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+text,title,author,length,culprit_ids
+"[Illustration]
+The Man in Lower Ten
+by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+Contents
+CHAPTER I. I GO TO PITTSBURG
+CHAPTER II. A TORN TELEGRAM
+CHAPTER III. ACROSS THE AISLE
+CHAPTER IV. NUMBERS SEVEN AND NINE
+CHAPTER V. THE WOMAN IN THE NEXT CAR
+CHAPTER VI. THE GIRL IN BLUE
+CHAPTER VII. A FINE GOLD CHAIN
+CHAPTER VIII. THE SECOND SECTION
+CHAPTER IX. THE HALCYON BREAKFAST
+CHAPTER X. MISS WEST’S REQUEST
+CHAPTER XI. THE NAME WAS SULLIVAN
+CHAPTER XII. THE GOLD BAG
+CHAPTER XIII. FADED ROSES
+CHAPTER XIV. THE TRAP-DOOR
+CHAPTER XV. THE CINEMATOGRAPH
+CHAPTER XVI. THE SHADOW OF A GIRL
+CHAPTER XVII. AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
+CHAPTER XVIII. A NEW WORLD
+CHAPTER XIX. AT THE TABLE NEXT
+CHAPTER XX. THE NOTES AND A BARGAIN
+CHAPTER XXI. McKNIGHT’S THEORY
+CHAPTER XXII. AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
+CHAPTER XXIII. A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
+CHAPTER XXIV. HIS WIFE’S FATHER
+CHAPTER XXV. AT THE STATION
+CHAPTER XXVI. ON TO RICHMOND
+CHAPTER XXVII. THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS
+CHAPTER XXVIII.ALISON’S STORY
+CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE DINING-ROOM
+CHAPTER XXX. FINER DETAILS
+CHAPTER XXXI. AND ONLY ONE ARM
+[Illustration]
+THE MAN IN LOWER TEN
+CHAPTER I.
+I GO TO PITTSBURG
+McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I
+never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I
+have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build
+up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely
+different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in
+circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering,
+white-faced wretch in the prisoners’ dock that I do not hark back with
+shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car Ontario,
+between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night of September ninth,
+last.
+McKnight could tell the story a great deal better than I, although he
+can not spell three consecutive words correctly. But, while he has
+imagination and humor, he is lazy.
+“It didn’t happen to me, anyhow,” he protested, when I put it up to
+him. “And nobody cares for second-hand thrills. Besides, you want the
+unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I’m no hand for that. I’m a
+lawyer.”
+So am I, although there have been times when my assumption in that
+particular has been disputed. I am unmarried, and just old enough to
+dance with the grown-up little sisters of the girls I used to know. I
+am fond of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid grown-up little
+sisters, am without sentiment (_am_ crossed out and _was_
+substituted.—Ed.) and completely ruled and frequently routed by my
+housekeeper, an elderly widow.
+In fact, of all the men of my acquaintance, I was probably the most
+prosaic, the least adventurous, the one man in a hundred who would be
+likely to go without a deviation from the normal through the orderly
+procession of the seasons, summer suits to winter flannels, golf to
+bridge.
+So it was a queer freak of the demons of chance to perch on my
+unsusceptible thirty-year-old chest, tie me up with a crime, ticket me
+with a love affair, and start me on that sensational and not always
+respectable journey that ended so surprisingly less than three weeks
+later in the firm’s private office. It had been the most remarkable
+period of my life. I would neither give it up nor live it again under
+any inducement, and yet all that I lost was some twenty yards off my
+drive!
+It was really McKnight’s turn to make the next journey. I had a
+tournament at Chevy Chase for Saturday, and a short yacht cruise
+planned for Sunday, and when a man has been grinding at statute law for
+a week, he needs relaxation. But McKnight begged off. It was not the
+first time he had shirked that summer in order to run down to Richmond,
+and I was surly about it. But this time he had a new excuse. “I
+wouldn’t be able to look after the business if I did go,” he said. He
+has a sort of wide-eyed frankness that makes one ashamed to doubt him.
+“I’m always car sick crossing the mountains. It’s a fact, Lollie.
+See-sawing over the peaks does it. Why, crossing the Alleghany
+Mountains has the Gulf Stream to Bermuda beaten to a frazzle.”
+So I gave him up finally and went home to pack. He came later in the
+evening with his machine, the Cannonball, to take me to the station,
+and he brought the forged notes in the Bronson case.
+“Guard them with your life,” he warned me. “They are more precious than
+honor. Sew them in your chest protector, or wherever people keep
+valuables. I never keep any. I’ll not be happy until I see Gentleman
+Andy doing the lockstep.”
+He sat down on my clean collars, found my cigarettes and struck a match
+on the mahogany bed post with one movement.
+“Where’s the Pirate?” he demanded. The Pirate is my housekeeper, Mrs.
+Klopton, a very worthy woman, so labeled—and libeled—because of a
+ferocious pair of eyes and what McKnight called a bucaneering nose. I
+quietly closed the door into the hall.
+“Keep your voice down, Richey,” I said. “She is looking for the evening
+paper to see if it is going to rain. She has my raincoat and an
+umbrella waiting in the hall.”
+The collars being damaged beyond repair, he left them and went to the
+window. He stood there for some time, staring at the blackness that
+represented the wall of the house next door.
+“It’s raining now,” he said over his shoulder, and closed the window
+and the shutters. Something in his voice made me glance up, but he was
+watching me, his hands idly in his pockets.
+“Who lives next door?” he inquired in a perfunctory tone, after a
+pause. I was packing my razor.
+“House is empty,” I returned absently. “If the landlord would put it in
+some sort of shape—”
+“Did you put those notes in your pocket?” he broke in.
+“Yes.” I was impatient. “Along with my certificates of registration,
+baptism and vaccination. Whoever wants them will have to steal my coat
+to get them.”
+“Well, I would move them, if I were you. Somebody in the next house was
+confoundedly anxious to see where you put them. Somebody right at that
+window opposite.”
+I scoffed at the idea, but nevertheless I moved the papers, putting
+them in my traveling-bag, well down at the bottom. McKnight watched me
+uneasily.
+“I have a hunch that you are going to have trouble,” he said, as I
+locked the alligator bag. “Darned if I like starting anything important
+on Friday.”
+“You have a congenital dislike to start anything on any old day,” I
+retorted, still sore from my lost Saturday. “And if you knew the owner
+of that house as I do you would know that if there was any one at that
+window he is paying rent for the privilege.”
+Mrs. Klopton rapped at the door and spoke discreetly from the hall.
+“Did Mr. McKnight bring the evening paper?” she inquired.
+“Sorry, but I didn’t, Mrs. Klopton,” McKnight called. “The Cubs won,
+three to nothing.” He listened, grinning, as she moved away with little
+irritated rustles of her black silk gown.
+I finished my packing, changed my collar and was ready to go. Then very
+cautiously we put out the light and opened the shutters. The window
+across was merely a deeper black in the darkness. It was closed and
+dirty. And yet, probably owing to Richey’s suggestion, I had an uneasy
+sensation of eyes staring across at me. The next moment we were at the
+door, poised for flight.
+“We’ll have to run for it,” I said in a whisper. “She’s down there with
+a package of some sort, sandwiches probably. And she’s threatened me
+with overshoes for a month. Ready now!”
+I had a kaleidoscopic view of Mrs. Klopton in the lower hall, holding
+out an armful of such traveling impedimenta as she deemed essential,
+while beside her, Euphemia, the colored housemaid, grinned over a
+white-wrapped box.
+“Awfully sorry—no time—back Sunday,” I panted over my shoulder. Then
+the door closed and the car was moving away.
+McKnight bent forward and stared at the façade of the empty house next
+door as we passed. It was black, staring, mysterious, as empty
+buildings are apt to be.
+“I’d like to hold a post-mortem on that corpse of a house,” he said
+thoughtfully. “By George, I’ve a notion to get out and take a look.”
+“Somebody after the brass pipes,” I scoffed. “House has been empty for
+a year.”
+With one hand on the steering wheel McKnight held out the other for my
+cigarette case. “Perhaps,” he said; “but I don’t see what she would
+want with brass pipe.”
+“A woman!” I laughed outright. “You have been looking too hard at the
+picture in the back of your watch, that’s all. There’s an experiment
+like that: if you stare long enough—”
+But McKnight was growing sulky: he sat looking rigidly ahead, and he
+did not speak again until he brought the Cannonball to a stop at the
+station. Even then it was only a perfunctory remark. He went through
+the gate with me, and with five minutes to spare, we lounged and smoked
+in the train shed. My mind had slid away from my surroundings and had
+wandered to a polo pony that I couldn’t afford and intended to buy
+anyhow. Then McKnight shook off his taciturnity.
+“For heaven’s sake, don’t look so martyred,” he burst out; “I know
+you’ve done all the traveling this summer. I know you’re missing a game
+to-morrow. But don’t be a patient mother; confound it, I have to go to
+Richmond on Sunday. I—I want to see a girl.”
+“Oh, don’t mind me,” I observed politely. “Personally, I wouldn’t
+change places with you. What’s her name—North? South?”
+“West,” he snapped. “Don’t try to be funny. And all I have to say,
+Blakeley, is that if you ever fall in love I hope you make an egregious
+ass of yourself.”
+In view of what followed, this came rather close to prophecy.
+The trip west was without incident. I played bridge with a furniture
+dealer from Grand Rapids, a sales agent for a Pittsburg iron firm and a
+young professor from an eastern college. I won three rubbers out of
+four, finished what cigarettes McKnight had left me, and went to bed at
+one o’clock. It was growing cooler, and the rain had ceased. Once,
+toward morning, I wakened with a start, for no apparent reason, and sat
+bolt upright. I had an uneasy feeling that some one had been looking at
+me, the same sensation I had experienced earlier in the evening at the
+window. But I could feel the bag with the notes, between me and the
+window, and with my arm thrown over it for security, I lapsed again
+into slumber. Later, when I tried to piece together the fragments of
+that journey, I remembered that my coat, which had been folded and
+placed beyond my restless tossing, had been rescued in the morning from
+a heterogeneous jumble of blankets, evening papers and cravat, had been
+shaken out with profanity and donned with wrath. At the time, nothing
+occurred to me but the necessity of writing to the Pullman Company and
+asking them if they ever traveled in their own cars. I even formulated
+some of the letter.
+“If they are built to scale, why not take a man of ordinary stature as
+your unit?” I wrote mentally. “I can not fold together like the
+traveling cup with which I drink your abominable water.”
+I was more cheerful after I had had a cup of coffee in the Union
+Station. It was too early to attend to business, and I lounged in the
+restaurant and hid behind the morning papers. As I had expected, they
+had got hold of my visit and its object. On the first page was a
+staring announcement that the forged papers in the Bronson case had
+been brought to Pittsburg. Underneath, a telegram from Washington
+stated that Lawrence Blakeley, of Blakeley and McKnight, had left for
+Pittsburg the night before, and that, owing to the approaching trial of
+the Bronson case and the illness of John Gilmore, the Pittsburg
+millionaire, who was the chief witness for the prosecution, it was
+supposed that the visit was intimately concerned with the trial.
+I looked around apprehensively. There were no reporters yet in sight,
+and thankful to have escaped notice I paid for my breakfast and left.
+At the cab-stand I chose the least dilapidated hansom I could find, and
+giving the driver the address of the Gilmore residence, in the East
+end, I got in.
+I was just in time. As the cab turned and rolled off, a slim young man
+in a straw hat separated himself from a little group of men and hurried
+toward us.
+“Hey! Wait a minute there!” he called, breaking into a trot.
+But the cabby did not hear, or perhaps did not care to. We jogged
+comfortably along, to my relief, leaving the young man far behind. I
+avoid reporters on principle, having learned long ago that I am an easy
+mark for a clever interviewer.
+It was perhaps nine o’clock when I left the station. Our way was along
+the boulevard which hugged the side of one of the city’s great hills.
+Far below, to the left, lay the railroad tracks and the seventy times
+seven looming stacks of the mills. The white mist of the river, the
+grays and blacks of the smoke blended into a half-revealing haze,
+dotted here and there with fire. It was unlovely, tremendous. Whistler
+might have painted it with its pathos, its majesty, but he would have
+missed what made it infinitely suggestive—the rattle and roar of iron
+on iron, the rumble of wheels, the throbbing beat, against the ears, of
+fire and heat and brawn welding prosperity.
+Something of this I voiced to the grim old millionaire who was
+responsible for at least part of it. He was propped up in bed in his
+East end home, listening to the market reports read by a nurse, and he
+smiled a little at my enthusiasm.
+“I can’t see much beauty in it myself,” he said. “But it’s our badge of
+prosperity. The full dinner pail here means a nose that looks like a
+flue. Pittsburg without smoke wouldn’t be Pittsburg, any more than New
+York without prohibition would be New York. Sit down for a few minutes,
+Mr. Blakeley. Now, Miss Gardner, Westinghouse Electric.”
+The nurse resumed her reading in a monotonous voice. She read literally
+and without understanding, using initials and abbreviations as they
+came. But the shrewd old man followed her easily. Once, however, he
+stopped her.
+“D-o is ditto,” he said gently, “not _do_.”
+As the nurse droned along, I found myself looking curiously at a
+photograph in a silver frame on the bed-side table. It was the picture
+of a girl in white, with her hands clasped loosely before her. Against
+the dark background her figure stood out slim and young. Perhaps it was
+the rather grim environment, possibly it was my mood, but although as a
+general thing photographs of young girls make no appeal to me, this one
+did. I found my eyes straying back to it. By a little finesse I even
+made out the name written across the corner, “Alison.”
+Mr. Gilmore lay back among his pillows and listened to the nurse’s
+listless voice. But he was watching me from under his heavy eyebrows,
+for when the reading was over, and we were alone, he indicated the
+picture with a gesture.
+“I keep it there to remind myself that I am an old man,” he said. ��That
+is my granddaughter, Alison West.”
+I expressed the customary polite surprise, at which, finding me
+responsive, he told me his age with a chuckle of pride. More surprise,
+this time genuine. From that we went to what he ate for breakfast and
+did not eat for luncheon, and then to his reserve power, which at
+sixty-five becomes a matter for thought. And so, in a wide circle, back
+to where we started, the picture.
+“Father was a rascal,” John Gilmore said, picking up the frame. “The
+happiest day of my life was when I knew he was safely dead in bed and
+not hanged. If the child had looked like him, I—well, she doesn’t.
+She’s a Gilmore, every inch. Supposed to look like me.”
+“Very noticeably,” I agreed soberly.
+I had produced the notes by that time, and replacing the picture Mr.
+Gilmore gathered his spectacles from beside it. He went over the four
+notes methodically, examining each carefully and putting it down before
+he picked up the next. Then he leaned back and took off his glasses.
+“They’re not so bad,” he said thoughtfully. “Not so bad. But I never
+saw them before. That’s my unofficial signature. I am inclined to
+think—” he was speaking partly to himself—“to think that he has got
+hold of a letter of mine, probably to Alison. Bronson was a friend of
+her rapscallion of a father.”
+I took Mr. Gilmore’s deposition and put it into my traveling-bag with
+the forged notes. When I saw them again, almost three weeks later, they
+were unrecognizable, a mass of charred paper on a copper ashtray. In
+the interval other and bigger things had happened: the Bronson forgery
+case had shrunk beside the greater and more imminent mystery of the man
+in lower ten. And Alison West had come into the story and into my life.
+CHAPTER II.
+A TORN TELEGRAM
+I lunched alone at the Gilmore house, and went back to the city at
+once. The sun had lifted the mists, and a fresh summer wind had cleared
+away the smoke pall. The boulevard was full of cars flying countryward
+for the Saturday half-holiday, toward golf and tennis, green fields and
+babbling girls. I gritted my teeth and thought of McKnight at Richmond,
+visiting the lady with the geographical name. And then, for the first
+time, I associated John Gilmore’s granddaughter with the “West” that
+McKnight had irritably flung at me.
+I still carried my traveling-bag, for McKnight’s vision at the window
+of the empty house had not been without effect. I did not transfer the
+notes to my pocket, and, if I had, it would not have altered the
+situation later. Only the other day McKnight put this very thing up to
+me.
+“I warned you,” he reminded me. “I told you there were queer things
+coming, and to be on your guard. You ought to have taken your
+revolver.”
+“It would have been of exactly as much use as a bucket of snow in
+Africa,” I retorted. “If I had never closed my eyes, or if I had kept
+my finger on the trigger of a six-shooter (which is novelesque for
+revolver), the result would have been the same. And the next time you
+want a little excitement with every variety of thrill thrown in, I can
+put you by way of it. You begin by getting the wrong berth in a Pullman
+car, and end—”
+“Oh, I know how it ends,” he finished shortly. “Don’t you suppose the
+whole thing’s written on my spinal marrow?”
+But I am wandering again. That is the difficulty with the
+unprofessional story-teller: he yaws back and forth and can’t keep in
+the wind; he drops his characters overboard when he hasn’t any further
+use for them and drowns them; he forgets the coffee-pot and the
+frying-pan and all the other small essentials, and, if he carries a
+love affair, he mutters a fervent “Allah be praised” when he lands
+them, drenched with adventures, at the matrimonial dock at the end of
+the final chapter.
+I put in a thoroughly unsatisfactory afternoon. Time dragged eternally.
+I dropped in at a summer vaudeville, and bought some ties at a
+haberdasher’s. I was bored but unexpectant; I had no premonition of
+what was to come. Nothing unusual had ever happened to me; friends of
+mine had sometimes sailed the high seas of adventure or skirted the
+coasts of chance, but all of the shipwrecks had occurred after a woman
+passenger had been taken on. “_Ergo_,” I had always said “no women!” I
+repeated it to myself that evening almost savagely, when I found my
+thoughts straying back to the picture of John Gilmore’s granddaughter.
+I even argued as I ate my solitary dinner at a downtown restaurant.
+“Haven’t you troubles enough,” I reflected, “without looking for more?
+Hasn’t Bad News gone lame, with a matinée race booked for next week?
+Otherwise aren’t you comfortable? Isn’t your house in order? Do you
+want to sell a pony in order to have the library done over in mission
+or the drawing-room in gold? Do you want somebody to count the empty
+cigarette boxes lying around every morning?”
+Lay it to the long idle afternoon, to the new environment, to anything
+you like, but I began to think that perhaps I did. I was confoundedly
+lonely. For the first time in my life its even course began to waver:
+the needle registered warning marks on the matrimonial seismograph,
+lines vague enough, but lines.
+My alligator bag lay at my feet, still locked. While I waited for my
+coffee I leaned back and surveyed the people incuriously. There were
+the usual couples intent on each other: my new state of mind made me
+regard them with tolerance. But at the next table, where a man and
+woman dined together, a different atmosphere prevailed. My attention
+was first caught by the woman’s face. She had been speaking earnestly
+across the table, her profile turned to me. I had noticed casually her
+earnest manner, her somber clothes, and the great mass of odd,
+bronze-colored hair on her neck. But suddenly she glanced toward me and
+the utter hopelessness—almost tragedy—of her expression struck me with
+a shock. She half closed her eyes and drew a long breath, then she
+turned again to the man across the table.
+Neither one was eating. He sat low in his chair, his chin on his chest,
+ugly folds of thick flesh protruding over his collar. He was probably
+fifty, bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not without a suggestion of
+power. But he had been drinking; as I looked, he raised an unsteady
+hand and summoned a waiter with a wine list.
+The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She had
+unconsciously raised her voice. Not beautiful, in her earnestness and
+stress she rather interested me. I had an idle inclination to advise
+the waiter to remove the bottled temptation from the table. I wonder
+what would have happened if I had? Suppose Harrington had not been
+intoxicated when he entered the Pullman car Ontario that night!
+For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young woman
+wished to go alone. I drank three cups of coffee, which accounted for
+my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the tableau before me.
+The woman’s protest evidently went for nothing: across the table the
+man grunted monosyllabic replies and grew more and more lowering and
+sullen. Once, during a brief unexpected _pianissimo_ in the music, her
+voice came to me sharply:
+“If I could only see him in time!” she was saying. “Oh, it’s terrible!”
+In spite of my interest I would have forgotten the whole incident at
+once, erased it from my mind as one does the inessentials and
+clutterings of memory, had I not met them again, later that evening, in
+the Pennsylvania station. The situation between them had not visibly
+altered: the same dogged determination showed in the man’s face, but
+the young woman—daughter or wife? I wondered—had drawn down her veil
+and I could only suspect what white misery lay beneath.
+I bought my berth after waiting in a line of some eight or ten people.
+When, step by step, I had almost reached the window, a tall woman whom
+I had not noticed before spoke to me from my elbow. She had a ticket
+and money in her hand.
+“Will you try to get me a lower when you buy yours?” she asked. “I have
+traveled for three nights in uppers.”
+I consented, of course; beyond that I hardly noticed the woman. I had a
+vague impression of height and a certain amount of stateliness, but the
+crowd was pushing behind me, and some one was standing on my foot. I
+got two lowers easily, and, turning with the change and berths, held
+out the tickets.
+“Which will you have?” I asked. “Lower eleven or lower ten?”
+“It makes no difference,” she said. “Thank you very much indeed.”
+At random I gave her lower eleven, and called a porter to help her with
+her luggage. I followed them leisurely to the train shed, and ten
+minutes more saw us under way.
+I looked into my car, but it presented the peculiarly unattractive
+appearance common to sleepers. The berths were made up; the center
+aisle was a path between walls of dingy, breeze-repelling curtains,
+while the two seats at each end of the car were piled high with
+suitcases and umbrellas. The perspiring porter was trying to be six
+places at once: somebody has said that Pullman porters are black so
+they won’t show the dirt, but they certainly show the heat.
+Nine-fifteen was an outrageous hour to go to bed, especially since I
+sleep little or not at all on the train, so I made my way to the smoker
+and passed the time until nearly eleven with cigarettes and a magazine.
+The car was very close. It was a warm night, and before turning in I
+stood a short time in the vestibule. The train had been stopping at
+frequent intervals, and, finding the brakeman there, I asked the
+trouble.
+It seemed that there was a hot-box on the next car, and that not only
+were we late, but we were delaying the second section, just behind. I
+was beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, and the air was growing cooler
+as we got into the mountains. I said good night to the brakeman and
+went back to my berth. To my surprise, lower ten was already occupied—a
+suit-case projected from beneath, a pair of shoes stood on the floor,
+and from behind the curtains came the heavy, unmistakable breathing of
+deep sleep. I hunted out the porter and together we investigated.
+“Are you asleep, sir?” asked the porter, leaning over deferentially. No
+answer forthcoming, he opened the curtains and looked in. Yes, the
+intruder was asleep—very much asleep—and an overwhelming odor of whisky
+proclaimed that he would probably remain asleep until morning. I was
+irritated. The car was full, and I was not disposed to take an upper in
+order to allow this drunken interloper to sleep comfortably in my
+berth.
+“You’ll have to get out of this,” I said, shaking him angrily. But he
+merely grunted and turned over. As he did so, I saw his features for
+the first time. It was the quarrelsome man of the restaurant.
+I was less disposed than ever to relinquish my claim, but the porter,
+after a little quiet investigation, offered a solution of the
+difficulty. “There’s no one in lower nine,” he suggested, pulling open
+the curtains just across. “It’s likely nine’s his berth, and he’s made
+a mistake, owing to his condition. You’d better take nine, sir.”
+I did, with a firm resolution that if nine’s rightful owner turned up
+later I should be just as unwakable as the man opposite. I undressed
+leisurely, making sure of the safety of the forged notes, and placing
+my grip as before between myself and the window.
+Being a man of systematic habits, I arranged my clothes carefully,
+putting my shoes out for the porter to polish, and stowing my collar
+and scarf in the little hammock swung for the purpose.
+At last, with my pillows so arranged that I could see out comfortably,
+and with the unhygienic-looking blanket turned back—I have always a
+distrust of those much-used affairs—I prepared to wait gradually for
+sleep.
+But sleep did not visit me. The train came to frequent, grating stops,
+and I surmised the hot box again. I am not a nervous man, but there was
+something chilling in the thought of the second section pounding along
+behind us. Once, as I was dozing, our locomotive whistled a shrill
+warning—“You keep back where you belong,” it screamed to my drowsy
+ears, and from somewhere behind came a chastened “All-right-I-will.”
+I grew more and more wide-awake. At Cresson I got up on my elbow and
+blinked out at the station lights. Some passengers boarded the train
+there and I heard a woman’s low tones, a southern voice, rich and full.
+Then quiet again. Every nerve was tense: time passed, perhaps ten
+minutes, possibly half an hour. Then, without the slightest warning, as
+the train rounded a curve, a heavy body was thrown into my berth. The
+incident, trivial as it seemed, was startling in its suddenness, for
+although my ears were painfully strained and awake, I had heard no step
+outside. The next instant the curtain hung limp again; still without a
+sound, my disturber had slipped away into the gloom and darkness. In a
+frenzy of wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair of slippers and fumbled
+for my bath-robe.
+From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular
+aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano,
+goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the
+listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears the
+very air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the edge of the berth
+and hoped the snorer would choke to death. He had considerable
+vitality, however; he withstood one shock after another and survived to
+start again with new vigor. In desperation I found some cigarettes and
+one match, piled my blankets over my grip, and drawing the curtains
+together as though the berth were still occupied, I made my way to the
+vestibule of the car.
+I was not clad for dress parade. Is it because the male is so
+restricted to gloom in his every-day attire that he blossoms into gaudy
+colors in his pajamas and dressing-gowns? It would take a Turk to feel
+at home before an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a Christmas
+remembrance from Mrs. Klopton, with slippers to match.
+So, naturally, when I saw a feminine figure on the platform, my first
+instinct was to dodge. The woman, however, was quicker than I; she gave
+me a startled glance, wheeled and disappeared, with a flash of two
+bronze-colored braids, into the next car.
+Cigarette box in one hand, match in the other, I leaned against the
+uncertain frame of the door and gazed after her vanished figure. The
+mountain air flapped my bath-robe around my bare ankles, my one match
+burned to the end and went out, and still I stared. For I had seen on
+her expressive face a haunting look that was horror, nothing less.
+Heaven knows, I am not psychological. Emotions have to be written large
+before I can read them. But a woman in trouble always appeals to me,
+and this woman was more than that. She was in deadly fear.
+If I had not been afraid of being ridiculous, I would have followed
+her. But I fancied that the apparition of a man in a red and yellow
+bath-robe, with an unkempt thatch of hair, walking up to her and
+assuring her that he would protect her would probably put her into
+hysterics. I had done that once before, when burglars had tried to
+break into the house, and had startled the parlor maid into bed for a
+week. So I tried to assure myself that I had imagined the lady’s
+distress—or caused it, perhaps—and to dismiss her from my mind. Perhaps
+she was merely anxious about the unpleasant gentleman of the
+restaurant. I thought smugly that I could have told her all about him:
+that he was sleeping the sleep of the just and the intoxicated in a
+berth that ought, by all that was fair and right, to have been mine,
+and that if I were tied to a man who snored like that I should have him
+anæsthetized and his soft palate put where it would never again flap
+like a loose sail in the wind.
+We passed Harrisburg as I stood there. It was starlight, and the great
+crests of the Alleghanies had given way to low hills. At intervals we
+passed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime comfortable farms,
+which McKnight says is a good way of putting it, the farms being a lot
+more comfortable than the people on them.
+I was growing drowsy: the woman with the bronze hair and the horrified
+face was fading in retrospect. It was colder, too, and I turned with a
+shiver to go in. As I did so a bit of paper fluttered into the air and
+settled on my sleeve, like a butterfly on a gorgeous red and yellow
+blossom. I picked it up curiously and glanced at it. It was part of a
+telegram that had been torn into bits.
+There were only parts of four words on the scrap, but it left me
+puzzled and thoughtful. It read, “—ower ten, car seve—.”
+“Lower ten, car seven,” was my berth—the one I had bought and found
+preempted.
+CHAPTER III.
+ACROSS THE AISLE
+No solution offering itself, I went back to my berth. The snorer across
+had apparently strangled, or turned over, and so after a time I dropped
+asleep, to be awakened by the morning sunlight across my face.
+I felt for my watch, yawning prodigiously. I reached under the pillow
+and failed to find it, but something scratched the back of my hand. I
+sat up irritably and nursed the wound, which was bleeding a little.
+Still drowsy, I felt more cautiously for what I supposed had been my
+scarf pin, but there was nothing there. Wide awake now, I reached for
+my traveling-bag, on the chance that I had put my watch in there. I had
+drawn the satchel to me and had my hand on the lock before I realized
+that it was not my own!
+Mine was of alligator hide. I had killed the beast in Florida, after
+the expenditure of enough money to have bought a house and enough
+energy to have built one. The bag I held in my hand was a black one,
+sealskin, I think. The staggering thought of what the loss of my bag
+meant to me put my finger on the bell and kept it there until the
+porter came.
+“Did you ring, sir?” he asked, poking his head through the curtains
+obsequiously. McKnight objects that nobody can poke his head through a
+curtain and be obsequious. But Pullman porters can and do.
+“No,” I snapped. “It rang itself. What in thunder do you mean by
+exchanging my valise for this one? You’ll have to find it if you waken
+the entire car to do it. There are important papers in that grip.”
+“Porter,” called a feminine voice from an upper berth near-by. “Porter,
+am I to dangle here all day?”
+“Let her dangle,” I said savagely. “You find that bag of mine.”
+The porter frowned. Then he looked at me with injured dignity. “I
+brought in your overcoat, sir. You carried your own valise.”
+The fellow was right! In an excess of caution I had refused to
+relinquish my alligator bag, and had turned over my other traps to the
+porter. It was clear enough then. I was simply a victim of the usual
+sleeping-car robbery. I was in a lather of perspiration by that time:
+the lady down the car was still dangling and talking about it: still
+nearer a feminine voice was giving quick orders in French, presumably
+to a maid. The porter was on his knees, looking under the berth.
+“Not there, sir,” he said, dusting his knees. He was visibly more
+cheerful, having been absolved of responsibility. “Reckon it was taken
+while you was wanderin’ around the car last night.”
+“I’ll give you fifty dollars if you find it,” I said. “A hundred. Reach
+up my shoes and I’ll—”
+I stopped abruptly. My eyes were fixed in stupefied amazement on a coat
+that hung from a hook at the foot of my berth. From the coat they
+traveled, dazed, to the soft-bosomed shirt beside it, and from there to
+the collar and cravat in the net hammock across the windows.
+“A hundred!” the porter repeated, showing his teeth. But I caught him
+by the arm and pointed to the foot of the berth.
+“What—what color’s that coat?” I asked unsteadily.
+“Gray, sir.” His tone was one of gentle reproof.
+“And—the trousers?”
+He reached over and held up one creased leg. “Gray, too,” he grinned.
+“Gray!” I could not believe even his corroboration of my own eyes. “But
+my clothes were blue!” The porter was amused: he dived under the
+curtains and brought up a pair of shoes. “Your shoes, sir,” he said
+with a flourish. “Reckon you’ve been dreaming, sir.”
+Now, there are two things I always avoid in my dress—possibly an
+idiosyncrasy of my bachelor existence. These tabooed articles are red
+neckties and tan shoes. And not only were the shoes the porter lifted
+from the floor of a gorgeous shade of yellow, but the scarf which was
+run through the turned over collar was a gaudy red. It took a full
+minute for the real import of things to penetrate my dazed
+intelligence. Then I gave a vindictive kick at the offending ensemble.
+“They’re not mine, any of them,” I snarled. “They are some other
+fellow’s. I’ll sit here until I take root before I put them on.”
+“They’re nice lookin’ clothes,” the porter put in, eying the red tie
+with appreciation. “Ain’t everybody would have left you anything.”
+“Call the conductor,” I said shortly. Then a possible explanation
+occurred to me. “Oh, porter—what’s the number of this berth?”
+“Seven, sir. If you cain’t wear those shoes—”
+“Seven!” In my relief I almost shouted it. “Why, then, it’s simple
+enough. I’m in the wrong berth, that’s all. My berth is nine.
+Only—where the deuce is the man who belongs here?”
+“Likely in nine, sir.” The darky was enjoying himself. “You and the
+other gentleman just got mixed in the night. That’s all, sir.” It was
+clear that he thought I had been drinking.
+I drew a long breath. Of course, that was the explanation. This was
+number seven’s berth, that was his soft hat, this his umbrella, his
+coat, his bag. My rage turned to irritation at myself.
+The porter went to the next berth and I could hear his softly
+insinuating voice. “Time to get up, sir. Are you awake? Time to get
+up.”
+There was no response from number nine. I guessed that he had opened
+the curtains and was looking in. Then he came back.
+“Number nine’s empty,” he said.
+“Empty! Do you mean my clothes aren’t there?” I demanded. “My valise?
+Why don’t you answer me?”
+“You doan’ give me time,” he retorted. “There ain’t nothin’ there. But
+it’s been slept in.”
+The disappointment was the greater for my few moments of hope. I sat up
+in a white fury and put on the clothes that had been left me. Then,
+still raging, I sat on the edge of the berth and put on the obnoxious
+tan shoes. The porter, called to his duties, made little excursions
+back to me, to offer assistance and to chuckle at my discomfiture. He
+stood by, outwardly decorous, but with little irritating grins of
+amusement around his mouth, when I finally emerged with the red tie in
+my hand.
+“Bet the owner of those clothes didn’t become them any more than you
+do,” he said, as he plied the ubiquitous whisk broom.
+“When I get the owner of these clothes,” I retorted grimly, “he will
+need a shroud. Where’s the conductor?”
+The conductor was coming, he assured me; also that there was no bag
+answering the description of mine on the car. I slammed my way to the
+dressing-room, washed, choked my fifteen and a half neck into a fifteen
+collar, and was back again in less than five minutes. The car, as well
+as its occupants, was gradually taking on a daylight appearance. I
+hobbled in, for one of the shoes was abominably tight, and found myself
+facing a young woman in blue with an unforgettable face. (“Three women
+already.” McKnight says: “That’s going some, even if you don’t count
+the Gilmore nurse.”) She stood, half-turned toward me, one hand idly
+drooping, the other steadying her as she gazed out at the flying
+landscape. I had an instant impression that I had met her somewhere,
+under different circumstances, more cheerful ones, I thought, for the
+girl’s dejection now was evident. Beside her, sitting down, a small
+dark woman, considerably older, was talking in a rapid undertone. The
+girl nodded indifferently now and then. I fancied, although I was not
+sure, that my appearance brought a startled look into the young woman’s
+face. I sat down and, hands thrust deep into the other man’s pockets,
+stared ruefully at the other man’s shoes.
+The stage was set. In a moment the curtain was going up on the first
+act of the play. And for a while we would all say our little speeches
+and sing our little songs, and I, the villain, would hold center stage
+while the gallery hissed.
+The porter was standing beside lower ten. He had reached in and was
+knocking valiantly. But his efforts met with no response. He winked at
+me over his shoulder; then he unfastened the curtains and bent forward.
+Behind him, I saw him stiffen, heard his muttered exclamation, saw the
+bluish pallor that spread over his face and neck. As he retreated a
+step the interior of lower ten lay open to the day.
+The man in it was on his back, the early morning sun striking full on
+his upturned face. But the light did not disturb him. A small stain of
+red dyed the front of his night clothes and trailed across the sheet;
+his half-open eyes were fixed, without seeing, on the shining wood
+above.
+I grasped the porter’s shaking shoulders and stared down to where the
+train imparted to the body a grisly suggestion of motion. “Good Lord,”
+I gasped. “The man’s been murdered!”
+CHAPTER IV.
+NUMBERS SEVEN AND NINE
+Afterwards, when I tried to recall our discovery of the body in lower
+ten, I found that my most vivid impression was not that made by the
+revelation of the opened curtain. I had an instantaneous picture of a
+slender blue-gowned girl who seemed to sense my words rather than hear
+them, of two small hands that clutched desperately at the seat beside
+them. The girl in the aisle stood, bent toward us, perplexity and alarm
+fighting in her face.
+With twitching hands the porter attempted to draw the curtains
+together. Then in a paralysis of shock, he collapsed on the edge of my
+berth and sat there swaying. In my excitement I shook him.
+“For Heaven’s sake, keep your nerve, man,” I said bruskly. “You’ll have
+every woman in the car in hysterics. And if you do, you’ll wish you
+could change places with the man in there.” He rolled his eyes.
+A man near, who had been reading last night’s paper, dropped it quickly
+and tiptoed toward us. He peered between the partly open curtains,
+closed them quietly and went back, ostentatiously solemn, to his seat.
+The very crackle with which he opened his paper added to the bursting
+curiosity of the car. For the passengers knew that something was amiss:
+I was conscious of a sudden tension.
+With the curtains closed the porter was more himself; he wiped his lips
+with a handkerchief and stood erect.
+“It’s my last trip in _this_ car,” he remarked heavily. “There’s
+something wrong with that berth. Last trip the woman in it took an
+overdose of some sleeping stuff, and we found her, jes’ like that,
+dead! And it ain’t more’n three months now since there was twins born
+in that very spot. No, sir, it ain’t natural.”
+At that moment a thin man with prominent eyes and a spare grayish
+goatee creaked up the aisle and paused beside me.
+“Porter sick?” he inquired, taking in with a professional eye the
+porter’s horror-struck face, my own excitement and the slightly gaping
+curtains of lower ten. He reached for the darky’s pulse and pulled out
+an old-fashioned gold watch.
+“Hm! Only fifty! What’s the matter? Had a shock?” he asked shrewdly.
+“Yes,” I answered for the porter. “We’ve both had one. If you are a
+doctor, I wish you would look at the man in the berth across, lower
+ten. I’m afraid it’s too late, but I’m not experienced in such
+matters.”
+Together we opened the curtains, and the doctor, bending down, gave a
+comprehensive glance that took in the rolling head, the relaxed jaw,
+the ugly stain on the sheet. The examination needed only a moment.
+Death was written in the clear white of the nostrils, the colorless
+lips, the smoothing away of the sinister lines of the night before.
+With its new dignity the face was not unhandsome: the gray hair was
+still plentiful, the features strong and well cut.
+The doctor straightened himself and turned to me. “Dead for some time,”
+he said, running a professional finger over the stains. “These are dry
+and darkened, you see, and _rigor mortis_ is well established. A friend
+of yours?”
+“I don’t know him at all,” I replied. “Never saw him but once before.”
+“Then you don’t know if he is traveling alone?”
+“No, he was not—that is, I don’t know anything about him,” I corrected
+myself. It was my first blunder: the doctor glanced up at me quickly
+and then turned his attention again to the body. Like a flash there had
+come to me the vision of the woman with the bronze hair and the tragic
+face, whom I had surprised in the vestibule between the cars, somewhere
+in the small hours of the morning. I had acted on my first impulse—the
+masculine one of shielding a woman.
+The doctor had unfastened the coat of the striped pajamas and exposed
+the dead man’s chest. On the left side was a small punctured wound of
+insignificant size.
+“Very neatly done,” the doctor said with appreciation. “Couldn’t have
+done it better myself. Right through the intercostal space: no time
+even to grunt.”
+“Isn’t the heart around there somewhere?” I asked. The medical man
+turned toward me and smiled austerely.
+“That’s where it belongs, just under that puncture, when it isn’t
+gadding around in a man’s throat or his boots.”
+I had a new respect for the doctor, for any one indeed who could crack
+even a feeble joke under such circumstances, or who could run an
+impersonal finger over that wound and those stains. Odd how a healthy,
+normal man holds the medical profession in half contemptuous regard
+until he gets sick, or an emergency like this arises, and then turns
+meekly to the man who knows the ins and outs of his mortal tenement,
+takes his pills or his patronage, ties to him like a rudderless ship in
+a gale.
+“Suicide, is it, doctor?” I asked.
+He stood erect, after drawing the bed-clothing over the face, and,
+taking off his glasses, he wiped them slowly.
+“No, it is not suicide,” he announced decisively. “It is murder.”
+Of course, I had expected that, but the word itself brought a shiver. I
+was just a bit dizzy. Curious faces through the car were turned toward
+us, and I could hear the porter behind me breathing audibly. A stout
+woman in negligee came down the aisle and querulously confronted the
+porter. She wore a pink dressing-jacket and carried portions of her
+clothing.
+“Porter,” she began, in the voice of the lady who had “dangled,” “is
+there a rule of this company that will allow a woman to occupy the
+dressing-room for one hour and curl her hair with an alcohol lamp while
+respectable people haven’t a place where they can hook their—”
+She stopped suddenly and stared into lower ten. Her shining pink cheeks
+grew pasty, her jaw fell. I remember trying to think of something to
+say, and of saying nothing at all. Then—she had buried her eyes in the
+nondescript garments that hung from her arm and tottered back the way
+she had come. Slowly a little knot of men gathered around us, silent
+for the most part. The doctor was making a search of the berth when the
+conductor elbowed his way through, followed by the inquisitive man, who
+had evidently summoned him. I had lost sight, for a time, of the girl
+in blue.
+“Do it himself?” the conductor queried, after a businesslike glance at
+the body.
+“No, he didn’t,” the doctor asserted. “There’s no weapon here, and the
+window is closed. He couldn’t have thrown it out, and he didn’t swallow
+it. What on earth are you looking for, man?”
+Some one was on the floor at our feet, face down, head peering under
+the berth. Now he got up without apology, revealing the man who had
+summoned the conductor. He was dusty, alert, cheerful, and he dragged
+up with him the dead man’s suit-case. The sight of it brought back to
+me at once my own predicament.
+“I don’t know whether there’s any connection or not, conductor,” I
+said, “but I am a victim, too, in less degree; I’ve been robbed of
+everything I possess, except a red and yellow bath-robe. I happened to
+be wearing the bath-robe, which was probably the reason the thief
+overlooked it.”
+There was a fresh murmur in the crowd. Some body laughed nervously. The
+conductor was irritated.
+“I can’t bother with that now,” he snarled. “The railroad company is
+responsible for transportation, not for clothes, jewelry and morals. If
+people want to be stabbed and robbed in the company’s cars, it’s their
+affair. Why didn’t you sleep in your clothes? I do.”
+I took an angry step forward. Then somebody touched my arm, and I
+unclenched my fist. I could understand the conductor’s position, and
+beside, in the law, I had been guilty myself of contributory
+negligence.
+“I’m not trying to make you responsible,” I protested as amiably as I
+could, “and I believe the clothes the thief left are as good as my own.
+They are certainly newer. But my valise contained valuable papers and
+it is to your interest as well as mine to find the man who stole it.”
+“Why, of course,” the conductor said shrewdly. “Find the man who
+skipped out with this gentleman’s clothes, and you’ve probably got the
+murderer.”
+“I went to bed in lower nine,” I said, my mind full again of my lost
+papers, “and I wakened in number seven. I was up in the night prowling
+around, as I was unable to sleep, and I must have gone back to the
+wrong berth. Anyhow, until the porter wakened me this morning I knew
+nothing of my mistake. In the interval the thief—murderer, too,
+perhaps—must have come back, discovered my error, and taken advantage
+of it to further his escape.”
+The inquisitive man looked at me from between narrowed eyelids,
+ferret-like.
+“Did any one on the train suspect you of having valuable papers?” he
+inquired. The crowd was listening intently.
+“No one,” I answered promptly and positively. The doctor was
+investigating the murdered man’s effects. The pockets of his trousers
+contained the usual miscellany of keys and small change, while in his
+hip pocket was found a small pearl-handled revolver of the type women
+usually keep around. A gold watch with a Masonic charm had slid down
+between the mattress and the window, while a showy diamond stud was
+still fastened in the bosom of his shirt. Taken as a whole, the
+personal belongings were those of a man of some means, but without any
+particular degree of breeding. The doctor heaped them together.
+“Either robbery was not the motive,” he reflected, “or the thief
+overlooked these things in his hurry.”
+The latter hypothesis seemed the more tenable, when, after a thorough
+search, we found no pocketbook and less than a dollar in small change.
+The suit-case gave no clue. It contained one empty leather-covered
+flask and a pint bottle, also empty, a change of linen and some collars
+with the laundry mark, S. H. In the leather tag on the handle was a
+card with the name Simon Harrington, Pittsburg. The conductor sat down
+on my unmade berth, across, and made an entry of the name and address.
+Then, on an old envelope, he wrote a few words and gave it to the
+porter, who disappeared.
+“I guess that’s all I can do,” he said. “I’ve had enough trouble this
+trip to last for a year. They don’t need a conductor on these trains
+any more; what they ought to have is a sheriff and a _posse_.”
+The porter from the next car came in and whispered to him. The
+conductor rose unhappily.
+“Next car’s caught the disease,” he grumbled. “Doctor, a woman back
+there has got mumps or bubonic plague, or something. Will you come
+back?”
+The strange porter stood aside.
+“Lady about the middle of the car,” he said, “in black, sir, with
+queer-looking hair—sort of copper color, I think, sir.”
+CHAPTER V.
+THE WOMAN IN THE NEXT CAR
+With the departure of the conductor and the doctor, the group around
+lower ten broke up, to re-form in smaller knots through the car. The
+porter remained on guard. With something of relief I sank into a seat.
+I wanted to think, to try to remember the details of the previous
+night. But my inquisitive acquaintance had other intentions. He came up
+and sat down beside me. Like the conductor, he had taken notes of the
+dead man’s belongings, his name, address, clothing and the general
+circumstances of the crime. Now with his little note-book open before
+him, he prepared to enjoy the minor sensation of the robbery.
+“And now for the second victim,” he began cheerfully. “What is your
+name and address, please?” I eyed him with suspicion.
+“I have lost everything but my name and address,” I parried. “What do
+you want them for? Publication?”
+“Oh, no; dear, no!” he said, shocked at my misapprehension. “Merely for
+my own enlightenment. I like to gather data of this kind and draw my
+own conclusions. Most interesting and engrossing. Once or twice I have
+forestalled the results of police investigation—but entirely for my own
+amusement.”
+I nodded tolerantly. Most of us have hobbies; I knew a man once who
+carried his handkerchief up his sleeve and had a mania for old colored
+prints cut out of Godey’s _Lady’s Book_.
+“I use that inductive method originated by Poe and followed since with
+such success by Conan Doyle. Have you ever read _Gaboriau?_ Ah, you
+have missed a treat, indeed. And now, to get down to business, what is
+the name of our escaped thief and probable murderer?”
+“How on earth do I know?” I demanded impatiently. “He didn’t write it
+in blood anywhere, did he?”
+The little man looked hurt and disappointed.
+“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that the pockets of those clothes are
+entirely empty?” The pockets! In the excitement I had forgotten
+entirely the sealskin grip which the porter now sat at my feet, and I
+had not investigated the pockets at all. With the inquisitive man’s
+pencil taking note of everything that I found, I emptied them on the
+opposite seat.
+Upper left-hand waist-coat, two lead pencils and a fountain pen; lower
+right waist-coat, match-box and a small stamp book; right-hand pocket
+coat, pair of gray suede gloves, new, size seven and a half; left-hand
+pocket, gun-metal cigarette case studded with pearls, half-full of
+Egyptian cigarettes. The trousers pockets contained a gold penknife, a
+small amount of money in bills and change, and a handkerchief with the
+initial “S” on it.
+Further search through the coat discovered a card-case with cards
+bearing the name Henry Pinckney Sullivan, and a leather flask with gold
+mountings, filled with what seemed to be very fair whisky, and
+monogrammed H. P. S.
+“His name evidently is Henry Pinckney Sullivan,” said the cheerful
+follower of Poe, as he wrote it down. “Address as yet unknown. Blond,
+probably. Have you noticed that it is almost always the blond men who
+affect a very light gray, with a touch of red in the scarf? Fact, I
+assure you. I kept a record once of the summer attire of men, and
+ninety per cent, followed my rule. Dark men like you affect navy blue,
+or brown.”
+In spite of myself I was amused at the man’s shrewdness.
+“Yes; the suit he took was dark—a blue,” I said. He rubbed his hands
+and smiled at me delightedly. “Then you wore black shoes, not tan,” he
+said, with a glance at the aggressive yellow ones I wore.
+“Right again,” I acknowledged. “Black low shoes and black embroidered
+hose. If you keep on you’ll have a motive for the crime, and the
+murderer’s present place of hiding. And if you come back to the smoker
+with me, I’ll give you an opportunity to judge if he knew good whisky
+from bad.”
+I put the articles from the pockets back again and got up. “I wonder if
+there is a diner on?” I said. “I need something sustaining after all
+this.”
+I was conscious then of some one at my elbow. I turned to see the young
+woman whose face was so vaguely familiar. In the very act of speaking
+she drew back suddenly and colored.
+“Oh,—I beg your pardon,” she said hurriedly, “I—thought you were—some
+one else.” She was looking in a puzzled fashion at my coat. I felt all
+the cringing guilt of a man who has accidentally picked up the wrong
+umbrella: my borrowed collar sat tight on my neck.
+“I’m sorry,” I said idiotically. “I’m sorry, but—I’m not.” I have
+learned since that she has bright brown hair, with a loose wave in it
+that drops over her ears, and dark blue eyes with black lashes and—but
+what does it matter? One enjoys a picture as a whole: not as the sum of
+its parts.
+She saw the flask then, and her errand came back to her. “One of the
+ladies at the end of car has fainted,” she explained. “I thought
+perhaps a stimulant—”
+I picked up the flask at once and followed my guide down the aisle. Two
+or three women were working over the woman who had fainted. They had
+opened her collar and taken out her hairpins, whatever good that might
+do. The stout woman was vigorously rubbing her wrists, with the idea,
+no doubt, of working up her pulse! The unconscious woman was the one
+for whom I had secured lower eleven at the station.
+I poured a little liquor in a bungling masculine fashion between her
+lips as she leaned back, with closed eyes. She choked, coughed, and
+rallied somewhat.
+“Poor thing,” said the stout lady. “As she lies back that way I could
+almost think it was my mother; she used to faint so much.”
+“It would make anybody faint,” chimed in another. “Murder and robbery
+in one night and on one car. I’m thankful I always wear my rings in a
+bag around my neck—even if they do get under me and keep me awake.”
+The girl in blue was looking at us with wide, startled eyes. I saw her
+pale a little, saw the quick, apprehensive glance which she threw at
+her traveling companion, the small woman I had noticed before. There
+was an exchange—almost a clash—of glances. The small woman frowned.
+That was all. I turned my attention again to my patient.
+She had revived somewhat, and now she asked to have the window opened.
+The train had stopped again and the car was oppressively hot. People
+around were looking at their watches and grumbling over the delay. The
+doctor bustled in with a remark about its being his busy day. The
+amateur detective and the porter together mounted guard over lower ten.
+Outside the heat rose in shimmering waves from the tracks: the very
+wood of the car was hot to touch. A Camberwell Beauty darted through
+the open door and made its way, in erratic plunges, great wings waving,
+down the sunny aisle. All around lay the peace of harvested fields, the
+quiet of the country.
+CHAPTER VI.
+THE GIRL IN BLUE
+I was growing more and more irritable. The thought of what the loss of
+the notes meant was fast crowding the murder to the back of my mind.
+The forced inaction was intolerable.
+The porter had reported no bag answering the description of mine on the
+train, but I was disposed to make my own investigation. I made a tour
+of the cars, scrutinizing every variety of hand luggage, ranging from
+luxurious English bags with gold mountings to the wicker nondescripts
+of the day coach at the rear. I was not alone in my quest, for the girl
+in blue was just ahead of me. Car by car she preceded me through the
+train, unconscious that I was behind her, looking at each passenger as
+she passed. I fancied the proceeding was distasteful, but that she had
+determined on a course and was carrying it through. We reached the end
+of the train almost together—empty-handed, both of us.
+The girl went out to the platform. When she saw me she moved aside, and
+I stepped out beside her. Behind us the track curved sharply; the early
+sunshine threw the train, in long black shadow, over the hot earth.
+Forward somewhere they were hammering. The girl said nothing, but her
+profile was strained and anxious.
+“I—if you have lost anything,” I began, “I wish you would let me try to
+help. Not that my own success is anything to boast of.”
+She hardly glanced at me. It was not flattering. “I have not been
+robbed, if that is what you mean,” she replied quietly. “I
+am—perplexed. That is all.”
+There was nothing to say to that. I lifted my hat—the other fellow’s
+hat—and turned to go back to my car. Two or three members of the train
+crew, including the conductor, were standing in the shadow talking. And
+at that moment, from a farm-house near came the swift clang of the
+breakfast bell, calling in the hands from barn and pasture. I turned
+back to the girl.
+“We may be here for an hour,” I said, “and there is no buffet car on.
+If I remember my youth, that bell means ham and eggs and country butter
+and coffee. If you care to run the risk—”
+“I am not hungry,” she said, “but perhaps a cup of coffee—dear me, I
+believe I _am_ hungry,” she finished. “Only—” She glanced back of her.
+“I can bring your companion,” I suggested, without enthusiasm. But the
+young woman shook her head.
+“She is not hungry,” she objected, “and she is very—well, I know she
+wouldn’t come. Do you suppose we could make it if we run?”
+“I haven’t any idea,” I said cheerfully. “Any old train would be better
+than this one, if it does leave us behind.”
+“Yes. Any train would be better than this one,” she repeated gravely. I
+found myself watching her changing expression. I had spoken two dozen
+words to her and already I felt that I knew the lights and shades in
+her voice,—I, who had always known how a woman rode to hounds, and who
+never could have told the color of her hair.
+I stepped down on the ties and turned to assist her, and together we
+walked back to where the conductor and the porter from our car were in
+close conversation. Instinctively my hand went to my cigarette pocket
+and came out empty. She saw the gesture.
+“If you want to smoke, you may,” she said. “I have a big cousin who
+smokes all the time. He says I am ‘kippered.’”
+I drew out the gun-metal cigarette case and opened it. But this most
+commonplace action had an extraordinary result: the girl beside me
+stopped dead still and stood staring at it with fascinated eyes.
+“Is—where did you get that?” she demanded, with a catch in her voice;
+her gaze still fixed on the cigarette case.
+“Then you haven’t heard the rest of the tragedy?” I asked, holding out
+the case. “It’s frightfully bad luck for me, but it makes a good story.
+You see—”
+At that moment the conductor and porter ceased their colloquy. The
+conductor came directly toward me, tugging as he came at his bristling
+gray mustache.
+“I would like to talk to you in the car,” he said to me, with a curious
+glance at the young lady.
+“Can’t it wait?” I objected. “We are on our way to a cup of coffee and
+a slice of bacon. Be merciful, as you are powerful.”
+“I’m afraid the breakfast will have to wait,” he replied. “I won’t keep
+you long.” There was a note of authority in his voice which I resented;
+but, after all, the circumstances were unusual.
+“We’ll have to defer that cup of coffee for a while,” I said to the
+girl; “but don’t despair; there’s breakfast somewhere.”
+As we entered the car, she stood aside, but I felt rather than saw that
+she followed us. I was surprised to see a half dozen men gathered
+around the berth in which I had wakened, number seven. It had not yet
+been made up.
+As we passed along the aisle, I was conscious of a new expression on
+the faces of the passengers. The tall woman who had fainted was
+searching my face with narrowed eyes, while the stout woman of the
+kindly heart avoided my gaze, and pretended to look out the window.
+As we pushed our way through the group, I fancied that it closed around
+me ominously. The conductor said nothing, but led the way without
+ceremony to the side of the berth.
+“What’s the matter?” I inquired. I was puzzled, but not apprehensive.
+“Have you some of my things? I’d be thankful even for my shoes; these
+are confoundedly tight.”
+Nobody spoke, and I fell silent, too. For one of the pillows had been
+turned over, and the under side of the white case was streaked with
+brownish stains. I think it was a perceptible time before I realized
+that the stains were blood, and that the faces around were filled with
+suspicion and distrust.
+“Why, it—that looks like blood,” I said vacuously. There was an
+incessant pounding in my ears, and the conductor’s voice came from far
+off.
+“It is blood,” he asserted grimly.
+I looked around with a dizzy attempt at nonchalance. “Even if it is,” I
+remonstrated, “surely you don’t suppose for a moment that I know
+anything about it!”
+The amateur detective elbowed his way in. He had a scrap of transparent
+paper in his hand, and a pencil.
+“I would like permission to trace the stains,” he began eagerly.
+“Also”—to me—“if you will kindly jab your finger with a
+pin—needle—anything—”
+“If you don’t keep out of this,” the conductor said savagely, “I will
+do some jabbing myself. As for you, sir—” he turned to me. I was
+absolutely innocent, but I knew that I presented a typical picture of
+guilt; I was covered with cold sweat, and the pounding in my ears kept
+up dizzily. “As for you, sir—”
+The irrepressible amateur detective made a quick pounce at the pillow
+and pushed back the cover. Before our incredulous eyes he drew out a
+narrow steel dirk which had been buried to the small cross that served
+as a head.
+There was a chorus of voices around, a quick surging forward of the
+crowd. So that was what had scratched my hand! I buried the wound in my
+coat pocket.
+“Well,” I said, trying to speak naturally, “doesn’t that prove what I
+have been telling you? The man who committed the murder belonged to
+this berth, and made an exchange in some way after the crime. How do
+you know he didn’t change the tags so I would come back to this berth?”
+This was an inspiration; I was pleased with it. “That’s what he did, he
+changed the tags,” I reiterated.
+There was a murmur of assent around. The doctor, who was standing
+beside me, put his hand on my arm. “If this gentleman committed this
+crime, and I for one feel sure he did not, then who is the fellow who
+got away? And why did he go?”
+“We have only one man’s word for that,” the conductor snarled. “I’ve
+traveled some in these cars myself, and no one ever changed berths with
+_me_.”
+Somebody on the edge of the group asserted that hereafter he would
+travel by daylight. I glanced up and caught the eye of the girl in
+blue.
+“They are all mad,” she said. Her tone was low, but I heard her
+distinctly. “Don’t take them seriously enough to defend yourself.”
+“I am glad you think I didn’t do it,” I observed meekly, over the
+crowd. “Nothing else is of any importance.”
+The conductor had pulled out his note-book again. “Your name, please,”
+he said gruffly.
+“Lawrence Blakeley, Washington.”
+“Your occupation?”
+“Attorney. A member of the firm of Blakeley and McKnight.”
+“Mr. Blakeley, you say you have occupied the wrong berth and have been
+robbed. Do you know anything of the man who did it?”
+“Only from what he left behind,” I answered. “These clothes—”
+“They fit you,” he said with quick suspicion. “Isn’t that rather a
+coincidence? You are a large man.”
+“Good Heavens,” I retorted, stung into fury, “do I look like a man who
+would wear this kind of a necktie? Do you suppose I carry purple and
+green barred silk handkerchiefs? Would any man in his senses wear a
+pair of shoes a full size too small?”
+The conductor was inclined to hedge. “You will have to grant that I am
+in a peculiar position,” he said. “I have only your word as to the
+exchange of berths, and you understand I am merely doing my duty. Are
+there any clues in the pockets?”
+For the second time I emptied them of their contents, which he noted.
+“Is that all?” he finished. “There was nothing else?”
+“Nothing.”
+“That’s not all, sir,” broke in the porter, stepping forward. “There
+was a small black satchel.”
+“That’s so,” I exclaimed. “I forgot the bag. I don’t even know where it
+is.”
+The easily swayed crowd looked suspicious again. I’ve grown so
+accustomed to reading the faces of a jury, seeing them swing from doubt
+to belief, and back again to doubt, that I instinctively watch
+expressions. I saw that my forgetfulness had done me harm—that
+suspicion was roused again.
+The bag was found a couple of seats away, under somebody’s
+raincoat—another dubious circumstance. Was I hiding it? It was brought
+to the berth and placed beside the conductor, who opened it at once.
+It contained the usual traveling impedimenta—change of linen, collars,
+handkerchiefs, a bronze-green scarf, and a safety razor. But the
+attention of the crowd riveted itself on a flat, Russia leather wallet,
+around which a heavy gum band was wrapped, and which bore in gilt
+letters the name “Simon Harrington.”
+CHAPTER VII.
+A FINE GOLD CHAIN
+The conductor held it out to me, his face sternly accusing.
+“Is this another coincidence?” he asked. “Did the man who left you his
+clothes and the barred silk handkerchief and the tight shoes leave you
+the spoil of the murder?”
+The men standing around had drawn off a little, and I saw the absolute
+futility of any remonstrance. Have you ever seen a fly, who, in these
+hygienic days, finding no cobwebs to entangle him, is caught in a sheet
+of fly paper, finds himself more and more mired, and is finally quiet
+with the sticky stillness of despair?
+Well, I was the fly. I had seen too much of circumstantial evidence to
+have any belief that the establishing of my identity would weigh much
+against the other incriminating details. It meant imprisonment and
+trial, probably, with all the notoriety and loss of practice they would
+entail. A man thinks quickly at a time like that. All the probable
+consequences of the finding of that pocket-book flashed through my mind
+as I extended my hand to take it. Then I drew my arm back.
+“I don’t want it,” I said. “Look inside. Maybe the other man took the
+money and left the wallet.”
+The conductor opened it, and again there was a curious surging forward
+of the crowd. To my intense disappointment the money was still there.
+I stood blankly miserable while it was counted out—five
+one-hundred-dollar bills, six twenties, and some fives and ones that
+brought the total to six hundred and fifty dollars.
+The little man with the note-book insisted on taking the numbers of the
+notes, to the conductor’s annoyance. It was immaterial to me: small
+things had lost their power to irritate. I was seeing myself in the
+prisoner’s box, going through all the nerve-racking routine of a trial
+for murder—the challenging of the jury, the endless cross-examinations,
+the alternate hope and fear. I believe I said before that I had no
+nerves, but for a few minutes that morning I was as near as a man ever
+comes to hysteria.
+I folded my arms and gave myself a mental shake. I seemed to be the
+center of a hundred eyes, expressing every shade of doubt and distrust,
+but I tried not to flinch. Then some one created a diversion.
+The amateur detective was busy again with the seal-skin bag,
+investigating the make of the safety razor and the manufacturer’s name
+on the bronze-green tie. Now, however, he paused and frowned, as though
+some pet theory had been upset.
+Then from a corner of the bag he drew out and held up for our
+inspection some three inches of fine gold chain, one end of which was
+blackened and stained with blood!
+The conductor held out his hand for it, but the little man was not
+ready to give it up. He turned to me.
+“You say no watch was left you? Was there a piece of chain like that?”
+“No chain at all,” I said sulkily. “No jewelry of any kind, except
+plain gold buttons in the shirt I am wearing.”
+“Where are your glasses?” he threw at me suddenly: instinctively my
+hand went to my eyes. My glasses had been gone all morning, and I had
+not even noticed their absence. The little man smiled cynically and
+held out the chain.
+“I must ask you to examine this,” he insisted. “Isn’t it a part of the
+fine gold chain you wear over your ear?”
+I didn’t want to touch the thing: the stain at the end made me shudder.
+But with a baker’s dozen of suspicious eyes—well, we’ll say fourteen:
+there were no one-eyed men—I took the fragment in the tips of my
+fingers and looked at it helplessly.
+“Very fine chains are much alike,” I managed to say. “For all I know,
+this may be mine, but I don’t know how it got into that sealskin bag. I
+never saw the bag until this morning after daylight.”
+“He admits that he had the bag,” somebody said behind me. “How did you
+guess that he wore glasses, anyhow?” to the amateur sleuth.
+That gentleman cleared his throat. “There were two reasons,” he said,
+“for suspecting it. When you see a man with the lines of his face
+drooping, a healthy individual with a pensive eye,—suspect astigmatism.
+Besides, this gentleman has a pronounced line across the bridge of his
+nose and a mark on his ear from the chain.”
+After this remarkable exhibition of the theoretical as combined with
+the practical, he sank into a seat near-by, and still holding the
+chain, sat with closed eyes and pursed lips. It was evident to all the
+car that the solution of the mystery was a question of moments. Once he
+bent forward eagerly and putting the chain on the window-sill,
+proceeded to go over it with a pocket magnifying glass, only to shake
+his head in disappointment. All the people around shook their heads
+too, although they had not the slightest idea what it was about.
+The pounding in my ears began again. The group around me seemed to be
+suddenly motionless in the very act of moving, as if a hypnotist had
+called “Rigid!” The girl in blue was looking at me, and above the din I
+thought she said she must speak to me—something vital. The pounding
+grew louder and merged into a scream. With a grinding and splintering
+the car rose under my feet. Then it fell away into darkness.
+CHAPTER VIII.
+THE SECOND SECTION
+Have you ever been picked up out of your three-meals-a-day life,
+whirled around in a tornado of events, and landed in a situation so
+grotesque and yet so horrible that you laugh even while you are
+groaning, and straining at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is
+hysteria, and that no man worthy of the name ever admits to it.
+Also, as McKnight says, it sounds like a tank drama. Just as the
+revolving saw is about to cut the hero into stove lengths, the second
+villain blows up the sawmill. The hero goes up through the roof and
+alights on the bank of a stream at the feet of his lady love, who is
+making daisy chains.
+Nevertheless, when I was safely home again, with Mrs. Klopton brewing
+strange drinks that came in paper packets from the pharmacy, and that
+smelled to heaven, I remember staggering to the door and closing it,
+and then going back to bed and howling out the absurdity and the
+madness of the whole thing. And while I laughed my very soul was sick,
+for the girl was gone by that time, and I knew by all the loyalty that
+answers between men for honor that I would have to put her out of my
+mind.
+And yet, all the night that followed, filled as it was with the
+shrieking demons of pain, I saw her as I had seen her last, in the
+queer hat with green ribbons. I told the doctor this, guardedly, the
+next morning, and he said it was the morphia, and that I was lucky not
+to have seen a row of devils with green tails.
+I don’t know anything about the wreck of September ninth last. You who
+swallowed the details with your coffee and digested the horrors with
+your chop, probably know a great deal more than I do. I remember very
+distinctly that the jumping and throbbing in my arm brought me back to
+a world that at first was nothing but sky, a heap of clouds that I
+thought hazily were the meringue on a blue charlotte russe. As the
+sense of hearing was slowly added to vision, I heard a woman near me
+sobbing that she had lost her hat pin, and she couldn’t keep her hat
+on.
+I think I dropped back into unconsciousness again, for the next thing I
+remember was of my blue patch of sky clouded with smoke, of a strange
+roaring and crackling, of a rain of fiery sparks on my face and of
+somebody beating at me with feeble hands. I opened my eyes and closed
+them again: the girl in blue was bending over me. With that
+imperviousness to big things and keenness to small that is the first
+effect of shock, I tried to be facetious, when a spark stung my cheek.
+“You will have to rouse yourself!” the girl was repeating desperately.
+“You’ve been on fire twice already.” A piece of striped ticking floated
+slowly over my head. As the wind caught it its charring edges leaped
+into flame.
+“Looks like a kite, doesn’t it?” I remarked cheerfully. And then, as my
+arm gave an excruciating throb—“Jove, how my arm hurts!”
+The girl bent over and spoke slowly, distinctly, as one might speak to
+a deaf person or a child.
+“Listen, Mr. Blakeley,” she said earnestly. “You _must_ rouse yourself.
+There has been a terrible accident. The second section ran into us. The
+wreck is burning now, and if we don’t move, we will catch fire. Do you
+hear?”
+Her voice and my arm were bringing me to my senses. “I hear,” I said.
+“I—I’ll sit up in a second. Are you hurt?”
+“No, only bruised. Do you think you can walk?”
+I drew up one foot after another, gingerly.
+“They seem to move all right,” I remarked dubiously. “Would you mind
+telling me where the back of my head has gone? I can’t help thinking it
+isn’t there.”
+She made a quick examination. “It’s pretty badly bumped,” she said.
+“You must have fallen on it.”
+I had got up on my uninjured elbow by that time, but the pain threw me
+back. “Don’t look at the wreck,” I entreated her. “It’s no sight for a
+woman. If—if there is any way to tie up this arm, I might be able to do
+something. There may be people under those cars!”
+“Then it is too late to help,” she replied solemnly. A little shower of
+feathers, each carrying its fiery lamp, blew over us from some burning
+pillow. A part of the wreck collapsed with a crash. In a resolute
+endeavor to play a man’s part in the tragedy going on around, I got to
+my knees. Then I realized what I had not noticed before: the hand and
+wrist of the broken left arm were jammed through the handle of the
+sealskin grip. I gasped and sat down suddenly.
+[Illustration]
+“You must not do that,” the girl insisted. I noticed now that she kept
+her back to the wreck, her eyes averted. “The weight of the
+traveling-bag must be agony. Let me support the valise until we get
+back a few yards. Then you must lie down until we can get it cut off.”
+“Will it have to be cut off?” I asked as calmly as possible. There were
+red-hot stabs of agony clear to my neck, but we were moving slowly away
+from the track.
+“Yes,” she replied, with dumfounding coolness. “If I had a knife I
+could do it myself. You might sit here and lean against this fence.”
+By that time my returning faculties had realized that she was going to
+cut off the satchel, not the arm. The dizziness was leaving and I was
+gradually becoming myself.
+“If you pull, it might come,” I suggested. “And with that weight gone,
+I think I will cease to be five feet eleven inches of baby.”
+She tried gently to loosen the handle, but it would not move, and at
+last, with great drops of cold perspiration over me, I had to give up.
+“I’m afraid I can’t stand it,” I said. “But there’s a knife somewhere
+around these clothes, and if I can find it, perhaps you can cut the
+leather.”
+As I gave her the knife she turned it over, examining it with a
+peculiar expression, bewilderment rather than surprise. But she said
+nothing. She set to work deftly, and in a few minutes the bag dropped
+free.
+“That’s better,” I declared, sitting up. “Now, if you can pin my sleeve
+to my coat, it will support the arm so we can get away from here.”
+“The pin might give,” she objected, “and the jerk would be terrible.”
+She looked around, puzzled; then she got up, coming back in a minute
+with a draggled, partly scorched sheet. This she tore into a large
+square, and after she had folded it, she slipped it under the broken
+arm and tied it securely at the back of my neck.
+The relief was immediate, and, picking up the sealskin bag, I walked
+slowly beside her, away from the track.
+The first act was over: the curtain fallen. The scene was “struck.”
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE HALCYON BREAKFAST
+We were still dazed, I think, for we wandered like two troubled
+children, our one idea at first to get as far away as we could from the
+horror behind us. We were both bareheaded, grimy, pallid through the
+grit. Now and then we met little groups of country folk hurrying to the
+track: they stared at us curiously, and some wished to question us. But
+we hurried past them; we had put the wreck behind us. That way lay
+madness.
+Only once the girl turned and looked behind her. The wreck was hidden,
+but the smoke cloud hung heavy and dense. For the first time I
+remembered that my companion had not been alone on the train.
+“It is quiet here,” I suggested. “If you will sit down on the bank I
+will go back and make some inquiries. I’ve been criminally thoughtless.
+Your traveling companion—”
+She interrupted me, and something of her splendid poise was gone.
+“Please don’t go back,” she said. “I am afraid it would be of no use.
+And I don’t want to be left alone.”
+Heaven knows I did not want her to be alone. I was more than content to
+walk along beside her aimlessly, for any length of time. Gradually, as
+she lost the exaltation of the moment, I was gaining my normal
+condition of mind. I was beginning to realize that I had lacked the
+morning grace of a shave, that I looked like some lost hope of
+yesterday, and that my left shoe pinched outrageously. A man does not
+rise triumphant above such handicaps. The girl, for all her disordered
+hair and the crumpled linen of her waist, in spite of her missing hat
+and the small gold bag that hung forlornly from a broken chain, looked
+exceedingly lovely.
+“Then I won’t leave you alone,” I said manfully, and we stumbled on
+together. Thus far we had seen nobody from the wreck, but well up the
+lane we came across the tall dark woman who had occupied lower eleven.
+She was half crouching beside the road, her black hair about her
+shoulders, and an ugly bruise over her eye. She did not seem to know
+us, and refused to accompany us. We left her there at last, babbling
+incoherently and rolling in her hands a dozen pebbles she had gathered
+in the road.
+The girl shuddered as we went on. Once she turned and glanced at my
+bandage. “Does it hurt very much?” she asked.
+“It’s growing rather numb. But it might be worse,” I answered
+mendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I had never
+experienced it.
+And so we trudged on bareheaded under the summer sun, growing parched
+and dusty and weary, doggedly leaving behind us the pillar of smoke. I
+thought I knew of a trolley line somewhere in the direction we were
+going, or perhaps we could find a horse and trap to take us into
+Baltimore. The girl smiled when I suggested it.
+“We will create a sensation, won’t we?” she asked. “Isn’t it queer—or
+perhaps it’s my state of mind—but I keep wishing for a pair of gloves,
+when I haven’t even a hat!”
+When we reached the main road we sat down for a moment, and her hair,
+which had been coming loose for some time, fell over her shoulders in
+little waves that were most alluring. It seemed a pity to twist it up
+again, but when I suggested this, cautiously, she said it was
+troublesome and got in her eyes when it was loose. So she gathered it
+up, while I held a row of little shell combs and pins, and when it was
+done it was vastly becoming, too. Funny about hair: a man never knows
+he has it until he begins to lose it, but it’s different with a girl.
+Something of the unconventional situation began to dawn on her as she
+put in the last hair-pin and patted some stray locks to place.
+“I have not told you my name,” she said abruptly. “I forgot that
+because I know who you are, you know nothing about me. I am Alison
+West, and my home is in Richmond.”
+So that was it! This was the girl of the photograph on John Gilmore’s
+bedside table. The girl McKnight expected to see in Richmond the next
+day, Sunday! She was on her way back to meet him! Well, what difference
+did it make, anyhow? We had been thrown together by the merest chance.
+In an hour or two at the most we would be back in civilization and she
+would recall me, if she remembered me at all, as an unshaven creature
+in a red cravat and tan shoes, with a soiled Pullman sheet tied around
+my neck. I drew a deep breath.
+“Just a twinge,” I said, when she glanced up quickly. “It’s very good
+of you to let me know, Miss West. I have been hearing delightful things
+about you for three months.”
+“From Richey McKnight?” She was frankly curious.
+“Yes. From Richey McKnight,” I assented. Was it any wonder McKnight was
+crazy about her? I dug my heels into the dust.
+“I have been visiting near Cresson, in the mountains,” Miss West was
+saying. “The person you mentioned, Mrs. Curtis, was my hostess. We—we
+were on our way to Washington together.” She spoke slowly, as if she
+wished to give the minimum of explanation. Across her face had come
+again the baffling expression of perplexity and trouble I had seen
+before.
+“You were on your way home, I suppose? Richey spoke about seeing you,”
+I floundered, finding it necessary to say something. She looked at me
+with level, direct eyes.
+“No,” she returned quietly. “I did not intend to go home. I—well, it
+doesn’t matter; I am going home now.”
+A woman in a calico dress, with two children, each an exact duplicate
+of the other, had come quickly down the road. She took in the situation
+at a glance, and was explosively hospitable.
+“You poor things,” she said. “If you’ll take the first road to the left
+over there, and turn in at the second pigsty, you will find breakfast
+on the table and a coffee-pot on the stove. And there’s plenty of soap
+and water, too. Don’t say one word. There isn’t a soul there to see
+you.”
+We accepted the invitation and she hurried on toward the excitement and
+the railroad. I got up carefully and helped Miss West to her feet.
+“At the second pigsty to the left,” I repeated, “we will find the
+breakfast I promised you seven eternities ago. Forward to the pigsty!”
+We said very little for the remainder of that walk. I had almost
+reached the limit of endurance: with every step the broken ends of the
+bone grated together. We found the farm-house without difficulty, and I
+remember wondering if I could hold out to the end of the old stone walk
+that led between hedges to the door.
+“Allah be praised,” I said with all the voice I could muster. “Behold
+the coffee-pot!” And then I put down the grip and folded up like a
+jack-knife on the porch floor.
+When I came around something hot was trickling down my neck, and a
+despairing voice was saying, “Oh, I don’t seem to be able to pour it
+into your mouth. Please open your eyes.”
+“But I don’t want it in my eyes,” I replied dreamily. “I haven’t any
+idea what came over me. It was the shoes, I think: the left one is a
+red-hot torture.” I was sitting by that time and looking across into
+her face.
+Never before or since have I fainted, but I would do it joyfully, a
+dozen times a day, if I could waken again to the blissful touch of soft
+fingers on my face, the hot ecstasy of coffee spilled by those fingers
+down my neck. There was a thrill in every tone of her voice that
+morning. Before long my loyalty to McKnight would step between me and
+the girl he loved: life would develop new complexities. In those early
+hours after the wreck, full of pain as they were, there was nothing of
+the suspicion and distrust that came later. Shorn of our gauds and
+baubles, we were primitive man and woman, together: our world for the
+hour was the deserted farm-house, the slope of wheat-field that led to
+the road, the woodland lot, the pasture.
+We breakfasted together across the homely table. Our cheerfulness, at
+first sheer reaction, became less forced as we ate great slices of
+bread from the granny oven back of the house, and drank hot fluid that
+smelled like coffee and tasted like nothing that I have ever swallowed.
+We found cream in stone jars, sunk deep in the chill water of the
+spring house. And there were eggs, great yellow-brown ones,—a basket of
+them.
+So, like two children awakened from a nightmare, we chattered over our
+food: we hunted mutual friends, we laughed together at my feeble
+witticisms, but we put the horror behind us resolutely. After all, it
+was the hat with the green ribbons that brought back the strangeness of
+the situation.
+All along I had had the impression that Alison West was deliberately
+putting out of her mind something that obtruded now and then. It
+brought with it a return of the puzzled expression that I had surprised
+early in the day, before the wreck. I caught it once, when, breakfast
+over, she was tightening the sling that held the broken arm. I had
+prolonged the morning meal as much as I could, but when the wooden
+clock with the pink roses on the dial pointed to half after ten, and
+the mother with the duplicate youngsters had not come back, Miss West
+made the move I had dreaded.
+“If we are to get into Baltimore at all we must start,” she said,
+rising. “You ought to see a doctor as soon as possible.”
+“Hush,” I said warningly. “Don’t mention the arm, please; it is asleep
+now. You may rouse it.”
+“If I only had a hat,” she reflected. “It wouldn’t need to be much of
+one, but—” She gave a little cry and darted to the corner. “Look,” she
+said triumphantly, “the very thing. With the green streamers tied up in
+a bow, like this—do you suppose the child would mind? I can put five
+dollars or so here—that would buy a dozen of them.”
+It was a queer affair of straw, that hat, with a round crown and a rim
+that flopped dismally. With a single movement she had turned it up at
+one side and fitted it to her head. Grotesque by itself, when she wore
+it it was a thing of joy.
+Evidently the lack of head covering had troubled her, for she was
+elated at her find. She left me, scrawling a note of thanks and pinning
+it with a bill to the table-cloth, and ran up-stairs to the mirror and
+the promised soap and water.
+I did not see her when she came down. I had discovered a bench with a
+tin basin outside the kitchen door, and was washing, in a helpless,
+one-sided way. I felt rather than saw that she was standing in the
+door-way, and I made a final plunge into the basin.
+“How is it possible for a man with only a right hand to wash his left
+ear?” I asked from the roller towel. I was distinctly uncomfortable:
+men are more rigidly creatures of convention than women, whether they
+admit it or not. “There is so much soap on me still that if I laugh I
+will blow bubbles. Washing with rain-water and home-made soap is like
+motoring on a slippery road. I only struck the high places.”
+Then, having achieved a brilliant polish with the towel, I looked at
+the girl.
+She was leaning against the frame of the door, her face perfectly
+colorless, her breath coming in slow, difficult respirations. The
+erratic hat was pinned to place, but it had slid rakishly to one side.
+When I realized that she was staring, not at me, but past me to the
+road along which we had come, I turned and followed her gaze. There was
+no one in sight: the lane stretched dust white in the sun,—no moving
+figure on it, no sign of life.
+CHAPTER X.
+MISS WEST’S REQUEST
+The surprising change in her held me speechless. All the animation of
+the breakfast table was gone: there was no hint of the response with
+which, before, she had met my nonsensical sallies. She stood there,
+white-lipped, unsmiling, staring down the dusty road. One hand was
+clenched tight over some small object. Her eyes dropped to it from the
+distant road, and then closed, with a quick, indrawn breath. Her color
+came back slowly. Whatever had caused the change, she said nothing. She
+was anxious to leave at once, almost impatient over my deliberate
+masculine way of getting my things together. Afterward I recalled that
+I had wanted to explore the barn for a horse and some sort of a vehicle
+to take us to the trolley, and that she had refused to allow me to
+look. I remembered many things later that might have helped me, and did
+not. At the time, I was only completely bewildered. Save the wreck, the
+responsibility for which lay between Providence and the engineer of the
+second section, all the events of that strange morning were logically
+connected; they came from one cause, and tended unerringly to one end.
+But the cause was buried, the end not yet in view.
+Not until we had left the house well behind did the girl’s face relax
+its tense lines. I was watching her more closely than I had realized,
+for when we had gone a little way along the road she turned to me
+almost petulantly. “Please don’t stare so at me,” she said, to my
+sudden confusion. “I know the hat is dreadful. Green always makes me
+look ghastly.”
+“Perhaps it was the green.” I was unaccountably relieved. “Do you know,
+a few minutes ago, you looked almost pallid to me!”
+She glanced at me quickly, but I was gazing ahead. We were out of sight
+of the house, now, and with every step away from it the girl was
+obviously relieved. Whatever she held in her hand, she never glanced at
+it. But she was conscious of it every second. She seemed to come to a
+decision about it while we were still in sight of the gate, for she
+murmured something and turned back alone, going swiftly, her feet
+stirring up small puffs of dust at every step. She fastened something
+to the gate-post,—I could see the nervous haste with which she worked.
+When she joined me again it was without explanation. But the clenched
+fingers were free now, and while she looked tired and worn, the strain
+had visibly relaxed.
+We walked along slowly in the general direction of the suburban trolley
+line. Once a man with an empty wagon offered us a lift, but after a
+glance at the springless vehicle I declined.
+“The ends of the bone think they are castanets as it is,” I explained.
+“But the lady—”
+The young lady, however, declined and we went on together. Once, when
+the trolley line was in sight, she got a pebble in her low shoe, and we
+sat down under a tree until she found the cause of the trouble.
+“I—I don’t know what I should have done without you,” I blundered.
+“Moral support and—and all that. Do you know, my first conscious
+thought after the wreck was of relief that you had not been hurt?”
+She was sitting beside me, where a big chestnut tree shaded the road,
+and I surprised a look of misery on her face that certainly my words
+had not been meant to produce.
+“And my first thought,” she said slowly, “was regret that I—that I
+hadn’t been obliterated, blown out like a candle. Please don’t look
+like that! I am only talking.”
+But her lips were trembling, and because the little shams of society
+are forgotten at times like this, I leaned over and patted her hand
+lightly, where it rested on the grass beside me.
+“You must not say those things,” I expostulated. “Perhaps, after all,
+your friends—”
+“I had no friends on the train.” Her voice was hard again, her tone
+final. She drew her hand from under mine, not quickly, but decisively.
+A car was in sight, coming toward us. The steel finger of civilization,
+of propriety, of visiting cards and formal introductions was beckoning
+us in. Miss West put on her shoe.
+We said little on the car. The few passengers stared at us frankly, and
+discussed the wreck, emphasizing its horrors. The girl did not seem to
+hear. Once she turned to me with the quick, unexpected movement that
+was one of her charms.
+“I do not wish my mother to know I was in the accident,” she said.
+“Will you please not tell Richey about having met me?”
+I gave my promise, of course. Again, when we were almost into
+Baltimore, she asked to examine the gun-metal cigarette case, and sat
+silent with it in her hands, while I told of the early morning’s events
+on the Ontario.
+“So you see,” I finished, “this grip, everything I have on, belongs to
+a fellow named Sullivan. He probably left the train before the
+wreck,—perhaps just after the murder.”
+“And so—you think he committed the—the crime?” Her eyes were on the
+cigarette case.
+“Naturally,” I said. “A man doesn’t jump off a Pullman car in the
+middle of the night in another man’s clothes, unless he is trying to
+get away from something. Besides the dirk, there were the stains that
+you saw. Why, I have the murdered man’s pocket-book in this valise at
+my feet. What does that look like?”
+I colored when I saw the ghost of a smile hovering around the corners
+of her mouth. “That is,” I finished, “if you care to believe that I am
+innocent.”
+The sustaining chain of her small gold bag gave way just then. She did
+not notice it. I picked it up and slid the trinket into my pocket for
+safekeeping, where I promptly forgot it. Afterwards I wished I had let
+it lie unnoticed on the floor of that dirty little suburban car, and
+even now, when I see a woman carelessly dangling a similar feminine
+trinket, I shudder involuntarily: there comes back to me the memory of
+a girl’s puzzled eyes under the brim of a flopping hat, the haunting
+suspicion of the sleepless nights that followed.
+Just then I was determined that my companion should not stray back to
+the wreck, and to that end I was determinedly facetious.
+“Do you know that it is Sunday?” she asked suddenly, “and that we are
+actually ragged?”
+“Never mind that,” I retorted. “All Baltimore is divided on Sunday into
+three parts, those who rise up and go to church, those who rise up and
+read the newspapers, and those who don’t rise up. The first are
+somewhere between the creed and the sermon, and we need not worry about
+the others.”
+“You treat me like a child,” she said almost pettishly. “Don’t try so
+hard to be cheerful. It—it is almost ghastly.”
+After that I subsided like a pricked balloon, and the remainder of the
+ride was made in silence. The information that she would go to friends
+in the city was a shock: it meant an earlier separation than I had
+planned for. But my arm was beginning again. In putting her into a cab
+I struck it and gritted my teeth with the pain. It was probably for
+that reason that I forgot the gold bag.
+She leaned forward and held out her hand. “I may not have another
+chance to thank you,” she said, “and I think I would better not try,
+anyhow. I cannot tell you how grateful I am.” I muttered something
+about the gratitude being mine: owing to the knock I was seeing two
+cabs, and two girls were holding out two hands.
+“Remember,” they were both saying, “you have never met me, Mr.
+Blakeley. And—if you ever hear anything about me—that is not—pleasant,
+I want you to think the best you can of me. Will you?”
+The two girls were one now, with little flashes of white light playing
+all around. “I—I’m afraid that I shall think too well for my own good,”
+I said unsteadily. And the cab drove on.
+CHAPTER XI.
+THE NAME WAS SULLIVAN
+I had my arm done up temporarily in Baltimore and took the next train
+home. I was pretty far gone when I stumbled out of a cab almost into
+the scandalized arms of Mrs. Klopton. In fifteen minutes I was in bed,
+with that good woman piling on blankets and blistering me in
+unprotected places with hot-water bottles. And in an hour I had a whiff
+of chloroform and Doctor Williams had set the broken bone.
+I dropped asleep then, waking in the late twilight to a realization
+that I was at home again, without the papers that meant conviction for
+Andy Bronson, with a charge of murder hanging over my head, and with
+something more than an impression of the girl my best friend was in
+love with, a girl moreover who was almost as great an enigma as the
+crime itself.
+“And I’m no hand at guessing riddles,” I groaned half aloud. Mrs.
+Klopton came over promptly and put a cold cloth on my forehead.
+“Euphemia,” she said to some one outside the door, “telephone the
+doctor that he is still rambling, but that he has switched from green
+ribbons to riddles.”
+“There’s nothing the matter with me, Mrs. Klopton,” I rebelled. “I was
+only thinking out loud. Confound that cloth: it’s trickling all over
+me!” I gave it a fling, and heard it land with a soggy thud on the
+floor.
+“Thinking out loud is delirium,” Mrs. Klopton said imperturbably. “A
+fresh cloth, Euphemia.”
+This time she held it on with a firm pressure that I was too weak to
+resist. I expostulated feebly that I was drowning, which she also laid
+to my mental exaltation, and then I finally dropped into a damp sleep.
+It was probably midnight when I roused again. I had been dreaming of
+the wreck, and it was inexpressibly comforting to feel the stability of
+my bed, and to realize the equal stability of Mrs. Klopton, who sat,
+fully attired, by the night light, reading _Science and Health_.
+“Does that book say anything about opening the windows on a hot night?”
+I suggested, when I had got my bearings.
+She put it down immediately and came over to me. If there is one time
+when Mrs. Klopton is chastened—and it is the only time—it is when she
+reads _Science and Health_. “I don’t like to open the shutters, Mr.
+Lawrence,” she explained. “Not since the night you went away.”
+But, pressed further, she refused to explain. “The doctor said you were
+not to be excited,” she persisted. “Here’s your beef tea.”
+“Not a drop until you tell me,” I said firmly. “Besides, you know very
+well there’s nothing the matter with me. This arm of mine is only a
+false belief.” I sat up gingerly. “Now—why don’t you open that window?”
+Mrs. Klopton succumbed. “Because there are queer goings-on in that
+house next door,” she said. “If you will take the beef tea, Mr.
+Lawrence, I will tell you.”
+The queer goings-on, however, proved to be slightly disappointing. It
+seemed that after I left on Friday night, a light was seen flitting
+fitfully through the empty house next door. Euphemia had seen it first
+and called Mrs. Klopton. Together they had watched it breathlessly
+until it disappeared on the lower floor.
+“You should have been a writer of ghost stories,” I said, giving my
+pillows a thump. “And so it was fitting flitfully!”
+“That’s what it was doing,” she reiterated. “Fitting flitfully—I mean
+flitting fitfully—how you do throw me out, Mr. Lawrence! And what’s
+more, it came again!”
+“Oh, come now, Mrs. Klopton,” I objected, “ghosts are like lightning;
+they never strike twice in the same night. That is only worth half a
+cup of beef tea.”
+“You may ask Euphemia,” she retorted with dignity. “Not more than an
+hour after, there was a light there again. We saw it through the chinks
+of the shutters. Only—_this time it began at the lower floor and
+climbed!_”
+“You oughtn’t to tell ghost stories at night,” came McKnight’s voice
+from the doorway. “Really, Mrs. Klopton, I’m amazed at you. You old
+duffer! I’ve got you to thank for the worst day of my life.”
+Mrs. Klopton gulped. Then realizing that the “old duffer” was meant for
+me, she took her empty cup and went out muttering.
+“The Pirate’s crazy about me, isn’t she?” McKnight said to the closing
+door. Then he swung around and held out his hand.
+“By Jove,” he said, “I’ve been laying you out all day, lilies on the
+door-bell, black gloves, everything. If you had had the sense of a
+mosquito in a snow-storm, you would have telephoned me.”
+“I never even thought of it.” I was filled with remorse. “Upon my word,
+Rich, I hadn’t an idea beyond getting away from that place. If you had
+seen what I saw—”
+McKnight stopped me. “Seen it! Why, you lunatic, I’ve been digging for
+you all day in the ruins! I’ve lunched and dined on horrors. Give me
+something to rinse them down, Lollie.”
+He had fished the key of the cellarette from its hiding-place in my
+shoe bag and was mixing himself what he called a Bernard Shaw—a
+foundation of brandy and soda, with a little of everything else in
+sight to give it snap. Now that I saw him clearly, he looked weary and
+grimy. I hated to tell him what I knew he was waiting to hear, but
+there was no use wading in by inches. I ducked and got it over.
+“The notes are gone, Rich,” I said, as quietly as I could. In spite of
+himself his face fell.
+“I—of course I expected it,” he said. “But—Mrs. Klopton said over the
+telephone that you had brought home a grip and I hoped—well, Lord knows
+we ought not to complain. You’re here, damaged, but here.” He lifted
+his glass. “Happy days, old man!”
+“If you will give me that black bottle and a teaspoon, I’ll drink that
+in arnica, or whatever the stuff is; Rich,—the notes were gone before
+the wreck!”
+He wheeled and stared at me, the bottle in his hand. “Lost, strayed or
+stolen?” he queried with forced lightness.
+“Stolen, although I believe the theft was incidental to something
+else.”
+Mrs. Klopton came in at that moment, with an egg-nog in her hand. She
+glanced at the clock, and, without addressing any one in particular,
+she intimated that it was time for self-respecting folks to be at home
+in bed. McKnight, who could never resist a fling at her back, spoke to
+me in a stage whisper.
+“Is she talking still? or again?” he asked, just before the door
+closed. There was a second’s indecision with the knob, then, judging
+discretion the better part, Mrs. Klopton went away.
+“Now, then,” McKnight said, settling himself in a chair beside the bed,
+“spit it out. Not the wreck—I know all I want about that. But the
+theft. I can tell you beforehand that it was a woman.”
+I had crawled painfully out of bed, and was in the act of pouring the
+egg-nog down the pipe of the washstand. I paused, with the glass in the
+air.
+“A woman!” I repeated, startled. “What makes you think that?”
+“You don’t know the first principles of a good detective yarn,” he said
+scornfully. “Of course, it was the woman in the empty house next door.
+You said it was brass pipes, you will remember. Well—on with the dance:
+let joy be unconfined.”
+So I told the story; I had told it so many times that day that I did it
+automatically. And I told about the girl with the bronze hair, and my
+suspicions. But I did not mention Alison West. McKnight listened to the
+end without interruption. When I had finished he drew a long breath.
+“Well!” he said. “That’s something of a mess, isn’t it? If you can only
+prove your mild and child-like disposition, they couldn’t hold you for
+the murder—which is a regular ten-twent-thirt crime, anyhow. But the
+notes—that’s different. They are not burned, anyhow. Your man wasn’t on
+the train—therefore, he wasn’t in the wreck. If he didn’t know what he
+was taking, as you seem to think, he probably reads the papers, and
+unless he is a fathead, he’s awake by this time to what he’s got. He’ll
+try to sell them to Bronson, probably.”
+“Or to us,” I put in.
+We said nothing for a few minutes. McKnight smoked a cigarette and
+stared at a photograph of Candida over the mantel. Candida is the best
+pony for a heavy mount in seven states.
+“I didn’t go to Richmond,” he observed finally. The remark followed my
+own thoughts so closely that I started. “Miss West is not home yet from
+Seal Harbor.”
+Receiving no response, he lapsed again into thoughtful silence. Mrs.
+Klopton came in just as the clock struck one, and made preparation for
+the night by putting a large gaudy comfortable into an arm-chair in the
+dressing-room, with a smaller, stiff-backed chair for her feet. She was
+wonderfully attired in a dressing-gown that was reminiscent, in parts,
+of all the ones she had given me for a half dozen Christmases, and she
+had a purple veil wrapped around her head, to hide Heaven knows what
+deficiency. She examined the empty egg-nog glass, inquired what the
+evening paper had said about the weather, and then stalked into the
+dressing-room, and prepared, with much ostentatious creaking, to sit up
+all night.
+We fell silent again, while McKnight traced a rough outline of the
+berths on the white table-cover, and puzzled it out slowly. It was
+something like this:
+[Illustration]
+“You think he changed the tags on seven and nine, so that when you went
+back to bed you thought you were crawling into nine, when it was really
+seven, eh?”
+“Probably—yes.”
+“Then toward morning, when everybody was asleep, your theory is that he
+changed the numbers again and left the train.”
+“I can’t think of anything else,” I replied wearily.
+“Jove, what a game of bridge that fellow would play! It was like
+finessing an eight-spot and winning out. They would scarcely have
+doubted your story had the tags been reversed in the morning. He
+certainly left you in a bad way. Not a jury in the country would stand
+out against the stains, the stiletto, and the murdered man’s
+pocket-book in your possession.”
+“Then you think Sullivan did it?” I asked.
+“Of course,” said McKnight confidently. “Unless you did it in your
+sleep. Look at the stains on his pillow, and the dirk stuck into it.
+And didn’t he have the man Harrington’s pocket-book?”
+“But why did he go off without the money?” I persisted. “And where does
+the bronze-haired girl come in?”
+“Search me,” McKnight retorted flippantly. “Inflammation of the
+imagination on your part.”
+“Then there is the piece of telegram. It said lower ten, car seven.
+It’s extremely likely that she had it. That telegram was about me,
+Richey.”
+“I’m getting a headache,” he said, putting out his cigarette against
+the sole of his shoe. “All I’m certain of just now is that if there
+hadn’t been a wreck, by this time you’d be sitting in an eight by ten
+cell, and feeling like the rhyme for it.”
+“But listen to this,” I contended, as he picked up his hat, “this
+fellow Sullivan is a fugitive, and he’s a lot more likely to make
+advances to Bronson than to us. We could have the case continued,
+release Bronson on bail and set a watch on him.”
+“Not my watch,” McKnight protested. “It’s a family heirloom.”
+“You’d better go home,” I said firmly. “Go home and go to bed. You’re
+sleepy. You can have Sullivan’s red necktie to dream over if you think
+it will help any.”
+Mrs. Klopton’s voice came drowsily from the next room, punctuated by a
+yawn. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she called, with the suspicious lisp
+which characterizes her at night, “somebody called up about noon, Mr.
+Lawrence. It was long distance, and he said he would call again. The
+name was”—she yawned—“Sullivan.”
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE GOLD BAG
+I have always smiled at those cases of spontaneous combustion which,
+like fusing the component parts of a seidlitz powder, unite two people
+in a bubbling and ephemeral ecstasy. But surely there is possible, with
+but a single meeting, an attraction so great, a community of mind and
+interest so strong, that between that first meeting and the next the
+bond may grow into something stronger. This is especially true, I
+fancy, of people with temperament, the modern substitute for
+imagination. It is a nice question whether lovers begin to love when
+they are together, or when they are apart.
+Not that I followed any such line of reasoning at the time. I would not
+even admit my folly to myself. But during the restless hours of that
+first night after the accident, when my back ached with lying on it,
+and any other position was torture, I found my thoughts constantly
+going back to Alison West. I dropped into a doze, to dream of touching
+her fingers again to comfort her, and awoke to find I had patted a
+teaspoonful of medicine out of Mrs. Klopton’s indignant hand. What was
+it McKnight had said about making an egregious ass of myself?
+And that brought me back to Richey, and I fancy I groaned. There is no
+use expatiating on the friendship between two men who have gone
+together through college, have quarreled and made it up, fussed
+together over politics and debated creeds for years: men don’t need to
+be told, and women can not understand. Nevertheless, I groaned. If it
+had been any one but Rich!
+Some things were mine, however, and I would hold them: the halcyon
+breakfast, the queer hat, the pebble in her small shoe, the gold bag
+with the broken chain—the bag! Why, it was in my pocket at that moment.
+I got up painfully and found my coat. Yes, there was the purse, bulging
+with an opulent suggestion of wealth inside. I went back to bed again,
+somewhat dizzy, between effort and the touch of the trinket, so lately
+hers. I held it up by its broken chain and gloated over it. By careful
+attention to orders, I ought to be out in a day or so. Then—I could
+return it to her. I really ought to do that: it was valuable, and I
+wouldn’t care to trust it to the mail. I could run down to Richmond,
+and see her once—there was no disloyalty to Rich in that.
+I had no intention of opening the little bag. I put it under my
+pillow—which was my reason for refusing to have the linen slips
+changed, to Mrs. Klopton’s dismay. And sometimes during the morning,
+while I lay under a virgin field of white, ornamented with strange
+flowers, my cigarettes hidden beyond discovery, and _Science and
+Health_ on a table by my elbow, as if by the merest accident, I slid my
+hand under my pillow and touched it reverently.
+McKnight came in about eleven. I heard his car at the curb, followed
+almost immediately by his slam at the front door, and his usual clamor
+on the stairs. He had a bottle under his arm, rightly surmising that I
+had been forbidden stimulant, and a large box of cigarettes in his
+pocket, suspecting my deprivation.
+“Well,” he said cheerfully. “How did you sleep after keeping me up half
+the night?”
+I slid my hand around: the purse was well covered. “Have it now, or
+wait till I get the cork out?” he rattled on.
+“I don’t want anything,” I protested. “I wish you wouldn’t be so darned
+cheerful, Richey.” He stopped whistling to stare at me.
+“‘I am saddest when I sing!’” he quoted unctuously. “It’s pure
+reaction, Lollie. Yesterday the sky was low: I was digging for my best
+friend. To-day—he lies before me, his peevish self. Yesterday I thought
+the notes were burned: to-day—I look forward to a good cross-country
+chase, and with luck we will draw.” His voice changed suddenly.
+“Yesterday—she was in Seal Harbor. To-day—she is here.”
+“Here in Washington?” I asked, as naturally as I could.
+“Yes. Going to stay a week or two.”
+“Oh, I had a little hen and she had a wooden leg
+And nearly every morning she used to lay an egg—”
+“Will you stop that racket, Rich! It’s the real thing this time, I
+suppose?”
+“She’s the best little chicken that we have on the farm
+And another little drink won’t do us any harm—”
+he finished, twisting out the corkscrew. Then he came over and sat down
+on the bed.
+“Well,” he said judicially, “since you drag it from me, I think perhaps
+it is. You—you’re such a confirmed woman-hater that I hardly knew how
+you would take it.”
+“Nothing of the sort,” I denied testily. “Because a man reaches the age
+of thirty without making maudlin love to every—”
+“I’ve taken to long country rides,” he went on reflectively, without
+listening to me, “and yesterday I ran over a sheep; nearly went into
+the ditch. But there’s a Providence that watches over fools and lovers,
+and just now I know darned well that I’m one, and I have a sneaking
+idea I’m both.”
+“You are both,” I said with disgust. “If you can be rational for one
+moment, I wish you would tell me why that man Sullivan called me over
+the telephone yesterday morning.”
+“Probably hadn’t yet discovered the Bronson notes—providing you hold to
+your theory that the theft was incidental to the murder. May have
+wanted his own clothes again, or to thank you for yours. Search me: I
+can’t think of anything else.” The doctor came in just then.
+As I said before, I think a lot of my doctor—when I am ill. He is a
+young man, with an air of breezy self-confidence and good humor. He
+looked directly past the bottle, which is a very valuable
+accomplishment, and shook hands with McKnight until I could put the
+cigarettes under the bedclothes. He had interdicted tobacco. Then he
+sat down beside the bed and felt around the bandages with hands as
+gentle as a baby’s.
+“Pretty good shape,” he said. “How did you sleep?”
+“Oh, occasionally,” I replied. “I would like to sit up, doctor.”
+“Nonsense. Take a rest while you have an excuse for it. I wish to
+thunder I could stay in bed for a day or so. I was up all night.”
+“Have a drink,” McKnight said, pushing over the bottle.
+“Twins!” The doctor grinned.
+“Have two drinks.”
+But the medical man refused.
+“I wouldn’t even wear a champagne-colored necktie during business
+hours,” he explained. “By the way, I had another case from your
+accident, Mr. Blakeley, late yesterday afternoon. Under the tongue,
+please.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth.
+I had a sudden terrible vision of the amateur detective coming to
+light, note-book, cheerful impertinence and incriminating data. “A
+small man?” I demanded, “gray hair—”
+“Keep your mouth closed,” the doctor said peremptorily. “No. A woman,
+with a fractured skull. Beautiful case. Van Kirk was up to his eyes and
+sent for me. Hemorrhage, right-sided paralysis, irregular pupils—all
+the trimmings. Worked for two hours.”
+“Did she recover?” McKnight put in. He was examining the doctor with a
+new awe.
+“She lifted her right arm before I left,” the doctor finished cheerily,
+“so the operation was a success, even if she should die.”
+“Good Heavens,” McKnight broke in, “and I thought you were just an
+ordinary mortal, like the rest of us! Let me touch you for luck. Was
+she pretty?”
+“Yes, and young. Had a wealth of bronze-colored hair. Upon my soul, I
+hated to cut it.”
+McKnight and I exchanged glances.
+“Do you know her name, doctor?” I asked.
+“No. The nurses said her clothes came from a Pittsburg tailor.”
+“She is not conscious, I suppose?”
+“No; she may be, to-morrow—or in a week.”
+He looked at the thermometer, murmured something about liquid diet,
+avoiding my eye—Mrs. Klopton was broiling a chop at the time—and took
+his departure, humming cheerfully as he went down-stairs. McKnight
+looked after him wistfully.
+“Jove, I wish I had his constitution,” he exclaimed. “Neither nerves
+nor heart! What a chauffeur he would make!”
+But I was serious.
+“I have an idea,” I said grimly, “that this small matter of the murder
+is going to come up again, and that your uncle will be in the deuce of
+a fix if it does. If that woman is going to die, somebody ought to be
+around to take her deposition. She knows a lot, if she didn’t do it
+herself. I wish you would go down to the telephone and get the
+hospital. Find out her name, and if she is conscious.”
+McKnight went under protest. “I haven’t much time,” he said, looking at
+his watch. “I’m to meet Mrs. West and Alison at one. I want you to know
+them, Lollie. You would like the mother.”
+“Why not the daughter?” I inquired. I touched the little gold bag under
+the pillow.
+“Well,” he said judicially, “you’ve always declared against the
+immaturity and romantic nonsense of very young women—”
+“I never said anything of the sort,” I retorted furiously.
+“‘There is more satisfaction to be had out of a good saddle horse!’” he
+quoted me. “‘More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal
+matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent
+hounds and a hunter, and I’ll show you the real joys of the chase!’”
+“For Heaven’s sake, go down to the telephone, you make my head ache,” I
+said savagely.
+I hardly know what prompted me to take out the gold purse and look at
+it. It was an imbecile thing to do—call it impulse, sentimentality,
+what you wish. I brought it out, one eye on the door, for Mrs. Klopton
+has a ready eye and a noiseless shoe. But the house was quiet.
+Down-stairs McKnight was flirting with the telephone central and there
+was an odor of boneset tea in the air. I think Mrs. Klopton was
+fascinated out of her theories by the “boneset” in connection with the
+fractured arm.
+Anyhow, I held up the bag and looked at it. It must have been
+unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the
+snowfield of the counterpane—some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a
+tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance—and a
+necklace. I drew myself up slowly and stared at the necklace.
+It was one of the semi-barbaric affairs that women are wearing now, a
+heavy pendant of gold chains and carved cameos, swung from a thin neck
+chain of the same metal. The necklace was broken: in three places the
+links were pulled apart and the cameos swung loose and partly detached.
+But it was the supporting chain that held my eye and fascinated with
+its sinister suggestion. Three inches of it had been snapped off, and
+as well as I knew anything on earth, I knew that the bit of chain that
+the amateur detective had found, blood-stain and all, belonged just
+there.
+And there was no one I could talk to about it, no one to tell me how
+hideously absurd it was, no one to give me a slap and tell me there are
+tons of fine gold chains made every year, or to point out the long arm
+of coincidence!
+With my one useful hand I fumbled the things back into the bag and
+thrust it deep out of sight among the pillows. Then I lay back in a
+cold perspiration. What connection had Alison West with this crime? Why
+had she stared so at the gun-metal cigarette case that morning on the
+train? What had alarmed her so at the farm-house? What had she taken
+back to the gate? Why did she wish she had not escaped from the wreck?
+And last, in Heaven’s name, how did a part of her necklace become torn
+off and covered with blood?
+Down-stairs McKnight was still at the telephone, and amusing himself
+with Mrs. Klopton in the interval of waiting.
+“Why did he come home in a gray suit, when he went away in a blue?” he
+repeated. “Well, wrecks are queer things, Mrs. Klopton. The suit may
+have turned gray with fright. Or perhaps wrecks do as queer stunts as
+lightning. Friend of mine once was struck by lightning; he and the
+caddy had taken refuge under a tree. After the flash, when they
+recovered consciousness, there was my friend in the caddy’s clothes,
+and the caddy in his. And as my friend was a large man and the caddy a
+very small boy—”
+McKnight’s story was interrupted by the indignant slam of the
+dining-room door. He was obliged to wait some time, and even his
+eternal cheerfulness was ebbing when he finally got the hospital.
+“Is Doctor Van Kirk there?” he asked. “Not there? Well, can you tell me
+how the patient is whom Doctor Williams, from Washington, operated on
+last night? Well, I’m glad of that. Is she conscious? Do you happen to
+know her name? Yes, I’ll hold the line.” There was a long pause, then
+McKnight’s voice:
+“Hello—yes. Thank you very much. Good-by.”
+He came up-stairs, two steps at a time.
+“Look here,” he said, bursting into the room, “there may be something
+in your theory, after all. The woman’s name—it may be a coincidence,
+but it’s curious—her name is Sullivan.”
+“What did I tell you?” I said, sitting up suddenly in bed. “She’s
+probably a sister of that scoundrel in lower seven, and she was afraid
+of what he might do.”
+“Well, I’ll go there some day soon. She’s not conscious yet. In the
+meantime, the only thing I can do is to keep an eye, through a
+detective, on the people who try to approach Bronson. We’ll have the
+case continued, anyhow, in the hope that the stolen notes will sooner
+or later turn up.”
+“Confound this arm,” I said, paying for my energy with some
+excruciating throbs. “There’s so much to be looked after, and here I
+am, bandaged, splinted, and generally useless. It’s a beastly shame.”
+“Don’t forget that I am here,” said McKnight pompously. “And another
+thing, when you feel this way just remember there are two less
+desirable places where you might be. One is jail, and the other is—” He
+strummed on an imaginary harp, with devotional eyes.
+But McKnight’s light-heartedness jarred on me that morning. I lay and
+frowned under my helplessness. When by chance I touched the little gold
+bag, it seemed to scorch my fingers. Richey, finding me unresponsive,
+left to keep his luncheon engagement with Alison West. As he clattered
+down the stairs, I turned my back to the morning sunshine and abandoned
+myself to misery. By what strain on her frayed nerves was Alison West
+keeping up, I wondered? Under the circumstances, would I dare to return
+the bag? Knowing that I had it, would she hate me for my knowledge? Or
+had I exaggerated the importance of the necklace, and in that case had
+she forgotten me already?
+But McKnight had not gone, after all. I heard him coming back, his
+voice preceding him, and I groaned with irritation.
+“Wake up!” he called. “Somebody’s sent you a lot of flowers. Please
+hold the box, Mrs. Klopton; I’m going out to be run down by an
+automobile.”
+I roused to feeble interest. My brother’s wife is punctilious about
+such things; all the new babies in the family have silver rattles, and
+all the sick people flowers.
+McKnight pulled up an armful of roses, and held them out to me.
+“Wonder who they’re from?” he said, fumbling in the box for a card.
+“There’s no name—yes, here’s one.”
+He held it up and read it with exasperating slowness.
+“‘Best wishes for an early recovery.
+A COMPANION IN MISFORTUNE.’
+“Well, what do you know about that!” he exclaimed. “That’s something
+you didn’t tell me, Lollie.”
+“It was hardly worth mentioning,” I said mendaciously, with my heart
+beating until I could hear it. She had not forgotten, after all.
+McKnight took a bud and fastened it in his button-hole. I’m afraid I
+was not especially pleasant about it. They were her roses, and anyhow,
+they were meant for me. Richey left very soon, with an irritating final
+grin at the box.
+“Good-by, sir woman-hater,” he jeered at me from the door.
+So he wore one of the roses she had sent me, to luncheon with her, and
+I lay back among my pillows and tried to remember that it was his game,
+anyhow, and that I wasn’t even drawing cards. To remember that, and to
+forget the broken necklace under my head!
+CHAPTER XIII.
+FADED ROSES
+I was in the house for a week. Much of that time I spent in composing
+and destroying letters of thanks to Miss West, and in growling at the
+doctor. McKnight dropped in daily, but he was less cheerful than usual.
+Now and then I caught him eying me as if he had something to say, but
+whatever it was he kept it to himself. Once during the week he went to
+Baltimore and saw the woman in the hospital there. From the description
+I had little difficulty in recognizing the young woman who had been
+with the murdered man in Pittsburg. But she was still unconscious. An
+elderly aunt had appeared, a gaunt person in black, who sat around like
+a buzzard on a fence, according to McKnight, and wept, in a mixed
+figure, into a damp handkerchief.
+On the last day of my imprisonment he stopped in to thrash out a case
+that was coming up in court the next day, and to play a game of double
+solitaire with me.
+“Who won the ball game?” I asked.
+“We were licked. Ask me something pleasant. Oh, by the way, Bronson’s
+out to-day.”
+“I’m glad I’m not on his bond,” I said pessimistically. “He’ll clear
+out.”
+“Not he.” McKnight pounced on my ace. “He’s no fool. Don’t you suppose
+he knows you took those notes to Pittsburg? The papers were full of it.
+And he knows you escaped with your life and a broken arm from the
+wreck. What do we do next? The Commonwealth continues the case. A deaf
+man on a dark night would know those notes are missing.”
+“Don’t play so fast,” I remonstrated. “I have only one arm to your two.
+Who is trailing Bronson? Did you try to get Johnson?”
+“I asked for him, but he had some work on hand.”
+“The murder’s evidently a dead issue,” I reflected. “No, I’m not
+joking. The wreck destroyed all the evidence. But I’m firmly convinced
+those notes will be offered, either to us or to Bronson very soon.
+Johnson’s a blackguard, but he’s a good detective. He could make his
+fortune as a game dog. What’s he doing?”
+McKnight put down his cards, and rising, went to the window. As he held
+the curtain back his customary grin looked a little forced.
+“To tell you the truth, Lollie,” he said, “for the last two days he has
+been watching a well-known Washington attorney named Lawrence Blakeley.
+He’s across the street now.”
+It took a moment for me to grasp what he meant.
+“Why, it’s ridiculous,” I asserted. “What would they trail me for? Go
+over and tell Johnson to get out of there, or I’ll pot at him with my
+revolver.”
+“You can tell him that yourself.” McKnight paused and bent forward.
+“Hello, here’s a visitor; little man with string halt.”
+“I won’t see him,” I said firmly. “I’ve been bothered enough with
+reporters.”
+We listened together to Mrs. Klopton’s expostulating tones in the lower
+hall and the creak of the boards as she came heavily up the stairs. She
+had a piece of paper in her hand torn from a pocket account-book, and
+on it was the name, “Mr. Wilson Budd Hotchkiss. Important business.”
+“Oh, well, show him up,” I said resignedly. “You’d better put those
+cards away, Richey. I fancy it’s the rector of the church around the
+corner.”
+But when the door opened to admit a curiously alert little man,
+adjusting his glasses with nervous fingers, my face must have shown my
+dismay.
+It was the amateur detective of the Ontario!
+I shook hands without enthusiasm. Here was the one survivor of the
+wrecked car who could do me any amount of harm. There was no hope that
+he had forgotten any of the incriminating details. In fact, he held in
+his hand the very note-book which contained them.
+His manner was restrained, but it was evident he was highly excited. I
+introduced him to McKnight, who has the imagination I lack, and who
+placed him at once, mentally.
+“I only learned yesterday that you had been—er—saved,” he said rapidly.
+“Terrible accident—unspeakable. Dream about it all night and think
+about it all day. Broken arm?”
+“No. He just wears the splint to be different from other people,”
+McKnight drawled lazily. I glared at him: there was nothing to be
+gained by antagonizing the little man.
+“Yes, a fractured humerus, which isn’t as funny as it sounds.”
+“Humerus—humorous! Pretty good,” he cackled. “I must say you keep up
+your spirits pretty well, considering everything.”
+“You seem to have escaped injury,” I parried. He was fumbling for
+something in his pockets.
+“Yes, I escaped,” he replied abstractedly. “Remarkable thing, too. I
+haven’t a doubt I would have broken my neck, but I landed on—you’ll
+never guess what! I landed head first on the very pillow which was
+under inspection at the time of the wreck. You remember, don’t you?
+Where did I put that package?”
+He found it finally and opened it on a table, displaying with some
+theatricalism a rectangular piece of muslin and a similar patch of
+striped ticking.
+“You recognize it?” he said. “The stains, you see, and the hole made by
+the dirk. I tried to bring away the entire pillow, but they thought I
+was stealing it, and made me give it up.”
+Richey touched the pieces gingerly. “By George,” he said, “and you
+carry that around in your pocket! What if you should mistake it for
+your handkerchief?”
+But Mr. Hotchkiss was not listening. He stood bent somewhat forward,
+leaning over the table, and fixed me with his ferret-like eyes.
+“Have you seen the evening papers, Mr. Blakeley?” he inquired.
+I glanced to where they lay unopened, and shook my head.
+“Then I have a disagreeable task,” he said with evident relish. “Of
+course, you had considered the matter of the man Harrington’s death
+closed, after the wreck. I did myself. As far as I was concerned, I
+meant to let it remain so. There were no other survivors, at least none
+that I knew of, and in spite of circumstances, there were a number of
+points in your favor.”
+“Thank you,” I put in with a sarcasm that was lost on him.
+“I verified your identity, for instance, as soon as I recovered from
+the shock. Also—I found on inquiring of your tailor that you invariably
+wore dark clothing.”
+McKnight came forward threateningly. “Who are you, anyhow?” he
+demanded. “And how is this any business of yours?” Mr. Hotchkiss was
+entirely unruffled.
+“I have a minor position here,” he said, reaching for a visiting card.
+“I am a very small patch on the seat of government, sir.”
+McKnight muttered something about certain offensive designs against the
+said patch and retired grumbling to the window. Our visitor was opening
+the paper with a tremendous expenditure of energy.
+“Here it is. Listen.” He read rapidly aloud:
+“The Pittsburg police have sent to Baltimore two detectives who are
+looking up the survivors of the ill-fated Washington Flier. It has
+transpired that Simon Harrington, the Wood Street merchant of that
+city, was not killed in the wreck, but was murdered in his berth the
+night preceding the accident. Shortly before the collision, John
+Flanders, the conductor of the Flier, sent this telegram to the chief
+of police:
+“‘Body of Simon Harrington found stabbed in his berth, lower ten,
+Ontario, at six-thirty this morning.
+JOHN FLANDERS, Conductor.’
+“It is hoped that the survivors of the wrecked car Ontario will be
+found, to tell what they know of the discovery of the crime.
+“Mr. John Gilmore, head of the steel company for which Mr. Harrington
+was purchasing agent, has signified his intention of sifting the matter
+to the bottom.”
+“So you see,” Hotchkiss concluded, “there’s trouble brewing. You and I
+are the only survivors of that unfortunate car.”
+I did not contradict him, but I knew of two others, at least: Alison
+West, and the woman we had left beside the road that morning, babbling
+incoherently, her black hair tumbling over her white face.
+“Unless we can find the man who occupied lower seven,” I suggested.
+“I have already tried and failed. To find him would not clear you, of
+course, unless we could establish some connection between him and the
+murdered man. It is the only thing I see, however. I have learned this
+much,” Hotchkiss concluded: “Lower seven was reserved from Cresson.”
+Cresson! Where Alison West and Mrs. Curtis had taken the train!
+McKnight came forward and suddenly held out his hand. “Mr. Hotchkiss,”
+he said, “I—I’m sorry if I have been offensive. I thought when you came
+in, that, like the Irishman and the government, you were ‘forninst’ us.
+If you will put those cheerful relics out of sight somewhere, I should
+be glad to have you dine with me at the Incubator.” (His name for his
+bachelor apartment.) “Compared with Johnson, you are the great original
+protoplasm.”
+The strength of this was lost on Hotchkiss, but the invitation was
+clear. They went out together, and from my window I watched them get
+into McKnight’s car. It was raining, and at the corner the Cannonball
+skidded. Across the street my detective, Johnson, looked after them
+with his crooked smile. As he turned up his collar he saw me, and
+lifted his hat.
+I left the window and sat down in the growing dusk. So the occupant of
+lower seven had got on the car at Cresson, probably with Alison West
+and her companion. There was some one she cared about enough to shield.
+I went irritably to the door and summoned Mrs. Klopton.
+“You may throw out those roses,” I said without looking at her. “They
+are quite dead.”
+“They have been quite dead for three days,” she retorted spitefully.
+“Euphemia said you threatened to dismiss her if she touched them.”
+CHAPTER XIV.
+THE TRAP-DOOR
+By Sunday evening, a week after the wreck, my inaction had goaded me to
+frenzy. The very sight of Johnson across the street or lurking, always
+within sight of the house, kept me constantly exasperated. It was on
+that day that things began to come to a focus, a burning-glass of
+events that seemed to center on me.
+I dined alone that evening in no cheerful frame of mind. There had been
+a polo game the day before and I had lent a pony, which is always a bad
+thing to do. And she had wrenched her shoulder, besides helping to lose
+the game. There was no one in town: the temperature was ninety and
+climbing, and my left hand persistently cramped under its bandage.
+Mrs. Klopton herself saw me served, my bread buttered and cut in
+tidbits, my meat ready for my fork. She hovered around me maternally,
+obviously trying to cheer me.
+“The paper says still warmer,” she ventured. “The thermometer is
+ninety-two now.”
+“And this coffee is two hundred and fifty,” I said, putting down my
+cup. “Where is Euphemia? I haven’t seen her around, or heard a dish
+smash all day.”
+“Euphemia is in bed,” Mrs. Klopton said gravely. “Is your meat cut
+small enough, Mr. Lawrence?” Mrs. Klopton can throw more mystery into
+an ordinary sentence than any one I know. She can say, “Are your sheets
+damp, sir?” And I can tell from her tone that the house across the
+street has been robbed, or that my left hand neighbor has appendicitis.
+So now I looked up and asked the question she was waiting for.
+“What’s the matter with Euphemia?” I inquired idly.
+“Frightened into her bed,” Mrs. Klopton said in a stage whisper. “She’s
+had three hot water bottles and she hasn’t done a thing all day but
+moan.”
+“She oughtn’t to take hot water bottles,” I said in my severest tone.
+“One would make me moan. You need not wait, I’ll ring if I need
+anything.”
+Mrs. Klopton sailed to the door, where she stopped and wheeled
+indignantly. “I only hope you won’t laugh on the wrong side of your
+face some morning, Mr. Lawrence,” she declared, with Christian
+fortitude. “But I warn you, I am going to have the police watch that
+house next door.”
+I was half inclined to tell her that both it and we were under police
+surveillance at that moment. But I like Mrs. Klopton, in spite of the
+fact that I make her life a torment for her, so I refrained.
+“Last night, when the paper said it was going to storm, I sent Euphemia
+to the roof to bring the rugs in. Eliza had slipped out, although it
+was her evening in. Euphemia went up to the roof—it was eleven
+o’clock—and soon I heard her running down-stairs crying. When she got
+to my room she just folded up on the floor. She said there was a black
+figure sitting on the parapet of the house next door—the empty
+house—and that when she appeared it rose and waved long black arms at
+her and spit like a cat.”
+I had finished my dinner and was lighting a cigarette. “If there was
+any one up there, which I doubt, they probably sneezed,” I suggested.
+“But if you feel uneasy, I’ll take a look around the roof to-night
+before I turn in. As far as Euphemia goes, I wouldn’t be uneasy about
+her—doesn’t she always have an attack of some sort when Eliza rings in
+an extra evening on her?”
+So I made a superficial examination of the window locks that night,
+visiting parts of the house that I had not seen since I bought it. Then
+I went to the roof. Evidently it had not been intended for any purpose
+save to cover the house, for unlike the houses around, there was no
+staircase. A ladder and a trap-door led to it, and it required some
+nice balancing on my part to get up with my useless arm. I made it,
+however, and found this unexplored part of my domain rather attractive.
+It was cooler than down-stairs, and I sat on the brick parapet and
+smoked my final cigarette. The roof of the empty house adjoined mine
+along the back wing, but investigation showed that the trap-door across
+the low dividing wall was bolted underneath.
+There was nothing out of the ordinary anywhere, and so I assured Mrs.
+Klopton. Needless to say, I did not tell her that I had left the
+trap-door open, to see if it would improve the temperature of the
+house. I went to bed at midnight, merely because there was nothing else
+to do. I turned on the night lamp at the head of my bed, and picked up
+a volume of Shaw at random (it was _Arms and the Man_, and I remember
+thinking grimly that I was a good bit of a chocolate cream soldier
+myself), and prepared to go to sleep. Shaw always puts me to sleep. I
+have no apologies to make for what occurred that night, and not even an
+explanation that I am sure of. I did a foolish thing under impulse, and
+I have not been sorry.
+It was something after two when the door-bell rang. It rang quickly,
+twice. I got up drowsily, for the maids and Mrs. Klopton always lock
+themselves beyond reach of the bell at night, and put on a
+dressing-gown. The bell rang again on my way down-stairs. I lit the
+hall light and opened the door. I was wide-awake now, and I saw that it
+was Johnson. His bald head shone in the light—his crooked mouth was
+twisted in a smile.
+“Good Heavens, man,” I said irritably. “Don’t you ever go home and go
+to bed?”
+He closed the vestibule door behind him and cavalierly turned out the
+light. Our dialogue was sharp, staccato.
+“Have you a key to the empty house next door?” he demanded. “Somebody’s
+in there, and the latch is caught.”
+“The houses are alike. The key to this door may fit. Did you see them
+go in?”
+“No. There’s a light moving up from room to room. I saw something like
+it last night, and I have been watching. The patrolman reported queer
+doings there a week or so ago.”
+“A light!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean that you—”
+“Very likely,” he said grimly. “Have you a revolver?”
+“All kinds in the gun rack,” I replied, and going into the den, I came
+back with a Smith and Wesson. “I’m not much use,” I explained, “with
+this arm, but I’ll do what I can. There may be somebody there. The
+servants here have been uneasy.”
+Johnson planned the campaign. He suggested on account of my familiarity
+with the roof, that I go there and cut off escape in that direction. “I
+have Robison out there now—the patrolman on the beat,” he said. “He’ll
+watch below and you above, while I search the house. Be as quiet as
+possible.”
+I was rather amused. I put on some clothes and felt my way carefully up
+the stairs, the revolver swinging free in my pocket, my hand on the
+rail. At the foot of the ladder I stopped and looked up. Above me there
+was a gray rectangle of sky dotted with stars. It occurred to me that
+with my one serviceable hand holding the ladder, I was hardly in a
+position to defend myself, that I was about to hoist a body that I am
+rather careful of into a danger I couldn’t see and wasn’t particularly
+keen about anyhow. I don’t mind saying that the seconds it took me to
+scramble up the ladder were among the most unpleasant that I recall.
+I got to the top, however, without incident. I could see fairly well
+after the darkness of the house beneath, but there was nothing
+suspicious in sight. The roofs, separated by two feet of brick wall,
+stretched around me, unbroken save by an occasional chimney. I went
+very softly over to the other trap, the one belonging to the suspected
+house. It was closed, but I imagined I could hear Johnson’s footsteps
+ascending heavily. Then even that was gone. A near-by clock struck
+three as I stood waiting. I examined my revolver then, for the first
+time, and found it was empty!
+I had been rather skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant
+attitude of the man who is summoned from his bed to search for
+burglars, combined with the artificial courage of firearms. With the
+discovery of my empty gun, I felt like a man on the top of a volcano in
+lively eruption. Suddenly I found myself staring incredulously at the
+trap-door at my feet. I had examined it early in the evening and found
+it bolted. Did I imagine it, or had it raised about an inch? Wasn’t it
+moving slowly as I looked? No, I am not a hero: I was startled almost
+into a panic. I had one arm, and whoever was raising that trap-door had
+two. My knees had a queer inclination to bend the wrong way.
+Johnson’s footsteps were distinct enough, but he was evidently far
+below. The trap, raised perhaps two inches now, remained stationary.
+There was no sound from beneath it: once I thought I heard two or three
+gasping respirations: I am not sure they were not my own. I wanted
+desperately to stand on one leg at a time and hold the other up out of
+focus of a possible revolver.
+I did not see the hand appear. There was nothing there, and then it was
+there, clutching the frame of the trap. I did the only thing I could
+think of; I put my foot on it!
+There was not a sound from beneath. The next moment I was kneeling and
+had clutched the wrist just above the hand. After a second’s struggle,
+the arm was still. With something real to face, I was myself again.
+“Don’t move, or I’ll stand on the trap and break your arm,” I panted.
+What else could I threaten? I couldn’t shoot, I couldn’t even fight.
+“Johnson!” I called.
+And then I realized the thing that stayed with me for a month, the
+thing I can not think of even now without a shudder. The hand lay ice
+cold, strangely quiescent. Under my fingers, an artery was beating
+feebly. The wrist was as slender as—I held the hand to the light. Then
+I let it drop.
+“Good Lord,” I muttered, and remained on my knees, staring at the spot
+where the hand had been. It was gone now: there was a faint rustle in
+the darkness below, and then silence.
+I held up my own hand in the starlight and stared at a long scratch in
+the palm. “A woman!” I said to myself stupidly. “By all that’s
+ridiculous, a woman!”
+Johnson was striking matches below and swearing softly to himself. “How
+the devil do you get to the roof?” he called. “I think I’ve broken my
+nose.”
+He found the ladder after a short search and stood at the bottom,
+looking up at me. “Well, I suppose you haven’t seen him?” he inquired.
+“There are enough darned cubbyholes in this house to hide a patrol
+wagon load of thieves.” He lighted a fresh match. “Hello, here’s
+another door!”
+By the sound of his diminishing footsteps I supposed it was a rear
+staircase. He came up again in ten minutes or so, this time with the
+policeman.
+“He’s gone, all right,” he said ruefully. “If you’d been attending to
+your business, Robison, you’d have watched the back door.”
+“I’m not twins.” Robison was surly.
+“Well,” I broke in, as cheerfully as I could, “if you are through with
+this jolly little affair, and can get down my ladder without having my
+housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some good Monongahela
+whisky—eh?”
+They came without a second invitation across the roof, and with them
+safely away from the house I breathed more freely. Down in the den I
+fulfilled my promise, which Johnson drank to the toast, “Coming through
+the rye.” He examined my gun rack with the eye of a connoisseur, and
+even when he was about to go he cast a loving eye back at the weapons.
+“Ever been in the army?” he inquired.
+“No,” I said with a bitterness that he noticed but failed to
+comprehend. “I’m a chocolate cream soldier—you don’t read Shaw, I
+suppose, Johnson?”
+“Never heard of him,” the detective said indifferently. “Well, good
+night, Mr. Blakeley. Much obliged.” At the door he hesitated and
+coughed.
+“I suppose you understand, Mr. Blakeley,” he said awkwardly, “that
+this—er—surveillance is all in the day’s work. I don’t like it, but
+it’s duty. Every man to his duty, sir.”
+“Sometime when you are in an open mood, Johnson,” I returned, “you can
+explain why I am being watched at all.”
+CHAPTER XV.
+THE CINEMATOGRAPH
+On Monday I went out for the first time. I did not go to the office. I
+wanted to walk. I thought fresh air and exercise would drive away the
+blue devils that had me by the throat. McKnight insisted on a long day
+in his car, but I refused.
+“I don’t know why not,” he said sulkily. “I can’t walk. I haven’t
+walked two consecutive blocks in three years. Automobiles have made
+legs mere ornaments—and some not even that. We could have Johnson out
+there chasing us over the country at five dollars an hour!”
+“He can chase us just as well at five miles an hour,” I said. “But what
+gets me, McKnight, is why I am under surveillance at all. How do the
+police know _I_ was accused of that thing?”
+“The young lady who sent the flowers—she isn’t likely to talk, is she?”
+“No. That is, I didn’t say it was a lady.” I groaned as I tried to get
+my splinted arm into a coat. “Anyhow, she didn’t tell,” I finished with
+conviction, and McKnight laughed.
+It had rained in the early morning, and Mrs. Klopton predicted more
+showers. In fact, so firm was her belief and so determined her eye that
+I took the umbrella she proffered me.
+“Never mind,” I said. “We can leave it next door; I have a story to
+tell you, Richey, and it requires proper setting.”
+McKnight was puzzled, but he followed me obediently round to the
+kitchen entrance of the empty house. It was unlocked, as I had
+expected. While we climbed to the upper floor I retailed the events of
+the previous night.
+“It’s the finest thing I ever heard of,” McKnight said, staring up at
+the ladder and the trap. “What a vaudeville skit it would make! Only
+you ought not to have put your foot on her hand. They don’t do it in
+the best circles.”
+I wheeled on him impatiently.
+“You don’t understand the situation at all, Richey!” I exclaimed. “What
+would you say if I tell you it was the hand of a lady? It was covered
+with rings.”
+“A lady!” he repeated. “Why, I’d say it was a darned compromising
+situation, and that the less you say of it the better. Look here,
+Lawrence, I think you dreamed it. You’ve been in the house too much. I
+take it all back: you do need exercise.”
+“She escaped through this door, I suppose,” I said as patiently as I
+could. “Evidently down the back staircase. We might as well go down
+that way.”
+“According to the best precedents in these affairs, we should find a
+glove about here,” he said as we started down. But he was more
+impressed than he cared to own. He examined the dusty steps carefully,
+and once, when a bit of loose plaster fell just behind him, he started
+like a nervous woman.
+“What I don’t understand is why you let her go,” he said, stopping
+once, puzzled. “You’re not usually quixotic.”
+“When we get out into the country, Richey,” I replied gravely, “I am
+going to tell you another story, and if you don’t tell me I’m a fool
+and a craven, on the strength of it, you are no friend of mine.”
+We stumbled through the twilight of the staircase into the blackness of
+the shuttered kitchen. The house had the moldy smell of closed
+buildings: even on that warm September morning it was damp and chilly.
+As we stepped into the sunshine McKnight gave a shiver.
+“Now that we are out,” he said, “I don’t mind telling you that I have
+been there before. Do you remember the night you left, and, the face at
+the window?”
+“When you speak of it—yes.”
+“Well, I was curious about that thing,” he went on, as we started up
+the street, “and I went back. The street door was unlocked, and I
+examined every room. I was Mrs. Klopton’s ghost that carried a light,
+and clumb.”
+“Did you find anything?”
+“Only a clean place rubbed on the window opposite your dressing-room.
+Splendid view of an untidy interior. If that house is ever occupied,
+you’d better put stained glass in that window of yours.”
+As we turned the corner I glanced back. Half a block behind us Johnson
+was moving our way slowly. When he saw me he stopped and proceeded with
+great deliberation to light a cigar. By hurrying, however, he caught
+the car that we took, and stood unobtrusively on the rear platform. He
+looked fagged, and absent-mindedly paid our fares, to McKnight’s
+delight.
+“We will give him a run for his money,” he declared, as the car moved
+countryward. “Conductor, let us off at the muddiest lane you can find.”
+At one o’clock, after a six-mile ramble, we entered a small country
+hotel. We had seen nothing of Johnson for a half hour. At that time he
+was a quarter of a mile behind us, and losing rapidly. Before we had
+finished our luncheon he staggered into the inn. One of his boots was
+under his arm, and his whole appearance was deplorable. He was coated
+with mud, streaked with perspiration, and he limped as he walked. He
+chose a table not far from us and ordered Scotch. Beyond touching his
+hat he paid no attention to us.
+“I’m just getting my second wind,” McKnight declared. “How do you feel,
+Mr. Johnson? Six or eight miles more and we’ll all enjoy our dinners.”
+Johnson put down the glass he had raised to his lips without replying.
+The fact was, however, that I was like Johnson. I was soft from my
+week’s inaction, and I was pretty well done up. McKnight, who was a
+well spring of vitality and high spirits, ordered a strange concoction,
+made of nearly everything in the bar, and sent it over to the
+detective, but Johnson refused it.
+“I hate that kind of person,” McKnight said pettishly. “Kind of a
+fellow that thinks you’re going to poison his dog if you offer him a
+bone.”
+When we got back to the car line, with Johnson a draggled and drooping
+tail to the kite, I was in better spirits. I had told McKnight the
+story of the three hours just after the wreck; I had not named the
+girl, of course; she had my promise of secrecy. But I told him
+everything else. It was a relief to have a fresh mind on it: I had
+puzzled so much over the incident at the farm-house, and the necklace
+in the gold bag, that I had lost perspective.
+He had been interested, but inclined to be amused, until I came to the
+broken chain. Then he had whistled softly.
+“But there are tons of fine gold chains made every year,” he said. “Why
+in the world do you think that the—er—smeary piece came from that
+necklace?”
+I had looked around. Johnson was far behind, scraping the mud off his
+feet with a piece of stick.
+“I have the short end of the chain in the sealskin bag,” I reminded
+him. “When I couldn’t sleep this morning I thought I would settle it,
+one way or the other. It was hell to go along the way I had been doing.
+And—there’s no doubt about it, Rich. It’s the same chain.”
+We walked along in silence until we caught the car back to town.
+“Well,” he said finally, “you know the girl, of course, and I don’t.
+But if you like her—and I think myself you’re rather hard hit, old
+man—I wouldn’t give a whoop about the chain in the gold purse. It’s
+just one of the little coincidences that hang people now and then. And
+as for last night—if she’s the kind of a girl you say she is, and you
+think she had anything to do with that, you—you’re addled, that’s all.
+You can depend on it, the lady of the empty house last week is the lady
+of last night. And yet your train acquaintance was in Altoona at that
+time.”
+Just before we got off the car, I reverted to the subject again. It was
+never far back in my mind.
+“About the—young lady of the train, Rich,” I said, with what I suppose
+was elaborate carelessness, “I don’t want you to get a wrong
+impression. I am rather unlikely to see her again, but even if I do,
+I—I believe she is already ‘bespoke,’ or next thing to it.”
+He made no reply, but as I opened the door with my latch-key he stood
+looking up at me from the pavement with his quizzical smile.
+“Love is like the measles,” he orated. “The older you get it, the worse
+the attack.”
+Johnson did not appear again that day. A small man in a raincoat took
+his place. The next morning I made my initial trip to the office, the
+raincoat still on hand. I had a short conference with Miller, the
+district attorney, at eleven. Bronson was under surveillance, he said,
+and any attempt to sell the notes to him would probably result in their
+recovery. In the meantime, as I knew, the Commonwealth had continued
+the case, in hope of such contingency.
+At noon I left the office and took a veterinarian to see Candida, the
+injured pony. By one o’clock my first day’s duties were performed, and
+a long Sahara of hot afternoon stretched ahead. McKnight, always glad
+to escape from the grind, suggested a vaudeville, and in sheer _ennui_
+I consented. I could neither ride, drive nor golf, and my own company
+bored me to distraction.
+“Coolest place in town these days,” he declared. “Electric fans, breezy
+songs, airy costumes. And there’s Johnson just behind—the coldest
+proposition in Washington.”
+He gravely bought three tickets and presented the detective with one.
+Then we went in. Having lived a normal, busy life, the theater in the
+afternoon is to me about on a par with ice-cream for breakfast. Up on
+the stage a very stout woman in short pink skirts, with a smile that
+McKnight declared looked like a slash in a roll of butter, was singing
+nasally, with a laborious kick at the end of each verse. Johnson, two
+rows ahead, went to sleep. McKnight prodded me with his elbow.
+“Look at the first box to the right,” he said, in a stage whisper. “I
+want you to come over at the end of this act.”
+It was the first time I had seen her since I put her in the cab at
+Baltimore. Outwardly I presume I was calm, for no one turned to stare
+at me, but every atom of me cried out at the sight of her. She was
+leaning, bent forward, lips slightly parted, gazing raptly at the
+Japanese conjurer who had replaced what McKnight disrespectfully called
+the Columns of Hercules. Compared with the draggled lady of the
+farm-house, she was radiant.
+For that first moment there was nothing but joy at the sight of her.
+McKnight’s touch on my arm brought me back to reality.
+“Come over and meet them,” he said. “That’s the cousin Miss West is
+visiting, Mrs. Dallas.”
+But I would not go. After he went I sat there alone, painfully
+conscious that I was being pointed out and stared at from the box. The
+abominable Japanese gave way to yet more atrocious performing dogs.
+“How many offers of marriage will the young lady in the box have?” The
+dog stopped sagely at ‘none,’ and then pulled out a card that said
+eight. Wild shouts of glee by the audience. “The fools,” I muttered.
+After a little I glanced over. Mrs. Dallas was talking to McKnight, but
+She was looking straight at me. She was flushed, but more calm than I,
+and she did not bow. I fumbled for my hat, but the next moment I saw
+that they were going, and I sat still. When McKnight came back he was
+triumphant.
+“I’ve made an engagement for you,” he said. “Mrs. Dallas asked me to
+bring you to dinner to-night, and I said I knew you would fall all over
+yourself to go. You are requested to bring along the broken arm, and
+any other souvenirs of the wreck that you may possess.”
+“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” I declared, struggling against my
+inclination. “I can’t even tie my necktie, and I have to have my food
+cut for me.”
+“Oh, that’s all right,” he said easily. “I’ll send Stogie over to fix
+you up, and Mrs. Dal knows all about the arm. I told her.”
+(Stogie is his Japanese factotum, so called because he is lean, a
+yellowish brown in color, and because he claims to have been shipped
+into this country in a box.)
+The Cinematograph was finishing the program. The house was dark and the
+music had stopped, as it does in the circus just before somebody risks
+his neck at so much a neck in the Dip of Death, or the hundred-foot
+dive. Then, with a sort of shock, I saw on the white curtain the
+announcement:
+THE NEXT PICTURE
+IS THE DOOMED WASHINGTON FLIER, TAKEN A SHORT DISTANCE FROM THE SCENE
+OF THE WRECK ON THE FATAL MORNING OF SEPTEMBER TENTH. TWO MILES FARTHER
+ON IT MET WITH ALMOST COMPLETE ANNIHILATION.
+I confess to a return of some of the sickening sensations of the wreck;
+people around me were leaning forward with tense faces. Then the
+letters were gone, and I saw a long level stretch of track, even the
+broken stone between the ties standing out distinctly. Far off under a
+cloud of smoke a small object was rushing toward us and growing larger
+as it came.
+Now it was on us, a mammoth in size, with huge drivers and a colossal
+tender. The engine leaped aside, as if just in time to save us from
+destruction, with a glimpse of a stooping fireman and a grimy engineer.
+The long train of sleepers followed. From a forward vestibule a porter
+in a white coat waved his hand. The rest of the cars seemed still
+wrapped in slumber. With mixed sensations I saw my own car, Ontario,
+fly past, and then I rose to my feet and gripped McKnight’s shoulder.
+On the lowest step at the last car, one foot hanging free, was a man.
+His black derby hat was pulled well down to keep it from blowing away,
+and his coat was flying open in the wind. He was swung well out from
+the car, his free hand gripping a small valise, every muscle tense for
+a jump.
+“Good God, that’s my man!” I said hoarsely, as the audience broke into
+applause. McKnight half rose: in his seat ahead Johnson stifled a yawn
+and turned to eye me.
+I dropped into my chair limply, and tried to control my excitement.
+“The man on the last platform of the train,” I said. “He was just about
+to leap; I’ll swear that was my bag.”
+“Could you see his face?” McKnight asked in an undertone. “Would you
+know him again?”
+“No. His hat was pulled down and his head was bent. I’m going back to
+find out where that picture was taken. They say two miles, but it may
+have been forty.”
+The audience, busy with its wraps, had not noticed. Mrs. Dallas and
+Alison West had gone. In front of us Johnson had dropped his hat and
+was stooping for it.
+“This way,” I motioned to McKnight, and we wheeled into the narrow
+passage beside us, back of the boxes. At the end there was a door
+leading into the wings, and as we went boldly through I turned the key.
+The final set was being struck, and no one paid any attention to us.
+Luckily they were similarly indifferent to a banging at the door I had
+locked, a banging which, I judged, signified Johnson.
+“I guess we’ve broken up his interference,” McKnight chuckled.
+Stage hands were hurrying in every direction; pieces of the side wall
+of the last drawing-room menaced us; a switchboard behind us was
+singing like a tea-kettle. Everywhere we stepped we were in somebody’s
+way. At last we were across, confronting a man in his shirt sleeves,
+who by dots and dashes of profanity seemed to be directing the chaos.
+“Well?” he said, wheeling on us. “What can I do for you?”
+“I would like to ask,” I replied, “if you have any idea just where the
+last cinematograph picture was taken.”
+“Broken board—picnickers—lake?”
+“No. The Washington Flier.”
+He glanced at my bandaged arm.
+“The announcement says two miles,” McKnight put in, “but we should like
+to know whether it is railroad miles, automobile miles, or policeman
+miles.”
+“I am sorry I can’t tell you,” he replied, more civilly. “We get those
+pictures by contract. We don’t take them ourselves.”
+“Where are the company’s offices?”
+“New York.” He stepped forward and grasped a super by the shoulder.
+“What in blazes are you doing with that gold chair in a kitchen set?
+Take that piece of pink plush there and throw it over a soap box, if
+you haven’t got a kitchen chair.”
+I had not realized the extent of the shock, but now I dropped into a
+chair and wiped my forehead. The unexpected glimpse of Alison West,
+followed almost immediately by the revelation of the picture, had left
+me limp and unnerved. McKnight was looking at his watch.
+“He says the moving picture people have an office down-town. We can
+make it if we go now.”
+So he called a cab, and we started at a gallop. There was no sign of
+the detective. “Upon my word,” Richey said, “I feel lonely without
+him.”
+The people at the down-town office of the cinematograph company were
+very obliging. The picture had been taken, they said, at M——, just two
+miles beyond the scene of the wreck. It was not much, but it was
+something to work on. I decided not to go home, but to send McKnight’s
+Jap for my clothes, and to dress at the Incubator. I was determined, if
+possible, to make my next day’s investigations without Johnson. In the
+meantime, even if it was for the last time, I would see Her that night.
+I gave Stogie a note for Mrs. Klopton, and with my dinner clothes there
+came back the gold bag, wrapped in tissue paper.
+CHAPTER XVI.
+THE SHADOW OF A GIRL
+Certain things about the dinner at the Dallas house will always be
+obscure to me. Dallas was something in the Fish Commission, and I
+remember his reeling off fish eggs in billions while we ate our caviar.
+He had some particular stunt he had been urging the government to for
+years—something about forbidding the establishment of mills and
+factories on river-banks—it seems they kill the fish, either the smoke,
+or the noise, or something they pour into the water.
+Mrs. Dallas was there, I think. Of course, I suppose she must have
+been; and there was a woman in yellow: I took her in to dinner, and I
+remember she loosened my clams for me so I could get them. But the only
+real person at the table was a girl across in white, a sublimated young
+woman who was as brilliant as I was stupid, who never by any chance
+looked directly at me, and who appeared and disappeared across the
+candles and orchids in a sort of halo of radiance.
+When the dinner had progressed from salmon to roast, and the
+conversation had done the same thing—from fish to scandal—the yellow
+gown turned to me. “We have been awfully good, haven’t we, Mr.
+Blakeley?” she asked. “Although I am crazy to hear, I have not said
+‘wreck’ once. I’m sure you must feel like the survivor of Waterloo, or
+something of the sort.”
+“If you want me to tell you about the wreck,” I said, glancing across
+the table, “I’m sorry to be disappointing, but I don’t remember
+anything.”
+“You are fortunate to be able to forget it.” It was the first word Miss
+West had spoken directly to me, and it went to my head.
+“There are some things I have not forgotten,” I said, over the candles.
+“I recall coming to myself some time after, and that a girl, a
+beautiful girl—”
+“Ah!” said the lady in yellow, leaning forward breathlessly. Miss West
+was staring at me coldly, but, once started, I had to stumble on.
+“That a girl was trying to rouse me, and that she told me I had been on
+fire twice already.” A shudder went around the table.
+“But surely that isn’t the end of the story,” Mrs. Dallas put in
+aggrievedly. “Why, that’s the most tantalizing thing I ever heard.”
+“I’m afraid that’s all,” I said. “She went her way and I went mine. If
+she recalls me at all, she probably thinks of me as a weak-kneed
+individual who faints like a woman when everything is over.”
+“What did I tell you?” Mrs. Dallas asserted triumphantly. “He fainted,
+did you hear? when everything was over! He hasn’t begun to tell it.”
+I would have given a lot by that time if I had not mentioned the girl.
+But McKnight took it up there and carried it on.
+“Blakeley is a regular geyser,” he said. “He never spouts until he
+reaches the boiling point. And by that same token, although he hasn’t
+said much about the Lady of the Wreck, I think he is crazy about her.
+In fact, I am sure of it. He thinks he has locked his secret in the
+caves of his soul, but I call you to witness that he has it nailed to
+his face. Look at him!”
+I squirmed miserably and tried to avoid the startled eyes of the girl
+across the table. I wanted to choke McKnight and murder the rest of the
+party.
+“It isn’t fair,” I said as coolly as I could. “I have my fingers
+crossed; you are five against one.”
+“And to think that there was a murder on that very train,” broke in the
+lady in yellow. “It was a perfect crescendo of horrors, wasn’t it? And
+what became of the murdered man, Mr. Blakeley?”
+McKnight had the sense to jump into the conversation and save my reply.
+“They say good Pittsburgers go to Atlantic City when they die,” he
+said. “So—we are reasonably certain the gentleman did _not_ go to the
+seashore.”
+The meal was over at last, and once in the drawing-room it was clear we
+hung heavy on the hostess’ hands. “It is so hard to get people for
+bridge in September,” she wailed, “there is absolutely nobody in town.
+Six is a dreadful number.”
+“It’s a good poker number,” her husband suggested.
+The matter settled itself, however. I was hopeless, save as a dummy;
+Miss West said it was too hot for cards, and went out on a balcony that
+overlooked the Mall. With obvious relief Mrs. Dallas had the card-table
+brought, and I was face to face with the minute I had dreaded and hoped
+for for a week.
+Now it had come, it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I do not
+know if there was a moon, but there was the urban substitute for it—the
+arc light. It threw the shadow of the balcony railing in long black
+bars against her white gown, and as it swung sometimes her face was in
+the light. I drew a chair close so that I could watch her.
+“Do you know,” I said, when she made no effort at speech, “that you are
+a much more formidable person to-night, in that gown, than you were the
+last time I saw you?”
+The light swung on her face; she was smiling faintly. “The hat with the
+green ribbons!” she said. “I must take it back; I had almost
+forgotten.”
+“I have not forgotten—anything.” I pulled myself up short. This was
+hardly loyalty to Richey. His voice came through the window just then,
+and perhaps I was wrong, but I thought she raised her head to listen.
+“Look at this hand,” he was saying. “Regular pianola: you could play it
+with your feet.”
+“He’s a dear, isn’t he?” Alison said unexpectedly. “No matter how
+depressed and downhearted I am, I always cheer up when I see Richey.”
+“He’s more than that,” I returned warmly. “He is the most honorable
+fellow I know. If he wasn’t so much that way, he would have a career
+before him. He wanted to put on the doors of our offices, Blakeley and
+McKnight, P. B. H., which is Poor But Honest.”
+From my comparative poverty to the wealth of the girl beside me was a
+single mental leap. From that wealth to the grandfather who was
+responsible for it was another.
+“I wonder if you know that I had been to Pittsburg to see your
+grandfather when I met you?” I said.
+“You?” She was surprised.
+“Yes. And you remember the alligator bag that I told you was exchanged
+for the one you cut off my arm?” She nodded expectantly. “Well, in that
+valise were the forged Andy Bronson notes, and Mr. Gilmore’s deposition
+that they were forged.”
+She was on her feet in an instant. “In that bag!” she cried. “Oh, why
+didn’t you tell me that before? Oh, it’s so ridiculous, so—so hopeless.
+Why, I could—”
+She stopped suddenly and sat down again. “I do not know that I am
+sorry, after all,” she said after a pause. “Mr. Bronson was a friend of
+my father’s. I—I suppose it was a bad thing for you, losing the
+papers?”
+“Well, it was not a good thing,” I conceded. “While we are on the
+subject of losing things, do you remember—do you know that I still have
+your gold purse?”
+She did not reply at once. The shadow of a column was over her face,
+but I guessed that she was staring at me.
+“_You_ have it!” She almost whispered.
+“I picked it up in the street car,” I said, with a cheerfulness I did
+not feel. “It looks like a very opulent little purse.”
+Why didn’t she speak about the necklace? For just a careless word to
+make me sane again!
+“You!” she repeated, horror-stricken. And then I produced the purse and
+held it out on my palm. “I should have sent it to you before, I
+suppose, but, as you know, I have been laid up since the wreck.”
+We both saw McKnight at the same moment. He had pulled the curtains
+aside and was standing looking out at us. The tableau of give and take
+was unmistakable; the gold purse, her outstretched hand, my own
+attitude. It was over in a second; then he came out and lounged on the
+balcony railing.
+“They’re mad at me in there,” he said airily, “so I came out. I suppose
+the reason they call it bridge is because so many people get cross over
+it.”
+The heat broke up the card group soon after, and they all came out for
+the night breeze. I had no more words alone with Alison.
+I went back to the Incubator for the night. We said almost nothing on
+the way home; there was a constraint between us for the first time that
+I could remember. It was too early for bed, and so we smoked in the
+living-room and tried to talk of trivial things. After a time even
+those failed, and we sat silent. It was McKnight who finally broached
+the subject.
+“And so she wasn’t at Seal Harbor at all.”
+“No.”
+“Do you know where she was, Lollie?”
+“Somewhere near Cresson.”
+“And that was the purse—her purse—with the broken necklace in it?”
+“Yes, it was. You understand, don’t you, Rich, that, having given her
+my word, I couldn’t tell you?”
+“I understand a lot of things,” he said, without bitterness.
+We sat for some time and smoked. Then Richey got up and stretched
+himself. “I’m off to bed, old man,” he said. “Need any help with that
+game arm of yours?”
+“No, thanks,” I returned.
+I heard him go into his room and lock the door. It was a bad hour for
+me. The first shadow between us, and the shadow of a girl at that.
+CHAPTER XVII.
+AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
+McKnight is always a sympathizer with the early worm. It was late when
+he appeared. Perhaps, like myself, he had not slept well. But he was
+apparently cheerful enough, and he made a better breakfast than I did.
+It was one o’clock before we got to Baltimore. After a half hour’s wait
+we took a local for M——, the station near which the cinematograph
+picture had been taken.
+We passed the scene of the wreck, McKnight with curiosity, I with a
+sickening sense of horror. Back in the fields was the little farm-house
+where Alison West and I had intended getting coffee, and winding away
+from the track, maple trees shading it on each side, was the lane where
+we had stopped to rest, and where I had—it seemed presumption beyond
+belief now—where I had tried to comfort her by patting her hand.
+We got out at M——, a small place with two or three houses and a general
+store. The station was a one-roomed affair, with a railed-off place at
+the end, where a scale, a telegraph instrument and a chair constituted
+the entire furnishing.
+The station agent was a young man with a shrewd face. He stopped
+hammering a piece of wood over a hole in the floor to ask where we
+wanted to go.
+“We’re not going,” said McKnight, “we’re coming. Have a cigar?”
+The agent took it with an inquiring glance, first at it and then at us.
+“We want to ask you a few questions,” began McKnight, perching himself
+on the railing and kicking the chair forward for me. “Or, rather, this
+gentleman does.”
+“Wait a minute,” said the agent, glancing through the window. “There��s
+a hen in that crate choking herself to death.”
+He was back in a minute, and took up his position near a sawdust-filled
+box that did duty as a cuspidor.
+“Now fire away,” he said.
+“In the first place,” I began, “do you remember the day the Washington
+Flier was wrecked below here?”
+“Do I!” he said. “Did Jonah remember the whale?”
+“Were you on the platform here when the first section passed?”
+“I was.”
+“Do you recall seeing a man hanging to the platform of the last car?”
+“There was no one hanging there when she passed here,” he said with
+conviction. “I watched her out of sight.”
+“Did you see anything that morning of a man about my size, carrying a
+small grip, and wearing dark clothes and a derby hat?” I asked eagerly.
+McKnight was trying to look unconcerned, but I was frankly anxious. It
+was clear that the man had jumped somewhere in the mile of track just
+beyond.
+“Well, yes, I did.” The agent cleared his throat. “When the smash came
+the operator at MX sent word along the wire, both ways. I got it here,
+and I was pretty near crazy, though I knew it wasn’t any fault of mine.
+“I was standing on the track looking down, for I couldn’t leave the
+office, when a young fellow with light hair limped up to me and asked
+me what that smoke was over there.
+“‘That’s what’s left of the Washington Flier,’ I said, ‘and I guess
+there’s souls going up in that smoke.’
+“‘Do you mean the first section?’ he said, getting kind of
+greenish-yellow.
+“‘That’s what I mean,’ I said; ‘split to kindling wood because
+Rafferty, on the second section, didn’t want to be late.’
+“He put his hand out in front of him, and the satchel fell with a bang.
+“‘My God!’ he said, and dropped right on the track in a heap.
+“I got him into the station and he came around, but he kept on groaning
+something awful. He’d sprained his ankle, and when he got a little
+better I drove him over in Carter’s milk wagon to the Carter place, and
+I reckon he stayed there a spell.”
+“That’s all, is it?” I asked.
+“That’s all—or, no, there’s something else. About noon that day one of
+the Carter twins came down with a note from him asking me to send a
+long-distance message to some one in Washington.”
+“To whom?” I asked eagerly.
+“I reckon I’ve forgot the name, but the message was that this
+fellow—Sullivan was his name—was at M——, and if the man had escaped
+from the wreck would he come to see him.”
+“He wouldn’t have sent that message to me,” I said to McKnight, rather
+crestfallen. “He’d have every object in keeping out of my way.”
+“There might be reasons,” McKnight observed judicially. “He might not
+have found the papers then.”
+“Was the name Blakeley?” I asked.
+“It might have been—I can’t say. But the man wasn’t there, and there
+was a lot of noise. I couldn’t hear well. Then in half an hour down
+came the other twin to say the gentleman was taking on awful and didn’t
+want the message sent.”
+“He’s gone, of course?”
+“Yes. Limped down here in about three days and took the noon train for
+the city.”
+It seemed a certainty now that our man, having hurt himself somewhat in
+his jump, had stayed quietly in the farm-house until he was able to
+travel. But, to be positive, we decided to visit the Carter place.
+I gave the station agent a five-dollar bill, which he rolled up with a
+couple of others and stuck in his pocket. I turned as we got to a bend
+in the road, and he was looking curiously after us.
+It was not until we had climbed the hill and turned onto the road to
+the Carter place that I realized where we were going. Although we
+approached it from another direction, I knew the farm-house at once. It
+was the one where Alison West and I had breakfasted nine days before.
+With the new restraint between us, I did not tell McKnight. I wondered
+afterward if he had suspected it. I saw him looking hard at the
+gate-post which had figured in one of our mysteries, but he asked no
+questions. Afterward he grew almost taciturn, for him, and let me do
+most of the talking.
+We opened the front gate of the Carter place and went slowly up the
+walk. Two ragged youngsters, alike even to freckles and squints, were
+playing in the yard.
+“Is your mother around?” I asked.
+“In the front room. Walk in,” they answered in identical tones.
+As we got to the porch we heard voices, and stopped. I knocked, but the
+people within, engaged in animated, rather one-sided conversation, did
+not answer.
+“‘In the front room. Walk in,’” quoted McKnight, and did so.
+In the stuffy farm parlor two people were sitting. One, a
+pleasant-faced woman with a checked apron, rose, somewhat embarrassed,
+to meet us. She did not know me, and I was thankful. But our attention
+was riveted on a little man who was sitting before a table, writing
+busily. It was Hotchkiss!
+He got up when he saw us, and had the grace to look uncomfortable.
+“Such an interesting case,” he said nervously, “I took the liberty—”
+“Look here,” said McKnight suddenly, “did you make any inquiries at the
+station?”
+“A few,” he confessed. “I went to the theater last night—I felt the
+need of a little relaxation—and the sight of a picture there, a
+cinematograph affair, started a new line of thought. Probably the same
+clue brought you gentlemen. I learned a good bit from the station
+agent.”
+“The son-of-a-gun,” said McKnight. “And you paid him, I suppose?”
+“I gave him five dollars,” was the apologetic answer. Mrs. Carter,
+hearing sounds of strife in the yard, went out, and Hotchkiss folded up
+his papers.
+“I think the identity of the man is established,” he said. “What number
+of hat do you wear, Mr. Blakeley?”
+“Seven and a quarter,” I replied.
+“Well, it’s only piling up evidence,” he said cheerfully. “On the night
+of the murder you wore light gray silk underclothing, with the second
+button of the shirt missing. Your hat had ‘L. B.’ in gilt letters
+inside, and there was a very minute hole in the toe of one black sock.”
+“Hush,” McKnight protested. “If word gets to Mrs. Klopton that Mr.
+Blakeley was wrecked, or robbed, or whatever it was, with a button
+missing and a hole in one sock, she’ll retire to the Old Ladies’ Home.
+I’ve heard her threaten it.”
+Mr. Hotchkiss was without a sense of humor. He regarded McKnight
+gravely and went on:
+“I’ve been up in the room where the man lay while he was unable to get
+away, and there is nothing there. But I found what may be a possible
+clue in the dust heap.
+“Mrs. Carter tells me that in unpacking his grip the other day she took
+out of the coat of the pajamas some pieces of a telegram. As I figure
+it, the pajamas were his own. He probably had them on when he effected
+the exchange.”
+I nodded assent. All I had retained of my own clothing was the suit of
+pajamas I was wearing and my bath-robe.
+“Therefore the telegram was his, not yours. I have pieces here, but
+some are missing. I am not discouraged, however.”
+He spread out some bits of yellow paper, and we bent over them
+curiously. It was something like this:
+Man with p— Get—
+Br—
+We spelled it out slowly.
+“Now,” Hotchkiss announced, “I make it something like this: The ‘p.—’
+is one of two things, pistol—you remember the little pearl-handled
+affair belonging to the murdered man—or it is pocket-book. I am
+inclined to the latter view, as the pocket-book had been disturbed and
+the pistol had not.”
+I took the piece of paper from the table and scrawled four words on it.
+“Now,” I said, rearranging them, “it happens, Mr. Hotchkiss, that I
+found one of these pieces of the telegram on the train. I thought it
+had been dropped by some one else, you see, but that’s immaterial.
+Arranged this way it almost makes sense. Fill out that ‘p.—’ with the
+rest of the word, as I imagine it, and it makes ‘papers,’ and add this
+scrap and you have:
+“‘Man with papers (in) lower ten, car seven. Get (them).’”
+McKnight slapped Hotchkiss on the back. “You’re a trump,” he said. “Br—
+is Bronson, of course. It’s almost too easy. You see, Mr. Blakeley here
+engaged lower ten, but found it occupied by the man who was later
+murdered there. The man who did the thing was a friend of Bronson’s,
+evidently, and in trying to get the papers we have the motive for the
+crime.”
+“There are still some things to be explained.” Mr. Hotchkiss wiped his
+glasses and put them on. “For one thing, Mr. Blakeley, I am puzzled by
+that bit of chain.”
+I did not glance at McKnight. I felt that the hand, with which I was
+gathering up the bits of torn paper were shaking. It seemed to me that
+this astute little man was going to drag in the girl in spite of me.
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+A NEW WORLD
+Hotchkiss jotted down the bits of telegram and rose.
+“Well,” he said, “we’ve done something. We’ve found where the murderer
+left the train, we know what day he went to Baltimore, and, most
+important of all, we have a motive for the crime.”
+“It seems the irony of fate,” said McKnight, getting up, “that a man
+should kill another man for certain papers he is supposed to be
+carrying, find he hasn’t got them after all, decide to throw suspicion
+on another man by changing berths and getting out, bag and baggage, and
+then, by the merest fluke of chance, take with him, in the valise he
+changed for his own, the very notes he was after. It was a bit of luck
+for him.”
+“Then why,” put in Hotchkiss doubtfully, “why did he collapse when he
+heard of the wreck? And what about the telephone message the station
+agent sent? You remember they tried to countermand it, and with some
+excitement.”
+“We will ask him those questions when we get him,” McKnight said. We
+were on the unrailed front porch by that time, and Hotchkiss had put
+away his notebook. The mother of the twins followed us to the steps.
+“Dear me,” she exclaimed volubly, “and to think I was forgetting to
+tell you! I put the young man to bed with a spice poultice on his
+ankle: my mother always was a firm believer in spice poultices. It’s
+wonderful what they will do in croup! And then I took the children and
+went down to see the wreck. It was Sunday, and the mister had gone to
+church; hasn’t missed a day since he took the pledge nine years ago.
+And on the way I met two people, a man and a woman. They looked half
+dead, so I sent them right here for breakfast and some soap and water.
+I always say soap is better than liquor after a shock.”
+Hotchkiss was listening absently: McKnight was whistling under his
+breath, staring down across the field to where a break in the woods
+showed a half dozen telegraph poles, the line of the railroad.
+“It must have been twelve o’clock when we got back; I wanted the
+children to see everything, because it isn’t likely they’ll ever see
+another wreck like that. Rows of—”
+“About twelve o’clock,” I broke in, “and what then?”
+“The young man up-stairs was awake,” she went on, “and hammering at his
+door like all possessed. And it was locked on the outside!” She paused
+to enjoy her sensation.
+“I would like to see that lock,” Hotchkiss said promptly, but for some
+reason the woman demurred.
+“I will bring the key down,” she said and disappeared. When she
+returned she held out an ordinary door key of the cheapest variety.
+“We had to break the lock,” she volunteered, “and the key didn’t turn
+up for two days. Then one of the twins found the turkey gobbler trying
+to swallow it. It has been washed since,” she hastened to assure
+Hotchkiss, who showed an inclination to drop it.
+“You don’t think he locked the door himself and threw the key out of
+the window?” the little man asked.
+“The windows are covered with mosquito netting, nailed on. The mister
+blamed it on the children, and it might have been Obadiah. He’s the
+quiet kind, and you never know what he’s about.”
+“He’s about to strangle, isn’t he,” McKnight remarked lazily, “or is
+that Obadiah?”
+Mrs. Carter picked the boy up and inverted him, talking amiably all the
+time. “He’s always doing it,” she said, giving him a shake. “Whenever
+we miss anything we look to see if Obadiah’s black in the face.” She
+gave him another shake, and the quarter I had given him shot out as if
+blown from a gun. Then we prepared to go back to the station.
+From where I stood I could look into the cheery farm kitchen, where
+Alison West and I had eaten our _al fresco_ breakfast. I looked at the
+table with mixed emotions, and then, gradually, the meaning of
+something on it penetrated my mind. Still in its papers, evidently just
+opened, was a hat box, and protruding over the edge of the box was a
+streamer of vivid green ribbon.
+On the plea that I wished to ask Mrs. Carter a few more questions, I
+let the others go on. I watched them down the flagstone walk; saw
+McKnight stop and examine the gate-posts and saw, too, the quick glance
+he threw back at the house. Then I turned to Mrs. Carter.
+“I would like to speak to the young lady up-stairs,” I said.
+She threw up her hands with a quick gesture of surrender. “I’ve done
+all I could,” she exclaimed. “She won’t like it very well, but—she’s in
+the room over the parlor.”
+I went eagerly up the ladder-like stairs, to the rag-carpeted hall. Two
+doors were open, showing interiors of four poster beds and high
+bureaus. The door of the room over the parlor was almost closed. I
+hesitated in the hallway: after all, what right had I to intrude on
+her? But she settled my difficulty by throwing open the door and facing
+me.
+“I—I beg your pardon, Miss West,” I stammered. “It has just occurred to
+me that I am unpardonably rude. I saw the hat down-stairs and I—I
+guessed—”
+“The hat!” she said. “I might have known. Does Richey know I am here?”
+“I don’t think so.” I turned to go down the stairs again. Then I
+halted. “The fact is,” I said, in an attempt at justification, “I’m in
+rather a mess these days, and I’m apt to do irresponsible things. It is
+not impossible that I shall be arrested, in a day or so, for the murder
+of Simon Harrington.”
+She drew her breath in sharply. “Murder!” she echoed. “Then they have
+found you after all!”
+“I don’t regard it as anything more than—er—inconvenient,” I lied.
+“They can’t convict me, you know. Almost all the witnesses are dead.”
+She was not deceived for a moment. She came over to me and stood, both
+hands on the rail of the stair. “I know just how grave it is,” she said
+quietly. “My grandfather will not leave one stone unturned, and he can
+be terrible—terrible. But”—she looked directly into my eyes as I stood
+below her on the stairs—“the time may come—soon—when I can help you.
+I’m afraid I shall not want to; I’m a dreadful coward, Mr. Blakeley.
+But—I will.” She tried to smile.
+“I wish you would let _me_ help _you_,” I said unsteadily. “Let us make
+it a bargain: each help the other!”
+The girl shook her head with a sad little smile. “I am only as unhappy
+as I deserve to be,” she said. And when I protested and took a step
+toward her she retreated, with her hands out before her.
+“Why don’t you ask me all the questions you are thinking?” she
+demanded, with a catch in her voice. “Oh, I know them. Or are you
+afraid to ask?”
+I looked at her, at the lines around her eyes, at the drawn look about
+her mouth. Then I held out my hand. “Afraid!” I said, as she gave me
+hers. “There is nothing in God’s green earth I am afraid of, save of
+trouble for you. To ask questions would be to imply a lack of faith. I
+ask you nothing. Some day, perhaps, you will come to me yourself and
+let me help you.”
+The next moment I was out in the golden sunshine: the birds were
+singing carols of joy: I walked dizzily through rainbow-colored clouds,
+past the twins, cherubs now, swinging on the gate. It was a new world
+into which I stepped from the Carter farm-house that morning, for—I had
+kissed her!
+CHAPTER XIX.
+AT THE TABLE NEXT
+McKnight and Hotchkiss were sauntering slowly down the road as I caught
+up with them. As usual, the little man was busy with some abstruse
+mental problem.
+“The idea is this,” he was saying, his brows knitted in thought, “if a
+left-handed man, standing in the position of the man in the picture,
+should jump from a car, would he be likely to sprain his right ankle?
+When a right-handed man prepares for a leap of that kind, my theory is
+that he would hold on with his right hand, and alight at the proper
+time, on his right foot. Of course—”
+“I imagine, although I don’t know,” interrupted McKnight, “that a man
+either ambidextrous or one-armed, jumping from the Washington Flier,
+would be more likely to land on his head.”
+“Anyhow,” I interposed, “what difference does it make whether Sullivan
+used one hand or the other? One pair of handcuffs will put both hands
+out of commission.”
+As usual when one of his pet theories was attacked, Hotchkiss looked
+aggrieved.
+“My dear sir,” he expostulated, “don’t you understand what bearing this
+has on the case? How was the murdered man lying when he was found?”
+“On his back,” I said promptly, “head toward the engine.”
+“Very well,” he retorted, “and what then? Your heart lies under your
+fifth intercostal space, and to reach it a right-handed blow would have
+struck either down or directly in.
+“But, gentleman, the point of entrance for the stiletto was below the
+heart, striking up! As Harrington lay with his head toward the engine,
+a person in the aisle must have used the left hand.”
+McKnight’s eyes sought mine and he winked at me solemnly as I
+unostentatiously transferred the hat I was carrying to my right hand.
+Long training has largely counterbalanced heredity in my case, but I
+still pitch ball, play tennis and carve with my left hand. But
+Hotchkiss was too busy with his theories to notice me.
+We were only just in time for our train back to Baltimore, but McKnight
+took advantage of a second’s delay to shake the station agent warmly by
+the hand.
+“I want to express my admiration for you,” he said beamingly. “Ability
+of your order is thrown away here. You should have been a city
+policeman, my friend.”
+The agent looked a trifle uncertain.
+“The young lady was the one who told me to keep still,” he said.
+McKnight glanced at me, gave the agent’s hand a final shake, and
+climbed on board. But I knew perfectly that he had guessed the reason
+for my delay.
+He was very silent on the way home. Hotchkiss, too, had little to say.
+He was reading over his notes intently, stopping now and then to make a
+penciled addition. Just before we left the train Richey turned to me.
+“I suppose it was the key to the door that she tied to the gate?”
+“Probably. I did not ask her.”
+“Curious, her locking that fellow in,” he reflected.
+“You may depend on it, there was a good reason for it all. And I wish
+you wouldn’t be so suspicious of motives, Rich,” I said warmly.
+“Only yesterday you were the suspicious one,” he retorted, and we
+lapsed into strained silence.
+It was late when we got to Washington. One of Mrs. Klopton’s small
+tyrannies was exacting punctuality at meals, and, like several other
+things, I respected it. There are always some concessions that should
+be made in return for faithful service.
+So, as my dinner hour of seven was long past, McKnight and I went to a
+little restaurant down town where they have a very decent way of fixing
+chicken _a la_ King. Hotchkiss had departed, economically bent, for a
+small hotel where he lived on the American plan.
+“I want to think some things over,” he said in response to my
+invitation to dinner, “and, anyhow, there’s no use dining out when I
+pay the same, dinner or no dinner, where I am stopping.”
+The day had been hot, and the first floor dining-room was sultry in
+spite of the palms and fans which attempted to simulate the verdure and
+breezes of the country.
+It was crowded, too, with a typical summer night crowd, and, after
+sitting for a few minutes in a sweltering corner, we got up and went to
+the smaller dining-room up-stairs. Here it was not so warm, and we
+settled ourselves comfortably by a window.
+Over in a corner half a dozen boys on their way back to school were
+ragging a perspiring waiter, a proceeding so exactly to McKnight’s
+taste that he insisted on going over to join them. But their table was
+full, and somehow that kind of fun had lost its point for me.
+Not far from us a very stout, middle-aged man, apoplectic with the
+heat, was elephantinely jolly for the benefit of a bored-looking girl
+across the table from him, and at the next table a newspaper woman ate
+alone, the last edition propped against the water-bottle before her,
+her hat, for coolness, on the corner of the table. It was a motley
+Bohemian crowd.
+I looked over the room casually, while McKnight ordered the meal. Then
+my attention was attracted to the table next to ours. Two people were
+sitting there, so deep in conversation that they did not notice us. The
+woman’s face was hidden under her hat, as she traced the pattern of the
+cloth mechanically with her fork. But the man’s features stood out
+clear in the light of the candles on the table. It was Bronson!
+“He shows the strain, doesn’t he?” McKnight said, holding up the wine
+list as if he read from it. “Who’s the woman?”
+“Search me,” I replied, in the same way.
+When the chicken came, I still found myself gazing now and then at the
+abstracted couple near me. Evidently the subject of conversation was
+unpleasant. Bronson was eating little, the woman not at all. Finally he
+got up, pushed his chair back noisily, thrust a bill at the waiter and
+stalked out.
+The woman sat still for a moment; then, with an apparent resolution to
+make the best of it, she began slowly to eat the meal before her.
+But the quarrel had taken away her appetite, for the mixture in our
+chafing-dish was hardly ready to serve before she pushed her chair back
+a little and looked around the room.
+I caught my first glimpse of her face then, and I confess it startled
+me. It was the tall, stately woman of the Ontario, the woman I had last
+seen cowering beside the road, rolling pebbles in her hand, blood
+streaming from a cut over her eye. I could see the scar now, a little
+affair, about an inch long, gleaming red through its layers of powder.
+And then, quite unexpectedly, she turned and looked directly at me.
+After a minute’s uncertainty, she bowed, letting her eyes rest on mine
+with a calmly insolent stare. She glanced at McKnight for a moment,
+then back to me. When she looked away again I breathed easier.
+“Who is it?” asked McKnight under his breath.
+“Ontario.” I formed it with my lips rather than said it. McKnight’s
+eyebrows went up and he looked with increased interest at the
+black-gowned figure.
+I ate little after that. The situation was rather bad for me, I began
+to see. Here was a woman who could, if she wished, and had any motive
+for so doing, put me in jail under a capital charge. A word from her to
+the police, and polite surveillance would become active interference.
+Then, too, she could say that she had seen me, just after the wreck,
+with a young woman from the murdered man’s car, and thus probably bring
+Alison West into the case.
+It is not surprising, then, that I ate little. The woman across seemed
+in no hurry to go. She loitered over a demi-tasse, and that finished,
+sat with her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, looking darkly
+at the changing groups in the room.
+The fun at the table where the college boys sat began to grow a little
+noisy; the fat man, now a purplish shade, ambled away behind his slim
+companion; the newspaper woman pinned on her business-like hat and
+stalked out. Still the woman at the next table waited.
+It was a relief when the meal was over. We got our hats and were about
+to leave the room, when a waiter touched me on the arm.
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but the lady at the table near the
+window, the lady in black, sir, would like to speak to you.”
+I looked down between the rows of tables to where the woman sat alone,
+her chin still resting on her hand, her black eyes still insolently
+staring, this time at me.
+“I’ll have to go,” I said to McKnight hurriedly. “She knows all about
+that affair and she’d be a bad enemy.”
+“I don’t like her lamps,” McKnight observed, after a glance at her.
+“Better jolly her a little. Good-by.”
+CHAPTER XX.
+THE NOTES AND A BARGAIN
+I went back slowly to where the woman sat alone.
+She smiled rather oddly as I drew near, and pointed to the chair
+Bronson had vacated.
+“Sit down, Mr. Blakeley,” she said, “I am going to take a few minutes
+of your valuable time.”
+“Certainly.” I sat down opposite her and glanced at a cuckoo clock on
+the wall. “I am sorry, but I have only a few minutes. If you—” She
+laughed a little, not very pleasantly, and opening a small black fan
+covered with spangles, waved it slowly.
+“The fact is,” she said, “I think we are about to make a bargain.”
+“A bargain?” I asked incredulously. “You have a second advantage of me.
+You know my name”—I paused suggestively and she took the cue.
+“I am Mrs. Conway,” she said, and flicked a crumb off the table with an
+over-manicured finger.
+The name was scarcely a surprise. I had already surmised that this
+might be the woman whom rumor credited as being Bronson’s common-law
+wife. Rumor, I remembered, had said other things even less pleasant,
+things which had been brought out at Bronson’s arrest for forgery.
+“We met last under less fortunate circumstances,” she was saying. “I
+have been fit for nothing since that terrible day. And you—you had a
+broken arm, I think.”
+“I still have it,” I said, with a lame attempt at jocularity; “but to
+have escaped at all was a miracle. We have much, indeed, to be thankful
+for.”
+“I suppose we have,” she said carelessly, “although sometimes I doubt
+it.” She was looking somberly toward the door through which her late
+companion had made his exit.
+“You sent for me—” I said.
+“Yes, I sent for you.” She roused herself and sat erect. “Now, Mr.
+Blakeley, have you found those papers?”
+“The papers? What papers?” I parried. I needed time to think.
+“Mr. Blakeley,” she said quietly, “I think we can lay aside all
+subterfuge. In the first place let me refresh your mind about a few
+things. The Pittsburg police are looking for the survivors of the car
+Ontario; there are three that I know of—yourself, the young woman with
+whom you left the scene of the wreck, and myself. The wreck, you will
+admit, was a fortunate one for you.”
+I nodded without speaking.
+“At the time of the collision you were in rather a hole,” she went on,
+looking at me with a disagreeable smile. “You were, if I remember,
+accused of a rather atrocious crime. There was a lot of corroborative
+evidence, was there not? I seem to remember a dirk and the murdered
+man’s pocket-book in your possession, and a few other things that
+were—well, rather unpleasant.”
+I was thrown a bit off my guard.
+“You remember also,” I said quickly, “that a man disappeared from the
+car, taking my clothes, papers and everything.”
+“I remember that you _said_ so.” Her tone was quietly insulting, and I
+bit my lip at having been caught. It was no time to make a defense.
+“You have missed one calculation,” I said coldly, “and that is, the
+discovery of the man who left the train.”
+“You have found him?” She bent forward, and again I regretted my hasty
+speech. “I knew it; I said so.”
+“We are going to find him,” I asserted, with a confidence I did not
+feel. “We can produce at any time proof that a man left the Flier a few
+miles beyond the wreck. And we can find him, I am positive.”
+“But you have not found him yet?” She was clearly disappointed. “Well,
+so be it. Now for our bargain. You will admit that I am no fool.”
+I made no such admission, and she smiled mockingly.
+“How flattering you are!” she said. “Very well. Now for the premises.
+You take to Pittsburg four notes held by the Mechanics’ National Bank,
+to have Mr. Gilmore, who is ill, declare his indorsement of them
+forged.
+“On the journey back to Pittsburg two things happen to you: you lose
+your clothing, your valise and your papers, including the notes, and
+you are accused of murder. In fact, Mr. Blakeley, the circumstances
+were most singular, and the evidence—well, almost conclusive.”
+I was completely at her mercy, but I gnawed my lip with irritation.
+“Now for the bargain.” She leaned over and lowered her voice. “A fair
+exchange, you know. The minute you put those four notes in my hand—that
+minute the blow to my head has caused complete forgetfulness as to the
+events of that awful morning. I am the only witness, and I will be
+silent. Do you understand? They will call off their dogs.”
+My head was buzzing with the strangeness of the idea.
+“But,” I said, striving to gain time, “I haven’t the notes. I can’t
+give you what I haven’t got.”
+“You have had the case continued,” she said sharply. “You expect to
+find them. Another thing,” she added slowly, watching my face, “if you
+don’t get them soon, Bronson will have them. They have been offered to
+him already, but at a prohibitive price.”
+“But,” I said, bewildered, “what is your object in coming to me? If
+Bronson will get them anyhow—”
+She shut her fan with a click and her face was not particularly
+pleasant to look at.
+“You are dense,” she said insolently. “I want those papers—for myself,
+not for Andy Bronson.”
+“Then the idea is,” I said, ignoring her tone, “that you think you have
+me in a hole, and that if I find those papers and give them to you you
+will let me out. As I understand it, our friend Bronson, under those
+circumstances, will also be in a hole.”
+She nodded.
+“The notes would be of no use to you for a limited length of time,” I
+went on, watching her narrowly. “If they are not turned over to the
+state’s attorney within a reasonable time there will have to be a
+_nolle pros_—that is, the case will simply be dropped for lack of
+evidence.”
+“A week would answer, I think,” she said slowly. “You will do it,
+then?”
+I laughed, although I was not especially cheerful.
+“No, I’ll not do it. I expect to come across the notes any time now,
+and I expect just as certainly to turn them over to the state’s
+attorney when I get them.”
+She got up suddenly, pushing her chair back with a noisy grating sound
+that turned many eyes toward us.
+“You’re more of a fool than I thought you,” she sneered, and left me at
+the table.
+CHAPTER XXI.
+McKNIGHT’S THEORY
+I confess I was staggered. The people at the surrounding tables, after
+glancing curiously in my direction, looked away again.
+I got my hat and went out in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. That
+she would inform the police at once of what she knew I never doubted,
+unless possibly she would give a day or two’s grace in the hope that I
+would change my mind.
+I reviewed the situation as I waited for a car. Two passed me going in
+the opposite direction, and on the first one I saw Bronson, his hat
+over his eyes, his arms folded, looking moodily ahead. Was it
+imagination? or was the small man huddled in the corner of the rear
+seat Hotchkiss?
+As the car rolled on I found myself smiling. The alert little man was
+for all the world like a terrier, ever on the scent, and scouring about
+in every direction.
+I found McKnight at the Incubator, with his coat off, working with
+enthusiasm and a manicure file over the horn of his auto.
+“It’s the worst horn I ever ran across,” he groaned, without looking
+up, as I came in. “The blankety-blank thing won’t blow.”
+He punched it savagely, finally eliciting a faint throaty croak.
+“Sounds like croup,” I suggested. “My sister-in-law uses camphor and
+goose greese for it; or how about a spice poultice?”
+But McKnight never sees any jokes but his own. He flung the horn
+clattering into a corner, and collapsed sulkily into a chair.
+“Now,” I said, “if you’re through manicuring that horn, I’ll tell you
+about my talk with the lady in black.”
+“What’s wrong?” asked McKnight languidly. “Police watching her, too?”
+“Not exactly. The fact is, Rich, there’s the mischief to pay.”
+Stogie came in, bringing a few additions to our comfort. When he went
+out I told my story.
+“You must remember,” I said, “that I had seen this woman before the
+morning of the wreck. She was buying her Pullman ticket when I did.
+Then the next morning, when the murder was discovered, she grew
+hysterical, and I gave her some whisky. The third and last time I saw
+her, until to-night, was when she crouched beside the road, after the
+wreck.”
+McKnight slid down in his chair until his weight rested on the small of
+his back, and put his feet on the big reading table.
+“It is rather a facer,” he said. “It’s really too good a situation for
+a commonplace lawyer. It ought to be dramatized. You can’t agree, of
+course; and by refusing you run the chance of jail, at least, and of
+having Alison brought into publicity, which is out of the question. You
+say she was at the Pullman window when you were?”
+“Yes; I bought her ticket for her. Gave her lower eleven.”
+“And you took ten?”
+“Lower ten.”
+McKnight straightened up and looked at me.
+“Then she thought you were in lower ten.”
+“I suppose she did, if she thought at all.”
+“But listen, man.” McKnight was growing excited. “What do you figure
+out of this? The Conway woman knows you have taken the notes to
+Pittsburg. The probabilities are that she follows you there, on the
+chance of an opportunity to get them, either for Bronson or herself.
+“Nothing doing during the trip over or during the day in Pittsburg; but
+she learns the number of your berth as you buy it at the Pullman ticket
+office in Pittsburg, and she thinks she sees her chance. No one could
+have foreseen that that drunken fellow would have crawled into your
+berth.
+“Now, I figure it out this way: She wanted those notes desperately—does
+still—not for Bronson, but to hold over his head for some purpose. In
+the night, when everything is quiet, she slips behind the curtains of
+lower ten, where the man’s breathing shows he is asleep. Didn’t you say
+he snored?”
+“He did!” I affirmed. “But I tell you—”
+“Now keep still and listen. She gropes cautiously around in the
+darkness, finally discovering the wallet under the pillow. Can’t you
+see it yourself?”
+He was leaning forward, excitedly, and I could almost see the gruesome
+tragedy he was depicting.
+“She draws out the wallet. Then, perhaps she remembers the alligator
+bag, and on the possibility that the notes are there, instead of in the
+pocket-book, she gropes around for it. Suddenly, the man awakes and
+clutches at the nearest object, perhaps her neck chain, which breaks.
+She drops the pocket-book and tries to escape, but he has caught her
+right hand.
+“It is all in silence; the man is still stupidly drunk. But he holds
+her in a tight grip. Then the tragedy. She must get away; in a minute
+the car will be aroused. Such a woman, on such an errand, does not go
+without some sort of a weapon, in this case a dagger, which, unlike a
+revolver, is noiseless.
+“With a quick thrust—she’s a big woman and a bold one—she strikes.
+Possibly Hotchkiss is right about the left-hand blow. Harrington may
+have held her right hand, or perhaps she held the dirk in her left hand
+as she groped with her right. Then, as the man falls back, and his
+grasp relaxes, she straightens and attempts to get away. The swaying of
+the car throws her almost into your berth, and, trembling with terror,
+she crouches behind the curtains of lower ten until everything is
+still. Then she goes noiselessly back to her berth.”
+I nodded.
+“It seems to fit partly, at least,” I said. “In the morning when she
+found that the crime had been not only fruitless, but that she had
+searched the wrong berth and killed the wrong man; when she saw me
+emerge, unhurt, just as she was bracing herself for the discovery of my
+dead body, then she went into hysterics. You remember, I gave her some
+whisky.
+“It really seems a tenable theory. But, like the Sullivan theory, there
+are one or two things that don’t agree with the rest. For one thing,
+how did the remainder of that chain get into Alison West’s possession?”
+“She may have picked it up on the floor.”
+“We’ll admit that,” I said; “and I’m sure I hope so. Then how did the
+murdered man’s pocket-book get into the sealskin bag? And the dirk, how
+account for that, and the blood-stains?”
+“Now what’s the use,” asked McKnight aggrievedly, “of my building up
+beautiful theories for you to pull down? We’ll take it to Hotchkiss.
+Maybe he can tell from the blood-stains if the murderer’s finger nails
+were square or pointed.”
+“Hotchkiss is no fool,” I said warmly. “Under all his theories there’s
+a good hard layer of common sense. And we must remember, Rich, that
+neither of our theories includes the woman at Doctor Van Kirk’s
+hospital, that the charming picture you have just drawn does not
+account for Alison West’s connection with the case, or for the bits of
+telegram in the Sullivan fellow’s pajamas pocket. You are like the man
+who put the clock together; you’ve got half of the works left over.”
+“Oh, go home,” said McKnight disgustedly. “I’m no Edgar Allan Poe.
+What’s the use of coming here and asking me things if you’re so
+particular?”
+With one of his quick changes of mood, he picked up his guitar.
+“Listen to this,” he said. “It is a Hawaiian song about a fat lady, oh,
+ignorant one! and how she fell off her mule.”
+But for all the lightness of the words, the voice that followed me down
+the stairs was anything but cheery.
+“There was a Kanaka in Balu did dwell,
+Who had for his daughter a monstrous fat girl—
+he sang in his clear tenor. I paused on the lower floor and listened.
+He had stopped singing as abruptly as he had begun.
+CHAPTER XXII.
+AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
+I had not been home for thirty-six hours, since the morning of the
+preceding day. Johnson was not in sight, and I let myself in quietly
+with my latchkey. It was almost midnight, and I had hardly settled
+myself in the library when the bell rang and I was surprised to find
+Hotchkiss, much out of breath, in the vestibule.
+“Why, come in, Mr. Hotchkiss,” I said. “I thought you were going home
+to go to bed.”
+“So I was, so I was.” He dropped into a chair beside my reading lamp
+and mopped his face. “And here it is almost midnight, and I’m wider
+awake than ever. I’ve seen Sullivan, Mr. Blakeley.”
+“You have!”
+“I have,” he said impressively.
+“You were following Bronson at eight o’clock. Was that when it
+happened?”
+“Something of the sort. When I left you at the door of the restaurant,
+I turned and almost ran into a plain clothes man from the central
+office. I know him pretty well; once or twice he has taken me with him
+on interesting bits of work. He knows my hobby.”
+“You know him, too, probably. It was the man Arnold, the detective whom
+the state’s attorney has had watching Bronson.”
+Johnson being otherwise occupied, I had asked for Arnold myself.
+I nodded.
+“Well, he stopped me at once; said he’d been on the fellow’s tracks
+since early morning and had had no time for luncheon. Bronson, it
+seems, isn’t eating much these days. I at once jotted down the fact,
+because it argued that he was being bothered by the man with the
+notes.”
+“It might point to other things,” I suggested. “Indigestion, you know.”
+Hotchkiss ignored me. “Well, Arnold had some reason for thinking that
+Bronson would try to give him the slip that night, so he asked me to
+stay around the private entrance there while he ran across the street
+and got something to eat. It seemed a fair presumption that, as he had
+gone there with a lady, they would dine leisurely, and Arnold would
+have plenty of time to get back.”
+“What about your own dinner?” I asked curiously.
+“Sir,” he said pompously, “I have given you a wrong estimate of Wilson
+Budd Hotchkiss if you think that a question of dinner would even
+obtrude itself on his mind at such a time as this.”
+He was a frail little man, and to-night he looked pale with heat and
+over-exertion.
+“Did you have any luncheon?” I asked.
+He was somewhat embarrassed at that.
+“I—really, Mr. Blakeley, the events of the day were so engrossing—”
+“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to see you drop on the floor from
+exhaustion. Just wait a minute.”
+I went back to the pantry, only to be confronted with rows of locked
+doors and empty dishes. Downstairs, in the basement kitchen, however, I
+found two unattractive looking cold chops, some dry bread and a piece
+of cake, wrapped in a napkin, and from its surreptitious and generally
+hang-dog appearance, destined for the coachman in the stable at the
+rear. Trays there were none—everything but the chairs and tables seemed
+under lock and key, and there was neither napkin, knife nor fork to be
+found.
+The luncheon was not attractive in appearance, but Hotchkiss ate his
+cold chops and gnawed at the crusts as though he had been famished,
+while he told his story.
+“I had been there only a few minutes,” he said, with a chop in one hand
+and the cake in the other, “when Bronson rushed out and cut across the
+street. He’s a tall man, Mr. Blakeley, and I had had work keeping
+close. It was a relief when he jumped on a passing car, although being
+well behind, it was a hard run for me to catch him. He had left the
+lady.
+“Once on the car, we simply rode from one end of the line to the other
+and back again. I suppose he was passing the time, for he looked at his
+watch now and then, and when I did once get a look at his face it made
+me—er—uncomfortable. He could have crushed me like a fly, sir.”
+I had brought Mr. Hotchkiss a glass of wine, and he was looking better.
+He stopped to finish it, declining with a wave of his hand to have it
+refilled, and continued:
+“About nine o’clock or a little later he got off somewhere near
+Washington Circle. He went along one of the residence streets there,
+turned to his left a square or two, and rang a bell. He had been
+admitted when I got there, but I guessed from the appearance of the
+place that it was a boarding-house.
+“I waited a few minutes and rang the bell. When a maid answered it, I
+asked for Mr. Sullivan. Of course there was no Mr. Sullivan there.
+“I said I was sorry; that the man I was looking for was a new boarder.
+She was sure there was no such boarder in the house; the only new
+arrival was a man on the third floor—she thought his name was Stuart.
+“‘My friend has a cousin by that name,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go up and
+see.’
+“She wanted to show me up, but I said it was unnecessary. So after
+telling me it was the bedroom and sitting-room on the third floor
+front, I went up.
+“I met a couple of men on the stairs, but neither of them paid any
+attention to me. A boarding-house is the easiest place in the world to
+enter.”
+“They’re not always so easy to leave,” I put in, to his evident
+irritation.
+“When I got to the third story, I took out a bunch of keys and posted
+myself by a door near the ones the girl had indicated. I could hear
+voices in one of the front rooms, but could not understand what they
+said.
+“There was no violent dispute, but a steady hum. Then Bronson jerked
+the door open. If he had stepped into the hall he would have seen me
+fitting a key into the door before me. But he spoke before he came out.
+“‘You’re acting like a maniac,’ he said. ‘You know I can get those
+things some way; I’m not going to threaten you. It isn’t necessary. You
+know me.’
+“‘It would be no use,’ the other man said. ‘I tell you, I haven’t seen
+the notes for ten days.’
+“‘But you will,’ Bronson said savagely. ‘You’re standing in your own
+way, that’s all. If you’re holding out expecting me to raise my figure,
+you’re making a mistake. It’s my last offer.’
+“‘I couldn’t take it if it was for a million,’ said the man inside the
+room. ‘I’d do it, I expect, if I could. The best of us have our price.’
+“Bronson slammed the door then, and flung past me down the hall.
+“After a couple of minutes I knocked at the door, and a tall man about
+your size, Mr. Blakeley, opened it. He was very blond, with a smooth
+face and blue eyes—what I think you would call a handsome man.
+“‘I beg your pardon for disturbing you,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me which
+is Mr. Johnson’s room? Mr. Francis Johnson?’
+“‘I can not say,’ he replied civilly. ‘I’ve only been here a few days.’
+“I thanked him and left, but I had had a good look at him, and I think
+I’d know him readily any place.”
+I sat for a few minutes thinking it over. “But what did he mean by
+saying he hadn’t seen the notes for ten days? And why is Bronson making
+the overtures?”
+“I think he was lying,” Hotchkiss reflected. “Bronson hasn’t reached
+his figure.”
+“It’s a big advance, Mr. Hotchkiss, and I appreciate what you have done
+more than I can tell you,” I said. “And now, if you can locate any of
+my property in this fellow’s room, we’ll send him up for larceny, and
+at least have him where we can get at him. I’m going to Cresson
+to-morrow, to try to trace him a little from there. But I’ll be back in
+a couple of days, and we’ll begin to gather in these scattered
+threads.”
+Hotchkiss rubbed his hands together delightedly.
+“That’s it,” he said. “That’s what we want to do, Mr. Blakeley. We’ll
+gather up the threads ourselves; if we let the police in too soon,
+they’ll tangle it up again. I’m not vindictive by nature; but when a
+fellow like Sullivan not only commits a murder, but goes to all sorts
+of trouble to put the burden of guilt on an innocent man—I say _hunt
+him down_, sir!”
+“You are convinced, of course, that Sullivan did it?”
+“Who else?” He looked over his glasses at me with the air of a man
+whose mental attitude is unassailable. “Well, listen to this,” I said.
+Then I told him at length of my encounter with Bronson in the
+restaurant, of the bargain proposed by Mrs. Conway, and finally of
+McKnight’s new theory. But, although he was impressed, he was far from
+convinced.
+“It’s a very vivid piece of imagination,” he said drily; “but while it
+fits the evidence as far as it goes, it doesn’t go far enough. How
+about the stains in lower seven, the dirk, and the wallet? Haven’t we
+even got motive in that telegram from Bronson?”
+“Yes,” I admitted, “but that bit of chain—”
+“Pooh,” he said shortly. “Perhaps, like yourself, Sullivan wore glasses
+with a chain. Our not finding them does not prove they did not exist.”
+And there I made an error; half confidences are always mistakes. I
+could not tell of the broken chain in Alison West’s gold purse.
+It was one o’clock when Hotchkiss finally left. We had by that time
+arranged a definite course of action—Hotchkiss to search Sullivan’s
+rooms and if possible find evidence to have him held for larceny, while
+I went to Cresson.
+Strangely enough, however, when I entered the train the following
+morning, Hotchkiss was already there. He had bought a new note-book,
+and was sharpening a fresh pencil.
+“I changed my plans, you see,” he said, bustling his newspaper aside
+for me. “It is no discredit to your intelligence, Mr. Blakeley, but you
+lack the professional eye, the analytical mind. You legal gentlemen
+call a spade a spade, although it may be a shovel.”
+“‘A primrose by the river’s brim
+A yellow primrose was to him,
+And nothing more!’”
+I quoted as the train pulled out.
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
+I slept most of the way to Cresson, to the disgust of the little
+detective. Finally he struck up an acquaintance with a kindly-faced old
+priest on his way home to his convent school, armed with a roll of
+dance music and surreptitious bundles that looked like boxes of candy.
+From scraps of conversation I gleaned that there had been mysterious
+occurrences at the convent,—ending in the theft of what the reverend
+father called vaguely, “a quantity of undermuslins.” I dropped asleep
+at that point, and when I roused a few moments later, the conversation
+had progressed. Hotchkiss had a diagram on an envelope.
+“With this window bolted, and that one inaccessible, and if, as you
+say, the—er—garments were in a tub here at X, then, as you hold the key
+to the other door,—I think you said the convent dog did not raise any
+disturbance? Pardon a personal question, but do you ever walk in your
+sleep?”
+The priest looked bewildered.
+“I’ll tell you what to do,” Hotchkiss said cheerfully, leaning forward,
+“look around a little yourself before you call in the police.
+Somnambulism is a queer thing. It’s a question whether we are most
+ourselves sleeping or waking. Ever think of that? Live a saintly life
+all day, prayers and matins and all that, and the subconscious mind
+hikes you out of bed at night to steal undermuslins! Subliminal theft,
+so to speak. Better examine the roof.”
+I dozed again. When I wakened Hotchkiss sat alone, and the priest, from
+a corner, was staring at him dazedly, over his breviary.
+It was raining when we reached Cresson, a wind-driven rain that had
+forced the agent at the newsstand to close himself in, and that beat
+back from the rails in parallel lines of white spray. As he went up the
+main street, Hotchkiss was cheerfully oblivious of the weather, of the
+threatening dusk, of our generally draggled condition. _My_ draggled
+condition, I should say, for he improved every moment,—his eyes
+brighter, his ruddy face ruddier, his collar newer and glossier.
+Sometime, when it does not encircle the little man’s neck, I shall test
+that collar with a match.
+I was growing steadily more depressed: I loathed my errand and its
+necessity. I had always held that a man who played the spy on a woman
+was beneath contempt. Then, I admit I was afraid of what I might learn.
+For a time, however, this promised to be a negligible quantity. The
+streets of the straggling little mountain town had been clean-washed of
+humanity by the downpour. Windows and doors were inhospitably shut, and
+from around an occasional drawn shade came narrow strips of light that
+merely emphasized our gloom. When Hotchkiss’ umbrella turned inside
+out, I stopped.
+“I don’t know where you are going,” I snarled, “I don’t care. But I’m
+going to get under cover inside of ten seconds. I’m not amphibious.”
+I ducked into the next shelter, which happened to be the yawning
+entrance to a livery stable, and shook myself, dog fashion. Hotchkiss
+wiped his collar with his handkerchief. It emerged gleaming and
+unwilted.
+“This will do as well as any place,” he said, raising his voice above
+the rattle of the rain. “Got to make a beginning.”
+I sat down on the usual chair without a back, just inside the door, and
+stared out at the darkening street. The whole affair had an air of
+unreality. Now that I was there, I doubted the necessity, or the value,
+of the journey. I was wet and uncomfortable. Around me, with Cresson as
+a center, stretched an irregular circumference of mountain, with
+possibly a ten-mile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a
+woman whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been
+a purely chimerical person.
+Hotchkiss had penetrated the steaming interior of the cave, and now his
+voice, punctuated by the occasional thud of horses’ hoofs, came to me.
+“Something light will do,” he was saying. “A runabout, perhaps.” He
+came forward rubbing his hands, followed by a thin man in overalls.
+“Mr. Peck says,” he began,—“this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck,—says
+that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the town.
+It’s clearing, isn’t it?”
+“It is not,” I returned savagely. “And we don’t want a runabout, Mr.
+Peck. What we require is an hermetically sealed diving suit. I suppose
+there isn’t a machine to be had?” Mr. Peck gazed at me, in silence:
+machine to him meant other things than motors. “Automobile,” I
+supplemented. His face cleared.
+“None but private affairs. I can give you a good buggy with a rubber
+apron. Mike, is the doctor’s horse in?”
+I am still uncertain as to whether the raw-boned roan we took out that
+night over the mountains was the doctor’s horse or not. If it was, the
+doctor may be a good doctor, but he doesn’t know anything about a
+horse. And furthermore, I hope he didn’t need the beast that miserable
+evening.
+While they harnessed the horse, Hotchkiss told me what he had learned.
+“Six Curtises in the town and vicinity,” he said. “Sort of family name
+around here. One of them is telegraph operator at the station. Person
+we are looking for is—was—a wealthy widow with a brother named
+Sullivan! Both supposed to have been killed on the Flier.”
+“Her brother,” I repeated stupidly.
+“You see,” Hotchkiss went on, “three people, in one party, took the
+train here that night, Miss West, Mrs. Curtis and Sullivan. The two
+women had the drawing-room, Sullivan had lower seven. What we want to
+find out is just who these people were, where they came from, if
+Bronson knew them, and how Miss West became entangled with them. She
+may have married Sullivan, for one thing.”
+I fell into gloom after that. The roan was led unwillingly into the
+weather, Hotchkiss and I in eclipse behind the blanket. The liveryman
+stood in the doorway and called directions to us. “You can’t miss it,”
+he finished. “Got the name over the gate anyhow, ‘The Laurels.’ The
+servants are still there: leastways, we didn’t bring them down.” He
+even took a step into the rain as Hotchkiss picked up the lines. “If
+you’re going to settle the estate,” he bawled, “don’t forget us, Peck
+and Peck. A half-bushel of name and a bushel of service.”
+Hotchkiss could not drive. Born a clerk, he guided the roan much as he
+would drive a bad pen. And the roan spattered through puddles and
+splashed ink—mud, that is—until I was in a frenzy of irritation.
+“What are we going to say when we get there?” I asked after I had
+finally taken the reins in my one useful hand. “Get out there at
+midnight and tell the servants we have come to ask a few questions
+about the family? It’s an idiotic trip anyhow; I wish I had stayed at
+home.”
+The roan fell just then, and we had to crawl out and help him up. By
+the time we had partly unharnessed him our matches were gone, and the
+small bicycle lamp on the buggy was wavering only too certainly. We
+were covered with mud, panting with exertion, and even Hotchkiss showed
+a disposition to be surly. The rain, which had lessened for a time,
+came on again, the lightning flashes doing more than anything else to
+reveal our isolated position.
+Another mile saw us, if possible, more despondent. The water in our
+clothes had had time to penetrate: the roan had sprained his shoulder,
+and drew us along in a series of convulsive jerks. And then through the
+rain-spattered window of the blanket, I saw a light. It was a small
+light, rather yellow, and it lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Hotchkiss
+missed it, and was inclined to doubt me. But in a couple of minutes the
+roan hobbled to the side of the road and stopped, and I made out a
+break in the pines and an arched gate.
+It was a small gate, too narrow for the buggy. I pulled the horse into
+as much shelter as possible under the trees, and we got out. Hotchkiss
+tied the beast and we left him there, head down against the driving
+rain, drooping and dejected. Then we went toward the house.
+It was a long walk. The path bent and twisted, and now and then we lost
+it. We were climbing as we went. Oddly there were no lights ahead,
+although it was only ten o’clock,—not later. Hotchkiss kept a little
+ahead of me, knocking into trees now and then, but finding the path in
+half the time I should have taken. Once, as I felt my way around a tree
+in the blackness, I put my hand unexpectedly on his shoulder, and felt
+a shudder go down my back.
+“What do you expect me to do?” he protested, when I remonstrated. “Hang
+out a red lantern? What was that? Listen.”
+We both stood peering into the gloom. The sharp patter of the rain on
+leaves had ceased, and from just ahead there came back to us the
+stealthy padding of feet in wet soil. My hand closed on Hotchkiss’
+shoulder, and we listened together, warily. The steps were close by,
+unmistakable. The next flash of lightning showed nothing moving: the
+house was in full view now, dark and uninviting, looming huge above a
+terrace, with an Italian garden at the side. Then the blackness again.
+Somebody’s teeth were chattering: I accused Hotchkiss but he denied it.
+“Although I’m not very comfortable, I’ll admit,” he confessed; “there
+was something breathing right at my elbow here a moment ago.”
+“Nonsense!” I took his elbow and steered him in what I made out to be
+the direction of the steps of the Italian garden. “I saw a deer just
+ahead by the last flash; that’s what you heard. By Jove, I hear
+wheels.”
+We paused to listen and Hotchkiss put his hand on something close to
+us. “Here’s your deer,” he said. “Bronze.”
+As we neared the house the sense of surveillance we had had in the park
+gradually left us. Stumbling over flower beds, running afoul of a
+sun-dial, groping our way savagely along hedges and thorny banks, we
+reached the steps finally and climbed the terrace.
+It was then that Hotchkiss fell over one of the two stone urns which,
+with tall boxwood trees in them, mounted guard at each side of the
+door. He didn’t make any attempt to get up. He sat in a puddle on the
+brick floor of the terrace and clutched his leg and swore softly in
+Government English.
+The occasional relief of the lightning was gone. I could not see an
+outline of the house before me. We had no matches, and an instant’s
+investigation showed that the windows were boarded and the house
+closed. Hotchkiss, still recumbent, was ascertaining the damage,
+tenderly peeling down his stocking.
+“Upon my soul,” he said finally, “I don’t know whether this moisture is
+blood or rain. I think I’ve broken a bone.”
+“Blood is thicker than water,” I suggested. “Is it sticky? See if you
+can move your toes.”
+There was a pause: Hotchkiss moved his toes. By that time I had found a
+knocker and was making the night hideous. But there was no response
+save the wind that blew sodden leaves derisively in our faces. Once
+Hotchkiss declared he heard a window-sash lifted, but renewed violence
+with the knocker produced no effect.
+“There’s only one thing to do,” I said finally. “I’ll go back and try
+to bring the buggy up for you. You can’t walk, can you?”
+Hotchkiss sat back in his puddle and said he didn’t think he could
+stir, but for me to go back to town and leave him, that he didn’t have
+any family dependent on him, and that if he was going to have pneumonia
+he had probably got it already. I left him there, and started back to
+get the horse.
+If possible, it was worse than before. There was no lightning, and only
+by a miracle did I find the little gate again. I drew a long breath of
+relief, followed by another, equally long, of dismay. For I had found
+the hitching strap and there was nothing at the end of it! In a lull of
+the wind I seemed to hear, far off, the eager thud of stable-bound
+feet. So for the second time I climbed the slope to the Laurels, and on
+the way I thought of many things to say.
+I struck the house at a new angle, for I found a veranda, destitute of
+chairs and furnishings, but dry and evidently roofed. It was better
+than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my
+way to Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed
+perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one,
+and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was
+startling, to say the least.
+I found Hotchkiss at last around an angle of the stone wall, and told
+him that the horse was gone. He was disconcerted, but not abased;
+maintaining that it was a new kind of knot that couldn’t slip and that
+the horse must have chewed the halter through! He was less enthusiastic
+than I had expected about the window.
+“It looks uncommonly like a trap,” he said. “I tell you there was some
+one in the park below when we were coming up. Man has a sixth sense
+that scientists ignore—a sense of the nearness of things. And all the
+time you have been gone, some one has been watching me.”
+“Couldn’t see you,” I maintained; “I can’t see you now. And your sense
+of contiguity didn’t tell you about that flower crock.”
+In the end, of course, he consented to go with me. He was very lame,
+and I helped him around to the open window. He was full of moral
+courage, the little man: it was only the physical in him that quailed.
+And as we groped along, he insisted on going through the window first.
+“If it is a trap,” he whispered, “I have two arms to your one, and,
+besides, as I said before, life holds much for you. As for me, the
+government would merely lose an indifferent employee.”
+When he found I was going first he was rather hurt, but I did not wait
+for his protests. I swung my feet over the sill and dropped. I made a
+clutch at the window-frame with my good hand when I found no floor
+under my feet, but I was too late. I dropped probably ten feet and
+landed with a crash that seemed to split my ear-drums. I was thoroughly
+shaken, but in some miraculous way the bandaged arm had escaped injury.
+“For Heaven’s sake,” Hotchkiss was calling from above, “have you broken
+your back?”
+“No,” I returned, as steadily as I could, “merely driven it up through
+my skull. This is a staircase. I’m coming up to open another window.”
+It was eerie work, but I accomplished it finally, discovering, not
+without mishap, a room filled with more tables than I had ever dreamed
+of, tables that seemed to waylay and strike at me. When I had got a
+window open, Hotchkiss crawled through, and we were at last under
+shelter.
+Our first thought was for a light. The same laborious investigation
+that had landed us where we were, revealed that the house was lighted
+by electricity, and that the plant was not in operation. By accident I
+stumbled across a tabouret with smoking materials, and found a half
+dozen matches. The first one showed us the magnitude of the room we
+stood in, and revealed also a brass candle-stick by the open fireplace,
+a candle-stick almost four feet high, supporting a candle of similar
+colossal proportions. It was Hotchkiss who discovered that it had been
+recently lighted. He held the match to it and peered at it over his
+glasses.
+“Within ten minutes,” he announced impressively, “this candle has been
+burning. Look at the wax! And the wick! Both soft.”
+“Perhaps it’s the damp weather,” I ventured, moving a little nearer to
+the circle of light. A gust of wind came in just then, and the flame
+turned over on its side and threatened demise. There was something
+almost ridiculous in the haste with which we put down the window and
+nursed the flicker to life.
+The peculiarly ghost-like appearance of the room added to the
+uncanniness of the situation. The furniture was swathed in white covers
+for the winter; even the pictures wore shrouds. And in a niche between
+two windows a bust on a pedestal, similarly wrapped, one arm extended
+under its winding sheet, made a most life-like ghost, if any ghost can
+be life-like.
+In the light of the candle we surveyed each other, and we were objects
+for mirth. Hotchkiss was taking off his sodden shoes and preparing to
+make himself comfortable, while I hung my muddy raincoat over the ghost
+in the corner. Thus habited, he presented a rakish but distinctly more
+comfortable appearance.
+“When these people built,” Hotchkiss said, surveying the huge
+dimensions of the room, “they must have bought a mountain and built all
+over it. What a room!”
+It seemed to be a living-room, although Hotchkiss remarked that it was
+much more like a dead one. It was probably fifty feet long and
+twenty-five feet wide. It was very high, too, with a domed ceiling, and
+a gallery ran around the entire room, about fifteen feet above the
+floor. The candle light did not penetrate beyond the dim outlines of
+the gallery rail, but I fancied the wall there hung with smaller
+pictures.
+Hotchkiss had discovered a fire laid in the enormous fireplace, and in
+a few minutes we were steaming before a cheerful blaze. Within the
+radius of its light and heat, we were comfortable again. But the
+brightness merely emphasized the gloom of the ghostly corners. We
+talked in subdued tones, and I smoked, a box of Russian cigarettes
+which I found in a table drawer. We had decided to stay all night,
+there being nothing else to do. I suggested a game of double-dummy
+bridge, but did not urge it when my companion asked me if it resembled
+euchre. Gradually, as the ecclesiastical candle paled in the firelight,
+we grew drowsy. I drew a divan into the cheerful area, and stretched
+myself out for sleep. Hotchkiss, who said the pain in his leg made him
+wakeful, sat wide-eyed by the fire, smoking a pipe.
+I have no idea how much time had passed when something threw itself
+violently on my chest. I roused with a start and leaped to my feet, and
+a large Angora cat fell with a thump to the floor. The fire was still
+bright, and there was an odor of scorched leather through the room,
+from Hotchkiss’ shoes. The little detective was sound asleep, his dead
+pipe in his fingers. The cat sat back on its haunches and wailed.
+The curtain at the door into the hallway bellied slowly out into the
+room and fell again. The cat looked toward it and opened its mouth for
+another howl. I thrust at it with my foot, but it refused to move.
+Hotchkiss stirred uneasily, and his pipe clattered to the floor.
+The cat was standing at my feet, staring behind me. Apparently it was
+following with its eyes, an object unseen to me, that moved behind me.
+The tip of its tail waved threateningly, but when I wheeled I saw
+nothing.
+I took the candle and made a circuit of the room. Behind the curtain
+that had moved the door was securely closed. The windows were shut and
+locked, and everywhere the silence was absolute. The cat followed me
+majestically. I stooped and stroked its head, but it persisted in its
+uncanny watching of the corners of the room.
+When I went back to my divan, after putting a fresh log on the fire, I
+was reassured. I took the precaution, and smiled at myself for doing
+it, to put the fire tongs within reach of my hand. But the cat would
+not let me sleep. After a time I decided that it wanted water, and I
+started out in search of some, carrying the candle without the stand. I
+wandered through several rooms, all closed and dismantled, before I
+found a small lavatory opening off a billiard room. The cat lapped
+steadily, and I filled a glass to take back with me. The candle
+flickered in a sickly fashion that threatened to leave me there lost in
+the wanderings of the many hallways, and from somewhere there came an
+occasional violent puff of wind. The cat stuck by my feet, with the
+hair on its back raised menacingly. I don’t like cats; there is
+something psychic about them.
+Hotchkiss was still asleep when I got back to the big room. I moved his
+boots back from the fire, and trimmed the candle. Then, with sleep gone
+from me, I lay back on my divan and reflected on many things: on my
+idiocy in coming; on Alison West, and the fact that only a week before
+she had been a guest in this very house; on Richey and the constraint
+that had come between us. From that I drifted back to Alison, and to
+the barrier my comparative poverty would be.
+The emptiness, the stillness were oppressive. Once I heard footsteps
+coming, rhythmical steps that neither hurried nor dragged, and seemed
+to mount endless staircases without coming any closer. I realized
+finally that I had not quite turned off the tap, and that the lavatory,
+which I had circled to reach, must be quite close.
+The cat lay by the fire, its nose on its folded paws, content in the
+warmth and companionship. I watched it idly. Now and then the green
+wood hissed in the fire, but the cat never batted an eye. Through an
+unshuttered window the lightning flashed. Suddenly the cat looked up.
+It lifted its head and stared directly at the gallery above. Then it
+blinked, and stared again. I was amused. Not until it had got up on its
+feet, eyes still riveted on the balcony, tail waving at the tip, the
+hair on its back a bristling brush, did I glance casually over my head.
+From among the shadows a face gazed down at me, a face that seemed a
+fitting tenant of the ghostly room below. I saw it as plainly as I
+might see my own face in a mirror. While I stared at it with horrified
+eyes, the apparition faded. The rail was there, the Bokhara rug still
+swung from it, but the gallery was empty.
+The cat threw back its head and wailed.
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+HIS WIFE’S FATHER
+I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat’s wail had roused
+Hotchkiss, who was wide-awake at once. He took in my offensive
+attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more.
+As he picked up the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed
+him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off
+to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself; below
+us the fire gleamed cheerfully, the cat was not in sight. There was no
+sign of my ghostly visitant, but as we stood there the Bokhara rug,
+without warning, slid over the railing and fell to the floor below.
+“Man or woman?” Hotchkiss inquired in his most professional tone.
+“Neither—that is, I don’t know. I didn���t notice anything but the eyes,”
+I muttered. “They were looking a hole in me. If you’d seen that cat you
+would realize my state of mind. That was a traditional graveyard yowl.”
+“I don’t think you saw anything at all,” he lied cheerfully. “You dozed
+off, and the rest is the natural result of a meal on a buffet car.”
+Nevertheless, he examined the Bokhara carefully when we went down, and
+when I finally went to sleep he was reading the only book in
+sight—_Elwell on Bridge_. The first rays of daylight were coming
+mistily into the room when he roused me. He had his finger on his lips,
+and he whispered sibilantly while I tried to draw on my distorted
+boots.
+“I think we have him,” he said triumphantly. “I’ve been looking around
+some, and I can tell you this much. Just before we came in through the
+window last night, another man came. Only—he did not drop, as you did.
+He swung over to the stair railing, and then down. The rail is
+scratched. He was long enough ahead of us to go into the dining-room
+and get a decanter out of the sideboard. He poured out the liquor into
+a glass, left the decanter there, and took the whisky into the library
+across the hall. Then—he broke into a desk, using a paper knife for a
+jimmy.”
+“Good Lord, Hotchkiss,” I exclaimed; “why, it may have been Sullivan
+himself! Confound your theories—he’s getting farther away every
+minute.”
+“It was Sullivan,” Hotchkiss returned imperturbably. “And he has not
+gone. His boots are by the library fire.”
+“He probably had a dozen pairs where he could get them,” I scoffed.
+“And while you and I sat and slept, the very man we want to get our
+hands on leered at us over that railing.”
+“Softly, softly, my friend,” Hotchkiss said, as I stamped into my other
+shoe. “I did not say he was gone. Don’t jump at conclusions. It is
+fatal to reasoning. As a matter of fact, he didn’t relish a night on
+the mountains any more than we did. After he had unintentionally
+frightened you almost into paralysis, what would my gentleman naturally
+do? Go out in the storm again? Not if I know the Alice-sit-by-the-fire
+type. He went up-stairs, well up near the roof, locked himself in and
+went to bed.”
+“And he is there now?”
+“He is there now.”
+We had no weapons. I am aware that the traditional hero is always
+armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a
+revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort.
+Hotchkiss carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong
+for me; I declined the poker.
+“All we want is a little peaceable conversation with him,” I demurred.
+“We can’t brain him first and converse with him afterward. And anyhow,
+while I can’t put my finger on the place, I think your theory is weak.
+If he wouldn’t run a hundred miles through fire and water to get away
+from us, then he is not the man we want.”
+Hotchkiss, however, was certain. He had found the room and listened
+outside the door to the sleeper’s heavy breathing, and so we climbed
+past luxurious suites, revealed in the deepening daylight, past long
+vistas of hall and boudoir. And we were both badly winded when we got
+there. It was a tower room, reached by narrow stairs, and well above
+the roof level. Hotchkiss was glowing.
+“It is partly good luck, but not all,” he panted in a whisper. “If we
+had persisted in the search last night, he would have taken alarm and
+fled. Now—we have him. Are you ready?”
+He gave a mighty rap at the door with the fire tongs, and stood
+expectant. Certainly he was right; some one moved within.
+“Hello! Hello there!” Hotchkiss bawled. “You might as well come out. We
+won’t hurt you, if you’ll come peaceably.”
+“Tell him we represent the law,” I prompted. “That’s the customary
+thing, you know.”
+But at that moment a bullet came squarely through the door and
+flattened itself with a sharp _pst_ against the wall of the tower
+staircase. We ducked unanimously, dropped back out of range, and
+Hotchkiss retaliated with a spirited bang at the door with the tongs.
+This brought another bullet. It was a ridiculous situation. Under the
+circumstances, no doubt, we should have retired, at least until we had
+armed ourselves, but Hotchkiss had no end of fighting spirit, and as
+for me, my blood was up.
+“Break the lock,” I suggested, and Hotchkiss, standing at the side, out
+of range, retaliated for every bullet by a smashing blow with the
+tongs. The shots ceased after a half dozen, and the door was giving,
+slowly. One of us on each side of the door, we were ready for almost
+any kind of desperate resistance. As it swung open Hotchkiss poised the
+tongs; I stood, bent forward, my arm drawn back for a blow.
+Nothing happened.
+There was not a sound. Finally, at the risk of losing an eye which I
+justly value, I peered around and into the room. There was no desperado
+there: only a fresh-faced, trembling-lipped servant, sitting on the
+edge of her bed, with a quilt around her shoulders and the empty
+revolver at her feet.
+We were victorious, but no conquered army ever beat such a retreat as
+ours down the tower stairs and into the refuge of the living-room.
+There, with the door closed, sprawled on the divan, I went from one
+spasm of mirth into another, becoming sane at intervals, and suffering
+relapse again every time I saw Hotchkiss’ disgruntled countenance. He
+was pacing the room, the tongs still in his hand, his mouth pursed with
+irritation. Finally he stopped in front of me and compelled my
+attention.
+“When you have finished cackling,” he said with dignity, “I wish to
+justify my position. Do you think the—er—young woman up-stairs put a
+pair of number eight boots to dry in the library last night? Do you
+think she poured the whisky out of that decanter?”
+“They have been known to do it,” I put in, but his eye silenced me.
+“Moreover, if she had been the person who peered at you over the
+gallery railing last night, don’t you suppose, with her—er—belligerent
+disposition, she could have filled you as full of lead as a window
+weight?”
+“I do,” I assented. “It wasn’t Alice-sit-by-the-fire. I grant you that.
+Then who was it?”
+Hotchkiss felt certain that it had been Sullivan, but I was not so
+sure. Why would he have crawled like a thief into his own house? If he
+had crossed the park, as seemed probable, when we did, he had not made
+any attempt to use the knocker. I gave it up finally, and made an
+effort to conciliate the young woman in the tower.
+We had heard no sound since our spectacular entrance into her room. I
+was distinctly uncomfortable as, alone this time, I climbed to the
+tower staircase. Reasoning from before, she would probably throw a
+chair at me. I stopped at the foot of the staircase and called.
+“Hello up there,” I said, in as debonair a manner as I could summon.
+“Good morning. _Wie geht es bei ihnen?_”
+No reply.
+“_Bon jour, mademoiselle_,” I tried again. This time there was a
+movement of some sort from above, but nothing fell on me.
+“I—we want to apologize for rousing you so—er—unexpectedly this
+morning,” I went on. “The fact is, we wanted to talk to you, and
+you—you were hard to waken. We are travelers, lost in your mountains,
+and we crave a breakfast and an audience.”
+She came to the door then. I could feel that she was investigating the
+top of my head from above. “Is Mr. Sullivan with you?” she asked. It
+was the first word from her, and she was not sure of her voice.
+“No. We are alone. If you will come down and look at us you will find
+us two perfectly harmless people, whose horse—curses on him—departed
+without leave last night and left us at your gate.”
+She relaxed somewhat then and came down a step or two. “I was afraid I
+had killed somebody,” she said. “The housekeeper left yesterday, and
+the other maids went with her.”
+When she saw that I was comparatively young and lacked the earmarks of
+the highwayman, she was greatly relieved. She was inclined to fight shy
+of Hotchkiss, however, for some reason. She gave us a breakfast of a
+sort, for there was little in the house, and afterward we telephoned to
+the town for a vehicle. While Hotchkiss examined scratches and replaced
+the Bokhara rug, I engaged Jennie in conversation.
+“Can you tell me,” I asked, “who is managing the estate since Mrs.
+Curtis was killed?”
+“No one,” she returned shortly.
+“Has—any member of the family been here since the accident?”
+“No, sir. There was only the two, and some think Mr. Sullivan was
+killed as well as his sister.”
+“You don’t?”
+“No,” with conviction.
+“Why?”
+She wheeled on me with quick suspicion.
+“Are you a detective?” she demanded.
+“No.”
+“You told him to say you represented the law.”
+“I am a lawyer. Some of them misrepresent the law, but I—”
+She broke in impatiently.
+“A sheriff’s officer?”
+“No. Look here, Jennie; I am all that I should be. You’ll have to
+believe that. And I’m in a bad position through no fault of my own. I
+want you to answer some questions. If you will help me, I will do what
+I can for you. Do you live near here?”
+Her chin quivered. It was the first sign of weakness she had shown.
+“My home is in Pittsburg,” she said, “and I haven’t enough money to get
+there. They hadn’t paid any wages for two months. They didn’t pay
+anybody.”
+“Very well,” I returned. “I’ll send you back to Pittsburg, Pullman
+included, if you will tell me some things I want to know.”
+She agreed eagerly. Outside the window Hotchkiss was bending over,
+examining footprints in the drive.
+“Now,” I began, “there has been a Miss West staying here?”
+“Yes.”
+“Mr. Sullivan was attentive to her?”
+“Yes. She was the granddaughter of a wealthy man in Pittsburg. My aunt
+has been in his family for twenty years. Mrs. Curtis wanted her brother
+to marry Miss West.”
+“Do you think he did marry her?” I could not keep the excitement out of
+my voice.
+“No. There were reasons”—she stopped abruptly.
+“Do you know anything of the family? Are they—were they New Yorkers?”
+“They came from somewhere in the south. I have heard Mrs. Curtis say
+her mother was a Cuban. I don’t know much about them, but Mr. Sullivan
+had a wicked temper, though he didn’t look it. Folks say big,
+light-haired people are easy going, but I don’t believe it, sir.”
+“How long was Miss West here?”
+“Two weeks.”
+I hesitated about further questioning. Critical as my position was, I
+could not pry deeper into Alison West’s affairs. If she had got into
+the hands of adventurers, as Sullivan and his sister appeared to have
+been, she was safely away from them again. But something of the
+situation in the car Ontario was forming itself in my mind: the
+incident at the farmhouse lacked only motive to be complete. Was
+Sullivan, after all, a rascal or a criminal? Was the murderer Sullivan
+or Mrs. Conway? The lady or the tiger again.
+Jennie was speaking.
+“I hope Miss West was not hurt?” she asked. “We liked her, all of us.
+She was not like Mrs. Curtis.”
+I wanted to say that she was not like anybody in the world.
+Instead—“She escaped with some bruises,” I said.
+She glanced at my arm. “You were on the train?”
+“Yes.”
+She waited for more questions, but none coming, she went to the door.
+Then she closed it softly and came back.
+“Mrs. Curtis is dead? You are sure of it?” she asked.
+“She was killed instantly, I believe. The body was not recovered. But I
+have reasons for believing that Mr. Sullivan is living.”
+“I knew it,” she said. “I—I think he was here the night before last.
+That is why I went to the tower room. I believe he would kill me if he
+could.” As nearly as her round and comely face could express it,
+Jennie’s expression was tragic at that moment. I made a quick
+resolution, and acted on it at once.
+“You are not entirely frank with me, Jennie,” I protested. “And I am
+going to tell you more than I have. We are talking at cross purposes.”
+“I was on the wrecked train, in the same car with Mrs. Curtis, Miss
+West and Mr. Sullivan. During the night there was a crime committed in
+that car and Mr. Sullivan disappeared. But he left behind him a chain
+of circumstantial evidence that involved me completely, so that I may,
+at any time, be arrested.”
+Apparently she did not comprehend for a moment. Then, as if the meaning
+of my words had just dawned on her, she looked up and gasped:
+“You mean—Mr. Sullivan committed the crime himself?”
+“I think he did.”
+“What was it?”
+“It was murder,” I said deliberately.
+Her hands clenched involuntarily, and she shrank back. “A woman?” She
+could scarcely form her words.
+“No, a man; a Mr. Simon Harrington, of Pittsburg.”
+Her effort to retain her self-control was pitiful. Then she broke down
+and cried, her head on the back of a tall chair.
+“It was my fault,” she said wretchedly, “my fault, I should not have
+sent them the word.”
+After a few minutes she grew quiet. She seemed to hesitate over
+something, and finally determined to say it.
+“You will understand better, sir, when I say that I was raised in the
+Harrington family. Mr. Harrington was Mr. Sullivan’s wife’s father!”
+CHAPTER XXV.
+AT THE STATION
+So it had been the tiger, not the lady! Well, I had held to that theory
+all through. Jennie suddenly became a valuable person; if necessary she
+could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man, and
+show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hotchkiss came in.
+When the girl had produced a photograph of Mrs. Sullivan, and I had
+recognized the bronze-haired girl of the train, we were both well
+satisfied—which goes to prove the ephemeral nature of most human
+contentments.
+Jennie either had nothing more to say, or feared she had said too much.
+She was evidently uneasy before Hotchkiss. I told her that Mrs.
+Sullivan was recovering in a Baltimore hospital, but she already knew
+it, from some source, and merely nodded. She made a few preparations
+for leaving, while Hotchkiss and I compared notes, and then, with the
+cat in her arms, she climbed into the trap from the town. I sat with
+her, and on the way down she told me a little, not much.
+“If you see Mrs. Sullivan,” she advised, “and she is conscious, she
+probably thinks that both her husband and her father were killed in the
+wreck. She will be in a bad way, sir.”
+“You mean that she—still cares about her husband?”
+The cat crawled over on to my knee, and rubbed its head against my hand
+invitingly. Jennie stared at the undulating line of the mountain
+crests, a colossal sun against a blue ocean of sky. “Yes, she cares,”
+she said softly. “Women are made like that. They say they are cats, but
+Peter there in your lap wouldn’t come back and lick your hand if you
+kicked him. If—if you have to tell her the truth, be as gentle as you
+can, sir. She has been good to me—that’s why I have played the spy here
+all summer. It’s a thankless thing, spying on people.”
+“It is that,” I agreed soberly.
+Hotchkiss and I arrived in Washington late that evening, and, rather
+than arouse the household, I went to the club. I was at the office
+early the next morning and admitted myself. McKnight rarely appeared
+before half after ten, and our modest office force some time after
+nine. I looked over my previous day’s mail and waited, with such
+patience as I possessed, for McKnight. In the interval I called up Mrs.
+Klopton and announced that I would dine at home that night. What my
+household subsists on during my numerous absences I have never
+discovered. Tea, probably, and crackers. Diligent search when I have
+made a midnight arrival, never reveals anything more substantial.
+Possibly I imagine it, but the announcement that I am about to make a
+journey always seems to create a general atmosphere of depression
+throughout the house, as though Euphemia and Eliza, and Thomas, the
+stableman, were already subsisting, in imagination, on Mrs. Klopton’s
+meager fare.
+So I called her up and announced my arrival. There was something
+unusual in her tone, as though her throat was tense with indignation.
+Always shrill, her elderly voice rasped my ear painfully through the
+receiver.
+“I have changed the butcher, Mr. Lawrence,” she announced portentously.
+“The last roast was a pound short, and his mutton-chops—any
+self-respecting sheep would refuse to acknowledge them.”
+As I said before, I can always tell from the voice in which Mrs.
+Klopton conveys the most indifferent matters, if something of real
+significance has occurred. Also, through long habit, I have learned how
+quickest to bring her to the point.
+“You are pessimistic this morning,” I returned. “What’s the matter,
+Mrs. Klopton? You haven’t used that tone since Euphemia baked a pie for
+the iceman. What is it now? Somebody poison the dog?”
+She cleared her throat.
+“The house has been broken into, Mr. Lawrence,” she said. “I have lived
+in the best families, and never have I stood by and seen what I saw
+yesterday—every bureau drawer opened, and my—my most sacred
+belongings—” she choked.
+“Did you notify the police?” I asked sharply.
+“Police!” she sniffed. “Police! It was the police that did it—two
+detectives with a search warrant. I—I wouldn’t dare tell you over the
+telephone what one of them said when he found the whisky and rock candy
+for my cough.”
+“Did they take anything?” I demanded, every nerve on edge.
+“They took the cough medicine,” she returned indignantly, “and they
+said—”
+“Confound the cough medicine!” I was frantic. “Did they take anything
+else? Were they in my dressing-room?”
+“Yes. I threatened to sue them, and I told them what you would do when
+you came back. But they wouldn’t listen. They took away that black
+sealskin bag you brought home from Pittsburg with you!”
+I knew then that my hours of freedom were numbered. To have found
+Sullivan and then, in support of my case against him, to have produced
+the bag, _minus_ the bit of chain, had been my intention. But the
+police had the bag, and, beyond knowing something of Sullivan’s
+history, I was practically no nearer his discovery than before.
+Hotchkiss hoped he had his man in the house off Washington Circle, but
+on the very night he had seen him Jennie claimed that Sullivan had
+tried to enter the Laurels. Then—suppose we found Sullivan and proved
+the satchel and its contents his? Since the police had the bit of chain
+it might mean involving Alison in the story. I sat down and buried my
+face in my hands. There was no escape. I figured it out despondingly.
+Against me was the evidence of the survivors of the Ontario that I had
+been accused of the murder at the time. There had been blood-stains on
+my pillow and a hidden dagger. Into the bargain, in my possession had
+been found a traveling-bag containing the dead man’s pocket-book.
+In my favor was McKnight’s theory against Mrs. Conway. She had a motive
+for wishing to secure the notes, she believed I was in lower ten, and
+she had collapsed at the discovery of the crime in the morning.
+Against both of these theories, I accuse a purely chimerical person
+named Sullivan, who was not seen by any of the survivors—save one,
+Alison, whom I could not bring into the case. I could find a motive for
+his murdering his father-in-law, whom he hated, but again—I would have
+to drag in the girl.
+And not one of the theories explained the telegram and the broken
+necklace.
+Outside the office force was arriving. They were comfortably ignorant
+of my presence, and over the transom floated scraps of dialogue and the
+stenographer’s gurgling laugh. McKnight had a relative, who was reading
+law with him, in the intervals between calling up the young women of
+his acquaintance. He came in singing, and the office boy joined in with
+the uncertainty of voice of fifteen. I smiled grimly. I was too busy
+with my own troubles to find any joy in opening the door and startling
+them into silence. I even heard, without resentment, Blobs of the
+uncertain voice inquire when “Blake” would be back.
+I hoped McKnight would arrive before the arrest occurred. There were
+many things to arrange. But when at last, impatient of his delay, I
+telephoned, I found he had been gone for more than an hour. Clearly he
+was not coming directly to the office, and with such resignation as I
+could muster I paced the floor and waited.
+I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life. “Born an orphan,”
+as Richey said, I had made my own way, carved out myself such success
+as had been mine. I had built up my house of life on the props of law
+and order, and now some unknown hand had withdrawn the supports, and I
+stood among ruins.
+I suppose it is the maternal in a woman that makes a man turn to her
+when everything else fails. The eternal boy in him goes to have his
+wounded pride bandaged, his tattered self-respect repaired. If he loves
+the woman, he wants her to kiss the hurt.
+The longing to see Alison, always with me, was stronger than I was that
+morning. It might be that I would not see her again. I had nothing to
+say to her save one thing, and that, under the cloud that hung over me,
+I did not dare to say. But I wanted to see her, to touch her hand—as
+only a lonely man can crave it, I wanted the comfort of her, the peace
+that lay in her presence. And so, with every step outside the door a
+threat, I telephoned to her.
+She was gone! The disappointment was great, for my need was great. In a
+fury of revolt against the scheme of things, I heard that she had
+started home to Richmond—but that she might still be caught at the
+station.
+To see her had by that time become an obsession. I picked up my hat,
+threw open the door, and, oblivious of the shock to the office force of
+my presence, followed so immediately by my exit, I dashed out to the
+elevator. As I went down in one cage I caught a glimpse of Johnson and
+two other men going up in the next. I hardly gave them a thought. There
+was no hansom in sight, and I jumped on a passing car. Let come what
+might, arrest, prison, disgrace, I was going to see Alison.
+I saw her. I flung into the station, saw that it was empty—empty, for
+she was not there. Then I hurried back to the gates. She was there, a
+familiar figure in blue, the very gown in which I always thought of
+her, the one she had worn when, Heaven help me—I had kissed her, at the
+Carter farm. And she was not alone. Bending over her, talking
+earnestly, with all his boyish heart in his face, was Richey.
+They did not see me, and I was glad of it. After all, it had been
+McKnight’s game first. I turned on my heel and made my way blindly out
+of the station. Before I lost them I turned once and looked toward
+them, standing apart from the crowd, absorbed in each other. They were
+the only two people on earth that I cared about, and I left them there
+together. Then I went back miserably to the office and awaited arrest.
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+ON TO RICHMOND
+Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day. McKnight did not appear
+at all. I sat at my desk and transacted routine business all afternoon,
+working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical
+illness or a hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid
+bills until I had writer’s cramp from signing checks, read over my
+will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly
+sister of my mother’s. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning
+in the station, I felt that anything would be a relief from the
+tension. I went home with perfect openness, courting the warrant that I
+knew was waiting, but I was not molested. The delay puzzled me. The
+early part of the evening was uneventful. I read until late, with
+occasional lapses, when my book lay at my elbow, and I smoked and
+thought. Mrs. Klopton closed the house with ostentatious caution, about
+eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on the outrageousness of the
+police search. I did not encourage her.
+“One would think,” she concluded pompously, one foot in the hall, “that
+you were something you oughtn’t to be, Mr. Lawrence. They acted as
+though you had committed a crime.”
+“I’m not sure that I didn’t, Mrs. Klopton,” I said wearily. “Somebody
+did, the general verdict seems to point my way.”
+She stared at me in speechless indignation. Then she flounced out. She
+came back once to say that the paper predicted cooler weather, and that
+she had put a blanket on my bed, but, to her disappointment, I refused
+to reopen the subject.
+At half past eleven McKnight and Hotchkiss came in. Richey has a habit
+of stopping his car in front of the house and honking until some one
+comes out. He has a code of signals with the horn, which I never
+remember. Two long and a short blast mean, I believe, “Send out a box
+of cigarettes,” and six short blasts, which sound like a police call,
+mean “Can you lend me some money?” To-night I knew something was up,
+for he got out and rang the door-bell like a Christian.
+They came into the library, and Hotchkiss wiped his collar until it
+gleamed. McKnight was aggressively cheerful.
+“Not pinched yet!” he exclaimed. “What do you think of that for luck!
+You always were a fortunate devil, Lawrence.”
+“Yes,” I assented, with some bitterness, “I hardly know how to contain
+myself for joy sometimes. I suppose you know”—to Hotchkiss—“that the
+police were here while we were at Cresson, and that they found the bag
+that I brought from the wreck?”
+“Things are coming to a head,” he said thoughtfully “unless a little
+plan that I have in mind—” he hesitated.
+“I hope so; I am pretty nearly desperate,” I said doggedly. “I’ve got a
+mental toothache, and the sooner it’s pulled the better.”
+“Tut, tut,” said McKnight, “think of the disgrace to the firm if its
+senior member goes up for life, or—” he twisted his handkerchief into a
+noose, and went through an elaborate pantomime.
+“Although jail isn’t so bad, anyhow,” he finished, “there are fellows
+that get the habit and keep going back and going back.” He looked at
+his watch, and I fancied his cheerfulness was strained. Hotchkiss was
+nervously fumbling my book.
+“Did you ever read _The Purloined Letter_, Mr. Blakeley?” he inquired.
+“Probably, years ago,” I said. “Poe, isn’t it?”
+He was choked at my indifference. “It is a masterpiece,” he said, with
+enthusiasm. “I re-read it to-day.”
+“And what happened?”
+“Then I inspected the rooms in the house off Washington Circle. I—I
+made some discoveries, Mr. Blakeley. For one thing, our man there is
+left-handed.” He looked around for our approval. “There was a small
+cushion on the dresser, and the scarf pins in it had been stuck in with
+the left hand.”
+“Somebody may have twisted the cushion,” I objected, but he looked
+hurt, and I desisted.
+“There is only one discrepancy,” he admitted, “but it troubles me.
+According to Mrs. Carter, at the farmhouse, our man wore gaudy pajamas,
+while I found here only the most severely plain night-shirts.”
+“Any buttons off?” McKnight inquired, looking again at his watch.
+“The buttons were there,” the amateur detective answered gravely, “but
+the buttonhole next the top one was torn through.”
+McKnight winked at me furtively.
+“I am convinced of one thing,” Hotchkiss went on, clearing his throat,
+“the papers are not in that room. Either he carries them with him, or
+he has sold them.”
+A sound on the street made both my visitors listen sharply. Whatever it
+was it passed on, however. I was growing curious and the restraint was
+telling on McKnight. He has no talent for secrecy. In the interval we
+discussed the strange occurrence at Cresson, which lost nothing by
+Hotchkiss’ dry narration.
+“And so,” he concluded, “the woman in the Baltimore hospital is the
+wife of Henry Sullivan and the daughter of the man he murdered. No
+wonder he collapsed when he heard of the wreck.”
+“Joy, probably,” McKnight put in. “Is that clock right, Lawrence? Never
+mind, it doesn’t matter. By the way, Mrs. Conway dropped in the office
+yesterday, while you were away.”
+“What!” I sprang from my chair.
+“Sure thing. Said she had heard great things of us, and wanted us to
+handle her case against the railroad.”
+“I would like to know what she is driving at,” I reflected. “Is she
+trying to reach me through you?”
+Richey’s flippancy is often a cloak for deeper feeling. He dropped it
+now. “Yes,” he said, “she’s after the notes, of course. And I’ll tell
+you I felt like a poltroon—whatever that may be—when I turned her down.
+She stood by the door with her face white, and told me contemptuously
+that I could save you from a murder charge and wouldn’t do it. She made
+me feel like a cur. I was just as guilty as if I could have obliged
+her. She hinted that there were reasons and she laid my attitude to
+beastly motives.”
+“Nonsense,” I said, as easily as I could. Hotchkiss had gone to the
+window. “She was excited. There are no ‘reasons,’ whatever she means.”
+Richey put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ve been together too long to
+let any ‘reasons’ or ‘unreasons’ come between us, old man,” he said,
+not very steadily. Hotchkiss, who had been silent, here came forward in
+his most impressive manner. He put his hands under his coat-tails and
+coughed.
+“Mr. Blakeley,” he began, “by Mr. McKnight’s advice we have arranged a
+little interview here to-night. If all has gone as I planned, Mr. Henry
+Pinckney Sullivan is by this time under arrest. Within a very few
+minutes—he will be here.”
+“I wanted to talk to him before he was locked up,” Richey explained.
+“He’s clever enough to be worth knowing, and, besides, I’m not so
+cocksure of his guilt as our friend the Patch on the Seat of
+Government. No murderer worthy of the name needs six different motives
+for the same crime, beginning with robbery, and ending with an
+unpleasant father-in-law.”
+We were all silent for a while. McKnight stationed himself at a window,
+and Hotchkiss paced the floor expectantly. “It’s a great day for modern
+detective methods,” he chirruped. “While the police have been guarding
+houses and standing with their mouths open waiting for clues to fall in
+and choke them, we have pieced together, bit by bit, a fabric—”
+The door-bell rang, followed immediately by sounds of footsteps in the
+hall. McKnight threw the door open, and Hotchkiss, raised on his toes,
+flung out his arm in a gesture of superb eloquence.
+“Behold—your man!” he declaimed.
+Through the open doorway came a tall, blond fellow, clad in light gray,
+wearing tan shoes, and followed closely by an officer.
+“I brought him here as you suggested, Mr. McKnight,” said the
+constable.
+But McKnight was doubled over the library table in silent convulsions
+of mirth, and I was almost as bad. Little Hotchkiss stood up, his
+important attitude finally changing to one of chagrin, while the blond
+man ceased to look angry, and became sheepish.
+It was Stuart, our confidential clerk for the last half dozen years!
+McKnight sat up and wiped his eyes.
+“Stuart,” he said sternly, “there are two very serious things we have
+learned about you. First, you jab your scarf pins into your cushion
+with your left hand, which is most reprehensible; second, you
+wear—er—night-shirts, instead of pajamas. Worse than that, perhaps, we
+find that one of them has a buttonhole torn out at the neck.”
+Stuart was bewildered. He looked from McKnight to me, and then at the
+crestfallen Hotchkiss.
+“I haven’t any idea what it’s all about,” he said. “I was arrested as I
+reached my boarding-house to-night, after the theater, and brought
+directly here. I told the officer it was a mistake.”
+Poor Hotchkiss tried bravely to justify the fiasco. “You can not deny,”
+he contended, “that Mr. Andrew Bronson followed you to your rooms last
+Monday evening.”
+Stuart looked at us and flushed.
+“No, I don’t deny it,” he said, “but there was nothing criminal about
+it, on my part, at least. Mr. Bronson has been trying to induce me to
+secure the forged notes for him. But I did not even know where they
+were.”
+“And you were not on the wrecked Washington Flier?” persisted
+Hotchkiss. But McKnight interfered.
+“There is no use trying to put the other man’s identity on Stuart, Mr.
+Hotchkiss,” he protested. “He has been our confidential clerk for six
+years, and has not been away from the office a day for a year. I am
+afraid that the beautiful fabric we have pieced out of all these scraps
+is going to be a crazy quilt.” His tone was facetious, but I could
+detect the undercurrent of real disappointment.
+I paid the constable for his trouble, and he departed. Stuart, still
+indignant, left to go back to Washington Circle. He shook hands with
+McKnight and myself magnanimously, but he hurled a look of utter hatred
+at Hotchkiss, sunk crestfallen in his chair.
+“As far as I can see,” said McKnight dryly, “we’re exactly as far along
+as we were the day we met at the Carter place. We’re not a step nearer
+to finding our man.”
+“We have one thing that may be of value,” I suggested. “He is the
+husband of a bronze-haired woman at Van Kirk’s hospital, and it is just
+possible we may trace him through her. I hope we are not going to lose
+your valuable co-operation, Mr. Hotchkiss?” I asked.
+He roused at that to feeble interest, “I—oh, of course not, if you
+still care to have me, I—I was wondering about—the man who just went
+out, Stuart, you say? I—told his landlady to-night that he wouldn’t
+need the room again. I hope she hasn’t rented it to somebody else.”
+We cheered him as best we could, and I suggested that we go to
+Baltimore the next day and try to find the real Sullivan through his
+wife. He left sometime after midnight, and Richey and I were alone.
+He drew a chair near the lamp and lighted a cigarette, and for a time
+we were silent. I was in the shadow, and I sat back and watched him. It
+was not surprising, I thought, that she cared for him: women had always
+loved him, perhaps because he always loved them. There was no
+disloyalty in the thought: it was the lad’s nature to give and crave
+affection. Only—I was different. I had never really cared about a girl
+before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely
+battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves and
+our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was
+Dorothy—I had forgotten the rest—but I remembered the sequel. In a
+spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richey
+and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a
+somber, white-hot martyrdom. As is often the case, McKnight’s first
+words showed our parallel lines of thought.
+“I say, Lollie,” he asked, “do you remember Dorothy Browne?” _Browne_,
+that was it!
+“Dorothy Browne?” I repeated. “Oh—why yes, I recall her now. Why?”
+“Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about her. That’s all. You remember
+you were crazy about her, and dropped back because she preferred me.”
+“I got out,” I said with dignity, “because you declared you would shoot
+yourself if she didn’t go with you to something or other!”
+“Oh, why yes, I recall now!” he mimicked. He tossed his cigarette in
+the general direction of the hearth and got up. We were both a little
+conscious, and he stood with his back to me, fingering a Japanese vase
+on the mantel.
+“I was thinking,” he began, turning the vase around, “that, if you feel
+pretty well again, and—and ready to take hold, that I should like to go
+away for a week or so. Things are fairly well cleaned up at the
+office.”
+“Do you mean—you are going to Richmond?” I asked, after a scarcely
+perceptible pause. He turned and faced me, with his hands thrust in his
+pockets.
+“No. That’s off, Lollie. The Seiberts are going for a week’s cruise
+along the coast. I—the hot weather has played hob with me and the
+cruise means seven days’ breeze and bridge.”
+I lighted a cigarette and offered him the box, but he refused. He was
+looking haggard and suddenly tired. I could not think of anything to
+say, and neither could he, evidently. The matter between us lay too
+deep for speech.
+“How’s Candida?” he asked.
+“Martin says a month, and she will be all right,” I returned, in the
+same tone. He picked up his hat, but he had something more to say. He
+blurted it out, finally, half way to the door.
+“The Seiberts are not going for a couple of days,” he said, “and if you
+want a day or so off to go down to Richmond yourself—”
+“Perhaps I _shall_,” I returned, as indifferently as I could. “Not
+going yet, are you?”
+“Yes. It is late.” He drew in his breath as if he had something more to
+say, but the impulse passed. “Well, good night,” he said from the
+doorway.
+“Good night, old man.”
+The next moment the outer door slammed and I heard the engine of the
+Cannonball throbbing in the street. Then the quiet settled down around
+me again, and there in the lamplight I dreamed dreams. I was going to
+see her.
+Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily, from so great
+and wonderful a world became intolerable. The possibility of arrest
+before I could get to Richmond was hideous, the night without end.
+I made my escape the next morning through the stable back of the house,
+and then, by devious dark and winding ways, to the office. There, after
+a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement,
+I double-locked the door of my private office and finished off some
+imperative work. By ten o’clock I was free, and for the twentieth time
+I consulted my train schedule. At five minutes after ten, with McKnight
+not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had
+agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the
+door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple
+dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy
+expression.
+“They’re here,” he said, “two of ’em, and that crazy Stuart wasn’t on,
+and said you were somewhere in the building.”
+A door slammed outside, followed by steps on the uncarpeted outer
+office.
+“This way,” said Blobs, in a husky undertone, and, darting into a
+lavatory, threw open a door that I had always supposed locked. Thence
+into a back hall piled high with boxes and past the presses of a
+bookbindery to the freight elevator.
+Greatly to Blobs’ disappointment, there was no pursuit. I was
+exhilarated but out of breath when we emerged into an alleyway, and the
+sharp daylight shone on Blobs’ excited face.
+“Great sport, isn’t it?” I panted, dropping a dollar into his palm,
+inked to correspond with his face. “Regular walk-away in the
+hundred-yard dash.”
+“Gimme two dollars more and I’ll drop ’em down the elevator shaft,” he
+suggested ferociously. I left him there with his blood-thirsty schemes,
+and started for the station. I had a tendency to look behind me now and
+then, but I reached the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot, the
+train rolled slowly along, stopping to pant at sweltering stations,
+from whose roofs the heat rose in waves. But I noticed these things
+objectively, not subjectively, for at the end of the journey was a girl
+with blue eyes and dark brown hair, hair that could—had I not seen
+it?—hang loose in bewitching tangles or be twisted into little coils of
+delight.
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS
+I telephoned as soon as I reached my hotel, and I had not known how
+much I had hoped from seeing her until I learned that she was out of
+town. I hung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment, and it
+was fully five minutes before I thought of calling up again and asking
+if she was within telephone reach. It seemed she was down on the bay
+staying with the Samuel Forbeses.
+Sammy Forbes! It was a name to conjure with just then. In the old days
+at college I had rather flouted him, but now I was ready to take him to
+my heart. I remembered that he had always meant well, anyhow, and that
+he was explosively generous. I called him up.
+“By the fumes of gasoline!” he said, when I told him who I was.
+“Blakeley, the Fount of Wisdom against Woman! Blakeley, the Great
+Unkissed! Welcome to our city!”
+Whereupon he proceeded to urge me to come down to the Shack, and to say
+that I was an agreeable surprise, because four times in two hours
+youths had called up to ask if Alison West was stopping with him, and
+to suggest that they had a vacant day or two. “Oh—Miss West!” I shouted
+politely. There was a buzzing on the line. “Is she there?” Sam had no
+suspicions. Was not I in his mind always the Great Unkissed?—which
+sounds like the Great Unwashed and is even more of a reproach. He asked
+me down promptly, as I had hoped, and thrust aside my objections.
+“Nonsense,” he said. “Bring yourself. The lady that keeps my
+boarding-house is calling to me to insist. You remember Dorothy, don’t
+you, Dorothy Browne? She says unless you have lost your figure you can
+wear my clothes all right. All you need here is a bathing suit for
+daytime and a dinner coat for evening.”
+“It sounds cool,” I temporized. “If you are sure I won’t put you
+out—very well, Sam, since you and your wife are good enough. I have a
+couple of days free. Give my love to Dorothy until I can do it myself.”
+Sam met me himself and drove me out to the Shack, which proved to be a
+substantial house overlooking the water. On the way he confided to me
+that lots of married men thought they were contented when they were
+merely resigned, but that it was the only life, and that Sam, Junior,
+could swim like a duck. Incidentally, he said that Alison was his
+wife’s cousin, their respective grandmothers having, at proper
+intervals, married the same man, and that Alison would lose her good
+looks if she was not careful.
+“I say she’s worried, and I stick to it,” he said, as he threw the
+lines to a groom and prepared to get out. “You know her, and she’s the
+kind of girl you think you can read like a book. But you can’t; don’t
+fool yourself. Take a good look at her at dinner, Blake; you won’t lose
+your head like the other fellows—and then tell me what’s wrong with
+her. We’re mighty fond of Allie.”
+He went ponderously up the steps, for Sam had put on weight since I
+knew him. At the door he turned around. “Do you happen to know the
+MacLures at Seal Harbor?” he asked irrelevantly, but Mrs. Sam came into
+the hall just then, both hands out to greet me, and, whatever Forbes
+had meant to say, he did not pick up the subject again.
+“We are having tea in here,” Dorothy said gaily, indicating the door
+behind her. “Tea by courtesy, because I think tea is the only beverage
+that isn’t represented. And then we must dress, for this is hop night
+at the club.”
+“Which is as great a misnomer as the tea,” Sam put in, ponderously
+struggling out of his linen driving coat. “It’s bridge night, and the
+only hops are in the beer.”
+He was still gurgling over this as he took me upstairs. He showed me my
+room himself, and then began the fruitless search for evening raiment
+that kept me home that night from the club. For I couldn’t wear Sam’s
+clothes. That was clear, after a perspiring seance of a half hour.
+“I won’t do it, Sam,” I said, when I had draped his dress-coat on me
+toga fashion. “Who am I to have clothing to spare, like this, when many
+a poor chap hasn’t even a cellar door to cover him. I won’t do it; I’m
+selfish, but not that selfish.”
+“Lord,” he said, wiping his face, “how you’ve kept your figure! I can’t
+wear a belt any more; got to have suspenders.”
+He reflected over his grievance for some time, sitting on the side of
+the bed. “You _could_ go as you are,” he said finally. “We do it all
+the time, only to-night happens to be the annual something or other,
+and—” he trailed off into silence, trying to buckle my belt around him.
+“A good six inches,” he sighed. “I never get into a hansom cab any more
+that I don’t expect to see the horse fly up into the air. Well, Allie
+isn’t going either. She turned down Granger this afternoon, the
+Annapolis fellow you met on the stairs, pigeon-breasted chap—and she
+always gets a headache on those occasions.”
+He got up heavily and went to the door. “Granger is leaving,” he said,
+“I may be able to get his dinner coat for you. How well do you know
+her?” he asked, with his hand on the knob.
+“If you mean Dolly—?”
+“Alison.”
+“Fairly well,” I said cautiously. “Not as well as I would like to. I
+dined with her last week in Washington. And—I knew her before that.”
+Forbes touched the bell instead of going out, and told the servant who
+answered to see if Mr. Granger’s suitcase had gone. If not, to bring it
+across the hall. Then he came back to his former position on the bed.
+“You see, we feel responsible for Allie—near relation and all that,” he
+began pompously. “And we can’t talk to the people here at the house—all
+the men are in love with her, and all the women are jealous.
+Then—there’s a lot of money, too, or will be.”
+“Confound the money!” I muttered. “That is—nothing. Razor slipped.”
+“I can tell you,” he went on, “because you don’t lose your head over
+every pretty face—although Allie is more than that, of course. But
+about a month ago she went away—to Seal Harbor, to visit Janet MacLure.
+Know her?”
+“She came home to Richmond yesterday, and then came down here—Allie, I
+mean. And yesterday afternoon Dolly had a letter from Janet—something
+about a second man—and saying she was disappointed not to have had
+Alison there, that she had promised them a two weeks’ visit! What do
+you make of that? And that isn’t the worst. Allie herself wasn’t in the
+room, but there were eight other women, and because Dolly had put
+belladonna in her eyes the night before to see how she would look, and
+as a result couldn’t see anything nearer than across the room, some one
+read the letter aloud to her, and the whole story is out. One of the
+cats told Granger and the boy proposed to Allie to-day, to show her he
+didn’t care a tinker’s dam where she had been.”
+“Good boy!” I said, with enthusiasm. I liked the Granger fellow—since
+he was out of the running. But Sam was looking at me with suspicion.
+“Blake,” he said, “if I didn’t know you for what you are, I’d say you
+were interested there yourself.”
+Being so near her, under the same roof, with even the tie of a dubious
+secret between us, was making me heady. I pushed Forbes toward the
+door.
+“I interested!” I retorted, holding him by the shoulders. “There isn’t
+a word in your vocabulary to fit my condition. I am an island in a
+sunlit sea of emotion, Sam, a—an empty place surrounded by longing—a—”
+“An empty place surrounded by longing!” he retorted. “You want your
+dinner, that’s what’s the matter with you—”
+I shut the door on him then. He seemed suddenly sordid. Dinner, I
+thought! Although, as matter of fact, I made a very fair meal when,
+Granger’s suitcase not having gone, in his coat and some other man’s
+trousers, I was finally fit for the amenities. Alison did not come down
+to dinner, so it was clear she would not go over to the club-house
+dance. I pled my injured arm and a ficticious, vaguely located sprain
+from the wreck, as an excuse for remaining at home. Sam regaled the
+table with accounts of my distrust of women, my one love affair—with
+Dorothy; to which I responded, as was expected, that only my failure
+there had kept me single all these years, and that if Sam should be
+mysteriously missing during the bathing hour to-morrow, and so on.
+And when the endless meal was over, and yards of white veils had been
+tied over pounds of hair—or is it, too, bought by the yard?—and some
+eight _ensembles_ with their abject complements had been packed into
+three automobiles and a trap, I drew a long breath and faced about. I
+had just then only one object in life—to find Alison, to assure her of
+my absolute faith and confidence in her, and to offer my help and my
+poor self, if she would let me, in her service.
+She was not easy to find. I searched the lower floor, the verandas and
+the grounds, circumspectly. Then I ran into a little English girl who
+turned out to be her maid, and who also was searching. She was
+concerned because her mistress had had no dinner, and because the tray
+of food she carried would soon be cold. I took the tray from her, on
+the glimpse of something white on the shore, and that was how I met the
+Girl again.
+She was sitting on an over-turned boat, her chin in her hands, staring
+out to sea. The soft tide of the bay lapped almost at her feet, and the
+draperies of her white gown melted hazily into the sands. She looked
+like a wraith, a despondent phantom of the sea, although the adjective
+is redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a cheerful phantom. Strangely
+enough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly to
+herself, over and over, some dreary little minor air that sounded like
+a Bohemian dirge. She glanced up quickly when I made a misstep and my
+dishes jingled. All considered, the tray was out of the picture: the
+sea, the misty starlight, the girl, with her beauty—even the sad little
+whistle that stopped now and then to go bravely on again, as though it
+fought against the odds of a trembling lip. And then I came,
+accompanied by a tray of little silver dishes that jingled and an
+unmistakable odor of broiled chicken!
+“Oh!” she said quickly; and then, “Oh! I thought you were Jenkins.”
+“_Timeo Danaos_—what’s the rest of it?” I asked, tendering my offering.
+“You didn’t have any dinner, you know.” I sat down beside her. “See,
+I’ll be the table. What was the old fairy tale? ‘Little goat bleat:
+little table appear!’ I’m perfectly willing to be the goat, too.”
+She was laughing rather tremulously.
+“We never _do_ meet like other people, do we?” she asked. “We really
+ought to shake hands and say how are you.”
+“I don’t want to meet you like other people, and I suppose you always
+think of me as wearing the other fellow’s clothes,” I returned meekly.
+“I’m doing it again: I don’t seem to be able to help it. These are
+Granger’s that I have on now.”
+She threw back her head and laughed again, joyously, this time.
+“Oh, it’s so ridiculous,” she said, “and you have never seen me when I
+was not eating! It’s too prosaic!”
+“Which reminds me that the chicken is getting cold, and the ice warm,”
+I suggested. “At the time, I thought there could be no place better
+than the farmhouse kitchen—but this is. I ordered all this for
+something I want to say to you—the sea, the sand, the stars.”
+“How alliterative you are!” she said, trying to be flippant. “You are
+not to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the things are
+spilled around!”
+But she ate nothing, after all, and pretty soon I put the tray down in
+the sand. I said little; there was no hurry. We were together, and time
+meant nothing against that age-long wash of the sea. The air blew her
+hair in small damp curls against her face, and little by little the
+tide retreated, leaving our boat an oasis in a waste of gray sand.
+“If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year
+Do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get it clear?”
+she threw at me once when she must have known I was going to speak. I
+held her hand, and as long as I merely held it she let it lie warm in
+mine. But when I raised it to my lips, and kissed the soft, open palm,
+she drew it away without displeasure.
+“Not that, please,” she protested, and fell to whistling softly again,
+her chin in her hands. “I can’t sing,” she said, to break an awkward
+pause, “and so, when I’m fidgety, or have something on my mind, I
+whistle. I hope you don’t dislike it?”
+“I love it,” I asserted warmly. I did; when she pursed her lips like
+that I was mad to kiss them.
+“I saw you—at the station,” she said, suddenly. “You—you were in a
+hurry to go.” I did not say anything, and after a pause she drew a long
+breath. “Men are queer, aren’t they?” she said, and fell to whistling
+again.
+After a while she sat up as if she had made a resolution. “I am going
+to confess something,” she announced suddenly. “You said, you know,
+that you had ordered all this for something you—you wanted to say to
+me. But the fact is, I fixed it all—came here, I mean, because—I knew
+you would come, and I had something to tell you. It was such a
+miserable thing I—needed the accessories to help me out.”
+“I don’t want to hear anything that distresses you to tell,” I assured
+her. “I didn’t come here to force your confidence, Alison. I came
+because I couldn’t help it.” She did not object to my use of her name.
+“Have you found—your papers?” she asked, looking directly at me for
+almost the first time.
+“Not yet. We hope to.”
+“The—police have not interfered with you?”
+“They haven’t had any opportunity,” I equivocated. “You needn’t
+distress yourself about that, anyhow.”
+“But I do. I wonder why you still believe in me? Nobody else does.”
+“I wonder,” I repeated, “why I do!”
+“If you produce Harry Sullivan,” she was saying, partly to herself,
+“and if you could connect him with Mr. Bronson, and get a full account
+of why he was on the train, and all that, it—it would help, wouldn’t
+it?”
+I acknowledged that it would. Now that the whole truth was almost in my
+possession, I was stricken with the old cowardice. I did not want to
+know what she might tell me. The yellow line on the horizon, where the
+moon was coming up, was a broken bit of golden chain: my heel in the
+sand was again pressed on a woman’s yielding fingers: I pulled myself
+together with a jerk.
+“In order that what you might tell me may help me, if it will,” I said
+constrainedly, “it would be necessary, perhaps, that you tell it to the
+police. Since they have found the end of the necklace—”
+“The end of the necklace!” she repeated slowly. “What about the end of
+the necklace?”
+I stared at her. “Don’t you remember”—I leaned forward—“the end of the
+cameo necklace, the part that was broken off, and was found in the
+black sealskin bag, stained with—with blood?”
+“Blood,” she said dully. “You mean that _you_ found the broken end? And
+then—you had my gold pocket-book, and you saw the necklace in it, and
+you—must have thought—”
+“I didn’t think anything,” I hastened to assure her. “I tell you,
+Alison, I never thought of anything but that you were unhappy, and that
+I had no right to help you. God knows, I thought you didn’t want me to
+help you.”
+She held out her hand to me and I took it between both of mine. No word
+of love had passed between us, but I felt that she knew and understood.
+It was one of the moments that come seldom in a lifetime, and then only
+in great crises, a moment of perfect understanding and trust.
+Then she drew her hand away and sat, erect and determined, her fingers
+laced in her lap. As she talked the moon came up slowly and threw its
+bright pathway across the water. Back of us, in the trees beyond the
+sea wall, a sleepy bird chirruped drowsily, and a wave, larger and
+bolder than its brothers, sped up the sand, bringing the moon’s silver
+to our very feet. I bent toward the girl.
+“I am going to ask just one question.”
+“Anything you like.” Her voice was almost dreary. “Was it because of
+anything you are going to tell me that you refused Richey?”
+She drew her breath in sharply.
+“No,” she said, without looking at me. “No. That was not the reason.”
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+ALISON’S STORY
+She told her story evenly, with her eyes on the water, only now and
+then, when I, too, sat looking seaward, I thought she glanced at me
+furtively. And once, in the middle of it, she stopped altogether.
+“You don’t realize it, probably,” she protested, “but you look like a—a
+war god. Your face is horrible.”
+“I will turn my back, if it will help any,” I said stormily, “but if
+you expect me to look anything but murderous, why, you don’t know what
+I am going through with. That’s all.”
+The story of her meeting with the Curtis woman was brief enough. They
+had met in Rome first, where Alison and her mother had taken a villa
+for a year. Mrs. Curtis had hovered on the ragged edges of society
+there, pleading the poverty of the south since the war as a reason for
+not going out more. There was talk of a brother, but Alison had not
+seen him, and after a scandal which implicated Mrs. Curtis and a young
+attaché of the Austrian embassy, Alison had been forbidden to see the
+woman.
+“The women had never liked her, anyhow,” she said. “She did
+unconventional things, and they are very conventional there. And they
+said she did not always pay her—her gambling debts. I didn’t like them.
+I thought they didn’t like her because she was poor—and popular.
+Then—we came home, and I almost forgot her, but last spring, when
+mother was not well—she had taken grandfather to the Riviera, and it
+always uses her up—we went to Virginia Hot Springs, and we met them
+there, the brother, too, this time. His name was Sullivan, Harry
+Pinckney Sullivan.”
+“I know. Go on.”
+“Mother had a nurse, and I was alone a great deal, and they were very
+kind to me. I—I saw a lot of them. The brother rather attracted me,
+partly—partly because he did not make love to me. He even seemed to
+avoid me, and I was piqued. I had been spoiled, I suppose. Most of the
+other men I knew had—had—”
+“I know that, too,” I said bitterly, and moved away from her a trifle.
+I was brutal, but the whole story was a long torture. I think she knew
+what I was suffering, for she showed no resentment.
+“It was early and there were few people around—none that I cared about.
+And mother and the nurse played cribbage eternally, until I felt as
+though the little pegs were driven into my brain. And when Mrs. Curtis
+arranged drives and picnics, I—I slipped away and went. I suppose you
+won’t believe me, but I had never done that kind of thing before, and
+I—well, I have paid up, I think.”
+“What sort of looking chap was Sullivan?” I demanded. I had got up and
+was pacing back and forward on the sand. I remember kicking savagely at
+a bit of water-soaked board that lay in my way.
+“Very handsome—as large as you are, but fair, and even more erect.”
+I drew my shoulders up sharply. I am straight enough, but I was fairly
+sagging with jealous rage.
+“When mother began to get around, somebody told her that I had been
+going about with Mrs. Curtis and her brother, and we had a dreadful
+time. I was dragged home like a bad child. Did anybody ever do that to
+you?”
+“Nobody ever cared. I was born an orphan,” I said, with a cheerless
+attempt at levity. “Go on.”
+“If Mrs. Curtis knew, she never said anything. She wrote me charming
+letters, and in the summer, when they went to Cresson, she asked me to
+visit her there. I was too proud to let her know that I could not go
+where I wished, and so—I sent Polly, my maid, to her aunt’s in the
+country, pretended to go to Seal Harbor, and really went to Cresson.
+You see I warned you it would be an unpleasant story.”
+I went over and stood in front of her. All the accumulated jealousy of
+the last few weeks had been fired by what she told me. If Sullivan had
+come across the sands just then, I think I would have strangled him
+with my hands, out of pure hate.
+“Did you marry him?” I demanded. My voice sounded hoarse and strange in
+my ears. “That’s all I want to know. Did you marry him?”
+“No.”
+I drew a long breath.
+“You—cared about him?”
+She hesitated.
+“No,” she said finally. “I did not care about him.”
+I sat down on the edge of the boat and mopped my hot face. I was
+heartily ashamed of myself, and mingled with my abasement was a great
+relief. If she had not married him, and had not cared for him, nothing
+else was of any importance.
+“I was sorry, of course, the moment the train had started, but I had
+wired I was coming, and I could not go back, and then when I got there,
+the place was charming. There were no neighbors, but we fished and rode
+and motored, and—it was moonlight, like this.”
+I put my hand over both of hers, clasped in her lap. “I know,” I
+acknowledged repentantly, “and—people do queer things when it is
+moonlight. The moon has got me to-night, Alison. If I am a boor,
+remember that, won’t you?”
+Her fingers lay quiet under mine. “And so,” she went on with a little
+sigh, “I began to think perhaps I cared. But all the time I felt that
+there was something not quite right. Now and then Mrs. Curtis would say
+or do something that gave me a queer start, as if she had dropped a
+mask for a moment. And there was trouble with the servants; they were
+almost insolent. I couldn’t understand. I don’t know when it dawned on
+me that the old Baron Cavalcanti had been right when he said they were
+not my kind of people. But I wanted to get away, wanted it
+desperately.”
+“Of course, they were not your kind,” I cried. “The man was married!
+The girl Jennie, a housemaid, was a spy in Mrs. Sullivan’s employ. If
+he had pretended to marry you I would have killed him! Not only that,
+but the man he murdered, Harrington, was his wife’s father. And I’ll
+see him hang by the neck yet if it takes every energy and every penny I
+possess.”
+I could have told her so much more gently, have broken the shock for
+her; I have never been proud of that evening on the sand. I was
+alternately a boor and a ruffian—like a hurt youngster who passes the
+blow that has hurt him on to his playmate, that both may bawl together.
+And now Alison sat, white and cold, without speech.
+“Married!” she said finally, in a small voice. “Why, I don’t think it
+is possible, is it? I—I was on my way to Baltimore to marry him myself,
+when the wreck came.”
+“But you said you didn’t care for him!” I protested, my heavy masculine
+mind unable to jump the gaps in her story. And then, without the
+slightest warning, I realized that she was crying. She shook off my
+hand and fumbled for her handkerchief, and failing to find it, she
+accepted the one I thrust into her wet fingers.
+Then, little by little, she told me from the handkerchief, a sordid
+story of a motor trip in the mountains without Mrs. Curtis, of a lost
+road and a broken car, and a rainy night when they—she and Sullivan,
+tramped eternally and did not get home. And of Mrs. Curtis, when they
+got home at dawn, suddenly grown conventional and deeply shocked. Of
+her own proud, half-disdainful consent to make possible the hackneyed
+compromising situation by marrying the rascal, and then—of his
+disappearance from the train. It was so terrible to her, such a
+Heaven-sent relief to me, in spite of my rage against Sullivan, that I
+laughed aloud. At which she looked at me over the handkerchief.
+“I know it’s funny,” she said, with a catch in her breath. “When I
+think that I nearly married a murderer—and didn’t—I cry for sheer joy.”
+Then she buried her face and cried again.
+“Please don’t,” I protested unsteadily. “I won’t be responsible if you
+keep on crying like that. I may forget that I have a capital charge
+hanging over my head, and that I may be arrested at any moment.”
+That brought her out of the handkerchief at once. “I meant to be so
+helpful,” she said, “and I’ve thought of nothing but myself! There were
+some things I meant to tell you. If Jennie was—what you say, then I
+understand why she came to me just before I left. She had been packing
+my things and she must have seen what condition I was in, for she came
+over to me when I was getting my wraps on, to leave, and said, ‘Don’t
+do it, Miss West, I beg you won’t do it; you’ll be sorry ever after.’
+And just then Mrs. Curtis came in and Jennie slipped out.”
+“That was all?”
+“No. As we went through the station the telegraph operator gave Har—Mr.
+Sullivan a message. He read it on the platform, and it excited him
+terribly. He took his sister aside and they talked together. He was
+white with either fear or anger—I don’t know which. Then, when we
+boarded the train, a woman in black, with beautiful hair, who was
+standing on the car platform, touched him on the arm and then drew
+back. He looked at her and glanced away again, but she reeled as if he
+had struck her.”
+“Then what?” The situation was growing clearer.
+“Mrs. Curtis and I had the drawing-room. I had a dreadful night, just
+sleeping a little now and then. I dreaded to see dawn come. It was to
+be my wedding-day. When we found Harry had disappeared in the night,
+Mrs. Curtis was in a frenzy. Then—I saw his cigarette case in your
+hand. I had given it to him. You wore his clothes. The murder was
+discovered and you were accused of it! What could I do? And then,
+afterward, when I saw him asleep at the farmhouse, I—I was
+panic-stricken. I locked him in and ran. I didn’t know why he did it,
+but—he had killed a man.”
+Some one was calling Alison through a megaphone, from the veranda. It
+sounded like Sam. “_All-ee_,” he called. “_All-ee!_ I’m going to have
+some anchovies on toast! _All-ee!_” Neither of us heard.
+“I wonder,” I reflected, “if you would be willing to repeat a part of
+that story—just from the telegram on—to a couple of detectives, say on
+Monday. If you would tell that, and—how the end of your necklace got
+into the sealskin bag—”
+“My necklace!” she repeated. “But it isn’t mine. I picked it up in the
+car.”
+“_All-ee!_” Sam again. “I see you down there. I’m making a julep!”
+Alison turned and called through her hands. “Coming in a moment, Sam,”
+she said, and rose. “It must be very late: Sam is home. We would better
+go back to the house.”
+“Don’t,” I begged her. “Anchovies and juleps and Sam will go on for
+ever, and I have you such a little time. I suppose I am only one of a
+dozen or so, but—you are the only girl in the world. You know I love
+you, don’t you, dear?”
+Sam was whistling, an irritating bird call, over and over. She pursed
+her red lips and answered him in kind. It was more than I could endure.
+“Sam or no Sam,” I said firmly, “I am going to kiss you!”
+But Sam’s voice came strident through the megaphone. “Be good, you
+two,” he bellowed, “I’ve got the binoculars!” And so, under fire, we
+walked sedately back to the house. My pulses were throbbing—the little
+swish of her dress beside me on the grass was pain and ecstasy. I had
+but to put out my hand to touch her, and I dared not.
+Sam, armed with a megaphone and field glasses, bent over the rail and
+watched us with gleeful malignity.
+“Home early, aren’t you?” Alison called, when we reached the steps.
+“Led a club when my partner had doubled no-trumps, and she fainted.
+Damn the heart convention!” he said cheerfully. “The others are not
+here yet.”
+Three hours later I went up to bed. I had not seen Alison alone again.
+The noise was at its height below, and I glanced down into the garden,
+still bright in the moonlight. Leaning against a tree, and staring
+interestedly into the billiard room, was Johnson.
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+IN THE DINING-ROOM
+That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five
+days had been full of swift-following events—the woman in the house
+next door, the picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the
+doomed train, the dinner at the Dallases’, and Richey’s discovery that
+Alison was the girl in the case. In quick succession had come our visit
+to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing
+Alison there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson
+trip stood out in my memory for its serio-comic horrors and its one
+real thrill. Then—the discovery by the police of the seal-skin bag and
+the bit of chain; Hotchkiss producing triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan
+and his subsequent discomfiture; McKnight at the station with Alison,
+and later the confession that he was out of the running.
+And yet, when I thought it all over, the entire week and its events
+were two sides of a triangle that was narrowing rapidly to an apex, a
+point. And the said apex was at that moment in the drive below my
+window, resting his long legs by sitting on a carriage block, and
+smoking a pipe that made the night hideous. The sense of the ridiculous
+is very close to the sense of tragedy. I opened my screen and whistled,
+and Johnson looked up and grinned. We said nothing. I held up a handful
+of cigars, he extended his hat, and when I finally went to sleep, it
+was to a soothing breeze that wafted in salt air and a faint aroma of
+good tobacco. I was thoroughly tired, but I slept restlessly, dreaming
+of two detectives with Pittsburg warrants being held up by Hotchkiss at
+the point of a splint, while Alison fastened their hands with a chain
+that was broken and much too short. I was roused about dawn by a light
+rap at the door, and, opening it, I found Forbes, in a pair of trousers
+and a pajama coat. He was as pleasant as most fleshy people are when
+they have to get up at night, and he said the telephone had been
+ringing for an hour, and he didn’t know why somebody else in the
+blankety-blank house couldn’t have heard it. _He_ wouldn’t get to sleep
+until noon.
+As he was palpably asleep on his feet, I left him grumbling and went to
+the telephone. It proved to be Richey, who had found me by the simple
+expedient of tracing Alison, and he was jubilant.
+“You’ll have to come back,” he said. “Got a railroad schedule there?”
+“I don’t sleep with one in my pocket,” I retorted, “but if you’ll hold
+the line I’ll call out the window to Johnson. He’s probably got one.”
+“Johnson!” I could hear the laugh with which McKnight comprehended the
+situation. He was still chuckling when I came back.
+“Train to Richmond at six-thirty A.M.,” I said. “What time is it now?”
+“Four. Listen, Lollie. We’ve got him. Do you hear? Through the woman at
+Baltimore. Then the other woman, the lady of the restaurant”—he was
+obviously avoiding names—“she is playing our cards for us. No—I don’t
+know why, and I don’t care. But you be at the Incubator to-night at
+eight o’clock. If you can’t shake Johnson, bring him, bless him.”
+To this day I believe the Sam Forbeses have not recovered from the
+surprise of my unexpected arrival, my one appearance at dinner in
+Granger’s clothes, and the note on my dresser which informed them the
+next morning that I had folded my tents like the Arabs and silently
+stole away. For at half after five Johnson and I, the former as
+uninquisitive as ever, were on our way through the dust to the station,
+three miles away, and by four that afternoon we were in Washington. The
+journey had been uneventful. Johnson relaxed under the influence of my
+tobacco, and spoke at some length on the latest improvements in
+gallows, dilating on the absurdity of cutting out the former free
+passes to see the affair in operation. I remember, too, that he
+mentioned the curious anomaly that permits a man about to be hanged to
+eat a hearty meal. I did not enjoy my dinner that night.
+Before we got into Washington I had made an arrangement with Johnson to
+surrender myself at two the following afternoon. Also, I had wired to
+Alison, asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made.
+The detective saw me home, and left me there. Mrs. Klopton received me
+with dignified reserve. The very tone in which she asked me when I
+would dine told me that something was wrong.
+“Now—what is it, Mrs. Klopton?” I demanded finally, when she had
+informed me, in a patient and long-suffering tone, that she felt worn
+out and thought she needed a rest.
+“When I lived with Mr. Justice Springer,” she began acidly, her
+mending-basket in her hands, “it was an orderly, well-conducted
+household. You can ask any of the neighbors. Meals were cooked and,
+what’s more, they were _eaten;_ there was none of this ‘here one day
+and gone the next’ business.”
+“Nonsense,” I observed. “You’re tired, that’s all, Mrs. Klopton. And I
+wish you would go out; I want to bathe.”
+“That’s _not_ all,” she said with dignity, from the doorway. “Women
+coming and going here, women whose shoes I am not fit—I mean, women who
+are not fit to touch my shoes—coming here as insolent as you please,
+and asking for you.”
+“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What did you tell them—her, whichever it
+was?”
+“Told her you were sick in a hospital and wouldn’t be out for a year!”
+she said triumphantly. “And when she said she thought she’d come in and
+wait for you, I slammed the door on her.”
+“What time was she here?”
+“Late last night. And she had a light-haired man across the street. If
+she thought I didn’t see him, she don’t know me.” Then she closed the
+door and left me to my bath and my reflections.
+At five minutes before eight I was at the Incubator, where I found
+Hotchkiss and McKnight. They were bending over a table, on which lay
+McKnight’s total armament—a pair of pistols, an elephant gun and an old
+cavalry saber.
+“Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie,” he said, pointing to the
+arsenal. “This is for the benefit of our friend Hotchkiss here, who
+says he is a small man and fond of life.”
+Hotchkiss, who had been trying to get the wrong end of a cartridge into
+the barrel of one of the revolvers, straightened himself and mopped his
+face.
+“We have desperate people to handle,” he said pompously, “and we may
+need desperate means.”
+“Hotchkiss is like the small boy whose one ambition was to have people
+grow ashen and tremble at the mention of his name,” McKnight jibed. But
+they were serious enough, both of them, under it all, and when they had
+told me what they planned, I was serious, too.
+“You’re compounding a felony,” I remonstrated, when they had explained.
+“I’m not eager to be locked away, but, by Jove, to offer her the stolen
+notes in exchange for Sullivan!”
+“We haven’t got either of them, you know,” McKnight remonstrated, “and
+we won’t have, if we don’t start. Come along, Fido,” to Hotchkiss.
+The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hotchkiss, Sullivan was to
+meet Bronson at Mrs. Conway’s apartment, at eight-thirty that night,
+with the notes. He was to be paid there and the papers destroyed. “But
+just before that interesting finale,” McKnight ended, “we will walk in,
+take the notes, grab Sullivan, and give the police a jolt that will put
+them out of the count.”
+I suppose not one of us, slewing around corners in the machine that
+night, had the faintest doubt that we were on the right track, or that
+Fate, scurvy enough before, was playing into our hands at last. Little
+Hotchkiss was in a state of fever; he alternately twitched and examined
+the revolver, and a fear that the two movements might be synchronous
+kept me uneasy. He produced and dilated on the scrap of pillow slip
+from the wreck, and showed me the stiletto, with its point in cotton
+batting for safekeeping. And in the intervals he implored Richey not to
+make such fine calculations at the corners.
+We were all grave enough and very quiet, however, when we reached the
+large building where Mrs. Conway had her apartment. McKnight left the
+power on, in case we might want to make a quick get-away, and Hotchkiss
+gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all
+seemed melodramatic to the verge of farce. In the doorway Hotchkiss was
+a half dozen feet ahead; Richey fell back beside me. He dropped his
+affectation of gayety, and I thought he looked tired. “Same old Sam, I
+suppose?” he asked.
+“Same, only more of him.”
+“I suppose Alison was there? How is she?” he inquired irrelevantly.
+“Very well. I did not see her this morning.”
+Hotchkiss was waiting near the elevator. McKnight put his hand on my
+arm. “Now, look here, old man,” he said, “I’ve got two arms and a
+revolver, and you’ve got one arm and a splint. If Hotchkiss is right,
+and there is a row, you crawl under a table.”
+“The deuce I will!” I declared scornfully.
+We crowded out of the elevator at the fourth floor, and found ourselves
+in a rather theatrical hallway of draperies and armor. It was very
+quiet; we stood uncertainly after the car had gone, and looked at the
+two or three doors in sight. They were heavy, covered with metal, and
+sound proof. From somewhere above came the metallic accuracy of a
+player-piano, and through the open window we could hear—or feel—the
+throb of the Cannonball’s engine.
+“Well, Sherlock,” McKnight said, “what’s the next move in the game? Is
+it our jump, or theirs? You brought us here.”
+None of us knew just what to do next. No sound of conversation
+penetrated the heavy doors. We waited uneasily for some minutes, and
+Hotchkiss looked at his watch. Then he put it to his ear.
+“Good gracious!” he exclaimed, his head cocked on one side, “I believe
+it has stopped. I’m afraid we are late.”
+We _were_ late. My watch and Hotchkiss’ agreed at nine o clock, and,
+with the discovery that our man might have come and gone, our zest in
+the adventure began to flag. McKnight motioned us away from the door
+and rang the bell. There was no response, no sound within. He rang it
+twice, the last time long and vigorously, without result. Then he
+turned and looked at us.
+“I don’t half like this,” he said. “That woman is in; you heard me ask
+the elevator boy. For two cents I’d—”
+I had seen it when he did. The door was ajar about an inch, and a
+narrow wedge of rose-colored light showed beyond. I pushed the door a
+little and listened. Then, with both men at my heels, I stepped into
+the private corridor of the apartment and looked around. It was a
+square reception hall, with rugs on the floor, a tall mahogany rack for
+hats, and a couple of chairs. A lantern of rose-colored glass and a
+desk light over a writing-table across made the room bright and
+cheerful. It was empty.
+None of us was comfortable. The place was full of feminine trifles that
+made us feel the weakness of our position. Some such instinct made
+McKnight suggest division.
+“We look like an invading army,” he said. “If she’s here alone, we will
+startle her into a spasm. One of us could take a look around and—”
+“What was that? Didn’t you hear something?”
+The sound, whatever it had been, was not repeated. We went awkwardly
+out into the hall, very uncomfortable, all of us, and flipped a coin.
+The choice fell to me, which was right enough, for the affair was mine,
+primarily.
+“Wait just inside the door,” I directed, “and if Sullivan comes, or
+anybody that answers his description, grab him without ceremony and ask
+him questions afterwards.”
+The apartment, save in the hallway, was unlighted. By one of those
+freaks of arrangement possible only in the modern flat, I found the
+kitchen first, and was struck a smart and unexpected blow by a swinging
+door. I carried a handful of matches, and by the time I had passed
+through a butler’s pantry and a refrigerator room I was completely lost
+in the darkness. Until then the situation had been merely
+uncomfortable; suddenly it became grisly. From somewhere near came a
+long-sustained groan, followed almost instantly by the crash of
+something—glass or china—on the floor.
+I struck a fresh match, and found myself in a narrow rear hallway.
+Behind me was the door by which I must have come; with a keen desire to
+get back to the place I had started from, I opened the door and
+attempted to cross the room. I thought I had kept my sense of
+direction, but I crashed without warning into what, from the resulting
+jangle, was the dining-table, probably laid for dinner. I cursed my
+stupidity in getting into such a situation, and I cursed my nerves for
+making my hand shake when I tried to strike a match. The groan had not
+been repeated.
+I braced myself against the table and struck the match sharply against
+the sole of my shoe. It flickered faintly and went out. And then,
+without the slightest warning, another dish went off the table. It fell
+with a thousand splinterings; the very air seemed broken into crashing
+waves of sound. I stood still, braced against the table, holding the
+red end of the dying match, and listened. I had not long to wait; the
+groan came again, and I recognized it, the cry of a dog in straits. I
+breathed again.
+“Come, old fellow,” I said. “Come on, old man. Let’s have a look at
+you.”
+I could hear the thud of his tail on the floor, but he did not move. He
+only whimpered. There is something companionable in the presence of a
+dog, and I fancied this dog in trouble. Slowly I began to work my way
+around the table toward him.
+“Good boy,” I said, as he whimpered. “We’ll find the light, which ought
+to be somewhere or other around here, and then—”
+I stumbled over something, and I drew back my foot almost instantly.
+“Did I step on you, old man?” I exclaimed, and bent to pat him. I
+remember straightening suddenly and hearing the dog pad softly toward
+me around the table. I recall even that I had put the matches down and
+could not find them. Then, with a bursting horror of the room and its
+contents, of the gibbering dark around me, I turned and made for the
+door by which I had entered.
+I could not find it. I felt along the endless wainscoting, past miles
+of wall. The dog was beside me, I think, but he was part and parcel
+now, to my excited mind, with the Thing under the table. And when,
+after æons of search, I found a knob and stumbled into the reception
+hall, I was as nearly in a panic as any man could be.
+I was myself again in a second, and by the light from the hall I led
+the way back to the tragedy I had stumbled on. Bronson still sat at the
+table, his elbows propped on it, his cigarette still lighted, burning a
+hole in the cloth. Partly under the table lay Mrs. Conway face down.
+The dog stood over her and wagged his tail.
+McKnight pointed silently to a large copper ashtray, filled with ashes
+and charred bits of paper.
+“The notes, probably,” he said ruefully. “He got them after all, and
+burned them before her. It was more than she could stand. Stabbed him
+first and then herself.”
+Hotchkiss got up and took off his hat. “They are dead,” he announced
+solemnly, and took his note-book out of his hatband.
+McKnight and I did the only thing we could think of—drove Hotchkiss and
+the dog out of the room, and closed and locked the door. “It’s a matter
+for the police,” McKnight asserted. “I suppose you’ve got an officer
+tied to you somewhere, Lawrence? You usually have.”
+We left Hotchkiss in charge and went down-stairs. It was McKnight who
+first saw Johnson, leaning against a park railing across the street,
+and called him over. We told him in a few words what we had found, and
+he grinned at me cheerfully.
+“After while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakeley,” he said, “when
+you get tired of monkeying around with the blood-stain and finger-print
+specialist up-stairs, you come to me. I’ve had that fellow you want
+under surveillance for ten days!”
+CHAPTER XXX.
+FINER DETAILS
+At ten minutes before two the following day, Monday, I arrived at my
+office. I had spent the morning putting my affairs in shape, and in a
+trip to the stable. The afternoon would see me either a free man or a
+prisoner for an indefinite length of time, and, in spite of Johnson’s
+promise to produce Sullivan, I was more prepared for the latter than
+the former.
+Blobs was watching for me outside the door, and it was clear that he
+was in a state of excitement bordering on delirium. He did nothing,
+however, save to tip me a wink that meant “As man to man, I’m for you.”
+I was too much engrossed either to reprove him or return the courtesy,
+but I heard him follow me down the hall to the small room where we keep
+outgrown lawbooks, typewriter supplies and, incidentally, our wraps. I
+was wondering vaguely if I would ever hang my hat on its nail again,
+when the door closed behind me. It shut firmly, without any particular
+amount of sound, and I was left in the dark. I groped my way to it,
+irritably, to find it locked on the outside. I shook it frantically,
+and was rewarded by a sibilant whisper through the keyhole.
+“Keep quiet,” Blobs was saying huskily. “You’re in deadly peril. The
+police are waiting in your office, three of ’em. I’m goin’ to lock the
+whole bunch in and throw the key out of the window.”
+“Come back here, you imp of Satan!” I called furiously, but I could
+hear him speeding down the corridor, and the slam of the outer office
+door by which he always announced his presence. And so I stood there in
+that ridiculous cupboard, hot with the heat of a steaming September
+day, musty with the smell of old leather bindings, littered with broken
+overshoes and handleless umbrellas. I was apoplectic with rage one
+minute, and choked with laughter the next. It seemed an hour before
+Blobs came back.
+He came without haste, strutting with new dignity, and paused outside
+my prison door.
+“Well, I guess that will hold them for a while,” he remarked
+comfortably, and proceeded to turn the key. “I’ve got ’em fastened up
+like sardines in a can!” he explained, working with the lock. “Gee
+whiz! you’d ought to hear ’em!” When he got his breath after the
+shaking I gave him, he began to splutter. “How’d I know?” he demanded
+sulkily. “You nearly broke your neck gettin’ away the other time. And I
+haven’t got the old key. It’s lost.”
+“Where’s it lost?” I demanded, with another gesture toward his coat
+collar.
+“Down the elevator shaft.” There was a gleam of indignant satisfaction
+through his tears of rage and humiliation.
+And so, while he hunted the key in the debris at the bottom of the
+shaft, I quieted his prisoners with the assurance that the lock had
+slipped, and that they would be free as lords as soon as we could find
+the janitor with a pass-key. Stuart went down finally and discovered
+Blobs, with the key in his pocket, telling the engineer how he had
+tried to save me from arrest and failed. When Stuart came up he was
+almost cheerful, but Blobs did not appear again that day.
+Simultaneous with the finding of the key came Hotchkiss, and we went in
+together. I shook hands with two men who, with Hotchkiss, made a not
+very animated group. The taller one, an oldish man, lean and hard,
+announced his errand at once.
+“A Pittsburg warrant?” I inquired, unlocking my cigar drawer.
+“Yes. Allegheny County has assumed jurisdiction, the exact locality
+where the crime was committed being in doubt.” He seemed to be the
+spokesman. The other, shorter and rotund, kept an amiable silence. “We
+hope you will see the wisdom of waiving extradition,” he went on. “It
+will save time.”
+“I’ll come, of course,” I agreed. “The sooner the better. But I want
+you to give me an hour here, gentlemen. I think we can interest you.
+Have a cigar?”
+The lean man took a cigar; the rotund man took three, putting two in
+his pocket.
+“How about the catch of that door?” he inquired jovially. “Any danger
+of it going off again?” Really, considering the circumstances, they
+were remarkably cheerful. Hotchkiss, however, was not. He paced the
+floor uneasily, his hands under his coat-tails. The arrival of McKnight
+created a diversion; he carried a long package and a corkscrew, and
+shook hands with the police and opened the bottle with a single
+gesture.
+“I always want something to cheer on these occasions,” he said.
+“Where’s the water, Blakeley? Everybody ready?” Then in French he
+toasted the two detectives.
+“To your eternal discomfiture,” he said, bowing ceremoniously. “May you
+go home and never come back! If you take Monsieur Blakeley with you, I
+hope you choke.”
+The lean man nodded gravely. “Prosit,” he said. But the fat one leaned
+back and laughed consumedly.
+Hotchkiss finished a mental synopsis of his position, and put down his
+glass. “Gentlemen,” he said pompously, “within five minutes the man you
+want will be here, a murderer caught in a net of evidence so fine that
+a mosquito could not get through.”
+The detectives glanced at each other solemnly. Had they not in their
+possession a sealskin bag containing a wallet and a bit of gold chain,
+which, by putting the crime on me, would leave a gap big enough for
+Sullivan himself to crawl through?
+“Why don’t you say your little speech before Johnson brings the other
+man, Lawrence?” McKnight inquired. “They won’t believe you, but it will
+help them to understand what is coming.”
+“You understand, of course,” the lean man put in gravely, “that what
+you say may be used against you.”
+“I’ll take the risk,” I answered impatiently.
+It took some time to tell the story of my worse than useless trip to
+Pittsburg, and its sequel. They listened gravely, without interruption.
+“Mr. Hotchkiss here,” I finished, “believes that the man Sullivan, whom
+we are momentarily expecting, committed the crime. Mr. McKnight is
+inclined to implicate Mrs. Conway, who stabbed Bronson and then herself
+last night. As for myself, I am open to conviction.”
+“I hope not,” said the stout detective quizzically. And then Alison was
+announced. My impulse to go out and meet her was forestalled by the
+detectives, who rose when I did. McKnight, therefore, brought her in,
+and I met her at the door.
+“I have put you to a great deal of trouble,” I said contritely, when I
+saw her glance around the room. “I wish I had not—”
+“It is only right that I should come,” she replied, looking up at me.
+“I am the unconscious cause of most of it, I am afraid. Mrs. Dallas is
+going to wait in the outer office.”
+I presented Hotchkiss and the two detectives, who eyed her with
+interest. In her poise, her beauty, even in her gown, I fancy she
+represented a new type to them. They remained standing until she sat
+down.
+“I have brought the necklace,” she began, holding out a white-wrapped
+box, “as you asked me to.”
+I passed it, unopened, to the detectives. “The necklace from which was
+broken the fragment you found in the sealskin bag,” I explained. “Miss
+West found it on the floor of the car, near lower ten.”
+“When did you find it?” asked the lean detective, bending forward.
+“In the morning, not long before the wreck.”
+“Did you ever see it before?”
+“I am not certain,” she replied. “I have seen one very much like it.”
+Her tone was troubled. She glanced at me as if for help, but I was
+powerless.
+“Where?” The detective was watching her closely. At that moment there
+came an interruption. The door opened without ceremony, and Johnson
+ushered in a tall, blond man, a stranger to all of us: I glanced at
+Alison; she was pale, but composed and scornful. She met the
+new-comer’s eyes full, and, caught unawares, he took a hasty backward
+step.
+“Sit down, Mr. Sullivan,” McKnight beamed cordially. “Have a cigar? I
+beg your pardon, Alison, do you mind this smoke?”
+“Not at all,” she said composedly. Sullivan had had a second to sound
+his bearings.
+“No—no, thanks,” he mumbled. “If you will be good enough to explain—”
+“But that’s what you’re to do,” McKnight said cheerfully, pulling up a
+chair. “You’ve got the most attentive audience you could ask. These two
+gentlemen are detectives from Pittsburg, and we are all curious to know
+the finer details of what happened on the car Ontario two weeks ago,
+the night your father-in-law was murdered.” Sullivan gripped the arms
+of his chair. “We are not prejudiced, either. The gentlemen from
+Pittsburg are betting on Mr. Blakeley, over there. Mr. Hotchkiss, the
+gentleman by the radiator, is ready to place ten to one odds on you.
+And some of us have still other theories.”
+“Gentlemen,” Sullivan said slowly, “I give you my word of honor that I
+did not kill Simon Harrington, and that I do not know who did.”
+“Fiddlededee!” cried Hotchkiss, bustling forward. “Why, I can tell
+you—” But McKnight pushed him firmly into a chair and held him there.
+“I am ready to plead guilty to the larceny,” Sullivan went on. “I took
+Mr. Blakeley’s clothes, I admit. If I can reimburse him in any way for
+the inconvenience—”
+The stout detective was listening with his mouth open. “Do you mean to
+say,” he demanded, “that you got into Mr. Blakeley’s berth, as he
+contends, took his clothes and forged notes, and left the train before
+the wreck?”
+“Yes.”
+“The notes, then?”
+“I gave them to Bronson yesterday. Much good they did him!” bitterly.
+We were all silent for a moment. The two detectives were adjusting
+themselves with difficulty to a new point of view; Sullivan was looking
+dejectedly at the floor, his hands hanging loose between his knees. I
+was watching Alison; from where I stood, behind her, I could almost
+touch the soft hair behind her ear.
+“I have no intention of pressing any charge against you,” I said with
+forced civility, for my hands were itching to get at him, “if you will
+give us a clear account of what happened on the Ontario that night.”
+Sullivan raised his handsome, haggard head and looked around at me.
+“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he asked. “Weren’t you an uninvited
+guest at the Laurels a few days—or nights—ago? The cat, you remember,
+and the rug that slipped?”
+“I remember,” I said shortly. He glanced from me to Alison and quickly
+away.
+“The truth can’t hurt me,” he said, “but it’s devilish unpleasant.
+Alison, you know all this. You would better go out.”
+His use of her name crazed me. I stepped in front of her and stood over
+him. “You will not bring Miss West into the conversation,” I
+threatened, “and she will stay if she wishes.”
+“Oh, very well,” he said with assumed indifference. Hotchkiss just then
+escaped from Richey’s grasp and crossed the room.
+“Did you ever wear glasses?” he asked eagerly.
+“Never.” Sullivan glanced with some contempt at mine.
+“I’d better begin by going back a little,” he went on sullenly. “I
+suppose you know I was married to Ida Harrington about five years ago.
+She was a good girl, and I thought a lot of her. But her father opposed
+the marriage—he’d never liked me, and he refused to make any sort of
+settlement.
+“I had thought, of course, that there would be money, and it was a bad
+day when I found out I’d made a mistake. My sister was wild with
+disappointment. We were pretty hard up, my sister and I.”
+I was watching Alison. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, and
+she was staring out of the window at the cheerless roof below. She had
+set her lips a little, but that was all.
+“You understand, of course, that I’m not defending myself,” went on the
+sullen voice. “The day came when old Harrington put us both out of the
+house at the point of a revolver, and I threatened—I suppose you know
+that, too—I threatened to kill him.
+“My sister and I had hard times after that. We lived on the continent
+for a while. I was at Monte Carlo and she was in Italy. She met a young
+lady there, the granddaughter of a steel manufacturer and an heiress,
+and she sent for me. When I got to Rome the girl was gone. Last winter
+I was all in—social secretary to an Englishman, a wholesale grocer with
+a new title, but we had a row, and I came home. I went out to the
+Heaton boys’ ranch in Wyoming, and met Bronson there. He lent me money,
+and I’ve been doing his dirty work ever since.”
+Sullivan got up then and walked slowly forward and back as he talked,
+his eyes on the faded pattern of the office rug.
+“If you want to live in hell,” he said savagely, “put yourself in
+another man’s power. Bronson got into trouble, forging John Gilmore’s
+name to those notes, and in some way he learned that a man was bringing
+the papers back to Washington on the Flier. He even learned the number
+of his berth, and the night before the wreck, just as I was boarding
+the train, I got a telegram.”
+Hotchkiss stepped forward once more importantly. “Which read, I think:
+‘Man with papers in lower ten, car seven. Get them.’”
+Sullivan looked at the little man with sulky blue eyes.
+“It was something like that, anyhow. But it was a nasty business, and
+it made matters worse that he didn’t care that a telegram which must
+pass through a half dozen hands was more or less incriminating to me.
+“Then, to add to the unpleasantness of my position, just after we
+boarded the train—I was accompanying my sister and this young lady,
+Miss West—a woman touched me on the sleeve, and I turned to face—my
+wife!
+“That took away my last bit of nerve. I told my sister, and you can
+understand she was in a bad way, too. We knew what it meant. Ida had
+heard that I was going—”
+He stopped and glanced uneasily at Alison.
+“Go on,” she said coldly. “It is too late to shield me. The time to
+have done that was when I was your guest.”
+“Well,” he went on, his eyes turned carefully away from my face, which
+must have presented certainly anything but a pleasant sight. “Miss West
+was going to do me the honor to marry me, and—”
+“You scoundrel!” I burst forth, thrusting past Alison West’s chair.
+“You—you infernal cur!”
+One of the detectives got up and stood between us. “You must remember,
+Mr. Blakeley, that you are forcing this story from this man. These
+details are unpleasant, but important. You were going to marry this
+young lady,” he said, turning to Sullivan, “although you already had a
+wife living?”
+“It was my sister’s plan, and I was in a bad way for money. If I could
+marry, secretly, a wealthy girl and go to Europe, it was unlikely that
+Ida—that is, Mrs. Sullivan—would hear of it.
+“So it was more than a shock to see my wife on the train, and to
+realize from her face that she knew what was going on. I don’t know
+yet, unless some of the servants—well, never mind that.
+“It meant that the whole thing had gone up. Old Harrington had carried
+a gun for me for years, and the same train wouldn’t hold both of us. Of
+course, I thought that he was in the coach just behind ours.”
+Hotchkiss was leaning forward now, his eyes narrowed, his thin lips
+drawn to a line.
+“Are you left-handed, Mr. Sullivan?” he asked.
+Sullivan stopped in surprise.
+“No,” he said gruffly. “Can’t do anything with my left hand.” Hotchkiss
+subsided, crestfallen but alert. “I tore up that cursed telegram, but I
+was afraid to throw the scraps away. Then I looked around for lower
+ten. It was almost exactly across—my berth was lower seven, and it was,
+of course, a bit of exceptional luck for me that the car was number
+seven.”
+“Did you tell your sister of the telegram from Bronson?” I asked.
+“No. It would do no good, and she was in a bad way without that to make
+her worse.”
+“Your sister was killed, think.” The shorter detective took a small
+package from his pocket and held it in his hand, snapping the rubber
+band which held it.
+“Yes, she was killed,” Sullivan said soberly. “What I say now can do
+her no harm.”
+He stopped to push back the heavy hair which dropped over his forehead,
+and went on more connectedly.
+“It was late, after midnight, and we went at once to our berths. I
+undressed, and then I lay there for an hour, wondering how I was going
+to get the notes. Some one in lower nine was restless and wide awake,
+but finally became quiet.
+“The man in ten was sleeping heavily. I could hear his breathing, and
+it seemed to be only a question of getting across and behind the
+curtains of his berth without being seen. After that, it was a mere
+matter of quiet searching.
+“The car became very still. I was about to try for the other berth,
+when some one brushed softly past, and I lay back again.
+“Finally, however, when things had been quiet for a time, I got up, and
+after looking along the aisle, I slipped behind the curtains of lower
+ten. You understand, Mr. Blakeley, that I thought you were in lower
+ten, with the notes.”
+I nodded curtly.
+“I’m not trying to defend myself,” he went on. “I was ready to steal
+the notes—I had to. But murder!”
+He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
+“Well, I slipped across and behind the curtains. It was very still. The
+man in ten didn’t move, although my heart was thumping until I thought
+he would hear it.
+“I felt around cautiously. It was perfectly dark, and I came across a
+bit of chain, about as long as my finger. It seemed a queer thing to
+find there, and it was sticky, too.”
+He shuddered, and I could see Alison’s hands clenching and unclenching
+with the strain.
+“All at once it struck me that the man was strangely silent, and I
+think I lost my nerve. Anyhow, I drew the curtains open a little, and
+let the light fall on my hands. They were red, blood-red.”
+He leaned one hand on the back of the chair, and was silent for a
+moment, as though he lived over again the awful events of that more
+than awful night.
+The stout detective had let his cigar go out; he was still drawing at
+it nervously. Richey had picked up a paper-weight and was tossing it
+from hand to hand; when it slipped and fell to the floor, a startled
+shudder passed through the room.
+“There was something glittering in there,” Sullivan resumed, “and on
+impulse I picked it up. Then I dropped the curtains and stumbled back
+to my own berth.”
+“Where you wiped your hands on the bed-clothing and stuck the dirk into
+the pillow.” Hotchkiss was seeing his carefully built structure
+crumbling to pieces, and he looked chagrined.
+“I suppose I did—I’m not very clear about what happened then. But when
+I rallied a little I saw a Russia leather wallet lying in the aisle
+almost at my feet, and, like a fool, I stuck it, with the bit of chain,
+into my bag.
+“I sat there, shivering, for what seemed hours. It was still perfectly
+quiet, except for some one snoring. I thought that would drive me
+crazy.
+“The more I thought of it the worse things looked. The telegram was the
+first thing against me—it would put the police on my track at once,
+when it was discovered that the man in lower ten had been killed.
+“Then I remembered the notes, and I took out the wallet and opened it.”
+He stopped for a minute, as if the recalling of the next occurrence was
+almost beyond him.
+“I took out the wallet,” he said simply, “and opening it, held it to
+the light. In gilt letters was the name, Simon Harrington.”
+The detectives were leaning forward now, their eyes on his face.
+“Things seemed to whirl around for a while. I sat there almost
+paralyzed, wondering what this new development meant for me.
+“My wife, I knew, would swear I had killed her father; nobody would be
+likely to believe the truth.
+“Do you believe me now?” He rooked around at us defiantly. “I am
+telling the absolute truth, and not one of you believes me!
+“After a bit the man in lower nine got up and walked along the aisle
+toward the smoking compartment. I heard him go, and, leaning from my
+berth, watched him out of sight.
+“It was then I got the idea of changing berths with him, getting into
+his clothes, and leaving the train. I give you my word I had no idea of
+throwing suspicion on him.”
+Alison looked scornfully incredulous, but I felt that the man was
+telling the truth.
+“I changed the numbers of the berths, and it worked well. I got into
+the other man’s berth, and he came back to mine. The rest was easy. I
+dressed in his clothes—luckily, they fitted—and jumped the train not
+far from Baltimore, just before the wreck.”
+“There is something else you must clear up,” I said. “Why did you try
+to telephone me from M——, and why did you change your mind about the
+message?”
+He looked astounded.
+“You knew I was at M——?” he stammered.
+“Yes, we traced you. What about the message?”
+“Well, it was this way: of course, I did not know your name, Mr.
+Blakeley. The telegram said, ‘Man with papers in lower ten, car seven,”
+and after I had made what I considered my escape, I began to think I
+had left the man in my berth in a bad way.
+“He would probably be accused of the crime. So, although when the wreck
+occurred I supposed every one connected with the affair had been
+killed, there was a chance that you had survived. I’ve not been of much
+account, but I didn’t want a man to swing because I’d left him in my
+place. Besides, I began to have a theory of my own.
+“As we entered the car a tall, dark woman passed us, with a glass of
+water in her hand, and I vaguely remembered her. She was amazingly like
+Blanche Conway.
+“If she, too, thought the man with the notes was in lower ten, it
+explained a lot, including that piece of a woman’s necklace. She was a
+fury, Blanche Conway, capable of anything.”
+“Then why did you countermand that message?” I asked curiously.
+“When I got to the Carter house, and got to bed—I had sprained my ankle
+in the jump—I went through the alligator bag I had taken from lower
+nine. When I found your name, I sent the first message. Then, soon
+after, I came across the notes. It seemed too good to be true, and I
+was crazy for fear the message had gone.
+“At first I was going to send them to Bronson; then I began to see what
+the possession of the notes meant to me. It meant power over Bronson,
+money, influence, everything. He was a devil, that man.”
+“Well, he’s at home now,” said McKnight, and we were glad to laugh and
+relieve the tension.
+Alison put her hand over her eyes, as if to shut out the sight of the
+man she had so nearly married, and I furtively touched one of the soft
+little curls that nestled at the back of her neck.
+“When I was able to walk,” went on the sullen voice, “I came at once to
+Washington. I tried to sell the notes to Bronson, but he was almost at
+the end of his rope. Not even my threat to send them back to you, Mr.
+Blakeley, could make him meet my figure. He didn’t have the money.”
+McKnight was triumphant.
+“I think you gentlemen will see reason in my theory now,” he said.
+“Mrs. Conway wanted the notes to force a legal marriage, I suppose?”
+“Yes.”
+The detective with the small package carefully rolled off the rubber
+band, and unwrapped it. I held my breath as he took out, first, the
+Russia leather wallet.
+“These things, Mr. Blakeley, we found in the seal-skin bag Mr. Sullivan
+says he left you. This wallet, Mr. Sullivan—is this the one you found
+on the floor of the car?”
+Sullivan opened it, and, glancing at the name inside, “Simon
+Harrington,” nodded affirmatively.
+“And this,” went on the detective—“this is a piece of gold chain?”
+“It seems to be,” said Sullivan, recoiling at the blood-stained end.
+“This, I believe, is the dagger.” He held it up, and Alison gave a
+faint cry of astonishment and dismay. Sullivan’s face grew ghastly, and
+he sat down weakly on the nearest chair.
+The detective looked at him shrewdly, then at Alison’s agitated face.
+“Where have you seen this dagger before, young lady?” he asked, kindly
+enough.
+“Oh, don’t ask me!” she gasped breathlessly, her eyes turned on
+Sullivan. “It’s—it’s too terrible!”
+“Tell him,” I advised, leaning over to her. “It will be found out
+later, anyhow.”
+“Ask him,” she said, nodding toward Sullivan. The detective unwrapped
+the small box Alison had brought, disclosing the trampled necklace and
+broken chain. With clumsy fingers he spread it on the table and fitted
+into place the bit of chain. There could be no doubt that it belonged
+there.
+“Where did you find that chain?” Sullivan asked hoarsely, looking for
+the first time at Alison.
+“On the floor, near the murdered man’s berth.”
+“Now, Mr. Sullivan,” said the detective civilly, “I believe you can
+tell us, in the light of these two exhibits, who really did murder
+Simon Harrington.”
+Sullivan looked again at the dagger, a sharp little bit of steel with a
+Florentine handle. Then he picked up the locket and pressed a hidden
+spring under one of the cameos. Inside, very neatly engraved, was the
+name and a date.
+“Gentlemen,” he said, his face ghastly, “it is of no use for me to
+attempt a denial. The dagger and necklace belonged to my sister, Alice
+Curtis!”
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+AND ONLY ONE ARM
+Hotchkiss was the first to break the tension.
+“Mr. Sullivan,” he asked suddenly, “was your sister left-handed?”
+“Yes.”
+Hotchkiss put away his note-book and looked around with an air of
+triumphant vindication. It gave us a chance to smile and look relieved.
+After all, Mrs. Curtis was dead. It was the happiest solution of the
+unhappy affair. McKnight brought Sullivan some whisky, and he braced up
+a little.
+“I learned through the papers that my wife was in a Baltimore hospital,
+and yesterday I ventured there to see her. I felt if she would help me
+to keep straight, that now, with her father and my sister both dead, we
+might be happy together.
+“I understand now what puzzled me then. It seemed that my sister went
+into the next car and tried to make my wife promise not to interfere.
+But Ida—Mrs. Sullivan—was firm, of course. She said her father had
+papers, certificates and so on, that would stop the marriage at once.
+“She said, also, that her father was in our car, and that there would
+be the mischief to pay in the morning. It was probably when my sister
+tried to get the papers that he awakened, and she had to do—what she
+did.”
+It was over. Save for a technicality or two, I was a free man. Alison
+rose quietly and prepared to go; the men stood to let her pass, save
+Sullivan who sat crouched in his chair, his face buried in his hands.
+Hotchkiss, who had been tapping the desk with his pencil, looked up
+abruptly and pointed the pencil at me.
+“If all this is true, and I believe it is,—then who was in the house
+next door, Blakeley, the night you and Mr. Johnson searched? You
+remember, you said it was a woman’s hand at the trap door.”
+I glanced hastily at Johnson, whose face was impassive. He had his hand
+on the knob of the door and he opened it before he spoke.
+“There were a number of scratches on Mrs. Conway’s right hand,” he
+observed to the room in general. “Her wrist was bandaged and badly
+bruised.”
+He went out then, but he turned as he closed the door and threw at me a
+glance of half-amused, half-contemptuous tolerance.
+McKnight saw Alison, with Mrs. Dallas, to their carriage, and came back
+again. The gathering in the office was breaking up. Sullivan, looking
+worn and old, was standing by the window, staring at the broken
+necklace in his hand. When he saw me watching him, he put it on the
+desk and picked up his hat.
+“If I can not do anything more—” he hesitated.
+“I think you have done about enough,” I replied grimly, and he went
+out.
+I believe that Richey and Hotchkiss led me somewhere to dinner, and
+that, for fear I would be lonely without him, they sent for Johnson.
+And I recall a spirited discussion in which Hotchkiss told the
+detective that he could manage certain cases, but that he lacked
+induction. Richey and I were mainly silent. My thoughts would slip
+ahead to that hour, later in the evening, when I should see Alison
+again.
+I dressed in savage haste finally, and was so particular about my tie
+that Mrs. Klopton gave up in despair.
+“I wish, until your arm is better, that you would buy the kind that
+hooks on,” she protested, almost tearfully. “I’m sure they look very
+nice, Mr. Lawrence. My late husband always—”
+“That’s a lover’s knot you’ve tied this time,” I snarled, and, jerking
+open the bow knot she had so painfully executed, looked out the window
+for Johnson—until I recalled that he no longer belonged in my
+perspective. I ended by driving frantically to the club and getting
+George to do it.
+I was late, of course. The drawing-room and library at the Dallas home
+were empty. I could hear billiard balls rolling somewhere, and I turned
+the other way. I found Alison at last on the balcony, sitting much as
+she had that night on the beach,—her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed
+unseeingly on the trees and lights of the square across. She was even
+whistling a little, softly. But this time the plaintiveness was gone.
+It was a tender little tune. She did not move, as I stood beside her,
+looking down. And now, when the moment had come, all the thousand and
+one things I had been waiting to say forsook me, precipitately beat a
+retreat, and left me unsupported. The arc-moon sent little fugitive
+lights over her hair, her eyes, her gown.
+[Illustration]
+“Don’t—do that,” I said unsteadily. “You—you know what I want to do
+when you whistle!”
+She glanced up at me, and she did not stop. She _did not stop!_ She
+went on whistling softly, a bit tremulously. And straightway I forgot
+the street, the chance of passers-by, the voices in the house behind
+us. “The world doesn’t hold any one but you,” I said reverently. “It is
+our world, sweetheart. I love you.”
+And I kissed her.
+A boy was whistling on the pavement below. I let her go reluctantly and
+sat back where I could see her.
+“I haven’t done this the way I intended to at all,” I confessed. “In
+books they get things all settled, and then kiss the lady.”
+“Settled?” she inquired.
+“Oh, about getting married and that sort of thing,” I explained with
+elaborate carelessness. “We—we could go down to Bermuda—or—or Jamaica,
+say in December.”
+She drew her hand away and faced me squarely.
+“I believe you are afraid!” she declared. “I refuse to marry you unless
+you propose properly. Everybody does it. And it is a woman’s privilege:
+she wants to have that to look back to.”
+“Very well,” I consented with an exaggerated sigh. “If you will promise
+not to think I look like an idiot, I shall do it, knee and all.”
+[Illustration]
+I had to pass her to close the door behind us, but when I kissed her
+again she protested that we were not really engaged.
+I turned to look down at her. “It is a terrible thing,” I said
+exultantly, “to love a girl the way I love you, and to have only one
+arm!” Then I closed the door.
+From across the street there came a sharp crescendo whistle, and a
+vaguely familiar figure separated itself from the park railing.
+“Say,” he called, in a hoarse whisper, “shall I throw the key down the
+elevator shaft?”",The Man in Lower Ten,Mary Roberts Rinehart,195,['Henry Pinckney Sullivan']
+"CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
+By Fyodor Dostoevsky
+Translated By Constance Garnett
+TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
+A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the English reader to
+understand his work.
+Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were very hard-working
+and deeply religious people, but so poor that they lived with their five
+children in only two rooms. The father and mother spent their evenings
+in reading aloud to their children, generally from books of a serious
+character.
+Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky came out third in the
+final examination of the Petersburg school of Engineering. There he had
+already begun his first work, “Poor Folk.”
+This story was published by the poet Nekrassov in his review and
+was received with acclamations. The shy, unknown youth found himself
+instantly something of a celebrity. A brilliant and successful career
+seemed to open before him, but those hopes were soon dashed. In 1849 he
+was arrested.
+Though neither by temperament nor conviction a revolutionist, Dostoevsky
+was one of a little group of young men who met together to read Fourier
+and Proudhon. He was accused of “taking part in conversations against
+the censorship, of reading a letter from Byelinsky to Gogol, and of
+knowing of the intention to set up a printing press.” Under Nicholas
+I. (that “stern and just man,” as Maurice Baring calls him) this was
+enough, and he was condemned to death. After eight months’ imprisonment
+he was with twenty-one others taken out to the Semyonovsky Square to
+be shot. Writing to his brother Mihail, Dostoevsky says: “They snapped
+words over our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts worn by
+persons condemned to death. Thereupon we were bound in threes to stakes,
+to suffer execution. Being the third in the row, I concluded I had only
+a few minutes of life before me. I thought of you and your dear ones and
+I contrived to kiss Plestcheiev and Dourov, who were next to me, and to
+bid them farewell. Suddenly the troops beat a tattoo, we were unbound,
+brought back upon the scaffold, and informed that his Majesty had spared
+us our lives.” The sentence was commuted to hard labour.
+One of the prisoners, Grigoryev, went mad as soon as he was untied, and
+never regained his sanity.
+The intense suffering of this experience left a lasting stamp on
+Dostoevsky’s mind. Though his religious temper led him in the end to
+accept every suffering with resignation and to regard it as a blessing
+in his own case, he constantly recurs to the subject in his writings.
+He describes the awful agony of the condemned man and insists on the
+cruelty of inflicting such torture. Then followed four years of penal
+servitude, spent in the company of common criminals in Siberia, where
+he began the “Dead House,” and some years of service in a disciplinary
+battalion.
+He had shown signs of some obscure nervous disease before his arrest
+and this now developed into violent attacks of epilepsy, from which he
+suffered for the rest of his life. The fits occurred three or four times
+a year and were more frequent in periods of great strain. In 1859 he was
+allowed to return to Russia. He started a journal--“Vremya,” which was
+forbidden by the Censorship through a misunderstanding. In 1864 he lost
+his first wife and his brother Mihail. He was in terrible poverty, yet
+he took upon himself the payment of his brother’s debts. He started
+another journal--“The Epoch,” which within a few months was also
+prohibited. He was weighed down by debt, his brother’s family was
+dependent on him, he was forced to write at heart-breaking speed, and is
+said never to have corrected his work. The later years of his life were
+much softened by the tenderness and devotion of his second wife.
+In June 1880 he made his famous speech at the unveiling of the
+monument to Pushkin in Moscow and he was received with extraordinary
+demonstrations of love and honour.
+A few months later Dostoevsky died. He was followed to the grave by a
+vast multitude of mourners, who “gave the hapless man the funeral of a
+king.” He is still probably the most widely read writer in Russia.
+In the words of a Russian critic, who seeks to explain the feeling
+inspired by Dostoevsky: “He was one of ourselves, a man of our blood and
+our bone, but one who has suffered and has seen so much more deeply than
+we have his insight impresses us as wisdom... that wisdom of the heart
+which we seek that we may learn from it how to live. All his other
+gifts came to him from nature, this he won for himself and through it he
+became great.”
+CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
+PART I
+CHAPTER I
+On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of
+the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though
+in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
+He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His
+garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more
+like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret,
+dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time
+he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which
+invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a
+sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was
+hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
+This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but
+for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition,
+verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in
+himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not
+only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the
+anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had
+given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all
+desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror
+for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her
+trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats
+and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to
+lie--no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and
+slip out unseen.
+This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely
+aware of his fears.
+“I want to attempt a thing _like that_ and am frightened by these
+trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm... yes, all is in a man’s
+hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would
+be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new
+step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking
+too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is
+that I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this
+last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the
+Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of _that_? Is
+_that_ serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse
+myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything.”
+The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle
+and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that
+special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out
+of town in summer--all worked painfully upon the young man’s already
+overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which
+are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men
+whom he met continually, although it was a working day, completed
+the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the profoundest
+disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man’s refined face. He was,
+by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim,
+well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank
+into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness
+of mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not caring
+to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the
+habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these
+moments he would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a
+tangle and that he was very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted
+food.
+He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would
+have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter
+of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have
+created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number
+of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading
+and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the
+heart of Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the streets
+that no figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was
+such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man’s heart, that,
+in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least
+of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with
+acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked
+meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown
+reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy
+dray horse, suddenly shouted at him as he drove past: “Hey there, German
+hatter” bawling at the top of his voice and pointing at him--the young
+man stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall
+round hat from Zimmerman’s, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all
+torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most unseemly
+fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to terror
+had overtaken him.
+“I knew it,” he muttered in confusion, “I thought so! That’s the worst
+of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail might
+spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looks absurd
+and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any
+sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears such
+a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered.... What
+matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them
+a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as
+possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such
+trifles that always ruin everything....”
+He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate
+of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted
+them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no
+faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous
+but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon
+them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at
+his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard
+this “hideous” dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he
+still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a
+“rehearsal” of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more
+and more violent.
+With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house
+which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the
+street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by
+working people of all kinds--tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of
+sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc.
+There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the
+two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on
+the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and
+at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the
+staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar
+with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings:
+in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.
+“If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that
+I were really going to do it?” he could not help asking himself as he
+reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters
+who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the
+flat had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service, and his
+family. This German was moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this
+staircase would be untenanted except by the old woman. “That’s a good
+thing anyway,” he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old
+woman’s flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of
+tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells
+that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now
+its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something and to bring it
+clearly before him.... He started, his nerves were terribly overstrained
+by now. In a little while, the door was opened a tiny crack: the old
+woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack, and
+nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness.
+But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and
+opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which
+was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing
+him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive,
+withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp
+little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared
+with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck,
+which looked like a hen’s leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag,
+and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy
+fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every
+instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar
+expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.
+“Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago,” the young man made
+haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more
+polite.
+“I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,” the
+old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face.
+“And here... I am again on the same errand,” Raskolnikov continued, a
+little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman’s mistrust. “Perhaps
+she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other
+time,” he thought with an uneasy feeling.
+The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side,
+and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass
+in front of her:
+“Step in, my good sir.”
+The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on
+the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly
+lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.
+“So the sun will shine like this _then_ too!” flashed as it were by
+chance through Raskolnikov’s mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned
+everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and
+remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room. The
+furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with
+a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a
+dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows,
+chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow
+frames, representing German damsels with birds in their hands--that was
+all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon. Everything
+was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished;
+everything shone.
+“Lizaveta’s work,” thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust
+to be seen in the whole flat.
+“It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such
+cleanliness,” Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance
+at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in
+which stood the old woman’s bed and chest of drawers and into which he
+had never looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.
+“What do you want?” the old woman said severely, coming into the room
+and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight in
+the face.
+“I’ve brought something to pawn here,” and he drew out of his pocket
+an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a
+globe; the chain was of steel.
+“But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day
+before yesterday.”
+“I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little.”
+“But that’s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell
+your pledge at once.”
+“How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?”
+“You come with such trifles, my good sir, it’s scarcely worth anything.
+I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it
+quite new at a jeweler’s for a rouble and a half.”
+“Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father’s. I
+shall be getting some money soon.”
+“A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!”
+“A rouble and a half!” cried the young man.
+“Please yourself”--and the old woman handed him back the watch. The
+young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going
+away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere
+else he could go, and that he had had another object also in coming.
+“Hand it over,” he said roughly.
+The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind
+the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in
+the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear
+her unlocking the chest of drawers.
+“It must be the top drawer,” he reflected. “So she carries the keys in
+a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring.... And there’s
+one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches;
+that can’t be the key of the chest of drawers... then there must be some
+other chest or strong-box... that’s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always
+have keys like that... but how degrading it all is.”
+The old woman came back.
+“Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take
+fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But
+for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks
+on the same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks
+altogether. So I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the
+watch. Here it is.”
+“What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!”
+“Just so.”
+The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the
+old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still
+something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know
+what.
+“I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona
+Ivanovna--a valuable thing--silver--a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it
+back from a friend...” he broke off in confusion.
+“Well, we will talk about it then, sir.”
+“Good-bye--are you always at home alone, your sister is not here with
+you?” He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into the
+passage.
+“What business is she of yours, my good sir?”
+“Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick.... Good-day,
+Alyona Ivanovna.”
+Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more
+and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two
+or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was
+in the street he cried out, “Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and
+can I, can I possibly.... No, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added
+resolutely. “And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head?
+What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all,
+disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!--and for a whole month I’ve been....”
+But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling
+of intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart
+while he was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a
+pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to
+do with himself to escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the
+pavement like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by, and jostling
+against them, and only came to his senses when he was in the next
+street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern
+which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement.
+At that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and
+supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to
+think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had
+never been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented by a
+burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold beer, and attributed his
+sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat down at a sticky little
+table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer, and eagerly drank
+off the first glassful. At once he felt easier; and his thoughts became
+clear.
+“All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there is nothing in it
+all to worry about! It’s simply physical derangement. Just a glass of
+beer, a piece of dry bread--and in one moment the brain is stronger,
+the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all
+is!”
+But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking cheerful
+as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed
+round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that
+moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also
+not normal.
+There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken
+men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men and
+a girl with a concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure
+left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons still in the tavern
+were a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely so,
+sitting before a pot of beer, and his companion, a huge, stout man with
+a grey beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk: and had
+dropped asleep on the bench; every now and then, he began as though in
+his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the upper
+part of his body bounding about on the bench, while he hummed some
+meaningless refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:
+“His wife a year he fondly loved
+His wife a--a year he--fondly loved.”
+Or suddenly waking up again:
+“Walking along the crowded row
+He met the one he used to know.”
+But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with
+positive hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was
+another man in the room who looked somewhat like a retired government
+clerk. He was sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and
+looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in some agitation.
+CHAPTER II
+Raskolnikov was not used to crowds, and, as we said before, he avoided
+society of every sort, more especially of late. But now all at once he
+felt a desire to be with other people. Something new seemed to be taking
+place within him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He
+was so weary after a whole month of concentrated wretchedness and gloomy
+excitement that he longed to rest, if only for a moment, in some other
+world, whatever it might be; and, in spite of the filthiness of the
+surroundings, he was glad now to stay in the tavern.
+The master of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently
+came down some steps into the main room, his jaunty, tarred boots with
+red turn-over tops coming into view each time before the rest of his
+person. He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat,
+with no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared with oil like an
+iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen, and there was
+another boy somewhat younger who handed whatever was wanted. On the
+counter lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of dried black bread, and
+some fish, chopped up small, all smelling very bad. It was insufferably
+close, and so heavy with the fumes of spirits that five minutes in such
+an atmosphere might well make a man drunk.
+There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the
+first moment, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression made on
+Raskolnikov by the person sitting a little distance from him, who looked
+like a retired clerk. The young man often recalled this impression
+afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked repeatedly
+at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was staring
+persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into conversation. At
+the other persons in the room, including the tavern-keeper, the clerk
+looked as though he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing
+a shade of condescending contempt for them as persons of station and
+culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless for him to
+converse. He was a man over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height,
+and stoutly built. His face, bloated from continual drinking, was of
+a yellow, even greenish, tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen
+reddish eyes gleamed like little chinks. But there was something very
+strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense
+feeling--perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the
+same time there was a gleam of something like madness. He was wearing an
+old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing
+except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this
+last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered with spots
+and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a clerk, he wore
+no beard, nor moustache, but had been so long unshaven that his chin
+looked like a stiff greyish brush. And there was something respectable
+and like an official about his manner too. But he was restless; he
+ruffled up his hair and from time to time let his head drop into his
+hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the stained and sticky
+table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov, and said loudly and
+resolutely:
+“May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation?
+Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command respect, my
+experience admonishes me that you are a man of education and not
+accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when in
+conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular
+counsellor in rank. Marmeladov--such is my name; titular counsellor. I
+make bold to inquire--have you been in the service?”
+“No, I am studying,” answered the young man, somewhat surprised at
+the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly
+addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for
+company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his
+habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached
+or attempted to approach him.
+“A student then, or formerly a student,” cried the clerk. “Just what
+I thought! I’m a man of experience, immense experience, sir,” and he
+tapped his forehead with his fingers in self-approval. “You’ve been a
+student or have attended some learned institution!... But allow me....”
+He got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down beside
+the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk, but spoke
+fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the thread of his
+sentences and drawling his words. He pounced upon Raskolnikov as
+greedily as though he too had not spoken to a soul for a month.
+“Honoured sir,” he began almost with solemnity, “poverty is not a vice,
+that’s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a virtue,
+and that that’s even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a
+vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but
+in beggary--never--no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human
+society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as
+humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary
+I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. Hence the pot-house!
+Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my wife a beating, and
+my wife is a very different matter from me! Do you understand? Allow me
+to ask you another question out of simple curiosity: have you ever spent
+a night on a hay barge, on the Neva?”
+“No, I have not happened to,” answered Raskolnikov. “What do you mean?”
+“Well, I’ve just come from one and it’s the fifth night I’ve slept
+so....” He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of hay were in
+fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his hair. It seemed quite
+probable that he had not undressed or washed for the last five days.
+His hands, particularly, were filthy. They were fat and red, with black
+nails.
+His conversation seemed to excite a general though languid interest. The
+boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down from the
+upper room, apparently on purpose to listen to the “funny fellow”
+and sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with dignity.
+Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had most
+likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from the habit of
+frequently entering into conversation with strangers of all sorts in
+the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity in some drunkards, and
+especially in those who are looked after sharply and kept in order
+at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers they try to justify
+themselves and even if possible obtain consideration.
+“Funny fellow!” pronounced the innkeeper. “And why don’t you work, why
+aren’t you at your duty, if you are in the service?”
+“Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir,” Marmeladov went on, addressing
+himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as though it had been he who put
+that question to him. “Why am I not at my duty? Does not my heart ache
+to think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr. Lebeziatnikov
+beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn’t I suffer?
+Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you... hm... well, to
+petition hopelessly for a loan?”
+“Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?”
+“Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you
+will get nothing by it. You know, for instance, beforehand with positive
+certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will
+on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he?
+For he knows of course that I shan’t pay it back. From compassion? But
+Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day
+that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and that that’s
+what is done now in England, where there is political economy. Why, I
+ask you, should he give it to me? And yet though I know beforehand that
+he won’t, I set off to him and...”
+“Why do you go?” put in Raskolnikov.
+“Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man must
+have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must
+go somewhere! When my own daughter first went out with a yellow ticket,
+then I had to go... (for my daughter has a yellow passport),” he added
+in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness at the young man.
+“No matter, sir, no matter!” he went on hurriedly and with apparent
+composure when both the boys at the counter guffawed and even the
+innkeeper smiled--“No matter, I am not confounded by the wagging of
+their heads; for everyone knows everything about it already, and all
+that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not with contempt, but
+with humility. So be it! So be it! ‘Behold the man!’ Excuse me, young
+man, can you.... No, to put it more strongly and more distinctly; not
+_can_ you but _dare_ you, looking upon me, assert that I am not a pig?”
+The young man did not answer a word.
+“Well,” the orator began again stolidly and with even increased dignity,
+after waiting for the laughter in the room to subside. “Well, so be
+it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I have the semblance of a beast, but
+Katerina Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education and an officer’s
+daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a
+noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And yet... oh,
+if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man
+ought to have at least one place where people feel for him! But Katerina
+Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is unjust.... And yet, although
+I realise that when she pulls my hair she only does it out of pity--for
+I repeat without being ashamed, she pulls my hair, young man,” he
+declared with redoubled dignity, hearing the sniggering again--“but, my
+God, if she would but once.... But no, no! It’s all in vain and it’s no
+use talking! No use talking! For more than once, my wish did come true
+and more than once she has felt for me but... such is my fate and I am a
+beast by nature!”
+“Rather!” assented the innkeeper yawning. Marmeladov struck his fist
+resolutely on the table.
+“Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very
+stockings for drink? Not her shoes--that would be more or less in the
+order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink!
+Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own
+property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this
+winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We have three
+little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from morning till
+night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for she’s
+been used to cleanliness from a child. But her chest is weak and she has
+a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don’t feel it?
+And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try
+to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer
+twice as much!” And as though in despair he laid his head down on the
+table.
+“Young man,” he went on, raising his head again, “in your face I seem to
+read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why
+I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I
+do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners,
+who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a man
+of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in a
+high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving she
+danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for
+which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit.
+The medal... well, the medal of course was sold--long ago, hm... but the
+certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed
+it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on bad terms
+with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell someone or other of her past
+honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for
+it, I don’t blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of
+the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady
+of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has
+nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t allow herself to be treated
+with disrespect. That’s why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s
+rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to
+her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was
+a widow when I married her, with three children, one smaller than the
+other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and
+ran away with him from her father’s house. She was exceedingly fond of
+her husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble and with that he
+died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him back, of
+which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of
+him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I am glad
+that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having
+once been happy.... And she was left at his death with three children in
+a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she
+was left in such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups
+and downs of all sort, I don’t feel equal to describing it even. Her
+relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively
+proud.... And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time a
+widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered
+her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can
+judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education
+and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my
+wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she
+married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you
+understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No,
+that you don’t understand yet.... And for a whole year, I performed
+my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this” (he
+tapped the jug with his finger), “for I have feelings. But even so, I
+could not please her; and then I lost my place too, and that through no
+fault of mine but through changes in the office; and then I did touch
+it!... It will be a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at
+last after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent
+capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained a
+situation.... I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you understand? This
+time it was through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had come
+out.... We have now part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel’s;
+and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say.
+There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and
+disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes... And meanwhile my daughter by
+my first wife has grown up; and what my daughter has had to put up with
+from her step-mother whilst she was growing up, I won’t speak of. For,
+though Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous feelings, she is a spirited
+lady, irritable and short-tempered.... Yes. But it’s no use going over
+that! Sonia, as you may well fancy, has had no education. I did make an
+effort four years ago to give her a course of geography and universal
+history, but as I was not very well up in those subjects myself and we
+had no suitable books, and what books we had... hm, anyway we have not
+even those now, so all our instruction came to an end. We stopped at
+Cyrus of Persia. Since she has attained years of maturity, she has read
+other books of romantic tendency and of late she had read with great
+interest a book she got through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, Lewes’ Physiology--do
+you know it?--and even recounted extracts from it to us: and that’s the
+whole of her education. And now may I venture to address you, honoured
+sir, on my own account with a private question. Do you suppose that
+a respectable poor girl can earn much by honest work? Not fifteen
+farthings a day can she earn, if she is respectable and has no special
+talent and that without putting her work down for an instant! And what’s
+more, Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the civil counsellor--have you heard of
+him?--has not to this day paid her for the half-dozen linen shirts she
+made him and drove her roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on the
+pretext that the shirt collars were not made like the pattern and were
+put in askew. And there are the little ones hungry.... And Katerina
+Ivanovna walking up and down and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed
+red, as they always are in that disease: ‘Here you live with us,’ says
+she, ‘you eat and drink and are kept warm and you do nothing to help.’
+And much she gets to eat and drink when there is not a crust for the
+little ones for three days! I was lying at the time... well, what of
+it! I was lying drunk and I heard my Sonia speaking (she is a gentle
+creature with a soft little voice... fair hair and such a pale, thin
+little face). She said: ‘Katerina Ivanovna, am I really to do a thing
+like that?’ And Darya Frantsovna, a woman of evil character and very
+well known to the police, had two or three times tried to get at her
+through the landlady. ‘And why not?’ said Katerina Ivanovna with a jeer,
+‘you are something mighty precious to be so careful of!’ But don’t blame
+her, don’t blame her, honoured sir, don’t blame her! She was not herself
+when she spoke, but driven to distraction by her illness and the crying
+of the hungry children; and it was said more to wound her than anything
+else.... For that’s Katerina Ivanovna’s character, and when children
+cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them at once. At six o’clock
+I saw Sonia get up, put on her kerchief and her cape, and go out of the
+room and about nine o’clock she came back. She walked straight up to
+Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty roubles on the table before her
+in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not even look at her, she
+simply picked up our big green _drap de dames_ shawl (we have a shawl,
+made of _drap de dames_), put it over her head and face and lay down
+on the bed with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and her
+body kept shuddering.... And I went on lying there, just as before....
+And then I saw, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna, in the same silence
+go up to Sonia’s little bed; she was on her knees all the evening
+kissing Sonia’s feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell
+asleep in each other’s arms... together, together... yes... and I... lay
+drunk.”
+Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then he
+hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat.
+“Since then, sir,” he went on after a brief pause--“Since then, owing
+to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by
+evil-intentioned persons--in all which Darya Frantsovna took a
+leading part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of
+respect--since then my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take
+a yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with
+us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not hear of it (though
+she had backed up Darya Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too...
+hm.... All the trouble between him and Katerina Ivanovna was on Sonia’s
+account. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and then all of
+a sudden he stood on his dignity: ‘how,’ said he, ‘can a highly educated
+man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like that?’ And Katerina
+Ivanovna would not let it pass, she stood up for her... and so that’s
+how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she
+comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can.... She has a room
+at the Kapernaumovs’ the tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov is
+a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft
+palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one
+room, but Sonia has her own, partitioned off.... Hm... yes... very poor
+people and all with cleft palates... yes. Then I got up in the morning,
+and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his
+excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch. His excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you
+know him? No? Well, then, it’s a man of God you don’t know. He is wax...
+wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth!... His eyes were
+dim when he heard my story. ‘Marmeladov, once already you have
+deceived my expectations... I’ll take you once more on my own
+responsibility’--that’s what he said, ‘remember,’ he said, ‘and now you
+can go.’ I kissed the dust at his feet--in thought only, for in reality
+he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of
+modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when I
+announced that I’d been taken back into the service and should receive a
+salary, heavens, what a to-do there was!...”
+Marmeladov stopped again in violent excitement. At that moment a whole
+party of revellers already drunk came in from the street, and the sounds
+of a hired concertina and the cracked piping voice of a child of seven
+singing “The Hamlet” were heard in the entry. The room was filled with
+noise. The tavern-keeper and the boys were busy with the new-comers.
+Marmeladov paying no attention to the new arrivals continued his story.
+He appeared by now to be extremely weak, but as he became more and more
+drunk, he became more and more talkative. The recollection of his
+recent success in getting the situation seemed to revive him, and was
+positively reflected in a sort of radiance on his face. Raskolnikov
+listened attentively.
+“That was five weeks ago, sir. Yes.... As soon as Katerina Ivanovna
+and Sonia heard of it, mercy on us, it was as though I stepped into the
+kingdom of Heaven. It used to be: you can lie like a beast, nothing but
+abuse. Now they were walking on tiptoe, hushing the children. ‘Semyon
+Zaharovitch is tired with his work at the office, he is resting, shh!’
+They made me coffee before I went to work and boiled cream for me! They
+began to get real cream for me, do you hear that? And how they managed
+to get together the money for a decent outfit--eleven roubles, fifty
+copecks, I can’t guess. Boots, cotton shirt-fronts--most magnificent,
+a uniform, they got up all in splendid style, for eleven roubles and
+a half. The first morning I came back from the office I found Katerina
+Ivanovna had cooked two courses for dinner--soup and salt meat with
+horse radish--which we had never dreamed of till then. She had not any
+dresses... none at all, but she got herself up as though she were going
+on a visit; and not that she’d anything to do it with, she smartened
+herself up with nothing at all, she’d done her hair nicely, put on a
+clean collar of some sort, cuffs, and there she was, quite a different
+person, she was younger and better looking. Sonia, my little darling,
+had only helped with money ‘for the time,’ she said, ‘it won’t do for me
+to come and see you too often. After dark maybe when no one can see.’ Do
+you hear, do you hear? I lay down for a nap after dinner and what do you
+think: though Katerina Ivanovna had quarrelled to the last degree with
+our landlady Amalia Fyodorovna only a week before, she could not
+resist then asking her in to coffee. For two hours they were sitting,
+whispering together. ‘Semyon Zaharovitch is in the service again,
+now, and receiving a salary,’ says she, ‘and he went himself to his
+excellency and his excellency himself came out to him, made all the
+others wait and led Semyon Zaharovitch by the hand before everybody into
+his study.’ Do you hear, do you hear? ‘To be sure,’ says he, ‘Semyon
+Zaharovitch, remembering your past services,’ says he, ‘and in spite
+of your propensity to that foolish weakness, since you promise now and
+since moreover we’ve got on badly without you,’ (do you hear, do you
+hear;) ‘and so,’ says he, ‘I rely now on your word as a gentleman.’ And
+all that, let me tell you, she has simply made up for herself, and not
+simply out of wantonness, for the sake of bragging; no, she believes it
+all herself, she amuses herself with her own fancies, upon my word she
+does! And I don’t blame her for it, no, I don’t blame her!... Six days
+ago when I brought her my first earnings in full--twenty-three roubles
+forty copecks altogether--she called me her poppet: ‘poppet,’ said she,
+‘my little poppet.’ And when we were by ourselves, you understand?
+You would not think me a beauty, you would not think much of me as a
+husband, would you?... Well, she pinched my cheek, ‘my little poppet,’
+said she.”
+Marmeladov broke off, tried to smile, but suddenly his chin began
+to twitch. He controlled himself however. The tavern, the degraded
+appearance of the man, the five nights in the hay barge, and the pot of
+spirits, and yet this poignant love for his wife and children bewildered
+his listener. Raskolnikov listened intently but with a sick sensation.
+He felt vexed that he had come here.
+“Honoured sir, honoured sir,” cried Marmeladov recovering himself--“Oh,
+sir, perhaps all this seems a laughing matter to you, as it does to
+others, and perhaps I am only worrying you with the stupidity of all the
+trivial details of my home life, but it is not a laughing matter to me.
+For I can feel it all.... And the whole of that heavenly day of my life
+and the whole of that evening I passed in fleeting dreams of how I would
+arrange it all, and how I would dress all the children, and how I should
+give her rest, and how I should rescue my own daughter from dishonour
+and restore her to the bosom of her family.... And a great deal more....
+Quite excusable, sir. Well, then, sir” (Marmeladov suddenly gave a sort
+of start, raised his head and gazed intently at his listener) “well, on
+the very next day after all those dreams, that is to say, exactly five
+days ago, in the evening, by a cunning trick, like a thief in the night,
+I stole from Katerina Ivanovna the key of her box, took out what was
+left of my earnings, how much it was I have forgotten, and now look
+at me, all of you! It’s the fifth day since I left home, and they are
+looking for me there and it’s the end of my employment, and my uniform
+is lying in a tavern on the Egyptian bridge. I exchanged it for the
+garments I have on... and it’s the end of everything!”
+Marmeladov struck his forehead with his fist, clenched his teeth, closed
+his eyes and leaned heavily with his elbow on the table. But a minute
+later his face suddenly changed and with a certain assumed slyness and
+affectation of bravado, he glanced at Raskolnikov, laughed and said:
+“This morning I went to see Sonia, I went to ask her for a pick-me-up!
+He-he-he!”
+“You don’t say she gave it to you?” cried one of the new-comers; he
+shouted the words and went off into a guffaw.
+“This very quart was bought with her money,” Marmeladov declared,
+addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov. “Thirty copecks she gave
+me with her own hands, her last, all she had, as I saw.... She said
+nothing, she only looked at me without a word.... Not on earth, but up
+yonder... they grieve over men, they weep, but they don’t blame them,
+they don’t blame them! But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don’t
+blame! Thirty copecks yes! And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do
+you think, my dear sir? For now she’s got to keep up her appearance. It
+costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you
+understand? And there’s pomatum, too, you see, she must have things;
+petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her
+foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you
+understand what all that smartness means? And here I, her own father,
+here I took thirty copecks of that money for a drink! And I am drinking
+it! And I have already drunk it! Come, who will have pity on a man like
+me, eh? Are you sorry for me, sir, or not? Tell me, sir, are you sorry
+or not? He-he-he!”
+He would have filled his glass, but there was no drink left. The pot was
+empty.
+“What are you to be pitied for?” shouted the tavern-keeper who was again
+near them.
+Shouts of laughter and even oaths followed. The laughter and the oaths
+came from those who were listening and also from those who had heard
+nothing but were simply looking at the figure of the discharged
+government clerk.
+“To be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?” Marmeladov suddenly declaimed,
+standing up with his arm outstretched, as though he had been only
+waiting for that question.
+“Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there’s nothing to pity me for! I
+ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied! Crucify me,
+oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And then I will go of myself to be
+crucified, for it’s not merry-making I seek but tears and tribulation!...
+Do you suppose, you that sell, that this pint of yours has been
+sweet to me? It was tribulation I sought at the bottom of it, tears and
+tribulation, and have found it, and I have tasted it; but He will pity
+us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood all men and all
+things, He is the One, He too is the judge. He will come in that day
+and He will ask: ‘Where is the daughter who gave herself for her cross,
+consumptive step-mother and for the little children of another? Where is
+the daughter who had pity upon the filthy drunkard, her earthly father,
+undismayed by his beastliness?’ And He will say, ‘Come to me! I have
+already forgiven thee once.... I have forgiven thee once.... Thy sins
+which are many are forgiven thee for thou hast loved much....’ And he
+will forgive my Sonia, He will forgive, I know it... I felt it in my
+heart when I was with her just now! And He will judge and will forgive
+all, the good and the evil, the wise and the meek.... And when He has
+done with all of them, then He will summon us. ‘You too come forth,’
+He will say, ‘Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come
+forth, ye children of shame!’ And we shall all come forth, without shame
+and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, ‘Ye are swine, made
+in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!’ And the
+wise ones and those of understanding will say, ‘Oh Lord, why dost Thou
+receive these men?’ And He will say, ‘This is why I receive them, oh ye
+wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one
+of them believed himself to be worthy of this.’ And He will hold out His
+hands to us and we shall fall down before him... and we shall weep...
+and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand all!... and
+all will understand, Katerina Ivanovna even... she will understand....
+Lord, Thy kingdom come!” And he sank down on the bench exhausted, and
+helpless, looking at no one, apparently oblivious of his surroundings
+and plunged in deep thought. His words had created a certain impression;
+there was a moment of silence; but soon laughter and oaths were heard
+again.
+“That’s his notion!”
+“Talked himself silly!”
+“A fine clerk he is!”
+And so on, and so on.
+“Let us go, sir,” said Marmeladov all at once, raising his head and
+addressing Raskolnikov--“come along with me... Kozel’s house, looking
+into the yard. I’m going to Katerina Ivanovna--time I did.”
+Raskolnikov had for some time been wanting to go and he had meant to
+help him. Marmeladov was much unsteadier on his legs than in his speech
+and leaned heavily on the young man. They had two or three hundred
+paces to go. The drunken man was more and more overcome by dismay and
+confusion as they drew nearer the house.
+“It’s not Katerina Ivanovna I am afraid of now,” he muttered in
+agitation--“and that she will begin pulling my hair. What does my hair
+matter! Bother my hair! That’s what I say! Indeed it will be better if
+she does begin pulling it, that’s not what I am afraid of... it’s her
+eyes I am afraid of... yes, her eyes... the red on her cheeks, too,
+frightens me... and her breathing too.... Have you noticed how people
+in that disease breathe... when they are excited? I am frightened of
+the children’s crying, too.... For if Sonia has not taken them food...
+I don’t know what’s happened! I don’t know! But blows I am not afraid
+of.... Know, sir, that such blows are not a pain to me, but even an
+enjoyment. In fact I can’t get on without it.... It’s better so. Let
+her strike me, it relieves her heart... it’s better so... There is the
+house. The house of Kozel, the cabinet-maker... a German, well-to-do.
+Lead the way!”
+They went in from the yard and up to the fourth storey. The staircase
+got darker and darker as they went up. It was nearly eleven o’clock
+and although in summer in Petersburg there is no real night, yet it was
+quite dark at the top of the stairs.
+A grimy little door at the very top of the stairs stood ajar. A very
+poor-looking room about ten paces long was lighted up by a candle-end;
+the whole of it was visible from the entrance. It was all in disorder,
+littered up with rags of all sorts, especially children’s garments.
+Across the furthest corner was stretched a ragged sheet. Behind it
+probably was the bed. There was nothing in the room except two chairs
+and a sofa covered with American leather, full of holes, before which
+stood an old deal kitchen-table, unpainted and uncovered. At the edge
+of the table stood a smoldering tallow-candle in an iron candlestick. It
+appeared that the family had a room to themselves, not part of a room,
+but their room was practically a passage. The door leading to the other
+rooms, or rather cupboards, into which Amalia Lippevechsel’s flat was
+divided stood half open, and there was shouting, uproar and laughter
+within. People seemed to be playing cards and drinking tea there. Words
+of the most unceremonious kind flew out from time to time.
+Raskolnikov recognised Katerina Ivanovna at once. She was a rather tall,
+slim and graceful woman, terribly emaciated, with magnificent dark brown
+hair and with a hectic flush in her cheeks. She was pacing up and down
+in her little room, pressing her hands against her chest; her lips
+were parched and her breathing came in nervous broken gasps. Her eyes
+glittered as in fever and looked about with a harsh immovable stare. And
+that consumptive and excited face with the last flickering light of the
+candle-end playing upon it made a sickening impression. She seemed to
+Raskolnikov about thirty years old and was certainly a strange wife for
+Marmeladov.... She had not heard them and did not notice them coming in.
+She seemed to be lost in thought, hearing and seeing nothing. The room
+was close, but she had not opened the window; a stench rose from the
+staircase, but the door on to the stairs was not closed. From the inner
+rooms clouds of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing, but did not
+close the door. The youngest child, a girl of six, was asleep, sitting
+curled up on the floor with her head on the sofa. A boy a year older
+stood crying and shaking in the corner, probably he had just had a
+beating. Beside him stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin,
+wearing a thin and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung
+over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reaching her knees.
+Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her brother’s neck. She was
+trying to comfort him, whispering something to him, and doing all she
+could to keep him from whimpering again. At the same time her large
+dark eyes, which looked larger still from the thinness of her frightened
+face, were watching her mother with alarm. Marmeladov did not enter the
+door, but dropped on his knees in the very doorway, pushing Raskolnikov
+in front of him. The woman seeing a stranger stopped indifferently
+facing him, coming to herself for a moment and apparently wondering what
+he had come for. But evidently she decided that he was going into
+the next room, as he had to pass through hers to get there. Taking no
+further notice of him, she walked towards the outer door to close it
+and uttered a sudden scream on seeing her husband on his knees in the
+doorway.
+“Ah!” she cried out in a frenzy, “he has come back! The criminal! the
+monster!... And where is the money? What’s in your pocket, show me! And
+your clothes are all different! Where are your clothes? Where is the
+money! Speak!”
+And she fell to searching him. Marmeladov submissively and obediently
+held up both arms to facilitate the search. Not a farthing was there.
+“Where is the money?” she cried--“Mercy on us, can he have drunk it all?
+There were twelve silver roubles left in the chest!” and in a fury
+she seized him by the hair and dragged him into the room. Marmeladov
+seconded her efforts by meekly crawling along on his knees.
+“And this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me, but is a
+positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir,” he called out, shaken to and
+fro by his hair and even once striking the ground with his forehead.
+The child asleep on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The boy in the
+corner losing all control began trembling and screaming and rushed
+to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was
+shaking like a leaf.
+“He’s drunk it! he’s drunk it all,” the poor woman screamed in
+despair--“and his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!”--and
+wringing her hands she pointed to the children. “Oh, accursed life!
+And you, are you not ashamed?”--she pounced all at once upon
+Raskolnikov--“from the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You have
+been drinking with him, too! Go away!”
+The young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The inner door
+was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse
+laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust
+themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in
+dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of
+them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when
+Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation
+to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill
+outcry was heard: this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself pushing her
+way amongst them and trying to restore order after her own fashion and
+for the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman by ordering her
+with coarse abuse to clear out of the room next day. As he went out,
+Raskolnikov had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the
+coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to
+lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed
+his mind and would have gone back.
+“What a stupid thing I’ve done,” he thought to himself, “they have Sonia
+and I want it myself.” But reflecting that it would be impossible to
+take it back now and that in any case he would not have taken it, he
+dismissed it with a wave of his hand and went back to his lodging.
+“Sonia wants pomatum too,” he said as he walked along the street, and he
+laughed malignantly--“such smartness costs money.... Hm! And maybe Sonia
+herself will be bankrupt to-day, for there is always a risk, hunting
+big game... digging for gold... then they would all be without a crust
+to-morrow except for my money. Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they’ve dug
+there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most
+of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to
+everything, the scoundrel!”
+He sank into thought.
+“And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought.
+“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the
+whole race of mankind--then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial
+terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”
+CHAPTER III
+He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not
+refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked
+with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six
+paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty
+yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man
+of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment
+that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in
+keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a
+painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books;
+the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long
+untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and
+half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but
+was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed. Often he went to sleep
+on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old
+student’s overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he
+heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A
+little table stood in front of the sofa.
+It would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of disorder, but to
+Raskolnikov in his present state of mind this was positively agreeable.
+He had got completely away from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell,
+and even the sight of a servant girl who had to wait upon him and looked
+sometimes into his room made him writhe with nervous irritation. He was
+in the condition that overtakes some monomaniacs entirely concentrated
+upon one thing. His landlady had for the last fortnight given up sending
+him in meals, and he had not yet thought of expostulating with her,
+though he went without his dinner. Nastasya, the cook and only servant,
+was rather pleased at the lodger’s mood and had entirely given up
+sweeping and doing his room, only once a week or so she would stray into
+his room with a broom. She waked him up that day.
+“Get up, why are you asleep?” she called to him. “It’s past nine, I have
+brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I should think you’re fairly
+starving?”
+Raskolnikov opened his eyes, started and recognised Nastasya.
+“From the landlady, eh?” he asked, slowly and with a sickly face sitting
+up on the sofa.
+“From the landlady, indeed!”
+She set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak and stale tea and
+laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side of it.
+“Here, Nastasya, take it please,” he said, fumbling in his pocket (for
+he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers--“run
+and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage, the cheapest, at the
+pork-butcher’s.”
+“The loaf I’ll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn’t you rather have
+some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It’s capital soup, yesterday’s. I
+saved it for you yesterday, but you came in late. It’s fine soup.”
+When the soup had been brought, and he had begun upon it, Nastasya
+sat down beside him on the sofa and began chatting. She was a country
+peasant-woman and a very talkative one.
+“Praskovya Pavlovna means to complain to the police about you,” she
+said.
+He scowled.
+“To the police? What does she want?”
+“You don’t pay her money and you won’t turn out of the room. That’s what
+she wants, to be sure.”
+“The devil, that’s the last straw,” he muttered, grinding his teeth,
+“no, that would not suit me... just now. She is a fool,” he added aloud.
+“I’ll go and talk to her to-day.”
+“Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so
+clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One
+time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you
+do nothing now?”
+“I am doing...” Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluctantly.
+“What are you doing?”
+“Work...”
+“What sort of work?”
+“I am thinking,” he answered seriously after a pause.
+Nastasya was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was given to laughter
+and when anything amused her, she laughed inaudibly, quivering and
+shaking all over till she felt ill.
+“And have you made much money by your thinking?” she managed to
+articulate at last.
+“One can’t go out to give lessons without boots. And I’m sick of it.”
+“Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.”
+“They pay so little for lessons. What’s the use of a few coppers?” he
+answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his own thought.
+“And you want to get a fortune all at once?”
+He looked at her strangely.
+“Yes, I want a fortune,” he answered firmly, after a brief pause.
+“Don’t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I get you the
+loaf or not?”
+“As you please.”
+“Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you were out.”
+“A letter? for me! from whom?”
+“I can’t say. I gave three copecks of my own to the postman for it. Will
+you pay me back?”
+“Then bring it to me, for God’s sake, bring it,” cried Raskolnikov
+greatly excited--“good God!”
+A minute later the letter was brought him. That was it: from his mother,
+from the province of R----. He turned pale when he took it. It was a
+long while since he had received a letter, but another feeling also
+suddenly stabbed his heart.
+“Nastasya, leave me alone, for goodness’ sake; here are your three
+copecks, but for goodness’ sake, make haste and go!”
+The letter was quivering in his hand; he did not want to open it in her
+presence; he wanted to be left _alone_ with this letter. When Nastasya
+had gone out, he lifted it quickly to his lips and kissed it; then he
+gazed intently at the address, the small, sloping handwriting, so dear
+and familiar, of the mother who had once taught him to read and write.
+He delayed; he seemed almost afraid of something. At last he opened it;
+it was a thick heavy letter, weighing over two ounces, two large sheets
+of note paper were covered with very small handwriting.
+“My dear Rodya,” wrote his mother--“it’s two months since I last had a
+talk with you by letter which has distressed me and even kept me
+awake at night, thinking. But I am sure you will not blame me for my
+inevitable silence. You know how I love you; you are all we have to look
+to, Dounia and I, you are our all, our one hope, our one stay. What a
+grief it was to me when I heard that you had given up the university
+some months ago, for want of means to keep yourself and that you had
+lost your lessons and your other work! How could I help you out of my
+hundred and twenty roubles a year pension? The fifteen roubles I sent
+you four months ago I borrowed, as you know, on security of my pension,
+from Vassily Ivanovitch Vahrushin a merchant of this town. He is a
+kind-hearted man and was a friend of your father’s too. But having given
+him the right to receive the pension, I had to wait till the debt was
+paid off and that is only just done, so that I’ve been unable to send
+you anything all this time. But now, thank God, I believe I shall
+be able to send you something more and in fact we may congratulate
+ourselves on our good fortune now, of which I hasten to inform you. In
+the first place, would you have guessed, dear Rodya, that your sister
+has been living with me for the last six weeks and we shall not be
+separated in the future. Thank God, her sufferings are over, but I will
+tell you everything in order, so that you may know just how everything
+has happened and all that we have hitherto concealed from you. When you
+wrote to me two months ago that you had heard that Dounia had a great
+deal to put up with in the Svidrigaïlovs’ house, when you wrote that
+and asked me to tell you all about it--what could I write in answer to
+you? If I had written the whole truth to you, I dare say you would have
+thrown up everything and have come to us, even if you had to walk all
+the way, for I know your character and your feelings, and you would not
+let your sister be insulted. I was in despair myself, but what could I
+do? And, besides, I did not know the whole truth myself then. What
+made it all so difficult was that Dounia received a hundred roubles
+in advance when she took the place as governess in their family, on
+condition of part of her salary being deducted every month, and so it
+was impossible to throw up the situation without repaying the debt.
+This sum (now I can explain it all to you, my precious Rodya) she took
+chiefly in order to send you sixty roubles, which you needed so terribly
+then and which you received from us last year. We deceived you then,
+writing that this money came from Dounia’s savings, but that was not
+so, and now I tell you all about it, because, thank God, things have
+suddenly changed for the better, and that you may know how Dounia loves
+you and what a heart she has. At first indeed Mr. Svidrigaïlov treated
+her very rudely and used to make disrespectful and jeering remarks at
+table.... But I don’t want to go into all those painful details, so as
+not to worry you for nothing when it is now all over. In short, in spite
+of the kind and generous behaviour of Marfa Petrovna, Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s
+wife, and all the rest of the household, Dounia had a very hard time,
+especially when Mr. Svidrigaïlov, relapsing into his old regimental
+habits, was under the influence of Bacchus. And how do you think it
+was all explained later on? Would you believe that the crazy fellow had
+conceived a passion for Dounia from the beginning, but had concealed
+it under a show of rudeness and contempt. Possibly he was ashamed and
+horrified himself at his own flighty hopes, considering his years and
+his being the father of a family; and that made him angry with Dounia.
+And possibly, too, he hoped by his rude and sneering behaviour to hide
+the truth from others. But at last he lost all control and had the face
+to make Dounia an open and shameful proposal, promising her all sorts of
+inducements and offering, besides, to throw up everything and take her
+to another estate of his, or even abroad. You can imagine all she went
+through! To leave her situation at once was impossible not only on
+account of the money debt, but also to spare the feelings of Marfa
+Petrovna, whose suspicions would have been aroused: and then Dounia
+would have been the cause of a rupture in the family. And it would
+have meant a terrible scandal for Dounia too; that would have been
+inevitable. There were various other reasons owing to which Dounia could
+not hope to escape from that awful house for another six weeks. You know
+Dounia, of course; you know how clever she is and what a strong will she
+has. Dounia can endure a great deal and even in the most difficult cases
+she has the fortitude to maintain her firmness. She did not even write
+to me about everything for fear of upsetting me, although we were
+constantly in communication. It all ended very unexpectedly. Marfa
+Petrovna accidentally overheard her husband imploring Dounia in the
+garden, and, putting quite a wrong interpretation on the position, threw
+the blame upon her, believing her to be the cause of it all. An awful
+scene took place between them on the spot in the garden; Marfa Petrovna
+went so far as to strike Dounia, refused to hear anything and was
+shouting at her for a whole hour and then gave orders that Dounia should
+be packed off at once to me in a plain peasant’s cart, into which they
+flung all her things, her linen and her clothes, all pell-mell, without
+folding it up and packing it. And a heavy shower of rain came on, too,
+and Dounia, insulted and put to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an
+open cart all the seventeen versts into town. Only think now what answer
+could I have sent to the letter I received from you two months ago and
+what could I have written? I was in despair; I dared not write to
+you the truth because you would have been very unhappy, mortified
+and indignant, and yet what could you do? You could only perhaps ruin
+yourself, and, besides, Dounia would not allow it; and fill up my letter
+with trifles when my heart was so full of sorrow, I could not. For a
+whole month the town was full of gossip about this scandal, and it came
+to such a pass that Dounia and I dared not even go to church on account
+of the contemptuous looks, whispers, and even remarks made aloud about
+us. All our acquaintances avoided us, nobody even bowed to us in the
+street, and I learnt that some shopmen and clerks were intending to
+insult us in a shameful way, smearing the gates of our house with pitch,
+so that the landlord began to tell us we must leave. All this was set
+going by Marfa Petrovna who managed to slander Dounia and throw dirt at
+her in every family. She knows everyone in the neighbourhood, and that
+month she was continually coming into the town, and as she is
+rather talkative and fond of gossiping about her family affairs and
+particularly of complaining to all and each of her husband--which is not
+at all right--so in a short time she had spread her story not only in
+the town, but over the whole surrounding district. It made me ill, but
+Dounia bore it better than I did, and if only you could have seen how
+she endured it all and tried to comfort me and cheer me up! She is
+an angel! But by God’s mercy, our sufferings were cut short: Mr.
+Svidrigaïlov returned to his senses and repented and, probably
+feeling sorry for Dounia, he laid before Marfa Petrovna a complete and
+unmistakable proof of Dounia’s innocence, in the form of a letter Dounia
+had been forced to write and give to him, before Marfa Petrovna
+came upon them in the garden. This letter, which remained in Mr.
+Svidrigaïlov’s hands after her departure, she had written to refuse
+personal explanations and secret interviews, for which he was entreating
+her. In that letter she reproached him with great heat and indignation
+for the baseness of his behaviour in regard to Marfa Petrovna, reminding
+him that he was the father and head of a family and telling him how
+infamous it was of him to torment and make unhappy a defenceless girl,
+unhappy enough already. Indeed, dear Rodya, the letter was so nobly and
+touchingly written that I sobbed when I read it and to this day I cannot
+read it without tears. Moreover, the evidence of the servants, too,
+cleared Dounia’s reputation; they had seen and known a great deal more
+than Mr. Svidrigaïlov had himself supposed--as indeed is always the case
+with servants. Marfa Petrovna was completely taken aback, and ‘again
+crushed’ as she said herself to us, but she was completely convinced of
+Dounia’s innocence. The very next day, being Sunday, she went straight
+to the Cathedral, knelt down and prayed with tears to Our Lady to give
+her strength to bear this new trial and to do her duty. Then she
+came straight from the Cathedral to us, told us the whole story, wept
+bitterly and, fully penitent, she embraced Dounia and besought her to
+forgive her. The same morning without any delay, she went round to all
+the houses in the town and everywhere, shedding tears, she asserted in
+the most flattering terms Dounia’s innocence and the nobility of
+her feelings and her behavior. What was more, she showed and read to
+everyone the letter in Dounia’s own handwriting to Mr. Svidrigaïlov and
+even allowed them to take copies of it--which I must say I think was
+superfluous. In this way she was busy for several days in driving about
+the whole town, because some people had taken offence through precedence
+having been given to others. And therefore they had to take turns, so
+that in every house she was expected before she arrived, and everyone
+knew that on such and such a day Marfa Petrovna would be reading the
+letter in such and such a place and people assembled for every reading
+of it, even many who had heard it several times already both in their
+own houses and in other people’s. In my opinion a great deal, a very
+great deal of all this was unnecessary; but that’s Marfa Petrovna’s
+character. Anyway she succeeded in completely re-establishing Dounia’s
+reputation and the whole ignominy of this affair rested as an indelible
+disgrace upon her husband, as the only person to blame, so that I really
+began to feel sorry for him; it was really treating the crazy fellow too
+harshly. Dounia was at once asked to give lessons in several families,
+but she refused. All of a sudden everyone began to treat her with marked
+respect and all this did much to bring about the event by which, one may
+say, our whole fortunes are now transformed. You must know, dear Rodya,
+that Dounia has a suitor and that she has already consented to marry
+him. I hasten to tell you all about the matter, and though it has been
+arranged without asking your consent, I think you will not be aggrieved
+with me or with your sister on that account, for you will see that we
+could not wait and put off our decision till we heard from you. And you
+could not have judged all the facts without being on the spot. This
+was how it happened. He is already of the rank of a counsellor, Pyotr
+Petrovitch Luzhin, and is distantly related to Marfa Petrovna, who
+has been very active in bringing the match about. It began with his
+expressing through her his desire to make our acquaintance. He was
+properly received, drank coffee with us and the very next day he sent
+us a letter in which he very courteously made an offer and begged for a
+speedy and decided answer. He is a very busy man and is in a great hurry
+to get to Petersburg, so that every moment is precious to him. At first,
+of course, we were greatly surprised, as it had all happened so quickly
+and unexpectedly. We thought and talked it over the whole day. He is a
+well-to-do man, to be depended upon, he has two posts in the government
+and has already made his fortune. It is true that he is forty-five years
+old, but he is of a fairly prepossessing appearance and might still be
+thought attractive by women, and he is altogether a very respectable and
+presentable man, only he seems a little morose and somewhat conceited.
+But possibly that may only be the impression he makes at first sight.
+And beware, dear Rodya, when he comes to Petersburg, as he shortly will
+do, beware of judging him too hastily and severely, as your way is, if
+there is anything you do not like in him at first sight. I give you this
+warning, although I feel sure that he will make a favourable impression
+upon you. Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be
+deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas,
+which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards. And Pyotr
+Petrovitch, judging by many indications, is a thoroughly estimable man.
+At his first visit, indeed, he told us that he was a practical man, but
+still he shares, as he expressed it, many of the convictions ‘of our
+most rising generation’ and he is an opponent of all prejudices. He
+said a good deal more, for he seems a little conceited and likes to be
+listened to, but this is scarcely a vice. I, of course, understood very
+little of it, but Dounia explained to me that, though he is not a man
+of great education, he is clever and seems to be good-natured. You know
+your sister’s character, Rodya. She is a resolute, sensible, patient and
+generous girl, but she has a passionate heart, as I know very well.
+Of course, there is no great love either on his side, or on hers, but
+Dounia is a clever girl and has the heart of an angel, and will make
+it her duty to make her husband happy who on his side will make her
+happiness his care. Of that we have no good reason to doubt, though it
+must be admitted the matter has been arranged in great haste. Besides he
+is a man of great prudence and he will see, to be sure, of himself, that
+his own happiness will be the more secure, the happier Dounia is with
+him. And as for some defects of character, for some habits and even
+certain differences of opinion--which indeed are inevitable even in
+the happiest marriages--Dounia has said that, as regards all that, she
+relies on herself, that there is nothing to be uneasy about, and
+that she is ready to put up with a great deal, if only their future
+relationship can be an honourable and straightforward one. He struck me,
+for instance, at first, as rather abrupt, but that may well come
+from his being an outspoken man, and that is no doubt how it is. For
+instance, at his second visit, after he had received Dounia’s consent,
+in the course of conversation, he declared that before making
+Dounia’s acquaintance, he had made up his mind to marry a girl of
+good reputation, without dowry and, above all, one who had experienced
+poverty, because, as he explained, a man ought not to be indebted to his
+wife, but that it is better for a wife to look upon her husband as her
+benefactor. I must add that he expressed it more nicely and politely
+than I have done, for I have forgotten his actual phrases and only
+remember the meaning. And, besides, it was obviously not said of design,
+but slipped out in the heat of conversation, so that he tried afterwards
+to correct himself and smooth it over, but all the same it did strike
+me as somewhat rude, and I said so afterwards to Dounia. But Dounia was
+vexed, and answered that ‘words are not deeds,’ and that, of course, is
+perfectly true. Dounia did not sleep all night before she made up
+her mind, and, thinking that I was asleep, she got out of bed and was
+walking up and down the room all night; at last she knelt down before
+the ikon and prayed long and fervently and in the morning she told me
+that she had decided.
+“I have mentioned already that Pyotr Petrovitch is just setting off for
+Petersburg, where he has a great deal of business, and he wants to open
+a legal bureau. He has been occupied for many years in conducting civil
+and commercial litigation, and only the other day he won an important
+case. He has to be in Petersburg because he has an important case before
+the Senate. So, Rodya dear, he may be of the greatest use to you, in
+every way indeed, and Dounia and I have agreed that from this very day
+you could definitely enter upon your career and might consider that
+your future is marked out and assured for you. Oh, if only this comes to
+pass! This would be such a benefit that we could only look upon it as a
+providential blessing. Dounia is dreaming of nothing else. We have even
+ventured already to drop a few words on the subject to Pyotr Petrovitch.
+He was cautious in his answer, and said that, of course, as he could not
+get on without a secretary, it would be better to be paying a salary to
+a relation than to a stranger, if only the former were fitted for the
+duties (as though there could be doubt of your being fitted!) but then
+he expressed doubts whether your studies at the university would leave
+you time for work at his office. The matter dropped for the time, but
+Dounia is thinking of nothing else now. She has been in a sort of fever
+for the last few days, and has already made a regular plan for
+your becoming in the end an associate and even a partner in Pyotr
+Petrovitch’s business, which might well be, seeing that you are a
+student of law. I am in complete agreement with her, Rodya, and share
+all her plans and hopes, and think there is every probability of
+realising them. And in spite of Pyotr Petrovitch’s evasiveness, very
+natural at present (since he does not know you), Dounia is firmly
+persuaded that she will gain everything by her good influence over her
+future husband; this she is reckoning upon. Of course we are careful
+not to talk of any of these more remote plans to Pyotr Petrovitch,
+especially of your becoming his partner. He is a practical man and might
+take this very coldly, it might all seem to him simply a day-dream. Nor
+has either Dounia or I breathed a word to him of the great hopes we have
+of his helping us to pay for your university studies; we have not spoken
+of it in the first place, because it will come to pass of itself,
+later on, and he will no doubt without wasting words offer to do it of
+himself, (as though he could refuse Dounia that) the more readily since
+you may by your own efforts become his right hand in the office, and
+receive this assistance not as a charity, but as a salary earned by your
+own work. Dounia wants to arrange it all like this and I quite agree
+with her. And we have not spoken of our plans for another reason, that
+is, because I particularly wanted you to feel on an equal footing when
+you first meet him. When Dounia spoke to him with enthusiasm about
+you, he answered that one could never judge of a man without seeing
+him close, for oneself, and that he looked forward to forming his own
+opinion when he makes your acquaintance. Do you know, my precious
+Rodya, I think that perhaps for some reasons (nothing to do with Pyotr
+Petrovitch though, simply for my own personal, perhaps old-womanish,
+fancies) I should do better to go on living by myself, apart, than with
+them, after the wedding. I am convinced that he will be generous and
+delicate enough to invite me and to urge me to remain with my daughter
+for the future, and if he has said nothing about it hitherto, it is
+simply because it has been taken for granted; but I shall refuse. I have
+noticed more than once in my life that husbands don’t quite get on with
+their mothers-in-law, and I don’t want to be the least bit in anyone’s
+way, and for my own sake, too, would rather be quite independent, so
+long as I have a crust of bread of my own, and such children as you and
+Dounia. If possible, I would settle somewhere near you, for the most
+joyful piece of news, dear Rodya, I have kept for the end of my letter:
+know then, my dear boy, that we may, perhaps, be all together in a
+very short time and may embrace one another again after a separation of
+almost three years! It is settled _for certain_ that Dounia and I are to
+set off for Petersburg, exactly when I don’t know, but very, very soon,
+possibly in a week. It all depends on Pyotr Petrovitch who will let us
+know when he has had time to look round him in Petersburg. To suit his
+own arrangements he is anxious to have the ceremony as soon as possible,
+even before the fast of Our Lady, if it could be managed, or if that is
+too soon to be ready, immediately after. Oh, with what happiness I shall
+press you to my heart! Dounia is all excitement at the joyful thought
+of seeing you, she said one day in joke that she would be ready to marry
+Pyotr Petrovitch for that alone. She is an angel! She is not writing
+anything to you now, and has only told me to write that she has so much,
+so much to tell you that she is not going to take up her pen now, for
+a few lines would tell you nothing, and it would only mean upsetting
+herself; she bids me send you her love and innumerable kisses. But
+although we shall be meeting so soon, perhaps I shall send you as much
+money as I can in a day or two. Now that everyone has heard that Dounia
+is to marry Pyotr Petrovitch, my credit has suddenly improved and I know
+that Afanasy Ivanovitch will trust me now even to seventy-five roubles
+on the security of my pension, so that perhaps I shall be able to send
+you twenty-five or even thirty roubles. I would send you more, but I am
+uneasy about our travelling expenses; for though Pyotr Petrovitch has
+been so kind as to undertake part of the expenses of the journey, that
+is to say, he has taken upon himself the conveyance of our bags and big
+trunk (which will be conveyed through some acquaintances of his), we
+must reckon upon some expense on our arrival in Petersburg, where we
+can’t be left without a halfpenny, at least for the first few days. But
+we have calculated it all, Dounia and I, to the last penny, and we see
+that the journey will not cost very much. It is only ninety versts from
+us to the railway and we have come to an agreement with a driver we
+know, so as to be in readiness; and from there Dounia and I can travel
+quite comfortably third class. So that I may very likely be able to send
+to you not twenty-five, but thirty roubles. But enough; I have covered
+two sheets already and there is no space left for more; our whole
+history, but so many events have happened! And now, my precious Rodya,
+I embrace you and send you a mother’s blessing till we meet. Love Dounia
+your sister, Rodya; love her as she loves you and understand that she
+loves you beyond everything, more than herself. She is an angel and you,
+Rodya, you are everything to us--our one hope, our one consolation. If
+only you are happy, we shall be happy. Do you still say your prayers,
+Rodya, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and our Redeemer? I am
+afraid in my heart that you may have been visited by the new spirit of
+infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is so, I pray for you. Remember,
+dear boy, how in your childhood, when your father was living, you used
+to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those
+days. Good-bye, till we meet then--I embrace you warmly, warmly, with
+many kisses.
+“Yours till death,
+“PULCHERIA RASKOLNIKOV.”
+Almost from the first, while he read the letter, Raskolnikov’s face was
+wet with tears; but when he finished it, his face was pale and distorted
+and a bitter, wrathful and malignant smile was on his lips. He laid his
+head down on his threadbare dirty pillow and pondered, pondered a long
+time. His heart was beating violently, and his brain was in a turmoil.
+At last he felt cramped and stifled in the little yellow room that was
+like a cupboard or a box. His eyes and his mind craved for space. He
+took up his hat and went out, this time without dread of meeting
+anyone; he had forgotten his dread. He turned in the direction of the
+Vassilyevsky Ostrov, walking along Vassilyevsky Prospect, as though
+hastening on some business, but he walked, as his habit was, without
+noticing his way, muttering and even speaking aloud to himself, to the
+astonishment of the passers-by. Many of them took him to be drunk.
+CHAPTER IV
+His mother’s letter had been a torture to him, but as regards the chief
+fact in it, he had felt not one moment’s hesitation, even whilst he was
+reading the letter. The essential question was settled, and irrevocably
+settled, in his mind: “Never such a marriage while I am alive and
+Mr. Luzhin be damned!” “The thing is perfectly clear,” he muttered
+to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating the triumph of his
+decision. “No, mother, no, Dounia, you won’t deceive me! and then they
+apologise for not asking my advice and for taking the decision without
+me! I dare say! They imagine it is arranged now and can’t be broken
+off; but we will see whether it can or not! A magnificent excuse:
+‘Pyotr Petrovitch is such a busy man that even his wedding has to be in
+post-haste, almost by express.’ No, Dounia, I see it all and I know what
+you want to say to me; and I know too what you were thinking about, when
+you walked up and down all night, and what your prayers were like before
+the Holy Mother of Kazan who stands in mother’s bedroom. Bitter is
+the ascent to Golgotha.... Hm... so it is finally settled; you have
+determined to marry a sensible business man, Avdotya Romanovna, one
+who has a fortune (has _already_ made his fortune, that is so much
+more solid and impressive), a man who holds two government posts and who
+shares the ideas of our most rising generation, as mother writes, and
+who _seems_ to be kind, as Dounia herself observes. That _seems_ beats
+everything! And that very Dounia for that very ‘_seems_’ is marrying
+him! Splendid! splendid!
+“... But I should like to know why mother has written to me about ‘our
+most rising generation’? Simply as a descriptive touch, or with the idea
+of prepossessing me in favour of Mr. Luzhin? Oh, the cunning of them!
+I should like to know one thing more: how far they were open with one
+another that day and night and all this time since? Was it all put into
+_words_, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart
+and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and
+better not to speak of it. Most likely it was partly like that, from
+mother’s letter it’s evident: he struck her as rude _a little_, and
+mother in her simplicity took her observations to Dounia. And she was
+sure to be vexed and ‘answered her angrily.’ I should think so! Who
+would not be angered when it was quite clear without any naïve questions
+and when it was understood that it was useless to discuss it. And why
+does she write to me, ‘love Dounia, Rodya, and she loves you more than
+herself’? Has she a secret conscience-prick at sacrificing her daughter
+to her son? ‘You are our one comfort, you are everything to us.’ Oh,
+mother!”
+His bitterness grew more and more intense, and if he had happened to
+meet Mr. Luzhin at the moment, he might have murdered him.
+“Hm... yes, that’s true,” he continued, pursuing the whirling ideas that
+chased each other in his brain, “it is true that ‘it needs time and care
+to get to know a man,’ but there is no mistake about Mr. Luzhin. The
+chief thing is he is ‘a man of business and _seems_ kind,’ that was
+something, wasn’t it, to send the bags and big box for them! A kind man,
+no doubt after that! But his _bride_ and her mother are to drive in a
+peasant’s cart covered with sacking (I know, I have been driven in
+it). No matter! It is only ninety versts and then they can ‘travel very
+comfortably, third class,’ for a thousand versts! Quite right, too. One
+must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth, but what about you, Mr.
+Luzhin? She is your bride.... And you must be aware that her mother has
+to raise money on her pension for the journey. To be sure it’s a matter
+of business, a partnership for mutual benefit, with equal shares and
+expenses;--food and drink provided, but pay for your tobacco. The
+business man has got the better of them, too. The luggage will cost less
+than their fares and very likely go for nothing. How is it that they
+don’t both see all that, or is it that they don’t want to see? And
+they are pleased, pleased! And to think that this is only the first
+blossoming, and that the real fruits are to come! But what really
+matters is not the stinginess, is not the meanness, but the _tone_
+of the whole thing. For that will be the tone after marriage, it’s a
+foretaste of it. And mother too, why should she be so lavish? What will
+she have by the time she gets to Petersburg? Three silver roubles or
+two ‘paper ones’ as _she_ says.... that old woman... hm. What does
+she expect to live upon in Petersburg afterwards? She has her reasons
+already for guessing that she _could not_ live with Dounia after the
+marriage, even for the first few months. The good man has no doubt let
+slip something on that subject also, though mother would deny it: ‘I
+shall refuse,’ says she. On whom is she reckoning then? Is she counting
+on what is left of her hundred and twenty roubles of pension when
+Afanasy Ivanovitch’s debt is paid? She knits woollen shawls and
+embroiders cuffs, ruining her old eyes. And all her shawls don’t add
+more than twenty roubles a year to her hundred and twenty, I know
+that. So she is building all her hopes all the time on Mr. Luzhin’s
+generosity; ‘he will offer it of himself, he will press it on me.’
+You may wait a long time for that! That’s how it always is with these
+Schilleresque noble hearts; till the last moment every goose is a swan
+with them, till the last moment, they hope for the best and will see
+nothing wrong, and although they have an inkling of the other side of
+the picture, yet they won’t face the truth till they are forced to; the
+very thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust the truth away with
+both hands, until the man they deck out in false colours puts a fool’s
+cap on them with his own hands. I should like to know whether Mr. Luzhin
+has any orders of merit; I bet he has the Anna in his buttonhole and
+that he puts it on when he goes to dine with contractors or merchants.
+He will be sure to have it for his wedding, too! Enough of him, confound
+him!
+“Well,... mother I don’t wonder at, it’s like her, God bless her, but
+how could Dounia? Dounia darling, as though I did not know you! You were
+nearly twenty when I saw you last: I understood you then. Mother writes
+that ‘Dounia can put up with a great deal.’ I know that very well. I
+knew that two years and a half ago, and for the last two and a half
+years I have been thinking about it, thinking of just that, that ‘Dounia
+can put up with a great deal.’ If she could put up with Mr. Svidrigaïlov
+and all the rest of it, she certainly can put up with a great deal. And
+now mother and she have taken it into their heads that she can put up
+with Mr. Luzhin, who propounds the theory of the superiority of
+wives raised from destitution and owing everything to their husband’s
+bounty--who propounds it, too, almost at the first interview. Granted
+that he ‘let it slip,’ though he is a sensible man, (yet maybe it
+was not a slip at all, but he meant to make himself clear as soon as
+possible) but Dounia, Dounia? She understands the man, of course, but
+she will have to live with the man. Why! she’d live on black bread
+and water, she would not sell her soul, she would not barter her moral
+freedom for comfort; she would not barter it for all Schleswig-Holstein,
+much less Mr. Luzhin’s money. No, Dounia was not that sort when I knew
+her and... she is still the same, of course! Yes, there’s no denying,
+the Svidrigaïlovs are a bitter pill! It’s a bitter thing to spend one’s
+life a governess in the provinces for two hundred roubles, but I know
+she would rather be a nigger on a plantation or a Lett with a German
+master than degrade her soul, and her moral dignity, by binding herself
+for ever to a man whom she does not respect and with whom she has
+nothing in common--for her own advantage. And if Mr. Luzhin had been of
+unalloyed gold, or one huge diamond, she would never have consented to
+become his legal concubine. Why is she consenting then? What’s the
+point of it? What’s the answer? It’s clear enough: for herself, for her
+comfort, to save her life she would not sell herself, but for someone
+else she is doing it! For one she loves, for one she adores, she will
+sell herself! That’s what it all amounts to; for her brother, for her
+mother, she will sell herself! She will sell everything! In such cases,
+‘we overcome our moral feeling if necessary,’ freedom, peace, conscience
+even, all, all are brought into the market. Let my life go, if only my
+dear ones may be happy! More than that, we become casuists, we learn
+to be Jesuitical and for a time maybe we can soothe ourselves, we can
+persuade ourselves that it is one’s duty for a good object. That’s just
+like us, it’s as clear as daylight. It’s clear that Rodion Romanovitch
+Raskolnikov is the central figure in the business, and no one else. Oh,
+yes, she can ensure his happiness, keep him in the university, make him
+a partner in the office, make his whole future secure; perhaps he may
+even be a rich man later on, prosperous, respected, and may even end his
+life a famous man! But my mother? It’s all Rodya, precious Rodya, her
+first born! For such a son who would not sacrifice such a daughter! Oh,
+loving, over-partial hearts! Why, for his sake we would not shrink even
+from Sonia’s fate. Sonia, Sonia Marmeladov, the eternal victim so long
+as the world lasts. Have you taken the measure of your sacrifice, both
+of you? Is it right? Can you bear it? Is it any use? Is there sense in
+it? And let me tell you, Dounia, Sonia’s life is no worse than life with
+Mr. Luzhin. ‘There can be no question of love,’ mother writes. And what
+if there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is aversion,
+contempt, repulsion, what then? So you will have to ‘keep up your
+appearance,’ too. Is not that so? Do you understand what that smartness
+means? Do you understand that the Luzhin smartness is just the same
+thing as Sonia’s and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case,
+Dounia, it’s a bargain for luxuries, after all, but with Sonia it’s
+simply a question of starvation. It has to be paid for, it has to be
+paid for, Dounia, this smartness. And what if it’s more than you can
+bear afterwards, if you regret it? The bitterness, the misery, the
+curses, the tears hidden from all the world, for you are not a Marfa
+Petrovna. And how will your mother feel then? Even now she is uneasy,
+she is worried, but then, when she sees it all clearly? And I? Yes,
+indeed, what have you taken me for? I won’t have your sacrifice, Dounia,
+I won’t have it, mother! It shall not be, so long as I am alive, it
+shall not, it shall not! I won’t accept it!”
+He suddenly paused in his reflection and stood still.
+“It shall not be? But what are you going to do to prevent it? You’ll
+forbid it? And what right have you? What can you promise them on your
+side to give you such a right? Your whole life, your whole future, you
+will devote to them _when you have finished your studies and obtained a
+post_? Yes, we have heard all that before, and that’s all _words_, but
+now? Now something must be done, now, do you understand that? And
+what are you doing now? You are living upon them. They borrow on their
+hundred roubles pension. They borrow from the Svidrigaïlovs. How are
+you going to save them from Svidrigaïlovs, from Afanasy Ivanovitch
+Vahrushin, oh, future millionaire Zeus who would arrange their lives for
+them? In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be blind
+with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to a
+shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine for a moment what may have
+become of your sister in ten years? What may happen to her during those
+ten years? Can you fancy?”
+So he tortured himself, fretting himself with such questions, and
+finding a kind of enjoyment in it. And yet all these questions were not
+new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches. It was
+long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart. Long, long
+ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had waxed and
+gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it had taken
+the form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured
+his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an answer. Now his
+mother’s letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear
+that he must not now suffer passively, worrying himself over unsolved
+questions, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it
+quickly. Anyway he must decide on something, or else...
+“Or throw up life altogether!” he cried suddenly, in a frenzy--“accept
+one’s lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle everything in
+oneself, giving up all claim to activity, life and love!”
+“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have
+absolutely nowhere to turn?” Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into
+his mind, “for every man must have somewhere to turn....”
+He gave a sudden start; another thought, that he had had yesterday,
+slipped back into his mind. But he did not start at the thought
+recurring to him, for he knew, he had _felt beforehand_, that it must
+come back, he was expecting it; besides it was not only yesterday’s
+thought. The difference was that a month ago, yesterday even, the
+thought was a mere dream: but now... now it appeared not a dream at all,
+it had taken a new menacing and quite unfamiliar shape, and he suddenly
+became aware of this himself.... He felt a hammering in his head, and
+there was a darkness before his eyes.
+He looked round hurriedly, he was searching for something. He wanted
+to sit down and was looking for a seat; he was walking along the K----
+Boulevard. There was a seat about a hundred paces in front of him. He
+walked towards it as fast he could; but on the way he met with a little
+adventure which absorbed all his attention. Looking for the seat, he had
+noticed a woman walking some twenty paces in front of him, but at first
+he took no more notice of her than of other objects that crossed his
+path. It had happened to him many times going home not to notice the
+road by which he was going, and he was accustomed to walk like that. But
+there was at first sight something so strange about the woman in front
+of him, that gradually his attention was riveted upon her, at first
+reluctantly and, as it were, resentfully, and then more and more
+intently. He felt a sudden desire to find out what it was that was so
+strange about the woman. In the first place, she appeared to be a girl
+quite young, and she was walking in the great heat bareheaded and with
+no parasol or gloves, waving her arms about in an absurd way. She had
+on a dress of some light silky material, but put on strangely awry, not
+properly hooked up, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the
+waist: a great piece was rent and hanging loose. A little kerchief was
+flung about her bare throat, but lay slanting on one side. The girl was
+walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side. She
+drew Raskolnikov’s whole attention at last. He overtook the girl at the
+seat, but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner;
+she let her head sink on the back of the seat and closed her eyes,
+apparently in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely, he saw at once
+that she was completely drunk. It was a strange and shocking sight. He
+could hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He saw before him the
+face of a quite young, fair-haired girl--sixteen, perhaps not more than
+fifteen, years old, pretty little face, but flushed and heavy looking
+and, as it were, swollen. The girl seemed hardly to know what she was
+doing; she crossed one leg over the other, lifting it indecorously, and
+showed every sign of being unconscious that she was in the street.
+Raskolnikov did not sit down, but he felt unwilling to leave her,
+and stood facing her in perplexity. This boulevard was never much
+frequented; and now, at two o’clock, in the stifling heat, it was quite
+deserted. And yet on the further side of the boulevard, about fifteen
+paces away, a gentleman was standing on the edge of the pavement. He,
+too, would apparently have liked to approach the girl with some object
+of his own. He, too, had probably seen her in the distance and had
+followed her, but found Raskolnikov in his way. He looked angrily at
+him, though he tried to escape his notice, and stood impatiently biding
+his time, till the unwelcome man in rags should have moved away. His
+intentions were unmistakable. The gentleman was a plump, thickly-set
+man, about thirty, fashionably dressed, with a high colour, red lips and
+moustaches. Raskolnikov felt furious; he had a sudden longing to insult
+this fat dandy in some way. He left the girl for a moment and walked
+towards the gentleman.
+“Hey! You Svidrigaïlov! What do you want here?” he shouted, clenching
+his fists and laughing, spluttering with rage.
+“What do you mean?” the gentleman asked sternly, scowling in haughty
+astonishment.
+“Get away, that’s what I mean.”
+“How dare you, you low fellow!”
+He raised his cane. Raskolnikov rushed at him with his fists, without
+reflecting that the stout gentleman was a match for two men like
+himself. But at that instant someone seized him from behind, and a
+police constable stood between them.
+“That’s enough, gentlemen, no fighting, please, in a public place. What
+do you want? Who are you?” he asked Raskolnikov sternly, noticing his
+rags.
+Raskolnikov looked at him intently. He had a straight-forward, sensible,
+soldierly face, with grey moustaches and whiskers.
+“You are just the man I want,” Raskolnikov cried, catching at his arm.
+“I am a student, Raskolnikov.... You may as well know that too,” he
+added, addressing the gentleman, “come along, I have something to show
+you.”
+And taking the policeman by the hand he drew him towards the seat.
+“Look here, hopelessly drunk, and she has just come down the boulevard.
+There is no telling who and what she is, she does not look like a
+professional. It’s more likely she has been given drink and deceived
+somewhere... for the first time... you understand? and they’ve put her
+out into the street like that. Look at the way her dress is torn, and
+the way it has been put on: she has been dressed by somebody, she has
+not dressed herself, and dressed by unpractised hands, by a man’s hands;
+that’s evident. And now look there: I don’t know that dandy with whom I
+was going to fight, I see him for the first time, but he, too, has seen
+her on the road, just now, drunk, not knowing what she is doing, and now
+he is very eager to get hold of her, to get her away somewhere while she
+is in this state... that’s certain, believe me, I am not wrong. I saw
+him myself watching her and following her, but I prevented him, and he
+is just waiting for me to go away. Now he has walked away a little, and
+is standing still, pretending to make a cigarette.... Think how can we
+keep her out of his hands, and how are we to get her home?”
+The policeman saw it all in a flash. The stout gentleman was easy to
+understand, he turned to consider the girl. The policeman bent over to
+examine her more closely, and his face worked with genuine compassion.
+“Ah, what a pity!” he said, shaking his head--“why, she is quite a
+child! She has been deceived, you can see that at once. Listen, lady,”
+he began addressing her, “where do you live?” The girl opened her weary
+and sleepy-looking eyes, gazed blankly at the speaker and waved her
+hand.
+“Here,” said Raskolnikov feeling in his pocket and finding twenty
+copecks, “here, call a cab and tell him to drive her to her address. The
+only thing is to find out her address!”
+“Missy, missy!” the policeman began again, taking the money. “I’ll fetch
+you a cab and take you home myself. Where shall I take you, eh? Where do
+you live?”
+“Go away! They won’t let me alone,” the girl muttered, and once more
+waved her hand.
+“Ach, ach, how shocking! It’s shameful, missy, it’s a shame!” He shook
+his head again, shocked, sympathetic and indignant.
+“It’s a difficult job,” the policeman said to Raskolnikov, and as he
+did so, he looked him up and down in a rapid glance. He, too, must have
+seemed a strange figure to him: dressed in rags and handing him money!
+“Did you meet her far from here?” he asked him.
+“I tell you she was walking in front of me, staggering, just here, in
+the boulevard. She only just reached the seat and sank down on it.”
+“Ah, the shameful things that are done in the world nowadays, God have
+mercy on us! An innocent creature like that, drunk already! She has been
+deceived, that’s a sure thing. See how her dress has been torn too....
+Ah, the vice one sees nowadays! And as likely as not she belongs to
+gentlefolk too, poor ones maybe.... There are many like that nowadays.
+She looks refined, too, as though she were a lady,” and he bent over her
+once more.
+Perhaps he had daughters growing up like that, “looking like ladies and
+refined” with pretensions to gentility and smartness....
+“The chief thing is,” Raskolnikov persisted, “to keep her out of this
+scoundrel’s hands! Why should he outrage her! It’s as clear as day what
+he is after; ah, the brute, he is not moving off!”
+Raskolnikov spoke aloud and pointed to him. The gentleman heard him,
+and seemed about to fly into a rage again, but thought better of it, and
+confined himself to a contemptuous look. He then walked slowly another
+ten paces away and again halted.
+“Keep her out of his hands we can,” said the constable thoughtfully,
+“if only she’d tell us where to take her, but as it is.... Missy, hey,
+missy!” he bent over her once more.
+She opened her eyes fully all of a sudden, looked at him intently, as
+though realising something, got up from the seat and walked away in the
+direction from which she had come. “Oh shameful wretches, they won’t let
+me alone!” she said, waving her hand again. She walked quickly, though
+staggering as before. The dandy followed her, but along another avenue,
+keeping his eye on her.
+“Don’t be anxious, I won’t let him have her,” the policeman said
+resolutely, and he set off after them.
+“Ah, the vice one sees nowadays!” he repeated aloud, sighing.
+At that moment something seemed to sting Raskolnikov; in an instant a
+complete revulsion of feeling came over him.
+“Hey, here!” he shouted after the policeman.
+The latter turned round.
+“Let them be! What is it to do with you? Let her go! Let him amuse
+himself.” He pointed at the dandy, “What is it to do with you?”
+The policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed. Raskolnikov
+laughed.
+“Well!” ejaculated the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he
+walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov for a
+madman or something even worse.
+“He has carried off my twenty copecks,” Raskolnikov murmured angrily
+when he was left alone. “Well, let him take as much from the other
+fellow to allow him to have the girl and so let it end. And why did I
+want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help? Let
+them devour each other alive--what is it to me? How did I dare to give him
+twenty copecks? Were they mine?”
+In spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down on
+the deserted seat. His thoughts strayed aimlessly.... He found it hard
+to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget himself
+altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and begin life
+anew....
+“Poor girl!” he said, looking at the empty corner where she had
+sat--“She will come to herself and weep, and then her mother will find
+out.... She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating and
+then maybe, turn her out of doors.... And even if she does not, the
+Darya Frantsovnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be
+slipping out on the sly here and there. Then there will be the hospital
+directly (that’s always the luck of those girls with respectable
+mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then... again the hospital...
+drink... the taverns... and more hospital, in two or three years--a
+wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen.... Have not I seen
+cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? Why, they’ve all
+come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That’s as it should
+be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year
+go... that way... to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain
+chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words
+they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.... Once you’ve said
+‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other
+word... maybe we might feel more uneasy.... But what if Dounia were one
+of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?
+“But where am I going?” he thought suddenly. “Strange, I came out for
+something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out.... I was going
+to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Razumihin. That’s what it was... now I
+remember. What for, though? And what put the idea of going to Razumihin
+into my head just now? That’s curious.”
+He wondered at himself. Razumihin was one of his old comrades at the
+university. It was remarkable that Raskolnikov had hardly any friends at
+the university; he kept aloof from everyone, went to see no one, and did
+not welcome anyone who came to see him, and indeed everyone soon gave
+him up. He took no part in the students’ gatherings, amusements or
+conversations. He worked with great intensity without sparing himself,
+and he was respected for this, but no one liked him. He was very poor,
+and there was a sort of haughty pride and reserve about him, as though
+he were keeping something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades
+to look down upon them all as children, as though he were superior in
+development, knowledge and convictions, as though their beliefs and
+interests were beneath him.
+With Razumihin he had got on, or, at least, he was more unreserved and
+communicative with him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any other
+terms with Razumihin. He was an exceptionally good-humoured and candid
+youth, good-natured to the point of simplicity, though both depth and
+dignity lay concealed under that simplicity. The better of his comrades
+understood this, and all were fond of him. He was extremely intelligent,
+though he was certainly rather a simpleton at times. He was of striking
+appearance--tall, thin, blackhaired and always badly shaved. He was
+sometimes uproarious and was reputed to be of great physical strength.
+One night, when out in a festive company, he had with one blow laid
+a gigantic policeman on his back. There was no limit to his drinking
+powers, but he could abstain from drink altogether; he sometimes went
+too far in his pranks; but he could do without pranks altogether.
+Another thing striking about Razumihin, no failure distressed him, and
+it seemed as though no unfavourable circumstances could crush him. He
+could lodge anywhere, and bear the extremes of cold and hunger. He was
+very poor, and kept himself entirely on what he could earn by work of
+one sort or another. He knew of no end of resources by which to earn
+money. He spent one whole winter without lighting his stove, and used to
+declare that he liked it better, because one slept more soundly in
+the cold. For the present he, too, had been obliged to give up the
+university, but it was only for a time, and he was working with all his
+might to save enough to return to his studies again. Raskolnikov had
+not been to see him for the last four months, and Razumihin did not even
+know his address. About two months before, they had met in the street,
+but Raskolnikov had turned away and even crossed to the other side that
+he might not be observed. And though Razumihin noticed him, he passed
+him by, as he did not want to annoy him.
+CHAPTER V
+“Of course, I’ve been meaning lately to go to Razumihin’s to ask for
+work, to ask him to get me lessons or something...” Raskolnikov thought,
+“but what help can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me lessons, suppose
+he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any farthings, so that
+I could get some boots and make myself tidy enough to give lessons...
+hm... Well and what then? What shall I do with the few coppers I
+earn? That’s not what I want now. It’s really absurd for me to go to
+Razumihin....”
+The question why he was now going to Razumihin agitated him even more
+than he was himself aware; he kept uneasily seeking for some sinister
+significance in this apparently ordinary action.
+“Could I have expected to set it all straight and to find a way out by
+means of Razumihin alone?” he asked himself in perplexity.
+He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to say, after long
+musing, suddenly, as if it were spontaneously and by chance, a fantastic
+thought came into his head.
+“Hm... to Razumihin’s,” he said all at once, calmly, as though he had
+reached a final determination. “I shall go to Razumihin’s of course,
+but... not now. I shall go to him... on the next day after It, when It
+will be over and everything will begin afresh....”
+And suddenly he realised what he was thinking.
+“After It,” he shouted, jumping up from the seat, “but is It really
+going to happen? Is it possible it really will happen?” He left the
+seat, and went off almost at a run; he meant to turn back, homewards,
+but the thought of going home suddenly filled him with intense loathing;
+in that hole, in that awful little cupboard of his, all _this_ had for a
+month past been growing up in him; and he walked on at random.
+His nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel
+shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he
+began almost unconsciously, from some inner craving, to stare at all
+the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract his
+attention; but he did not succeed, and kept dropping every moment into
+brooding. When with a start he lifted his head again and looked round,
+he forgot at once what he had just been thinking about and even where he
+was going. In this way he walked right across Vassilyevsky Ostrov, came
+out on to the Lesser Neva, crossed the bridge and turned towards the
+islands. The greenness and freshness were at first restful to his weary
+eyes after the dust of the town and the huge houses that hemmed him in
+and weighed upon him. Here there were no taverns, no stifling closeness,
+no stench. But soon these new pleasant sensations passed into morbid
+irritability. Sometimes he stood still before a brightly painted summer
+villa standing among green foliage, he gazed through the fence, he saw
+in the distance smartly dressed women on the verandahs and balconies,
+and children running in the gardens. The flowers especially caught his
+attention; he gazed at them longer than at anything. He was met, too, by
+luxurious carriages and by men and women on horseback; he watched them
+with curious eyes and forgot about them before they had vanished from
+his sight. Once he stood still and counted his money; he found he had
+thirty copecks. “Twenty to the policeman, three to Nastasya for the
+letter, so I must have given forty-seven or fifty to the Marmeladovs
+yesterday,” he thought, reckoning it up for some unknown reason, but he
+soon forgot with what object he had taken the money out of his pocket.
+He recalled it on passing an eating-house or tavern, and felt that he
+was hungry.... Going into the tavern he drank a glass of vodka and ate a
+pie of some sort. He finished eating it as he walked away. It was a long
+while since he had taken vodka and it had an effect upon him at once,
+though he only drank a wineglassful. His legs felt suddenly heavy and
+a great drowsiness came upon him. He turned homewards, but reaching
+Petrovsky Ostrov he stopped completely exhausted, turned off the road
+into the bushes, sank down upon the grass and instantly fell asleep.
+In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular
+actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times
+monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are
+so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but
+so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like
+Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking
+state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a
+powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.
+Raskolnikov had a fearful dream. He dreamt he was back in his childhood
+in the little town of his birth. He was a child about seven years old,
+walking into the country with his father on the evening of a holiday. It
+was a grey and heavy day, the country was exactly as he remembered it;
+indeed he recalled it far more vividly in his dream than he had done in
+memory. The little town stood on a level flat as bare as the hand, not
+even a willow near it; only in the far distance, a copse lay, a dark
+blur on the very edge of the horizon. A few paces beyond the last market
+garden stood a tavern, a big tavern, which had always aroused in him a
+feeling of aversion, even of fear, when he walked by it with his father.
+There was always a crowd there, always shouting, laughter and abuse,
+hideous hoarse singing and often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking
+figures were hanging about the tavern. He used to cling close to his
+father, trembling all over when he met them. Near the tavern the road
+became a dusty track, the dust of which was always black. It was a
+winding road, and about a hundred paces further on, it turned to the
+right to the graveyard. In the middle of the graveyard stood a stone
+church with a green cupola where he used to go to mass two or three
+times a year with his father and mother, when a service was held in
+memory of his grandmother, who had long been dead, and whom he had never
+seen. On these occasions they used to take on a white dish tied up in a
+table napkin a special sort of rice pudding with raisins stuck in it in
+the shape of a cross. He loved that church, the old-fashioned, unadorned
+ikons and the old priest with the shaking head. Near his grandmother’s
+grave, which was marked by a stone, was the little grave of his younger
+brother who had died at six months old. He did not remember him at all,
+but he had been told about his little brother, and whenever he visited
+the graveyard he used religiously and reverently to cross himself and
+to bow down and kiss the little grave. And now he dreamt that he was
+walking with his father past the tavern on the way to the graveyard; he
+was holding his father’s hand and looking with dread at the tavern. A
+peculiar circumstance attracted his attention: there seemed to be
+some kind of festivity going on, there were crowds of gaily dressed
+townspeople, peasant women, their husbands, and riff-raff of all sorts,
+all singing and all more or less drunk. Near the entrance of the tavern
+stood a cart, but a strange cart. It was one of those big carts usually
+drawn by heavy cart-horses and laden with casks of wine or other heavy
+goods. He always liked looking at those great cart-horses, with their
+long manes, thick legs, and slow even pace, drawing along a perfect
+mountain with no appearance of effort, as though it were easier going
+with a load than without it. But now, strange to say, in the shafts of
+such a cart he saw a thin little sorrel beast, one of those peasants’
+nags which he had often seen straining their utmost under a heavy load
+of wood or hay, especially when the wheels were stuck in the mud or in
+a rut. And the peasants would beat them so cruelly, sometimes even
+about the nose and eyes, and he felt so sorry, so sorry for them that
+he almost cried, and his mother always used to take him away from the
+window. All of a sudden there was a great uproar of shouting, singing
+and the balalaïka, and from the tavern a number of big and very drunken
+peasants came out, wearing red and blue shirts and coats thrown over
+their shoulders.
+“Get in, get in!” shouted one of them, a young thick-necked peasant with
+a fleshy face red as a carrot. “I’ll take you all, get in!”
+But at once there was an outbreak of laughter and exclamations in the
+crowd.
+“Take us all with a beast like that!”
+“Why, Mikolka, are you crazy to put a nag like that in such a cart?”
+“And this mare is twenty if she is a day, mates!”
+“Get in, I’ll take you all,” Mikolka shouted again, leaping first into
+the cart, seizing the reins and standing straight up in front. “The bay
+has gone with Matvey,” he shouted from the cart--“and this brute, mates,
+is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill her. She’s just
+eating her head off. Get in, I tell you! I’ll make her gallop! She’ll
+gallop!” and he picked up the whip, preparing himself with relish to
+flog the little mare.
+“Get in! Come along!” The crowd laughed. “D’you hear, she’ll gallop!”
+“Gallop indeed! She has not had a gallop in her for the last ten years!”
+“She’ll jog along!”
+“Don’t you mind her, mates, bring a whip each of you, get ready!”
+“All right! Give it to her!”
+They all clambered into Mikolka’s cart, laughing and making jokes. Six
+men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat,
+rosy-cheeked woman. She was dressed in red cotton, in a pointed, beaded
+headdress and thick leather shoes; she was cracking nuts and laughing.
+The crowd round them was laughing too and indeed, how could they help
+laughing? That wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a
+gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to
+help Mikolka. With the cry of “now,” the mare tugged with all her might,
+but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with
+her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which
+were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the
+crowd was redoubled, but Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously thrashed
+the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop.
+“Let me get in, too, mates,” shouted a young man in the crowd whose
+appetite was aroused.
+“Get in, all get in,” cried Mikolka, “she will draw you all. I’ll beat
+her to death!” And he thrashed and thrashed at the mare, beside himself
+with fury.
+“Father, father,” he cried, “father, what are they doing? Father, they
+are beating the poor horse!”
+“Come along, come along!” said his father. “They are drunken and
+foolish, they are in fun; come away, don’t look!” and he tried to draw
+him away, but he tore himself away from his hand, and, beside himself
+with horror, ran to the horse. The poor beast was in a bad way. She was
+gasping, standing still, then tugging again and almost falling.
+“Beat her to death,” cried Mikolka, “it’s come to that. I’ll do for
+her!”
+“What are you about, are you a Christian, you devil?” shouted an old man
+in the crowd.
+“Did anyone ever see the like? A wretched nag like that pulling such a
+cartload,” said another.
+“You’ll kill her,” shouted the third.
+“Don’t meddle! It’s my property, I’ll do what I choose. Get in, more of
+you! Get in, all of you! I will have her go at a gallop!...”
+All at once laughter broke into a roar and covered everything: the mare,
+roused by the shower of blows, began feebly kicking. Even the old man
+could not help smiling. To think of a wretched little beast like that
+trying to kick!
+Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to beat her
+about the ribs. One ran each side.
+“Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes,” cried Mikolka.
+“Give us a song, mates,” shouted someone in the cart and everyone in the
+cart joined in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and whistling. The
+woman went on cracking nuts and laughing.
+... He ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped
+across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his
+tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across
+the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he
+rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was
+shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and
+would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to
+the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking once more.
+“I’ll teach you to kick,” Mikolka shouted ferociously. He threw down
+the whip, bent forward and picked up from the bottom of the cart a long,
+thick shaft, he took hold of one end with both hands and with an effort
+brandished it over the mare.
+“He’ll crush her,” was shouted round him. “He’ll kill her!”
+“It’s my property,” shouted Mikolka and brought the shaft down with a
+swinging blow. There was a sound of a heavy thud.
+“Thrash her, thrash her! Why have you stopped?” shouted voices in the
+crowd.
+And Mikolka swung the shaft a second time and it fell a second time
+on the spine of the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches, but
+lurched forward and tugged forward with all her force, tugged first on
+one side and then on the other, trying to move the cart. But the six
+whips were attacking her in all directions, and the shaft was raised
+again and fell upon her a third time, then a fourth, with heavy measured
+blows. Mikolka was in a fury that he could not kill her at one blow.
+“She’s a tough one,” was shouted in the crowd.
+“She’ll fall in a minute, mates, there will soon be an end of her,” said
+an admiring spectator in the crowd.
+“Fetch an axe to her! Finish her off,” shouted a third.
+“I’ll show you! Stand off,” Mikolka screamed frantically; he threw down
+the shaft, stooped down in the cart and picked up an iron crowbar. “Look
+out,” he shouted, and with all his might he dealt a stunning blow at the
+poor mare. The blow fell; the mare staggered, sank back, tried to pull,
+but the bar fell again with a swinging blow on her back and she fell on
+the ground like a log.
+“Finish her off,” shouted Mikolka and he leapt beside himself, out of
+the cart. Several young men, also flushed with drink, seized anything
+they could come across--whips, sticks, poles, and ran to the dying
+mare. Mikolka stood on one side and began dealing random blows with the
+crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long breath and died.
+“You butchered her,” someone shouted in the crowd.
+“Why wouldn’t she gallop then?”
+“My property!” shouted Mikolka, with bloodshot eyes, brandishing the bar
+in his hands. He stood as though regretting that he had nothing more to
+beat.
+“No mistake about it, you are not a Christian,” many voices were
+shouting in the crowd.
+But the poor boy, beside himself, made his way, screaming, through the
+crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and
+kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed the lips.... Then he jumped up and
+flew in a frenzy with his little fists out at Mikolka. At that instant
+his father, who had been running after him, snatched him up and carried
+him out of the crowd.
+“Come along, come! Let us go home,” he said to him.
+“Father! Why did they... kill... the poor horse!” he sobbed, but his
+voice broke and the words came in shrieks from his panting chest.
+“They are drunk.... They are brutal... it’s not our business!” said his
+father. He put his arms round his father but he felt choked, choked. He
+tried to draw a breath, to cry out--and woke up.
+He waked up, gasping for breath, his hair soaked with perspiration, and
+stood up in terror.
+“Thank God, that was only a dream,” he said, sitting down under a tree
+and drawing deep breaths. “But what is it? Is it some fever coming on?
+Such a hideous dream!”
+He felt utterly broken: darkness and confusion were in his soul. He
+rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his hands.
+“Good God!” he cried, “can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an
+axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open... that I
+shall tread in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal and tremble;
+hide, all spattered in the blood... with the axe.... Good God, can it
+be?”
+He was shaking like a leaf as he said this.
+“But why am I going on like this?” he continued, sitting up again, as it
+were in profound amazement. “I knew that I could never bring myself
+to it, so what have I been torturing myself for till now? Yesterday,
+yesterday, when I went to make that... _experiment_, yesterday I
+realised completely that I could never bear to do it.... Why am I going
+over it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs
+yesterday, I said myself that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile... the
+very thought of it made me feel sick and filled me with horror.
+“No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it! Granted, granted that there is
+no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last
+month is clear as day, true as arithmetic.... My God! Anyway I couldn’t
+bring myself to it! I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it! Why, why then am
+I still...?”
+He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though surprised at
+finding himself in this place, and went towards the bridge. He was pale,
+his eyes glowed, he was exhausted in every limb, but he seemed suddenly
+to breathe more easily. He felt he had cast off that fearful burden that
+had so long been weighing upon him, and all at once there was a sense
+of relief and peace in his soul. “Lord,” he prayed, “show me my path--I
+renounce that accursed... dream of mine.”
+Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the
+glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his weakness he
+was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though an abscess that had been
+forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken. Freedom,
+freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!
+Later on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to him during
+those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously
+impressed by one circumstance, which, though in itself not very
+exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the predestined
+turning-point of his fate. He could never understand and explain to
+himself why, when he was tired and worn out, when it would have been
+more convenient for him to go home by the shortest and most direct way,
+he had returned by the Hay Market where he had no need to go. It was
+obviously and quite unnecessarily out of his way, though not much so. It
+is true that it happened to him dozens of times to return home without
+noticing what streets he passed through. But why, he was always asking
+himself, why had such an important, such a decisive and at the same time
+such an absolutely chance meeting happened in the Hay Market (where he
+had moreover no reason to go) at the very hour, the very minute of his
+life when he was just in the very mood and in the very circumstances
+in which that meeting was able to exert the gravest and most decisive
+influence on his whole destiny? As though it had been lying in wait for
+him on purpose!
+It was about nine o’clock when he crossed the Hay Market. At the tables
+and the barrows, at the booths and the shops, all the market people were
+closing their establishments or clearing away and packing up their
+wares and, like their customers, were going home. Rag pickers and
+costermongers of all kinds were crowding round the taverns in the dirty
+and stinking courtyards of the Hay Market. Raskolnikov particularly
+liked this place and the neighbouring alleys, when he wandered aimlessly
+in the streets. Here his rags did not attract contemptuous attention,
+and one could walk about in any attire without scandalising people. At
+the corner of an alley a huckster and his wife had two tables set out
+with tapes, thread, cotton handkerchiefs, etc. They, too, had got up to
+go home, but were lingering in conversation with a friend, who had just
+come up to them. This friend was Lizaveta Ivanovna, or, as everyone
+called her, Lizaveta, the younger sister of the old pawnbroker, Alyona
+Ivanovna, whom Raskolnikov had visited the previous day to pawn his
+watch and make his _experiment_.... He already knew all about Lizaveta
+and she knew him a little too. She was a single woman of about
+thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid, submissive and almost idiotic. She was
+a complete slave and went in fear and trembling of her sister, who
+made her work day and night, and even beat her. She was standing with
+a bundle before the huckster and his wife, listening earnestly and
+doubtfully. They were talking of something with special warmth. The
+moment Raskolnikov caught sight of her, he was overcome by a strange
+sensation as it were of intense astonishment, though there was nothing
+astonishing about this meeting.
+“You could make up your mind for yourself, Lizaveta Ivanovna,” the
+huckster was saying aloud. “Come round to-morrow about seven. They will
+be here too.”
+“To-morrow?” said Lizaveta slowly and thoughtfully, as though unable to
+make up her mind.
+“Upon my word, what a fright you are in of Alyona Ivanovna,” gabbled
+the huckster’s wife, a lively little woman. “I look at you, you are like
+some little babe. And she is not your own sister either--nothing but a
+step-sister and what a hand she keeps over you!”
+“But this time don’t say a word to Alyona Ivanovna,” her husband
+interrupted; “that’s my advice, but come round to us without asking.
+It will be worth your while. Later on your sister herself may have a
+notion.”
+“Am I to come?”
+“About seven o’clock to-morrow. And they will be here. You will be able
+to decide for yourself.”
+“And we’ll have a cup of tea,” added his wife.
+“All right, I’ll come,” said Lizaveta, still pondering, and she began
+slowly moving away.
+Raskolnikov had just passed and heard no more. He passed softly,
+unnoticed, trying not to miss a word. His first amazement was followed
+by a thrill of horror, like a shiver running down his spine. He had
+learnt, he had suddenly quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day at
+seven o’clock Lizaveta, the old woman’s sister and only companion, would
+be away from home and that therefore at seven o’clock precisely the old
+woman _would be left alone_.
+He was only a few steps from his lodging. He went in like a man
+condemned to death. He thought of nothing and was incapable of thinking;
+but he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more freedom
+of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably
+decided.
+Certainly, if he had to wait whole years for a suitable opportunity, he
+could not reckon on a more certain step towards the success of the plan
+than that which had just presented itself. In any case, it would have
+been difficult to find out beforehand and with certainty, with
+greater exactness and less risk, and without dangerous inquiries and
+investigations, that next day at a certain time an old woman, on whose
+life an attempt was contemplated, would be at home and entirely alone.
+CHAPTER VI
+Later on Raskolnikov happened to find out why the huckster and his
+wife had invited Lizaveta. It was a very ordinary matter and there was
+nothing exceptional about it. A family who had come to the town and been
+reduced to poverty were selling their household goods and clothes, all
+women’s things. As the things would have fetched little in the market,
+they were looking for a dealer. This was Lizaveta’s business. She
+undertook such jobs and was frequently employed, as she was very honest
+and always fixed a fair price and stuck to it. She spoke as a rule
+little and, as we have said already, she was very submissive and timid.
+But Raskolnikov had become superstitious of late. The traces of
+superstition remained in him long after, and were almost ineradicable.
+And in all this he was always afterwards disposed to see something
+strange and mysterious, as it were, the presence of some peculiar
+influences and coincidences. In the previous winter a student he knew
+called Pokorev, who had left for Harkov, had chanced in conversation to
+give him the address of Alyona Ivanovna, the old pawnbroker, in case he
+might want to pawn anything. For a long while he did not go to her, for
+he had lessons and managed to get along somehow. Six weeks ago he had
+remembered the address; he had two articles that could be pawned: his
+father’s old silver watch and a little gold ring with three red stones,
+a present from his sister at parting. He decided to take the ring. When
+he found the old woman he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her
+at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her. He got
+two roubles from her and went into a miserable little tavern on his way
+home. He asked for tea, sat down and sank into deep thought. A strange
+idea was pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very
+much absorbed him.
+Almost beside him at the next table there was sitting a student, whom he
+did not know and had never seen, and with him a young officer. They had
+played a game of billiards and began drinking tea. All at once he heard
+the student mention to the officer the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna and
+give him her address. This of itself seemed strange to Raskolnikov; he
+had just come from her and here at once he heard her name. Of course
+it was a chance, but he could not shake off a very extraordinary
+impression, and here someone seemed to be speaking expressly for him;
+the student began telling his friend various details about Alyona
+Ivanovna.
+“She is first-rate,” he said. “You can always get money from her. She is
+as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and
+she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have
+had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy....”
+And he began describing how spiteful and uncertain she was, how if you
+were only a day late with your interest the pledge was lost; how she
+gave a quarter of the value of an article and took five and even seven
+percent a month on it and so on. The student chattered on, saying
+that she had a sister Lizaveta, whom the wretched little creature was
+continually beating, and kept in complete bondage like a small child,
+though Lizaveta was at least six feet high.
+“There’s a phenomenon for you,” cried the student and he laughed.
+They began talking about Lizaveta. The student spoke about her with a
+peculiar relish and was continually laughing and the officer listened
+with great interest and asked him to send Lizaveta to do some mending
+for him. Raskolnikov did not miss a word and learned everything about
+her. Lizaveta was younger than the old woman and was her half-sister,
+being the child of a different mother. She was thirty-five. She worked
+day and night for her sister, and besides doing the cooking and the
+washing, she did sewing and worked as a charwoman and gave her sister
+all she earned. She did not dare to accept an order or job of any kind
+without her sister’s permission. The old woman had already made her
+will, and Lizaveta knew of it, and by this will she would not get a
+farthing; nothing but the movables, chairs and so on; all the money was
+left to a monastery in the province of N----, that prayers might be
+said for her in perpetuity. Lizaveta was of lower rank than her sister,
+unmarried and awfully uncouth in appearance, remarkably tall with long
+feet that looked as if they were bent outwards. She always wore battered
+goatskin shoes, and was clean in her person. What the student expressed
+most surprise and amusement about was the fact that Lizaveta was
+continually with child.
+“But you say she is hideous?” observed the officer.
+“Yes, she is so dark-skinned and looks like a soldier dressed up, but
+you know she is not at all hideous. She has such a good-natured face
+and eyes. Strikingly so. And the proof of it is that lots of people are
+attracted by her. She is such a soft, gentle creature, ready to put up
+with anything, always willing, willing to do anything. And her smile is
+really very sweet.”
+“You seem to find her attractive yourself,” laughed the officer.
+“From her queerness. No, I’ll tell you what. I could kill that damned
+old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without the
+faintest conscience-prick,” the student added with warmth. The officer
+laughed again while Raskolnikov shuddered. How strange it was!
+“Listen, I want to ask you a serious question,” the student said hotly.
+“I was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a stupid,
+senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman, not simply
+useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what she is
+living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any case. You
+understand? You understand?”
+“Yes, yes, I understand,” answered the officer, watching his excited
+companion attentively.
+“Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for
+want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good
+deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be
+buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the
+right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from
+vice, from the Lock hospitals--and all with her money. Kill her, take
+her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of
+humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny
+crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands
+would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives
+in exchange--it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of
+that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence!
+No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact
+because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of
+others; the other day she bit Lizaveta’s finger out of spite; it almost
+had to be amputated.”
+“Of course she does not deserve to live,” remarked the officer, “but
+there it is, it’s nature.”
+“Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but
+for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that,
+there would never have been a single great man. They talk of
+duty, conscience--I don’t want to say anything against duty and
+conscience;--but the point is, what do we mean by them? Stay, I have
+another question to ask you. Listen!”
+“No, you stay, I’ll ask you a question. Listen!”
+“Well?”
+“You are talking and speechifying away, but tell me, would you kill the
+old woman _yourself_?”
+“Of course not! I was only arguing the justice of it.... It’s nothing to
+do with me....”
+“But I think, if you would not do it yourself, there’s no justice about
+it.... Let us have another game.”
+Raskolnikov was violently agitated. Of course, it was all ordinary
+youthful talk and thought, such as he had often heard before in
+different forms and on different themes. But why had he happened to hear
+such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain
+was just conceiving... _the very same ideas_? And why, just at the
+moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old
+woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This
+coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern
+had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had
+really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint....
+*****
+On returning from the Hay Market he flung himself on the sofa and sat
+for a whole hour without stirring. Meanwhile it got dark; he had no
+candle and, indeed, it did not occur to him to light up. He could never
+recollect whether he had been thinking about anything at that time. At
+last he was conscious of his former fever and shivering, and he realised
+with relief that he could lie down on the sofa. Soon heavy, leaden sleep
+came over him, as it were crushing him.
+He slept an extraordinarily long time and without dreaming. Nastasya,
+coming into his room at ten o’clock the next morning, had difficulty
+in rousing him. She brought him in tea and bread. The tea was again the
+second brew and again in her own tea-pot.
+“My goodness, how he sleeps!” she cried indignantly. “And he is always
+asleep.”
+He got up with an effort. His head ached, he stood up, took a turn in
+his garret and sank back on the sofa again.
+“Going to sleep again,” cried Nastasya. “Are you ill, eh?”
+He made no reply.
+“Do you want some tea?”
+“Afterwards,” he said with an effort, closing his eyes again and turning
+to the wall.
+Nastasya stood over him.
+“Perhaps he really is ill,” she said, turned and went out. She came in
+again at two o’clock with soup. He was lying as before. The tea stood
+untouched. Nastasya felt positively offended and began wrathfully
+rousing him.
+“Why are you lying like a log?” she shouted, looking at him with
+repulsion.
+He got up, and sat down again, but said nothing and stared at the floor.
+“Are you ill or not?” asked Nastasya and again received no answer.
+“You’d better go out and get a breath of air,” she said after a pause.
+“Will you eat it or not?”
+“Afterwards,” he said weakly. “You can go.”
+And he motioned her out.
+She remained a little longer, looked at him with compassion and went
+out.
+A few minutes afterwards, he raised his eyes and looked for a long while
+at the tea and the soup. Then he took the bread, took up a spoon and
+began to eat.
+He ate a little, three or four spoonfuls, without appetite, as it were
+mechanically. His head ached less. After his meal he stretched himself
+on the sofa again, but now he could not sleep; he lay without stirring,
+with his face in the pillow. He was haunted by day-dreams and such
+strange day-dreams; in one, that kept recurring, he fancied that he was
+in Africa, in Egypt, in some sort of oasis. The caravan was resting,
+the camels were peacefully lying down; the palms stood all around in a
+complete circle; all the party were at dinner. But he was drinking water
+from a spring which flowed gurgling close by. And it was so cool, it was
+wonderful, wonderful, blue, cold water running among the parti-coloured
+stones and over the clean sand which glistened here and there like
+gold.... Suddenly he heard a clock strike. He started, roused himself,
+raised his head, looked out of the window, and seeing how late it was,
+suddenly jumped up wide awake as though someone had pulled him off the
+sofa. He crept on tiptoe to the door, stealthily opened it and began
+listening on the staircase. His heart beat terribly. But all was quiet
+on the stairs as if everyone was asleep.... It seemed to him strange and
+monstrous that he could have slept in such forgetfulness from the
+previous day and had done nothing, had prepared nothing yet.... And
+meanwhile perhaps it had struck six. And his drowsiness and stupefaction
+were followed by an extraordinary, feverish, as it were distracted
+haste. But the preparations to be made were few. He concentrated all his
+energies on thinking of everything and forgetting nothing; and his heart
+kept beating and thumping so that he could hardly breathe. First he had
+to make a noose and sew it into his overcoat--a work of a moment. He
+rummaged under his pillow and picked out amongst the linen stuffed away
+under it, a worn out, old unwashed shirt. From its rags he tore a long
+strip, a couple of inches wide and about sixteen inches long. He folded
+this strip in two, took off his wide, strong summer overcoat of some
+stout cotton material (his only outer garment) and began sewing the two
+ends of the rag on the inside, under the left armhole. His hands shook
+as he sewed, but he did it successfully so that nothing showed outside
+when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread he had got ready
+long before and they lay on his table in a piece of paper. As for the
+noose, it was a very ingenious device of his own; the noose was intended
+for the axe. It was impossible for him to carry the axe through the
+street in his hands. And if hidden under his coat he would still have
+had to support it with his hand, which would have been noticeable. Now
+he had only to put the head of the axe in the noose, and it would hang
+quietly under his arm on the inside. Putting his hand in his coat
+pocket, he could hold the end of the handle all the way, so that it did
+not swing; and as the coat was very full, a regular sack in fact, it
+could not be seen from outside that he was holding something with the
+hand that was in the pocket. This noose, too, he had designed a
+fortnight before.
+When he had finished with this, he thrust his hand into a little opening
+between his sofa and the floor, fumbled in the left corner and drew out
+the _pledge_, which he had got ready long before and hidden there. This
+pledge was, however, only a smoothly planed piece of wood the size and
+thickness of a silver cigarette case. He picked up this piece of wood
+in one of his wanderings in a courtyard where there was some sort of
+a workshop. Afterwards he had added to the wood a thin smooth piece
+of iron, which he had also picked up at the same time in the street.
+Putting the iron which was a little the smaller on the piece of wood,
+he fastened them very firmly, crossing and re-crossing the thread round
+them; then wrapped them carefully and daintily in clean white paper and
+tied up the parcel so that it would be very difficult to untie it. This
+was in order to divert the attention of the old woman for a time, while
+she was trying to undo the knot, and so to gain a moment. The iron strip
+was added to give weight, so that the woman might not guess the first
+minute that the “thing” was made of wood. All this had been stored by
+him beforehand under the sofa. He had only just got the pledge out when
+he heard someone suddenly about in the yard.
+“It struck six long ago.”
+“Long ago! My God!”
+He rushed to the door, listened, caught up his hat and began to descend
+his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat. He had still the
+most important thing to do--to steal the axe from the kitchen. That the
+deed must be done with an axe he had decided long ago. He had also a
+pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less
+on his own strength, and so resolved finally on the axe. We may note in
+passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken by
+him in the matter; they had one strange characteristic: the more final
+they were, the more hideous and the more absurd they at once became in
+his eyes. In spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for
+a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his
+plans.
+And, indeed, if it had ever happened that everything to the least point
+could have been considered and finally settled, and no uncertainty of
+any kind had remained, he would, it seems, have renounced it all
+as something absurd, monstrous and impossible. But a whole mass of
+unsettled points and uncertainties remained. As for getting the axe,
+that trifling business cost him no anxiety, for nothing could be easier.
+Nastasya was continually out of the house, especially in the evenings;
+she would run in to the neighbours or to a shop, and always left the
+door ajar. It was the one thing the landlady was always scolding her
+about. And so, when the time came, he would only have to go quietly into
+the kitchen and to take the axe, and an hour later (when everything
+was over) go in and put it back again. But these were doubtful points.
+Supposing he returned an hour later to put it back, and Nastasya had
+come back and was on the spot. He would of course have to go by and wait
+till she went out again. But supposing she were in the meantime to miss
+the axe, look for it, make an outcry--that would mean suspicion or at
+least grounds for suspicion.
+But those were all trifles which he had not even begun to consider, and
+indeed he had no time. He was thinking of the chief point, and put off
+trifling details, until _he could believe in it all_. But that seemed
+utterly unattainable. So it seemed to himself at least. He could not
+imagine, for instance, that he would sometime leave off thinking, get
+up and simply go there.... Even his late experiment (i.e. his visit with
+the object of a final survey of the place) was simply an attempt at
+an experiment, far from being the real thing, as though one should say
+“come, let us go and try it--why dream about it!”--and at once he
+had broken down and had run away cursing, in a frenzy with himself.
+Meanwhile it would seem, as regards the moral question, that his
+analysis was complete; his casuistry had become keen as a razor, and he
+could not find rational objections in himself. But in the last resort
+he simply ceased to believe in himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought
+arguments in all directions, fumbling for them, as though someone were
+forcing and drawing him to it.
+At first--long before indeed--he had been much occupied with one
+question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily
+detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He
+had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his
+opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility
+of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every
+criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a
+childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence
+and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse
+of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease,
+developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the
+perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment
+of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the
+individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The
+question whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the
+crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of
+the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide.
+When he reached these conclusions, he decided that in his own case there
+could not be such a morbid reaction, that his reason and will would
+remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for the
+simple reason that his design was “not a crime....” We will omit all the
+process by means of which he arrived at this last conclusion; we have
+run too far ahead already.... We may add only that the practical, purely
+material difficulties of the affair occupied a secondary position in his
+mind. “One has but to keep all one’s will-power and reason to deal
+with them, and they will all be overcome at the time when once one has
+familiarised oneself with the minutest details of the business....” But
+this preparation had never been begun. His final decisions were what he
+came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite
+differently, as it were accidentally and unexpectedly.
+One trifling circumstance upset his calculations, before he had even
+left the staircase. When he reached the landlady’s kitchen, the door
+of which was open as usual, he glanced cautiously in to see whether, in
+Nastasya’s absence, the landlady herself was there, or if not, whether
+the door to her own room was closed, so that she might not peep out when
+he went in for the axe. But what was his amazement when he suddenly
+saw that Nastasya was not only at home in the kitchen, but was occupied
+there, taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on a line. Seeing
+him, she left off hanging the clothes, turned to him and stared at him
+all the time he was passing. He turned away his eyes, and walked past as
+though he noticed nothing. But it was the end of everything; he had not
+the axe! He was overwhelmed.
+“What made me think,” he reflected, as he went under the gateway, “what
+made me think that she would be sure not to be at home at that moment!
+Why, why, why did I assume this so certainly?”
+He was crushed and even humiliated. He could have laughed at himself in
+his anger.... A dull animal rage boiled within him.
+He stood hesitating in the gateway. To go into the street, to go a walk
+for appearance’ sake was revolting; to go back to his room, even more
+revolting. “And what a chance I have lost for ever!” he muttered,
+standing aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the porter’s little
+dark room, which was also open. Suddenly he started. From the porter’s
+room, two paces away from him, something shining under the bench to the
+right caught his eye.... He looked about him--nobody. He approached the
+room on tiptoe, went down two steps into it and in a faint voice called
+the porter. “Yes, not at home! Somewhere near though, in the yard, for
+the door is wide open.” He dashed to the axe (it was an axe) and pulled
+it out from under the bench, where it lay between two chunks of wood;
+at once, before going out, he made it fast in the noose, he thrust both
+hands into his pockets and went out of the room; no one had noticed him!
+“When reason fails, the devil helps!” he thought with a strange grin.
+This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.
+He walked along quietly and sedately, without hurry, to avoid awakening
+suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passers-by, tried to escape looking
+at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable as possible.
+Suddenly he thought of his hat. “Good heavens! I had the money the day
+before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear instead!” A curse rose
+from the bottom of his soul.
+Glancing out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he saw by a clock on
+the wall that it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make haste and at
+the same time to go someway round, so as to approach the house from the
+other side....
+When he had happened to imagine all this beforehand, he had sometimes
+thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not very much
+afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed. His mind was even occupied
+by irrelevant matters, but by nothing for long. As he passed the Yusupov
+garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the building of great
+fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere in all
+the squares. By degrees he passed to the conviction that if the summer
+garden were extended to the field of Mars, and perhaps joined to the
+garden of the Mihailovsky Palace, it would be a splendid thing and a
+great benefit to the town. Then he was interested by the question why
+in all great towns men are not simply driven by necessity, but in some
+peculiar way inclined to live in those parts of the town where there
+are no gardens nor fountains; where there is most dirt and smell and all
+sorts of nastiness. Then his own walks through the Hay Market came back
+to his mind, and for a moment he waked up to reality. “What nonsense!”
+he thought, “better think of nothing at all!”
+“So probably men led to execution clutch mentally at every object that
+meets them on the way,” flashed through his mind, but simply flashed,
+like lightning; he made haste to dismiss this thought.... And by now
+he was near; here was the house, here was the gate. Suddenly a clock
+somewhere struck once. “What! can it be half-past seven? Impossible, it
+must be fast!”
+Luckily for him, everything went well again at the gates. At that very
+moment, as though expressly for his benefit, a huge waggon of hay had
+just driven in at the gate, completely screening him as he passed under
+the gateway, and the waggon had scarcely had time to drive through into
+the yard, before he had slipped in a flash to the right. On the other
+side of the waggon he could hear shouting and quarrelling; but no one
+noticed him and no one met him. Many windows looking into that huge
+quadrangular yard were open at that moment, but he did not raise his
+head--he had not the strength to. The staircase leading to the old
+woman’s room was close by, just on the right of the gateway. He was
+already on the stairs....
+Drawing a breath, pressing his hand against his throbbing heart, and
+once more feeling for the axe and setting it straight, he began softly
+and cautiously ascending the stairs, listening every minute. But the
+stairs, too, were quite deserted; all the doors were shut; he met no
+one. One flat indeed on the first floor was wide open and painters were
+at work in it, but they did not glance at him. He stood still, thought
+a minute and went on. “Of course it would be better if they had not been
+here, but... it’s two storeys above them.”
+And there was the fourth storey, here was the door, here was the
+flat opposite, the empty one. The flat underneath the old woman’s was
+apparently empty also; the visiting card nailed on the door had been
+torn off--they had gone away!... He was out of breath. For one instant
+the thought floated through his mind “Shall I go back?” But he made no
+answer and began listening at the old woman’s door, a dead silence. Then
+he listened again on the staircase, listened long and intently...
+then looked about him for the last time, pulled himself together, drew
+himself up, and once more tried the axe in the noose. “Am I very pale?”
+he wondered. “Am I not evidently agitated? She is mistrustful.... Had I
+better wait a little longer... till my heart leaves off thumping?”
+But his heart did not leave off. On the contrary, as though to spite
+him, it throbbed more and more violently. He could stand it no longer,
+he slowly put out his hand to the bell and rang. Half a minute later he
+rang again, more loudly.
+No answer. To go on ringing was useless and out of place. The old woman
+was, of course, at home, but she was suspicious and alone. He had some
+knowledge of her habits... and once more he put his ear to the door.
+Either his senses were peculiarly keen (which it is difficult to
+suppose), or the sound was really very distinct. Anyway, he suddenly
+heard something like the cautious touch of a hand on the lock and the
+rustle of a skirt at the very door. Someone was standing stealthily
+close to the lock and just as he was doing on the outside was secretly
+listening within, and seemed to have her ear to the door.... He moved
+a little on purpose and muttered something aloud that he might not have
+the appearance of hiding, then rang a third time, but quietly, soberly,
+and without impatience, Recalling it afterwards, that moment stood out
+in his mind vividly, distinctly, for ever; he could not make out how he
+had had such cunning, for his mind was as it were clouded at moments and
+he was almost unconscious of his body.... An instant later he heard the
+latch unfastened.
+CHAPTER VII
+The door was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and
+suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Then Raskolnikov lost
+his head and nearly made a great mistake.
+Fearing the old woman would be frightened by their being alone, and not
+hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions, he took
+hold of the door and drew it towards him to prevent the old woman from
+attempting to shut it again. Seeing this she did not pull the door back,
+but she did not let go the handle so that he almost dragged her out with
+it on to the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in the doorway not
+allowing him to pass, he advanced straight upon her. She stepped back
+in alarm, tried to say something, but seemed unable to speak and stared
+with open eyes at him.
+“Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna,” he began, trying to speak easily, but
+his voice would not obey him, it broke and shook. “I have come... I have
+brought something... but we’d better come in... to the light....”
+And leaving her, he passed straight into the room uninvited. The old
+woman ran after him; her tongue was unloosed.
+“Good heavens! What it is? Who is it? What do you want?”
+“Why, Alyona Ivanovna, you know me... Raskolnikov... here, I brought you
+the pledge I promised the other day...” And he held out the pledge.
+The old woman glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared in
+the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously and
+mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a sneer
+in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt that
+he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened
+that if she were to look like that and not say a word for another half
+minute, he thought he would have run away from her.
+“Why do you look at me as though you did not know me?” he said suddenly,
+also with malice. “Take it if you like, if not I’ll go elsewhere, I am
+in a hurry.”
+He had not even thought of saying this, but it was suddenly said of
+itself. The old woman recovered herself, and her visitor’s resolute tone
+evidently restored her confidence.
+“But why, my good sir, all of a minute.... What is it?” she asked,
+looking at the pledge.
+“The silver cigarette case; I spoke of it last time, you know.”
+She held out her hand.
+“But how pale you are, to be sure... and your hands are trembling too?
+Have you been bathing, or what?”
+“Fever,” he answered abruptly. “You can’t help getting pale... if you’ve
+nothing to eat,” he added, with difficulty articulating the words.
+His strength was failing him again. But his answer sounded like the
+truth; the old woman took the pledge.
+“What is it?” she asked once more, scanning Raskolnikov intently, and
+weighing the pledge in her hand.
+“A thing... cigarette case.... Silver.... Look at it.”
+“It does not seem somehow like silver.... How he has wrapped it up!”
+Trying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light (all
+her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left
+him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He
+unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet
+take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the
+coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing
+more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and
+fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him.
+“But what has he tied it up like this for?” the old woman cried with
+vexation and moved towards him.
+He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung
+it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without
+effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He
+seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once
+brought the axe down, his strength returned to him.
+The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked
+with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat’s tail and
+fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the nape of her neck.
+As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She
+cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the
+floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she still held “the
+pledge.” Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side
+and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, the
+body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her
+face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets,
+the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively.
+He laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at once in her
+pocket (trying to avoid the streaming body)--the same right-hand pocket
+from which she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in full
+possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness, but his
+hands were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he had been
+particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not to get
+smeared with blood.... He pulled out the keys at once, they were all,
+as before, in one bunch on a steel ring. He ran at once into the bedroom
+with them. It was a very small room with a whole shrine of holy images.
+Against the other wall stood a big bed, very clean and covered with
+a silk patchwork wadded quilt. Against a third wall was a chest of
+drawers. Strange to say, so soon as he began to fit the keys into the
+chest, so soon as he heard their jingling, a convulsive shudder passed
+over him. He suddenly felt tempted again to give it all up and go
+away. But that was only for an instant; it was too late to go back.
+He positively smiled at himself, when suddenly another terrifying idea
+occurred to his mind. He suddenly fancied that the old woman might be
+still alive and might recover her senses. Leaving the keys in the chest,
+he ran back to the body, snatched up the axe and lifted it once more
+over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that
+she was dead. Bending down and examining her again more closely, he saw
+clearly that the skull was broken and even battered in on one side. He
+was about to feel it with his finger, but drew back his hand and indeed
+it was evident without that. Meanwhile there was a perfect pool of
+blood. All at once he noticed a string on her neck; he tugged at it, but
+the string was strong and did not snap and besides, it was soaked
+with blood. He tried to pull it out from the front of the dress, but
+something held it and prevented its coming. In his impatience he raised
+the axe again to cut the string from above on the body, but did not
+dare, and with difficulty, smearing his hand and the axe in the blood,
+after two minutes’ hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off
+without touching the body with the axe; he was not mistaken--it was a
+purse. On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus wood and one of
+copper, and an image in silver filigree, and with them a small greasy
+chamois leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The purse was stuffed
+very full; Raskolnikov thrust it in his pocket without looking at it,
+flung the crosses on the old woman’s body and rushed back into the
+bedroom, this time taking the axe with him.
+He was in terrible haste, he snatched the keys, and began trying them
+again. But he was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the locks. It
+was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he kept making
+mistakes; though he saw for instance that a key was not the right one
+and would not fit, still he tried to put it in. Suddenly he remembered
+and realised that the big key with the deep notches, which was hanging
+there with the small keys could not possibly belong to the chest of
+drawers (on his last visit this had struck him), but to some strong box,
+and that everything perhaps was hidden in that box. He left the chest
+of drawers, and at once felt under the bedstead, knowing that old
+women usually keep boxes under their beds. And so it was; there was a
+good-sized box under the bed, at least a yard in length, with an arched
+lid covered with red leather and studded with steel nails. The notched
+key fitted at once and unlocked it. At the top, under a white sheet, was
+a coat of red brocade lined with hareskin; under it was a silk dress,
+then a shawl and it seemed as though there was nothing below but
+clothes. The first thing he did was to wipe his blood-stained hands on
+the red brocade. “It’s red, and on red blood will be less noticeable,”
+the thought passed through his mind; then he suddenly came to himself.
+“Good God, am I going out of my senses?” he thought with terror.
+But no sooner did he touch the clothes than a gold watch slipped from
+under the fur coat. He made haste to turn them all over. There turned
+out to be various articles made of gold among the clothes--probably
+all pledges, unredeemed or waiting to be redeemed--bracelets, chains,
+ear-rings, pins and such things. Some were in cases, others simply
+wrapped in newspaper, carefully and exactly folded, and tied round with
+tape. Without any delay, he began filling up the pockets of his trousers
+and overcoat without examining or undoing the parcels and cases; but he
+had not time to take many....
+He suddenly heard steps in the room where the old woman lay. He stopped
+short and was still as death. But all was quiet, so it must have been
+his fancy. All at once he heard distinctly a faint cry, as though
+someone had uttered a low broken moan. Then again dead silence for
+a minute or two. He sat squatting on his heels by the box and waited
+holding his breath. Suddenly he jumped up, seized the axe and ran out of
+the bedroom.
+In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta with a big bundle in her arms.
+She was gazing in stupefaction at her murdered sister, white as a sheet
+and seeming not to have the strength to cry out. Seeing him run out
+of the bedroom, she began faintly quivering all over, like a leaf, a
+shudder ran down her face; she lifted her hand, opened her mouth, but
+still did not scream. She began slowly backing away from him into the
+corner, staring intently, persistently at him, but still uttered no
+sound, as though she could not get breath to scream. He rushed at her
+with the axe; her mouth twitched piteously, as one sees babies’ mouths,
+when they begin to be frightened, stare intently at what frightens them
+and are on the point of screaming. And this hapless Lizaveta was so
+simple and had been so thoroughly crushed and scared that she did not
+even raise a hand to guard her face, though that was the most necessary
+and natural action at the moment, for the axe was raised over her face.
+She only put up her empty left hand, but not to her face, slowly holding
+it out before her as though motioning him away. The axe fell with the
+sharp edge just on the skull and split at one blow all the top of the
+head. She fell heavily at once. Raskolnikov completely lost his head,
+snatching up her bundle, dropped it again and ran into the entry.
+Fear gained more and more mastery over him, especially after this
+second, quite unexpected murder. He longed to run away from the place
+as fast as possible. And if at that moment he had been capable of seeing
+and reasoning more correctly, if he had been able to realise all the
+difficulties of his position, the hopelessness, the hideousness and the
+absurdity of it, if he could have understood how many obstacles and,
+perhaps, crimes he had still to overcome or to commit, to get out of
+that place and to make his way home, it is very possible that he would
+have flung up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and
+not from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had
+done. The feeling of loathing especially surged up within him and grew
+stronger every minute. He would not now have gone to the box or even
+into the room for anything in the world.
+But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess, had begun by degrees to take
+possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather, forgot what
+was of importance, and caught at trifles. Glancing, however, into the
+kitchen and seeing a bucket half full of water on a bench, he bethought
+him of washing his hands and the axe. His hands were sticky with blood.
+He dropped the axe with the blade in the water, snatched a piece of soap
+that lay in a broken saucer on the window, and began washing his hands
+in the bucket. When they were clean, he took out the axe, washed the
+blade and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood where
+there were spots of blood rubbing them with soap. Then he wiped it all
+with some linen that was hanging to dry on a line in the kitchen and
+then he was a long while attentively examining the axe at the window.
+There was no trace left on it, only the wood was still damp. He
+carefully hung the axe in the noose under his coat. Then as far as was
+possible, in the dim light in the kitchen, he looked over his overcoat,
+his trousers and his boots. At the first glance there seemed to be
+nothing but stains on the boots. He wetted the rag and rubbed the boots.
+But he knew he was not looking thoroughly, that there might be something
+quite noticeable that he was overlooking. He stood in the middle of the
+room, lost in thought. Dark agonising ideas rose in his mind--the idea
+that he was mad and that at that moment he was incapable of reasoning,
+of protecting himself, that he ought perhaps to be doing something
+utterly different from what he was now doing. “Good God!” he muttered “I
+must fly, fly,” and he rushed into the entry. But here a shock of terror
+awaited him such as he had never known before.
+He stood and gazed and could not believe his eyes: the door, the outer
+door from the stairs, at which he had not long before waited and rung,
+was standing unfastened and at least six inches open. No lock, no bolt,
+all the time, all that time! The old woman had not shut it after him
+perhaps as a precaution. But, good God! Why, he had seen Lizaveta
+afterwards! And how could he, how could he have failed to reflect that
+she must have come in somehow! She could not have come through the wall!
+He dashed to the door and fastened the latch.
+“But no, the wrong thing again! I must get away, get away....”
+He unfastened the latch, opened the door and began listening on the
+staircase.
+He listened a long time. Somewhere far away, it might be in the gateway,
+two voices were loudly and shrilly shouting, quarrelling and scolding.
+“What are they about?” He waited patiently. At last all was still, as
+though suddenly cut off; they had separated. He was meaning to go out,
+but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was noisily opened and someone
+began going downstairs humming a tune. “How is it they all make such
+a noise?” flashed through his mind. Once more he closed the door and
+waited. At last all was still, not a soul stirring. He was just taking a
+step towards the stairs when he heard fresh footsteps.
+The steps sounded very far off, at the very bottom of the stairs, but
+he remembered quite clearly and distinctly that from the first sound he
+began for some reason to suspect that this was someone coming _there_,
+to the fourth floor, to the old woman. Why? Were the sounds somehow
+peculiar, significant? The steps were heavy, even and unhurried. Now
+_he_ had passed the first floor, now he was mounting higher, it was
+growing more and more distinct! He could hear his heavy breathing. And
+now the third storey had been reached. Coming here! And it seemed to
+him all at once that he was turned to stone, that it was like a dream
+in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will be killed, and is
+rooted to the spot and cannot even move one’s arms.
+At last when the unknown was mounting to the fourth floor, he suddenly
+started, and succeeded in slipping neatly and quickly back into the
+flat and closing the door behind him. Then he took the hook and softly,
+noiselessly, fixed it in the catch. Instinct helped him. When he had
+done this, he crouched holding his breath, by the door. The unknown
+visitor was by now also at the door. They were now standing opposite one
+another, as he had just before been standing with the old woman, when
+the door divided them and he was listening.
+The visitor panted several times. “He must be a big, fat man,” thought
+Raskolnikov, squeezing the axe in his hand. It seemed like a dream
+indeed. The visitor took hold of the bell and rang it loudly.
+As soon as the tin bell tinkled, Raskolnikov seemed to be aware of
+something moving in the room. For some seconds he listened quite
+seriously. The unknown rang again, waited and suddenly tugged violently
+and impatiently at the handle of the door. Raskolnikov gazed in horror
+at the hook shaking in its fastening, and in blank terror expected every
+minute that the fastening would be pulled out. It certainly did seem
+possible, so violently was he shaking it. He was tempted to hold the
+fastening, but _he_ might be aware of it. A giddiness came over him
+again. “I shall fall down!” flashed through his mind, but the unknown
+began to speak and he recovered himself at once.
+“What’s up? Are they asleep or murdered? D-damn them!” he bawled in a
+thick voice, “Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, hey,
+my beauty! open the door! Oh, damn them! Are they asleep or what?”
+And again, enraged, he tugged with all his might a dozen times at
+the bell. He must certainly be a man of authority and an intimate
+acquaintance.
+At this moment light hurried steps were heard not far off, on the
+stairs. Someone else was approaching. Raskolnikov had not heard them at
+first.
+“You don’t say there’s no one at home,” the new-comer cried in a
+cheerful, ringing voice, addressing the first visitor, who still went on
+pulling the bell. “Good evening, Koch.”
+“From his voice he must be quite young,” thought Raskolnikov.
+“Who the devil can tell? I’ve almost broken the lock,” answered Koch.
+“But how do you come to know me?”
+“Why! The day before yesterday I beat you three times running at
+billiards at Gambrinus’.”
+“Oh!”
+“So they are not at home? That’s queer. It’s awfully stupid though.
+Where could the old woman have gone? I’ve come on business.”
+“Yes; and I have business with her, too.”
+“Well, what can we do? Go back, I suppose, Aie--aie! And I was hoping to
+get some money!” cried the young man.
+“We must give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The
+old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It’s out of my way.
+And where the devil she can have got to, I can’t make out. She sits here
+from year’s end to year’s end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet
+here all of a sudden she is out for a walk!”
+“Hadn’t we better ask the porter?”
+“What?”
+“Where she’s gone and when she’ll be back.”
+“Hm.... Damn it all!... We might ask.... But you know she never does go
+anywhere.”
+And he once more tugged at the door-handle.
+“Damn it all. There’s nothing to be done, we must go!”
+“Stay!” cried the young man suddenly. “Do you see how the door shakes if
+you pull it?”
+“Well?”
+“That shows it’s not locked, but fastened with the hook! Do you hear how
+the hook clanks?”
+“Well?”
+“Why, don’t you see? That proves that one of them is at home. If they
+were all out, they would have locked the door from the outside with the
+key and not with the hook from inside. There, do you hear how the hook
+is clanking? To fasten the hook on the inside they must be at home,
+don’t you see. So there they are sitting inside and don’t open the
+door!”
+“Well! And so they must be!” cried Koch, astonished. “What are they
+about in there?” And he began furiously shaking the door.
+“Stay!” cried the young man again. “Don’t pull at it! There must be
+something wrong.... Here, you’ve been ringing and pulling at the door
+and still they don’t open! So either they’ve both fainted or...”
+“What?”
+“I tell you what. Let’s go fetch the porter, let him wake them up.”
+“All right.”
+Both were going down.
+“Stay. You stop here while I run down for the porter.”
+“What for?”
+“Well, you’d better.”
+“All right.”
+“I’m studying the law you see! It’s evident, e-vi-dent there’s something
+wrong here!” the young man cried hotly, and he ran downstairs.
+Koch remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one
+tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began
+touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure once
+more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and panting he
+bent down and began looking at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock
+on the inside and so nothing could be seen.
+Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of
+delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in.
+While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times
+occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the
+door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them,
+while they could not open the door! “Only make haste!” was the thought
+that flashed through his mind.
+“But what the devil is he about?...” Time was passing, one minute, and
+another--no one came. Koch began to be restless.
+“What the devil?” he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting his
+sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping with his heavy
+boots on the stairs. The steps died away.
+“Good heavens! What am I to do?”
+Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door--there was no sound.
+Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing the door as
+thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.
+He had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice
+below--where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going
+back to the flat.
+“Hey there! Catch the brute!”
+Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell than ran
+down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice.
+“Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast him!”
+The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard; all was
+still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast began
+noisily mounting the stairs. There were three or four of them. He
+distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. “Hey!”
+Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling “come what
+must!” If they stopped him--all was lost; if they let him pass--all was
+lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only
+a flight from him--and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the
+right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the
+second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though
+for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just
+run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle
+of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes. In one
+instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall
+and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing.
+Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He
+waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs.
+No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through
+the gateway and turned to the left in the street.
+He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the
+flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as
+the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the
+bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and
+completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had
+succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They would
+guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were
+going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though
+the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. “Should he
+slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No,
+hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless,
+hopeless!”
+At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive.
+Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky
+because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a
+grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could
+scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet.
+“My word, he has been going it!” someone shouted at him when he came out
+on the canal bank.
+He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the
+worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal
+bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more
+conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost
+falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from
+quite a different direction.
+He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his
+house! He was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe.
+And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to
+escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of course
+incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to
+restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody’s yard. But
+it all happened fortunately, the door of the porter’s room was closed
+but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at
+home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he
+walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him,
+“What do you want?” he would perhaps have simply handed him the axe. But
+again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in putting the axe
+back under the bench, and even covering it with the chunk of wood as
+before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way to his room;
+the landlady’s door was shut. When he was in his room, he flung himself
+on the sofa just as he was--he did not sleep, but sank into blank
+forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have
+jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were
+simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could
+not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts....
+PART II
+CHAPTER I
+So he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up, and at
+such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but it did not
+occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was beginning to get
+light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion.
+Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which he
+heard every night, indeed, under his window after two o’clock. They woke
+him up now.
+“Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns,” he thought, “it’s
+past two o’clock,” and at once he leaped up, as though someone had
+pulled him from the sofa.
+“What! Past two o’clock!”
+He sat down on the sofa--and instantly recollected everything! All at
+once, in one flash, he recollected everything.
+For the first moment he thought he was going mad. A dreadful chill came
+over him; but the chill was from the fever that had begun long before in
+his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken with violent shivering, so that his
+teeth chattered and all his limbs were shaking. He opened the door and
+began listening--everything in the house was asleep. With amazement he
+gazed at himself and everything in the room around him, wondering how he
+could have come in the night before without fastening the door, and have
+flung himself on the sofa without undressing, without even taking his
+hat off. It had fallen off and was lying on the floor near his pillow.
+“If anyone had come in, what would he have thought? That I’m drunk
+but...”
+He rushed to the window. There was light enough, and he began hurriedly
+looking himself all over from head to foot, all his clothes; were there
+no traces? But there was no doing it like that; shivering with cold, he
+began taking off everything and looking over again. He turned everything
+over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting himself, went through
+his search three times.
+But there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where
+some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge
+of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the frayed
+threads. There seemed to be nothing more.
+Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken out of
+the old woman’s box were still in his pockets! He had not thought till
+then of taking them out and hiding them! He had not even thought of them
+while he was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly he rushed
+to take them out and fling them on the table. When he had pulled out
+everything, and turned the pocket inside out to be sure there was
+nothing left, he carried the whole heap to the corner. The paper had
+come off the bottom of the wall and hung there in tatters. He began
+stuffing all the things into the hole under the paper: “They’re in! All
+out of sight, and the purse too!” he thought gleefully, getting up and
+gazing blankly at the hole which bulged out more than ever. Suddenly
+he shuddered all over with horror; “My God!” he whispered in despair:
+“what’s the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that the way to hide
+things?”
+He had not reckoned on having trinkets to hide. He had only thought of
+money, and so had not prepared a hiding-place.
+“But now, now, what am I glad of?” he thought, “Is that hiding things?
+My reason’s deserting me--simply!”
+He sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and was at once shaken by another
+unbearable fit of shivering. Mechanically he drew from a chair beside
+him his old student’s winter coat, which was still warm though almost in
+rags, covered himself up with it and once more sank into drowsiness and
+delirium. He lost consciousness.
+Not more than five minutes had passed when he jumped up a second time,
+and at once pounced in a frenzy on his clothes again.
+“How could I go to sleep again with nothing done? Yes, yes; I have not
+taken the loop off the armhole! I forgot it, forgot a thing like that!
+Such a piece of evidence!”
+He pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it to pieces and threw the bits
+among his linen under the pillow.
+“Pieces of torn linen couldn’t rouse suspicion, whatever happened; I
+think not, I think not, any way!” he repeated, standing in the middle
+of the room, and with painful concentration he fell to gazing about
+him again, at the floor and everywhere, trying to make sure he had not
+forgotten anything. The conviction that all his faculties, even memory,
+and the simplest power of reflection were failing him, began to be an
+insufferable torture.
+“Surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely it isn’t my punishment coming
+upon me? It is!”
+The frayed rags he had cut off his trousers were actually lying on the
+floor in the middle of the room, where anyone coming in would see them!
+“What is the matter with me!” he cried again, like one distraught.
+Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes
+were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many
+stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because
+his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces... his reason was
+clouded.... Suddenly he remembered that there had been blood on the
+purse too. “Ah! Then there must be blood on the pocket too, for I put
+the wet purse in my pocket!”
+In a flash he had turned the pocket inside out and, yes!--there were
+traces, stains on the lining of the pocket!
+“So my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have some sense and
+memory, since I guessed it of myself,” he thought triumphantly, with
+a deep sigh of relief; “it’s simply the weakness of fever, a moment’s
+delirium,” and he tore the whole lining out of the left pocket of his
+trousers. At that instant the sunlight fell on his left boot; on the
+sock which poked out from the boot, he fancied there were traces! He
+flung off his boots; “traces indeed! The tip of the sock was soaked with
+blood;” he must have unwarily stepped into that pool.... “But what am I
+to do with this now? Where am I to put the sock and rags and pocket?”
+He gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the middle of the
+room.
+“In the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn them?
+But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No, better
+go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it away,” he
+repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, “and at once, this minute,
+without lingering...”
+But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the unbearable icy
+shivering came over him; again he drew his coat over him.
+And for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by the impulse to
+“go off somewhere at once, this moment, and fling it all away, so that
+it may be out of sight and done with, at once, at once!” Several times
+he tried to rise from the sofa, but could not.
+He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knocking at his door.
+“Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here!” shouted
+Nastasya, banging with her fist on the door. “For whole days together
+he’s snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open I tell you. It’s
+past ten.”
+“Maybe he’s not at home,” said a man’s voice.
+“Ha! that’s the porter’s voice.... What does he want?”
+He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his heart was a
+positive pain.
+“Then who can have latched the door?” retorted Nastasya. “He’s taken to
+bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake
+up!”
+“What do they want? Why the porter? All’s discovered. Resist or open?
+Come what may!...”
+He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door.
+His room was so small that he could undo the latch without leaving the
+bed. Yes; the porter and Nastasya were standing there.
+Nastasya stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with a defiant and
+desperate air at the porter, who without a word held out a grey folded
+paper sealed with bottle-wax.
+“A notice from the office,” he announced, as he gave him the paper.
+“From what office?”
+“A summons to the police office, of course. You know which office.”
+“To the police?... What for?...”
+“How can I tell? You’re sent for, so you go.”
+The man looked at him attentively, looked round the room and turned to
+go away.
+“He’s downright ill!” observed Nastasya, not taking her eyes off him.
+The porter turned his head for a moment. “He’s been in a fever since
+yesterday,” she added.
+Raskolnikov made no response and held the paper in his hands, without
+opening it. “Don’t you get up then,” Nastasya went on compassionately,
+seeing that he was letting his feet down from the sofa. “You’re ill, and
+so don’t go; there’s no such hurry. What have you got there?”
+He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had cut from his
+trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket. So he had been asleep
+with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting upon it, he remembered that
+half waking up in his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand
+and so fallen asleep again.
+“Look at the rags he’s collected and sleeps with them, as though he has
+got hold of a treasure...”
+And Nastasya went off into her hysterical giggle.
+Instantly he thrust them all under his great coat and fixed his
+eyes intently upon her. Far as he was from being capable of rational
+reflection at that moment, he felt that no one would behave like that
+with a person who was going to be arrested. “But... the police?”
+“You’d better have some tea! Yes? I’ll bring it, there’s some left.”
+“No... I’m going; I’ll go at once,” he muttered, getting on to his feet.
+“Why, you’ll never get downstairs!”
+“Yes, I’ll go.”
+“As you please.”
+She followed the porter out.
+At once he rushed to the light to examine the sock and the rags.
+“There are stains, but not very noticeable; all covered with dirt,
+and rubbed and already discoloured. No one who had no suspicion could
+distinguish anything. Nastasya from a distance could not have noticed,
+thank God!” Then with a tremor he broke the seal of the notice and began
+reading; he was a long while reading, before he understood. It was an
+ordinary summons from the district police-station to appear that day at
+half-past nine at the office of the district superintendent.
+“But when has such a thing happened? I never have anything to do with
+the police! And why just to-day?” he thought in agonising bewilderment.
+“Good God, only get it over soon!”
+He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into
+laughter--not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.
+He began, hurriedly dressing. “If I’m lost, I am lost, I don’t care!
+Shall I put the sock on?” he suddenly wondered, “it will get dustier
+still and the traces will be gone.”
+But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in loathing
+and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had no other socks,
+he picked it up and put it on again--and again he laughed.
+“That’s all conventional, that’s all relative, merely a way of looking
+at it,” he thought in a flash, but only on the top surface of his
+mind, while he was shuddering all over, “there, I’ve got it on! I have
+finished by getting it on!”
+But his laughter was quickly followed by despair.
+“No, it’s too much for me...” he thought. His legs shook. “From fear,”
+he muttered. His head swam and ached with fever. “It’s a trick! They
+want to decoy me there and confound me over everything,” he mused, as
+he went out on to the stairs--“the worst of it is I’m almost
+light-headed... I may blurt out something stupid...”
+On the stairs he remembered that he was leaving all the things just as
+they were in the hole in the wall, “and very likely, it’s on purpose
+to search when I’m out,” he thought, and stopped short. But he was
+possessed by such despair, such cynicism of misery, if one may so call
+it, that with a wave of his hand he went on. “Only to get it over!”
+In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain had
+fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench
+from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the Finnish
+pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes,
+so that it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his head going
+round--as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out into the
+street on a bright sunny day.
+When he reached the turning into _the_ street, in an agony of
+trepidation he looked down it... at _the_ house... and at once averted
+his eyes.
+“If they question me, perhaps I’ll simply tell,” he thought, as he drew
+near the police-station.
+The police-station was about a quarter of a mile off. It had lately been
+moved to new rooms on the fourth floor of a new house. He had been once
+for a moment in the old office but long ago. Turning in at the gateway,
+he saw on the right a flight of stairs which a peasant was mounting with
+a book in his hand. “A house-porter, no doubt; so then, the office is
+here,” and he began ascending the stairs on the chance. He did not want
+to ask questions of anyone.
+“I’ll go in, fall on my knees, and confess everything...�� he thought, as
+he reached the fourth floor.
+The staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy with dirty water. The
+kitchens of the flats opened on to the stairs and stood open almost
+the whole day. So there was a fearful smell and heat. The staircase
+was crowded with porters going up and down with their books under their
+arms, policemen, and persons of all sorts and both sexes. The door of
+the office, too, stood wide open. Peasants stood waiting within. There,
+too, the heat was stifling and there was a sickening smell of fresh
+paint and stale oil from the newly decorated rooms.
+After waiting a little, he decided to move forward into the next room.
+All the rooms were small and low-pitched. A fearful impatience drew him
+on and on. No one paid attention to him. In the second room some
+clerks sat writing, dressed hardly better than he was, and rather a
+queer-looking set. He went up to one of them.
+“What is it?”
+He showed the notice he had received.
+“You are a student?” the man asked, glancing at the notice.
+“Yes, formerly a student.”
+The clerk looked at him, but without the slightest interest. He was a
+particularly unkempt person with the look of a fixed idea in his eye.
+“There would be no getting anything out of him, because he has no
+interest in anything,” thought Raskolnikov.
+“Go in there to the head clerk,” said the clerk, pointing towards the
+furthest room.
+He went into that room--the fourth in order; it was a small room and
+packed full of people, rather better dressed than in the outer rooms.
+Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed in mourning, sat at the
+table opposite the chief clerk, writing something at his dictation.
+The other, a very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red, blotchy face,
+excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom as big as a
+saucer, was standing on one side, apparently waiting for something.
+Raskolnikov thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The latter glanced
+at it, said: “Wait a minute,” and went on attending to the lady in
+mourning.
+He breathed more freely. “It can’t be that!”
+By degrees he began to regain confidence, he kept urging himself to have
+courage and be calm.
+“Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may betray myself!
+Hm... it’s a pity there’s no air here,” he added, “it’s stifling.... It
+makes one’s head dizzier than ever... and one’s mind too...”
+He was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil. He was afraid of losing
+his self-control; he tried to catch at something and fix his mind on it,
+something quite irrelevant, but he could not succeed in this at all. Yet
+the head clerk greatly interested him, he kept hoping to see through him
+and guess something from his face.
+He was a very young man, about two and twenty, with a dark mobile
+face that looked older than his years. He was fashionably dressed and
+foppish, with his hair parted in the middle, well combed and pomaded,
+and wore a number of rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and a gold chain
+on his waistcoat. He said a couple of words in French to a foreigner who
+was in the room, and said them fairly correctly.
+“Luise Ivanovna, you can sit down,” he said casually to the
+gaily-dressed, purple-faced lady, who was still standing as though not
+venturing to sit down, though there was a chair beside her.
+“Ich danke,” said the latter, and softly, with a rustle of silk she sank
+into the chair. Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace floated
+about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost half the room. She
+smelt of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed at filling half
+the room and smelling so strongly of scent; and though her smile was
+impudent as well as cringing, it betrayed evident uneasiness.
+The lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All at once, with
+some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar swing of
+his shoulders at each step. He tossed his cockaded cap on the table and
+sat down in an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped from her
+seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy; but the
+officer took not the smallest notice of her, and she did not venture to
+sit down again in his presence. He was the assistant superintendent. He
+had a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally on each side of his
+face, and extremely small features, expressive of nothing much except
+a certain insolence. He looked askance and rather indignantly at
+Raskolnikov; he was so very badly dressed, and in spite of his
+humiliating position, his bearing was by no means in keeping with his
+clothes. Raskolnikov had unwarily fixed a very long and direct look on
+him, so that he felt positively affronted.
+“What do you want?” he shouted, apparently astonished that such a ragged
+fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.
+“I was summoned... by a notice...” Raskolnikov faltered.
+“For the recovery of money due, from _the student_,” the head clerk
+interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his papers. “Here!” and he
+flung Raskolnikov a document and pointed out the place. “Read that!”
+“Money? What money?” thought Raskolnikov, “but... then... it’s certainly
+not _that_.”
+And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense indescribable relief. A
+load was lifted from his back.
+“And pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?” shouted the
+assistant superintendent, seeming for some unknown reason more and more
+aggrieved. “You are told to come at nine, and now it’s twelve!”
+“The notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour ago,” Raskolnikov
+answered loudly over his shoulder. To his own surprise he, too, grew
+suddenly angry and found a certain pleasure in it. “And it’s enough that
+I have come here ill with fever.”
+“Kindly refrain from shouting!”
+“I’m not shouting, I’m speaking very quietly, it’s you who are shouting
+at me. I’m a student, and allow no one to shout at me.”
+The assistant superintendent was so furious that for the first minute he
+could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up from his seat.
+“Be silent! You are in a government office. Don’t be impudent, sir!”
+“You’re in a government office, too,” cried Raskolnikov, “and you’re
+smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are showing disrespect
+to all of us.”
+He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this.
+The head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry assistant
+superintendent was obviously disconcerted.
+“That’s not your business!” he shouted at last with unnatural loudness.
+“Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him. Alexandr
+Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don’t pay your
+debts! You’re a fine bird!”
+But Raskolnikov was not listening now; he had eagerly clutched at the
+paper, in haste to find an explanation. He read it once, and a second
+time, and still did not understand.
+“What is this?” he asked the head clerk.
+“It is for the recovery of money on an I O U, a writ. You must
+either pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written
+declaration when you can pay it, and at the same time an undertaking not
+to leave the capital without payment, and nor to sell or conceal your
+property. The creditor is at liberty to sell your property, and proceed
+against you according to the law.”
+“But I... am not in debt to anyone!”
+“That’s not our business. Here, an I O U for a hundred and fifteen
+roubles, legally attested, and due for payment, has been brought us
+for recovery, given by you to the widow of the assessor Zarnitsyn, nine
+months ago, and paid over by the widow Zarnitsyn to one Mr. Tchebarov.
+We therefore summon you, hereupon.”
+“But she is my landlady!”
+“And what if she is your landlady?”
+The head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of compassion,
+and at the same time with a certain triumph, as at a novice under fire
+for the first time--as though he would say: “Well, how do you feel now?”
+But what did he care now for an I O U, for a writ of recovery! Was that
+worth worrying about now, was it worth attention even! He stood, he
+read, he listened, he answered, he even asked questions himself, but
+all mechanically. The triumphant sense of security, of deliverance from
+overwhelming danger, that was what filled his whole soul that moment
+without thought for the future, without analysis, without suppositions
+or surmises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an instant
+of full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But at that very moment
+something like a thunderstorm took place in the office. The assistant
+superintendent, still shaken by Raskolnikov’s disrespect, still fuming
+and obviously anxious to keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the
+unfortunate smart lady, who had been gazing at him ever since he came in
+with an exceedingly silly smile.
+“You shameful hussy!” he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. (The
+lady in mourning had left the office.) “What was going on at your house
+last night? Eh! A disgrace again, you’re a scandal to the whole street.
+Fighting and drinking again. Do you want the house of correction? Why,
+I have warned you ten times over that I would not let you off the
+eleventh! And here you are again, again, you... you...!”
+The paper fell out of Raskolnikov’s hands, and he looked wildly at the
+smart lady who was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon saw what it
+meant, and at once began to find positive amusement in the scandal. He
+listened with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh and laugh... all his
+nerves were on edge.
+“Ilya Petrovitch!” the head clerk was beginning anxiously, but stopped
+short, for he knew from experience that the enraged assistant could not
+be stopped except by force.
+As for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled before the
+storm. But, strange to say, the more numerous and violent the terms of
+abuse became, the more amiable she looked, and the more seductive the
+smiles she lavished on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily, and
+curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of putting in her
+word: and at last she found it.
+“There was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr. Captain,” she
+pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speaking Russian confidently,
+though with a strong German accent, “and no sort of scandal, and his
+honour came drunk, and it’s the whole truth I am telling, Mr. Captain,
+and I am not to blame.... Mine is an honourable house, Mr. Captain,
+and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike any
+scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles
+again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte
+with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and
+he _ganz_ broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said
+so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone with it. And then
+I called the porter, and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him in the
+eye; and he hit Henriette in the eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the
+cheek. And it was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain,
+and I screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and stood in
+the window, squealing like a little pig; it was a disgrace. The idea of
+squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon him!
+And Karl pulled him away from the window by his coat, and it is true,
+Mr. Captain, he tore _sein rock_. And then he shouted that _man muss_
+pay him fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr. Captain, five
+roubles for _sein rock_. And he is an ungentlemanly visitor and caused
+all the scandal. ‘I will show you up,’ he said, ‘for I can write to all
+the papers about you.’”
+“Then he was an author?”
+“Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an honourable
+house....”
+“Now then! Enough! I have told you already...”
+“Ilya Petrovitch!” the head clerk repeated significantly.
+The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly shook his
+head.
+“... So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Ivanovna, and I tell it
+you for the last time,” the assistant went on. “If there is a scandal
+in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself in the
+lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a literary
+man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an ‘honourable
+house’? A nice set, these authors!”
+And he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov. “There was a scandal
+the other day in a restaurant, too. An author had eaten his dinner and
+would not pay; ‘I’ll write a satire on you,’ says he. And there was
+another of them on a steamer last week used the most disgraceful
+language to the respectable family of a civil councillor, his wife and
+daughter. And there was one of them turned out of a confectioner’s shop
+the other day. They are like that, authors, literary men, students,
+town-criers.... Pfoo! You get along! I shall look in upon you myself one
+day. Then you had better be careful! Do you hear?”
+With hurried deference, Luise Ivanovna fell to curtsying in all
+directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door, she
+stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh, open
+face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent of
+the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch. Luise Ivanovna made haste
+to curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she
+fluttered out of the office.
+“Again thunder and lightning--a hurricane!” said Nikodim Fomitch to Ilya
+Petrovitch in a civil and friendly tone. “You are aroused again, you are
+fuming again! I heard it on the stairs!”
+“Well, what then!” Ilya Petrovitch drawled with gentlemanly nonchalance;
+and he walked with some papers to another table, with a jaunty swing of
+his shoulders at each step. “Here, if you will kindly look: an author,
+or a student, has been one at least, does not pay his debts, has given
+an I O U, won’t clear out of his room, and complaints are constantly
+being lodged against him, and here he has been pleased to make a protest
+against my smoking in his presence! He behaves like a cad himself, and
+just look at him, please. Here’s the gentleman, and very attractive he
+is!”
+“Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off like powder,
+you can’t bear a slight, I daresay you took offence at something and
+went too far yourself,” continued Nikodim Fomitch, turning affably to
+Raskolnikov. “But you were wrong there; he is a capital fellow, I assure
+you, but explosive, explosive! He gets hot, fires up, boils over, and no
+stopping him! And then it’s all over! And at the bottom he’s a heart of
+gold! His nickname in the regiment was the Explosive Lieutenant....”
+“And what a regiment it was, too,” cried Ilya Petrovitch, much gratified
+at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.
+Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally pleasant
+to them all. “Excuse me, Captain,” he began easily, suddenly addressing
+Nikodim Fomitch, “will you enter into my position?... I am ready to
+ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student, sick
+and shattered (shattered was the word he used) by poverty. I am not
+studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get money.... I
+have a mother and sister in the province of X. They will send it to
+me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-hearted woman, but she is so
+exasperated at my having lost my lessons, and not paying her for the
+last four months, that she does not even send up my dinner... and I
+don’t understand this I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her on this
+I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for yourselves!...”
+“But that is not our business, you know,” the head clerk was observing.
+“Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain...”
+Raskolnikov put in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch, but trying
+his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also, though the latter persistently
+appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously
+oblivious of him. “Allow me to explain that I have been living with her
+for nearly three years and at first... at first... for why should I not
+confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it
+was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked
+her, though I was not in love with her... a youthful affair in fact...
+that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those
+days, and I led a life of... I was very heedless...”
+“Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we’ve no time to
+waste,” Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph;
+but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it
+exceedingly difficult to speak.
+“But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain... how it all
+happened... In my turn... though I agree with you... it is unnecessary.
+But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained lodging there as
+before, and when my landlady moved into her present quarters, she said
+to me... and in a friendly way... that she had complete trust in me,
+but still, would I not give her an I O U for one hundred and fifteen
+roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her that,
+she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that she would never,
+never--those were her own words--make use of that I O U till I could pay
+of myself... and now, when I have lost my lessons and have nothing to
+eat, she takes action against me. What am I to say to that?”
+“All these affecting details are no business of ours.” Ilya Petrovitch
+interrupted rudely. “You must give a written undertaking but as for your
+love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do with
+that.”
+“Come now... you are harsh,” muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down at
+the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed.
+“Write!” said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.
+“Write what?” the latter asked, gruffly.
+“I will dictate to you.”
+Raskolnikov fancied that the head clerk treated him more casually and
+contemptuously after his speech, but strange to say he suddenly felt
+completely indifferent to anyone’s opinion, and this revulsion took
+place in a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to think a little,
+he would have been amazed indeed that he could have talked to them like
+that a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And where had
+those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled, not
+with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him, he
+would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his heart. A
+gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took
+conscious form in his soul. It was not the meanness of his sentimental
+effusions before Ilya Petrovitch, nor the meanness of the latter’s
+triumph over him that had caused this sudden revulsion in his heart.
+Oh, what had he to do now with his own baseness, with all these petty
+vanities, officers, German women, debts, police-offices? If he had been
+sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would not have stirred, would
+hardly have heard the sentence to the end. Something was happening to
+him entirely new, sudden and unknown. It was not that he understood, but
+he felt clearly with all the intensity of sensation that he could
+never more appeal to these people in the police-office with sentimental
+effusions like his recent outburst, or with anything whatever; and that
+if they had been his own brothers and sisters and not police-officers,
+it would have been utterly out of the question to appeal to them in any
+circumstance of life. He had never experienced such a strange and awful
+sensation. And what was most agonising--it was more a sensation than a
+conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most agonising of all the
+sensations he had known in his life.
+The head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of declaration,
+that he could not pay, that he undertook to do so at a future date, that
+he would not leave the town, nor sell his property, and so on.
+“But you can’t write, you can hardly hold the pen,” observed the head
+clerk, looking with curiosity at Raskolnikov. “Are you ill?”
+“Yes, I am giddy. Go on!”
+“That’s all. Sign it.”
+The head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to others.
+Raskolnikov gave back the pen; but instead of getting up and going away,
+he put his elbows on the table and pressed his head in his hands. He
+felt as if a nail were being driven into his skull. A strange idea
+suddenly occurred to him, to get up at once, to go up to Nikodim
+Fomitch, and tell him everything that had happened yesterday, and then
+to go with him to his lodgings and to show him the things in the hole
+in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he got up from his seat
+to carry it out. “Hadn’t I better think a minute?” flashed through his
+mind. “No, better cast off the burden without thinking.” But all at once
+he stood still, rooted to the spot. Nikodim Fomitch was talking eagerly
+with Ilya Petrovitch, and the words reached him:
+“It’s impossible, they’ll both be released. To begin with, the whole
+story contradicts itself. Why should they have called the porter, if it
+had been their doing? To inform against themselves? Or as a blind? No,
+that would be too cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the student, was seen at
+the gate by both the porters and a woman as he went in. He was walking
+with three friends, who left him only at the gate, and he asked the
+porters to direct him, in the presence of the friends. Now, would he
+have asked his way if he had been going with such an object? As for
+Koch, he spent half an hour at the silversmith’s below, before he went
+up to the old woman and he left him at exactly a quarter to eight. Now
+just consider...”
+“But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state
+themselves that they knocked and the door was locked; yet three minutes
+later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the door was
+unfastened.”
+“That’s just it; the murderer must have been there and bolted himself
+in; and they’d have caught him for a certainty if Koch had not been
+an ass and gone to look for the porter too. _He_ must have seized the
+interval to get downstairs and slip by them somehow. Koch keeps crossing
+himself and saying: ‘If I had been there, he would have jumped out and
+killed me with his axe.’ He is going to have a thanksgiving service--ha,
+ha!”
+“And no one saw the murderer?”
+“They might well not see him; the house is a regular Noah’s Ark,” said
+the head clerk, who was listening.
+“It’s clear, quite clear,” Nikodim Fomitch repeated warmly.
+“No, it is anything but clear,” Ilya Petrovitch maintained.
+Raskolnikov picked up his hat and walked towards the door, but he did
+not reach it....
+When he recovered consciousness, he found himself sitting in a chair,
+supported by someone on the right side, while someone else was standing
+on the left, holding a yellowish glass filled with yellow water, and
+Nikodim Fomitch standing before him, looking intently at him. He got up
+from the chair.
+“What’s this? Are you ill?” Nikodim Fomitch asked, rather sharply.
+“He could hardly hold his pen when he was signing,” said the head clerk,
+settling back in his place, and taking up his work again.
+“Have you been ill long?” cried Ilya Petrovitch from his place, where
+he, too, was looking through papers. He had, of course, come to look at
+the sick man when he fainted, but retired at once when he recovered.
+“Since yesterday,” muttered Raskolnikov in reply.
+“Did you go out yesterday?”
+“Yes.”
+“Though you were ill?”
+“Yes.”
+“At what time?”
+“About seven.”
+“And where did you go, may I ask?”
+“Along the street.”
+“Short and clear.”
+Raskolnikov, white as a handkerchief, had answered sharply, jerkily,
+without dropping his black feverish eyes before Ilya Petrovitch’s stare.
+“He can scarcely stand upright. And you...” Nikodim Fomitch was
+beginning.
+“No matter,” Ilya Petrovitch pronounced rather peculiarly.
+Nikodim Fomitch would have made some further protest, but glancing at
+the head clerk who was looking very hard at him, he did not speak. There
+was a sudden silence. It was strange.
+“Very well, then,” concluded Ilya Petrovitch, “we will not detain you.”
+Raskolnikov went out. He caught the sound of eager conversation on his
+departure, and above the rest rose the questioning voice of Nikodim
+Fomitch. In the street, his faintness passed off completely.
+“A search--there will be a search at once,” he repeated to himself,
+hurrying home. “The brutes! they suspect.”
+His former terror mastered him completely again.
+CHAPTER II
+“And what if there has been a search already? What if I find them in my
+room?”
+But here was his room. Nothing and no one in it. No one had peeped in.
+Even Nastasya had not touched it. But heavens! how could he have left
+all those things in the hole?
+He rushed to the corner, slipped his hand under the paper, pulled the
+things out and lined his pockets with them. There were eight articles in
+all: two little boxes with ear-rings or something of the sort, he hardly
+looked to see; then four small leather cases. There was a chain, too,
+merely wrapped in newspaper and something else in newspaper, that looked
+like a decoration.... He put them all in the different pockets of his
+overcoat, and the remaining pocket of his trousers, trying to conceal
+them as much as possible. He took the purse, too. Then he went out of
+his room, leaving the door open. He walked quickly and resolutely, and
+though he felt shattered, he had his senses about him. He was afraid of
+pursuit, he was afraid that in another half-hour, another quarter of an
+hour perhaps, instructions would be issued for his pursuit, and so at
+all costs, he must hide all traces before then. He must clear everything
+up while he still had some strength, some reasoning power left him....
+Where was he to go?
+That had long been settled: “Fling them into the canal, and all traces
+hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end.” So he had decided in
+the night of his delirium when several times he had had the impulse to
+get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to get
+rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along
+the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked
+several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not
+think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps’ edge,
+and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and
+people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed
+from the banks on all sides; it would look suspicious for a man to go
+down on purpose, stop, and throw something into the water. And what if
+the boxes were to float instead of sinking? And of course they would.
+Even as it was, everyone he met seemed to stare and look round, as if
+they had nothing to do but to watch him. “Why is it, or can it be my
+fancy?” he thought.
+At last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to the
+Neva. There were not so many people there, he would be less observed,
+and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it was further
+off. He wondered how he could have been wandering for a good half-hour,
+worried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking of it
+before. And that half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan, simply
+because he had thought of it in delirium! He had become extremely absent
+and forgetful and he was aware of it. He certainly must make haste.
+He walked towards the Neva along V---- Prospect, but on the way
+another idea struck him. “Why to the Neva? Would it not be better to go
+somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the things
+in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot
+perhaps?” And though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the idea
+seemed to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there. For
+coming out of V---- Prospect towards the square, he saw on the left a
+passage leading between two blank walls to a courtyard. On the right
+hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched far
+into the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with it for
+twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the left. Here
+was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of different sorts was
+lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a low, smutty, stone shed,
+apparently part of some workshop, peeped from behind the hoarding. It
+was probably a carriage builder’s or carpenter’s shed; the whole place
+from the entrance was black with coal dust. Here would be the place to
+throw it, he thought. Not seeing anyone in the yard, he slipped in, and
+at once saw near the gate a sink, such as is often put in yards where
+there are many workmen or cab-drivers; and on the hoarding above had
+been scribbled in chalk the time-honoured witticism, “Standing here
+strictly forbidden.” This was all the better, for there would be nothing
+suspicious about his going in. “Here I could throw it all in a heap and
+get away!”
+Looking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he noticed
+against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a big unhewn
+stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the wall was a
+street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that part, but he
+could not be seen from the entrance, unless someone came in from the
+street, which might well happen indeed, so there was need of haste.
+He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both hands,
+and using all his strength turned it over. Under the stone was a small
+hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his pocket into it.
+The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not filled up. Then he
+seized the stone again and with one twist turned it back, so that it was
+in the same position again, though it stood a very little higher. But
+he scraped the earth about it and pressed it at the edges with his foot.
+Nothing could be noticed.
+Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense,
+almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in
+the police-office. “I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of
+looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever since
+the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it were
+found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!” And he laughed.
+Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous noiseless
+laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the square. But
+when he reached the K---- Boulevard where two days before he had come
+upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other ideas crept into his
+mind. He felt all at once that it would be loathsome to pass that seat
+on which after the girl was gone, he had sat and pondered, and that it
+would be hateful, too, to meet that whiskered policeman to whom he had
+given the twenty copecks: “Damn him!”
+He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas now
+seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that there
+really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing that
+point--and for the first time, indeed, during the last two months.
+“Damn it all!” he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury.
+“If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how
+stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I fawned
+upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What do I
+care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at all! It
+is not that at all!”
+Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple
+question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.
+“If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if
+I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even
+glance into the purse and don’t know what I had there, for which I have
+undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this base,
+filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw into the
+water the purse together with all the things which I had not seen
+either... how’s that?”
+Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all before, and
+it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the night
+without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be, as though
+it could not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had known it all, and
+understood it all; it surely had all been settled even yesterday at the
+moment when he was bending over the box and pulling the jewel-cases out
+of it.... Yes, so it was.
+“It is because I am very ill,” he decided grimly at last, “I have been
+worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know what I am doing....
+Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I have been
+worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not worry.... But what
+if I don’t get well at all? Good God, how sick I am of it all!”
+He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some
+distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new
+overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him
+every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for
+everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred.
+All who met him were loathsome to him--he loathed their faces, their
+movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he
+might have spat at him or bitten him....
+He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the Little Neva, near
+the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. “Why, he lives here, in that house,”
+he thought, “why, I have not come to Razumihin of my own accord! Here
+it’s the same thing over again.... Very interesting to know, though;
+have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by chance? Never
+mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go and see him the
+day _after_; well, and so I will! Besides I really cannot go further
+now.”
+He went up to Razumihin’s room on the fifth floor.
+The latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at the moment, and
+he opened the door himself. It was four months since they had seen each
+other. Razumihin was sitting in a ragged dressing-gown, with slippers on
+his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed. His face showed surprise.
+“Is it you?” he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after a
+brief pause, he whistled. “As hard up as all that! Why, brother, you’ve
+cut me out!” he added, looking at Raskolnikov’s rags. “Come sit down,
+you are tired, I’ll be bound.”
+And when he had sunk down on the American leather sofa, which was
+in even worse condition than his own, Razumihin saw at once that his
+visitor was ill.
+“Why, you are seriously ill, do you know that?” He began feeling his
+pulse. Raskolnikov pulled away his hand.
+“Never mind,” he said, “I have come for this: I have no lessons.... I
+wanted,... but I don’t really want lessons....”
+“But I say! You are delirious, you know!” Razumihin observed, watching
+him carefully.
+“No, I am not.”
+Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to
+Razumihin’s, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend
+face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of all
+disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with anyone in the
+wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage at
+himself as soon as he crossed Razumihin’s threshold.
+“Good-bye,” he said abruptly, and walked to the door.
+“Stop, stop! You queer fish.”
+“I don’t want to,” said the other, again pulling away his hand.
+“Then why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or what? Why, this
+is... almost insulting! I won’t let you go like that.”
+“Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could
+help... to begin... because you are kinder than anyone--cleverer, I
+mean, and can judge... and now I see that I want nothing. Do you hear?
+Nothing at all... no one’s services... no one’s sympathy. I am by
+myself... alone. Come, that’s enough. Leave me alone.”
+“Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As you like for all
+I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I don’t care about that, but
+there’s a bookseller, Heruvimov--and he takes the place of a lesson.
+I would not exchange him for five lessons. He’s doing publishing of a
+kind, and issuing natural science manuals and what a circulation they
+have! The very titles are worth the money! You always maintained that I
+was a fool, but by Jove, my boy, there are greater fools than I am!
+Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that he has an inkling of
+anything, but, of course, I encourage him. Here are two signatures of
+the German text--in my opinion, the crudest charlatanism; it discusses
+the question, ‘Is woman a human being?’ And, of course, triumphantly
+proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to bring out this work as a
+contribution to the woman question; I am translating it; he will expand
+these two and a half signatures into six, we shall make up a gorgeous
+title half a page long and bring it out at half a rouble. It will do! He
+pays me six roubles the signature, it works out to about fifteen roubles
+for the job, and I’ve had six already in advance. When we have finished
+this, we are going to begin a translation about whales, and then some of
+the dullest scandals out of the second part of _Les Confessions_ we have
+marked for translation; somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was
+a kind of Radishchev. You may be sure I don’t contradict him, hang him!
+Well, would you like to do the second signature of ‘_Is woman a human
+being?_’ If you would, take the German and pens and paper--all those
+are provided, and take three roubles; for as I have had six roubles in
+advance on the whole thing, three roubles come to you for your share.
+And when you have finished the signature there will be another three
+roubles for you. And please don’t think I am doing you a service; quite
+the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you could help me; to
+begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes utterly
+adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go along for the most part.
+The only comfort is, that it’s bound to be a change for the better.
+Though who can tell, maybe it’s sometimes for the worse. Will you take
+it?”
+Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took the three roubles
+and without a word went out. Razumihin gazed after him in astonishment.
+But when Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned back, mounted the
+stairs to Razumihin’s again and laying on the table the German article
+and the three roubles, went out again, still without uttering a word.
+“Are you raving, or what?” Razumihin shouted, roused to fury at last.
+“What farce is this? You’ll drive me crazy too... what did you come to
+see me for, damn you?”
+“I don’t want... translation,” muttered Raskolnikov from the stairs.
+“Then what the devil do you want?” shouted Razumihin from above.
+Raskolnikov continued descending the staircase in silence.
+“Hey, there! Where are you living?”
+No answer.
+“Well, confound you then!”
+But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street. On the Nikolaevsky
+Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an unpleasant
+incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave him
+a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having almost fallen under
+his horses’ hoofs. The lash so infuriated him that he dashed away to the
+railing (for some unknown reason he had been walking in the very middle
+of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily clenched and ground his teeth.
+He heard laughter, of course.
+“Serves him right!”
+“A pickpocket I dare say.”
+“Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on
+purpose; and you have to answer for him.”
+“It’s a regular profession, that’s what it is.”
+But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered
+after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt
+someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman
+in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter,
+wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.
+“Take it, my good man, in Christ’s name.”
+He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks. From
+his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a beggar
+asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty copecks he
+doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry for him.
+He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and
+turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was without
+a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the
+Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the
+bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight,
+and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished.
+The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot about it; one
+uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now completely. He stood
+still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was
+especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had
+hundreds of times--generally on his way home--stood still on this spot,
+gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at
+a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely
+cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered
+every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting
+himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled
+those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was
+no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and
+grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before,
+as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be
+interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him...
+so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his
+heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him
+now--all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories,
+his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all.... He
+felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing
+from his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he
+suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his
+hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into
+the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut
+himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment.
+Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have been
+walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not remember.
+Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay down on the
+sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into oblivion....
+It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good God, what a
+scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears,
+blows and curses he had never heard.
+He could never have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In terror he
+sat up in bed, almost swooning with agony. But the fighting, wailing
+and cursing grew louder and louder. And then to his intense amazement
+he caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling, shrieking and
+wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently, so that he could not make
+out what she was talking about; she was beseeching, no doubt, not to be
+beaten, for she was being mercilessly beaten on the stairs. The voice of
+her assailant was so horrible from spite and rage that it was almost
+a croak; but he, too, was saying something, and just as quickly
+and indistinctly, hurrying and spluttering. All at once Raskolnikov
+trembled; he recognised the voice--it was the voice of Ilya Petrovitch.
+Ilya Petrovitch here and beating the landlady! He is kicking her,
+banging her head against the steps--that’s clear, that can be told
+from the sounds, from the cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world
+topsy-turvy? He could hear people running in crowds from all the storeys
+and all the staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors
+banging. “But why, why, and how could it be?” he repeated, thinking
+seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And
+they would come to him then next, “for no doubt... it’s all about
+that... about yesterday.... Good God!” He would have fastened his door
+with the latch, but he could not lift his hand... besides, it would
+be useless. Terror gripped his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed
+him.... But at last all this uproar, after continuing about ten minutes,
+began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and groaning; Ilya
+Petrovitch was still uttering threats and curses.... But at last he,
+too, seemed to be silent, and now he could not be heard. “Can he have
+gone away? Good Lord!” Yes, and now the landlady is going too, still
+weeping and moaning... and then her door slammed.... Now the crowd was
+going from the stairs to their rooms, exclaiming, disputing, calling
+to one another, raising their voices to a shout, dropping them to a
+whisper. There must have been numbers of them--almost all the inmates
+of the block. “But, good God, how could it be! And why, why had he come
+here!”
+Raskolnikov sank worn out on the sofa, but could not close his eyes. He
+lay for half an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable sensation of
+infinite terror as he had never experienced before. Suddenly a bright
+light flashed into his room. Nastasya came in with a candle and a plate
+of soup. Looking at him carefully and ascertaining that he was not
+asleep, she set the candle on the table and began to lay out what she
+had brought--bread, salt, a plate, a spoon.
+“You’ve eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You’ve been trudging
+about all day, and you’re shaking with fever.”
+“Nastasya... what were they beating the landlady for?”
+She looked intently at him.
+“Who beat the landlady?”
+“Just now... half an hour ago, Ilya Petrovitch, the assistant
+superintendent, on the stairs.... Why was he ill-treating her like that,
+and... why was he here?”
+Nastasya scrutinised him, silent and frowning, and her scrutiny lasted a
+long time. He felt uneasy, even frightened at her searching eyes.
+“Nastasya, why don’t you speak?” he said timidly at last in a weak
+voice.
+“It’s the blood,” she answered at last softly, as though speaking to
+herself.
+“Blood? What blood?” he muttered, growing white and turning towards the
+wall.
+Nastasya still looked at him without speaking.
+“Nobody has been beating the landlady,” she declared at last in a firm,
+resolute voice.
+He gazed at her, hardly able to breathe.
+“I heard it myself.... I was not asleep... I was sitting up,” he
+said still more timidly. “I listened a long while. The assistant
+superintendent came.... Everyone ran out on to the stairs from all the
+flats.”
+“No one has been here. That’s the blood crying in your ears. When
+there’s no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying
+things.... Will you eat something?”
+He made no answer. Nastasya still stood over him, watching him.
+“Give me something to drink... Nastasya.”
+She went downstairs and returned with a white earthenware jug of water.
+He remembered only swallowing one sip of the cold water and spilling
+some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness.
+CHAPTER III
+He was not completely unconscious, however, all the time he was ill; he
+was in a feverish state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half conscious.
+He remembered a great deal afterwards. Sometimes it seemed as though
+there were a number of people round him; they wanted to take him away
+somewhere, there was a great deal of squabbling and discussing about
+him. Then he would be alone in the room; they had all gone away afraid
+of him, and only now and then opened the door a crack to look at him;
+they threatened him, plotted something together, laughed, and mocked
+at him. He remembered Nastasya often at his bedside; he distinguished
+another person, too, whom he seemed to know very well, though he could
+not remember who he was, and this fretted him, even made him cry.
+Sometimes he fancied he had been lying there a month; at other times
+it all seemed part of the same day. But of _that_--of _that_ he had
+no recollection, and yet every minute he felt that he had forgotten
+something he ought to remember. He worried and tormented himself trying
+to remember, moaned, flew into a rage, or sank into awful, intolerable
+terror. Then he struggled to get up, would have run away, but someone
+always prevented him by force, and he sank back into impotence and
+forgetfulness. At last he returned to complete consciousness.
+It happened at ten o’clock in the morning. On fine days the sun shone
+into the room at that hour, throwing a streak of light on the right
+wall and the corner near the door. Nastasya was standing beside him
+with another person, a complete stranger, who was looking at him
+very inquisitively. He was a young man with a beard, wearing a full,
+short-waisted coat, and looked like a messenger. The landlady was
+peeping in at the half-opened door. Raskolnikov sat up.
+“Who is this, Nastasya?” he asked, pointing to the young man.
+“I say, he’s himself again!” she said.
+“He is himself,” echoed the man.
+Concluding that he had returned to his senses, the landlady closed the
+door and disappeared. She was always shy and dreaded conversations or
+discussions. She was a woman of forty, not at all bad-looking, fat
+and buxom, with black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from fatness and
+laziness, and absurdly bashful.
+“Who... are you?” he went on, addressing the man. But at that moment
+the door was flung open, and, stooping a little, as he was so tall,
+Razumihin came in.
+“What a cabin it is!” he cried. “I am always knocking my head. You call
+this a lodging! So you are conscious, brother? I’ve just heard the news
+from Pashenka.”
+“He has just come to,” said Nastasya.
+“Just come to,” echoed the man again, with a smile.
+“And who are you?” Razumihin asked, suddenly addressing him. “My name is
+Vrazumihin, at your service; not Razumihin, as I am always called, but
+Vrazumihin, a student and gentleman; and he is my friend. And who are
+you?”
+“I am the messenger from our office, from the merchant Shelopaev, and
+I’ve come on business.”
+“Please sit down.” Razumihin seated himself on the other side of the
+table. “It’s a good thing you’ve come to, brother,” he went on to
+Raskolnikov. “For the last four days you have scarcely eaten or drunk
+anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls. I brought Zossimov to see
+you twice. You remember Zossimov? He examined you carefully and said at
+once it was nothing serious--something seemed to have gone to your head.
+Some nervous nonsense, the result of bad feeding, he says you have not
+had enough beer and radish, but it’s nothing much, it will pass and you
+will be all right. Zossimov is a first-rate fellow! He is making quite a
+name. Come, I won’t keep you,” he said, addressing the man again. “Will
+you explain what you want? You must know, Rodya, this is the second time
+they have sent from the office; but it was another man last time, and I
+talked to him. Who was it came before?”
+“That was the day before yesterday, I venture to say, if you please,
+sir. That was Alexey Semyonovitch; he is in our office, too.”
+“He was more intelligent than you, don’t you think so?”
+“Yes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight than I am.”
+“Quite so; go on.”
+“At your mamma’s request, through Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, of whom
+I presume you have heard more than once, a remittance is sent to you
+from our office,” the man began, addressing Raskolnikov. “If you are in
+an intelligible condition, I’ve thirty-five roubles to remit to you, as
+Semyon Semyonovitch has received from Afanasy Ivanovitch at your mamma’s
+request instructions to that effect, as on previous occasions. Do you
+know him, sir?”
+“Yes, I remember... Vahrushin,” Raskolnikov said dreamily.
+“You hear, he knows Vahrushin,” cried Razumihin. “He is in ‘an
+intelligible condition’! And I see you are an intelligent man too. Well,
+it’s always pleasant to hear words of wisdom.”
+“That’s the gentleman, Vahrushin, Afanasy Ivanovitch. And at the request
+of your mamma, who has sent you a remittance once before in the
+same manner through him, he did not refuse this time also, and sent
+instructions to Semyon Semyonovitch some days since to hand you
+thirty-five roubles in the hope of better to come.”
+“That ‘hoping for better to come’ is the best thing you’ve said, though
+‘your mamma’ is not bad either. Come then, what do you say? Is he fully
+conscious, eh?”
+“That’s all right. If only he can sign this little paper.”
+“He can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?”
+“Yes, here’s the book.”
+“Give it to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I’ll hold you. Take the pen and
+scribble ‘Raskolnikov’ for him. For just now, brother, money is sweeter
+to us than treacle.”
+“I don’t want it,” said Raskolnikov, pushing away the pen.
+“Not want it?”
+“I won’t sign it.”
+“How the devil can you do without signing it?”
+“I don’t want... the money.”
+“Don’t want the money! Come, brother, that’s nonsense, I bear witness.
+Don’t trouble, please, it’s only that he is on his travels again. But
+that’s pretty common with him at all times though.... You are a man of
+judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more simply, take his
+hand and he will sign it. Here.”
+“But I can come another time.”
+“No, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment.... Now,
+Rodya, don’t keep your visitor, you see he is waiting,” and he made
+ready to hold Raskolnikov’s hand in earnest.
+“Stop, I’ll do it alone,” said the latter, taking the pen and signing
+his name.
+The messenger took out the money and went away.
+“Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?”
+“Yes,” answered Raskolnikov.
+“Is there any soup?”
+“Some of yesterday’s,” answered Nastasya, who was still standing there.
+“With potatoes and rice in it?”
+“Yes.”
+“I know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea.”
+“Very well.”
+Raskolnikov looked at all this with profound astonishment and a dull,
+unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see what
+would happen. “I believe I am not wandering. I believe it’s reality,” he
+thought.
+In a couple of minutes Nastasya returned with the soup, and announced
+that the tea would be ready directly. With the soup she brought two
+spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef, and so on. The
+table was set as it had not been for a long time. The cloth was clean.
+“It would not be amiss, Nastasya, if Praskovya Pavlovna were to send us
+up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them.”
+“Well, you are a cool hand,” muttered Nastasya, and she departed to
+carry out his orders.
+Raskolnikov still gazed wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile
+Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put his
+left arm round Raskolnikov’s head, although he was able to sit up, and
+with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it that
+it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm. Raskolnikov
+swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a third. But after
+giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Razumihin suddenly stopped, and
+said that he must ask Zossimov whether he ought to have more.
+Nastasya came in with two bottles of beer.
+“And will you have tea?”
+“Yes.”
+“Cut along, Nastasya, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture on
+without the faculty. But here is the beer!” He moved back to his chair,
+pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as though he
+had not touched food for three days.
+“I must tell you, Rodya, I dine like this here every day now,” he
+mumbled with his mouth full of beef, “and it’s all Pashenka, your dear
+little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me. I
+don’t ask for it, but, of course, I don’t object. And here’s Nastasya
+with the tea. She is a quick girl. Nastasya, my dear, won’t you have
+some beer?”
+“Get along with your nonsense!”
+“A cup of tea, then?”
+“A cup of tea, maybe.”
+“Pour it out. Stay, I’ll pour it out myself. Sit down.”
+He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa again. As
+before, he put his left arm round the sick man’s head, raised him up
+and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again blowing each spoonful steadily and
+earnestly, as though this process was the principal and most effective
+means towards his friend’s recovery. Raskolnikov said nothing and made
+no resistance, though he felt quite strong enough to sit up on the sofa
+without support and could not merely have held a cup or a spoon, but
+even perhaps could have walked about. But from some queer, almost
+animal, cunning he conceived the idea of hiding his strength and lying
+low for a time, pretending if necessary not to be yet in full possession
+of his faculties, and meanwhile listening to find out what was going on.
+Yet he could not overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen
+spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away
+capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real
+pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed
+that, too, and took note of it.
+“Pashenka must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some
+raspberry tea,” said Razumihin, going back to his chair and attacking
+his soup and beer again.
+“And where is she to get raspberries for you?” asked Nastasya, balancing
+a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea through a lump of
+sugar.
+“She’ll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Rodya, all sorts of things
+have been happening while you have been laid up. When you decamped in
+that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt so angry that I
+resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work that very day.
+How I ran about making inquiries for you! This lodging of yours I had
+forgotten, though I never remembered it, indeed, because I did not know
+it; and as for your old lodgings, I could only remember it was at the
+Five Corners, Harlamov’s house. I kept trying to find that Harlamov’s
+house, and afterwards it turned out that it was not Harlamov’s, but
+Buch’s. How one muddles up sound sometimes! So I lost my temper, and I
+went on the chance to the address bureau next day, and only fancy, in
+two minutes they looked you up! Your name is down there.”
+“My name!”
+“I should think so; and yet a General Kobelev they could not find while
+I was there. Well, it’s a long story. But as soon as I did land on this
+place, I soon got to know all your affairs--all, all, brother, I know
+everything; Nastasya here will tell you. I made the acquaintance of
+Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, and the house-porter and Mr.
+Zametov, Alexandr Grigorievitch, the head clerk in the police office,
+and, last, but not least, of Pashenka; Nastasya here knows....”
+“He’s got round her,” Nastasya murmured, smiling slyly.
+“Why don’t you put the sugar in your tea, Nastasya Nikiforovna?”
+“You are a one!” Nastasya cried suddenly, going off into a giggle. “I am
+not Nikiforovna, but Petrovna,” she added suddenly, recovering from her
+mirth.
+“I’ll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story short,
+I was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all malignant
+influences in the locality, but Pashenka won the day. I had not
+expected, brother, to find her so... prepossessing. Eh, what do you
+think?”
+Raskolnikov did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon him,
+full of alarm.
+“And all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect,” Razumihin went
+on, not at all embarrassed by his silence.
+“Ah, the sly dog!” Nastasya shrieked again. This conversation afforded
+her unspeakable delight.
+“It’s a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way
+at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so
+to speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her
+character later.... How could you let things come to such a pass that
+she gave up sending you your dinner? And that I O U? You must have been
+mad to sign an I O U. And that promise of marriage when her daughter,
+Natalya Yegorovna, was alive?... I know all about it! But I see that’s
+a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But, talking of
+foolishness, do you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly so foolish as
+you would think at first sight?”
+“No,” mumbled Raskolnikov, looking away, but feeling that it was better
+to keep up the conversation.
+“She isn’t, is she?” cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out
+of him. “But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially,
+essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss,
+I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is thirty-six, and
+of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her
+intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a
+sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not!
+I don’t understand it! Well, that’s all nonsense. Only, seeing that you
+are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and
+that through the young lady’s death she has no need to treat you as
+a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in your den and
+dropped all your old relations with her, she planned to get rid of you.
+And she’s been cherishing that design a long time, but was sorry to lose
+the I O U, for you assured her yourself that your mother would pay.”
+“It was base of me to say that.... My mother herself is almost
+a beggar... and I told a lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,”
+Raskolnikov said loudly and distinctly.
+“Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that point
+Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never have
+thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too retiring; but
+the business man is by no means retiring, and first thing he puts the
+question, ‘Is there any hope of realising the I O U?’ Answer: there is,
+because he has a mother who would save her Rodya with her hundred and
+twenty-five roubles pension, if she has to starve herself; and a sister,
+too, who would go into bondage for his sake. That’s what he was building
+upon.... Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs of your affairs
+now, my dear boy--it’s not for nothing that you were so open with
+Pashenka when you were her prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as
+a friend.... But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is
+open; and a business man ‘listens and goes on eating’ you up. Well,
+then she gave the I O U by way of payment to this Tchebarov, and without
+hesitation he made a formal demand for payment. When I heard of all this
+I wanted to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience, but by that time
+harmony reigned between me and Pashenka, and I insisted on stopping
+the whole affair, engaging that you would pay. I went security for you,
+brother. Do you understand? We called Tchebarov, flung him ten
+roubles and got the I O U back from him, and here I have the honour of
+presenting it to you. She trusts your word now. Here, take it, you see I
+have torn it.”
+Razumihin put the note on the table. Raskolnikov looked at him and
+turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a
+twinge.
+“I see, brother,” he said a moment later, “that I have been playing the
+fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my chatter, and I believe
+I have only made you cross.”
+“Was it you I did not recognise when I was delirious?” Raskolnikov
+asked, after a moment’s pause without turning his head.
+“Yes, and you flew into a rage about it, especially when I brought
+Zametov one day.”
+“Zametov? The head clerk? What for?” Raskolnikov turned round quickly
+and fixed his eyes on Razumihin.
+“What’s the matter with you?... What are you upset about? He wanted to
+make your acquaintance because I talked to him a lot about you.... How
+could I have found out so much except from him? He is a capital
+fellow, brother, first-rate... in his own way, of course. Now we are
+friends--see each other almost every day. I have moved into this part,
+you know. I have only just moved. I’ve been with him to Luise Ivanovna
+once or twice.... Do you remember Luise, Luise Ivanovna?
+“Did I say anything in delirium?”
+“I should think so! You were beside yourself.”
+“What did I rave about?”
+“What next? What did you rave about? What people do rave about.... Well,
+brother, now I must not lose time. To work.” He got up from the table
+and took up his cap.
+“What did I rave about?”
+“How he keeps on! Are you afraid of having let out some secret? Don’t
+worry yourself; you said nothing about a countess. But you said a lot
+about a bulldog, and about ear-rings and chains, and about Krestovsky
+Island, and some porter, and Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, the
+assistant superintendent. And another thing that was of special interest
+to you was your own sock. You whined, ‘Give me my sock.’ Zametov
+hunted all about your room for your socks, and with his own scented,
+ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag. And only then were you
+comforted, and for the next twenty-four hours you held the wretched
+thing in your hand; we could not get it from you. It is most likely
+somewhere under your quilt at this moment. And then you asked so
+piteously for fringe for your trousers. We tried to find out what sort
+of fringe, but we could not make it out. Now to business! Here are
+thirty-five roubles; I take ten of them, and shall give you an account
+of them in an hour or two. I will let Zossimov know at the same time,
+though he ought to have been here long ago, for it is nearly twelve. And
+you, Nastasya, look in pretty often while I am away, to see whether he
+wants a drink or anything else. And I will tell Pashenka what is wanted
+myself. Good-bye!”
+“He calls her Pashenka! Ah, he’s a deep one!” said Nastasya as he went
+out; then she opened the door and stood listening, but could not resist
+running downstairs after him. She was very eager to hear what he would
+say to the landlady. She was evidently quite fascinated by Razumihin.
+No sooner had she left the room than the sick man flung off the
+bedclothes and leapt out of bed like a madman. With burning, twitching
+impatience he had waited for them to be gone so that he might set to
+work. But to what work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him.
+“Good God, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not? What
+if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am laid up,
+and then they will come in and tell me that it’s been discovered long
+ago and that they have only... What am I to do now? That’s what I’ve
+forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all at once, I remembered
+a minute ago.”
+He stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable bewilderment
+about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened; but that was not
+what he wanted. Suddenly, as though recalling something, he rushed to
+the corner where there was a hole under the paper, began examining it,
+put his hand into the hole, fumbled--but that was not it. He went to the
+stove, opened it and began rummaging in the ashes; the frayed edges of
+his trousers and the rags cut off his pocket were lying there just as
+he had thrown them. No one had looked, then! Then he remembered the sock
+about which Razumihin had just been telling him. Yes, there it lay on
+the sofa under the quilt, but it was so covered with dust and grime that
+Zametov could not have seen anything on it.
+“Bah, Zametov! The police office! And why am I sent for to the police
+office? Where’s the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was then. I
+looked at my sock then, too, but now... now I have been ill. But
+what did Zametov come for? Why did Razumihin bring him?” he muttered,
+helplessly sitting on the sofa again. “What does it mean? Am I still in
+delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I remember; I must
+escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must escape! Yes... but
+where? And where are my clothes? I’ve no boots. They’ve taken them away!
+They’ve hidden them! I understand! Ah, here is my coat--they passed that
+over! And here is money on the table, thank God! And here’s the I O U...
+I’ll take the money and go and take another lodging. They won’t find
+me!... Yes, but the address bureau? They’ll find me, Razumihin will find
+me. Better escape altogether... far away... to America, and let them
+do their worst! And take the I O U... it would be of use there.... What
+else shall I take? They think I am ill! They don’t know that I can walk,
+ha-ha-ha! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it! If
+only I could get downstairs! And what if they have set a watch
+there--policemen! What’s this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half a
+bottle, cold!”
+He snatched up the bottle, which still contained a glassful of beer, and
+gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his breast.
+But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a faint and
+even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and pulled the
+quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew more and more
+disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came upon him. With
+a sense of comfort he nestled his head into the pillow, wrapped more
+closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had replaced the old,
+ragged greatcoat, sighed softly and sank into a deep, sound, refreshing
+sleep.
+He woke up, hearing someone come in. He opened his eyes and saw
+Razumihin standing in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or
+not. Raskolnikov sat up quickly on the sofa and gazed at him, as though
+trying to recall something.
+“Ah, you are not asleep! Here I am! Nastasya, bring in the parcel!”
+Razumihin shouted down the stairs. “You shall have the account
+directly.”
+“What time is it?” asked Raskolnikov, looking round uneasily.
+“Yes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it’s almost evening, it will be six
+o’clock directly. You have slept more than six hours.”
+“Good heavens! Have I?”
+“And why not? It will do you good. What’s the hurry? A tryst, is it?
+We’ve all time before us. I’ve been waiting for the last three hours for
+you; I’ve been up twice and found you asleep. I’ve called on Zossimov
+twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter, he will turn up. And
+I’ve been out on my own business, too. You know I’ve been moving to-day,
+moving with my uncle. I have an uncle living with me now. But that’s
+no matter, to business. Give me the parcel, Nastasya. We will open it
+directly. And how do you feel now, brother?”
+“I am quite well, I am not ill. Razumihin, have you been here long?”
+“I tell you I’ve been waiting for the last three hours.”
+“No, before.”
+“How do you mean?”
+“How long have you been coming here?”
+“Why I told you all about it this morning. Don’t you remember?”
+Raskolnikov pondered. The morning seemed like a dream to him. He could
+not remember alone, and looked inquiringly at Razumihin.
+“Hm!” said the latter, “he has forgotten. I fancied then that you were
+not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep.... You really
+look much better. First-rate! Well, to business. Look here, my dear
+boy.”
+He began untying the bundle, which evidently interested him.
+“Believe me, brother, this is something specially near my heart. For we
+must make a man of you. Let’s begin from the top. Do you see this
+cap?” he said, taking out of the bundle a fairly good though cheap and
+ordinary cap. “Let me try it on.”
+“Presently, afterwards,” said Raskolnikov, waving it off pettishly.
+“Come, Rodya, my boy, don’t oppose it, afterwards will be too late; and
+I shan’t sleep all night, for I bought it by guess, without measure.
+Just right!” he cried triumphantly, fitting it on, “just your size! A
+proper head-covering is the first thing in dress and a recommendation in
+its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off
+his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other
+people wear their hats or caps. People think he does it from slavish
+politeness, but it’s simply because he is ashamed of his bird’s nest;
+he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Nastasya, here are two specimens of
+headgear: this Palmerston”--he took from the corner Raskolnikov’s old,
+battered hat, which for some unknown reason, he called a Palmerston--“or
+this jewel! Guess the price, Rodya, what do you suppose I paid for it,
+Nastasya!” he said, turning to her, seeing that Raskolnikov did not
+speak.
+“Twenty copecks, no more, I dare say,” answered Nastasya.
+“Twenty copecks, silly!” he cried, offended. “Why, nowadays you would
+cost more than that--eighty copecks! And that only because it has been
+worn. And it’s bought on condition that when’s it’s worn out, they will
+give you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well, now let us pass to
+the United States of America, as they called them at school. I assure
+you I am proud of these breeches,” and he exhibited to Raskolnikov a
+pair of light, summer trousers of grey woollen material. “No holes, no
+spots, and quite respectable, although a little worn; and a waistcoat
+to match, quite in the fashion. And its being worn really is an
+improvement, it’s softer, smoother.... You see, Rodya, to my thinking,
+the great thing for getting on in the world is always to keep to the
+seasons; if you don’t insist on having asparagus in January, you keep
+your money in your purse; and it’s the same with this purchase. It’s
+summer now, so I’ve been buying summer things--warmer materials will be
+wanted for autumn, so you will have to throw these away in any case...
+especially as they will be done for by then from their own lack of
+coherence if not your higher standard of luxury. Come, price them! What
+do you say? Two roubles twenty-five copecks! And remember the condition:
+if you wear these out, you will have another suit for nothing! They only
+do business on that system at Fedyaev’s; if you’ve bought a thing once,
+you are satisfied for life, for you will never go there again of your
+own free will. Now for the boots. What do you say? You see that they are
+a bit worn, but they’ll last a couple of months, for it’s foreign work
+and foreign leather; the secretary of the English Embassy sold them last
+week--he had only worn them six days, but he was very short of cash.
+Price--a rouble and a half. A bargain?”
+“But perhaps they won���t fit,” observed Nastasya.
+“Not fit? Just look!” and he pulled out of his pocket Raskolnikov’s
+old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. “I did not go
+empty-handed--they took the size from this monster. We all did our best.
+And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that. Here, to begin
+with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable front.... Well
+now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles twenty-five copecks the
+suit--together three roubles five copecks--a rouble and a half for the
+boots--for, you see, they are very good--and that makes four roubles
+fifty-five copecks; five roubles for the underclothes--they were
+bought in the lot--which makes exactly nine roubles fifty-five copecks.
+Forty-five copecks change in coppers. Will you take it? And so, Rodya,
+you are set up with a complete new rig-out, for your overcoat will
+serve, and even has a style of its own. That comes from getting one’s
+clothes from Sharmer’s! As for your socks and other things, I leave them
+to you; we’ve twenty-five roubles left. And as for Pashenka and paying
+for your lodging, don’t you worry. I tell you she’ll trust you for
+anything. And now, brother, let me change your linen, for I daresay you
+will throw off your illness with your shirt.”
+“Let me be! I don’t want to!” Raskolnikov waved him off. He had listened
+with disgust to Razumihin’s efforts to be playful about his purchases.
+“Come, brother, don’t tell me I’ve been trudging around for nothing,”
+Razumihin insisted. “Nastasya, don’t be bashful, but help me--that’s
+it,” and in spite of Raskolnikov’s resistance he changed his linen. The
+latter sank back on the pillows and for a minute or two said nothing.
+“It will be long before I get rid of them,” he thought. “What money was
+all that bought with?” he asked at last, gazing at the wall.
+“Money? Why, your own, what the messenger brought from Vahrushin, your
+mother sent it. Have you forgotten that, too?”
+“I remember now,” said Raskolnikov after a long, sullen silence.
+Razumihin looked at him, frowning and uneasy.
+The door opened and a tall, stout man whose appearance seemed familiar
+to Raskolnikov came in.
+CHAPTER IV
+Zossimov was a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face
+and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on
+his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey fashionable
+loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose,
+fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his
+watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were,
+nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and easy; he made
+efforts to conceal his self-importance, but it was apparent at every
+instant. All his acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever
+at his work.
+“I’ve been to you twice to-day, brother. You see, he’s come to himself,”
+cried Razumihin.
+“I see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?” said Zossimov to
+Raskolnikov, watching him carefully and, sitting down at the foot of the
+sofa, he settled himself as comfortably as he could.
+“He is still depressed,” Razumihin went on. “We’ve just changed his
+linen and he almost cried.”
+“That’s very natural; you might have put it off if he did not wish
+it.... His pulse is first-rate. Is your head still aching, eh?”
+“I am well, I am perfectly well!” Raskolnikov declared positively
+and irritably. He raised himself on the sofa and looked at them with
+glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow at once and turned to
+the wall. Zossimov watched him intently.
+“Very good.... Going on all right,” he said lazily. “Has he eaten
+anything?”
+They told him, and asked what he might have.
+“He may have anything... soup, tea... mushrooms and cucumbers, of
+course, you must not give him; he’d better not have meat either, and...
+but no need to tell you that!” Razumihin and he looked at each
+other. “No more medicine or anything. I’ll look at him again to-morrow.
+Perhaps, to-day even... but never mind...”
+“To-morrow evening I shall take him for a walk,” said Razumihin. “We are
+going to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais de Cristal.”
+“I would not disturb him to-morrow at all, but I don’t know... a little,
+maybe... but we’ll see.”
+“Ach, what a nuisance! I’ve got a house-warming party to-night; it’s
+only a step from here. Couldn’t he come? He could lie on the sofa. You
+are coming?” Razumihin said to Zossimov. “Don’t forget, you promised.”
+“All right, only rather later. What are you going to do?”
+“Oh, nothing--tea, vodka, herrings. There will be a pie... just our
+friends.”
+“And who?”
+“All neighbours here, almost all new friends, except my old uncle, and
+he is new too--he only arrived in Petersburg yesterday to see to some
+business of his. We meet once in five years.”
+“What is he?”
+“He’s been stagnating all his life as a district postmaster; gets a
+little pension. He is sixty-five--not worth talking about.... But I
+am fond of him. Porfiry Petrovitch, the head of the Investigation
+Department here... But you know him.”
+“Is he a relation of yours, too?”
+“A very distant one. But why are you scowling? Because you quarrelled
+once, won’t you come then?”
+“I don’t care a damn for him.”
+“So much the better. Well, there will be some students, a teacher, a
+government clerk, a musician, an officer and Zametov.”
+“Do tell me, please, what you or he”--Zossimov nodded at
+Raskolnikov--“can have in common with this Zametov?”
+“Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by principles,
+as it were by springs; you won’t venture to turn round on your own
+account. If a man is a nice fellow, that’s the only principle I go upon.
+Zametov is a delightful person.”
+“Though he does take bribes.”
+“Well, he does! and what of it? I don’t care if he does take bribes,”
+Razumihin cried with unnatural irritability. “I don’t praise him for
+taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own way! But if one
+looks at men in all ways--are there many good ones left? Why, I am sure
+I shouldn’t be worth a baked onion myself... perhaps with you thrown
+in.”
+“That’s too little; I’d give two for you.”
+“And I wouldn’t give more than one for you. No more of your jokes!
+Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw him
+not repel him. You’ll never improve a man by repelling him, especially
+a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you progressive
+dullards! You don’t understand. You harm yourselves running another man
+down.... But if you want to know, we really have something in common.”
+“I should like to know what.”
+“Why, it’s all about a house-painter.... We are getting him out of
+a mess! Though indeed there’s nothing to fear now. The matter is
+absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam.”
+“A painter?”
+“Why, haven’t I told you about it? I only told you the beginning then
+about the murder of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter is mixed
+up in it...”
+“Oh, I heard about that murder before and was rather interested in it...
+partly... for one reason.... I read about it in the papers, too....”
+“Lizaveta was murdered, too,” Nastasya blurted out, suddenly addressing
+Raskolnikov. She remained in the room all the time, standing by the door
+listening.
+“Lizaveta,” murmured Raskolnikov hardly audibly.
+“Lizaveta, who sold old clothes. Didn’t you know her? She used to come
+here. She mended a shirt for you, too.”
+Raskolnikov turned to the wall where in the dirty, yellow paper he
+picked out one clumsy, white flower with brown lines on it and began
+examining how many petals there were in it, how many scallops in the
+petals and how many lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as lifeless
+as though they had been cut off. He did not attempt to move, but stared
+obstinately at the flower.
+“But what about the painter?” Zossimov interrupted Nastasya’s chatter
+with marked displeasure. She sighed and was silent.
+“Why, he was accused of the murder,” Razumihin went on hotly.
+“Was there evidence against him then?”
+“Evidence, indeed! Evidence that was no evidence, and that’s what we
+have to prove. It was just as they pitched on those fellows, Koch and
+Pestryakov, at first. Foo! how stupidly it’s all done, it makes one
+sick, though it’s not one’s business! Pestryakov may be coming
+to-night.... By the way, Rodya, you’ve heard about the business already;
+it happened before you were ill, the day before you fainted at the
+police office while they were talking about it.”
+Zossimov looked curiously at Raskolnikov. He did not stir.
+“But I say, Razumihin, I wonder at you. What a busybody you are!”
+Zossimov observed.
+“Maybe I am, but we will get him off anyway,” shouted Razumihin,
+bringing his fist down on the table. “What’s the most offensive is not
+their lying--one can always forgive lying--lying is a delightful thing,
+for it leads to truth--what is offensive is that they lie and worship
+their own lying.... I respect Porfiry, but... What threw them out at
+first? The door was locked, and when they came back with the porter
+it was open. So it followed that Koch and Pestryakov were the
+murderers--that was their logic!”
+“But don’t excite yourself; they simply detained them, they could not
+help that.... And, by the way, I’ve met that man Koch. He used to buy
+unredeemed pledges from the old woman? Eh?”
+“Yes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a profession
+of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me angry? It’s their
+sickening rotten, petrified routine.... And this case might be the means
+of introducing a new method. One can show from the psychological data
+alone how to get on the track of the real man. ‘We have facts,’ they
+say. But facts are not everything--at least half the business lies in
+how you interpret them!”
+“Can you interpret them, then?”
+“Anyway, one can’t hold one’s tongue when one has a feeling, a tangible
+feeling, that one might be a help if only.... Eh! Do you know the
+details of the case?”
+“I am waiting to hear about the painter.”
+“Oh, yes! Well, here’s the story. Early on the third day after the
+murder, when they were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov--though they
+accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff--an
+unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin, who keeps a
+dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a jeweller’s
+case containing some gold ear-rings, and told a long rigamarole. ‘The
+day before yesterday, just after eight o’clock’--mark the day and the
+hour!--‘a journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had been in to see me
+already that day, brought me this box of gold ear-rings and stones, and
+asked me to give him two roubles for them. When I asked him where he got
+them, he said that he picked them up in the street. I did not ask him
+anything more.’ I am telling you Dushkin’s story. ‘I gave him a note’--a
+rouble that is--‘for I thought if he did not pawn it with me he would
+with another. It would all come to the same thing--he’d spend it on
+drink, so the thing had better be with me. The further you hide it
+the quicker you will find it, and if anything turns up, if I hear any
+rumours, I’ll take it to the police.’ Of course, that’s all taradiddle;
+he lies like a horse, for I know this Dushkin, he is a pawnbroker and
+a receiver of stolen goods, and he did not cheat Nikolay out of a
+thirty-rouble trinket in order to give it to the police. He was simply
+afraid. But no matter, to return to Dushkin’s story. ‘I’ve known
+this peasant, Nikolay Dementyev, from a child; he comes from the same
+province and district of Zaraïsk, we are both Ryazan men. And though
+Nikolay is not a drunkard, he drinks, and I knew he had a job in that
+house, painting work with Dmitri, who comes from the same village, too.
+As soon as he got the rouble he changed it, had a couple of glasses,
+took his change and went out. But I did not see Dmitri with him then.
+And the next day I heard that someone had murdered Alyona Ivanovna and
+her sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna, with an axe. I knew them, and I felt
+suspicious about the ear-rings at once, for I knew the murdered woman
+lent money on pledges. I went to the house, and began to make careful
+inquiries without saying a word to anyone. First of all I asked, “Is
+Nikolay here?” Dmitri told me that Nikolay had gone off on the spree; he
+had come home at daybreak drunk, stayed in the house about ten minutes,
+and went out again. Dmitri didn’t see him again and is finishing the
+job alone. And their job is on the same staircase as the murder, on
+the second floor. When I heard all that I did not say a word to
+anyone’--that’s Dushkin’s tale--‘but I found out what I could about
+the murder, and went home feeling as suspicious as ever. And at eight
+o’clock this morning’--that was the third day, you understand--‘I saw
+Nikolay coming in, not sober, though not to say very drunk--he could
+understand what was said to him. He sat down on the bench and did not
+speak. There was only one stranger in the bar and a man I knew asleep
+on a bench and our two boys. “Have you seen Dmitri?” said I. “No, I
+haven’t,” said he. “And you’ve not been here either?” “Not since the day
+before yesterday,” said he. “And where did you sleep last night?”
+“In Peski, with the Kolomensky men.” “And where did you get those
+ear-rings?” I asked. “I found them in the street,” and the way he said
+it was a bit queer; he did not look at me. “Did you hear what happened
+that very evening, at that very hour, on that same staircase?” said I.
+“No,” said he, “I had not heard,” and all the while he was listening,
+his eyes were staring out of his head and he turned as white as chalk. I
+told him all about it and he took his hat and began getting up. I wanted
+to keep him. “Wait a bit, Nikolay,” said I, “won’t you have a drink?”
+And I signed to the boy to hold the door, and I came out from behind the
+bar; but he darted out and down the street to the turning at a run.
+I have not seen him since. Then my doubts were at an end--it was his
+doing, as clear as could be....’”
+“I should think so,” said Zossimov.
+“Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Nikolay;
+they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Dmitri, too, was arrested;
+the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the day before
+yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a tavern at the end of the town. He
+had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and asked for a dram
+for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards the woman went
+to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw in the stable
+adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam, stood on a
+block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose. The woman
+screeched her hardest; people ran in. ‘So that’s what you are up to!’
+‘Take me,’ he says, ‘to such-and-such a police officer; I’ll confess
+everything.’ Well, they took him to that police station--that is
+here--with a suitable escort. So they asked him this and that, how old
+he is, ‘twenty-two,’ and so on. At the question, ‘When you were working
+with Dmitri, didn’t you see anyone on the staircase at such-and-such a
+time?’--answer: ‘To be sure folks may have gone up and down, but I did
+not notice them.’ ‘And didn’t you hear anything, any noise, and so on?’
+‘We heard nothing special.’ ‘And did you hear, Nikolay, that on the same
+day Widow So-and-so and her sister were murdered and robbed?’ ‘I
+never knew a thing about it. The first I heard of it was from Afanasy
+Pavlovitch the day before yesterday.’ ‘And where did you find the
+ear-rings?’ ‘I found them on the pavement.’ ‘Why didn’t you go to work
+with Dmitri the other day?’ ‘Because I was drinking.’ ‘And where were
+you drinking?’ ‘Oh, in such-and-such a place.’ ‘Why did you run away
+from Dushkin’s?’ ‘Because I was awfully frightened.’ ‘What were
+you frightened of?’ ‘That I should be accused.’ ‘How could you be
+frightened, if you felt free from guilt?’ Now, Zossimov, you may not
+believe me, that question was put literally in those words. I know it
+for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What do you say to that?”
+“Well, anyway, there’s the evidence.”
+“I am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that question,
+of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed and squeezed
+him and he confessed: ‘I did not find it in the street, but in the flat
+where I was painting with Dmitri.’ ‘And how was that?’ ‘Why, Dmitri and
+I were painting there all day, and we were just getting ready to go, and
+Dmitri took a brush and painted my face, and he ran off and I after him.
+I ran after him, shouting my hardest, and at the bottom of the stairs I
+ran right against the porter and some gentlemen--and how many gentlemen
+were there I don’t remember. And the porter swore at me, and the other
+porter swore, too, and the porter’s wife came out, and swore at us, too;
+and a gentleman came into the entry with a lady, and he swore at us,
+too, for Dmitri and I lay right across the way. I got hold of Dmitri’s
+hair and knocked him down and began beating him. And Dmitri, too, caught
+me by the hair and began beating me. But we did it all not for temper
+but in a friendly way, for sport. And then Dmitri escaped and ran into
+the street, and I ran after him; but I did not catch him, and went back
+to the flat alone; I had to clear up my things. I began putting them
+together, expecting Dmitri to come, and there in the passage, in the
+corner by the door, I stepped on the box. I saw it lying there wrapped
+up in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little hooks, undid them,
+and in the box were the ear-rings....’”
+“Behind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?” Raskolnikov
+cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at Razumihin, and he
+slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand.
+“Yes... why? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” Razumihin, too, got up
+from his seat.
+“Nothing,” Raskolnikov answered faintly, turning to the wall. All were
+silent for a while.
+“He must have waked from a dream,” Razumihin said at last, looking
+inquiringly at Zossimov. The latter slightly shook his head.
+“Well, go on,” said Zossimov. “What next?”
+“What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Dmitri and
+everything, he took up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know, got
+a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street, and
+went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the murder:
+‘I know nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before yesterday.’
+‘And why didn’t you come to the police till now?’ ‘I was frightened.’
+‘And why did you try to hang yourself?’ ‘From anxiety.’ ‘What anxiety?’
+‘That I should be accused of it.’ Well, that’s the whole story. And now
+what do you suppose they deduced from that?”
+“Why, there’s no supposing. There’s a clue, such as it is, a fact. You
+wouldn’t have your painter set free?”
+“Now they’ve simply taken him for the murderer. They haven’t a shadow of
+doubt.”
+“That’s nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You
+must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the old
+woman’s box have come into Nikolay’s hands, they must have come there
+somehow. That’s a good deal in such a case.”
+“How did they get there? How did they get there?” cried Razumihin.
+“How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more
+opportunity than anyone else for studying human nature--how can you fail
+to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don’t you see at
+once that the answers he has given in the examination are the holy
+truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us--he stepped
+on the box and picked it up.”
+“The holy truth! But didn’t he own himself that he told a lie at first?”
+“Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Koch and Pestryakov
+and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and the woman who
+was sitting in the porter’s lodge and the man Kryukov, who had just got
+out of a cab at that minute and went in at the entry with a lady on his
+arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree that Nikolay had Dmitri on
+the ground, was lying on him beating him, while Dmitri hung on to his
+hair, beating him, too. They lay right across the way, blocking the
+thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all sides while they ‘like children’
+(the very words of the witnesses) were falling over one another,
+squealing, fighting and laughing with the funniest faces, and, chasing
+one another like children, they ran into the street. Now take careful
+note. The bodies upstairs were warm, you understand, warm when they
+found them! If they, or Nikolay alone, had murdered them and broken open
+the boxes, or simply taken part in the robbery, allow me to ask you one
+question: do their state of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish
+scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning,
+robbery? They’d just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for
+the bodies were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing
+that people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they
+rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention.
+And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!”
+“Of course it is strange! It’s impossible, indeed, but...”
+“No, brother, no _buts_. And if the ear-rings being found in Nikolay’s
+hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes an important
+piece of circumstantial evidence against him--although the explanation
+given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does not tell seriously
+against him--one must take into consideration the facts which prove him
+innocent, especially as they are facts that _cannot be denied_. And
+do you suppose, from the character of our legal system, that they will
+accept, or that they are in a position to accept, this fact--resting
+simply on a psychological impossibility--as irrefutable and conclusively
+breaking down the circumstantial evidence for the prosecution? No, they
+won’t accept it, they certainly won’t, because they found the jewel-case
+and the man tried to hang himself, ‘which he could not have done if he
+hadn’t felt guilty.’ That’s the point, that’s what excites me, you must
+understand!”
+“Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what proof
+is there that the box came from the old woman?”
+“That’s been proved,” said Razumihin with apparent reluctance, frowning.
+“Koch recognised the jewel-case and gave the name of the owner, who
+proved conclusively that it was his.”
+“That’s bad. Now another point. Did anyone see Nikolay at the time
+that Koch and Pestryakov were going upstairs at first, and is there no
+evidence about that?”
+“Nobody did see him,” Razumihin answered with vexation. “That’s the
+worst of it. Even Koch and Pestryakov did not notice them on their way
+upstairs, though, indeed, their evidence could not have been worth much.
+They said they saw the flat was open, and that there must be work going
+on in it, but they took no special notice and could not remember whether
+there actually were men at work in it.”
+“Hm!... So the only evidence for the defence is that they were beating
+one another and laughing. That constitutes a strong presumption, but...
+How do you explain the facts yourself?”
+“How do I explain them? What is there to explain? It’s clear. At any
+rate, the direction in which explanation is to be sought is clear, and
+the jewel-case points to it. The real murderer dropped those ear-rings.
+The murderer was upstairs, locked in, when Koch and Pestryakov knocked
+at the door. Koch, like an ass, did not stay at the door; so the
+murderer popped out and ran down, too; for he had no other way of
+escape. He hid from Koch, Pestryakov and the porter in the flat when
+Nikolay and Dmitri had just run out of it. He stopped there while the
+porter and others were going upstairs, waited till they were out of
+hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the very minute when Dmitri
+and Nikolay ran out into the street and there was no one in the entry;
+possibly he was seen, but not noticed. There are lots of people going
+in and out. He must have dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket when
+he stood behind the door, and did not notice he dropped them, because he
+had other things to think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive proof that
+he did stand there.... That’s how I explain it.”
+“Too clever! No, my boy, you’re too clever. That beats everything.”
+“But, why, why?”
+“Why, because everything fits too well... it’s too melodramatic.”
+“A-ach!” Razumihin was exclaiming, but at that moment the door opened
+and a personage came in who was a stranger to all present.
+CHAPTER V
+This was a gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly appearance,
+and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by stopping short in the
+doorway, staring about him with offensive and undisguised astonishment,
+as though asking himself what sort of place he had come to.
+Mistrustfully and with an affectation of being alarmed and almost
+affronted, he scanned Raskolnikov’s low and narrow “cabin.” With the
+same amazement he stared at Raskolnikov, who lay undressed, dishevelled,
+unwashed, on his miserable dirty sofa, looking fixedly at him. Then with
+the same deliberation he scrutinised the uncouth, unkempt figure and
+unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked him boldly and inquiringly in the
+face without rising from his seat. A constrained silence lasted for a
+couple of minutes, and then, as might be expected, some scene-shifting
+took place. Reflecting, probably from certain fairly unmistakable signs,
+that he would get nothing in this “cabin” by attempting to overawe them,
+the gentleman softened somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity,
+emphasising every syllable of his question, addressed Zossimov:
+“Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a student, or formerly a student?”
+Zossimov made a slight movement, and would have answered, had not
+Razumihin anticipated him.
+“Here he is lying on the sofa! What do you want?”
+This familiar “what do you want” seemed to cut the ground from the
+feet of the pompous gentleman. He was turning to Razumihin, but checked
+himself in time and turned to Zossimov again.
+“This is Raskolnikov,” mumbled Zossimov, nodding towards him. Then he
+gave a prolonged yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible. Then he
+lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, pulled out a huge gold
+watch in a round hunter’s case, opened it, looked at it and as slowly
+and lazily proceeded to put it back.
+Raskolnikov himself lay without speaking, on his back, gazing
+persistently, though without understanding, at the stranger. Now that
+his face was turned away from the strange flower on the paper, it
+was extremely pale and wore a look of anguish, as though he had just
+undergone an agonising operation or just been taken from the rack. But
+the new-comer gradually began to arouse his attention, then his wonder,
+then suspicion and even alarm. When Zossimov said “This is Raskolnikov”
+he jumped up quickly, sat on the sofa and with an almost defiant, but
+weak and breaking, voice articulated:
+“Yes, I am Raskolnikov! What do you want?”
+The visitor scrutinised him and pronounced impressively:
+“Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin. I believe I have reason to hope that my name
+is not wholly unknown to you?”
+But Raskolnikov, who had expected something quite different, gazed
+blankly and dreamily at him, making no reply, as though he heard the
+name of Pyotr Petrovitch for the first time.
+“Is it possible that you can up to the present have received no
+information?” asked Pyotr Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted.
+In reply Raskolnikov sank languidly back on the pillow, put his hands
+behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay came into
+Luzhin’s face. Zossimov and Razumihin stared at him more inquisitively
+than ever, and at last he showed unmistakable signs of embarrassment.
+“I had presumed and calculated,” he faltered, “that a letter posted more
+than ten days, if not a fortnight ago...”
+“I say, why are you standing in the doorway?” Razumihin interrupted
+suddenly. “If you’ve something to say, sit down. Nastasya and you are so
+crowded. Nastasya, make room. Here’s a chair, thread your way in!”
+He moved his chair back from the table, made a little space between the
+table and his knees, and waited in a rather cramped position for the
+visitor to “thread his way in.” The minute was so chosen that it was
+impossible to refuse, and the visitor squeezed his way through, hurrying
+and stumbling. Reaching the chair, he sat down, looking suspiciously at
+Razumihin.
+“No need to be nervous,” the latter blurted out. “Rodya has been ill for
+the last five days and delirious for three, but now he is recovering and
+has got an appetite. This is his doctor, who has just had a look at him.
+I am a comrade of Rodya’s, like him, formerly a student, and now I am
+nursing him; so don’t you take any notice of us, but go on with your
+business.”
+“Thank you. But shall I not disturb the invalid by my presence and
+conversation?” Pyotr Petrovitch asked of Zossimov.
+“N-no,” mumbled Zossimov; “you may amuse him.” He yawned again.
+“He has been conscious a long time, since the morning,” went on
+Razumihin, whose familiarity seemed so much like unaffected good-nature
+that Pyotr Petrovitch began to be more cheerful, partly, perhaps,
+because this shabby and impudent person had introduced himself as a
+student.
+“Your mamma,” began Luzhin.
+“Hm!” Razumihin cleared his throat loudly. Luzhin looked at him
+inquiringly.
+“That’s all right, go on.”
+Luzhin shrugged his shoulders.
+“Your mamma had commenced a letter to you while I was sojourning in
+her neighbourhood. On my arrival here I purposely allowed a few days to
+elapse before coming to see you, in order that I might be fully
+assured that you were in full possession of the tidings; but now, to my
+astonishment...”
+“I know, I know!” Raskolnikov cried suddenly with impatient vexation.
+“So you are the _fiancé_? I know, and that’s enough!”
+There was no doubt about Pyotr Petrovitch’s being offended this time,
+but he said nothing. He made a violent effort to understand what it all
+meant. There was a moment’s silence.
+Meanwhile Raskolnikov, who had turned a little towards him when he
+answered, began suddenly staring at him again with marked curiosity, as
+though he had not had a good look at him yet, or as though something
+new had struck him; he rose from his pillow on purpose to stare at
+him. There certainly was something peculiar in Pyotr Petrovitch’s whole
+appearance, something which seemed to justify the title of “fiancé” so
+unceremoniously applied to him. In the first place, it was evident, far
+too much so indeed, that Pyotr Petrovitch had made eager use of his few
+days in the capital to get himself up and rig himself out in expectation
+of his betrothed--a perfectly innocent and permissible proceeding,
+indeed. Even his own, perhaps too complacent, consciousness of the
+agreeable improvement in his appearance might have been forgiven in such
+circumstances, seeing that Pyotr Petrovitch had taken up the rôle of
+fiancé. All his clothes were fresh from the tailor’s and were all
+right, except for being too new and too distinctly appropriate. Even
+the stylish new round hat had the same significance. Pyotr Petrovitch
+treated it too respectfully and held it too carefully in his hands. The
+exquisite pair of lavender gloves, real Louvain, told the same tale,
+if only from the fact of his not wearing them, but carrying them in
+his hand for show. Light and youthful colours predominated in Pyotr
+Petrovitch’s attire. He wore a charming summer jacket of a fawn shade,
+light thin trousers, a waistcoat of the same, new and fine linen, a
+cravat of the lightest cambric with pink stripes on it, and the best
+of it was, this all suited Pyotr Petrovitch. His very fresh and even
+handsome face looked younger than his forty-five years at all times.
+His dark, mutton-chop whiskers made an agreeable setting on both sides,
+growing thickly upon his shining, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair,
+touched here and there with grey, though it had been combed and curled
+at a hairdresser’s, did not give him a stupid appearance, as curled hair
+usually does, by inevitably suggesting a German on his wedding-day.
+If there really was something unpleasing and repulsive in his rather
+good-looking and imposing countenance, it was due to quite other
+causes. After scanning Mr. Luzhin unceremoniously, Raskolnikov smiled
+malignantly, sank back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling as
+before.
+But Mr. Luzhin hardened his heart and seemed to determine to take no
+notice of their oddities.
+“I feel the greatest regret at finding you in this situation,” he began,
+again breaking the silence with an effort. “If I had been aware of your
+illness I should have come earlier. But you know what business is. I
+have, too, a very important legal affair in the Senate, not to mention
+other preoccupations which you may well conjecture. I am expecting your
+mamma and sister any minute.”
+Raskolnikov made a movement and seemed about to speak; his face showed
+some excitement. Pyotr Petrovitch paused, waited, but as nothing
+followed, he went on:
+“... Any minute. I have found a lodging for them on their arrival.”
+“Where?” asked Raskolnikov weakly.
+“Very near here, in Bakaleyev’s house.”
+“That’s in Voskresensky,” put in Razumihin. “There are two storeys of
+rooms, let by a merchant called Yushin; I’ve been there.”
+“Yes, rooms...”
+“A disgusting place--filthy, stinking and, what’s more, of doubtful
+character. Things have happened there, and there are all sorts of queer
+people living there. And I went there about a scandalous business. It’s
+cheap, though...”
+“I could not, of course, find out so much about it, for I am a stranger
+in Petersburg myself,” Pyotr Petrovitch replied huffily. “However, the
+two rooms are exceedingly clean, and as it is for so short a time...
+I have already taken a permanent, that is, our future flat,” he said,
+addressing Raskolnikov, “and I am having it done up. And meanwhile I am
+myself cramped for room in a lodging with my friend Andrey Semyonovitch
+Lebeziatnikov, in the flat of Madame Lippevechsel; it was he who told me
+of Bakaleyev’s house, too...”
+“Lebeziatnikov?” said Raskolnikov slowly, as if recalling something.
+“Yes, Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, a clerk in the Ministry. Do you
+know him?”
+“Yes... no,” Raskolnikov answered.
+“Excuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry. I was once his guardian....
+A very nice young man and advanced. I like to meet young people: one
+learns new things from them.” Luzhin looked round hopefully at them all.
+“How do you mean?” asked Razumihin.
+“In the most serious and essential matters,” Pyotr Petrovitch replied,
+as though delighted at the question. “You see, it’s ten years since I
+visited Petersburg. All the novelties, reforms, ideas have reached us in
+the provinces, but to see it all more clearly one must be in Petersburg.
+And it’s my notion that you observe and learn most by watching the
+younger generation. And I confess I am delighted...”
+“At what?”
+“Your question is a wide one. I may be mistaken, but I fancy I find
+clearer views, more, so to say, criticism, more practicality...”
+“That’s true,” Zossimov let drop.
+“Nonsense! There’s no practicality.” Razumihin flew at him.
+“Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from
+heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced from
+all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting,” he said to
+Pyotr Petrovitch, “and desire for good exists, though it’s in a childish
+form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands.
+Anyway, there’s no practicality. Practicality goes well shod.”
+“I don’t agree with you,” Pyotr Petrovitch replied, with evident
+enjoyment. “Of course, people do get carried away and make mistakes,
+but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of
+enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment. If little
+has been done, the time has been but short; of means I will not speak.
+It’s my personal view, if you care to know, that something has been
+accomplished already. New valuable ideas, new valuable works are
+circulating in the place of our old dreamy and romantic authors.
+Literature is taking a maturer form, many injurious prejudices have been
+rooted up and turned into ridicule.... In a word, we have cut ourselves
+off irrevocably from the past, and that, to my thinking, is a great
+thing...”
+“He’s learnt it by heart to show off!” Raskolnikov pronounced suddenly.
+“What?” asked Pyotr Petrovitch, not catching his words; but he received
+no reply.
+“That’s all true,” Zossimov hastened to interpose.
+“Isn’t it so?” Pyotr Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at Zossimov.
+“You must admit,” he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of
+triumph and superciliousness--he almost added “young man”--“that there
+is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name of science and
+economic truth...”
+“A commonplace.”
+“No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, ‘love
+thy neighbour,’ what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with
+excessive haste. “It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my
+neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has
+it, ‘Catch several hares and you won’t catch one.’ Science now tells
+us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on
+self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly
+and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private
+affairs are organised in society--the more whole coats, so to say--the
+firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare
+organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for
+myself, I am acquiring, so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to
+pass my neighbour’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not
+from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general
+advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time
+reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it
+would seem to want very little wit to perceive it...”
+“Excuse me, I’ve very little wit myself,” Razumihin cut in sharply,
+“and so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an object, but I’ve
+grown so sick during the last three years of this chattering to amuse
+oneself, of this incessant flow of commonplaces, always the same, that,
+by Jove, I blush even when other people talk like that. You are in a
+hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements; and I don’t blame you,
+that’s quite pardonable. I only wanted to find out what sort of man you
+are, for so many unscrupulous people have got hold of the progressive
+cause of late and have so distorted in their own interests everything
+they touched, that the whole cause has been dragged in the mire. That’s
+enough!”
+“Excuse me, sir,” said Luzhin, affronted, and speaking with excessive
+dignity. “Do you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I too...”
+“Oh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come, that’s enough,” Razumihin
+concluded, and he turned abruptly to Zossimov to continue their previous
+conversation.
+Pyotr Petrovitch had the good sense to accept the disavowal. He made up
+his mind to take leave in another minute or two.
+“I trust our acquaintance,” he said, addressing Raskolnikov, “may, upon
+your recovery and in view of the circumstances of which you are aware,
+become closer... Above all, I hope for your return to health...”
+Raskolnikov did not even turn his head. Pyotr Petrovitch began getting
+up from his chair.
+“One of her customers must have killed her,” Zossimov declared
+positively.
+“Not a doubt of it,” replied Razumihin. “Porfiry doesn’t give his
+opinion, but is examining all who have left pledges with her there.”
+“Examining them?” Raskolnikov asked aloud.
+“Yes. What then?”
+“Nothing.”
+“How does he get hold of them?” asked Zossimov.
+“Koch has given the names of some of them, other names are on the
+wrappers of the pledges and some have come forward of themselves.”
+“It must have been a cunning and practised ruffian! The boldness of it!
+The coolness!”
+“That’s just what it wasn’t!” interposed Razumihin. “That’s what throws
+you all off the scent. But I maintain that he is not cunning, not
+practised, and probably this was his first crime! The supposition that
+it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal doesn’t work. Suppose
+him to have been inexperienced, and it’s clear that it was only a chance
+that saved him--and chance may do anything. Why, he did not foresee
+obstacles, perhaps! And how did he set to work? He took jewels worth
+ten or twenty roubles, stuffing his pockets with them, ransacked the
+old woman’s trunks, her rags--and they found fifteen hundred roubles,
+besides notes, in a box in the top drawer of the chest! He did not know
+how to rob; he could only murder. It was his first crime, I assure you,
+his first crime; he lost his head. And he got off more by luck than good
+counsel!”
+“You are talking of the murder of the old pawnbroker, I believe?” Pyotr
+Petrovitch put in, addressing Zossimov. He was standing, hat and gloves
+in hand, but before departing he felt disposed to throw off a few more
+intellectual phrases. He was evidently anxious to make a favourable
+impression and his vanity overcame his prudence.
+“Yes. You’ve heard of it?”
+“Oh, yes, being in the neighbourhood.”
+“Do you know the details?”
+“I can’t say that; but another circumstance interests me in the
+case--the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that crime
+has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes during the last
+five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and arson everywhere,
+what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in the higher classes,
+too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one place one hears of a
+student’s robbing the mail on the high road; in another place people of
+good social position forge false banknotes; in Moscow of late a whole
+gang has been captured who used to forge lottery tickets, and one of
+the ringleaders was a lecturer in universal history; then our secretary
+abroad was murdered from some obscure motive of gain.... And if this old
+woman, the pawnbroker, has been murdered by someone of a higher class
+in society--for peasants don’t pawn gold trinkets--how are we to explain
+this demoralisation of the civilised part of our society?”
+“There are many economic changes,” put in Zossimov.
+“How are we to explain it?” Razumihin caught him up. “It might be
+explained by our inveterate impracticality.”
+“How do you mean?”
+“What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he
+was forging notes? ‘Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I
+want to make haste to get rich too.’ I don’t remember the exact words,
+but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or
+working! We’ve grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking
+on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour
+struck,[*] and every man showed himself in his true colours.”
+[*] The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 is meant.
+--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
+“But morality? And so to speak, principles...”
+“But why do you worry about it?” Raskolnikov interposed suddenly. “It’s
+in accordance with your theory!”
+“In accordance with my theory?”
+“Why, carry out logically the theory you were advocating just now, and
+it follows that people may be killed...”
+“Upon my word!” cried Luzhin.
+“No, that’s not so,” put in Zossimov.
+Raskolnikov lay with a white face and twitching upper lip, breathing
+painfully.
+“There’s a measure in all things,” Luzhin went on superciliously.
+“Economic ideas are not an incitement to murder, and one has but to
+suppose...”
+“And is it true,” Raskolnikov interposed once more suddenly, again in a
+voice quivering with fury and delight in insulting him, “is it true that
+you told your _fiancée_... within an hour of her acceptance, that what
+pleased you most... was that she was a beggar... because it was better
+to raise a wife from poverty, so that you may have complete control over
+her, and reproach her with your being her benefactor?”
+“Upon my word,” Luzhin cried wrathfully and irritably, crimson with
+confusion, “to distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow me to
+assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather, let me say,
+has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth, and I... suspect
+who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your mamma... She seemed
+to me in other things, with all her excellent qualities, of a somewhat
+high-flown and romantic way of thinking.... But I was a thousand miles
+from supposing that she would misunderstand and misrepresent things in
+so fanciful a way.... And indeed... indeed...”
+“I tell you what,” cried Raskolnikov, raising himself on his pillow and
+fixing his piercing, glittering eyes upon him, “I tell you what.”
+“What?” Luzhin stood still, waiting with a defiant and offended face.
+Silence lasted for some seconds.
+“Why, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my
+mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!”
+“What’s the matter with you?” cried Razumihin.
+“So that’s how it is?” Luzhin turned pale and bit his lip. “Let me tell
+you, sir,” he began deliberately, doing his utmost to restrain himself
+but breathing hard, “at the first moment I saw you you were ill-disposed
+to me, but I remained here on purpose to find out more. I could forgive
+a great deal in a sick man and a connection, but you... never after
+this...”
+“I am not ill,” cried Raskolnikov.
+“So much the worse...”
+“Go to hell!”
+But Luzhin was already leaving without finishing his speech, squeezing
+between the table and the chair; Razumihin got up this time to let him
+pass. Without glancing at anyone, and not even nodding to Zossimov, who
+had for some time been making signs to him to let the sick man alone,
+he went out, lifting his hat to the level of his shoulders to avoid
+crushing it as he stooped to go out of the door. And even the curve of
+his spine was expressive of the horrible insult he had received.
+“How could you--how could you!” Razumihin said, shaking his head in
+perplexity.
+“Let me alone--let me alone all of you!” Raskolnikov cried in a frenzy.
+“Will you ever leave off tormenting me? I am not afraid of you! I am
+not afraid of anyone, anyone now! Get away from me! I want to be alone,
+alone, alone!”
+“Come along,” said Zossimov, nodding to Razumihin.
+“But we can’t leave him like this!”
+“Come along,” Zossimov repeated insistently, and he went out. Razumihin
+thought a minute and ran to overtake him.
+“It might be worse not to obey him,” said Zossimov on the stairs. “He
+mustn’t be irritated.”
+“What’s the matter with him?”
+“If only he could get some favourable shock, that’s what would do it! At
+first he was better.... You know he has got something on his mind! Some
+fixed idea weighing on him.... I am very much afraid so; he must have!”
+“Perhaps it’s that gentleman, Pyotr Petrovitch. From his conversation
+I gather he is going to marry his sister, and that he had received a
+letter about it just before his illness....”
+“Yes, confound the man! he may have upset the case altogether. But have
+you noticed, he takes no interest in anything, he does not respond to
+anything except one point on which he seems excited--that’s the murder?”
+“Yes, yes,” Razumihin agreed, “I noticed that, too. He is interested,
+frightened. It gave him a shock on the day he was ill in the police
+office; he fainted.”
+“Tell me more about that this evening and I’ll tell you something
+afterwards. He interests me very much! In half an hour I’ll go and see
+him again.... There’ll be no inflammation though.”
+“Thanks! And I’ll wait with Pashenka meantime and will keep watch on him
+through Nastasya....”
+Raskolnikov, left alone, looked with impatience and misery at Nastasya,
+but she still lingered.
+“Won’t you have some tea now?” she asked.
+“Later! I am sleepy! Leave me.”
+He turned abruptly to the wall; Nastasya went out.
+CHAPTER VI
+But as soon as she went out, he got up, latched the door, undid the
+parcel which Razumihin had brought in that evening and had tied up again
+and began dressing. Strange to say, he seemed immediately to have become
+perfectly calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor of the panic
+fear that had haunted him of late. It was the first moment of a strange
+sudden calm. His movements were precise and definite; a firm purpose was
+evident in them. “To-day, to-day,” he muttered to himself. He understood
+that he was still weak, but his intense spiritual concentration gave him
+strength and self-confidence. He hoped, moreover, that he would not
+fall down in the street. When he had dressed in entirely new clothes, he
+looked at the money lying on the table, and after a moment’s thought
+put it in his pocket. It was twenty-five roubles. He took also all the
+copper change from the ten roubles spent by Razumihin on the clothes.
+Then he softly unlatched the door, went out, slipped downstairs and
+glanced in at the open kitchen door. Nastasya was standing with her back
+to him, blowing up the landlady’s samovar. She heard nothing. Who would
+have dreamed of his going out, indeed? A minute later he was in the
+street.
+It was nearly eight o’clock, the sun was setting. It was as stifling as
+before, but he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town air. His head
+felt rather dizzy; a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in his
+feverish eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face. He did not know and
+did not think where he was going, he had one thought only: “that all
+_this_ must be ended to-day, once for all, immediately; that he would
+not return home without it, because he _would not go on living like
+that_.” How, with what to make an end? He had not an idea about it,
+he did not even want to think of it. He drove away thought; thought
+tortured him. All he knew, all he felt was that everything must be
+changed “one way or another,” he repeated with desperate and immovable
+self-confidence and determination.
+From old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay
+Market. A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in
+the road in front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very
+sentimental song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood
+on the pavement in front of him. She was dressed up in a crinoline, a
+mantle and a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very
+old and shabby. In a strong and rather agreeable voice, cracked and
+coarsened by street singing, she sang in hope of getting a copper from
+the shop. Raskolnikov joined two or three listeners, took out a five
+copeck piece and put it in the girl’s hand. She broke off abruptly on a
+sentimental high note, shouted sharply to the organ grinder “Come on,”
+and both moved on to the next shop.
+“Do you like street music?” said Raskolnikov, addressing a middle-aged
+man standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering.
+“I love to hear singing to a street organ,” said Raskolnikov, and his
+manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject--“I like it
+on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings--they must be damp--when all the
+passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet
+snow is falling straight down, when there’s no wind--you know what I
+mean?--and the street lamps shine through it...”
+“I don’t know.... Excuse me...” muttered the stranger, frightened by the
+question and Raskolnikov’s strange manner, and he crossed over to the
+other side of the street.
+Raskolnikov walked straight on and came out at the corner of the Hay
+Market, where the huckster and his wife had talked with Lizaveta; but
+they were not there now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked round
+and addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping before a
+corn chandler’s shop.
+“Isn’t there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at this corner?”
+“All sorts of people keep booths here,” answered the young man, glancing
+superciliously at Raskolnikov.
+“What’s his name?”
+“What he was christened.”
+“Aren’t you a Zaraïsky man, too? Which province?”
+The young man looked at Raskolnikov again.
+“It’s not a province, your excellency, but a district. Graciously
+forgive me, your excellency!”
+“Is that a tavern at the top there?”
+“Yes, it’s an eating-house and there’s a billiard-room and you’ll find
+princesses there too.... La-la!”
+Raskolnikov crossed the square. In that corner there was a dense crowd
+of peasants. He pushed his way into the thickest part of it, looking
+at the faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination to enter into
+conversation with people. But the peasants took no notice of him; they
+were all shouting in groups together. He stood and thought a little and
+took a turning to the right in the direction of V.
+He had often crossed that little street which turns at an angle, leading
+from the market-place to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often felt drawn
+to wander about this district, when he felt depressed, that he might
+feel more so.
+Now he walked along, thinking of nothing. At that point there is a great
+block of buildings, entirely let out in dram shops and eating-houses;
+women were continually running in and out, bare-headed and in their
+indoor clothes. Here and there they gathered in groups, on the pavement,
+especially about the entrances to various festive establishments in
+the lower storeys. From one of these a loud din, sounds of singing, the
+tinkling of a guitar and shouts of merriment, floated into the street.
+A crowd of women were thronging round the door; some were sitting on the
+steps, others on the pavement, others were standing talking. A drunken
+soldier, smoking a cigarette, was walking near them in the road,
+swearing; he seemed to be trying to find his way somewhere, but had
+forgotten where. One beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead
+drunk was lying right across the road. Raskolnikov joined the throng of
+women, who were talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore
+cotton dresses and goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some
+not more than seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes.
+He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and
+uproar in the saloon below.... someone could be heard within dancing
+frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of the guitar
+and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He listened intently,
+gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the entrance and peeping
+inquisitively in from the pavement.
+“Oh, my handsome soldier
+Don’t beat me for nothing,”
+trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov felt a great desire to
+make out what he was singing, as though everything depended on that.
+“Shall I go in?” he thought. “They are laughing. From drink. Shall I get
+drunk?”
+“Won’t you come in?” one of the women asked him. Her voice was
+still musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not
+repulsive--the only one of the group.
+“Why, she’s pretty,” he said, drawing himself up and looking at her.
+She smiled, much pleased at the compliment.
+“You’re very nice looking yourself,” she said.
+“Isn’t he thin though!” observed another woman in a deep bass. “Have you
+just come out of a hospital?”
+“They’re all generals’ daughters, it seems, but they have all snub
+noses,” interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face, wearing
+a loose coat. “See how jolly they are.”
+“Go along with you!”
+“I’ll go, sweetie!”
+And he darted down into the saloon below. Raskolnikov moved on.
+“I say, sir,” the girl shouted after him.
+“What is it?”
+She hesitated.
+“I’ll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman, but
+now I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there’s a nice young
+man!”
+Raskolnikov gave her what came first--fifteen copecks.
+“Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!”
+“What’s your name?”
+“Ask for Duclida.”
+“Well, that’s too much,” one of the women observed, shaking her head
+at Duclida. “I don’t know how you can ask like that. I believe I should
+drop with shame....”
+Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked wench
+of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She made
+her criticism quietly and earnestly. “Where is it,” thought Raskolnikov.
+“Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks,
+an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock,
+on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean,
+everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around
+him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his
+life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die
+at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!...
+How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature!... And vile
+is he who calls him vile for that,” he added a moment later.
+He went into another street. “Bah, the Palais de Cristal! Razumihin
+was just talking of the Palais de Cristal. But what on earth was it
+I wanted? Yes, the newspapers.... Zossimov said he’d read it in the
+papers. Have you the papers?” he asked, going into a very spacious and
+positively clean restaurant, consisting of several rooms, which were,
+however, rather empty. Two or three people were drinking tea, and in a
+room further away were sitting four men drinking champagne. Raskolnikov
+fancied that Zametov was one of them, but he could not be sure at that
+distance. “What if it is?” he thought.
+“Will you have vodka?” asked the waiter.
+“Give me some tea and bring me the papers, the old ones for the last
+five days, and I’ll give you something.”
+“Yes, sir, here’s to-day’s. No vodka?”
+The old newspapers and the tea were brought. Raskolnikov sat down and
+began to look through them.
+“Oh, damn... these are the items of intelligence. An accident on a
+staircase, spontaneous combustion of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire
+in Peski... a fire in the Petersburg quarter... another fire in the
+Petersburg quarter... and another fire in the Petersburg quarter....
+Ah, here it is!” He found at last what he was seeking and began to
+read it. The lines danced before his eyes, but he read it all and began
+eagerly seeking later additions in the following numbers. His hands
+shook with nervous impatience as he turned the sheets. Suddenly someone
+sat down beside him at his table. He looked up, it was the head clerk
+Zametov, looking just the same, with the rings on his fingers and the
+watch-chain, with the curly, black hair, parted and pomaded, with the
+smart waistcoat, rather shabby coat and doubtful linen. He was in a good
+humour, at least he was smiling very gaily and good-humouredly. His dark
+face was rather flushed from the champagne he had drunk.
+“What, you here?” he began in surprise, speaking as though he’d known
+him all his life. “Why, Razumihin told me only yesterday you were
+unconscious. How strange! And do you know I’ve been to see you?”
+Raskolnikov knew he would come up to him. He laid aside the papers and
+turned to Zametov. There was a smile on his lips, and a new shade of
+irritable impatience was apparent in that smile.
+“I know you have,” he answered. “I’ve heard it. You looked for my
+sock.... And you know Razumihin has lost his heart to you? He says
+you’ve been with him to Luise Ivanovna’s--you know, the woman you tried
+to befriend, for whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant and he
+would not understand. Do you remember? How could he fail to
+understand--it was quite clear, wasn’t it?”
+“What a hot head he is!”
+“The explosive one?”
+“No, your friend Razumihin.”
+“You must have a jolly life, Mr. Zametov; entrance free to the most
+agreeable places. Who’s been pouring champagne into you just now?”
+“We’ve just been... having a drink together.... You talk about pouring
+it into me!”
+“By way of a fee! You profit by everything!” Raskolnikov laughed, “it’s
+all right, my dear boy,” he added, slapping Zametov on the shoulder. “I
+am not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for sport, as that
+workman of yours said when he was scuffling with Dmitri, in the case of
+the old woman....”
+“How do you know about it?”
+“Perhaps I know more about it than you do.”
+“How strange you are.... I am sure you are still very unwell. You
+oughtn’t to have come out.”
+“Oh, do I seem strange to you?”
+“Yes. What are you doing, reading the papers?”
+“Yes.”
+“There’s a lot about the fires.”
+“No, I am not reading about the fires.” Here he looked mysteriously at
+Zametov; his lips were twisted again in a mocking smile. “No, I am not
+reading about the fires,” he went on, winking at Zametov. “But confess
+now, my dear fellow, you’re awfully anxious to know what I am reading
+about?”
+“I am not in the least. Mayn’t I ask a question? Why do you keep
+on...?”
+“Listen, you are a man of culture and education?”
+“I was in the sixth class at the gymnasium,” said Zametov with some
+dignity.
+“Sixth class! Ah, my cock-sparrow! With your parting and your rings--you
+are a gentleman of fortune. Foo! what a charming boy!” Here Raskolnikov
+broke into a nervous laugh right in Zametov’s face. The latter drew
+back, more amazed than offended.
+“Foo! how strange you are!” Zametov repeated very seriously. “I can’t
+help thinking you are still delirious.”
+“I am delirious? You are fibbing, my cock-sparrow! So I am strange? You
+find me curious, do you?”
+“Yes, curious.”
+“Shall I tell you what I was reading about, what I was looking for? See
+what a lot of papers I’ve made them bring me. Suspicious, eh?”
+“Well, what is it?”
+“You prick up your ears?”
+“How do you mean--‘prick up my ears’?”
+“I’ll explain that afterwards, but now, my boy, I declare to you... no,
+better ‘I confess’... No, that’s not right either; ‘I make a deposition
+and you take it.’ I depose that I was reading, that I was looking and
+searching....” he screwed up his eyes and paused. “I was searching--and
+came here on purpose to do it--for news of the murder of the old
+pawnbroker woman,” he articulated at last, almost in a whisper, bringing
+his face exceedingly close to the face of Zametov. Zametov looked at him
+steadily, without moving or drawing his face away. What struck Zametov
+afterwards as the strangest part of it all was that silence followed for
+exactly a minute, and that they gazed at one another all the while.
+“What if you have been reading about it?” he cried at last, perplexed
+and impatient. “That’s no business of mine! What of it?”
+“The same old woman,” Raskolnikov went on in the same whisper, not
+heeding Zametov’s explanation, “about whom you were talking in the
+police-office, you remember, when I fainted. Well, do you understand
+now?”
+“What do you mean? Understand... what?” Zametov brought out, almost
+alarmed.
+Raskolnikov’s set and earnest face was suddenly transformed, and he
+suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as though
+utterly unable to restrain himself. And in one flash he recalled with
+extraordinary vividness of sensation a moment in the recent past, that
+moment when he stood with the axe behind the door, while the latch
+trembled and the men outside swore and shook it, and he had a sudden
+desire to shout at them, to swear at them, to put out his tongue at
+them, to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!
+“You are either mad, or...” began Zametov, and he broke off, as though
+stunned by the idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind.
+“Or? Or what? What? Come, tell me!”
+“Nothing,” said Zametov, getting angry, “it’s all nonsense!”
+Both were silent. After his sudden fit of laughter Raskolnikov became
+suddenly thoughtful and melancholy. He put his elbow on the table and
+leaned his head on his hand. He seemed to have completely forgotten
+Zametov. The silence lasted for some time.
+“Why don’t you drink your tea? It’s getting cold,” said Zametov.
+“What! Tea? Oh, yes....” Raskolnikov sipped the glass, put a morsel of
+bread in his mouth and, suddenly looking at Zametov, seemed to remember
+everything and pulled himself together. At the same moment his face
+resumed its original mocking expression. He went on drinking tea.
+“There have been a great many of these crimes lately,” said Zametov.
+“Only the other day I read in the _Moscow News_ that a whole gang of
+false coiners had been caught in Moscow. It was a regular society. They
+used to forge tickets!”
+“Oh, but it was a long time ago! I read about it a month ago,”
+Raskolnikov answered calmly. “So you consider them criminals?” he added,
+smiling.
+“Of course they are criminals.”
+“They? They are children, simpletons, not criminals! Why, half a hundred
+people meeting for such an object--what an idea! Three would be too
+many, and then they want to have more faith in one another than in
+themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all collapses.
+Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the notes--what
+a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us suppose that these
+simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and what follows for the
+rest of their lives? Each is dependent on the others for the rest of his
+life! Better hang oneself at once! And they did not know how to change
+the notes either; the man who changed the notes took five thousand
+roubles, and his hands trembled. He counted the first four thousand,
+but did not count the fifth thousand--he was in such a hurry to get the
+money into his pocket and run away. Of course he roused suspicion. And
+the whole thing came to a crash through one fool! Is it possible?”
+“That his hands trembled?” observed Zametov, “yes, that’s quite
+possible. That, I feel quite sure, is possible. Sometimes one can’t
+stand things.”
+“Can’t stand that?”
+“Why, could you stand it then? No, I couldn’t. For the sake of a hundred
+roubles to face such a terrible experience? To go with false notes
+into a bank where it’s their business to spot that sort of thing! No, I
+should not have the face to do it. Would you?”
+Raskolnikov had an intense desire again “to put his tongue out.” Shivers
+kept running down his spine.
+“I should do it quite differently,” Raskolnikov began. “This is how I
+would change the notes: I’d count the first thousand three or four times
+backwards and forwards, looking at every note and then I’d set to the
+second thousand; I’d count that half-way through and then hold some
+fifty-rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it to the light
+again--to see whether it was a good one. ‘I am afraid,’ I would say, ‘a
+relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other day through a
+false note,’ and then I’d tell them the whole story. And after I began
+counting the third, ‘No, excuse me,’ I would say, ‘I fancy I made a
+mistake in the seventh hundred in that second thousand, I am not sure.’
+And so I would give up the third thousand and go back to the second and
+so on to the end. And when I had finished, I’d pick out one from the
+fifth and one from the second thousand and take them again to the light
+and ask again, ‘Change them, please,’ and put the clerk into such a stew
+that he would not know how to get rid of me. When I’d finished and had
+gone out, I’d come back, ‘No, excuse me,’ and ask for some explanation.
+That’s how I’d do it.”
+“Foo! what terrible things you say!” said Zametov, laughing. “But all
+that is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you’d make a slip.
+I believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always reckon on
+himself, much less you and I. To take an example near home--that old
+woman murdered in our district. The murderer seems to have been a
+desperate fellow, he risked everything in open daylight, was saved by
+a miracle--but his hands shook, too. He did not succeed in robbing the
+place, he couldn’t stand it. That was clear from the...”
+Raskolnikov seemed offended.
+“Clear? Why don’t you catch him then?” he cried, maliciously gibing at
+Zametov.
+“Well, they will catch him.”
+“Who? You? Do you suppose you could catch him? You’ve a tough job! A
+great point for you is whether a man is spending money or not. If he had
+no money and suddenly begins spending, he must be the man. So that any
+child can mislead you.”
+“The fact is they always do that, though,” answered Zametov. “A man will
+commit a clever murder at the risk of his life and then at once he goes
+drinking in a tavern. They are caught spending money, they are not all
+as cunning as you are. You wouldn’t go to a tavern, of course?”
+Raskolnikov frowned and looked steadily at Zametov.
+“You seem to enjoy the subject and would like to know how I should
+behave in that case, too?” he asked with displeasure.
+“I should like to,” Zametov answered firmly and seriously. Somewhat too
+much earnestness began to appear in his words and looks.
+“Very much?”
+“Very much!”
+“All right then. This is how I should behave,” Raskolnikov began, again
+bringing his face close to Zametov’s, again staring at him and speaking
+in a whisper, so that the latter positively shuddered. “This is what
+I should have done. I should have taken the money and jewels, I should
+have walked out of there and have gone straight to some deserted place
+with fences round it and scarcely anyone to be seen, some kitchen garden
+or place of that sort. I should have looked out beforehand some stone
+weighing a hundredweight or more which had been lying in the corner from
+the time the house was built. I would lift that stone--there would sure
+to be a hollow under it, and I would put the jewels and money in that
+hole. Then I’d roll the stone back so that it would look as before,
+would press it down with my foot and walk away. And for a year or two,
+three maybe, I would not touch it. And, well, they could search! There’d
+be no trace.”
+“You are a madman,” said Zametov, and for some reason he too spoke in a
+whisper, and moved away from Raskolnikov, whose eyes were glittering. He
+had turned fearfully pale and his upper lip was twitching and quivering.
+He bent down as close as possible to Zametov, and his lips began to move
+without uttering a word. This lasted for half a minute; he knew what he
+was doing, but could not restrain himself. The terrible word trembled on
+his lips, like the latch on that door; in another moment it will break
+out, in another moment he will let it go, he will speak out.
+“And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?” he said
+suddenly and--realised what he had done.
+Zametov looked wildly at him and turned white as the tablecloth. His
+face wore a contorted smile.
+“But is it possible?” he brought out faintly. Raskolnikov looked
+wrathfully at him.
+“Own up that you believed it, yes, you did?”
+“Not a bit of it, I believe it less than ever now,” Zametov cried
+hastily.
+“I’ve caught my cock-sparrow! So you did believe it before, if now you
+believe less than ever?”
+“Not at all,” cried Zametov, obviously embarrassed. “Have you been
+frightening me so as to lead up to this?”
+“You don’t believe it then? What were you talking about behind my
+back when I went out of the police-office? And why did the explosive
+lieutenant question me after I fainted? Hey, there,” he shouted to the
+waiter, getting up and taking his cap, “how much?”
+“Thirty copecks,” the latter replied, running up.
+“And there is twenty copecks for vodka. See what a lot of money!” he
+held out his shaking hand to Zametov with notes in it. “Red notes and
+blue, twenty-five roubles. Where did I get them? And where did my new
+clothes come from? You know I had not a copeck. You’ve cross-examined my
+landlady, I’ll be bound.... Well, that’s enough! _Assez causé!_ Till we
+meet again!”
+He went out, trembling all over from a sort of wild hysterical
+sensation, in which there was an element of insufferable rapture. Yet he
+was gloomy and terribly tired. His face was twisted as after a fit.
+His fatigue increased rapidly. Any shock, any irritating sensation
+stimulated and revived his energies at once, but his strength failed as
+quickly when the stimulus was removed.
+Zametov, left alone, sat for a long time in the same place, plunged in
+thought. Raskolnikov had unwittingly worked a revolution in his brain on
+a certain point and had made up his mind for him conclusively.
+“Ilya Petrovitch is a blockhead,” he decided.
+Raskolnikov had hardly opened the door of the restaurant when he
+stumbled against Razumihin on the steps. They did not see each other
+till they almost knocked against each other. For a moment they stood
+looking each other up and down. Razumihin was greatly astounded, then
+anger, real anger gleamed fiercely in his eyes.
+“So here you are!” he shouted at the top of his voice--“you ran away
+from your bed! And here I’ve been looking for you under the sofa! We
+went up to the garret. I almost beat Nastasya on your account. And here
+he is after all. Rodya! What is the meaning of it? Tell me the whole
+truth! Confess! Do you hear?”
+“It means that I’m sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,”
+Raskolnikov answered calmly.
+“Alone? When you are not able to walk, when your face is as white as a
+sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been doing
+in the Palais de Cristal? Own up at once!”
+“Let me go!” said Raskolnikov and tried to pass him. This was too much
+for Razumihin; he gripped him firmly by the shoulder.
+“Let you go? You dare tell me to let you go? Do you know what I’ll do
+with you directly? I’ll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle, carry you
+home under my arm and lock you up!”
+“Listen, Razumihin,” Raskolnikov began quietly, apparently calm--“can’t
+you see that I don’t want your benevolence? A strange desire you have to
+shower benefits on a man who... curses them, who feels them a burden in
+fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I
+was very glad to die. Didn’t I tell you plainly enough to-day that
+you were torturing me, that I was... sick of you! You seem to want to
+torture people! I assure you that all that is seriously hindering my
+recovery, because it’s continually irritating me. You saw Zossimov
+went away just now to avoid irritating me. You leave me alone too, for
+goodness’ sake! What right have you, indeed, to keep me by force? Don’t
+you see that I am in possession of all my faculties now? How, how can
+I persuade you not to persecute me with your kindness? I may be
+ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for God’s sake, let me be!
+Let me be, let me be!”
+He began calmly, gloating beforehand over the venomous phrases he was
+about to utter, but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy, as he had
+been with Luzhin.
+Razumihin stood a moment, thought and let his hand drop.
+“Well, go to hell then,” he said gently and thoughtfully. “Stay,” he
+roared, as Raskolnikov was about to move. “Listen to me. Let me tell
+you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you’ve any
+little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you are
+plagiarists even in that! There isn’t a sign of independent life in
+you! You are made of spermaceti ointment and you’ve lymph in your veins
+instead of blood. I don’t believe in anyone of you! In any circumstances
+the first thing for all of you is to be unlike a human being! Stop!” he
+cried with redoubled fury, noticing that Raskolnikov was again making
+a movement--“hear me out! You know I’m having a house-warming this
+evening, I dare say they’ve arrived by now, but I left my uncle there--I
+just ran in--to receive the guests. And if you weren’t a fool, a common
+fool, a perfect fool, if you were an original instead of a translation...
+you see, Rodya, I recognise you’re a clever fellow, but you’re a
+fool!--and if you weren’t a fool you’d come round to me this evening
+instead of wearing out your boots in the street! Since you have gone
+out, there’s no help for it! I’d give you a snug easy chair, my landlady
+has one... a cup of tea, company.... Or you could lie on the sofa--any
+way you would be with us.... Zossimov will be there too. Will you come?”
+“No.”
+“R-rubbish!” Razumihin shouted, out of patience. “How do you know?
+You can’t answer for yourself! You don’t know anything about it....
+Thousands of times I’ve fought tooth and nail with people and run back
+to them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So
+remember, Potchinkov’s house on the third storey....”
+“Why, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you’d let anybody beat you from sheer
+benevolence.”
+“Beat? Whom? Me? I’d twist his nose off at the mere idea! Potchinkov’s
+house, 47, Babushkin’s flat....”
+“I shall not come, Razumihin.” Raskolnikov turned and walked away.
+“I bet you will,” Razumihin shouted after him. “I refuse to know you if
+you don’t! Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?”
+“Yes.”
+“Did you see him?”
+“Yes.”
+“Talked to him?”
+“Yes.”
+“What about? Confound you, don’t tell me then. Potchinkov’s house, 47,
+Babushkin’s flat, remember!”
+Raskolnikov walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street.
+Razumihin looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his hand he
+went into the house but stopped short of the stairs.
+“Confound it,” he went on almost aloud. “He talked sensibly but yet...
+I am a fool! As if madmen didn’t talk sensibly! And this was just what
+Zossimov seemed afraid of.” He struck his finger on his forehead. “What
+if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown himself.... Ach,
+what a blunder! I can’t.” And he ran back to overtake Raskolnikov, but
+there was no trace of him. With a curse he returned with rapid steps to
+the Palais de Cristal to question Zametov.
+Raskolnikov walked straight to X---- Bridge, stood in the middle, and
+leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On parting
+with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could scarcely reach this
+place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street. Bending
+over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of the
+sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in the gathering twilight, at
+one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though on fire in
+the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water of the canal,
+and the water seemed to catch his attention. At last red circles flashed
+before his eyes, the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal
+banks, the carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started,
+saved again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sight. He
+became aware of someone standing on the right side of him; he looked
+and saw a tall woman with a kerchief on her head, with a long, yellow,
+wasted face and red sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him, but
+obviously she saw nothing and recognised no one. Suddenly she leaned her
+right hand on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the railing, then
+her left and threw herself into the canal. The filthy water parted and
+swallowed up its victim for a moment, but an instant later the drowning
+woman floated to the surface, moving slowly with the current, her head
+and legs in the water, her skirt inflated like a balloon over her back.
+“A woman drowning! A woman drowning!” shouted dozens of voices; people
+ran up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge people
+crowded about Raskolnikov, pressing up behind him.
+“Mercy on it! it’s our Afrosinya!” a woman cried tearfully close by.
+“Mercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!”
+“A boat, a boat” was shouted in the crowd. But there was no need of a
+boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off his great
+coat and his boots and rushed into the water. It was easy to reach her:
+she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he caught hold of
+her clothes with his right hand and with his left seized a pole which a
+comrade held out to him; the drowning woman was pulled out at once. They
+laid her on the granite pavement of the embankment. She soon recovered
+consciousness, raised her head, sat up and began sneezing and coughing,
+stupidly wiping her wet dress with her hands. She said nothing.
+“She’s drunk herself out of her senses,” the same woman’s voice wailed
+at her side. “Out of her senses. The other day she tried to hang
+herself, we cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my little
+girl to look after her--and here she’s in trouble again! A neighbour,
+gentleman, a neighbour, we live close by, the second house from the end,
+see yonder....”
+The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman, someone
+mentioned the police station.... Raskolnikov looked on with a strange
+sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted. “No, that’s
+loathsome... water... it’s not good enough,” he muttered to himself.
+“Nothing will come of it,” he added, “no use to wait. What about the
+police office...? And why isn’t Zametov at the police office? The police
+office is open till ten o’clock....” He turned his back to the railing
+and looked about him.
+“Very well then!” he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and
+walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow and
+empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed, there
+was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out “to make an
+end of it all.” Complete apathy had succeeded to it.
+“Well, it’s a way out of it,” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly
+along the canal bank. “Anyway I’ll make an end, for I want to.... But
+is it a way out? What does it matter! There’ll be the square yard of
+space--ha! But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or
+not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere to sit or lie
+down soon! What I am most ashamed of is its being so stupid. But I don’t
+care about that either! What idiotic ideas come into one’s head.”
+To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take the
+second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at the
+first turning he stopped and, after a minute’s thought, turned into a
+side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly without any
+object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He walked, looking
+at the ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper in his ear; he lifted
+his head and saw that he was standing at the very gate of _the_ house.
+He had not passed it, he had not been near it since _that_ evening.
+An overwhelming, unaccountable prompting drew him on. He went into the
+house, passed through the gateway, then into the first entrance on the
+right, and began mounting the familiar staircase to the fourth storey.
+The narrow, steep staircase was very dark. He stopped at each landing
+and looked round him with curiosity; on the first landing the framework
+of the window had been taken out. “That wasn’t so then,” he thought.
+Here was the flat on the second storey where Nikolay and Dmitri had been
+working. “It’s shut up and the door newly painted. So it’s to let.” Then
+the third storey and the fourth. “Here!” He was perplexed to find the
+door of the flat wide open. There were men there, he could hear voices;
+he had not expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last
+stairs and went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were
+workmen in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he
+would find everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the
+same places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture; it seemed
+strange. He walked to the window and sat down on the window-sill. There
+were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much younger than the
+other. They were papering the walls with a new white paper covered with
+lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one. Raskolnikov for
+some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked at the new paper
+with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it all so changed.
+The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and now they were
+hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go home. They took
+no notice of Raskolnikov’s coming in; they were talking. Raskolnikov
+folded his arms and listened.
+“She comes to me in the morning,” said the elder to the younger, “very
+early, all dressed up. ‘Why are you preening and prinking?’ says I. ‘I
+am ready to do anything to please you, Tit Vassilitch!’ That’s a way of
+going on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!”
+“And what is a fashion book?” the younger one asked. He obviously
+regarded the other as an authority.
+“A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the
+tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how
+to dress, the male sex as well as the female. They’re pictures. The
+gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies’ fluffles,
+they’re beyond anything you can fancy.”
+“There’s nothing you can’t find in Petersburg,” the younger cried
+enthusiastically, “except father and mother, there’s everything!”
+“Except them, there’s everything to be found, my boy,” the elder
+declared sententiously.
+Raskolnikov got up and walked into the other room where the strong box,
+the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to him very
+tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the paper in the
+corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He looked at it and
+went to the window. The elder workman looked at him askance.
+“What do you want?” he asked suddenly.
+Instead of answering Raskolnikov went into the passage and pulled the
+bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second and
+a third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and agonisingly
+fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more and more
+vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more and more
+satisfaction.
+“Well, what do you want? Who are you?” the workman shouted, going out to
+him. Raskolnikov went inside again.
+“I want to take a flat,” he said. “I am looking round.”
+“It’s not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to come up
+with the porter.”
+“The floors have been washed, will they be painted?” Raskolnikov went
+on. “Is there no blood?”
+“What blood?”
+“Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a
+perfect pool there.”
+“But who are you?” the workman cried, uneasy.
+“Who am I?”
+“Yes.”
+“You want to know? Come to the police station, I’ll tell you.”
+The workmen looked at him in amazement.
+“It’s time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Alyoshka. We must lock
+up,” said the elder workman.
+“Very well, come along,” said Raskolnikov indifferently, and going
+out first, he went slowly downstairs. “Hey, porter,” he cried in the
+gateway.
+At the entrance several people were standing, staring at the passers-by;
+the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and a few others.
+Raskolnikov went straight up to them.
+“What do you want?” asked one of the porters.
+“Have you been to the police office?”
+“I’ve just been there. What do you want?”
+“Is it open?”
+“Of course.”
+“Is the assistant there?”
+“He was there for a time. What do you want?”
+Raskolnikov made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought.
+“He’s been to look at the flat,” said the elder workman, coming forward.
+“Which flat?”
+“Where we are at work. ‘Why have you washed away the blood?’ says he.
+‘There has been a murder here,’ says he, ‘and I’ve come to take it.’
+And he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. ‘Come to the police
+station,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you everything there.’ He wouldn’t leave
+us.”
+The porter looked at Raskolnikov, frowning and perplexed.
+“Who are you?” he shouted as impressively as he could.
+“I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, formerly a student, I live in
+Shil’s house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he
+knows me.” Raskolnikov said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not
+turning round, but looking intently into the darkening street.
+“Why have you been to the flat?”
+“To look at it.”
+“What is there to look at?”
+“Take him straight to the police station,” the man in the long coat
+jerked in abruptly.
+Raskolnikov looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the
+same slow, lazy tones:
+“Come along.”
+“Yes, take him,” the man went on more confidently. “Why was he going
+into _that_, what’s in his mind, eh?”
+“He’s not drunk, but God knows what’s the matter with him,” muttered the
+workman.
+“But what do you want?” the porter shouted again, beginning to get angry
+in earnest--“Why are you hanging about?”
+“You funk the police station then?” said Raskolnikov jeeringly.
+“How funk it? Why are you hanging about?”
+“He’s a rogue!” shouted the peasant woman.
+“Why waste time talking to him?” cried the other porter, a huge peasant
+in a full open coat and with keys on his belt. “Get along! He is a rogue
+and no mistake. Get along!”
+And seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder he flung him into the street. He
+lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the spectators in
+silence and walked away.
+“Strange man!” observed the workman.
+“There are strange folks about nowadays,” said the woman.
+“You should have taken him to the police station all the same,” said the
+man in the long coat.
+“Better have nothing to do with him,” decided the big porter. “A regular
+rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take him up, you
+won’t get rid of him.... We know the sort!”
+“Shall I go there or not?” thought Raskolnikov, standing in the middle
+of the thoroughfare at the cross-roads, and he looked about him, as
+though expecting from someone a decisive word. But no sound came, all
+was dead and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead to him, to
+him alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two hundred yards
+away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard talk and shouts.
+In the middle of the crowd stood a carriage.... A light gleamed in the
+middle of the street. “What is it?” Raskolnikov turned to the right
+and went up to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at everything and smiled
+coldly when he recognised it, for he had fully made up his mind to go to
+the police station and knew that it would all soon be over.
+CHAPTER VII
+An elegant carriage stood in the middle of the road with a pair of
+spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got
+off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the bridle....
+A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing in front. One
+of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on something lying
+close to the wheels. Everyone was talking, shouting, exclaiming; the
+coachman seemed at a loss and kept repeating:
+“What a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!”
+Raskolnikov pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at last
+in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground a
+man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered with
+blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood was
+flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated and
+disfigured. He was evidently badly injured.
+“Merciful heaven!” wailed the coachman, “what more could I do? If I’d
+been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going quietly,
+not in a hurry. Everyone could see I was going along just like everybody
+else. A drunken man can’t walk straight, we all know.... I saw him
+crossing the street, staggering and almost falling. I shouted again
+and a second and a third time, then I held the horses in, but he fell
+straight under their feet! Either he did it on purpose or he was very
+tipsy.... The horses are young and ready to take fright... they started,
+he screamed... that made them worse. That’s how it happened!”
+“That’s just how it was,” a voice in the crowd confirmed.
+“He shouted, that’s true, he shouted three times,” another voice
+declared.
+“Three times it was, we all heard it,” shouted a third.
+But the coachman was not very much distressed and frightened. It was
+evident that the carriage belonged to a rich and important person who
+was awaiting it somewhere; the police, of course, were in no little
+anxiety to avoid upsetting his arrangements. All they had to do was to
+take the injured man to the police station and the hospital. No one knew
+his name.
+Meanwhile Raskolnikov had squeezed in and stooped closer over him. The
+lantern suddenly lighted up the unfortunate man’s face. He recognised
+him.
+“I know him! I know him!” he shouted, pushing to the front. “It’s a
+government clerk retired from the service, Marmeladov. He lives close
+by in Kozel’s house.... Make haste for a doctor! I will pay, see?” He
+pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to the policeman. He was in
+violent agitation.
+The police were glad that they had found out who the man was.
+Raskolnikov gave his own name and address, and, as earnestly as if it
+had been his father, he besought the police to carry the unconscious
+Marmeladov to his lodging at once.
+“Just here, three houses away,” he said eagerly, “the house belongs to
+Kozel, a rich German. He was going home, no doubt drunk. I know him,
+he is a drunkard. He has a family there, a wife, children, he has one
+daughter.... It will take time to take him to the hospital, and there is
+sure to be a doctor in the house. I’ll pay, I’ll pay! At least he will
+be looked after at home... they will help him at once. But he’ll die
+before you get him to the hospital.” He managed to slip something
+unseen into the policeman’s hand. But the thing was straightforward
+and legitimate, and in any case help was closer here. They raised the
+injured man; people volunteered to help.
+Kozel’s house was thirty yards away. Raskolnikov walked behind,
+carefully holding Marmeladov’s head and showing the way.
+“This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head foremost. Turn
+round! I’ll pay, I’ll make it worth your while,” he muttered.
+Katerina Ivanovna had just begun, as she always did at every free
+moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window to stove and
+back again, with her arms folded across her chest, talking to herself
+and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk more than ever to her eldest
+girl, Polenka, a child of ten, who, though there was much she did not
+understand, understood very well that her mother needed her, and so
+always watched her with her big clever eyes and strove her utmost
+to appear to understand. This time Polenka was undressing her little
+brother, who had been unwell all day and was going to bed. The boy was
+waiting for her to take off his shirt, which had to be washed at night.
+He was sitting straight and motionless on a chair, with a silent,
+serious face, with his legs stretched out straight before him--heels
+together and toes turned out.
+He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister, sitting
+perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes, just as all good
+little boys have to sit when they are undressed to go to bed. A little
+girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags, stood at the screen,
+waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open to relieve
+them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which floated in from the
+other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor,
+consumptive woman. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have grown even thinner
+during that week and the hectic flush on her face was brighter than
+ever.
+“You wouldn’t believe, you can’t imagine, Polenka,” she said, walking
+about the room, “what a happy luxurious life we had in my papa’s house
+and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring you all, to ruin!
+Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from being a governor; so that
+everyone who came to see him said, ‘We look upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch,
+as our governor!’ When I... when...” she coughed violently, “oh, cursed
+life,” she cried, clearing her throat and pressing her hands to her
+breast, “when I... when at the last ball... at the marshal’s...
+Princess Bezzemelny saw me--who gave me the blessing when your father
+and I were married, Polenka--she asked at once ‘Isn’t that the pretty
+girl who danced the shawl dance at the breaking-up?’ (You must mend
+that tear, you must take your needle and darn it as I showed you, or
+to-morrow--cough, cough, cough--he will make the hole bigger,” she
+articulated with effort.) “Prince Schegolskoy, a kammerjunker, had just
+come from Petersburg then... he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to
+make me an offer next day; but I thanked him in flattering expressions
+and told him that my heart had long been another’s. That other was your
+father, Polya; papa was fearfully angry.... Is the water ready? Give me
+the shirt, and the stockings! Lida,” said she to the youngest one, “you
+must manage without your chemise to-night... and lay your stockings out
+with it... I’ll wash them together.... How is it that drunken vagabond
+doesn’t come in? He has worn his shirt till it looks like a dish-clout,
+he has torn it to rags! I’d do it all together, so as not to have to
+work two nights running! Oh, dear! (Cough, cough, cough, cough!) Again!
+What’s this?” she cried, noticing a crowd in the passage and the men,
+who were pushing into her room, carrying a burden. “What is it? What are
+they bringing? Mercy on us!”
+“Where are we to put him?” asked the policeman, looking round when
+Marmeladov, unconscious and covered with blood, had been carried in.
+“On the sofa! Put him straight on the sofa, with his head this way,”
+Raskolnikov showed him.
+“Run over in the road! Drunk!” someone shouted in the passage.
+Katerina Ivanovna stood, turning white and gasping for breath. The
+children were terrified. Little Lida screamed, rushed to Polenka and
+clutched at her, trembling all over.
+Having laid Marmeladov down, Raskolnikov flew to Katerina Ivanovna.
+“For God’s sake be calm, don’t be frightened!” he said, speaking
+quickly, “he was crossing the road and was run over by a carriage, don’t
+be frightened, he will come to, I told them bring him here... I’ve been
+here already, you remember? He will come to; I’ll pay!”
+“He’s done it this time!” Katerina Ivanovna cried despairingly and she
+rushed to her husband.
+Raskolnikov noticed at once that she was not one of those women who
+swoon easily. She instantly placed under the luckless man’s head a
+pillow, which no one had thought of and began undressing and examining
+him. She kept her head, forgetting herself, biting her trembling lips
+and stifling the screams which were ready to break from her.
+Raskolnikov meanwhile induced someone to run for a doctor. There was a
+doctor, it appeared, next door but one.
+“I’ve sent for a doctor,” he kept assuring Katerina Ivanovna, “don’t be
+uneasy, I’ll pay. Haven’t you water?... and give me a napkin or a towel,
+anything, as quick as you can.... He is injured, but not killed, believe
+me.... We shall see what the doctor says!”
+Katerina Ivanovna ran to the window; there, on a broken chair in the
+corner, a large earthenware basin full of water had been stood, in
+readiness for washing her children’s and husband’s linen that night.
+This washing was done by Katerina Ivanovna at night at least twice a
+week, if not oftener. For the family had come to such a pass that they
+were practically without change of linen, and Katerina Ivanovna could
+not endure uncleanliness and, rather than see dirt in the house, she
+preferred to wear herself out at night, working beyond her strength when
+the rest were asleep, so as to get the wet linen hung on a line and dry
+by the morning. She took up the basin of water at Raskolnikov’s request,
+but almost fell down with her burden. But the latter had already
+succeeded in finding a towel, wetted it and began washing the blood off
+Marmeladov’s face.
+Katerina Ivanovna stood by, breathing painfully and pressing her hands
+to her breast. She was in need of attention herself. Raskolnikov began
+to realise that he might have made a mistake in having the injured man
+brought here. The policeman, too, stood in hesitation.
+“Polenka,” cried Katerina Ivanovna, “run to Sonia, make haste. If you
+don’t find her at home, leave word that her father has been run over
+and that she is to come here at once... when she comes in. Run, Polenka!
+there, put on the shawl.”
+“Run your fastest!” cried the little boy on the chair suddenly, after
+which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round eyes, his
+heels thrust forward and his toes spread out.
+Meanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn’t have
+dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained for a
+time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the stairs. Almost
+all Madame Lippevechsel’s lodgers had streamed in from the inner rooms
+of the flat; at first they were squeezed together in the doorway, but
+afterwards they overflowed into the room. Katerina Ivanovna flew into a
+fury.
+“You might let him die in peace, at least,” she shouted at the crowd,
+“is it a spectacle for you to gape at? With cigarettes! (Cough, cough,
+cough!) You might as well keep your hats on.... And there is one in his
+hat!... Get away! You should respect the dead, at least!”
+Her cough choked her--but her reproaches were not without result. They
+evidently stood in some awe of Katerina Ivanovna. The lodgers, one after
+another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange inner feeling
+of satisfaction which may be observed in the presence of a sudden
+accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim, from which
+no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest sympathy and
+compassion.
+Voices outside were heard, however, speaking of the hospital and saying
+that they’d no business to make a disturbance here.
+“No business to die!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and she was rushing to
+the door to vent her wrath upon them, but in the doorway came face to
+face with Madame Lippevechsel who had only just heard of the accident
+and ran in to restore order. She was a particularly quarrelsome and
+irresponsible German.
+“Ah, my God!” she cried, clasping her hands, “your husband drunken
+horses have trampled! To the hospital with him! I am the landlady!”
+“Amalia Ludwigovna, I beg you to recollect what you are saying,”
+Katerina Ivanovna began haughtily (she always took a haughty tone with
+the landlady that she might “remember her place” and even now could not
+deny herself this satisfaction). “Amalia Ludwigovna...”
+“I have you once before told that you to call me Amalia Ludwigovna may
+not dare; I am Amalia Ivanovna.”
+“You are not Amalia Ivanovna, but Amalia Ludwigovna, and as I am not
+one of your despicable flatterers like Mr. Lebeziatnikov, who’s laughing
+behind the door at this moment (a laugh and a cry of ‘they are at it
+again’ was in fact audible at the door) so I shall always call you
+Amalia Ludwigovna, though I fail to understand why you dislike that
+name. You can see for yourself what has happened to Semyon Zaharovitch;
+he is dying. I beg you to close that door at once and to admit no one.
+Let him at least die in peace! Or I warn you the Governor-General,
+himself, shall be informed of your conduct to-morrow. The prince knew
+me as a girl; he remembers Semyon Zaharovitch well and has often been
+a benefactor to him. Everyone knows that Semyon Zaharovitch had many
+friends and protectors, whom he abandoned himself from an honourable
+pride, knowing his unhappy weakness, but now (she pointed to
+Raskolnikov) a generous young man has come to our assistance, who has
+wealth and connections and whom Semyon Zaharovitch has known from a
+child. You may rest assured, Amalia Ludwigovna...”
+All this was uttered with extreme rapidity, getting quicker and quicker,
+but a cough suddenly cut short Katerina Ivanovna’s eloquence. At that
+instant the dying man recovered consciousness and uttered a groan; she
+ran to him. The injured man opened his eyes and without recognition or
+understanding gazed at Raskolnikov who was bending over him. He drew
+deep, slow, painful breaths; blood oozed at the corners of his mouth
+and drops of perspiration came out on his forehead. Not recognising
+Raskolnikov, he began looking round uneasily. Katerina Ivanovna looked
+at him with a sad but stern face, and tears trickled from her eyes.
+“My God! His whole chest is crushed! How he is bleeding,” she said
+in despair. “We must take off his clothes. Turn a little, Semyon
+Zaharovitch, if you can,” she cried to him.
+Marmeladov recognised her.
+“A priest,” he articulated huskily.
+Katerina Ivanovna walked to the window, laid her head against the window
+frame and exclaimed in despair:
+“Oh, cursed life!”
+“A priest,” the dying man said again after a moment’s silence.
+“They’ve gone for him,” Katerina Ivanovna shouted to him, he obeyed her
+shout and was silent. With sad and timid eyes he looked for her; she
+returned and stood by his pillow. He seemed a little easier but not for
+long.
+Soon his eyes rested on little Lida, his favourite, who was shaking in
+the corner, as though she were in a fit, and staring at him with her
+wondering childish eyes.
+“A-ah,” he signed towards her uneasily. He wanted to say something.
+“What now?” cried Katerina Ivanovna.
+“Barefoot, barefoot!” he muttered, indicating with frenzied eyes the
+child’s bare feet.
+“Be silent,” Katerina Ivanovna cried irritably, “you know why she is
+barefooted.”
+“Thank God, the doctor,” exclaimed Raskolnikov, relieved.
+The doctor came in, a precise little old man, a German, looking about
+him mistrustfully; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse, carefully
+felt his head and with the help of Katerina Ivanovna he unbuttoned the
+blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man’s chest. It was gashed,
+crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side were broken.
+On the left side, just over the heart, was a large, sinister-looking
+yellowish-black bruise--a cruel kick from the horse’s hoof. The doctor
+frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in the wheel and
+turned round with it for thirty yards on the road.
+“It’s wonderful that he has recovered consciousness,” the doctor
+whispered softly to Raskolnikov.
+“What do you think of him?” he asked.
+“He will die immediately.”
+“Is there really no hope?”
+“Not the faintest! He is at the last gasp.... His head is badly injured,
+too... Hm... I could bleed him if you like, but... it would be useless.
+He is bound to die within the next five or ten minutes.”
+“Better bleed him then.”
+“If you like.... But I warn you it will be perfectly useless.”
+At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage parted,
+and the priest, a little, grey old man, appeared in the doorway bearing
+the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the time of the accident.
+The doctor changed places with him, exchanging glances with him.
+Raskolnikov begged the doctor to remain a little while. He shrugged his
+shoulders and remained.
+All stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man probably
+understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken sounds.
+Katerina Ivanovna took little Lida, lifted the boy from the chair, knelt
+down in the corner by the stove and made the children kneel in front of
+her. The little girl was still trembling; but the boy, kneeling on his
+little bare knees, lifted his hand rhythmically, crossing himself with
+precision and bowed down, touching the floor with his forehead, which
+seemed to afford him especial satisfaction. Katerina Ivanovna bit her
+lips and held back her tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling
+straight the boy’s shirt, and managed to cover the girl’s bare shoulders
+with a kerchief, which she took from the chest without rising from her
+knees or ceasing to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was
+opened inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from
+all the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not
+venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the scene.
+At that moment Polenka forced her way through the crowd at the door. She
+came in panting from running so fast, took off her kerchief, looked for
+her mother, went up to her and said, “She’s coming, I met her in the
+street.” Her mother made her kneel beside her.
+Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd,
+and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags,
+death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of
+the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp,
+unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in the
+doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything.
+She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with
+its ridiculous long train, and her immense crinoline that filled up the
+whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought
+with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat
+with its flaring flame-coloured feather. Under this rakishly-tilted hat
+was a pale, frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in
+terror. Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather
+pretty, with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the
+priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some
+words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a
+step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door.
+The service was over. Katerina Ivanovna went up to her husband again.
+The priest stepped back and turned to say a few words of admonition and
+consolation to Katerina Ivanovna on leaving.
+“What am I to do with these?” she interrupted sharply and irritably,
+pointing to the little ones.
+“God is merciful; look to the Most High for succour,” the priest began.
+“Ach! He is merciful, but not to us.”
+“That’s a sin, a sin, madam,” observed the priest, shaking his head.
+“And isn’t that a sin?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, pointing to the dying
+man.
+“Perhaps those who have involuntarily caused the accident will agree to
+compensate you, at least for the loss of his earnings.”
+“You don’t understand!” cried Katerina Ivanovna angrily waving her hand.
+“And why should they compensate me? Why, he was drunk and threw himself
+under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in nothing but misery.
+He drank everything away, the drunkard! He robbed us to get drink, he
+wasted their lives and mine for drink! And thank God he’s dying! One
+less to keep!”
+“You must forgive in the hour of death, that’s a sin, madam, such
+feelings are a great sin.”
+Katerina Ivanovna was busy with the dying man; she was giving him water,
+wiping the blood and sweat from his head, setting his pillow straight,
+and had only turned now and then for a moment to address the priest. Now
+she flew at him almost in a frenzy.
+“Ah, father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run
+over, he’d have come home to-day drunk and his only shirt dirty and
+in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been
+sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s
+and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I
+should have been darning them. That’s how I spend my nights!... What’s
+the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!”
+A terrible hollow cough interrupted her words. She put her handkerchief
+to her lips and showed it to the priest, pressing her other hand to her
+aching chest. The handkerchief was covered with blood. The priest bowed
+his head and said nothing.
+Marmeladov was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face
+of Katerina Ivanovna, who was bending over him again. He kept trying
+to say something to her; he began moving his tongue with difficulty and
+articulating indistinctly, but Katerina Ivanovna, understanding that he
+wanted to ask her forgiveness, called peremptorily to him:
+“Be silent! No need! I know what you want to say!” And the sick man
+was silent, but at the same instant his wandering eyes strayed to the
+doorway and he saw Sonia.
+Till then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the shadow in a
+corner.
+“Who’s that? Who’s that?” he said suddenly in a thick gasping voice,
+in agitation, turning his eyes in horror towards the door where his
+daughter was standing, and trying to sit up.
+“Lie down! Lie do-own!” cried Katerina Ivanovna.
+With unnatural strength he had succeeded in propping himself on his
+elbow. He looked wildly and fixedly for some time on his daughter, as
+though not recognising her. He had never seen her before in such attire.
+Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her humiliation and
+gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye to her dying
+father. His face showed intense suffering.
+“Sonia! Daughter! Forgive!” he cried, and he tried to hold out his hand
+to her, but losing his balance, he fell off the sofa, face downwards on
+the floor. They rushed to pick him up, they put him on the sofa; but he
+was dying. Sonia with a faint cry ran up, embraced him and remained so
+without moving. He died in her arms.
+“He’s got what he wanted,” Katerina Ivanovna cried, seeing her husband’s
+dead body. “Well, what’s to be done now? How am I to bury him! What can
+I give them to-morrow to eat?”
+Raskolnikov went up to Katerina Ivanovna.
+“Katerina Ivanovna,” he began, “last week your husband told me all his
+life and circumstances.... Believe me, he spoke of you with passionate
+reverence. From that evening, when I learnt how devoted he was to you
+all and how he loved and respected you especially, Katerina Ivanovna,
+in spite of his unfortunate weakness, from that evening we became
+friends.... Allow me now... to do something... to repay my debt to my
+dead friend. Here are twenty roubles, I think--and if that can be of any
+assistance to you, then... I... in short, I will come again, I will
+be sure to come again... I shall, perhaps, come again to-morrow....
+Good-bye!”
+And he went quickly out of the room, squeezing his way through the crowd
+to the stairs. But in the crowd he suddenly jostled against Nikodim
+Fomitch, who had heard of the accident and had come to give instructions
+in person. They had not met since the scene at the police station, but
+Nikodim Fomitch knew him instantly.
+“Ah, is that you?” he asked him.
+“He’s dead,” answered Raskolnikov. “The doctor and the priest have been,
+all as it should have been. Don’t worry the poor woman too much, she is
+in consumption as it is. Try and cheer her up, if possible... you are a
+kind-hearted man, I know...” he added with a smile, looking straight in
+his face.
+“But you are spattered with blood,” observed Nikodim Fomitch, noticing
+in the lamplight some fresh stains on Raskolnikov’s waistcoat.
+“Yes... I’m covered with blood,” Raskolnikov said with a peculiar air;
+then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs.
+He walked down slowly and deliberately, feverish but not conscious
+of it, entirely absorbed in a new overwhelming sensation of life and
+strength that surged up suddenly within him. This sensation might be
+compared to that of a man condemned to death who has suddenly been
+pardoned. Halfway down the staircase he was overtaken by the priest on
+his way home; Raskolnikov let him pass, exchanging a silent greeting
+with him. He was just descending the last steps when he heard rapid
+footsteps behind him. Someone overtook him; it was Polenka. She was
+running after him, calling “Wait! wait!”
+He turned round. She was at the bottom of the staircase and stopped
+short a step above him. A dim light came in from the yard. Raskolnikov
+could distinguish the child’s thin but pretty little face, looking at
+him with a bright childish smile. She had run after him with a message
+which she was evidently glad to give.
+“Tell me, what is your name?... and where do you live?” she said
+hurriedly in a breathless voice.
+He laid both hands on her shoulders and looked at her with a sort of
+rapture. It was such a joy to him to look at her, he could not have said
+why.
+“Who sent you?”
+“Sister Sonia sent me,” answered the girl, smiling still more brightly.
+“I knew it was sister Sonia sent you.”
+“Mamma sent me, too... when sister Sonia was sending me, mamma came up,
+too, and said ‘Run fast, Polenka.’”
+“Do you love sister Sonia?”
+“I love her more than anyone,” Polenka answered with a peculiar
+earnestness, and her smile became graver.
+“And will you love me?”
+By way of answer he saw the little girl’s face approaching him, her full
+lips naïvely held out to kiss him. Suddenly her arms as thin as sticks
+held him tightly, her head rested on his shoulder and the little girl
+wept softly, pressing her face against him.
+“I am sorry for father,” she said a moment later, raising her
+tear-stained face and brushing away the tears with her hands. “It’s
+nothing but misfortunes now,” she added suddenly with that peculiarly
+sedate air which children try hard to assume when they want to speak
+like grown-up people.
+“Did your father love you?”
+“He loved Lida most,” she went on very seriously without a smile,
+exactly like grown-up people, “he loved her because she is little and
+because she is ill, too. And he always used to bring her presents. But
+he taught us to read and me grammar and scripture, too,” she added with
+dignity. “And mother never used to say anything, but we knew that she
+liked it and father knew it, too. And mother wants to teach me French,
+for it’s time my education began.”
+“And do you know your prayers?”
+“Of course, we do! We knew them long ago. I say my prayers to myself
+as I am a big girl now, but Kolya and Lida say them aloud with mother.
+First they repeat the ‘Ave Maria’ and then another prayer: ‘Lord,
+forgive and bless sister Sonia,’ and then another, ‘Lord, forgive and
+bless our second father.’ For our elder father is dead and this is
+another one, but we do pray for the other as well.”
+“Polenka, my name is Rodion. Pray sometimes for me, too. ‘And Thy
+servant Rodion,’ nothing more.”
+“I’ll pray for you all the rest of my life,” the little girl declared
+hotly, and suddenly smiling again she rushed at him and hugged him
+warmly once more.
+Raskolnikov told her his name and address and promised to be sure to
+come next day. The child went away quite enchanted with him. It was past
+ten when he came out into the street. In five minutes he was standing on
+the bridge at the spot where the woman had jumped in.
+“Enough,” he pronounced resolutely and triumphantly. “I’ve done with
+fancies, imaginary terrors and phantoms! Life is real! haven’t I lived
+just now? My life has not yet died with that old woman! The Kingdom of
+Heaven to her--and now enough, madam, leave me in peace! Now for the
+reign of reason and light... and of will, and of strength... and now
+we will see! We will try our strength!” he added defiantly, as though
+challenging some power of darkness. “And I was ready to consent to live
+in a square of space!
+“I am very weak at this moment, but... I believe my illness is all over.
+I knew it would be over when I went out. By the way, Potchinkov’s house
+is only a few steps away. I certainly must go to Razumihin even if
+it were not close by... let him win his bet! Let us give him some
+satisfaction, too--no matter! Strength, strength is what one wants, you
+can get nothing without it, and strength must be won by strength--that’s
+what they don’t know,” he added proudly and self-confidently and
+he walked with flagging footsteps from the bridge. Pride and
+self-confidence grew continually stronger in him; he was becoming
+a different man every moment. What was it had happened to work this
+revolution in him? He did not know himself; like a man catching at a
+straw, he suddenly felt that he, too, ‘could live, that there was still
+life for him, that his life had not died with the old woman.’ Perhaps he
+was in too great a hurry with his conclusions, but he did not think of
+that.
+“But I did ask her to remember ‘Thy servant Rodion’ in her prayers,” the
+idea struck him. “Well, that was... in case of emergency,” he added and
+laughed himself at his boyish sally. He was in the best of spirits.
+He easily found Razumihin; the new lodger was already known at
+Potchinkov’s and the porter at once showed him the way. Half-way
+upstairs he could hear the noise and animated conversation of a big
+gathering of people. The door was wide open on the stairs; he could
+hear exclamations and discussion. Razumihin’s room was fairly large; the
+company consisted of fifteen people. Raskolnikov stopped in the entry,
+where two of the landlady’s servants were busy behind a screen with two
+samovars, bottles, plates and dishes of pie and savouries, brought up
+from the landlady’s kitchen. Raskolnikov sent in for Razumihin. He ran
+out delighted. At the first glance it was apparent that he had had a
+great deal to drink and, though no amount of liquor made Razumihin quite
+drunk, this time he was perceptibly affected by it.
+“Listen,” Raskolnikov hastened to say, “I’ve only just come to tell you
+you’ve won your bet and that no one really knows what may not happen to
+him. I can’t come in; I am so weak that I shall fall down directly. And
+so good evening and good-bye! Come and see me to-morrow.”
+“Do you know what? I’ll see you home. If you say you’re weak yourself,
+you must...”
+“And your visitors? Who is the curly-headed one who has just peeped
+out?”
+“He? Goodness only knows! Some friend of uncle’s, I expect, or perhaps
+he has come without being invited... I’ll leave uncle with them, he
+is an invaluable person, pity I can’t introduce you to him now. But
+confound them all now! They won’t notice me, and I need a little fresh
+air, for you’ve come just in the nick of time--another two minutes and I
+should have come to blows! They are talking such a lot of wild stuff...
+you simply can’t imagine what men will say! Though why shouldn’t you
+imagine? Don’t we talk nonsense ourselves? And let them... that’s the
+way to learn not to!... Wait a minute, I’ll fetch Zossimov.”
+Zossimov pounced upon Raskolnikov almost greedily; he showed a special
+interest in him; soon his face brightened.
+“You must go to bed at once,” he pronounced, examining the patient as
+far as he could, “and take something for the night. Will you take it? I
+got it ready some time ago... a powder.”
+“Two, if you like,” answered Raskolnikov. The powder was taken at once.
+“It’s a good thing you are taking him home,” observed Zossimov to
+Razumihin--“we shall see how he is to-morrow, to-day he’s not at all
+amiss--a considerable change since the afternoon. Live and learn...”
+“Do you know what Zossimov whispered to me when we were coming out?”
+Razumihin blurted out, as soon as they were in the street. “I won’t tell
+you everything, brother, because they are such fools. Zossimov told me
+to talk freely to you on the way and get you to talk freely to me, and
+afterwards I am to tell him about it, for he’s got a notion in his head
+that you are... mad or close on it. Only fancy! In the first place,
+you’ve three times the brains he has; in the second, if you are not mad,
+you needn’t care a hang that he has got such a wild idea; and thirdly,
+that piece of beef whose specialty is surgery has gone mad on mental
+diseases, and what’s brought him to this conclusion about you was your
+conversation to-day with Zametov.”
+“Zametov told you all about it?���
+“Yes, and he did well. Now I understand what it all means and so does
+Zametov.... Well, the fact is, Rodya... the point is... I am a little
+drunk now.... But that’s... no matter... the point is that this
+idea... you understand? was just being hatched in their brains... you
+understand? That is, no one ventured to say it aloud, because the idea
+is too absurd and especially since the arrest of that painter, that
+bubble’s burst and gone for ever. But why are they such fools? I gave
+Zametov a bit of a thrashing at the time--that’s between ourselves,
+brother; please don’t let out a hint that you know of it; I’ve noticed
+he is a ticklish subject; it was at Luise Ivanovna’s. But to-day, to-day
+it’s all cleared up. That Ilya Petrovitch is at the bottom of it! He
+took advantage of your fainting at the police station, but he is ashamed
+of it himself now; I know that...”
+Raskolnikov listened greedily. Razumihin was drunk enough to talk too
+freely.
+“I fainted then because it was so close and the smell of paint,” said
+Raskolnikov.
+“No need to explain that! And it wasn’t the paint only: the fever had
+been coming on for a month; Zossimov testifies to that! But how crushed
+that boy is now, you wouldn’t believe! ‘I am not worth his little
+finger,’ he says. Yours, he means. He has good feelings at times,
+brother. But the lesson, the lesson you gave him to-day in the Palais
+de Cristal, that was too good for anything! You frightened him at first,
+you know, he nearly went into convulsions! You almost convinced
+him again of the truth of all that hideous nonsense, and then you
+suddenly--put out your tongue at him: ‘There now, what do you make of
+it?’ It was perfect! He is crushed, annihilated now! It was masterly, by
+Jove, it’s what they deserve! Ah, that I wasn’t there! He was hoping to
+see you awfully. Porfiry, too, wants to make your acquaintance...”
+“Ah!... he too... but why did they put me down as mad?”
+“Oh, not mad. I must have said too much, brother.... What struck him,
+you see, was that only that subject seemed to interest you; now it’s
+clear why it did interest you; knowing all the circumstances... and
+how that irritated you and worked in with your illness... I am a little
+drunk, brother, only, confound him, he has some idea of his own... I
+tell you, he’s mad on mental diseases. But don’t you mind him...”
+For half a minute both were silent.
+“Listen, Razumihin,” began Raskolnikov, “I want to tell you plainly:
+I’ve just been at a death-bed, a clerk who died... I gave them all my
+money... and besides I’ve just been kissed by someone who, if I had
+killed anyone, would just the same... in fact I saw someone else
+there... with a flame-coloured feather... but I am talking nonsense; I
+am very weak, support me... we shall be at the stairs directly...”
+“What’s the matter? What’s the matter with you?” Razumihin asked
+anxiously.
+“I am a little giddy, but that’s not the point, I am so sad, so sad...
+like a woman. Look, what’s that? Look, look!”
+“What is it?”
+“Don’t you see? A light in my room, you see? Through the crack...”
+They were already at the foot of the last flight of stairs, at the level
+of the landlady’s door, and they could, as a fact, see from below that
+there was a light in Raskolnikov’s garret.
+“Queer! Nastasya, perhaps,” observed Razumihin.
+“She is never in my room at this time and she must be in bed long ago,
+but... I don’t care! Good-bye!”
+“What do you mean? I am coming with you, we’ll come in together!”
+“I know we are going in together, but I want to shake hands here and say
+good-bye to you here. So give me your hand, good-bye!”
+“What’s the matter with you, Rodya?”
+“Nothing... come along... you shall be witness.”
+They began mounting the stairs, and the idea struck Razumihin that
+perhaps Zossimov might be right after all. “Ah, I’ve upset him with my
+chatter!” he muttered to himself.
+When they reached the door they heard voices in the room.
+“What is it?” cried Razumihin. Raskolnikov was the first to open the
+door; he flung it wide and stood still in the doorway, dumbfoundered.
+His mother and sister were sitting on his sofa and had been waiting an
+hour and a half for him. Why had he never expected, never thought of
+them, though the news that they had started, were on their way and would
+arrive immediately, had been repeated to him only that day? They had
+spent that hour and a half plying Nastasya with questions. She was
+standing before them and had told them everything by now. They were
+beside themselves with alarm when they heard of his “running away”
+to-day, ill and, as they understood from her story, delirious! “Good
+Heavens, what had become of him?” Both had been weeping, both had been
+in anguish for that hour and a half.
+A cry of joy, of ecstasy, greeted Raskolnikov’s entrance. Both rushed to
+him. But he stood like one dead; a sudden intolerable sensation struck
+him like a thunderbolt. He did not lift his arms to embrace them, he
+could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their arms, kissed him,
+laughed and cried. He took a step, tottered and fell to the ground,
+fainting.
+Anxiety, cries of horror, moans... Razumihin who was standing in the
+doorway flew into the room, seized the sick man in his strong arms and
+in a moment had him on the sofa.
+“It’s nothing, nothing!” he cried to the mother and sister--“it’s only a
+faint, a mere trifle! Only just now the doctor said he was much better,
+that he is perfectly well! Water! See, he is coming to himself, he is
+all right again!”
+And seizing Dounia by the arm so that he almost dislocated it, he made
+her bend down to see that “he is all right again.” The mother and sister
+looked on him with emotion and gratitude, as their Providence. They
+had heard already from Nastasya all that had been done for their Rodya
+during his illness, by this “very competent young man,” as Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna Raskolnikov called him that evening in conversation with
+Dounia.
+PART III
+CHAPTER I
+Raskolnikov got up, and sat down on the sofa. He waved his hand weakly
+to Razumihin to cut short the flow of warm and incoherent consolations
+he was addressing to his mother and sister, took them both by the hand
+and for a minute or two gazed from one to the other without speaking.
+His mother was alarmed by his expression. It revealed an emotion
+agonisingly poignant, and at the same time something immovable, almost
+insane. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.
+Avdotya Romanovna was pale; her hand trembled in her brother’s.
+“Go home... with him,” he said in a broken voice, pointing to Razumihin,
+“good-bye till to-morrow; to-morrow everything... Is it long since you
+arrived?”
+“This evening, Rodya,” answered Pulcheria Alexandrovna, “the train was
+awfully late. But, Rodya, nothing would induce me to leave you now! I
+will spend the night here, near you...”
+“Don’t torture me!” he said with a gesture of irritation.
+“I will stay with him,” cried Razumihin, “I won’t leave him for a
+moment. Bother all my visitors! Let them rage to their hearts’ content!
+My uncle is presiding there.”
+“How, how can I thank you!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna was beginning, once
+more pressing Razumihin’s hands, but Raskolnikov interrupted her again.
+“I can’t have it! I can’t have it!” he repeated irritably, “don’t worry
+me! Enough, go away... I can’t stand it!”
+“Come, mamma, come out of the room at least for a minute,” Dounia
+whispered in dismay; “we are distressing him, that’s evident.”
+“Mayn’t I look at him after three years?” wept Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“Stay,” he stopped them again, “you keep interrupting me, and my ideas
+get muddled.... Have you seen Luzhin?”
+“No, Rodya, but he knows already of our arrival. We have heard, Rodya,
+that Pyotr Petrovitch was so kind as to visit you today,” Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna added somewhat timidly.
+“Yes... he was so kind... Dounia, I promised Luzhin I’d throw him
+downstairs and told him to go to hell....”
+“Rodya, what are you saying! Surely, you don’t mean to tell us...”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna began in alarm, but she stopped, looking at
+Dounia.
+Avdotya Romanovna was looking attentively at her brother, waiting
+for what would come next. Both of them had heard of the quarrel from
+Nastasya, so far as she had succeeded in understanding and reporting it,
+and were in painful perplexity and suspense.
+“Dounia,” Raskolnikov continued with an effort, “I don’t want that
+marriage, so at the first opportunity to-morrow you must refuse Luzhin,
+so that we may never hear his name again.”
+“Good Heavens!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“Brother, think what you are saying!” Avdotya Romanovna began
+impetuously, but immediately checked herself. “You are not fit to talk
+now, perhaps; you are tired,” she added gently.
+“You think I am delirious? No... You are marrying Luzhin for _my_
+sake. But I won’t accept the sacrifice. And so write a letter before
+to-morrow, to refuse him... Let me read it in the morning and that will
+be the end of it!”
+“That I can’t do!” the girl cried, offended, “what right have you...”
+“Dounia, you are hasty, too, be quiet, to-morrow... Don’t you see...”
+the mother interposed in dismay. “Better come away!”
+“He is raving,” Razumihin cried tipsily, “or how would he dare!
+To-morrow all this nonsense will be over... to-day he certainly did
+drive him away. That was so. And Luzhin got angry, too.... He made
+speeches here, wanted to show off his learning and he went out
+crest-fallen....”
+“Then it’s true?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“Good-bye till to-morrow, brother,” said Dounia compassionately--“let us
+go, mother... Good-bye, Rodya.”
+“Do you hear, sister,” he repeated after them, making a last effort,
+“I am not delirious; this marriage is--an infamy. Let me act like
+a scoundrel, but you mustn’t... one is enough... and though I am a
+scoundrel, I wouldn’t own such a sister. It’s me or Luzhin! Go now....”
+“But you’re out of your mind! Despot!” roared Razumihin; but Raskolnikov
+did not and perhaps could not answer. He lay down on the sofa, and
+turned to the wall, utterly exhausted. Avdotya Romanovna looked with
+interest at Razumihin; her black eyes flashed; Razumihin positively
+started at her glance.
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna stood overwhelmed.
+“Nothing would induce me to go,” she whispered in despair to Razumihin.
+“I will stay somewhere here... escort Dounia home.”
+“You’ll spoil everything,” Razumihin answered in the same whisper,
+losing patience--“come out on to the stairs, anyway. Nastasya, show a
+light! I assure you,” he went on in a half whisper on the stairs--“that
+he was almost beating the doctor and me this afternoon! Do you
+understand? The doctor himself! Even he gave way and left him, so as not
+to irritate him. I remained downstairs on guard, but he dressed at once
+and slipped off. And he will slip off again if you irritate him, at this
+time of night, and will do himself some mischief....”
+“What are you saying?”
+“And Avdotya Romanovna can’t possibly be left in those lodgings without
+you. Just think where you are staying! That blackguard Pyotr Petrovitch
+couldn’t find you better lodgings... But you know I’ve had a little to
+drink, and that’s what makes me... swear; don’t mind it....”
+“But I’ll go to the landlady here,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna insisted,
+“I’ll beseech her to find some corner for Dounia and me for the night. I
+can’t leave him like that, I cannot!”
+This conversation took place on the landing just before the landlady’s
+door. Nastasya lighted them from a step below. Razumihin was in
+extraordinary excitement. Half an hour earlier, while he was bringing
+Raskolnikov home, he had indeed talked too freely, but he was aware of
+it himself, and his head was clear in spite of the vast quantities he
+had imbibed. Now he was in a state bordering on ecstasy, and all that he
+had drunk seemed to fly to his head with redoubled effect. He stood with
+the two ladies, seizing both by their hands, persuading them, and giving
+them reasons with astonishing plainness of speech, and at almost every
+word he uttered, probably to emphasise his arguments, he squeezed their
+hands painfully as in a vise. He stared at Avdotya Romanovna without the
+least regard for good manners. They sometimes pulled their hands out of
+his huge bony paws, but far from noticing what was the matter, he drew
+them all the closer to him. If they’d told him to jump head foremost
+from the staircase, he would have done it without thought or hesitation
+in their service. Though Pulcheria Alexandrovna felt that the young man
+was really too eccentric and pinched her hand too much, in her anxiety
+over her Rodya she looked on his presence as providential, and was
+unwilling to notice all his peculiarities. But though Avdotya Romanovna
+shared her anxiety, and was not of timorous disposition, she could not
+see the glowing light in his eyes without wonder and almost alarm. It
+was only the unbounded confidence inspired by Nastasya’s account of her
+brother’s queer friend, which prevented her from trying to run away from
+him, and to persuade her mother to do the same. She realised, too,
+that even running away was perhaps impossible now. Ten minutes later,
+however, she was considerably reassured; it was characteristic of
+Razumihin that he showed his true nature at once, whatever mood he might
+be in, so that people quickly saw the sort of man they had to deal with.
+“You can’t go to the landlady, that’s perfect nonsense!” he cried. “If
+you stay, though you are his mother, you’ll drive him to a frenzy, and
+then goodness knows what will happen! Listen, I’ll tell you what I’ll
+do: Nastasya will stay with him now, and I’ll conduct you both home, you
+can’t be in the streets alone; Petersburg is an awful place in that
+way.... But no matter! Then I’ll run straight back here and a quarter of
+an hour later, on my word of honour, I’ll bring you news how he is,
+whether he is asleep, and all that. Then, listen! Then I’ll run home in
+a twinkling--I’ve a lot of friends there, all drunk--I’ll fetch
+Zossimov--that’s the doctor who is looking after him, he is there, too,
+but he is not drunk; he is not drunk, he is never drunk! I’ll drag him
+to Rodya, and then to you, so that you’ll get two reports in the
+hour--from the doctor, you understand, from the doctor himself, that’s a
+very different thing from my account of him! If there’s anything wrong,
+I swear I’ll bring you here myself, but, if it’s all right, you go to
+bed. And I’ll spend the night here, in the passage, he won’t hear me,
+and I’ll tell Zossimov to sleep at the landlady’s, to be at hand. Which
+is better for him: you or the doctor? So come home then! But the
+landlady is out of the question; it’s all right for me, but it’s out of
+the question for you: she wouldn’t take you, for she��s... for she’s a
+fool... She’d be jealous on my account of Avdotya Romanovna and of you,
+too, if you want to know... of Avdotya Romanovna certainly. She is an
+absolutely, absolutely unaccountable character! But I am a fool, too!...
+No matter! Come along! Do you trust me? Come, do you trust me or not?”
+“Let us go, mother,” said Avdotya Romanovna, “he will certainly do what
+he has promised. He has saved Rodya already, and if the doctor really
+will consent to spend the night here, what could be better?”
+“You see, you... you... understand me, because you are an angel!”
+Razumihin cried in ecstasy, “let us go! Nastasya! Fly upstairs and sit
+with him with a light; I’ll come in a quarter of an hour.”
+Though Pulcheria Alexandrovna was not perfectly convinced, she made no
+further resistance. Razumihin gave an arm to each and drew them down
+the stairs. He still made her uneasy, as though he was competent and
+good-natured, was he capable of carrying out his promise? He seemed in
+such a condition....
+“Ah, I see you think I am in such a condition!” Razumihin broke in upon
+her thoughts, guessing them, as he strolled along the pavement with huge
+steps, so that the two ladies could hardly keep up with him, a fact he
+did not observe, however. “Nonsense! That is... I am drunk like a fool,
+but that’s not it; I am not drunk from wine. It’s seeing you has turned
+my head... But don’t mind me! Don’t take any notice: I am talking
+nonsense, I am not worthy of you.... I am utterly unworthy of you! The
+minute I’ve taken you home, I’ll pour a couple of pailfuls of water over
+my head in the gutter here, and then I shall be all right.... If only
+you knew how I love you both! Don’t laugh, and don’t be angry! You may
+be angry with anyone, but not with me! I am his friend, and therefore I
+am your friend, too, I want to be... I had a presentiment... Last year
+there was a moment... though it wasn’t a presentiment really, for
+you seem to have fallen from heaven. And I expect I shan’t sleep all
+night... Zossimov was afraid a little time ago that he would go mad...
+that’s why he mustn’t be irritated.”
+“What do you say?” cried the mother.
+“Did the doctor really say that?” asked Avdotya Romanovna, alarmed.
+“Yes, but it’s not so, not a bit of it. He gave him some medicine, a
+powder, I saw it, and then your coming here.... Ah! It would have been
+better if you had come to-morrow. It’s a good thing we went away. And in
+an hour Zossimov himself will report to you about everything. He is not
+drunk! And I shan’t be drunk.... And what made me get so tight? Because
+they got me into an argument, damn them! I’ve sworn never to argue! They
+talk such trash! I almost came to blows! I’ve left my uncle to preside.
+Would you believe, they insist on complete absence of individualism
+and that’s just what they relish! Not to be themselves, to be as unlike
+themselves as they can. That’s what they regard as the highest point of
+progress. If only their nonsense were their own, but as it is...”
+“Listen!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna interrupted timidly, but it only added
+fuel to the flames.
+“What do you think?” shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, “you think I
+am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk
+nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error
+you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any
+truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and
+fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make
+mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense,
+and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than
+to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the
+second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life
+can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now?
+In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism,
+judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are
+still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other
+people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?” cried
+Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies’ hands.
+“Oh, mercy, I do not know,” cried poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“Yes, yes... though I don’t agree with you in everything,” added Avdotya
+Romanovna earnestly and at once uttered a cry, for he squeezed her hand
+so painfully.
+“Yes, you say yes... well after that you... you...” he cried in
+a transport, “you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense... and
+perfection. Give me your hand... you give me yours, too! I want to kiss
+your hands here at once, on my knees...” and he fell on his knees on the
+pavement, fortunately at that time deserted.
+“Leave off, I entreat you, what are you doing?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
+cried, greatly distressed.
+“Get up, get up!” said Dounia laughing, though she, too, was upset.
+“Not for anything till you let me kiss your hands! That’s it! Enough! I
+get up and we’ll go on! I am a luckless fool, I am unworthy of you and
+drunk... and I am ashamed.... I am not worthy to love you, but to do
+homage to you is the duty of every man who is not a perfect beast! And
+I’ve done homage.... Here are your lodgings, and for that alone Rodya
+was right in driving your Pyotr Petrovitch away.... How dare he! how
+dare he put you in such lodgings! It’s a scandal! Do you know the
+sort of people they take in here? And you his betrothed! You are
+his betrothed? Yes? Well, then, I’ll tell you, your _fiancé_ is a
+scoundrel.”
+“Excuse me, Mr. Razumihin, you are forgetting...” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
+was beginning.
+“Yes, yes, you are right, I did forget myself, I am ashamed of it,”
+Razumihin made haste to apologise. “But... but you can’t be angry with
+me for speaking so! For I speak sincerely and not because... hm, hm!
+That would be disgraceful; in fact not because I’m in... hm! Well,
+anyway, I won’t say why, I daren’t.... But we all saw to-day when he
+came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair
+curled at the barber’s, not because he was in such a hurry to show his
+wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint
+and a buffoon. That’s evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a
+fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see,
+ladies?” he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their rooms, “though
+all my friends there are drunk, yet they are all honest, and though we
+do talk a lot of trash, and I do, too, yet we shall talk our way to the
+truth at last, for we are on the right path, while Pyotr Petrovitch...
+is not on the right path. Though I’ve been calling them all sorts of
+names just now, I do respect them all... though I don’t respect Zametov,
+I like him, for he is a puppy, and that bullock Zossimov, because he
+is an honest man and knows his work. But enough, it’s all said and
+forgiven. Is it forgiven? Well, then, let’s go on. I know this corridor,
+I’ve been here, there was a scandal here at Number 3.... Where are you
+here? Which number? eight? Well, lock yourselves in for the night, then.
+Don’t let anybody in. In a quarter of an hour I’ll come back with news,
+and half an hour later I’ll bring Zossimov, you’ll see! Good-bye, I’ll
+run.”
+“Good heavens, Dounia, what is going to happen?” said Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna, addressing her daughter with anxiety and dismay.
+“Don’t worry yourself, mother,” said Dounia, taking off her hat and
+cape. “God has sent this gentleman to our aid, though he has come from a
+drinking party. We can depend on him, I assure you. And all that he has
+done for Rodya....”
+“Ah. Dounia, goodness knows whether he will come! How could I bring
+myself to leave Rodya?... And how different, how different I had fancied
+our meeting! How sullen he was, as though not pleased to see us....”
+Tears came into her eyes.
+“No, it’s not that, mother. You didn’t see, you were crying all the
+time. He is quite unhinged by serious illness--that’s the reason.”
+“Ah, that illness! What will happen, what will happen? And how he talked
+to you, Dounia!” said the mother, looking timidly at her daughter,
+trying to read her thoughts and, already half consoled by Dounia’s
+standing up for her brother, which meant that she had already forgiven
+him. “I am sure he will think better of it to-morrow,” she added,
+probing her further.
+“And I am sure that he will say the same to-morrow... about that,”
+Avdotya Romanovna said finally. And, of course, there was no going
+beyond that, for this was a point which Pulcheria Alexandrovna was
+afraid to discuss. Dounia went up and kissed her mother. The latter
+warmly embraced her without speaking. Then she sat down to wait
+anxiously for Razumihin’s return, timidly watching her daughter who
+walked up and down the room with her arms folded, lost in thought.
+This walking up and down when she was thinking was a habit of Avdotya
+Romanovna’s and the mother was always afraid to break in on her
+daughter’s mood at such moments.
+Razumihin, of course, was ridiculous in his sudden drunken infatuation
+for Avdotya Romanovna. Yet apart from his eccentric condition, many
+people would have thought it justified if they had seen Avdotya
+Romanovna, especially at that moment when she was walking to and
+fro with folded arms, pensive and melancholy. Avdotya Romanovna was
+remarkably good-looking; she was tall, strikingly well-proportioned,
+strong and self-reliant--the latter quality was apparent in every
+gesture, though it did not in the least detract from the grace and
+softness of her movements. In face she resembled her brother, but she
+might be described as really beautiful. Her hair was dark brown, a
+little lighter than her brother’s; there was a proud light in her almost
+black eyes and yet at times a look of extraordinary kindness. She was
+pale, but it was a healthy pallor; her face was radiant with freshness
+and vigour. Her mouth was rather small; the full red lower lip projected
+a little as did her chin; it was the only irregularity in her beautiful
+face, but it gave it a peculiarly individual and almost haughty
+expression. Her face was always more serious and thoughtful than gay;
+but how well smiles, how well youthful, lighthearted, irresponsible,
+laughter suited her face! It was natural enough that a warm, open,
+simple-hearted, honest giant like Razumihin, who had never seen anyone
+like her and was not quite sober at the time, should lose his head
+immediately. Besides, as chance would have it, he saw Dounia for the
+first time transfigured by her love for her brother and her joy at
+meeting him. Afterwards he saw her lower lip quiver with indignation
+at her brother’s insolent, cruel and ungrateful words--and his fate was
+sealed.
+He had spoken the truth, moreover, when he blurted out in his drunken
+talk on the stairs that Praskovya Pavlovna, Raskolnikov’s eccentric
+landlady, would be jealous of Pulcheria Alexandrovna as well as of
+Avdotya Romanovna on his account. Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was
+forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she
+looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the
+case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure
+sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to
+preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age. Her
+hair had begun to grow grey and thin, there had long been little crow’s
+foot wrinkles round her eyes, her cheeks were hollow and sunken from
+anxiety and grief, and yet it was a handsome face. She was Dounia
+over again, twenty years older, but without the projecting underlip.
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna was emotional, but not sentimental, timid and
+yielding, but only to a certain point. She could give way and accept a
+great deal even of what was contrary to her convictions, but there was a
+certain barrier fixed by honesty, principle and the deepest convictions
+which nothing would induce her to cross.
+Exactly twenty minutes after Razumihin’s departure, there came two
+subdued but hurried knocks at the door: he had come back.
+“I won’t come in, I haven’t time,” he hastened to say when the door was
+opened. “He sleeps like a top, soundly, quietly, and God grant he may
+sleep ten hours. Nastasya’s with him; I told her not to leave till I
+came. Now I am fetching Zossimov, he will report to you and then you’d
+better turn in; I can see you are too tired to do anything....”
+And he ran off down the corridor.
+“What a very competent and... devoted young man!” cried Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna exceedingly delighted.
+“He seems a splendid person!” Avdotya Romanovna replied with some
+warmth, resuming her walk up and down the room.
+It was nearly an hour later when they heard footsteps in the corridor
+and another knock at the door. Both women waited this time completely
+relying on Razumihin’s promise; he actually had succeeded in bringing
+Zossimov. Zossimov had agreed at once to desert the drinking party to
+go to Raskolnikov’s, but he came reluctantly and with the greatest
+suspicion to see the ladies, mistrusting Razumihin in his exhilarated
+condition. But his vanity was at once reassured and flattered; he saw
+that they were really expecting him as an oracle. He stayed just ten
+minutes and succeeded in completely convincing and comforting Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna. He spoke with marked sympathy, but with the reserve and
+extreme seriousness of a young doctor at an important consultation.
+He did not utter a word on any other subject and did not display the
+slightest desire to enter into more personal relations with the two
+ladies. Remarking at his first entrance the dazzling beauty of Avdotya
+Romanovna, he endeavoured not to notice her at all during his visit and
+addressed himself solely to Pulcheria Alexandrovna. All this gave him
+extraordinary inward satisfaction. He declared that he thought the
+invalid at this moment going on very satisfactorily. According to his
+observations the patient’s illness was due partly to his unfortunate
+material surroundings during the last few months, but it had partly also
+a moral origin, “was, so to speak, the product of several material and
+moral influences, anxieties, apprehensions, troubles, certain ideas...
+and so on.” Noticing stealthily that Avdotya Romanovna was following his
+words with close attention, Zossimov allowed himself to enlarge on this
+theme. On Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s anxiously and timidly inquiring as
+to “some suspicion of insanity,” he replied with a composed and candid
+smile that his words had been exaggerated; that certainly the patient
+had some fixed idea, something approaching a monomania--he, Zossimov,
+was now particularly studying this interesting branch of medicine--but
+that it must be recollected that until to-day the patient had been in
+delirium and... and that no doubt the presence of his family would have
+a favourable effect on his recovery and distract his mind, “if only all
+fresh shocks can be avoided,” he added significantly. Then he got up,
+took leave with an impressive and affable bow, while blessings, warm
+gratitude, and entreaties were showered upon him, and Avdotya Romanovna
+spontaneously offered her hand to him. He went out exceedingly pleased
+with his visit and still more so with himself.
+“We’ll talk to-morrow; go to bed at once!” Razumihin said in conclusion,
+following Zossimov out. “I’ll be with you to-morrow morning as early as
+possible with my report.”
+“That’s a fetching little girl, Avdotya Romanovna,” remarked Zossimov,
+almost licking his lips as they both came out into the street.
+“Fetching? You said fetching?” roared Razumihin and he flew at Zossimov
+and seized him by the throat. “If you ever dare.... Do you understand?
+Do you understand?” he shouted, shaking him by the collar and squeezing
+him against the wall. “Do you hear?”
+“Let me go, you drunken devil,” said Zossimov, struggling and when he
+had let him go, he stared at him and went off into a sudden guffaw.
+Razumihin stood facing him in gloomy and earnest reflection.
+“Of course, I am an ass,” he observed, sombre as a storm cloud, “but
+still... you are another.”
+“No, brother, not at all such another. I am not dreaming of any folly.”
+They walked along in silence and only when they were close to
+Raskolnikov’s lodgings, Razumihin broke the silence in considerable
+anxiety.
+“Listen,” he said, “you’re a first-rate fellow, but among your other
+failings, you’re a loose fish, that I know, and a dirty one, too. You
+are a feeble, nervous wretch, and a mass of whims, you’re getting fat
+and lazy and can’t deny yourself anything--and I call that dirty because
+it leads one straight into the dirt. You’ve let yourself get so slack
+that I don’t know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted doctor.
+You--a doctor--sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to your
+patients! In another three or four years you won’t get up for your
+patients... But hang it all, that’s not the point!... You are going
+to spend to-night in the landlady’s flat here. (Hard work I’ve had to
+persuade her!) And I’ll be in the kitchen. So here’s a chance for you to
+get to know her better.... It’s not as you think! There’s not a trace of
+anything of the sort, brother...!”
+“But I don’t think!”
+“Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage
+virtue... and yet she’s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting!
+Save me from her, by all that’s unholy! She’s most prepossessing... I’ll
+repay you, I’ll do anything....”
+Zossimov laughed more violently than ever.
+“Well, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?”
+“It won’t be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to her,
+as long as you sit by her and talk. You’re a doctor, too; try curing
+her of something. I swear you won’t regret it. She has a piano, and you
+know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian one: ‘I
+shed hot tears.’ She likes the genuine article--and well, it all
+began with that song; Now you’re a regular performer, a _maître_, a
+Rubinstein.... I assure you, you won’t regret it!”
+“But have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise of
+marriage, perhaps?”
+“Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is not
+that sort at all.... Tchebarov tried that....”
+“Well then, drop her!”
+“But I can’t drop her like that!”
+“Why can’t you?”
+“Well, I can’t, that’s all about it! There’s an element of attraction
+here, brother.”
+“Then why have you fascinated her?”
+“I haven’t fascinated her; perhaps I was fascinated myself in my folly.
+But she won’t care a straw whether it’s you or I, so long as somebody
+sits beside her, sighing.... I can’t explain the position, brother...
+look here, you are good at mathematics, and working at it now... begin
+teaching her the integral calculus; upon my soul, I’m not joking, I’m
+in earnest, it’ll be just the same to her. She will gaze at you and sigh
+for a whole year together. I talked to her once for two days at a time
+about the Prussian House of Lords (for one must talk of something)--she
+just sighed and perspired! And you mustn’t talk of love--she’s bashful
+to hysterics--but just let her see you can’t tear yourself away--that’s
+enough. It’s fearfully comfortable; you’re quite at home, you can
+read, sit, lie about, write. You may even venture on a kiss, if you’re
+careful.”
+“But what do I want with her?”
+“Ach, I can’t make you understand! You see, you are made for each other!
+I have often been reminded of you!... You’ll come to it in the end! So
+does it matter whether it’s sooner or later? There’s the feather-bed
+element here, brother--ach! and not only that! There’s an attraction
+here--here you have the end of the world, an anchorage, a quiet haven,
+the navel of the earth, the three fishes that are the foundation of the
+world, the essence of pancakes, of savoury fish-pies, of the evening
+samovar, of soft sighs and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on--as
+snug as though you were dead, and yet you’re alive--the advantages
+of both at once! Well, hang it, brother, what stuff I’m talking, it’s
+bedtime! Listen. I sometimes wake up at night; so I’ll go in and look at
+him. But there’s no need, it’s all right. Don’t you worry yourself,
+yet if you like, you might just look in once, too. But if you notice
+anything--delirium or fever--wake me at once. But there can’t be....”
+CHAPTER II
+Razumihin waked up next morning at eight o’clock, troubled and serious.
+He found himself confronted with many new and unlooked-for perplexities.
+He had never expected that he would ever wake up feeling like that. He
+remembered every detail of the previous day and he knew that a perfectly
+novel experience had befallen him, that he had received an impression
+unlike anything he had known before. At the same time he recognised
+clearly that the dream which had fired his imagination was hopelessly
+unattainable--so unattainable that he felt positively ashamed of it, and
+he hastened to pass to the other more practical cares and difficulties
+bequeathed him by that “thrice accursed yesterday.”
+The most awful recollection of the previous day was the way he had shown
+himself “base and mean,” not only because he had been drunk, but
+because he had taken advantage of the young girl’s position to abuse
+her _fiancé_ in his stupid jealousy, knowing nothing of their mutual
+relations and obligations and next to nothing of the man himself. And
+what right had he to criticise him in that hasty and unguarded manner?
+Who had asked for his opinion? Was it thinkable that such a creature as
+Avdotya Romanovna would be marrying an unworthy man for money? So there
+must be something in him. The lodgings? But after all how could he know
+the character of the lodgings? He was furnishing a flat... Foo! how
+despicable it all was! And what justification was it that he was drunk?
+Such a stupid excuse was even more degrading! In wine is truth, and the
+truth had all come out, “that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse
+and envious heart”! And would such a dream ever be permissible to
+him, Razumihin? What was he beside such a girl--he, the drunken noisy
+braggart of last night? Was it possible to imagine so absurd and cynical
+a juxtaposition? Razumihin blushed desperately at the very idea and
+suddenly the recollection forced itself vividly upon him of how he had
+said last night on the stairs that the landlady would be jealous of
+Avdotya Romanovna... that was simply intolerable. He brought his fist
+down heavily on the kitchen stove, hurt his hand and sent one of the
+bricks flying.
+“Of course,” he muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of
+self-abasement, “of course, all these infamies can never be wiped out or
+smoothed over... and so it’s useless even to think of it, and I must
+go to them in silence and do my duty... in silence, too... and not ask
+forgiveness, and say nothing... for all is lost now!”
+And yet as he dressed he examined his attire more carefully than usual.
+He hadn’t another suit--if he had had, perhaps he wouldn’t have put it
+on. “I would have made a point of not putting it on.” But in any case he
+could not remain a cynic and a dirty sloven; he had no right to offend
+the feelings of others, especially when they were in need of his
+assistance and asking him to see them. He brushed his clothes carefully.
+His linen was always decent; in that respect he was especially clean.
+He washed that morning scrupulously--he got some soap from Nastasya--he
+washed his hair, his neck and especially his hands. When it came to the
+question whether to shave his stubbly chin or not (Praskovya Pavlovna
+had capital razors that had been left by her late husband), the question
+was angrily answered in the negative. “Let it stay as it is! What if
+they think that I shaved on purpose to...? They certainly would think
+so! Not on any account!”
+“And... the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the
+manners of a pothouse; and... and even admitting that he knew he had
+some of the essentials of a gentleman... what was there in that to be
+proud of? Everyone ought to be a gentleman and more than that... and all
+the same (he remembered) he, too, had done little things... not exactly
+dishonest, and yet.... And what thoughts he sometimes had; hm... and to
+set all that beside Avdotya Romanovna! Confound it! So be it! Well, he’d
+make a point then of being dirty, greasy, pothouse in his manners and he
+wouldn’t care! He’d be worse!”
+He was engaged in such monologues when Zossimov, who had spent the night
+in Praskovya Pavlovna’s parlour, came in.
+He was going home and was in a hurry to look at the invalid first.
+Razumihin informed him that Raskolnikov was sleeping like a dormouse.
+Zossimov gave orders that they shouldn’t wake him and promised to see
+him again about eleven.
+“If he is still at home,” he added. “Damn it all! If one can’t control
+one’s patients, how is one to cure them? Do you know whether _he_ will
+go to them, or whether _they_ are coming here?”
+“They are coming, I think,” said Razumihin, understanding the object
+of the question, “and they will discuss their family affairs, no doubt.
+I’ll be off. You, as the doctor, have more right to be here than I.”
+“But I am not a father confessor; I shall come and go away; I’ve plenty
+to do besides looking after them.”
+“One thing worries me,” interposed Razumihin, frowning. “On the way home
+I talked a lot of drunken nonsense to him... all sorts of things... and
+amongst them that you were afraid that he... might become insane.”
+“You told the ladies so, too.”
+“I know it was stupid! You may beat me if you like! Did you think so
+seriously?”
+“That’s nonsense, I tell you, how could I think it seriously? You,
+yourself, described him as a monomaniac when you fetched me to
+him... and we added fuel to the fire yesterday, you did, that is, with
+your story about the painter; it was a nice conversation, when he was,
+perhaps, mad on that very point! If only I’d known what happened then
+at the police station and that some wretch... had insulted him with this
+suspicion! Hm... I would not have allowed that conversation yesterday.
+These monomaniacs will make a mountain out of a mole-hill... and
+see their fancies as solid realities.... As far as I remember, it was
+Zametov’s story that cleared up half the mystery, to my mind. Why, I
+know one case in which a hypochondriac, a man of forty, cut the throat
+of a little boy of eight, because he couldn’t endure the jokes he made
+every day at table! And in this case his rags, the insolent police
+officer, the fever and this suspicion! All that working upon a man half
+frantic with hypochondria, and with his morbid exceptional vanity! That
+may well have been the starting-point of illness. Well, bother it
+all!... And, by the way, that Zametov certainly is a nice fellow, but
+hm... he shouldn’t have told all that last night. He is an awful
+chatterbox!”
+“But whom did he tell it to? You and me?”
+“And Porfiry.”
+“What does that matter?”
+“And, by the way, have you any influence on them, his mother and sister?
+Tell them to be more careful with him to-day....”
+“They’ll get on all right!” Razumihin answered reluctantly.
+“Why is he so set against this Luzhin? A man with money and she doesn’t
+seem to dislike him... and they haven’t a farthing, I suppose? eh?”
+“But what business is it of yours?” Razumihin cried with annoyance. “How
+can I tell whether they’ve a farthing? Ask them yourself and perhaps
+you’ll find out....”
+“Foo! what an ass you are sometimes! Last night’s wine has not gone off
+yet.... Good-bye; thank your Praskovya Pavlovna from me for my night’s
+lodging. She locked herself in, made no reply to my _bonjour_ through
+the door; she was up at seven o’clock, the samovar was taken into her
+from the kitchen. I was not vouchsafed a personal interview....”
+At nine o’clock precisely Razumihin reached the lodgings at Bakaleyev’s
+house. Both ladies were waiting for him with nervous impatience. They
+had risen at seven o’clock or earlier. He entered looking as black as
+night, bowed awkwardly and was at once furious with himself for it. He
+had reckoned without his host: Pulcheria Alexandrovna fairly rushed at
+him, seized him by both hands and was almost kissing them. He glanced
+timidly at Avdotya Romanovna, but her proud countenance wore at that
+moment an expression of such gratitude and friendliness, such
+complete and unlooked-for respect (in place of the sneering looks and
+ill-disguised contempt he had expected), that it threw him into greater
+confusion than if he had been met with abuse. Fortunately there was a
+subject for conversation, and he made haste to snatch at it.
+Hearing that everything was going well and that Rodya had not yet waked,
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna declared that she was glad to hear it, because
+“she had something which it was very, very necessary to talk over
+beforehand.” Then followed an inquiry about breakfast and an invitation
+to have it with them; they had waited to have it with him. Avdotya
+Romanovna rang the bell: it was answered by a ragged dirty waiter, and
+they asked him to bring tea which was served at last, but in such
+a dirty and disorderly way that the ladies were ashamed. Razumihin
+vigorously attacked the lodgings, but, remembering Luzhin, stopped
+in embarrassment and was greatly relieved by Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s
+questions, which showered in a continual stream upon him.
+He talked for three quarters of an hour, being constantly interrupted
+by their questions, and succeeded in describing to them all the
+most important facts he knew of the last year of Raskolnikov’s life,
+concluding with a circumstantial account of his illness. He omitted,
+however, many things, which were better omitted, including the scene at
+the police station with all its consequences. They listened eagerly
+to his story, and, when he thought he had finished and satisfied his
+listeners, he found that they considered he had hardly begun.
+“Tell me, tell me! What do you think...? Excuse me, I still don’t know
+your name!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna put in hastily.
+“Dmitri Prokofitch.”
+“I should like very, very much to know, Dmitri Prokofitch... how he
+looks... on things in general now, that is, how can I explain, what are
+his likes and dislikes? Is he always so irritable? Tell me, if you can,
+what are his hopes and, so to say, his dreams? Under what influences is
+he now? In a word, I should like...”
+“Ah, mother, how can he answer all that at once?” observed Dounia.
+“Good heavens, I had not expected to find him in the least like this,
+Dmitri Prokofitch!”
+“Naturally,” answered Razumihin. “I have no mother, but my uncle comes
+every year and almost every time he can scarcely recognise me, even in
+appearance, though he is a clever man; and your three years’ separation
+means a great deal. What am I to tell you? I have known Rodion for
+a year and a half; he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of
+late--and perhaps for a long time before--he has been suspicious and
+fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like
+showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his
+heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all morbid, but simply
+cold and inhumanly callous; it’s as though he were alternating between
+two characters. Sometimes he is fearfully reserved! He says he is
+so busy that everything is a hindrance, and yet he lies in bed doing
+nothing. He doesn’t jeer at things, not because he hasn’t the wit, but
+as though he hadn’t time to waste on such trifles. He never listens
+to what is said to him. He is never interested in what interests other
+people at any given moment. He thinks very highly of himself and perhaps
+he is right. Well, what more? I think your arrival will have a most
+beneficial influence upon him.”
+“God grant it may,” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, distressed by
+Razumihin’s account of her Rodya.
+And Razumihin ventured to look more boldly at Avdotya Romanovna at last.
+He glanced at her often while he was talking, but only for a moment and
+looked away again at once. Avdotya Romanovna sat at the table, listening
+attentively, then got up again and began walking to and fro with her
+arms folded and her lips compressed, occasionally putting in a question,
+without stopping her walk. She had the same habit of not listening to
+what was said. She was wearing a dress of thin dark stuff and she had a
+white transparent scarf round her neck. Razumihin soon detected signs of
+extreme poverty in their belongings. Had Avdotya Romanovna been dressed
+like a queen, he felt that he would not be afraid of her, but perhaps
+just because she was poorly dressed and that he noticed all the misery
+of her surroundings, his heart was filled with dread and he began to be
+afraid of every word he uttered, every gesture he made, which was very
+trying for a man who already felt diffident.
+“You’ve told us a great deal that is interesting about my brother’s
+character... and have told it impartially. I am glad. I thought that you
+were too uncritically devoted to him,” observed Avdotya Romanovna with
+a smile. “I think you are right that he needs a woman’s care,” she added
+thoughtfully.
+“I didn’t say so; but I daresay you are right, only...”
+“What?”
+“He loves no one and perhaps he never will,” Razumihin declared
+decisively.
+“You mean he is not capable of love?”
+“Do you know, Avdotya Romanovna, you are awfully like your brother, in
+everything, indeed!” he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but
+remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother,
+he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Avdotya
+Romanovna couldn’t help laughing when she looked at him.
+“You may both be mistaken about Rodya,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna remarked,
+slightly piqued. “I am not talking of our present difficulty, Dounia.
+What Pyotr Petrovitch writes in this letter and what you and I have
+supposed may be mistaken, but you can’t imagine, Dmitri Prokofitch, how
+moody and, so to say, capricious he is. I never could depend on what
+he would do when he was only fifteen. And I am sure that he might
+do something now that nobody else would think of doing... Well, for
+instance, do you know how a year and a half ago he astounded me and gave
+me a shock that nearly killed me, when he had the idea of marrying that
+girl--what was her name--his landlady’s daughter?”
+“Did you hear about that affair?” asked Avdotya Romanovna.
+“Do you suppose----” Pulcheria Alexandrovna continued warmly. “Do you
+suppose that my tears, my entreaties, my illness, my possible death from
+grief, our poverty would have made him pause? No, he would calmly have
+disregarded all obstacles. And yet it isn’t that he doesn’t love us!”
+“He has never spoken a word of that affair to me,” Razumihin answered
+cautiously. “But I did hear something from Praskovya Pavlovna herself,
+though she is by no means a gossip. And what I heard certainly was
+rather strange.”
+“And what did you hear?” both the ladies asked at once.
+“Well, nothing very special. I only learned that the marriage, which
+only failed to take place through the girl’s death, was not at all to
+Praskovya Pavlovna’s liking. They say, too, the girl was not at all
+pretty, in fact I am told positively ugly... and such an invalid... and
+queer. But she seems to have had some good qualities. She must have
+had some good qualities or it’s quite inexplicable.... She had no money
+either and he wouldn’t have considered her money.... But it’s always
+difficult to judge in such matters.”
+“I am sure she was a good girl,” Avdotya Romanovna observed briefly.
+“God forgive me, I simply rejoiced at her death. Though I don’t know
+which of them would have caused most misery to the other--he to her
+or she to him,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna concluded. Then she began
+tentatively questioning him about the scene on the previous day with
+Luzhin, hesitating and continually glancing at Dounia, obviously to
+the latter’s annoyance. This incident more than all the rest evidently
+caused her uneasiness, even consternation. Razumihin described it in
+detail again, but this time he added his own conclusions: he openly
+blamed Raskolnikov for intentionally insulting Pyotr Petrovitch, not
+seeking to excuse him on the score of his illness.
+“He had planned it before his illness,” he added.
+“I think so, too,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna agreed with a dejected air.
+But she was very much surprised at hearing Razumihin express himself
+so carefully and even with a certain respect about Pyotr Petrovitch.
+Avdotya Romanovna, too, was struck by it.
+“So this is your opinion of Pyotr Petrovitch?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
+could not resist asking.
+“I can have no other opinion of your daughter’s future husband,”
+Razumihin answered firmly and with warmth, “and I don’t say it simply
+from vulgar politeness, but because... simply because Avdotya Romanovna
+has of her own free will deigned to accept this man. If I spoke so
+rudely of him last night, it was because I was disgustingly drunk and...
+mad besides; yes, mad, crazy, I lost my head completely... and this
+morning I am ashamed of it.”
+He crimsoned and ceased speaking. Avdotya Romanovna flushed, but did not
+break the silence. She had not uttered a word from the moment they began
+to speak of Luzhin.
+Without her support Pulcheria Alexandrovna obviously did not know what
+to do. At last, faltering and continually glancing at her daughter, she
+confessed that she was exceedingly worried by one circumstance.
+“You see, Dmitri Prokofitch,” she began. “I’ll be perfectly open with
+Dmitri Prokofitch, Dounia?”
+“Of course, mother,” said Avdotya Romanovna emphatically.
+“This is what it is,” she began in haste, as though the permission to
+speak of her trouble lifted a weight off her mind. “Very early this
+morning we got a note from Pyotr Petrovitch in reply to our letter
+announcing our arrival. He promised to meet us at the station, you
+know; instead of that he sent a servant to bring us the address of these
+lodgings and to show us the way; and he sent a message that he would
+be here himself this morning. But this morning this note came from him.
+You’d better read it yourself; there is one point in it which worries me
+very much... you will soon see what that is, and... tell me your candid
+opinion, Dmitri Prokofitch! You know Rodya’s character better than
+anyone and no one can advise us better than you can. Dounia, I must tell
+you, made her decision at once, but I still don’t feel sure how to act
+and I... I’ve been waiting for your opinion.”
+Razumihin opened the note which was dated the previous evening and read
+as follows:
+“Dear Madam, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, I have the honour to inform you
+that owing to unforeseen obstacles I was rendered unable to meet you at
+the railway station; I sent a very competent person with the same object
+in view. I likewise shall be deprived of the honour of an interview with
+you to-morrow morning by business in the Senate that does not admit of
+delay, and also that I may not intrude on your family circle while you
+are meeting your son, and Avdotya Romanovna her brother. I shall have
+the honour of visiting you and paying you my respects at your lodgings
+not later than to-morrow evening at eight o’clock precisely, and
+herewith I venture to present my earnest and, I may add, imperative
+request that Rodion Romanovitch may not be present at our interview--as
+he offered me a gross and unprecedented affront on the occasion of my
+visit to him in his illness yesterday, and, moreover, since I desire
+from you personally an indispensable and circumstantial explanation
+upon a certain point, in regard to which I wish to learn your own
+interpretation. I have the honour to inform you, in anticipation,
+that if, in spite of my request, I meet Rodion Romanovitch, I shall be
+compelled to withdraw immediately and then you have only yourself to
+blame. I write on the assumption that Rodion Romanovitch who appeared so
+ill at my visit, suddenly recovered two hours later and so, being able
+to leave the house, may visit you also. I was confirmed in that belief
+by the testimony of my own eyes in the lodging of a drunken man who
+was run over and has since died, to whose daughter, a young woman of
+notorious behaviour, he gave twenty-five roubles on the pretext of the
+funeral, which gravely surprised me knowing what pains you were at to
+raise that sum. Herewith expressing my special respect to your estimable
+daughter, Avdotya Romanovna, I beg you to accept the respectful homage
+of
+“Your humble servant,
+“P. LUZHIN.”
+“What am I to do now, Dmitri Prokofitch?” began Pulcheria Alexandrovna,
+almost weeping. “How can I ask Rodya not to come? Yesterday he insisted
+so earnestly on our refusing Pyotr Petrovitch and now we are ordered not
+to receive Rodya! He will come on purpose if he knows, and... what will
+happen then?”
+“Act on Avdotya Romanovna’s decision,” Razumihin answered calmly at
+once.
+“Oh, dear me! She says... goodness knows what she says, she doesn’t
+explain her object! She says that it would be best, at least, not that
+it would be best, but that it’s absolutely necessary that Rodya should
+make a point of being here at eight o’clock and that they must meet....
+I didn’t want even to show him the letter, but to prevent him
+from coming by some stratagem with your help... because he is so
+irritable.... Besides I don’t understand about that drunkard who died
+and that daughter, and how he could have given the daughter all the
+money... which...”
+“Which cost you such sacrifice, mother,” put in Avdotya Romanovna.
+“He was not himself yesterday,” Razumihin said thoughtfully, “if you
+only knew what he was up to in a restaurant yesterday, though there
+was sense in it too.... Hm! He did say something, as we were going home
+yesterday evening, about a dead man and a girl, but I didn’t understand
+a word.... But last night, I myself...”
+“The best thing, mother, will be for us to go to him ourselves and
+there I assure you we shall see at once what’s to be done. Besides,
+it’s getting late--good heavens, it’s past ten,” she cried looking at
+a splendid gold enamelled watch which hung round her neck on a thin
+Venetian chain, and looked entirely out of keeping with the rest of her
+dress. “A present from her _fiancé_,” thought Razumihin.
+“We must start, Dounia, we must start,” her mother cried in a flutter.
+“He will be thinking we are still angry after yesterday, from our coming
+so late. Merciful heavens!”
+While she said this she was hurriedly putting on her hat and mantle;
+Dounia, too, put on her things. Her gloves, as Razumihin noticed, were
+not merely shabby but had holes in them, and yet this evident poverty
+gave the two ladies an air of special dignity, which is always found in
+people who know how to wear poor clothes. Razumihin looked reverently
+at Dounia and felt proud of escorting her. “The queen who mended her
+stockings in prison,” he thought, “must have looked then every inch a
+queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levées.”
+“My God!” exclaimed Pulcheria Alexandrovna, “little did I think that I
+should ever fear seeing my son, my darling, darling Rodya! I am afraid,
+Dmitri Prokofitch,” she added, glancing at him timidly.
+“Don’t be afraid, mother,” said Dounia, kissing her, “better have faith
+in him.”
+“Oh, dear, I have faith in him, but I haven’t slept all night,”
+exclaimed the poor woman.
+They came out into the street.
+“Do you know, Dounia, when I dozed a little this morning I dreamed of
+Marfa Petrovna... she was all in white... she came up to me, took
+my hand, and shook her head at me, but so sternly as though she were
+blaming me.... Is that a good omen? Oh, dear me! You don’t know, Dmitri
+Prokofitch, that Marfa Petrovna’s dead!”
+“No, I didn’t know; who is Marfa Petrovna?”
+“She died suddenly; and only fancy...”
+“Afterwards, mamma,” put in Dounia. “He doesn’t know who Marfa Petrovna
+is.”
+“Ah, you don’t know? And I was thinking that you knew all about us.
+Forgive me, Dmitri Prokofitch, I don’t know what I am thinking about
+these last few days. I look upon you really as a providence for us, and
+so I took it for granted that you knew all about us. I look on you as a
+relation.... Don’t be angry with me for saying so. Dear me, what’s the
+matter with your right hand? Have you knocked it?”
+“Yes, I bruised it,” muttered Razumihin overjoyed.
+“I sometimes speak too much from the heart, so that Dounia finds fault
+with me.... But, dear me, what a cupboard he lives in! I wonder whether
+he is awake? Does this woman, his landlady, consider it a room? Listen,
+you say he does not like to show his feelings, so perhaps I shall annoy
+him with my... weaknesses? Do advise me, Dmitri Prokofitch, how am I to
+treat him? I feel quite distracted, you know.”
+“Don’t question him too much about anything if you see him frown; don’t
+ask him too much about his health; he doesn’t like that.”
+“Ah, Dmitri Prokofitch, how hard it is to be a mother! But here are the
+stairs.... What an awful staircase!”
+“Mother, you are quite pale, don’t distress yourself, darling,” said
+Dounia caressing her, then with flashing eyes she added: “He ought to be
+happy at seeing you, and you are tormenting yourself so.”
+“Wait, I’ll peep in and see whether he has waked up.”
+The ladies slowly followed Razumihin, who went on before, and when they
+reached the landlady’s door on the fourth storey, they noticed that her
+door was a tiny crack open and that two keen black eyes were watching
+them from the darkness within. When their eyes met, the door was
+suddenly shut with such a slam that Pulcheria Alexandrovna almost cried
+out.
+CHAPTER III
+“He is well, quite well!” Zossimov cried cheerfully as they entered.
+He had come in ten minutes earlier and was sitting in the same place
+as before, on the sofa. Raskolnikov was sitting in the opposite corner,
+fully dressed and carefully washed and combed, as he had not been for
+some time past. The room was immediately crowded, yet Nastasya managed
+to follow the visitors in and stayed to listen.
+Raskolnikov really was almost well, as compared with his condition the
+day before, but he was still pale, listless, and sombre. He looked like
+a wounded man or one who has undergone some terrible physical suffering.
+His brows were knitted, his lips compressed, his eyes feverish. He spoke
+little and reluctantly, as though performing a duty, and there was a
+restlessness in his movements.
+He only wanted a sling on his arm or a bandage on his finger to complete
+the impression of a man with a painful abscess or a broken arm. The
+pale, sombre face lighted up for a moment when his mother and sister
+entered, but this only gave it a look of more intense suffering, in
+place of its listless dejection. The light soon died away, but the look
+of suffering remained, and Zossimov, watching and studying his patient
+with all the zest of a young doctor beginning to practise, noticed
+in him no joy at the arrival of his mother and sister, but a sort of
+bitter, hidden determination to bear another hour or two of inevitable
+torture. He saw later that almost every word of the following
+conversation seemed to touch on some sore place and irritate it. But
+at the same time he marvelled at the power of controlling himself
+and hiding his feelings in a patient who the previous day had, like a
+monomaniac, fallen into a frenzy at the slightest word.
+“Yes, I see myself now that I am almost well,” said Raskolnikov,
+giving his mother and sister a kiss of welcome which made Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna radiant at once. “And I don’t say this _as I did
+yesterday_,” he said, addressing Razumihin, with a friendly pressure of
+his hand.
+“Yes, indeed, I am quite surprised at him to-day,” began Zossimov, much
+delighted at the ladies’ entrance, for he had not succeeded in keeping
+up a conversation with his patient for ten minutes. “In another three or
+four days, if he goes on like this, he will be just as before, that is,
+as he was a month ago, or two... or perhaps even three. This has been
+coming on for a long while.... eh? Confess, now, that it has been
+perhaps your own fault?” he added, with a tentative smile, as though
+still afraid of irritating him.
+“It is very possible,” answered Raskolnikov coldly.
+“I should say, too,” continued Zossimov with zest, “that your complete
+recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to you,
+I should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid the
+elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce your
+morbid condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will go
+from bad to worse. These fundamental causes I don’t know, but they must
+be known to you. You are an intelligent man, and must have observed
+yourself, of course. I fancy the first stage of your derangement
+coincides with your leaving the university. You must not be left without
+occupation, and so, work and a definite aim set before you might, I
+fancy, be very beneficial.”
+“Yes, yes; you are perfectly right.... I will make haste and return to
+the university: and then everything will go smoothly....”
+Zossimov, who had begun his sage advice partly to make an effect before
+the ladies, was certainly somewhat mystified, when, glancing at his
+patient, he observed unmistakable mockery on his face. This lasted
+an instant, however. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began at once thanking
+Zossimov, especially for his visit to their lodging the previous night.
+“What! he saw you last night?” Raskolnikov asked, as though startled.
+“Then you have not slept either after your journey.”
+“Ach, Rodya, that was only till two o’clock. Dounia and I never go to
+bed before two at home.”
+“I don’t know how to thank him either,” Raskolnikov went on,
+suddenly frowning and looking down. “Setting aside the question of
+payment--forgive me for referring to it (he turned to Zossimov)--I
+really don’t know what I have done to deserve such special attention
+from you! I simply don’t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon
+me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.”
+“Don’t be irritated.” Zossimov forced himself to laugh. “Assume that you
+are my first patient--well--we fellows just beginning to practise love
+our first patients as if they were our children, and some almost fall in
+love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in patients.”
+“I say nothing about him,” added Raskolnikov, pointing to Razumihin,
+“though he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble.”
+“What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood to-day,
+are you?” shouted Razumihin.
+If he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no
+trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite.
+But Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and uneasily watching
+her brother.
+“As for you, mother, I don’t dare to speak,” he went on, as though
+repeating a lesson learned by heart. “It is only to-day that I have
+been able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here
+yesterday, waiting for me to come back.”
+When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his sister,
+smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of real
+unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught it at once, and warmly pressed his
+hand, overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her
+since their dispute the previous day. The mother’s face lighted up
+with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken
+reconciliation. “Yes, that is what I love him for,” Razumihin,
+exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a vigorous turn in his
+chair. “He has these movements.”
+“And how well he does it all,” the mother was thinking to herself. “What
+generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end
+to all the misunderstanding with his sister--simply by holding out his
+hand at the right minute and looking at her like that.... And what
+fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!... He is even better
+looking than Dounia.... But, good heavens, what a suit--how terribly
+he’s dressed!... Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch’s shop, is
+better dressed! I could rush at him and hug him... weep over him--but
+I am afraid.... Oh, dear, he’s so strange! He’s talking kindly, but I’m
+afraid! Why, what am I afraid of?...”
+“Oh, Rodya, you wouldn’t believe,” she began suddenly, in haste to
+answer his words to her, “how unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now
+that it’s all over and done with and we are quite happy again--I can
+tell you. Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace
+you and that woman--ah, here she is! Good morning, Nastasya!... She told
+us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away
+from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the
+streets. You can’t imagine how we felt! I couldn’t help thinking of the
+tragic end of Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father’s--you
+can’t remember him, Rodya--who ran out in the same way in a high fever
+and fell into the well in the court-yard and they couldn’t pull him out
+till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of
+rushing to find Pyotr Petrovitch to ask him to help.... Because we were
+alone, utterly alone,” she said plaintively and stopped short,
+suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Pyotr
+Petrovitch, although “we are quite happy again.”
+“Yes, yes.... Of course it’s very annoying....” Raskolnikov muttered in
+reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed
+at him in perplexity.
+“What else was it I wanted to say?” He went on trying to recollect. “Oh,
+yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don’t think that I didn’t mean
+to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first.”
+“What are you saying, Rodya?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. She, too,
+was surprised.
+“Is he answering us as a duty?” Dounia wondered. “Is he being reconciled
+and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating
+a lesson?”
+“I’ve only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing
+to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Nastasya... to wash out
+the blood... I’ve only just dressed.”
+“Blood! What blood?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in alarm.
+“Oh, nothing--don’t be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about
+yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run
+over... a clerk...”
+“Delirious? But you remember everything!” Razumihin interrupted.
+“That’s true,” Raskolnikov answered with special carefulness. “I
+remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet--why I did
+that and went there and said that, I can’t clearly explain now.”
+“A familiar phenomenon,” interposed Zossimov, “actions are sometimes
+performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the
+actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions--it’s
+like a dream.”
+“Perhaps it’s a good thing really that he should think me almost a
+madman,” thought Raskolnikov.
+“Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too,” observed
+Dounia, looking uneasily at Zossimov.
+“There is some truth in your observation,” the latter replied. “In that
+sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the
+slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we
+must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among
+dozens--perhaps hundreds of thousands--hardly one is to be met with.”
+At the word “madman,” carelessly dropped by Zossimov in his chatter on
+his favourite subject, everyone frowned.
+Raskolnikov sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought with a
+strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on something.
+“Well, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!”
+Razumihin cried hastily.
+“What?” Raskolnikov seemed to wake up. “Oh... I got spattered with
+blood helping to carry him to his lodging. By the way, mamma, I did an
+unpardonable thing yesterday. I was literally out of my mind. I gave
+away all the money you sent me... to his wife for the funeral. She’s
+a widow now, in consumption, a poor creature... three little children,
+starving... nothing in the house... there’s a daughter, too... perhaps
+you’d have given it yourself if you’d seen them. But I had no right to
+do it I admit, especially as I knew how you needed the money yourself.
+To help others one must have the right to do it, or else _Crevez,
+chiens, si vous n’êtes pas contents_.” He laughed, “That’s right, isn’t
+it, Dounia?”
+“No, it’s not,” answered Dounia firmly.
+“Bah! you, too, have ideals,” he muttered, looking at her almost with
+hatred, and smiling sarcastically. “I ought to have considered that....
+Well, that’s praiseworthy, and it’s better for you... and if you reach a
+line you won’t overstep, you will be unhappy... and if you overstep it,
+maybe you will be still unhappier.... But all that’s nonsense,” he added
+irritably, vexed at being carried away. “I only meant to say that I beg
+your forgiveness, mother,” he concluded, shortly and abruptly.
+“That’s enough, Rodya, I am sure that everything you do is very good,”
+said his mother, delighted.
+“Don’t be too sure,” he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile.
+A silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this
+conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the
+forgiveness, and all were feeling it.
+“It is as though they were afraid of me,” Raskolnikov was thinking
+to himself, looking askance at his mother and sister. Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna was indeed growing more timid the longer she kept silent.
+“Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much,” flashed through
+his mind.
+“Do you know, Rodya, Marfa Petrovna is dead,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
+suddenly blurted out.
+“What Marfa Petrovna?”
+“Oh, mercy on us--Marfa Petrovna Svidrigaïlov. I wrote you so much about
+her.”
+“A-a-h! Yes, I remember.... So she’s dead! Oh, really?” he roused
+himself suddenly, as if waking up. “What did she die of?”
+“Only imagine, quite suddenly,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna answered
+hurriedly, encouraged by his curiosity. “On the very day I was sending
+you that letter! Would you believe it, that awful man seems to have been
+the cause of her death. They say he beat her dreadfully.”
+“Why, were they on such bad terms?” he asked, addressing his sister.
+“Not at all. Quite the contrary indeed. With her, he was always very
+patient, considerate even. In fact, all those seven years of their
+married life he gave way to her, too much so indeed, in many cases. All
+of a sudden he seems to have lost patience.”
+“Then he could not have been so awful if he controlled himself for seven
+years? You seem to be defending him, Dounia?”
+“No, no, he’s an awful man! I can imagine nothing more awful!” Dounia
+answered, almost with a shudder, knitting her brows, and sinking into
+thought.
+“That had happened in the morning,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on
+hurriedly. “And directly afterwards she ordered the horses to be
+harnessed to drive to the town immediately after dinner. She always used
+to drive to the town in such cases. She ate a very good dinner, I am
+told....”
+“After the beating?”
+“That was always her... habit; and immediately after dinner, so as not
+to be late in starting, she went to the bath-house.... You see, she was
+undergoing some treatment with baths. They have a cold spring there, and
+she used to bathe in it regularly every day, and no sooner had she got
+into the water when she suddenly had a stroke!”
+“I should think so,” said Zossimov.
+“And did he beat her badly?”
+“What does that matter!” put in Dounia.
+“H’m! But I don’t know why you want to tell us such gossip, mother,”
+said Raskolnikov irritably, as it were in spite of himself.
+“Ah, my dear, I don’t know what to talk about,” broke from Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna.
+“Why, are you all afraid of me?” he asked, with a constrained smile.
+“That’s certainly true,” said Dounia, looking directly and sternly at
+her brother. “Mother was crossing herself with terror as she came up the
+stairs.”
+His face worked, as though in convulsion.
+“Ach, what are you saying, Dounia! Don’t be angry, please, Rodya....
+Why did you say that, Dounia?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began,
+overwhelmed--“You see, coming here, I was dreaming all the way, in the
+train, how we should meet, how we should talk over everything
+together.... And I was so happy, I did not notice the journey! But what
+am I saying? I am happy now.... You should not, Dounia.... I am happy
+now--simply in seeing you, Rodya....”
+“Hush, mother,” he muttered in confusion, not looking at her, but
+pressing her hand. “We shall have time to speak freely of everything!”
+As he said this, he was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion and turned
+pale. Again that awful sensation he had known of late passed with deadly
+chill over his soul. Again it became suddenly plain and perceptible to
+him that he had just told a fearful lie--that he would never now be
+able to speak freely of everything--that he would never again be able to
+_speak_ of anything to anyone. The anguish of this thought was such that
+for a moment he almost forgot himself. He got up from his seat, and not
+looking at anyone walked towards the door.
+“What are you about?” cried Razumihin, clutching him by the arm.
+He sat down again, and began looking about him, in silence. They were
+all looking at him in perplexity.
+“But what are you all so dull for?” he shouted, suddenly and quite
+unexpectedly. “Do say something! What’s the use of sitting like this?
+Come, do speak. Let us talk.... We meet together and sit in silence....
+Come, anything!”
+“Thank God; I was afraid the same thing as yesterday was beginning
+again,” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself.
+“What is the matter, Rodya?” asked Avdotya Romanovna, distrustfully.
+“Oh, nothing! I remembered something,” he answered, and suddenly
+laughed.
+“Well, if you remembered something; that’s all right!... I was beginning
+to think...” muttered Zossimov, getting up from the sofa. “It is time
+for me to be off. I will look in again perhaps... if I can...” He made
+his bows, and went out.
+“What an excellent man!” observed Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“Yes, excellent, splendid, well-educated, intelligent,” Raskolnikov
+began, suddenly speaking with surprising rapidity, and a liveliness he
+had not shown till then. “I can’t remember where I met him before my
+illness.... I believe I have met him somewhere----... And this is a good
+man, too,” he nodded at Razumihin. “Do you like him, Dounia?” he asked
+her; and suddenly, for some unknown reason, laughed.
+“Very much,” answered Dounia.
+“Foo!--what a pig you are!” Razumihin protested, blushing in terrible
+confusion, and he got up from his chair. Pulcheria Alexandrovna smiled
+faintly, but Raskolnikov laughed aloud.
+“Where are you off to?”
+“I must go.”
+“You need not at all. Stay. Zossimov has gone, so you must. Don’t go.
+What’s the time? Is it twelve o’clock? What a pretty watch you have got,
+Dounia. But why are you all silent again? I do all the talking.”
+“It was a present from Marfa Petrovna,” answered Dounia.
+“And a very expensive one!” added Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“A-ah! What a big one! Hardly like a lady’s.”
+“I like that sort,” said Dounia.
+“So it is not a present from her _fiancé_,” thought Razumihin, and was
+unreasonably delighted.
+“I thought it was Luzhin’s present,” observed Raskolnikov.
+“No, he has not made Dounia any presents yet.”
+“A-ah! And do you remember, mother, I was in love and wanted to get
+married?” he said suddenly, looking at his mother, who was disconcerted
+by the sudden change of subject and the way he spoke of it.
+“Oh, yes, my dear.”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna exchanged glances with Dounia and Razumihin.
+“H’m, yes. What shall I tell you? I don’t remember much indeed. She was
+such a sickly girl,” he went on, growing dreamy and looking down again.
+“Quite an invalid. She was fond of giving alms to the poor, and was
+always dreaming of a nunnery, and once she burst into tears when she
+began talking to me about it. Yes, yes, I remember. I remember very
+well. She was an ugly little thing. I really don’t know what drew me
+to her then--I think it was because she was always ill. If she had been
+lame or hunchback, I believe I should have liked her better still,” he
+smiled dreamily. “Yes, it was a sort of spring delirium.”
+“No, it was not only spring delirium,” said Dounia, with warm feeling.
+He fixed a strained intent look on his sister, but did not hear or did
+not understand her words. Then, completely lost in thought, he got up,
+went up to his mother, kissed her, went back to his place and sat down.
+“You love her even now?” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, touched.
+“Her? Now? Oh, yes.... You ask about her? No... that’s all now, as
+it were, in another world... and so long ago. And indeed everything
+happening here seems somehow far away.” He looked attentively at them.
+“You, now... I seem to be looking at you from a thousand miles away...
+but, goodness knows why we are talking of that! And what’s the use of
+asking about it?” he added with annoyance, and biting his nails, fell
+into dreamy silence again.
+“What a wretched lodging you have, Rodya! It’s like a tomb,” said
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna, suddenly breaking the oppressive silence. “I
+am sure it’s quite half through your lodging you have become so
+melancholy.”
+“My lodging,” he answered, listlessly. “Yes, the lodging had a great
+deal to do with it.... I thought that, too.... If only you knew, though,
+what a strange thing you said just now, mother,” he said, laughing
+strangely.
+A little more, and their companionship, this mother and this sister,
+with him after three years’ absence, this intimate tone of conversation,
+in face of the utter impossibility of really speaking about anything,
+would have been beyond his power of endurance. But there was one urgent
+matter which must be settled one way or the other that day--so he had
+decided when he woke. Now he was glad to remember it, as a means of
+escape.
+“Listen, Dounia,” he began, gravely and drily, “of course I beg your
+pardon for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to tell you again that
+I do not withdraw from my chief point. It is me or Luzhin. If I am a
+scoundrel, you must not be. One is enough. If you marry Luzhin, I cease
+at once to look on you as a sister.”
+“Rodya, Rodya! It is the same as yesterday again,” Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna cried, mournfully. “And why do you call yourself a
+scoundrel? I can’t bear it. You said the same yesterday.”
+“Brother,” Dounia answered firmly and with the same dryness. “In all
+this there is a mistake on your part. I thought it over at night,
+and found out the mistake. It is all because you seem to fancy I am
+sacrificing myself to someone and for someone. That is not the case at
+all. I am simply marrying for my own sake, because things are hard for
+me. Though, of course, I shall be glad if I succeed in being useful to
+my family. But that is not the chief motive for my decision....”
+“She is lying,” he thought to himself, biting his nails vindictively.
+“Proud creature! She won’t admit she wants to do it out of charity! Too
+haughty! Oh, base characters! They even love as though they hate.... Oh,
+how I... hate them all!”
+“In fact,” continued Dounia, “I am marrying Pyotr Petrovitch because of
+two evils I choose the less. I intend to do honestly all he expects of
+me, so I am not deceiving him.... Why did you smile just now?” She, too,
+flushed, and there was a gleam of anger in her eyes.
+“All?” he asked, with a malignant grin.
+“Within certain limits. Both the manner and form of Pyotr Petrovitch’s
+courtship showed me at once what he wanted. He may, of course, think too
+well of himself, but I hope he esteems me, too.... Why are you laughing
+again?”
+“And why are you blushing again? You are lying, sister. You are
+intentionally lying, simply from feminine obstinacy, simply to hold your
+own against me.... You cannot respect Luzhin. I have seen him and talked
+with him. So you are selling yourself for money, and so in any case you
+are acting basely, and I am glad at least that you can blush for it.”
+“It is not true. I am not lying,” cried Dounia, losing her composure.
+“I would not marry him if I were not convinced that he esteems me
+and thinks highly of me. I would not marry him if I were not firmly
+convinced that I can respect him. Fortunately, I can have convincing
+proof of it this very day... and such a marriage is not a vileness, as
+you say! And even if you were right, if I really had determined on a
+vile action, is it not merciless on your part to speak to me like that?
+Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you have not either? It
+is despotism; it is tyranny. If I ruin anyone, it is only myself.... I
+am not committing a murder. Why do you look at me like that? Why are you
+so pale? Rodya, darling, what’s the matter?”
+“Good heavens! You have made him faint,” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“No, no, nonsense! It’s nothing. A little giddiness--not fainting. You
+have fainting on the brain. H’m, yes, what was I saying? Oh, yes. In
+what way will you get convincing proof to-day that you can respect him,
+and that he... esteems you, as you said. I think you said to-day?”
+“Mother, show Rodya Pyotr Petrovitch’s letter,” said Dounia.
+With trembling hands, Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave him the letter. He
+took it with great interest, but, before opening it, he suddenly looked
+with a sort of wonder at Dounia.
+“It is strange,” he said, slowly, as though struck by a new idea. “What
+am I making such a fuss for? What is it all about? Marry whom you like!”
+He said this as though to himself, but said it aloud, and looked for
+some time at his sister, as though puzzled. He opened the letter at
+last, still with the same look of strange wonder on his face. Then,
+slowly and attentively, he began reading, and read it through twice.
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna showed marked anxiety, and all indeed expected
+something particular.
+“What surprises me,” he began, after a short pause, handing the letter
+to his mother, but not addressing anyone in particular, “is that he is a
+business man, a lawyer, and his conversation is pretentious indeed, and
+yet he writes such an uneducated letter.”
+They all started. They had expected something quite different.
+“But they all write like that, you know,” Razumihin observed, abruptly.
+“Have you read it?”
+“Yes.”
+“We showed him, Rodya. We... consulted him just now,” Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna began, embarrassed.
+“That’s just the jargon of the courts,” Razumihin put in. “Legal
+documents are written like that to this day.”
+“Legal? Yes, it’s just legal--business language--not so very uneducated,
+and not quite educated--business language!”
+“Pyotr Petrovitch makes no secret of the fact that he had a cheap
+education, he is proud indeed of having made his own way,” Avdotya
+Romanovna observed, somewhat offended by her brother’s tone.
+“Well, if he’s proud of it, he has reason, I don’t deny it. You seem to
+be offended, sister, at my making only such a frivolous criticism on the
+letter, and to think that I speak of such trifling matters on purpose to
+annoy you. It is quite the contrary, an observation apropos of the style
+occurred to me that is by no means irrelevant as things stand. There
+is one expression, ‘blame yourselves’ put in very significantly and
+plainly, and there is besides a threat that he will go away at once if I
+am present. That threat to go away is equivalent to a threat to abandon
+you both if you are disobedient, and to abandon you now after summoning
+you to Petersburg. Well, what do you think? Can one resent such an
+expression from Luzhin, as we should if he (he pointed to Razumihin) had
+written it, or Zossimov, or one of us?”
+“N-no,” answered Dounia, with more animation. “I saw clearly that it
+was too naïvely expressed, and that perhaps he simply has no skill
+in writing... that is a true criticism, brother. I did not expect,
+indeed...”
+“It is expressed in legal style, and sounds coarser than perhaps he
+intended. But I must disillusion you a little. There is one expression
+in the letter, one slander about me, and rather a contemptible one. I
+gave the money last night to the widow, a woman in consumption, crushed
+with trouble, and not ‘on the pretext of the funeral,’ but simply to pay
+for the funeral, and not to the daughter--a young woman, as he writes,
+of notorious behaviour (whom I saw last night for the first time in my
+life)--but to the widow. In all this I see a too hasty desire to slander
+me and to raise dissension between us. It is expressed again in legal
+jargon, that is to say, with a too obvious display of the aim, and
+with a very naïve eagerness. He is a man of intelligence, but to act
+sensibly, intelligence is not enough. It all shows the man and... I
+don’t think he has a great esteem for you. I tell you this simply to
+warn you, because I sincerely wish for your good...”
+Dounia did not reply. Her resolution had been taken. She was only
+awaiting the evening.
+“Then what is your decision, Rodya?” asked Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who
+was more uneasy than ever at the sudden, new businesslike tone of his
+talk.
+“What decision?”
+“You see Pyotr Petrovitch writes that you are not to be with us this
+evening, and that he will go away if you come. So will you... come?”
+“That, of course, is not for me to decide, but for you first, if you are
+not offended by such a request; and secondly, by Dounia, if she, too, is
+not offended. I will do what you think best,” he added, drily.
+“Dounia has already decided, and I fully agree with her,” Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna hastened to declare.
+“I decided to ask you, Rodya, to urge you not to fail to be with us at
+this interview,” said Dounia. “Will you come?”
+“Yes.”
+“I will ask you, too, to be with us at eight o’clock,” she said,
+addressing Razumihin. “Mother, I am inviting him, too.”
+“Quite right, Dounia. Well, since you have decided,” added Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna, “so be it. I shall feel easier myself. I do not like
+concealment and deception. Better let us have the whole truth.... Pyotr
+Petrovitch may be angry or not, now!”
+CHAPTER IV
+At that moment the door was softly opened, and a young girl walked into
+the room, looking timidly about her. Everyone turned towards her with
+surprise and curiosity. At first sight, Raskolnikov did not recognise
+her. It was Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov. He had seen her yesterday for
+the first time, but at such a moment, in such surroundings and in such
+a dress, that his memory retained a very different image of her. Now she
+was a modestly and poorly-dressed young girl, very young, indeed,
+almost like a child, with a modest and refined manner, with a candid but
+somewhat frightened-looking face. She was wearing a very plain indoor
+dress, and had on a shabby old-fashioned hat, but she still carried a
+parasol. Unexpectedly finding the room full of people, she was not so
+much embarrassed as completely overwhelmed with shyness, like a
+little child. She was even about to retreat. “Oh... it’s you!” said
+Raskolnikov, extremely astonished, and he, too, was confused. He at once
+recollected that his mother and sister knew through Luzhin’s letter
+of “some young woman of notorious behaviour.” He had only just been
+protesting against Luzhin’s calumny and declaring that he had seen the
+girl last night for the first time, and suddenly she had walked in. He
+remembered, too, that he had not protested against the expression “of
+notorious behaviour.” All this passed vaguely and fleetingly through
+his brain, but looking at her more intently, he saw that the humiliated
+creature was so humiliated that he felt suddenly sorry for her. When she
+made a movement to retreat in terror, it sent a pang to his heart.
+“I did not expect you,” he said, hurriedly, with a look that made her
+stop. “Please sit down. You come, no doubt, from Katerina Ivanovna.
+Allow me--not there. Sit here....”
+At Sonia’s entrance, Razumihin, who had been sitting on one of
+Raskolnikov’s three chairs, close to the door, got up to allow her to
+enter. Raskolnikov had at first shown her the place on the sofa where
+Zossimov had been sitting, but feeling that the sofa which served him
+as a bed, was too _familiar_ a place, he hurriedly motioned her to
+Razumihin’s chair.
+“You sit here,” he said to Razumihin, putting him on the sofa.
+Sonia sat down, almost shaking with terror, and looked timidly at the
+two ladies. It was evidently almost inconceivable to herself that she
+could sit down beside them. At the thought of it, she was so frightened
+that she hurriedly got up again, and in utter confusion addressed
+Raskolnikov.
+“I... I... have come for one minute. Forgive me for disturbing you,” she
+began falteringly. “I come from Katerina Ivanovna, and she had no one to
+send. Katerina Ivanovna told me to beg you... to be at the service... in
+the morning... at Mitrofanievsky... and then... to us... to her...
+to do her the honour... she told me to beg you...” Sonia stammered and
+ceased speaking.
+“I will try, certainly, most certainly,” answered Raskolnikov. He,
+too, stood up, and he, too, faltered and could not finish his sentence.
+“Please sit down,” he said, suddenly. “I want to talk to you. You are
+perhaps in a hurry, but please, be so kind, spare me two minutes,” and
+he drew up a chair for her.
+Sonia sat down again, and again timidly she took a hurried, frightened
+look at the two ladies, and dropped her eyes. Raskolnikov’s pale face
+flushed, a shudder passed over him, his eyes glowed.
+“Mother,” he said, firmly and insistently, “this is Sofya Semyonovna
+Marmeladov, the daughter of that unfortunate Mr. Marmeladov, who was run
+over yesterday before my eyes, and of whom I was just telling you.”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna glanced at Sonia, and slightly screwed up
+her eyes. In spite of her embarrassment before Rodya’s urgent and
+challenging look, she could not deny herself that satisfaction. Dounia
+gazed gravely and intently into the poor girl’s face, and scrutinised
+her with perplexity. Sonia, hearing herself introduced, tried to raise
+her eyes again, but was more embarrassed than ever.
+“I wanted to ask you,” said Raskolnikov, hastily, “how things were
+arranged yesterday. You were not worried by the police, for instance?”
+“No, that was all right... it was too evident, the cause of death...
+they did not worry us... only the lodgers are angry.”
+“Why?”
+“At the body’s remaining so long. You see it is hot now. So that,
+to-day, they will carry it to the cemetery, into the chapel, until
+to-morrow. At first Katerina Ivanovna was unwilling, but now she sees
+herself that it’s necessary...”
+“To-day, then?”
+“She begs you to do us the honour to be in the church to-morrow for the
+service, and then to be present at the funeral lunch.”
+“She is giving a funeral lunch?”
+“Yes... just a little.... She told me to thank you very much for helping
+us yesterday. But for you, we should have had nothing for the funeral.”
+All at once her lips and chin began trembling, but, with an effort, she
+controlled herself, looking down again.
+During the conversation, Raskolnikov watched her carefully. She had a
+thin, very thin, pale little face, rather irregular and angular, with a
+sharp little nose and chin. She could not have been called pretty, but
+her blue eyes were so clear, and when they lighted up, there was such
+a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that one could not help
+being attracted. Her face, and her whole figure indeed, had another
+peculiar characteristic. In spite of her eighteen years, she looked
+almost a little girl--almost a child. And in some of her gestures, this
+childishness seemed almost absurd.
+“But has Katerina Ivanovna been able to manage with such small means?
+Does she even mean to have a funeral lunch?” Raskolnikov asked,
+persistently keeping up the conversation.
+“The coffin will be plain, of course... and everything will be plain, so
+it won’t cost much. Katerina Ivanovna and I have reckoned it all out, so
+that there will be enough left... and Katerina Ivanovna was very anxious
+it should be so. You know one can’t... it’s a comfort to her... she is
+like that, you know....”
+“I understand, I understand... of course... why do you look at my room
+like that? My mother has just said it is like a tomb.”
+“You gave us everything yesterday,” Sonia said suddenly, in reply, in a
+loud rapid whisper; and again she looked down in confusion. Her lips
+and chin were trembling once more. She had been struck at once
+by Raskolnikov’s poor surroundings, and now these words broke out
+spontaneously. A silence followed. There was a light in Dounia’s eyes,
+and even Pulcheria Alexandrovna looked kindly at Sonia.
+“Rodya,” she said, getting up, “we shall have dinner together, of
+course. Come, Dounia.... And you, Rodya, had better go for a little
+walk, and then rest and lie down before you come to see us.... I am
+afraid we have exhausted you....”
+“Yes, yes, I’ll come,” he answered, getting up fussily. “But I have
+something to see to.”
+“But surely you will have dinner together?” cried Razumihin, looking in
+surprise at Raskolnikov. “What do you mean?”
+“Yes, yes, I am coming... of course, of course! And you stay a minute.
+You do not want him just now, do you, mother? Or perhaps I am taking him
+from you?”
+“Oh, no, no. And will you, Dmitri Prokofitch, do us the favour of dining
+with us?”
+“Please do,” added Dounia.
+Razumihin bowed, positively radiant. For one moment, they were all
+strangely embarrassed.
+“Good-bye, Rodya, that is till we meet. I do not like saying good-bye.
+Good-bye, Nastasya. Ah, I have said good-bye again.”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna meant to greet Sonia, too; but it somehow failed
+to come off, and she went in a flutter out of the room.
+But Avdotya Romanovna seemed to await her turn, and following her mother
+out, gave Sonia an attentive, courteous bow. Sonia, in confusion, gave
+a hurried, frightened curtsy. There was a look of poignant discomfort
+in her face, as though Avdotya Romanovna’s courtesy and attention were
+oppressive and painful to her.
+“Dounia, good-bye,” called Raskolnikov, in the passage. “Give me your
+hand.”
+“Why, I did give it to you. Have you forgotten?” said Dounia, turning
+warmly and awkwardly to him.
+“Never mind, give it to me again.” And he squeezed her fingers warmly.
+Dounia smiled, flushed, pulled her hand away, and went off quite happy.
+“Come, that’s capital,” he said to Sonia, going back and looking
+brightly at her. “God give peace to the dead, the living have still to
+live. That is right, isn’t it?”
+Sonia looked surprised at the sudden brightness of his face. He looked
+at her for some moments in silence. The whole history of the dead father
+floated before his memory in those moments....
+*****
+“Heavens, Dounia,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began, as soon as they were in
+the street, “I really feel relieved myself at coming away--more at ease.
+How little did I think yesterday in the train that I could ever be glad
+of that.”
+“I tell you again, mother, he is still very ill. Don’t you see it?
+Perhaps worrying about us upset him. We must be patient, and much, much
+can be forgiven.”
+“Well, you were not very patient!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna caught her up,
+hotly and jealously. “Do you know, Dounia, I was looking at you two. You
+are the very portrait of him, and not so much in face as in soul. You
+are both melancholy, both morose and hot-tempered, both haughty and both
+generous.... Surely he can’t be an egoist, Dounia. Eh? When I think of
+what is in store for us this evening, my heart sinks!”
+“Don’t be uneasy, mother. What must be, will be.”
+“Dounia, only think what a position we are in! What if Pyotr Petrovitch
+breaks it off?” poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna blurted out, incautiously.
+“He won’t be worth much if he does,” answered Dounia, sharply and
+contemptuously.
+“We did well to come away,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurriedly broke in.
+“He was in a hurry about some business or other. If he gets out and has
+a breath of air... it is fearfully close in his room.... But where is
+one to get a breath of air here? The very streets here feel like shut-up
+rooms. Good heavens! what a town!... stay... this side... they will
+crush you--carrying something. Why, it is a piano they have got, I
+declare... how they push!... I am very much afraid of that young woman,
+too.”
+“What young woman, mother?
+“Why, that Sofya Semyonovna, who was there just now.”
+“Why?”
+“I have a presentiment, Dounia. Well, you may believe it or not, but
+as soon as she came in, that very minute, I felt that she was the chief
+cause of the trouble....”
+“Nothing of the sort!” cried Dounia, in vexation. “What nonsense, with
+your presentiments, mother! He only made her acquaintance the evening
+before, and he did not know her when she came in.”
+“Well, you will see.... She worries me; but you will see, you will
+see! I was so frightened. She was gazing at me with those eyes. I could
+scarcely sit still in my chair when he began introducing her, do you
+remember? It seems so strange, but Pyotr Petrovitch writes like that
+about her, and he introduces her to us--to you! So he must think a great
+deal of her.”
+“People will write anything. We were talked about and written about,
+too. Have you forgotten? I am sure that she is a good girl, and that it
+is all nonsense.”
+“God grant it may be!”
+“And Pyotr Petrovitch is a contemptible slanderer,” Dounia snapped out,
+suddenly.
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna was crushed; the conversation was not resumed.
+*****
+“I will tell you what I want with you,” said Raskolnikov, drawing
+Razumihin to the window.
+“Then I will tell Katerina Ivanovna that you are coming,” Sonia said
+hurriedly, preparing to depart.
+“One minute, Sofya Semyonovna. We have no secrets. You are not in our
+way. I want to have another word or two with you. Listen!” he turned
+suddenly to Razumihin again. “You know that... what’s his name...
+Porfiry Petrovitch?”
+“I should think so! He is a relation. Why?” added the latter, with
+interest.
+“Is not he managing that case... you know, about that murder?... You
+were speaking about it yesterday.”
+“Yes... well?” Razumihin’s eyes opened wide.
+“He was inquiring for people who had pawned things, and I have some
+pledges there, too--trifles--a ring my sister gave me as a keepsake when
+I left home, and my father’s silver watch--they are only worth five or
+six roubles altogether... but I value them. So what am I to do now? I
+do not want to lose the things, especially the watch. I was quaking just
+now, for fear mother would ask to look at it, when we spoke of Dounia’s
+watch. It is the only thing of father’s left us. She would be ill if
+it were lost. You know what women are. So tell me what to do. I know I
+ought to have given notice at the police station, but would it not be
+better to go straight to Porfiry? Eh? What do you think? The matter
+might be settled more quickly. You see, mother may ask for it before
+dinner.”
+“Certainly not to the police station. Certainly to Porfiry,” Razumihin
+shouted in extraordinary excitement. “Well, how glad I am. Let us go at
+once. It is a couple of steps. We shall be sure to find him.”
+“Very well, let us go.”
+“And he will be very, very glad to make your acquaintance. I have
+often talked to him of you at different times. I was speaking of you
+yesterday. Let us go. So you knew the old woman? So that’s it! It is all
+turning out splendidly.... Oh, yes, Sofya Ivanovna...”
+“Sofya Semyonovna,” corrected Raskolnikov. “Sofya Semyonovna, this is my
+friend Razumihin, and he is a good man.”
+“If you have to go now,” Sonia was beginning, not looking at Razumihin
+at all, and still more embarrassed.
+“Let us go,” decided Raskolnikov. “I will come to you to-day, Sofya
+Semyonovna. Only tell me where you live.”
+He was not exactly ill at ease, but seemed hurried, and avoided her
+eyes. Sonia gave her address, and flushed as she did so. They all went
+out together.
+“Don’t you lock up?” asked Razumihin, following him on to the stairs.
+“Never,” answered Raskolnikov. “I have been meaning to buy a lock for
+these two years. People are happy who have no need of locks,” he said,
+laughing, to Sonia. They stood still in the gateway.
+“Do you go to the right, Sofya Semyonovna? How did you find me, by the
+way?” he added, as though he wanted to say something quite different. He
+wanted to look at her soft clear eyes, but this was not easy.
+“Why, you gave your address to Polenka yesterday.”
+“Polenka? Oh, yes; Polenka, that is the little girl. She is your sister?
+Did I give her the address?”
+“Why, had you forgotten?”
+“No, I remember.”
+“I had heard my father speak of you... only I did not know your name,
+and he did not know it. And now I came... and as I had learnt your name,
+I asked to-day, ‘Where does Mr. Raskolnikov live?’ I did not know you
+had only a room too.... Good-bye, I will tell Katerina Ivanovna.”
+She was extremely glad to escape at last; she went away looking down,
+hurrying to get out of sight as soon as possible, to walk the twenty
+steps to the turning on the right and to be at last alone, and then
+moving rapidly along, looking at no one, noticing nothing, to think, to
+remember, to meditate on every word, every detail. Never, never had she
+felt anything like this. Dimly and unconsciously a whole new world was
+opening before her. She remembered suddenly that Raskolnikov meant to
+come to her that day, perhaps at once!
+“Only not to-day, please, not to-day!” she kept muttering with a sinking
+heart, as though entreating someone, like a frightened child. “Mercy! to
+me... to that room... he will see... oh, dear!”
+She was not capable at that instant of noticing an unknown gentleman who
+was watching her and following at her heels. He had accompanied her from
+the gateway. At the moment when Razumihin, Raskolnikov, and she stood
+still at parting on the pavement, this gentleman, who was just passing,
+started on hearing Sonia’s words: “and I asked where Mr. Raskolnikov
+lived?” He turned a rapid but attentive look upon all three, especially
+upon Raskolnikov, to whom Sonia was speaking; then looked back and noted
+the house. All this was done in an instant as he passed, and trying not
+to betray his interest, he walked on more slowly as though waiting for
+something. He was waiting for Sonia; he saw that they were parting, and
+that Sonia was going home.
+“Home? Where? I’ve seen that face somewhere,” he thought. “I must find
+out.”
+At the turning he crossed over, looked round, and saw Sonia coming the
+same way, noticing nothing. She turned the corner. He followed her on
+the other side. After about fifty paces he crossed over again, overtook
+her and kept two or three yards behind her.
+He was a man about fifty, rather tall and thickly set, with broad high
+shoulders which made him look as though he stooped a little. He wore
+good and fashionable clothes, and looked like a gentleman of position.
+He carried a handsome cane, which he tapped on the pavement at each
+step; his gloves were spotless. He had a broad, rather pleasant face
+with high cheek-bones and a fresh colour, not often seen in Petersburg.
+His flaxen hair was still abundant, and only touched here and there with
+grey, and his thick square beard was even lighter than his hair.
+His eyes were blue and had a cold and thoughtful look; his lips were
+crimson. He was a remarkedly well-preserved man and looked much younger
+than his years.
+When Sonia came out on the canal bank, they were the only two persons on
+the pavement. He observed her dreaminess and preoccupation. On reaching
+the house where she lodged, Sonia turned in at the gate; he followed
+her, seeming rather surprised. In the courtyard she turned to the right
+corner. “Bah!” muttered the unknown gentleman, and mounted the stairs
+behind her. Only then Sonia noticed him. She reached the third storey,
+turned down the passage, and rang at No. 9. On the door was inscribed
+in chalk, “Kapernaumov, Tailor.” “Bah!” the stranger repeated again,
+wondering at the strange coincidence, and he rang next door, at No. 8.
+The doors were two or three yards apart.
+“You lodge at Kapernaumov’s,” he said, looking at Sonia and laughing.
+“He altered a waistcoat for me yesterday. I am staying close here at
+Madame Resslich’s. How odd!” Sonia looked at him attentively.
+“We are neighbours,” he went on gaily. “I only came to town the day
+before yesterday. Good-bye for the present.”
+Sonia made no reply; the door opened and she slipped in. She felt for
+some reason ashamed and uneasy.
+*****
+On the way to Porfiry’s, Razumihin was obviously excited.
+“That’s capital, brother,” he repeated several times, “and I am glad! I
+am glad!”
+“What are you glad about?” Raskolnikov thought to himself.
+“I didn’t know that you pledged things at the old woman’s, too. And...
+was it long ago? I mean, was it long since you were there?”
+“What a simple-hearted fool he is!”
+“When was it?” Raskolnikov stopped still to recollect. “Two or three
+days before her death it must have been. But I am not going to redeem
+the things now,” he put in with a sort of hurried and conspicuous
+solicitude about the things. “I’ve not more than a silver rouble
+left... after last night’s accursed delirium!”
+He laid special emphasis on the delirium.
+“Yes, yes,” Razumihin hastened to agree--with what was not clear. “Then
+that’s why you... were stuck... partly... you know in your delirium you
+were continually mentioning some rings or chains! Yes, yes... that’s
+clear, it’s all clear now.”
+“Hullo! How that idea must have got about among them. Here this man will
+go to the stake for me, and I find him delighted at having it _cleared
+up_ why I spoke of rings in my delirium! What a hold the idea must have
+on all of them!”
+“Shall we find him?” he asked suddenly.
+“Oh, yes,” Razumihin answered quickly. “He is a nice fellow, you will
+see, brother. Rather clumsy, that is to say, he is a man of polished
+manners, but I mean clumsy in a different sense. He is an intelligent
+fellow, very much so indeed, but he has his own range of ideas.... He
+is incredulous, sceptical, cynical... he likes to impose on people, or
+rather to make fun of them. His is the old, circumstantial method....
+But he understands his work... thoroughly.... Last year he cleared up a
+case of murder in which the police had hardly a clue. He is very, very
+anxious to make your acquaintance!”
+“On what grounds is he so anxious?”
+“Oh, it’s not exactly... you see, since you’ve been ill I happen to have
+mentioned you several times.... So, when he heard about you... about
+your being a law student and not able to finish your studies, he said,
+‘What a pity!’ And so I concluded... from everything together, not only
+that; yesterday Zametov... you know, Rodya, I talked some nonsense on
+the way home to you yesterday, when I was drunk... I am afraid, brother,
+of your exaggerating it, you see.”
+“What? That they think I am a madman? Maybe they are right,” he said
+with a constrained smile.
+“Yes, yes.... That is, pooh, no!... But all that I said (and there was
+something else too) it was all nonsense, drunken nonsense.”
+“But why are you apologising? I am so sick of it all!” Raskolnikov cried
+with exaggerated irritability. It was partly assumed, however.
+“I know, I know, I understand. Believe me, I understand. One’s ashamed
+to speak of it.”
+“If you are ashamed, then don’t speak of it.”
+Both were silent. Razumihin was more than ecstatic and Raskolnikov
+perceived it with repulsion. He was alarmed, too, by what Razumihin had
+just said about Porfiry.
+“I shall have to pull a long face with him too,” he thought, with a
+beating heart, and he turned white, “and do it naturally, too. But the
+most natural thing would be to do nothing at all. Carefully do nothing
+at all! No, _carefully_ would not be natural again.... Oh, well, we
+shall see how it turns out.... We shall see... directly. Is it a good
+thing to go or not? The butterfly flies to the light. My heart is
+beating, that’s what’s bad!”
+“In this grey house,” said Razumihin.
+“The most important thing, does Porfiry know that I was at the old
+hag’s flat yesterday... and asked about the blood? I must find that out
+instantly, as soon as I go in, find out from his face; otherwise... I’ll
+find out, if it’s my ruin.”
+“I say, brother,” he said suddenly, addressing Razumihin, with a sly
+smile, “I have been noticing all day that you seem to be curiously
+excited. Isn’t it so?”
+“Excited? Not a bit of it,” said Razumihin, stung to the quick.
+“Yes, brother, I assure you it’s noticeable. Why, you sat on your chair
+in a way you never do sit, on the edge somehow, and you seemed to be
+writhing all the time. You kept jumping up for nothing. One moment you
+were angry, and the next your face looked like a sweetmeat. You even
+blushed; especially when you were invited to dinner, you blushed
+awfully.”
+“Nothing of the sort, nonsense! What do you mean?”
+“But why are you wriggling out of it, like a schoolboy? By Jove, there
+he’s blushing again.”
+“What a pig you are!”
+“But why are you so shamefaced about it? Romeo! Stay, I’ll tell of you
+to-day. Ha-ha-ha! I’ll make mother laugh, and someone else, too...”
+“Listen, listen, listen, this is serious.... What next, you fiend!”
+Razumihin was utterly overwhelmed, turning cold with horror. “What will
+you tell them? Come, brother... foo! what a pig you are!”
+“You are like a summer rose. And if only you knew how it suits you; a
+Romeo over six foot high! And how you’ve washed to-day--you cleaned your
+nails, I declare. Eh? That’s something unheard of! Why, I do believe
+you’ve got pomatum on your hair! Bend down.”
+“Pig!”
+Raskolnikov laughed as though he could not restrain himself. So
+laughing, they entered Porfiry Petrovitch’s flat. This is what
+Raskolnikov wanted: from within they could be heard laughing as they
+came in, still guffawing in the passage.
+“Not a word here or I’ll... brain you!” Razumihin whispered furiously,
+seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder.
+CHAPTER V
+Raskolnikov was already entering the room. He came in looking as though
+he had the utmost difficulty not to burst out laughing again. Behind him
+Razumihin strode in gawky and awkward, shamefaced and red as a peony,
+with an utterly crestfallen and ferocious expression. His face and
+whole figure really were ridiculous at that moment and amply justified
+Raskolnikov’s laughter. Raskolnikov, not waiting for an introduction,
+bowed to Porfiry Petrovitch, who stood in the middle of the room
+looking inquiringly at them. He held out his hand and shook hands, still
+apparently making desperate efforts to subdue his mirth and utter a few
+words to introduce himself. But he had no sooner succeeded in assuming
+a serious air and muttering something when he suddenly glanced again as
+though accidentally at Razumihin, and could no longer control himself:
+his stifled laughter broke out the more irresistibly the more he tried
+to restrain it. The extraordinary ferocity with which Razumihin received
+this “spontaneous” mirth gave the whole scene the appearance of most
+genuine fun and naturalness. Razumihin strengthened this impression as
+though on purpose.
+“Fool! You fiend,” he roared, waving his arm which at once struck a
+little round table with an empty tea-glass on it. Everything was sent
+flying and crashing.
+“But why break chairs, gentlemen? You know it’s a loss to the Crown,”
+Porfiry Petrovitch quoted gaily.
+Raskolnikov was still laughing, with his hand in Porfiry Petrovitch’s,
+but anxious not to overdo it, awaited the right moment to put a natural
+end to it. Razumihin, completely put to confusion by upsetting the table
+and smashing the glass, gazed gloomily at the fragments, cursed and
+turned sharply to the window where he stood looking out with his back
+to the company with a fiercely scowling countenance, seeing nothing.
+Porfiry Petrovitch laughed and was ready to go on laughing, but
+obviously looked for explanations. Zametov had been sitting in the
+corner, but he rose at the visitors’ entrance and was standing in
+expectation with a smile on his lips, though he looked with surprise and
+even it seemed incredulity at the whole scene and at Raskolnikov with a
+certain embarrassment. Zametov’s unexpected presence struck Raskolnikov
+unpleasantly.
+“I’ve got to think of that,” he thought. “Excuse me, please,” he began,
+affecting extreme embarrassment. “Raskolnikov.”
+“Not at all, very pleasant to see you... and how pleasantly you’ve come
+in.... Why, won’t he even say good-morning?” Porfiry Petrovitch nodded
+at Razumihin.
+“Upon my honour I don’t know why he is in such a rage with me. I only
+told him as we came along that he was like Romeo... and proved it. And
+that was all, I think!”
+“Pig!” ejaculated Razumihin, without turning round.
+“There must have been very grave grounds for it, if he is so furious at
+the word,” Porfiry laughed.
+“Oh, you sharp lawyer!... Damn you all!” snapped Razumihin, and suddenly
+bursting out laughing himself, he went up to Porfiry with a more
+cheerful face as though nothing had happened. “That’ll do! We are
+all fools. To come to business. This is my friend Rodion Romanovitch
+Raskolnikov; in the first place he has heard of you and wants to make
+your acquaintance, and secondly, he has a little matter of business with
+you. Bah! Zametov, what brought you here? Have you met before? Have you
+known each other long?”
+“What does this mean?” thought Raskolnikov uneasily.
+Zametov seemed taken aback, but not very much so.
+“Why, it was at your rooms we met yesterday,” he said easily.
+“Then I have been spared the trouble. All last week he was begging me
+to introduce him to you. Porfiry and you have sniffed each other out
+without me. Where is your tobacco?”
+Porfiry Petrovitch was wearing a dressing-gown, very clean linen, and
+trodden-down slippers. He was a man of about five and thirty, short,
+stout even to corpulence, and clean shaven. He wore his hair cut short
+and had a large round head, particularly prominent at the back. His
+soft, round, rather snub-nosed face was of a sickly yellowish colour,
+but had a vigorous and rather ironical expression. It would have been
+good-natured except for a look in the eyes, which shone with a watery,
+mawkish light under almost white, blinking eyelashes. The expression
+of those eyes was strangely out of keeping with his somewhat womanish
+figure, and gave it something far more serious than could be guessed at
+first sight.
+As soon as Porfiry Petrovitch heard that his visitor had a little matter
+of business with him, he begged him to sit down on the sofa and sat down
+himself on the other end, waiting for him to explain his business, with
+that careful and over-serious attention which is at once oppressive and
+embarrassing, especially to a stranger, and especially if what you are
+discussing is in your opinion of far too little importance for such
+exceptional solemnity. But in brief and coherent phrases Raskolnikov
+explained his business clearly and exactly, and was so well satisfied
+with himself that he even succeeded in taking a good look at Porfiry.
+Porfiry Petrovitch did not once take his eyes off him. Razumihin,
+sitting opposite at the same table, listened warmly and impatiently,
+looking from one to the other every moment with rather excessive
+interest.
+“Fool,” Raskolnikov swore to himself.
+“You have to give information to the police,” Porfiry replied, with a
+most businesslike air, “that having learnt of this incident, that is of
+the murder, you beg to inform the lawyer in charge of the case that such
+and such things belong to you, and that you desire to redeem them...
+or... but they will write to you.”
+“That’s just the point, that at the present moment,” Raskolnikov tried
+his utmost to feign embarrassment, “I am not quite in funds... and
+even this trifling sum is beyond me... I only wanted, you see, for
+the present to declare that the things are mine, and that when I have
+money....”
+“That’s no matter,” answered Porfiry Petrovitch, receiving his
+explanation of his pecuniary position coldly, “but you can, if you
+prefer, write straight to me, to say, that having been informed of the
+matter, and claiming such and such as your property, you beg...”
+“On an ordinary sheet of paper?” Raskolnikov interrupted eagerly, again
+interested in the financial side of the question.
+“Oh, the most ordinary,” and suddenly Porfiry Petrovitch looked with
+obvious irony at him, screwing up his eyes and, as it were, winking at
+him. But perhaps it was Raskolnikov’s fancy, for it all lasted but a
+moment. There was certainly something of the sort, Raskolnikov could
+have sworn he winked at him, goodness knows why.
+“He knows,” flashed through his mind like lightning.
+“Forgive my troubling you about such trifles,” he went on, a little
+disconcerted, “the things are only worth five roubles, but I prize them
+particularly for the sake of those from whom they came to me, and I must
+confess that I was alarmed when I heard...”
+“That’s why you were so much struck when I mentioned to Zossimov that
+Porfiry was inquiring for everyone who had pledges!” Razumihin put in
+with obvious intention.
+This was really unbearable. Raskolnikov could not help glancing at him
+with a flash of vindictive anger in his black eyes, but immediately
+recollected himself.
+“You seem to be jeering at me, brother?” he said to him, with a
+well-feigned irritability. “I dare say I do seem to you absurdly anxious
+about such trash; but you mustn’t think me selfish or grasping for that,
+and these two things may be anything but trash in my eyes. I told you
+just now that the silver watch, though it’s not worth a cent, is the
+only thing left us of my father’s. You may laugh at me, but my mother is
+here,” he turned suddenly to Porfiry, “and if she knew,” he turned again
+hurriedly to Razumihin, carefully making his voice tremble, “that the
+watch was lost, she would be in despair! You know what women are!”
+“Not a bit of it! I didn’t mean that at all! Quite the contrary!”
+shouted Razumihin distressed.
+“Was it right? Was it natural? Did I overdo it?” Raskolnikov asked
+himself in a tremor. “Why did I say that about women?”
+“Oh, your mother is with you?” Porfiry Petrovitch inquired.
+“Yes.”
+“When did she come?”
+“Last night.”
+Porfiry paused as though reflecting.
+“Your things would not in any case be lost,” he went on calmly and
+coldly. “I have been expecting you here for some time.”
+And as though that was a matter of no importance, he carefully offered
+the ash-tray to Razumihin, who was ruthlessly scattering cigarette ash
+over the carpet. Raskolnikov shuddered, but Porfiry did not seem to be
+looking at him, and was still concerned with Razumihin’s cigarette.
+“What? Expecting him? Why, did you know that he had pledges _there_?”
+cried Razumihin.
+Porfiry Petrovitch addressed himself to Raskolnikov.
+“Your things, the ring and the watch, were wrapped up together, and on
+the paper your name was legibly written in pencil, together with the
+date on which you left them with her...”
+“How observant you are!” Raskolnikov smiled awkwardly, doing his very
+utmost to look him straight in the face, but he failed, and suddenly
+added:
+“I say that because I suppose there were a great many pledges... that it
+must be difficult to remember them all.... But you remember them all so
+clearly, and... and...”
+“Stupid! Feeble!” he thought. “Why did I add that?”
+“But we know all who had pledges, and you are the only one who hasn’t
+come forward,” Porfiry answered with hardly perceptible irony.
+“I haven’t been quite well.”
+“I heard that too. I heard, indeed, that you were in great distress
+about something. You look pale still.”
+“I am not pale at all.... No, I am quite well,” Raskolnikov snapped
+out rudely and angrily, completely changing his tone. His anger was
+mounting, he could not repress it. “And in my anger I shall betray
+myself,” flashed through his mind again. “Why are they torturing me?”
+“Not quite well!” Razumihin caught him up. “What next! He was
+unconscious and delirious all yesterday. Would you believe, Porfiry, as
+soon as our backs were turned, he dressed, though he could hardly stand,
+and gave us the slip and went off on a spree somewhere till midnight,
+delirious all the time! Would you believe it! Extraordinary!”
+“Really delirious? You don’t say so!” Porfiry shook his head in a
+womanish way.
+“Nonsense! Don’t you believe it! But you don’t believe it anyway,”
+Raskolnikov let slip in his anger. But Porfiry Petrovitch did not seem
+to catch those strange words.
+“But how could you have gone out if you hadn’t been delirious?”
+Razumihin got hot suddenly. “What did you go out for? What was the
+object of it? And why on the sly? Were you in your senses when you did
+it? Now that all danger is over I can speak plainly.”
+“I was awfully sick of them yesterday.” Raskolnikov addressed Porfiry
+suddenly with a smile of insolent defiance, “I ran away from them to
+take lodgings where they wouldn’t find me, and took a lot of money with
+me. Mr. Zametov there saw it. I say, Mr. Zametov, was I sensible or
+delirious yesterday; settle our dispute.”
+He could have strangled Zametov at that moment, so hateful were his
+expression and his silence to him.
+“In my opinion you talked sensibly and even artfully, but you were
+extremely irritable,” Zametov pronounced dryly.
+“And Nikodim Fomitch was telling me to-day,” put in Porfiry Petrovitch,
+“that he met you very late last night in the lodging of a man who had
+been run over.”
+“And there,” said Razumihin, “weren’t you mad then? You gave your last
+penny to the widow for the funeral. If you wanted to help, give fifteen
+or twenty even, but keep three roubles for yourself at least, but he
+flung away all the twenty-five at once!”
+“Maybe I found a treasure somewhere and you know nothing of it? So
+that’s why I was liberal yesterday.... Mr. Zametov knows I’ve found a
+treasure! Excuse us, please, for disturbing you for half an hour
+with such trivialities,” he said, turning to Porfiry Petrovitch, with
+trembling lips. “We are boring you, aren’t we?”
+“Oh no, quite the contrary, quite the contrary! If only you knew how you
+interest me! It’s interesting to look on and listen... and I am really
+glad you have come forward at last.”
+“But you might give us some tea! My throat’s dry,” cried Razumihin.
+“Capital idea! Perhaps we will all keep you company. Wouldn’t you
+like... something more essential before tea?”
+“Get along with you!”
+Porfiry Petrovitch went out to order tea.
+Raskolnikov’s thoughts were in a whirl. He was in terrible exasperation.
+“The worst of it is they don’t disguise it; they don’t care to stand on
+ceremony! And how if you didn’t know me at all, did you come to talk
+to Nikodim Fomitch about me? So they don’t care to hide that they are
+tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my face.” He was
+shaking with rage. “Come, strike me openly, don’t play with me like a
+cat with a mouse. It’s hardly civil, Porfiry Petrovitch, but perhaps I
+won’t allow it! I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly
+faces, and you’ll see how I despise you.” He could hardly breathe.
+“And what if it’s only my fancy? What if I am mistaken, and through
+inexperience I get angry and don’t keep up my nasty part? Perhaps it’s
+all unintentional. All their phrases are the usual ones, but there is
+something about them.... It all might be said, but there is something.
+Why did he say bluntly, ‘With her’? Why did Zametov add that I spoke
+artfully? Why do they speak in that tone? Yes, the tone.... Razumihin
+is sitting here, why does he see nothing? That innocent blockhead never
+does see anything! Feverish again! Did Porfiry wink at me just now? Of
+course it’s nonsense! What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset
+my nerves or are they teasing me? Either it’s ill fancy or they know!
+Even Zametov is rude.... Is Zametov rude? Zametov has changed his mind.
+I foresaw he would change his mind! He is at home here, while it’s my
+first visit. Porfiry does not consider him a visitor; sits with his back
+to him. They’re as thick as thieves, no doubt, over me! Not a doubt they
+were talking about me before we came. Do they know about the flat? If
+only they’d make haste! When I said that I ran away to take a flat he
+let it pass.... I put that in cleverly about a flat, it may be of use
+afterwards.... Delirious, indeed... ha-ha-ha! He knows all about last
+night! He didn’t know of my mother’s arrival! The hag had written the
+date on in pencil! You are wrong, you won’t catch me! There are no
+facts... it’s all supposition! You produce facts! The flat even isn’t a
+fact but delirium. I know what to say to them.... Do they know about the
+flat? I won’t go without finding out. What did I come for? But my being
+angry now, maybe is a fact! Fool, how irritable I am! Perhaps that’s
+right; to play the invalid.... He is feeling me. He will try to catch
+me. Why did I come?”
+All this flashed like lightning through his mind.
+Porfiry Petrovitch returned quickly. He became suddenly more jovial.
+“Your party yesterday, brother, has left my head rather.... And I am out
+of sorts altogether,” he began in quite a different tone, laughing to
+Razumihin.
+“Was it interesting? I left you yesterday at the most interesting point.
+Who got the best of it?”
+“Oh, no one, of course. They got on to everlasting questions, floated
+off into space.”
+“Only fancy, Rodya, what we got on to yesterday. Whether there is such a
+thing as crime. I told you that we talked our heads off.”
+“What is there strange? It’s an everyday social question,” Raskolnikov
+answered casually.
+“The question wasn’t put quite like that,” observed Porfiry.
+“Not quite, that’s true,” Razumihin agreed at once, getting warm and
+hurried as usual. “Listen, Rodion, and tell us your opinion, I want to
+hear it. I was fighting tooth and nail with them and wanted you to
+help me. I told them you were coming.... It began with the socialist
+doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the
+abnormality of the social organisation and nothing more, and nothing
+more; no other causes admitted!...”
+“You are wrong there,” cried Porfiry Petrovitch; he was noticeably
+animated and kept laughing as he looked at Razumihin, which made him
+more excited than ever.
+“Nothing is admitted,” Razumihin interrupted with heat.
+“I am not wrong. I’ll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them
+is ‘the influence of environment,’ and nothing else. Their favourite
+phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organised,
+all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest
+against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature
+is not taken into account, it is excluded, it’s not supposed to exist!
+They don’t recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living
+process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a
+social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going
+to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an
+instant, quicker than any living process! That’s why they instinctively
+dislike history, ‘nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,’ and they
+explain it all as stupidity! That’s why they so dislike the _living_
+process of life; they don’t want a _living soul_! The living soul
+demands life, the soul won’t obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an
+object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though
+it smells of death and can be made of India-rubber, at least is not
+alive, has no will, is servile and won’t revolt! And it comes in the end
+to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning
+of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready,
+indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery--it
+wants life, it hasn’t completed its vital process, it’s too soon for the
+graveyard! You can’t skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three
+possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce
+it all to the question of comfort! That’s the easiest solution of the
+problem! It’s seductively clear and you musn’t think about it. That’s
+the great thing, you mustn’t think! The whole secret of life in two
+pages of print!”
+“Now he is off, beating the drum! Catch hold of him, do!” laughed
+Porfiry. “Can you imagine,” he turned to Raskolnikov, “six people
+holding forth like that last night, in one room, with punch as a
+preliminary! No, brother, you are wrong, environment accounts for a
+great deal in crime; I can assure you of that.”
+“Oh, I know it does, but just tell me: a man of forty violates a child
+of ten; was it environment drove him to it?”
+“Well, strictly speaking, it did,” Porfiry observed with noteworthy
+gravity; “a crime of that nature may be very well ascribed to the
+influence of environment.”
+Razumihin was almost in a frenzy. “Oh, if you like,” he roared. “I’ll
+prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed to the
+Church of Ivan the Great’s being two hundred and fifty feet high, and I
+will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even with a Liberal
+tendency! I undertake to! Will you bet on it?”
+“Done! Let’s hear, please, how he will prove it!”
+“He is always humbugging, confound him,” cried Razumihin, jumping up and
+gesticulating. “What’s the use of talking to you? He does all that
+on purpose; you don’t know him, Rodion! He took their side yesterday,
+simply to make fools of them. And the things he said yesterday! And they
+were delighted! He can keep it up for a fortnight together. Last year he
+persuaded us that he was going into a monastery: he stuck to it for two
+months. Not long ago he took it into his head to declare he was going
+to get married, that he had everything ready for the wedding. He ordered
+new clothes indeed. We all began to congratulate him. There was no
+bride, nothing, all pure fantasy!”
+“Ah, you are wrong! I got the clothes before. It was the new clothes in
+fact that made me think of taking you in.”
+“Are you such a good dissembler?” Raskolnikov asked carelessly.
+“You wouldn’t have supposed it, eh? Wait a bit, I shall take you in,
+too. Ha-ha-ha! No, I’ll tell you the truth. All these questions about
+crime, environment, children, recall to my mind an article of yours
+which interested me at the time. ‘On Crime’... or something of the
+sort, I forget the title, I read it with pleasure two months ago in the
+_Periodical Review_.”
+“My article? In the _Periodical Review_?” Raskolnikov asked in
+astonishment. “I certainly did write an article upon a book six months
+ago when I left the university, but I sent it to the _Weekly Review_.”
+“But it came out in the _Periodical_.”
+“And the _Weekly Review_ ceased to exist, so that’s why it wasn’t
+printed at the time.”
+“That’s true; but when it ceased to exist, the _Weekly Review_ was
+amalgamated with the _Periodical_, and so your article appeared two
+months ago in the latter. Didn’t you know?”
+Raskolnikov had not known.
+“Why, you might get some money out of them for the article! What a
+strange person you are! You lead such a solitary life that you know
+nothing of matters that concern you directly. It’s a fact, I assure
+you.”
+“Bravo, Rodya! I knew nothing about it either!” cried Razumihin. “I’ll
+run to-day to the reading-room and ask for the number. Two months ago?
+What was the date? It doesn’t matter though, I will find it. Think of
+not telling us!”
+“How did you find out that the article was mine? It’s only signed with
+an initial.”
+“I only learnt it by chance, the other day. Through the editor; I know
+him.... I was very much interested.”
+“I analysed, if I remember, the psychology of a criminal before and
+after the crime.”
+“Yes, and you maintained that the perpetration of a crime is always
+accompanied by illness. Very, very original, but... it was not that part
+of your article that interested me so much, but an idea at the end of
+the article which I regret to say you merely suggested without working
+it out clearly. There is, if you recollect, a suggestion that there are
+certain persons who can... that is, not precisely are able to, but have
+a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the
+law is not for them.”
+Raskolnikov smiled at the exaggerated and intentional distortion of his
+idea.
+“What? What do you mean? A right to crime? But not because of the
+influence of environment?” Razumihin inquired with some alarm even.
+“No, not exactly because of it,” answered Porfiry. “In his article all
+men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have
+to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because,
+don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to
+commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they
+are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?”
+“What do you mean? That can’t be right?” Razumihin muttered in
+bewilderment.
+Raskolnikov smiled again. He saw the point at once, and knew where they
+wanted to drive him. He decided to take up the challenge.
+“That wasn’t quite my contention,” he began simply and modestly. “Yet
+I admit that you have stated it almost correctly; perhaps, if you like,
+perfectly so.” (It almost gave him pleasure to admit this.) “The only
+difference is that I don’t contend that extraordinary people are always
+bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt
+whether such an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an
+‘extraordinary’ man has the right... that is not an official right, but
+an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep... certain
+obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment
+of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity).
+You say that my article isn’t definite; I am ready to make it as clear
+as I can. Perhaps I am right in thinking you want me to; very well. I
+maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have
+been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a
+hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have
+been in duty-bound... to _eliminate_ the dozen or the hundred men for
+the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But
+it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people
+right and left and to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I
+maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men,
+such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without
+exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law, they
+transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held
+sacred by the people, and they did not stop short at bloodshed either,
+if that bloodshed--often of innocent persons fighting bravely in defence
+of ancient law--were of use to their cause. It’s remarkable, in fact,
+that the majority, indeed, of these benefactors and leaders of humanity
+were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men
+or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving
+some new word, must from their very nature be criminals--more or less,
+of course. Otherwise it’s hard for them to get out of the common rut;
+and to remain in the common rut is what they can���t submit to, from their
+very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to
+it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that. The
+same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for my
+division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that
+it’s somewhat arbitrary, but I don’t insist upon exact numbers. I only
+believe in my leading idea that men are _in general_ divided by a law
+of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say,
+material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have
+the gift or the talent to utter _a new word_. There are, of course,
+innumerable sub-divisions, but the distinguishing features of both
+categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally
+speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live
+under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty
+to be controlled, because that’s their vocation, and there is nothing
+humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the
+law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their
+capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied;
+for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the
+present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the
+sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I
+maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading
+through blood--that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that.
+It’s only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article
+(you remember it began with the legal question). There’s no need for
+such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right,
+they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil
+quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these
+criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or
+less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second
+the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the
+second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal
+right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me--and _vive la
+guerre éternelle_--till the New Jerusalem, of course!”
+“Then you believe in the New Jerusalem, do you?”
+“I do,” Raskolnikov answered firmly; as he said these words and during
+the whole preceding tirade he kept his eyes on one spot on the carpet.
+“And... and do you believe in God? Excuse my curiosity.”
+“I do,” repeated Raskolnikov, raising his eyes to Porfiry.
+“And... do you believe in Lazarus’ rising from the dead?”
+“I... I do. Why do you ask all this?”
+“You believe it literally?”
+“Literally.”
+“You don’t say so.... I asked from curiosity. Excuse me. But let us
+go back to the question; they are not always executed. Some, on the
+contrary...”
+“Triumph in their lifetime? Oh, yes, some attain their ends in this
+life, and then...”
+“They begin executing other people?”
+“If it’s necessary; indeed, for the most part they do. Your remark is
+very witty.”
+“Thank you. But tell me this: how do you distinguish those extraordinary
+people from the ordinary ones? Are there signs at their birth? I feel
+there ought to be more exactitude, more external definition. Excuse the
+natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding citizen, but couldn’t they
+adopt a special uniform, for instance, couldn’t they wear something, be
+branded in some way? For you know if confusion arises and a member of
+one category imagines that he belongs to the other, begins to ‘eliminate
+obstacles’ as you so happily expressed it, then...”
+“Oh, that very often happens! That remark is wittier than the other.”
+“Thank you.”
+“No reason to; but take note that the mistake can only arise in
+the first category, that is among the ordinary people (as I perhaps
+unfortunately called them). In spite of their predisposition to
+obedience very many of them, through a playfulness of nature, sometimes
+vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people,
+‘destroyers,’ and to push themselves into the ‘new movement,’ and
+this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really _new_ people are very often
+unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries of grovelling
+tendencies. But I don’t think there is any considerable danger here,
+and you really need not be uneasy for they never go very far. Of course,
+they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away
+with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even
+this isn’t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very
+conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others
+chastise themselves with their own hands.... They will impose various
+public acts of penitence upon themselves with a beautiful and edifying
+effect; in fact you’ve nothing to be uneasy about.... It’s a law of
+nature.”
+“Well, you have certainly set my mind more at rest on that score; but
+there’s another thing worries me. Tell me, please, are there many people
+who have the right to kill others, these extraordinary people? I am
+ready to bow down to them, of course, but you must admit it’s alarming
+if there are a great many of them, eh?”
+“Oh, you needn’t worry about that either,” Raskolnikov went on in the
+same tone. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for
+saying something _new_, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily
+so in fact. One thing only is clear, that the appearance of all these
+grades and sub-divisions of men must follow with unfailing regularity
+some law of nature. That law, of course, is unknown at present, but I am
+convinced that it exists, and one day may become known. The vast mass of
+mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort,
+by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and
+stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a
+thousand with a spark of independence. One in ten thousand perhaps--I
+speak roughly, approximately--is born with some independence, and with
+still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. The man of genius
+is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity,
+appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have
+not peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there
+certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of
+chance.”
+“Why, are you both joking?” Razumihin cried at last. “There you sit,
+making fun of one another. Are you serious, Rodya?”
+Raskolnikov raised his pale and almost mournful face and made no reply.
+And the unconcealed, persistent, nervous, and _discourteous_ sarcasm of
+Porfiry seemed strange to Razumihin beside that quiet and mournful face.
+“Well, brother, if you are really serious... You are right, of course,
+in saying that it’s not new, that it’s like what we’ve read and heard a
+thousand times already; but what is really original in all this, and is
+exclusively your own, to my horror, is that you sanction bloodshed
+_in the name of conscience_, and, excuse my saying so, with such
+fanaticism.... That, I take it, is the point of your article. But that
+sanction of bloodshed _by conscience_ is to my mind... more terrible
+than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed....”
+“You are quite right, it is more terrible,” Porfiry agreed.
+“Yes, you must have exaggerated! There is some mistake, I shall read it.
+You can’t think that! I shall read it.”
+“All that is not in the article, there’s only a hint of it,” said
+Raskolnikov.
+“Yes, yes.” Porfiry couldn’t sit still. “Your attitude to crime is
+pretty clear to me now, but... excuse me for my impertinence (I am
+really ashamed to be worrying you like this), you see, you’ve removed
+my anxiety as to the two grades getting mixed, but... there are various
+practical possibilities that make me uneasy! What if some man or youth
+imagines that he is a Lycurgus or Mahomet--a future one of course--and
+suppose he begins to remove all obstacles.... He has some great
+enterprise before him and needs money for it... and tries to get it...
+do you see?”
+Zametov gave a sudden guffaw in his corner. Raskolnikov did not even
+raise his eyes to him.
+“I must admit,” he went on calmly, “that such cases certainly must
+arise. The vain and foolish are particularly apt to fall into that
+snare; young people especially.”
+“Yes, you see. Well then?”
+“What then?” Raskolnikov smiled in reply; “that’s not my fault. So it is
+and so it always will be. He said just now (he nodded at Razumihin)
+that I sanction bloodshed. Society is too well protected by prisons,
+banishment, criminal investigators, penal servitude. There’s no need to
+be uneasy. You have but to catch the thief.”
+“And what if we do catch him?”
+“Then he gets what he deserves.”
+“You are certainly logical. But what of his conscience?”
+“Why do you care about that?”
+“Simply from humanity.”
+“If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his
+punishment--as well as the prison.”
+“But the real geniuses,” asked Razumihin frowning, “those who have
+the right to murder? Oughtn’t they to suffer at all even for the blood
+they’ve shed?”
+“Why the word _ought_? It’s not a matter of permission or prohibition.
+He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim. Pain and suffering are
+always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The
+really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth,” he added
+dreamily, not in the tone of the conversation.
+He raised his eyes, looked earnestly at them all, smiled, and took his
+cap. He was too quiet by comparison with his manner at his entrance, and
+he felt this. Everyone got up.
+“Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like,” Porfiry
+Petrovitch began again, “but I can’t resist. Allow me one little
+question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I
+want to express, simply that I may not forget it.”
+“Very good, tell me your little notion,” Raskolnikov stood waiting, pale
+and grave before him.
+“Well, you see... I really don’t know how to express it properly....
+It’s a playful, psychological idea.... When you were writing your
+article, surely you couldn’t have helped, he-he! fancying yourself...
+just a little, an ‘extraordinary’ man, uttering a _new word_ in your
+sense.... That’s so, isn’t it?”
+“Quite possibly,” Raskolnikov answered contemptuously.
+Razumihin made a movement.
+“And, if so, could you bring yourself in case of worldly difficulties
+and hardship or for some service to humanity--to overstep obstacles?...
+For instance, to rob and murder?”
+And again he winked with his left eye, and laughed noiselessly just as
+before.
+“If I did I certainly should not tell you,” Raskolnikov answered with
+defiant and haughty contempt.
+“No, I was only interested on account of your article, from a literary
+point of view...”
+“Foo! how obvious and insolent that is!” Raskolnikov thought with
+repulsion.
+“Allow me to observe,” he answered dryly, “that I don’t consider myself
+a Mahomet or a Napoleon, nor any personage of that kind, and not being
+one of them I cannot tell you how I should act.”
+“Oh, come, don’t we all think ourselves Napoleons now in Russia?”
+Porfiry Petrovitch said with alarming familiarity.
+Something peculiar betrayed itself in the very intonation of his voice.
+“Perhaps it was one of these future Napoleons who did for Alyona
+Ivanovna last week?” Zametov blurted out from the corner.
+Raskolnikov did not speak, but looked firmly and intently at Porfiry.
+Razumihin was scowling gloomily. He seemed before this to be noticing
+something. He looked angrily around. There was a minute of gloomy
+silence. Raskolnikov turned to go.
+“Are you going already?” Porfiry said amiably, holding out his hand with
+excessive politeness. “Very, very glad of your acquaintance. As for your
+request, have no uneasiness, write just as I told you, or, better still,
+come to me there yourself in a day or two... to-morrow, indeed. I shall
+be there at eleven o’clock for certain. We’ll arrange it all; we’ll have
+a talk. As one of the last to be _there_, you might perhaps be able to
+tell us something,” he added with a most good-natured expression.
+“You want to cross-examine me officially in due form?” Raskolnikov asked
+sharply.
+“Oh, why? That’s not necessary for the present. You misunderstand me.
+I lose no opportunity, you see, and... I’ve talked with all who had
+pledges.... I obtained evidence from some of them, and you are the
+last.... Yes, by the way,” he cried, seemingly suddenly delighted, “I
+just remember, what was I thinking of?” he turned to Razumihin, “you
+were talking my ears off about that Nikolay... of course, I know, I know
+very well,” he turned to Raskolnikov, “that the fellow is innocent, but
+what is one to do? We had to trouble Dmitri too.... This is the point,
+this is all: when you went up the stairs it was past seven, wasn’t it?”
+“Yes,” answered Raskolnikov, with an unpleasant sensation at the very
+moment he spoke that he need not have said it.
+“Then when you went upstairs between seven and eight, didn’t you see in
+a flat that stood open on a second storey, do you remember? two workmen
+or at least one of them? They were painting there, didn’t you notice
+them? It’s very, very important for them.”
+“Painters? No, I didn’t see them,” Raskolnikov answered slowly, as
+though ransacking his memory, while at the same instant he was racking
+every nerve, almost swooning with anxiety to conjecture as quickly as
+possible where the trap lay and not to overlook anything. “No, I didn’t
+see them, and I don’t think I noticed a flat like that open.... But on
+the fourth storey” (he had mastered the trap now and was triumphant)
+“I remember now that someone was moving out of the flat opposite Alyona
+Ivanovna’s.... I remember... I remember it clearly. Some porters
+were carrying out a sofa and they squeezed me against the wall. But
+painters... no, I don’t remember that there were any painters, and I
+don’t think that there was a flat open anywhere, no, there wasn’t.”
+“What do you mean?” Razumihin shouted suddenly, as though he had
+reflected and realised. “Why, it was on the day of the murder the
+painters were at work, and he was there three days before? What are you
+asking?”
+“Foo! I have muddled it!” Porfiry slapped himself on the forehead.
+“Deuce take it! This business is turning my brain!” he addressed
+Raskolnikov somewhat apologetically. “It would be such a great thing for
+us to find out whether anyone had seen them between seven and eight at
+the flat, so I fancied you could perhaps have told us something.... I
+quite muddled it.”
+“Then you should be more careful,” Razumihin observed grimly.
+The last words were uttered in the passage. Porfiry Petrovitch saw them
+to the door with excessive politeness.
+They went out into the street gloomy and sullen, and for some steps they
+did not say a word. Raskolnikov drew a deep breath.
+CHAPTER VI
+“I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” repeated Razumihin, trying in
+perplexity to refute Raskolnikov’s arguments.
+They were by now approaching Bakaleyev’s lodgings, where Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna and Dounia had been expecting them a long while. Razumihin
+kept stopping on the way in the heat of discussion, confused and excited
+by the very fact that they were for the first time speaking openly about
+_it_.
+“Don’t believe it, then!” answered Raskolnikov, with a cold, careless
+smile. “You were noticing nothing as usual, but I was weighing every
+word.”
+“You are suspicious. That is why you weighed their words... h’m...
+certainly, I agree, Porfiry’s tone was rather strange, and still
+more that wretch Zametov!... You are right, there was something about
+him--but why? Why?”
+“He has changed his mind since last night.”
+“Quite the contrary! If they had that brainless idea, they would do
+their utmost to hide it, and conceal their cards, so as to catch you
+afterwards.... But it was all impudent and careless.”
+“If they had had facts--I mean, real facts--or at least grounds for
+suspicion, then they would certainly have tried to hide their game,
+in the hope of getting more (they would have made a search long ago
+besides). But they have no facts, not one. It is all mirage--all
+ambiguous. Simply a floating idea. So they try to throw me out by
+impudence. And perhaps, he was irritated at having no facts, and blurted
+it out in his vexation--or perhaps he has some plan... he seems an
+intelligent man. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by pretending to
+know. They have a psychology of their own, brother. But it is loathsome
+explaining it all. Stop!”
+“And it’s insulting, insulting! I understand you. But... since we have
+spoken openly now (and it is an excellent thing that we have at last--I
+am glad) I will own now frankly that I noticed it in them long ago,
+this idea. Of course the merest hint only--an insinuation--but why an
+insinuation even? How dare they? What foundation have they? If only you
+knew how furious I have been. Think only! Simply because a poor student,
+unhinged by poverty and hypochondria, on the eve of a severe delirious
+illness (note that), suspicious, vain, proud, who has not seen a soul to
+speak to for six months, in rags and in boots without soles, has to
+face some wretched policemen and put up with their insolence; and
+the unexpected debt thrust under his nose, the I.O.U. presented
+by Tchebarov, the new paint, thirty degrees Reaumur and a stifling
+atmosphere, a crowd of people, the talk about the murder of a person
+where he had been just before, and all that on an empty stomach--he
+might well have a fainting fit! And that, that is what they found it
+all on! Damn them! I understand how annoying it is, but in your place,
+Rodya, I would laugh at them, or better still, spit in their ugly faces,
+and spit a dozen times in all directions. I’d hit out in all
+directions, neatly too, and so I’d put an end to it. Damn them! Don’t be
+downhearted. It’s a shame!”
+“He really has put it well, though,” Raskolnikov thought.
+“Damn them? But the cross-examination again, to-morrow?” he said with
+bitterness. “Must I really enter into explanations with them? I feel
+vexed as it is, that I condescended to speak to Zametov yesterday in the
+restaurant....”
+“Damn it! I will go myself to Porfiry. I will squeeze it out of him, as
+one of the family: he must let me know the ins and outs of it all! And
+as for Zametov...”
+“At last he sees through him!” thought Raskolnikov.
+“Stay!” cried Razumihin, seizing him by the shoulder again. “Stay! you
+were wrong. I have thought it out. You are wrong! How was that a trap?
+You say that the question about the workmen was a trap. But if you had
+done _that_, could you have said you had seen them painting the flat...
+and the workmen? On the contrary, you would have seen nothing, even if
+you had seen it. Who would own it against himself?”
+“If I had done _that thing_, I should certainly have said that I had
+seen the workmen and the flat,” Raskolnikov answered, with reluctance
+and obvious disgust.
+“But why speak against yourself?”
+“Because only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices deny
+everything flatly at examinations. If a man is ever so little developed
+and experienced, he will certainly try to admit all the external facts
+that can’t be avoided, but will seek other explanations of them, will
+introduce some special, unexpected turn, that will give them another
+significance and put them in another light. Porfiry might well reckon
+that I should be sure to answer so, and say I had seen them to give an
+air of truth, and then make some explanation.”
+“But he would have told you at once that the workmen could not have been
+there two days before, and that therefore you must have been there on
+the day of the murder at eight o’clock. And so he would have caught you
+over a detail.”
+“Yes, that is what he was reckoning on, that I should not have time to
+reflect, and should be in a hurry to make the most likely answer, and
+so would forget that the workmen could not have been there two days
+before.”
+“But how could you forget it?”
+“Nothing easier. It is in just such stupid things clever people are most
+easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he
+will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler
+the trap he must be caught in. Porfiry is not such a fool as you
+think....”
+“He is a knave then, if that is so!”
+Raskolnikov could not help laughing. But at the very moment, he was
+struck by the strangeness of his own frankness, and the eagerness
+with which he had made this explanation, though he had kept up all the
+preceding conversation with gloomy repulsion, obviously with a motive,
+from necessity.
+“I am getting a relish for certain aspects!” he thought to himself.
+But almost at the same instant he became suddenly uneasy, as though an
+unexpected and alarming idea had occurred to him. His uneasiness kept on
+increasing. They had just reached the entrance to Bakaleyev’s.
+“Go in alone!” said Raskolnikov suddenly. “I will be back directly.”
+“Where are you going? Why, we are just here.”
+“I can’t help it.... I will come in half an hour. Tell them.”
+“Say what you like, I will come with you.”
+“You, too, want to torture me!” he screamed, with such bitter
+irritation, such despair in his eyes that Razumihin’s hands dropped.
+He stood for some time on the steps, looking gloomily at Raskolnikov
+striding rapidly away in the direction of his lodging. At last, gritting
+his teeth and clenching his fist, he swore he would squeeze Porfiry
+like a lemon that very day, and went up the stairs to reassure Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna, who was by now alarmed at their long absence.
+When Raskolnikov got home, his hair was soaked with sweat and he was
+breathing heavily. He went rapidly up the stairs, walked into his
+unlocked room and at once fastened the latch. Then in senseless terror
+he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put
+the things; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the
+hole, in every crack and fold of the paper. Finding nothing, he got up
+and drew a deep breath. As he was reaching the steps of Bakaleyev’s, he
+suddenly fancied that something, a chain, a stud or even a bit of paper
+in which they had been wrapped with the old woman’s handwriting on it,
+might somehow have slipped out and been lost in some crack, and then
+might suddenly turn up as unexpected, conclusive evidence against him.
+He stood as though lost in thought, and a strange, humiliated, half
+senseless smile strayed on his lips. He took his cap at last and went
+quietly out of the room. His ideas were all tangled. He went dreamily
+through the gateway.
+“Here he is himself,” shouted a loud voice.
+He raised his head.
+The porter was standing at the door of his little room and was pointing
+him out to a short man who looked like an artisan, wearing a long coat
+and a waistcoat, and looking at a distance remarkably like a woman. He
+stooped, and his head in a greasy cap hung forward. From his wrinkled
+flabby face he looked over fifty; his little eyes were lost in fat and
+they looked out grimly, sternly and discontentedly.
+“What is it?” Raskolnikov asked, going up to the porter.
+The man stole a look at him from under his brows and he looked at him
+attentively, deliberately; then he turned slowly and went out of the
+gate into the street without saying a word.
+“What is it?” cried Raskolnikov.
+“Why, he there was asking whether a student lived here, mentioned your
+name and whom you lodged with. I saw you coming and pointed you out and
+he went away. It’s funny.”
+The porter too seemed rather puzzled, but not much so, and after
+wondering for a moment he turned and went back to his room.
+Raskolnikov ran after the stranger, and at once caught sight of
+him walking along the other side of the street with the same even,
+deliberate step with his eyes fixed on the ground, as though in
+meditation. He soon overtook him, but for some time walked behind him.
+At last, moving on to a level with him, he looked at his face. The man
+noticed him at once, looked at him quickly, but dropped his eyes again;
+and so they walked for a minute side by side without uttering a word.
+“You were inquiring for me... of the porter?” Raskolnikov said at last,
+but in a curiously quiet voice.
+The man made no answer; he didn’t even look at him. Again they were both
+silent.
+“Why do you... come and ask for me... and say nothing.... What’s the
+meaning of it?”
+Raskolnikov’s voice broke and he seemed unable to articulate the words
+clearly.
+The man raised his eyes this time and turned a gloomy sinister look at
+Raskolnikov.
+“Murderer!” he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice.
+Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a
+cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for
+a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So
+they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence.
+The man did not look at him.
+“What do you mean... what is.... Who is a murderer?” muttered
+Raskolnikov hardly audibly.
+“_You_ are a murderer,” the man answered still more articulately and
+emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked
+straight into Raskolnikov’s pale face and stricken eyes.
+They had just reached the cross-roads. The man turned to the left
+without looking behind him. Raskolnikov remained standing, gazing after
+him. He saw him turn round fifty paces away and look back at him still
+standing there. Raskolnikov could not see clearly, but he fancied that
+he was again smiling the same smile of cold hatred and triumph.
+With slow faltering steps, with shaking knees, Raskolnikov made his way
+back to his little garret, feeling chilled all over. He took off his cap
+and put it on the table, and for ten minutes he stood without moving.
+Then he sank exhausted on the sofa and with a weak moan of pain he
+stretched himself on it. So he lay for half an hour.
+He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some
+images without order or coherence floated before his mind--faces of
+people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would
+never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table
+in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars
+in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite
+dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and the
+Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images followed one
+another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried
+to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppression
+within him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even
+pleasant.... The slight shivering still persisted, but that too
+was an almost pleasant sensation.
+He heard the hurried footsteps of Razumihin; he closed his eyes and
+pretended to be asleep. Razumihin opened the door and stood for some
+time in the doorway as though hesitating, then he stepped softly into
+the room and went cautiously to the sofa. Raskolnikov heard Nastasya’s
+whisper:
+“Don’t disturb him! Let him sleep. He can have his dinner later.”
+“Quite so,” answered Razumihin. Both withdrew carefully and closed the
+door. Another half-hour passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes, turned on
+his back again, clasping his hands behind his head.
+“Who is he? Who is that man who sprang out of the earth? Where was he,
+what did he see? He has seen it all, that’s clear. Where was he then?
+And from where did he see? Why has he only now sprung out of the earth?
+And how could he see? Is it possible? Hm...” continued Raskolnikov,
+turning cold and shivering, “and the jewel case Nikolay found behind the
+door--was that possible? A clue? You miss an infinitesimal line and you
+can build it into a pyramid of evidence! A fly flew by and saw it! Is it
+possible?” He felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak he
+had become. “I ought to have known it,” he thought with a bitter smile.
+“And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an
+axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did
+know!” he whispered in despair. At times he came to a standstill at some
+thought.
+“No, those men are not made so. The real _Master_ to whom all is
+permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, _forgets_ an army in
+Egypt, _wastes_ half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off
+with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and
+so _all_ is permitted. No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but
+of bronze!”
+One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the
+pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with
+a red trunk under her bed--it’s a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch to
+digest! How can they digest it! It’s too inartistic. “A Napoleon creep
+under an old woman’s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!”
+At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish
+excitement. “The old woman is of no consequence,” he thought, hotly and
+incoherently. “The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not
+what matters! The old woman was only an illness.... I was in a hurry to
+overstep.... I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the
+principle, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side.... I was
+only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that...
+Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They are
+industrious, commercial people; ‘the happiness of all’ is their case.
+No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I
+don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself,
+or else better not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother
+starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the
+‘happiness of all.’ I am putting my little brick into the happiness of
+all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only
+live once, I too want.... Ech, I am an æsthetic louse and nothing
+more,” he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. “Yes, I am certainly a
+louse,” he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing
+with it with vindictive pleasure. “In the first place, because I can
+reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been
+troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that not for
+my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble
+object--ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as
+possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked
+out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I
+needed for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone
+to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I
+am utterly a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “is that I am
+perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and _I felt
+beforehand_ that I should tell myself so _after_ killing her. Can
+anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The
+abjectness! I understand the ‘prophet’ with his sabre, on his steed:
+Allah commands and ‘trembling’ creation must obey! The ‘prophet’ is
+right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up
+the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It’s for you to
+obey, trembling creation, and not _to have desires_, for that’s not for
+you!... I shall never, never forgive the old woman!”
+His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his
+eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
+“Mother, sister--how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate
+them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can’t bear them near me....
+I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember.... To embrace her
+and think if she only knew... shall I tell her then? That’s just what
+I might do.... _She_ must be the same as I am,” he added, straining
+himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. “Ah, how I hate
+the old woman now! I feel I should kill her again if she came to life!
+Poor Lizaveta! Why did she come in?... It’s strange though, why is it
+I scarcely ever think of her, as though I hadn’t killed her? Lizaveta!
+Sonia! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes.... Dear women! Why don’t
+they weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything... their eyes
+are soft and gentle.... Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!”
+He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn’t remember
+how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight had fallen
+and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a
+peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the
+street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other
+people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and
+stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful and anxious; he was
+distinctly aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do
+something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he
+stood still and saw a man standing on the other side of the street,
+beckoning to him. He crossed over to him, but at once the man turned and
+walked away with his head hanging, as though he had made no sign to
+him. “Stay, did he really beckon?” Raskolnikov wondered, but he tried
+to overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognised him and
+was frightened; it was the same man with stooping shoulders in the long
+coat. Raskolnikov followed him at a distance; his heart was beating;
+they went down a turning; the man still did not look round. “Does he
+know I am following him?” thought Raskolnikov. The man went into the
+gateway of a big house. Raskolnikov hastened to the gate and looked in
+to see whether he would look round and sign to him. In the court-yard
+the man did turn round and again seemed to beckon him. Raskolnikov at
+once followed him into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have
+gone up the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He heard
+slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely
+familiar. He reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone
+through the panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he
+reached the second floor. Bah! this is the flat where the painters were
+at work... but how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps
+of the man above had died away. “So he must have stopped or hidden
+somewhere.” He reached the third storey, should he go on? There was a
+stillness that was dreadful.... But he went on. The sound of his own
+footsteps scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be
+hiding in some corner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he
+hesitated and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as
+though everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe into the parlour
+which was flooded with moonlight. Everything there was as before, the
+chairs, the looking-glass, the yellow sofa and the pictures in the
+frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked in at the windows.
+“It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,” thought
+Raskolnikov. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the more
+silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat, till it was
+painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he heard a momentary sharp
+crack like the snapping of a splinter and all was still again. A fly
+flew up suddenly and struck the window pane with a plaintive buzz. At
+that moment he noticed in the corner between the window and the little
+cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. “Why is that cloak
+here?” he thought, “it wasn’t there before....” He went up to it quietly
+and felt that there was someone hiding behind it. He cautiously moved
+the cloak and saw, sitting on a chair in the corner, the old woman bent
+double so that he couldn’t see her face; but it was she. He stood over
+her. “She is afraid,” he thought. He stealthily took the axe from the
+noose and struck her one blow, then another on the skull. But strange
+to say she did not stir, as though she were made of wood. He was
+frightened, bent down nearer and tried to look at her; but she, too,
+bent her head lower. He bent right down to the ground and peeped up
+into her face from below, he peeped and turned cold with horror: the old
+woman was sitting and laughing, shaking with noiseless laughter, doing
+her utmost that he should not hear it. Suddenly he fancied that the door
+from the bedroom was opened a little and that there was laughter and
+whispering within. He was overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the
+old woman on the head with all his force, but at every blow of the axe
+the laughter and whispering from the bedroom grew louder and the old
+woman was simply shaking with mirth. He was rushing away, but the
+passage was full of people, the doors of the flats stood open and on the
+landing, on the stairs and everywhere below there were people, rows of
+heads, all looking, but huddled together in silence and expectation.
+Something gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to the spot, they
+would not move.... He tried to scream and woke up.
+He drew a deep breath--but his dream seemed strangely to persist:
+his door was flung open and a man whom he had never seen stood in the
+doorway watching him intently.
+Raskolnikov had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly closed them
+again. He lay on his back without stirring.
+“Is it still a dream?” he wondered and again raised his eyelids hardly
+perceptibly; the stranger was standing in the same place, still watching
+him.
+He stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing the door after
+him, went up to the table, paused a moment, still keeping his eyes on
+Raskolnikov, and noiselessly seated himself on the chair by the sofa; he
+put his hat on the floor beside him and leaned his hands on his cane
+and his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait
+indefinitely. As far as Raskolnikov could make out from his stolen
+glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a full, fair, almost
+whitish beard.
+Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk. There
+was complete stillness in the room. Not a sound came from the stairs.
+Only a big fly buzzed and fluttered against the window pane. It was
+unbearable at last. Raskolnikov suddenly got up and sat on the sofa.
+“Come, tell me what you want.”
+“I knew you were not asleep, but only pretending,” the stranger answered
+oddly, laughing calmly. “Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov, allow me to
+introduce myself....”
+PART IV
+CHAPTER I
+“Can this be still a dream?” Raskolnikov thought once more.
+He looked carefully and suspiciously at the unexpected visitor.
+“Svidrigaïlov! What nonsense! It can’t be!” he said at last aloud in
+bewilderment.
+His visitor did not seem at all surprised at this exclamation.
+“I’ve come to you for two reasons. In the first place, I wanted to make
+your personal acquaintance, as I have already heard a great deal about
+you that is interesting and flattering; secondly, I cherish the hope
+that you may not refuse to assist me in a matter directly concerning the
+welfare of your sister, Avdotya Romanovna. For without your support she
+might not let me come near her now, for she is prejudiced against me,
+but with your assistance I reckon on...”
+“You reckon wrongly,” interrupted Raskolnikov.
+“They only arrived yesterday, may I ask you?”
+Raskolnikov made no reply.
+“It was yesterday, I know. I only arrived myself the day before. Well,
+let me tell you this, Rodion Romanovitch, I don’t consider it necessary
+to justify myself, but kindly tell me what was there particularly
+criminal on my part in all this business, speaking without prejudice,
+with common sense?”
+Raskolnikov continued to look at him in silence.
+“That in my own house I persecuted a defenceless girl and ‘insulted her
+with my infamous proposals’--is that it? (I am anticipating you.) But
+you’ve only to assume that I, too, am a man _et nihil humanum_... in a
+word, that I am capable of being attracted and falling in love (which
+does not depend on our will), then everything can be explained in the
+most natural manner. The question is, am I a monster, or am I myself
+a victim? And what if I am a victim? In proposing to the object of my
+passion to elope with me to America or Switzerland, I may have cherished
+the deepest respect for her and may have thought that I was promoting
+our mutual happiness! Reason is the slave of passion, you know; why,
+probably, I was doing more harm to myself than anyone!”
+“But that’s not the point,” Raskolnikov interrupted with disgust. “It’s
+simply that whether you are right or wrong, we dislike you. We don’t
+want to have anything to do with you. We show you the door. Go out!”
+Svidrigaïlov broke into a sudden laugh.
+“But you’re... but there’s no getting round you,” he said, laughing in
+the frankest way. “I hoped to get round you, but you took up the right
+line at once!”
+“But you are trying to get round me still!”
+“What of it? What of it?” cried Svidrigaïlov, laughing openly. “But this
+is what the French call _bonne guerre_, and the most innocent form of
+deception!... But still you have interrupted me; one way or another, I
+repeat again: there would never have been any unpleasantness except for
+what happened in the garden. Marfa Petrovna...”
+“You have got rid of Marfa Petrovna, too, so they say?” Raskolnikov
+interrupted rudely.
+“Oh, you’ve heard that, too, then? You’d be sure to, though.... But
+as for your question, I really don’t know what to say, though my own
+conscience is quite at rest on that score. Don’t suppose that I am in
+any apprehension about it. All was regular and in order; the medical
+inquiry diagnosed apoplexy due to bathing immediately after a heavy
+dinner and a bottle of wine, and indeed it could have proved nothing
+else. But I’ll tell you what I have been thinking to myself of late, on
+my way here in the train, especially: didn’t I contribute to all that...
+calamity, morally, in a way, by irritation or something of the
+sort. But I came to the conclusion that that, too, was quite out of the
+question.”
+Raskolnikov laughed.
+“I wonder you trouble yourself about it!”
+“But what are you laughing at? Only consider, I struck her just twice
+with a switch--there were no marks even... don’t regard me as a cynic,
+please; I am perfectly aware how atrocious it was of me and all that;
+but I know for certain, too, that Marfa Petrovna was very likely pleased
+at my, so to say, warmth. The story of your sister had been wrung out to
+the last drop; for the last three days Marfa Petrovna had been forced to
+sit at home; she had nothing to show herself with in the town. Besides,
+she had bored them so with that letter (you heard about her reading the
+letter). And all of a sudden those two switches fell from heaven! Her
+first act was to order the carriage to be got out.... Not to speak
+of the fact that there are cases when women are very, very glad to be
+insulted in spite of all their show of indignation. There are instances
+of it with everyone; human beings in general, indeed, greatly love to
+be insulted, have you noticed that? But it’s particularly so with women.
+One might even say it’s their only amusement.”
+At one time Raskolnikov thought of getting up and walking out and so
+finishing the interview. But some curiosity and even a sort of prudence
+made him linger for a moment.
+“You are fond of fighting?” he asked carelessly.
+“No, not very,” Svidrigaïlov answered, calmly. “And Marfa Petrovna and
+I scarcely ever fought. We lived very harmoniously, and she was always
+pleased with me. I only used the whip twice in all our seven years (not
+counting a third occasion of a very ambiguous character). The first
+time, two months after our marriage, immediately after we arrived in the
+country, and the last time was that of which we are speaking. Did you
+suppose I was such a monster, such a reactionary, such a slave driver?
+Ha, ha! By the way, do you remember, Rodion Romanovitch, how a few years
+ago, in those days of beneficent publicity, a nobleman, I’ve forgotten
+his name, was put to shame everywhere, in all the papers, for having
+thrashed a German woman in the railway train. You remember? It was in
+those days, that very year I believe, the ‘disgraceful action of the
+_Age_’ took place (you know, ‘The Egyptian Nights,’ that public reading,
+you remember? The dark eyes, you know! Ah, the golden days of our youth,
+where are they?). Well, as for the gentleman who thrashed the German,
+I feel no sympathy with him, because after all what need is there
+for sympathy? But I must say that there are sometimes such provoking
+‘Germans’ that I don’t believe there is a progressive who could quite
+answer for himself. No one looked at the subject from that point of view
+then, but that’s the truly humane point of view, I assure you.”
+After saying this, Svidrigaïlov broke into a sudden laugh again.
+Raskolnikov saw clearly that this was a man with a firm purpose in his
+mind and able to keep it to himself.
+“I expect you’ve not talked to anyone for some days?” he asked.
+“Scarcely anyone. I suppose you are wondering at my being such an
+adaptable man?”
+“No, I am only wondering at your being too adaptable a man.”
+“Because I am not offended at the rudeness of your questions? Is that
+it? But why take offence? As you asked, so I answered,” he replied,
+with a surprising expression of simplicity. “You know, there’s
+hardly anything I take interest in,” he went on, as it were dreamily,
+“especially now, I’ve nothing to do.... You are quite at liberty to
+imagine though that I am making up to you with a motive, particularly as
+I told you I want to see your sister about something. But I’ll confess
+frankly, I am very much bored. The last three days especially, so I am
+delighted to see you.... Don’t be angry, Rodion Romanovitch, but you
+seem to be somehow awfully strange yourself. Say what you like, there’s
+something wrong with you, and now, too... not this very minute, I mean,
+but now, generally.... Well, well, I won’t, I won’t, don’t scowl! I am
+not such a bear, you know, as you think.”
+Raskolnikov looked gloomily at him.
+“You are not a bear, perhaps, at all,” he said. “I fancy indeed that
+you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to
+behave like one.”
+“I am not particularly interested in anyone’s opinion,” Svidrigaïlov
+answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, “and therefore why
+not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a convenient cloak for our
+climate... and especially if one has a natural propensity that way,” he
+added, laughing again.
+“But I’ve heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say, ‘not
+without connections.’ What can you want with me, then, unless you’ve
+some special object?”
+“That’s true that I have friends here,” Svidrigaïlov admitted, not
+replying to the chief point. “I’ve met some already. I’ve been lounging
+about for the last three days, and I’ve seen them, or they’ve seen me.
+That’s a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not a poor
+man; the emancipation of the serfs hasn’t affected me; my property
+consists chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue has not
+fallen off; but... I am not going to see them, I was sick of them long
+ago. I’ve been here three days and have called on no one.... What a town
+it is! How has it come into existence among us, tell me that? A town of
+officials and students of all sorts. Yes, there’s a great deal I didn’t
+notice when I was here eight years ago, kicking up my heels.... My only
+hope now is in anatomy, by Jove, it is!”
+“Anatomy?”
+“But as for these clubs, Dussauts, parades, or progress, indeed,
+maybe--well, all that can go on without me,” he went on, again without
+noticing the question. “Besides, who wants to be a card-sharper?”
+“Why, have you been a card-sharper then?”
+“How could I help being? There was a regular set of us, men of the best
+society, eight years ago; we had a fine time. And all men of breeding,
+you know, poets, men of property. And indeed as a rule in our Russian
+society the best manners are found among those who’ve been thrashed,
+have you noticed that? I’ve deteriorated in the country. But I did get
+into prison for debt, through a low Greek who came from Nezhin. Then
+Marfa Petrovna turned up; she bargained with him and bought me off for
+thirty thousand silver pieces (I owed seventy thousand). We were united
+in lawful wedlock and she bore me off into the country like a treasure.
+You know she was five years older than I. She was very fond of me. For
+seven years I never left the country. And, take note, that all my life
+she held a document over me, the IOU for thirty thousand roubles, so
+if I were to elect to be restive about anything I should be trapped at
+once! And she would have done it! Women find nothing incompatible in
+that.”
+“If it hadn’t been for that, would you have given her the slip?”
+“I don’t know what to say. It was scarcely the document restrained me. I
+didn’t want to go anywhere else. Marfa Petrovna herself invited me to go
+abroad, seeing I was bored, but I’ve been abroad before, and always
+felt sick there. For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the
+sea--you look at them and it makes you sad. What’s most revolting is
+that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one
+blames others for everything and excuses oneself. I should have gone
+perhaps on an expedition to the North Pole, because _j’ai le vin
+mauvais_ and hate drinking, and there’s nothing left but wine. I have
+tried it. But, I say, I’ve been told Berg is going up in a great balloon
+next Sunday from the Yusupov Garden and will take up passengers at a
+fee. Is it true?”
+“Why, would you go up?”
+“I... No, oh, no,” muttered Svidrigaïlov really seeming to be deep in
+thought.
+“What does he mean? Is he in earnest?” Raskolnikov wondered.
+“No, the document didn’t restrain me,” Svidrigaïlov went on,
+meditatively. “It was my own doing, not leaving the country, and nearly
+a year ago Marfa Petrovna gave me back the document on my name-day
+and made me a present of a considerable sum of money, too. She had a
+fortune, you know. ‘You see how I trust you, Arkady Ivanovitch’--that
+was actually her expression. You don’t believe she used it? But do
+you know I managed the estate quite decently, they know me in the
+neighbourhood. I ordered books, too. Marfa Petrovna at first approved,
+but afterwards she was afraid of my over-studying.”
+“You seem to be missing Marfa Petrovna very much?”
+“Missing her? Perhaps. Really, perhaps I am. And, by the way, do you
+believe in ghosts?”
+“What ghosts?”
+“Why, ordinary ghosts.”
+“Do you believe in them?”
+“Perhaps not, _pour vous plaire_.... I wouldn’t say no exactly.”
+“Do you see them, then?”
+Svidrigaïlov looked at him rather oddly.
+“Marfa Petrovna is pleased to visit me,” he said, twisting his mouth
+into a strange smile.
+“How do you mean ‘she is pleased to visit you’?”
+“She has been three times. I saw her first on the very day of the
+funeral, an hour after she was buried. It was the day before I left to
+come here. The second time was the day before yesterday, at daybreak, on
+the journey at the station of Malaya Vishera, and the third time was two
+hours ago in the room where I am staying. I was alone.”
+“Were you awake?”
+“Quite awake. I was wide awake every time. She comes, speaks to me for
+a minute and goes out at the door--always at the door. I can almost hear
+her.”
+“What made me think that something of the sort must be happening to
+you?” Raskolnikov said suddenly.
+At the same moment he was surprised at having said it. He was much
+excited.
+“What! Did you think so?” Svidrigaïlov asked in astonishment. “Did you
+really? Didn’t I say that there was something in common between us, eh?”
+“You never said so!” Raskolnikov cried sharply and with heat.
+“Didn’t I?”
+“No!”
+“I thought I did. When I came in and saw you lying with your eyes shut,
+pretending, I said to myself at once, ‘Here’s the man.’”
+“What do you mean by ‘the man?’ What are you talking about?” cried
+Raskolnikov.
+“What do I mean? I really don’t know....” Svidrigaïlov muttered
+ingenuously, as though he, too, were puzzled.
+For a minute they were silent. They stared in each other’s faces.
+“That’s all nonsense!” Raskolnikov shouted with vexation. “What does she
+say when she comes to you?”
+“She! Would you believe it, she talks of the silliest trifles and--man
+is a strange creature--it makes me angry. The first time she came in (I
+was tired you know: the funeral service, the funeral ceremony, the lunch
+afterwards. At last I was left alone in my study. I lighted a cigar and
+began to think), she came in at the door. ‘You’ve been so busy to-day,
+Arkady Ivanovitch, you have forgotten to wind the dining-room clock,’
+she said. All those seven years I’ve wound that clock every week, and if
+I forgot it she would always remind me. The next day I set off on my way
+here. I got out at the station at daybreak; I’d been asleep, tired out,
+with my eyes half open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and
+there was suddenly Marfa Petrovna sitting beside me with a pack of
+cards in her hands. ‘Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Arkady
+Ivanovitch?’ She was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never
+forgive myself for not asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and,
+besides, the bell rang. I was sitting to-day, feeling very heavy after a
+miserable dinner from a cookshop; I was sitting smoking, all of a sudden
+Marfa Petrovna again. She came in very smart in a new green silk dress
+with a long train. ‘Good day, Arkady Ivanovitch! How do you like my
+dress? Aniska can’t make like this.’ (Aniska was a dressmaker in the
+country, one of our former serf girls who had been trained in Moscow, a
+pretty wench.) She stood turning round before me. I looked at the dress,
+and then I looked carefully, very carefully, at her face. ‘I wonder
+you trouble to come to me about such trifles, Marfa Petrovna.’ ‘Good
+gracious, you won’t let one disturb you about anything!’ To tease her
+I said, ‘I want to get married, Marfa Petrovna.’ ‘That’s just like you,
+Arkady Ivanovitch; it does you very little credit to come looking for a
+bride when you’ve hardly buried your wife. And if you could make a good
+choice, at least, but I know it won’t be for your happiness or hers, you
+will only be a laughing-stock to all good people.’ Then she went out and
+her train seemed to rustle. Isn’t it nonsense, eh?”
+“But perhaps you are telling lies?” Raskolnikov put in.
+“I rarely lie,” answered Svidrigaïlov thoughtfully, apparently not
+noticing the rudeness of the question.
+“And in the past, have you ever seen ghosts before?”
+“Y-yes, I have seen them, but only once in my life, six years ago. I had
+a serf, Filka; just after his burial I called out forgetting ‘Filka, my
+pipe!’ He came in and went to the cupboard where my pipes were. I sat
+still and thought ‘he is doing it out of revenge,’ because we had a
+violent quarrel just before his death. ‘How dare you come in with a hole
+in your elbow?’ I said. ‘Go away, you scamp!’ He turned and went out,
+and never came again. I didn’t tell Marfa Petrovna at the time. I wanted
+to have a service sung for him, but I was ashamed.”
+“You should go to a doctor.”
+“I know I am not well, without your telling me, though I don’t know
+what’s wrong; I believe I am five times as strong as you are. I didn’t
+ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you
+believe that they exist.”
+“No, I won’t believe it!” Raskolnikov cried, with positive anger.
+“What do people generally say?” muttered Svidrigaïlov, as though
+speaking to himself, looking aside and bowing his head. “They say, ‘You
+are ill, so what appears to you is only unreal fantasy.’ But that’s not
+strictly logical. I agree that ghosts only appear to the sick, but that
+only proves that they are unable to appear except to the sick, not that
+they don’t exist.”
+“Nothing of the sort,” Raskolnikov insisted irritably.
+“No? You don’t think so?” Svidrigaïlov went on, looking at him
+deliberately. “But what do you say to this argument (help me with
+it): ghosts are, as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the
+beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see
+them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the
+sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon
+as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is
+broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the
+more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one’s contact with that
+other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that
+world. I thought of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you
+could believe in that, too.”
+“I don’t believe in a future life,” said Raskolnikov.
+Svidrigaïlov sat lost in thought.
+“And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort,”
+he said suddenly.
+“He is a madman,” thought Raskolnikov.
+“We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception,
+something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what
+if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black
+and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I
+sometimes fancy it like that.”
+“Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than
+that?” Raskolnikov cried, with a feeling of anguish.
+“Juster? And how can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know
+it’s what I would certainly have made it,” answered Svidrigaïlov, with a
+vague smile.
+This horrible answer sent a cold chill through Raskolnikov. Svidrigaïlov
+raised his head, looked at him, and suddenly began laughing.
+“Only think,” he cried, “half an hour ago we had never seen each other,
+we regarded each other as enemies; there is a matter unsettled between
+us; we’ve thrown it aside, and away we’ve gone into the abstract! Wasn’t
+I right in saying that we were birds of a feather?”
+“Kindly allow me,” Raskolnikov went on irritably, “to ask you to explain
+why you have honoured me with your visit... and... and I am in a hurry,
+I have no time to waste. I want to go out.”
+“By all means, by all means. Your sister, Avdotya Romanovna, is going to
+be married to Mr. Luzhin, Pyotr Petrovitch?”
+“Can you refrain from any question about my sister and from mentioning
+her name? I can’t understand how you dare utter her name in my presence,
+if you really are Svidrigaïlov.”
+“Why, but I’ve come here to speak about her; how can I avoid mentioning
+her?”
+“Very good, speak, but make haste.”
+“I am sure that you must have formed your own opinion of this Mr.
+Luzhin, who is a connection of mine through my wife, if you have only
+seen him for half an hour, or heard any facts about him. He is no
+match for Avdotya Romanovna. I believe Avdotya Romanovna is sacrificing
+herself generously and imprudently for the sake of... for the sake of
+her family. I fancied from all I had heard of you that you would be very
+glad if the match could be broken off without the sacrifice of worldly
+advantages. Now I know you personally, I am convinced of it.”
+“All this is very naïve... excuse me, I should have said impudent on
+your part,” said Raskolnikov.
+“You mean to say that I am seeking my own ends. Don’t be uneasy, Rodion
+Romanovitch, if I were working for my own advantage, I would not have
+spoken out so directly. I am not quite a fool. I will confess something
+psychologically curious about that: just now, defending my love for
+Avdotya Romanovna, I said I was myself the victim. Well, let me tell you
+that I’ve no feeling of love now, not the slightest, so that I wonder
+myself indeed, for I really did feel something...”
+“Through idleness and depravity,” Raskolnikov put in.
+“I certainly am idle and depraved, but your sister has such qualities
+that even I could not help being impressed by them. But that’s all
+nonsense, as I see myself now.”
+“Have you seen that long?”
+“I began to be aware of it before, but was only perfectly sure of it the
+day before yesterday, almost at the moment I arrived in Petersburg. I
+still fancied in Moscow, though, that I was coming to try to get Avdotya
+Romanovna’s hand and to cut out Mr. Luzhin.”
+“Excuse me for interrupting you; kindly be brief, and come to the object
+of your visit. I am in a hurry, I want to go out...”
+“With the greatest pleasure. On arriving here and determining on a
+certain... journey, I should like to make some necessary preliminary
+arrangements. I left my children with an aunt; they are well provided
+for; and they have no need of me personally. And a nice father I should
+make, too! I have taken nothing but what Marfa Petrovna gave me a year
+ago. That’s enough for me. Excuse me, I am just coming to the point.
+Before the journey which may come off, I want to settle Mr. Luzhin, too.
+It’s not that I detest him so much, but it was through him I quarrelled
+with Marfa Petrovna when I learned that she had dished up this marriage.
+I want now to see Avdotya Romanovna through your mediation, and if you
+like in your presence, to explain to her that in the first place she
+will never gain anything but harm from Mr. Luzhin. Then, begging
+her pardon for all past unpleasantness, to make her a present of ten
+thousand roubles and so assist the rupture with Mr. Luzhin, a rupture to
+which I believe she is herself not disinclined, if she could see the way
+to it.”
+“You are certainly mad,” cried Raskolnikov not so much angered as
+astonished. “How dare you talk like that!”
+“I knew you would scream at me; but in the first place, though I am not
+rich, this ten thousand roubles is perfectly free; I have absolutely no
+need for it. If Avdotya Romanovna does not accept it, I shall waste
+it in some more foolish way. That’s the first thing. Secondly, my
+conscience is perfectly easy; I make the offer with no ulterior motive.
+You may not believe it, but in the end Avdotya Romanovna and you will
+know. The point is, that I did actually cause your sister, whom I
+greatly respect, some trouble and unpleasantness, and so, sincerely
+regretting it, I want--not to compensate, not to repay her for the
+unpleasantness, but simply to do something to her advantage, to show
+that I am not, after all, privileged to do nothing but harm. If there
+were a millionth fraction of self-interest in my offer, I should not
+have made it so openly; and I should not have offered her ten thousand
+only, when five weeks ago I offered her more, Besides, I may, perhaps,
+very soon marry a young lady, and that alone ought to prevent suspicion
+of any design on Avdotya Romanovna. In conclusion, let me say that
+in marrying Mr. Luzhin, she is taking money just the same, only from
+another man. Don’t be angry, Rodion Romanovitch, think it over coolly
+and quietly.”
+Svidrigaïlov himself was exceedingly cool and quiet as he was saying
+this.
+“I beg you to say no more,” said Raskolnikov. “In any case this is
+unpardonable impertinence.”
+“Not in the least. Then a man may do nothing but harm to his neighbour
+in this world, and is prevented from doing the tiniest bit of good
+by trivial conventional formalities. That’s absurd. If I died, for
+instance, and left that sum to your sister in my will, surely she
+wouldn’t refuse it?”
+“Very likely she would.”
+“Oh, no, indeed. However, if you refuse it, so be it, though ten
+thousand roubles is a capital thing to have on occasion. In any case I
+beg you to repeat what I have said to Avdotya Romanovna.”
+“No, I won’t.”
+“In that case, Rodion Romanovitch, I shall be obliged to try and see her
+myself and worry her by doing so.”
+“And if I do tell her, will you not try to see her?”
+“I don’t know really what to say. I should like very much to see her
+once more.”
+“Don’t hope for it.”
+“I’m sorry. But you don’t know me. Perhaps we may become better
+friends.”
+“You think we may become friends?”
+“And why not?” Svidrigaïlov said, smiling. He stood up and took his hat.
+“I didn’t quite intend to disturb you and I came here without reckoning
+on it... though I was very much struck by your face this morning.”
+“Where did you see me this morning?” Raskolnikov asked uneasily.
+“I saw you by chance.... I kept fancying there is something about you
+like me.... But don’t be uneasy. I am not intrusive; I used to get on
+all right with card-sharpers, and I never bored Prince Svirbey, a great
+personage who is a distant relation of mine, and I could write about
+Raphael’s _Madonna_ in Madam Prilukov’s album, and I never left Marfa
+Petrovna’s side for seven years, and I used to stay the night at
+Viazemsky’s house in the Hay Market in the old days, and I may go up in
+a balloon with Berg, perhaps.”
+“Oh, all right. Are you starting soon on your travels, may I ask?”
+“What travels?”
+“Why, on that ‘journey’; you spoke of it yourself.”
+“A journey? Oh, yes. I did speak of a journey. Well, that’s a wide
+subject.... if only you knew what you are asking,” he added, and gave
+a sudden, loud, short laugh. “Perhaps I’ll get married instead of the
+journey. They’re making a match for me.”
+“Here?”
+“Yes.”
+“How have you had time for that?”
+“But I am very anxious to see Avdotya Romanovna once. I earnestly beg
+it. Well, good-bye for the present. Oh, yes. I have forgotten something.
+Tell your sister, Rodion Romanovitch, that Marfa Petrovna remembered
+her in her will and left her three thousand roubles. That’s absolutely
+certain. Marfa Petrovna arranged it a week before her death, and it was
+done in my presence. Avdotya Romanovna will be able to receive the money
+in two or three weeks.”
+“Are you telling the truth?”
+“Yes, tell her. Well, your servant. I am staying very near you.”
+As he went out, Svidrigaïlov ran up against Razumihin in the doorway.
+CHAPTER II
+It was nearly eight o’clock. The two young men hurried to Bakaleyev’s,
+to arrive before Luzhin.
+“Why, who was that?” asked Razumihin, as soon as they were in the
+street.
+“It was Svidrigaïlov, that landowner in whose house my sister was
+insulted when she was their governess. Through his persecuting her with
+his attentions, she was turned out by his wife, Marfa Petrovna. This
+Marfa Petrovna begged Dounia’s forgiveness afterwards, and she’s just
+died suddenly. It was of her we were talking this morning. I don’t
+know why I’m afraid of that man. He came here at once after his wife’s
+funeral. He is very strange, and is determined on doing something.... We
+must guard Dounia from him... that’s what I wanted to tell you, do you
+hear?”
+“Guard her! What can he do to harm Avdotya Romanovna? Thank you, Rodya,
+for speaking to me like that.... We will, we will guard her. Where does
+he live?”
+“I don’t know.”
+“Why didn’t you ask? What a pity! I’ll find out, though.”
+“Did you see him?” asked Raskolnikov after a pause.
+“Yes, I noticed him, I noticed him well.”
+“You did really see him? You saw him clearly?” Raskolnikov insisted.
+“Yes, I remember him perfectly, I should know him in a thousand; I have
+a good memory for faces.”
+They were silent again.
+“Hm!... that’s all right,” muttered Raskolnikov. “Do you know, I
+fancied... I keep thinking that it may have been an hallucination.”
+“What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”
+“Well, you all say,” Raskolnikov went on, twisting his mouth into a
+smile, “that I am mad. I thought just now that perhaps I really am mad,
+and have only seen a phantom.”
+“What do you mean?”
+“Why, who can tell? Perhaps I am really mad, and perhaps everything that
+happened all these days may be only imagination.”
+“Ach, Rodya, you have been upset again!... But what did he say, what did
+he come for?”
+Raskolnikov did not answer. Razumihin thought a minute.
+“Now let me tell you my story,” he began, “I came to you, you were
+asleep. Then we had dinner and then I went to Porfiry’s, Zametov was
+still with him. I tried to begin, but it was no use. I couldn’t speak in
+the right way. They don’t seem to understand and can’t understand, but
+are not a bit ashamed. I drew Porfiry to the window, and began talking
+to him, but it was still no use. He looked away and I looked away. At
+last I shook my fist in his ugly face, and told him as a cousin I’d
+brain him. He merely looked at me, I cursed and came away. That was
+all. It was very stupid. To Zametov I didn’t say a word. But, you see, I
+thought I’d made a mess of it, but as I went downstairs a brilliant idea
+struck me: why should we trouble? Of course if you were in any danger
+or anything, but why need you care? You needn’t care a hang for them. We
+shall have a laugh at them afterwards, and if I were in your place I’d
+mystify them more than ever. How ashamed they’ll be afterwards! Hang
+them! We can thrash them afterwards, but let’s laugh at them now!”
+“To be sure,” answered Raskolnikov. “But what will you say to-morrow?”
+he thought to himself. Strange to say, till that moment it had never
+occurred to him to wonder what Razumihin would think when he knew. As he
+thought it, Raskolnikov looked at him. Razumihin’s account of his visit
+to Porfiry had very little interest for him, so much had come and gone
+since then.
+In the corridor they came upon Luzhin; he had arrived punctually
+at eight, and was looking for the number, so that all three went in
+together without greeting or looking at one another. The young men
+walked in first, while Pyotr Petrovitch, for good manners, lingered a
+little in the passage, taking off his coat. Pulcheria Alexandrovna came
+forward at once to greet him in the doorway, Dounia was welcoming her
+brother. Pyotr Petrovitch walked in and quite amiably, though with
+redoubled dignity, bowed to the ladies. He looked, however, as though
+he were a little put out and could not yet recover himself. Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna, who seemed also a little embarrassed, hastened to make
+them all sit down at the round table where a samovar was boiling. Dounia
+and Luzhin were facing one another on opposite sides of the table.
+Razumihin and Raskolnikov were facing Pulcheria Alexandrovna, Razumihin
+was next to Luzhin and Raskolnikov was beside his sister.
+A moment’s silence followed. Pyotr Petrovitch deliberately drew out a
+cambric handkerchief reeking of scent and blew his nose with an air of
+a benevolent man who felt himself slighted, and was firmly resolved to
+insist on an explanation. In the passage the idea had occurred to him to
+keep on his overcoat and walk away, and so give the two ladies a sharp
+and emphatic lesson and make them feel the gravity of the position.
+But he could not bring himself to do this. Besides, he could not endure
+uncertainty, and he wanted an explanation: if his request had been so
+openly disobeyed, there was something behind it, and in that case it was
+better to find it out beforehand; it rested with him to punish them and
+there would always be time for that.
+“I trust you had a favourable journey,” he inquired officially of
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“Oh, very, Pyotr Petrovitch.”
+“I am gratified to hear it. And Avdotya Romanovna is not over-fatigued
+either?”
+“I am young and strong, I don’t get tired, but it was a great strain for
+mother,” answered Dounia.
+“That’s unavoidable! our national railways are of terrible length.
+‘Mother Russia,’ as they say, is a vast country.... In spite of all my
+desire to do so, I was unable to meet you yesterday. But I trust all
+passed off without inconvenience?”
+“Oh, no, Pyotr Petrovitch, it was all terribly disheartening,” Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna hastened to declare with peculiar intonation, “and if
+Dmitri Prokofitch had not been sent us, I really believe by God Himself,
+we should have been utterly lost. Here, he is! Dmitri Prokofitch
+Razumihin,” she added, introducing him to Luzhin.
+“I had the pleasure... yesterday,” muttered Pyotr Petrovitch with a
+hostile glance sidelong at Razumihin; then he scowled and was silent.
+Pyotr Petrovitch belonged to that class of persons, on the surface very
+polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but who,
+directly they are crossed in anything, are completely disconcerted, and
+become more like sacks of flour than elegant and lively men of society.
+Again all was silent; Raskolnikov was obstinately mute, Avdotya
+Romanovna was unwilling to open the conversation too soon. Razumihin had
+nothing to say, so Pulcheria Alexandrovna was anxious again.
+“Marfa Petrovna is dead, have you heard?” she began having recourse to
+her leading item of conversation.
+“To be sure, I heard so. I was immediately informed, and I have come to
+make you acquainted with the fact that Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov
+set off in haste for Petersburg immediately after his wife’s funeral. So
+at least I have excellent authority for believing.”
+“To Petersburg? here?” Dounia asked in alarm and looked at her mother.
+“Yes, indeed, and doubtless not without some design, having in view the
+rapidity of his departure, and all the circumstances preceding it.”
+“Good heavens! won’t he leave Dounia in peace even here?” cried
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+“I imagine that neither you nor Avdotya Romanovna have any grounds for
+uneasiness, unless, of course, you are yourselves desirous of getting
+into communication with him. For my part I am on my guard, and am now
+discovering where he is lodging.”
+“Oh, Pyotr Petrovitch, you would not believe what a fright you have
+given me,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on: “I’ve only seen him twice,
+but I thought him terrible, terrible! I am convinced that he was the
+cause of Marfa Petrovna’s death.”
+“It’s impossible to be certain about that. I have precise information. I
+do not dispute that he may have contributed to accelerate the course of
+events by the moral influence, so to say, of the affront; but as to the
+general conduct and moral characteristics of that personage, I am
+in agreement with you. I do not know whether he is well off now, and
+precisely what Marfa Petrovna left him; this will be known to me within
+a very short period; but no doubt here in Petersburg, if he has any
+pecuniary resources, he will relapse at once into his old ways. He is
+the most depraved, and abjectly vicious specimen of that class of men.
+I have considerable reason to believe that Marfa Petrovna, who was so
+unfortunate as to fall in love with him and to pay his debts eight years
+ago, was of service to him also in another way. Solely by her exertions
+and sacrifices, a criminal charge, involving an element of fantastic
+and homicidal brutality for which he might well have been sentenced to
+Siberia, was hushed up. That’s the sort of man he is, if you care to
+know.”
+“Good heavens!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Raskolnikov listened
+attentively.
+“Are you speaking the truth when you say that you have good evidence of
+this?” Dounia asked sternly and emphatically.
+“I only repeat what I was told in secret by Marfa Petrovna. I must
+observe that from the legal point of view the case was far from clear.
+There was, and I believe still is, living here a woman called Resslich,
+a foreigner, who lent small sums of money at interest, and did other
+commissions, and with this woman Svidrigaïlov had for a long while close
+and mysterious relations. She had a relation, a niece I believe, living
+with her, a deaf and dumb girl of fifteen, or perhaps not more than
+fourteen. Resslich hated this girl, and grudged her every crust; she
+used to beat her mercilessly. One day the girl was found hanging in
+the garret. At the inquest the verdict was suicide. After the usual
+proceedings the matter ended, but, later on, information was given that
+the child had been... cruelly outraged by Svidrigaïlov. It is true, this
+was not clearly established, the information was given by another German
+woman of loose character whose word could not be trusted; no statement
+was actually made to the police, thanks to Marfa Petrovna’s money and
+exertions; it did not get beyond gossip. And yet the story is a very
+significant one. You heard, no doubt, Avdotya Romanovna, when you were
+with them the story of the servant Philip who died of ill treatment he
+received six years ago, before the abolition of serfdom.”
+“I heard, on the contrary, that this Philip hanged himself.”
+“Quite so, but what drove him, or rather perhaps disposed him,
+to suicide was the systematic persecution and severity of Mr.
+Svidrigaïlov.”
+“I don’t know that,” answered Dounia, dryly. “I only heard a queer story
+that Philip was a sort of hypochondriac, a sort of domestic philosopher,
+the servants used to say, ‘he read himself silly,’ and that he hanged
+himself partly on account of Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s mockery of him and not
+his blows. When I was there he behaved well to the servants, and they
+were actually fond of him, though they certainly did blame him for
+Philip’s death.”
+“I perceive, Avdotya Romanovna, that you seem disposed to undertake his
+defence all of a sudden,” Luzhin observed, twisting his lips into
+an ambiguous smile, “there’s no doubt that he is an astute man, and
+insinuating where ladies are concerned, of which Marfa Petrovna, who has
+died so strangely, is a terrible instance. My only desire has been to be
+of service to you and your mother with my advice, in view of the renewed
+efforts which may certainly be anticipated from him. For my part it’s
+my firm conviction, that he will end in a debtor’s prison again.
+Marfa Petrovna had not the slightest intention of settling anything
+substantial on him, having regard for his children’s interests, and,
+if she left him anything, it would only be the merest sufficiency,
+something insignificant and ephemeral, which would not last a year for a
+man of his habits.”
+“Pyotr Petrovitch, I beg you,” said Dounia, “say no more of Mr.
+Svidrigaïlov. It makes me miserable.”
+“He has just been to see me,” said Raskolnikov, breaking his silence for
+the first time.
+There were exclamations from all, and they all turned to him. Even Pyotr
+Petrovitch was roused.
+“An hour and a half ago, he came in when I was asleep, waked me, and
+introduced himself,” Raskolnikov continued. “He was fairly cheerful
+and at ease, and quite hopes that we shall become friends. He is
+particularly anxious, by the way, Dounia, for an interview with you, at
+which he asked me to assist. He has a proposition to make to you, and
+he told me about it. He told me, too, that a week before her death Marfa
+Petrovna left you three thousand roubles in her will, Dounia, and that
+you can receive the money very shortly.”
+“Thank God!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself. “Pray for
+her soul, Dounia!”
+“It’s a fact!” broke from Luzhin.
+“Tell us, what more?” Dounia urged Raskolnikov.
+“Then he said that he wasn’t rich and all the estate was left to his
+children who are now with an aunt, then that he was staying somewhere
+not far from me, but where, I don’t know, I didn’t ask....”
+“But what, what does he want to propose to Dounia?” cried Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna in a fright. “Did he tell you?”
+“Yes.”
+“What was it?”
+“I’ll tell you afterwards.”
+Raskolnikov ceased speaking and turned his attention to his tea.
+Pyotr Petrovitch looked at his watch.
+“I am compelled to keep a business engagement, and so I shall not be in
+your way,” he added with an air of some pique and he began getting up.
+“Don’t go, Pyotr Petrovitch,” said Dounia, “you intended to spend
+the evening. Besides, you wrote yourself that you wanted to have an
+explanation with mother.”
+“Precisely so, Avdotya Romanovna,” Pyotr Petrovitch answered
+impressively, sitting down again, but still holding his hat. “I
+certainly desired an explanation with you and your honoured mother upon
+a very important point indeed. But as your brother cannot speak openly
+in my presence of some proposals of Mr. Svidrigaïlov, I, too, do not
+desire and am not able to speak openly... in the presence of others...
+of certain matters of the greatest gravity. Moreover, my most weighty
+and urgent request has been disregarded....”
+Assuming an aggrieved air, Luzhin relapsed into dignified silence.
+“Your request that my brother should not be present at our meeting was
+disregarded solely at my insistance,” said Dounia. “You wrote that you
+had been insulted by my brother; I think that this must be explained at
+once, and you must be reconciled. And if Rodya really has insulted you,
+then he _should_ and _will_ apologise.”
+Pyotr Petrovitch took a stronger line.
+“There are insults, Avdotya Romanovna, which no goodwill can make us
+forget. There is a line in everything which it is dangerous to overstep;
+and when it has been overstepped, there is no return.”
+“That wasn’t what I was speaking of exactly, Pyotr Petrovitch,” Dounia
+interrupted with some impatience. “Please understand that our whole
+future depends now on whether all this is explained and set right as
+soon as possible. I tell you frankly at the start that I cannot look at
+it in any other light, and if you have the least regard for me, all this
+business must be ended to-day, however hard that may be. I repeat that
+if my brother is to blame he will ask your forgiveness.”
+“I am surprised at your putting the question like that,” said Luzhin,
+getting more and more irritated. “Esteeming, and so to say, adoring you,
+I may at the same time, very well indeed, be able to dislike some member
+of your family. Though I lay claim to the happiness of your hand, I
+cannot accept duties incompatible with...”
+“Ah, don’t be so ready to take offence, Pyotr Petrovitch,” Dounia
+interrupted with feeling, “and be the sensible and generous man I have
+always considered, and wish to consider, you to be. I’ve given you a
+great promise, I am your betrothed. Trust me in this matter and, believe
+me, I shall be capable of judging impartially. My assuming the part of
+judge is as much a surprise for my brother as for you. When I insisted
+on his coming to our interview to-day after your letter, I told
+him nothing of what I meant to do. Understand that, if you are not
+reconciled, I must choose between you--it must be either you or he. That
+is how the question rests on your side and on his. I don’t want to be
+mistaken in my choice, and I must not be. For your sake I must break off
+with my brother, for my brother’s sake I must break off with you. I can
+find out for certain now whether he is a brother to me, and I want to
+know it; and of you, whether I am dear to you, whether you esteem me,
+whether you are the husband for me.”
+“Avdotya Romanovna,” Luzhin declared huffily, “your words are of too
+much consequence to me; I will say more, they are offensive in view
+of the position I have the honour to occupy in relation to you. To say
+nothing of your strange and offensive setting me on a level with an
+impertinent boy, you admit the possibility of breaking your promise to
+me. You say ‘you or he,’ showing thereby of how little consequence I
+am in your eyes... I cannot let this pass considering the relationship
+and... the obligations existing between us.”
+“What!” cried Dounia, flushing. “I set your interest beside all that has
+hitherto been most precious in my life, what has made up the _whole_ of
+my life, and here you are offended at my making too _little_ account of
+you.”
+Raskolnikov smiled sarcastically, Razumihin fidgeted, but Pyotr
+Petrovitch did not accept the reproof; on the contrary, at every word he
+became more persistent and irritable, as though he relished it.
+“Love for the future partner of your life, for your husband, ought to
+outweigh your love for your brother,” he pronounced sententiously, “and
+in any case I cannot be put on the same level.... Although I said so
+emphatically that I would not speak openly in your brother’s presence,
+nevertheless, I intend now to ask your honoured mother for a necessary
+explanation on a point of great importance closely affecting my dignity.
+Your son,” he turned to Pulcheria Alexandrovna, “yesterday in the
+presence of Mr. Razsudkin (or... I think that’s it? excuse me I have
+forgotten your surname,” he bowed politely to Razumihin) “insulted me by
+misrepresenting the idea I expressed to you in a private conversation,
+drinking coffee, that is, that marriage with a poor girl who has had
+experience of trouble is more advantageous from the conjugal point of
+view than with one who has lived in luxury, since it is more profitable
+for the moral character. Your son intentionally exaggerated the
+significance of my words and made them ridiculous, accusing me of
+malicious intentions, and, as far as I could see, relied upon your
+correspondence with him. I shall consider myself happy, Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna, if it is possible for you to convince me of an opposite
+conclusion, and thereby considerately reassure me. Kindly let me know
+in what terms precisely you repeated my words in your letter to Rodion
+Romanovitch.”
+“I don’t remember,” faltered Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “I repeated them as
+I understood them. I don’t know how Rodya repeated them to you, perhaps
+he exaggerated.”
+“He could not have exaggerated them, except at your instigation.”
+“Pyotr Petrovitch,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna declared with dignity, “the
+proof that Dounia and I did not take your words in a very bad sense is
+the fact that we are here.”
+“Good, mother,” said Dounia approvingly.
+“Then this is my fault again,” said Luzhin, aggrieved.
+“Well, Pyotr Petrovitch, you keep blaming Rodion, but you yourself have
+just written what was false about him,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna added,
+gaining courage.
+“I don’t remember writing anything false.”
+“You wrote,” Raskolnikov said sharply, not turning to Luzhin, “that I
+gave money yesterday not to the widow of the man who was killed, as was
+the fact, but to his daughter (whom I had never seen till yesterday).
+You wrote this to make dissension between me and my family, and for that
+object added coarse expressions about the conduct of a girl whom you
+don’t know. All that is mean slander.”
+“Excuse me, sir,” said Luzhin, quivering with fury. “I enlarged upon
+your qualities and conduct in my letter solely in response to your
+sister’s and mother’s inquiries, how I found you, and what impression
+you made on me. As for what you’ve alluded to in my letter, be so good
+as to point out one word of falsehood, show, that is, that you didn’t
+throw away your money, and that there are not worthless persons in that
+family, however unfortunate.”
+“To my thinking, you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little
+finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones.”
+“Would you go so far then as to let her associate with your mother and
+sister?”
+“I have done so already, if you care to know. I made her sit down to-day
+with mother and Dounia.”
+“Rodya!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Dounia crimsoned, Razumihin
+knitted his brows. Luzhin smiled with lofty sarcasm.
+“You may see for yourself, Avdotya Romanovna,” he said, “whether it is
+possible for us to agree. I hope now that this question is at an end,
+once and for all. I will withdraw, that I may not hinder the pleasures
+of family intimacy, and the discussion of secrets.” He got up from his
+chair and took his hat. “But in withdrawing, I venture to request
+that for the future I may be spared similar meetings, and, so to
+say, compromises. I appeal particularly to you, honoured Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna, on this subject, the more as my letter was addressed to
+you and to no one else.”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna was a little offended.
+“You seem to think we are completely under your authority, Pyotr
+Petrovitch. Dounia has told you the reason your desire was disregarded,
+she had the best intentions. And indeed you write as though you were
+laying commands upon me. Are we to consider every desire of yours as
+a command? Let me tell you on the contrary that you ought to show
+particular delicacy and consideration for us now, because we have thrown
+up everything, and have come here relying on you, and so we are in any
+case in a sense in your hands.”
+“That is not quite true, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, especially at the
+present moment, when the news has come of Marfa Petrovna’s legacy, which
+seems indeed very apropos, judging from the new tone you take to me,” he
+added sarcastically.
+“Judging from that remark, we may certainly presume that you were
+reckoning on our helplessness,” Dounia observed irritably.
+“But now in any case I cannot reckon on it, and I particularly desire
+not to hinder your discussion of the secret proposals of Arkady
+Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov, which he has entrusted to your brother and
+which have, I perceive, a great and possibly a very agreeable interest
+for you.”
+“Good heavens!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+Razumihin could not sit still on his chair.
+“Aren’t you ashamed now, sister?” asked Raskolnikov.
+“I am ashamed, Rodya,” said Dounia. “Pyotr Petrovitch, go away,” she
+turned to him, white with anger.
+Pyotr Petrovitch had apparently not at all expected such a conclusion.
+He had too much confidence in himself, in his power and in the
+helplessness of his victims. He could not believe it even now. He turned
+pale, and his lips quivered.
+“Avdotya Romanovna, if I go out of this door now, after such a
+dismissal, then, you may reckon on it, I will never come back. Consider
+what you are doing. My word is not to be shaken.”
+“What insolence!” cried Dounia, springing up from her seat. “I don’t
+want you to come back again.”
+“What! So that’s how it stands!” cried Luzhin, utterly unable to the
+last moment to believe in the rupture and so completely thrown out of
+his reckoning now. “So that’s how it stands! But do you know, Avdotya
+Romanovna, that I might protest?”
+“What right have you to speak to her like that?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
+intervened hotly. “And what can you protest about? What rights have you?
+Am I to give my Dounia to a man like you? Go away, leave us altogether!
+We are to blame for having agreed to a wrong action, and I above
+all....”
+“But you have bound me, Pulcheria Alexandrovna,” Luzhin stormed in a
+frenzy, “by your promise, and now you deny it and... besides... I have
+been led on account of that into expenses....”
+This last complaint was so characteristic of Pyotr Petrovitch, that
+Raskolnikov, pale with anger and with the effort of restraining it,
+could not help breaking into laughter. But Pulcheria Alexandrovna was
+furious.
+“Expenses? What expenses? Are you speaking of our trunk? But the
+conductor brought it for nothing for you. Mercy on us, we have bound
+you! What are you thinking about, Pyotr Petrovitch, it was you bound us,
+hand and foot, not we!”
+“Enough, mother, no more please,” Avdotya Romanovna implored. “Pyotr
+Petrovitch, do be kind and go!”
+“I am going, but one last word,” he said, quite unable to control
+himself. “Your mamma seems to have entirely forgotten that I made up my
+mind to take you, so to speak, after the gossip of the town had spread
+all over the district in regard to your reputation. Disregarding public
+opinion for your sake and reinstating your reputation, I certainly
+might very well reckon on a fitting return, and might indeed look for
+gratitude on your part. And my eyes have only now been opened! I see
+myself that I may have acted very, very recklessly in disregarding the
+universal verdict....”
+“Does the fellow want his head smashed?” cried Razumihin, jumping up.
+“You are a mean and spiteful man!” cried Dounia.
+“Not a word! Not a movement!” cried Raskolnikov, holding Razumihin back;
+then going close up to Luzhin, “Kindly leave the room!” he said quietly
+and distinctly, “and not a word more or...”
+Pyotr Petrovitch gazed at him for some seconds with a pale face that
+worked with anger, then he turned, went out, and rarely has any man
+carried away in his heart such vindictive hatred as he felt against
+Raskolnikov. Him, and him alone, he blamed for everything. It is
+noteworthy that as he went downstairs he still imagined that his case
+was perhaps not utterly lost, and that, so far as the ladies were
+concerned, all might “very well indeed” be set right again.
+CHAPTER III
+The fact was that up to the last moment he had never expected such an
+ending; he had been overbearing to the last degree, never dreaming that
+two destitute and defenceless women could escape from his control. This
+conviction was strengthened by his vanity and conceit, a conceit to
+the point of fatuity. Pyotr Petrovitch, who had made his way up from
+insignificance, was morbidly given to self-admiration, had the highest
+opinion of his intelligence and capacities, and sometimes even gloated
+in solitude over his image in the glass. But what he loved and valued
+above all was the money he had amassed by his labour, and by all sorts
+of devices: that money made him the equal of all who had been his
+superiors.
+When he had bitterly reminded Dounia that he had decided to take her in
+spite of evil report, Pyotr Petrovitch had spoken with perfect sincerity
+and had, indeed, felt genuinely indignant at such “black ingratitude.”
+And yet, when he made Dounia his offer, he was fully aware of the
+groundlessness of all the gossip. The story had been everywhere
+contradicted by Marfa Petrovna, and was by then disbelieved by all the
+townspeople, who were warm in Dounia’a defence. And he would not have
+denied that he knew all that at the time. Yet he still thought highly
+of his own resolution in lifting Dounia to his level and regarded it as
+something heroic. In speaking of it to Dounia, he had let out the secret
+feeling he cherished and admired, and he could not understand that
+others should fail to admire it too. He had called on Raskolnikov with
+the feelings of a benefactor who is about to reap the fruits of his good
+deeds and to hear agreeable flattery. And as he went downstairs now, he
+considered himself most undeservedly injured and unrecognised.
+Dounia was simply essential to him; to do without her was unthinkable.
+For many years he had had voluptuous dreams of marriage, but he had
+gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish, in profound
+secret, over the image of a girl--virtuous, poor (she must be poor),
+very young, very pretty, of good birth and education, very timid, one
+who had suffered much, and was completely humbled before him, one who
+would all her life look on him as her saviour, worship him, admire him
+and only him. How many scenes, how many amorous episodes he had imagined
+on this seductive and playful theme, when his work was over! And,
+behold, the dream of so many years was all but realised; the beauty and
+education of Avdotya Romanovna had impressed him; her helpless position
+had been a great allurement; in her he had found even more than he
+dreamed of. Here was a girl of pride, character, virtue, of education
+and breeding superior to his own (he felt that), and this creature would
+be slavishly grateful all her life for his heroic condescension, and
+would humble herself in the dust before him, and he would have absolute,
+unbounded power over her!... Not long before, he had, too, after long
+reflection and hesitation, made an important change in his career and
+was now entering on a wider circle of business. With this change his
+cherished dreams of rising into a higher class of society seemed likely
+to be realised.... He was, in fact, determined to try his fortune
+in Petersburg. He knew that women could do a very great deal. The
+fascination of a charming, virtuous, highly educated woman might make
+his way easier, might do wonders in attracting people to him, throwing
+an aureole round him, and now everything was in ruins! This sudden
+horrible rupture affected him like a clap of thunder; it was like a
+hideous joke, an absurdity. He had only been a tiny bit masterful,
+had not even time to speak out, had simply made a joke, been carried
+away--and it had ended so seriously. And, of course, too, he did love
+Dounia in his own way; he already possessed her in his dreams--and all
+at once! No! The next day, the very next day, it must all be set right,
+smoothed over, settled. Above all he must crush that conceited milksop
+who was the cause of it all. With a sick feeling he could not help
+recalling Razumihin too, but, he soon reassured himself on that score;
+as though a fellow like that could be put on a level with him! The man
+he really dreaded in earnest was Svidrigaïlov.... He had, in short, a
+great deal to attend to....
+*****
+“No, I, I am more to blame than anyone!” said Dounia, kissing and
+embracing her mother. “I was tempted by his money, but on my honour,
+brother, I had no idea he was such a base man. If I had seen through him
+before, nothing would have tempted me! Don’t blame me, brother!”
+“God has delivered us! God has delivered us!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
+muttered, but half consciously, as though scarcely able to realise what
+had happened.
+They were all relieved, and in five minutes they were laughing. Only now
+and then Dounia turned white and frowned, remembering what had passed.
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna was surprised to find that she, too, was glad:
+she had only that morning thought rupture with Luzhin a terrible
+misfortune. Razumihin was delighted. He did not yet dare to express his
+joy fully, but he was in a fever of excitement as though a ton-weight
+had fallen off his heart. Now he had the right to devote his life to
+them, to serve them.... Anything might happen now! But he felt afraid to
+think of further possibilities and dared not let his imagination
+range. But Raskolnikov sat still in the same place, almost sullen and
+indifferent. Though he had been the most insistent on getting rid of
+Luzhin, he seemed now the least concerned at what had happened. Dounia
+could not help thinking that he was still angry with her, and Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna watched him timidly.
+“What did Svidrigaïlov say to you?” said Dounia, approaching him.
+“Yes, yes!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
+Raskolnikov raised his head.
+“He wants to make you a present of ten thousand roubles and he desires
+to see you once in my presence.”
+“See her! On no account!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “And how dare he
+offer her money!”
+Then Raskolnikov repeated (rather dryly) his conversation with
+Svidrigaïlov, omitting his account of the ghostly visitations of Marfa
+Petrovna, wishing to avoid all unnecessary talk.
+“What answer did you give him?” asked Dounia.
+“At first I said I would not take any message to you. Then he said that
+he would do his utmost to obtain an interview with you without my help.
+He assured me that his passion for you was a passing infatuation, now he
+has no feeling for you. He doesn’t want you to marry Luzhin.... His talk
+was altogether rather muddled.”
+“How do you explain him to yourself, Rodya? How did he strike you?”
+“I must confess I don’t quite understand him. He offers you ten
+thousand, and yet says he is not well off. He says he is going away, and
+in ten minutes he forgets he has said it. Then he says he is going to be
+married and has already fixed on the girl.... No doubt he has a motive,
+and probably a bad one. But it’s odd that he should be so clumsy about
+it if he had any designs against you.... Of course, I refused this
+money on your account, once for all. Altogether, I thought him very
+strange.... One might almost think he was mad. But I may be mistaken;
+that may only be the part he assumes. The death of Marfa Petrovna seems
+to have made a great impression on him.”
+“God rest her soul,” exclaimed Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “I shall always,
+always pray for her! Where should we be now, Dounia, without this three
+thousand! It’s as though it had fallen from heaven! Why, Rodya, this
+morning we had only three roubles in our pocket and Dounia and I were
+just planning to pawn her watch, so as to avoid borrowing from that man
+until he offered help.”
+Dounia seemed strangely impressed by Svidrigaïlov’s offer. She still
+stood meditating.
+“He has got some terrible plan,” she said in a half whisper to herself,
+almost shuddering.
+Raskolnikov noticed this disproportionate terror.
+“I fancy I shall have to see him more than once again,” he said to
+Dounia.
+“We will watch him! I will track him out!” cried Razumihin, vigorously.
+“I won’t lose sight of him. Rodya has given me leave. He said to me
+himself just now. ‘Take care of my sister.’ Will you give me leave, too,
+Avdotya Romanovna?”
+Dounia smiled and held out her hand, but the look of anxiety did not
+leave her face. Pulcheria Alexandrovna gazed at her timidly, but the
+three thousand roubles had obviously a soothing effect on her.
+A quarter of an hour later, they were all engaged in a lively
+conversation. Even Raskolnikov listened attentively for some time,
+though he did not talk. Razumihin was the speaker.
+“And why, why should you go away?” he flowed on ecstatically. “And what
+are you to do in a little town? The great thing is, you are all here
+together and you need one another--you do need one another, believe me.
+For a time, anyway.... Take me into partnership, and I assure you we’ll
+plan a capital enterprise. Listen! I’ll explain it all in detail to
+you, the whole project! It all flashed into my head this morning,
+before anything had happened... I tell you what; I have an uncle, I must
+introduce him to you (a most accommodating and respectable old man).
+This uncle has got a capital of a thousand roubles, and he lives on his
+pension and has no need of that money. For the last two years he has
+been bothering me to borrow it from him and pay him six per cent.
+interest. I know what that means; he simply wants to help me. Last year
+I had no need of it, but this year I resolved to borrow it as soon as
+he arrived. Then you lend me another thousand of your three and we have
+enough for a start, so we’ll go into partnership, and what are we going
+to do?”
+Then Razumihin began to unfold his project, and he explained at length
+that almost all our publishers and booksellers know nothing at all
+of what they are selling, and for that reason they are usually bad
+publishers, and that any decent publications pay as a rule and give
+a profit, sometimes a considerable one. Razumihin had, indeed, been
+dreaming of setting up as a publisher. For the last two years he had
+been working in publishers’ offices, and knew three European languages
+well, though he had told Raskolnikov six days before that he was
+“schwach” in German with an object of persuading him to take half his
+translation and half the payment for it. He had told a lie then, and
+Raskolnikov knew he was lying.
+“Why, why should we let our chance slip when we have one of the chief
+means of success--money of our own!” cried Razumihin warmly. “Of course
+there will be a lot of work, but we will work, you, Avdotya Romanovna,
+I, Rodion.... You get a splendid profit on some books nowadays! And
+the great point of the business is that we shall know just what wants
+translating, and we shall be translating, publishing, learning all at
+once. I can be of use because I have experience. For nearly two years
+I’ve been scuttling about among the publishers, and now I know every
+detail of their business. You need not be a saint to make pots, believe
+me! And why, why should we let our chance slip! Why, I know--and I kept
+the secret--two or three books which one might get a hundred roubles
+simply for thinking of translating and publishing. Indeed, and I would
+not take five hundred for the very idea of one of them. And what do you
+think? If I were to tell a publisher, I dare say he’d hesitate--they are
+such blockheads! And as for the business side, printing, paper, selling,
+you trust to me, I know my way about. We’ll begin in a small way and go
+on to a large. In any case it will get us our living and we shall get
+back our capital.”
+Dounia’s eyes shone.
+“I like what you are saying, Dmitri Prokofitch!” she said.
+“I know nothing about it, of course,” put in Pulcheria Alexandrovna,
+“it may be a good idea, but again God knows. It’s new and untried. Of
+course, we must remain here at least for a time.” She looked at Rodya.
+“What do you think, brother?” said Dounia.
+“I think he’s got a very good idea,” he answered. “Of course, it’s too
+soon to dream of a publishing firm, but we certainly might bring out
+five or six books and be sure of success. I know of one book myself
+which would be sure to go well. And as for his being able to manage it,
+there’s no doubt about that either. He knows the business.... But we can
+talk it over later....”
+“Hurrah!” cried Razumihin. “Now, stay, there’s a flat here in this
+house, belonging to the same owner. It’s a special flat apart, not
+communicating with these lodgings. It’s furnished, rent moderate,
+three rooms. Suppose you take them to begin with. I’ll pawn your watch
+to-morrow and bring you the money, and everything can be arranged then.
+You can all three live together, and Rodya will be with you. But where
+are you off to, Rodya?”
+“What, Rodya, you are going already?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in
+dismay.
+“At such a minute?” cried Razumihin.
+Dounia looked at her brother with incredulous wonder. He held his cap in
+his hand, he was preparing to leave them.
+“One would think you were burying me or saying good-bye for ever,” he
+said somewhat oddly. He attempted to smile, but it did not turn out a
+smile. “But who knows, perhaps it is the last time we shall see each
+other...” he let slip accidentally. It was what he was thinking, and it
+somehow was uttered aloud.
+“What is the matter with you?” cried his mother.
+“Where are you going, Rodya?” asked Dounia rather strangely.
+“Oh, I’m quite obliged to...” he answered vaguely, as though hesitating
+what he would say. But there was a look of sharp determination in his
+white face.
+“I meant to say... as I was coming here... I meant to tell you, mother,
+and you, Dounia, that it would be better for us to part for a time. I
+feel ill, I am not at peace.... I will come afterwards, I will come of
+myself... when it’s possible. I remember you and love you.... Leave me,
+leave me alone. I decided this even before... I’m absolutely resolved on
+it. Whatever may come to me, whether I come to ruin or not, I want to be
+alone. Forget me altogether, it’s better. Don’t inquire about me. When
+I can, I’ll come of myself or... I’ll send for you. Perhaps it will all
+come back, but now if you love me, give me up... else I shall begin to
+hate you, I feel it.... Good-bye!”
+“Good God!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Both his mother and his sister
+were terribly alarmed. Razumihin was also.
+“Rodya, Rodya, be reconciled with us! Let us be as before!” cried his
+poor mother.
+He turned slowly to the door and slowly went out of the room. Dounia
+overtook him.
+“Brother, what are you doing to mother?” she whispered, her eyes
+flashing with indignation.
+He looked dully at her.
+“No matter, I shall come.... I’m coming,” he muttered in an undertone,
+as though not fully conscious of what he was saying, and he went out of
+the room.
+“Wicked, heartless egoist!” cried Dounia.
+“He is insane, but not heartless. He is mad! Don’t you see it? You’re
+heartless after that!” Razumihin whispered in her ear, squeezing
+her hand tightly. “I shall be back directly,” he shouted to the
+horror-stricken mother, and he ran out of the room.
+Raskolnikov was waiting for him at the end of the passage.
+“I knew you would run after me,” he said. “Go back to them--be with
+them... be with them to-morrow and always.... I... perhaps I shall
+come... if I can. Good-bye.”
+And without holding out his hand he walked away.
+“But where are you going? What are you doing? What’s the matter with
+you? How can you go on like this?” Razumihin muttered, at his wits’ end.
+Raskolnikov stopped once more.
+“Once for all, never ask me about anything. I have nothing to tell you.
+Don’t come to see me. Maybe I’ll come here.... Leave me, but _don’t
+leave_ them. Do you understand me?”
+It was dark in the corridor, they were standing near the lamp. For a
+minute they were looking at one another in silence. Razumihin remembered
+that minute all his life. Raskolnikov’s burning and intent eyes
+grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his soul, into his
+consciousness. Suddenly Razumihin started. Something strange, as it
+were, passed between them.... Some idea, some hint, as it were, slipped,
+something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides....
+Razumihin turned pale.
+“Do you understand now?” said Raskolnikov, his face twitching nervously.
+“Go back, go to them,” he said suddenly, and turning quickly, he went
+out of the house.
+I will not attempt to describe how Razumihin went back to the ladies,
+how he soothed them, how he protested that Rodya needed rest in his
+illness, protested that Rodya was sure to come, that he would come every
+day, that he was very, very much upset, that he must not be irritated,
+that he, Razumihin, would watch over him, would get him a doctor, the
+best doctor, a consultation.... In fact from that evening Razumihin took
+his place with them as a son and a brother.
+CHAPTER IV
+Raskolnikov went straight to the house on the canal bank where Sonia
+lived. It was an old green house of three storeys. He found the
+porter and obtained from him vague directions as to the whereabouts of
+Kapernaumov, the tailor. Having found in the corner of the courtyard
+the entrance to the dark and narrow staircase, he mounted to the second
+floor and came out into a gallery that ran round the whole second storey
+over the yard. While he was wandering in the darkness, uncertain where
+to turn for Kapernaumov’s door, a door opened three paces from him; he
+mechanically took hold of it.
+“Who is there?” a woman’s voice asked uneasily.
+“It’s I... come to see you,” answered Raskolnikov and he walked into the
+tiny entry.
+On a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick.
+“It’s you! Good heavens!” cried Sonia weakly, and she stood rooted to
+the spot.
+“Which is your room? This way?” and Raskolnikov, trying not to look at
+her, hastened in.
+A minute later Sonia, too, came in with the candle, set down the
+candlestick and, completely disconcerted, stood before him inexpressibly
+agitated and apparently frightened by his unexpected visit. The colour
+rushed suddenly to her pale face and tears came into her eyes... She
+felt sick and ashamed and happy, too.... Raskolnikov turned away quickly
+and sat on a chair by the table. He scanned the room in a rapid glance.
+It was a large but exceedingly low-pitched room, the only one let by the
+Kapernaumovs, to whose rooms a closed door led in the wall on the left.
+In the opposite side on the right hand wall was another door, always
+kept locked. That led to the next flat, which formed a separate lodging.
+Sonia’s room looked like a barn; it was a very irregular quadrangle and
+this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking
+out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute
+angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light.
+The other corner was disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any
+furniture in the big room: in the corner on the right was a bedstead,
+beside it, nearest the door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a
+blue cloth stood against the same wall, close to the door into the other
+flat. Two rush-bottom chairs stood by the table. On the opposite
+wall near the acute angle stood a small plain wooden chest of drawers
+looking, as it were, lost in a desert. That was all there was in the
+room. The yellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the
+corners. It must have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There
+was every sign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain.
+Sonia looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively and
+unceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last to tremble
+with terror, as though she was standing before her judge and the arbiter
+of her destinies.
+“I am late.... It’s eleven, isn’t it?” he asked, still not lifting his
+eyes.
+“Yes,” muttered Sonia, “oh yes, it is,” she added, hastily, as though in
+that lay her means of escape. “My landlady’s clock has just struck... I
+heard it myself....”
+“I’ve come to you for the last time,” Raskolnikov went on gloomily,
+although this was the first time. “I may perhaps not see you again...”
+“Are you... going away?”
+“I don’t know... to-morrow....”
+“Then you are not coming to Katerina Ivanovna to-morrow?” Sonia’s voice
+shook.
+“I don’t know. I shall know to-morrow morning.... Never mind that: I’ve
+come to say one word....”
+He raised his brooding eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he was
+sitting down while she was all the while standing before him.
+“Why are you standing? Sit down,” he said in a changed voice, gentle and
+friendly.
+She sat down. He looked kindly and almost compassionately at her.
+“How thin you are! What a hand! Quite transparent, like a dead hand.”
+He took her hand. Sonia smiled faintly.
+“I have always been like that,” she said.
+“Even when you lived at home?”
+“Yes.”
+“Of course, you were,” he added abruptly and the expression of his face
+and the sound of his voice changed again suddenly.
+He looked round him once more.
+“You rent this room from the Kapernaumovs?”
+“Yes....”
+“They live there, through that door?”
+“Yes.... They have another room like this.”
+“All in one room?”
+“Yes.”
+“I should be afraid in your room at night,” he observed gloomily.
+“They are very good people, very kind,” answered Sonia, who still seemed
+bewildered, “and all the furniture, everything... everything is theirs.
+And they are very kind and the children, too, often come to see me.”
+“They all stammer, don’t they?”
+“Yes.... He stammers and he’s lame. And his wife, too.... It���s not
+exactly that she stammers, but she can’t speak plainly. She is a very
+kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven
+children... and it’s only the eldest one that stammers and the others
+are simply ill... but they don’t stammer.... But where did you hear
+about them?” she added with some surprise.
+“Your father told me, then. He told me all about you.... And how you
+went out at six o’clock and came back at nine and how Katerina Ivanovna
+knelt down by your bed.”
+Sonia was confused.
+“I fancied I saw him to-day,” she whispered hesitatingly.
+“Whom?”
+“Father. I was walking in the street, out there at the corner, about ten
+o’clock and he seemed to be walking in front. It looked just like him. I
+wanted to go to Katerina Ivanovna....”
+“You were walking in the streets?”
+“Yes,” Sonia whispered abruptly, again overcome with confusion and
+looking down.
+“Katerina Ivanovna used to beat you, I dare say?”
+“Oh no, what are you saying? No!” Sonia looked at him almost with
+dismay.
+“You love her, then?”
+“Love her? Of course!” said Sonia with plaintive emphasis, and she
+clasped her hands in distress. “Ah, you don’t.... If you only knew!
+You see, she is quite like a child.... Her mind is quite unhinged, you
+see... from sorrow. And how clever she used to be... how generous... how
+kind! Ah, you don’t understand, you don’t understand!”
+Sonia said this as though in despair, wringing her hands in excitement
+and distress. Her pale cheeks flushed, there was a look of anguish in
+her eyes. It was clear that she was stirred to the very depths, that
+she was longing to speak, to champion, to express something. A sort
+of _insatiable_ compassion, if one may so express it, was reflected in
+every feature of her face.
+“Beat me! how can you? Good heavens, beat me! And if she did beat me,
+what then? What of it? You know nothing, nothing about it.... She is so
+unhappy... ah, how unhappy! And ill.... She is seeking righteousness,
+she is pure. She has such faith that there must be righteousness
+everywhere and she expects it.... And if you were to torture her, she
+wouldn’t do wrong. She doesn’t see that it’s impossible for people to
+be righteous and she is angry at it. Like a child, like a child. She is
+good!”
+“And what will happen to you?”
+Sonia looked at him inquiringly.
+“They are left on your hands, you see. They were all on your hands
+before, though.... And your father came to you to beg for drink. Well,
+how will it be now?”
+“I don’t know,” Sonia articulated mournfully.
+“Will they stay there?”
+“I don’t know.... They are in debt for the lodging, but the landlady,
+I hear, said to-day that she wanted to get rid of them, and Katerina
+Ivanovna says that she won’t stay another minute.”
+“How is it she is so bold? She relies upon you?”
+“Oh, no, don’t talk like that.... We are one, we live like one.” Sonia
+was agitated again and even angry, as though a canary or some other
+little bird were to be angry. “And what could she do? What, what could
+she do?” she persisted, getting hot and excited. “And how she cried
+to-day! Her mind is unhinged, haven’t you noticed it? At one minute she
+is worrying like a child that everything should be right to-morrow, the
+lunch and all that.... Then she is wringing her hands, spitting blood,
+weeping, and all at once she will begin knocking her head against the
+wall, in despair. Then she will be comforted again. She builds all her
+hopes on you; she says that you will help her now and that she will
+borrow a little money somewhere and go to her native town with me and
+set up a boarding school for the daughters of gentlemen and take me to
+superintend it, and we will begin a new splendid life. And she kisses
+and hugs me, comforts me, and you know she has such faith, such faith in
+her fancies! One can’t contradict her. And all the day long she has been
+washing, cleaning, mending. She dragged the wash tub into the room with
+her feeble hands and sank on the bed, gasping for breath. We went this
+morning to the shops to buy shoes for Polenka and Lida for theirs are
+quite worn out. Only the money we’d reckoned wasn’t enough, not nearly
+enough. And she picked out such dear little boots, for she has taste,
+you don’t know. And there in the shop she burst out crying before the
+shopmen because she hadn’t enough.... Ah, it was sad to see her....”
+“Well, after that I can understand your living like this,” Raskolnikov
+said with a bitter smile.
+“And aren’t you sorry for them? Aren’t you sorry?” Sonia flew at him
+again. “Why, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you’d
+seen nothing of it, and if you’d seen everything, oh dear! And how
+often, how often I’ve brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I! Only
+a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I’ve done it! Ah,
+I’ve been wretched at the thought of it all day!”
+Sonia wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it.
+“You were cruel?”
+“Yes, I--I. I went to see them,” she went on, weeping, “and father said,
+‘read me something, Sonia, my head aches, read to me, here’s a book.’ He
+had a book he had got from Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, he lives
+there, he always used to get hold of such funny books. And I said, ‘I
+can’t stay,’ as I didn’t want to read, and I’d gone in chiefly to show
+Katerina Ivanovna some collars. Lizaveta, the pedlar, sold me some
+collars and cuffs cheap, pretty, new, embroidered ones. Katerina
+Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself
+in the glass and was delighted with them. ‘Make me a present of them,
+Sonia,’ she said, ‘please do.’ ‘_Please do_,’ she said, she wanted them
+so much. And when could she wear them? They just reminded her of her old
+happy days. She looked at herself in the glass, admired herself, and she
+has no clothes at all, no things of her own, hasn’t had all these years!
+And she never asks anyone for anything; she is proud, she’d sooner give
+away everything. And these she asked for, she liked them so much. And I
+was sorry to give them. ‘What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna?’ I
+said. I spoke like that to her, I ought not to have said that! She gave
+me such a look. And she was so grieved, so grieved at my refusing her.
+And it was so sad to see.... And she was not grieved for the collars,
+but for my refusing, I saw that. Ah, if only I could bring it all back,
+change it, take back those words! Ah, if I... but it’s nothing to you!”
+“Did you know Lizaveta, the pedlar?”
+“Yes.... Did you know her?” Sonia asked with some surprise.
+“Katerina Ivanovna is in consumption, rapid consumption; she will soon
+die,” said Raskolnikov after a pause, without answering her question.
+“Oh, no, no, no!”
+And Sonia unconsciously clutched both his hands, as though imploring
+that she should not.
+“But it will be better if she does die.”
+“No, not better, not at all better!” Sonia unconsciously repeated in
+dismay.
+“And the children? What can you do except take them to live with you?”
+“Oh, I don’t know,” cried Sonia, almost in despair, and she put her
+hands to her head.
+It was evident that that idea had very often occurred to her before and
+he had only roused it again.
+“And, what, if even now, while Katerina Ivanovna is alive, you get ill
+and are taken to the hospital, what will happen then?” he persisted
+pitilessly.
+“How can you? That cannot be!”
+And Sonia’s face worked with awful terror.
+“Cannot be?” Raskolnikov went on with a harsh smile. “You are not
+insured against it, are you? What will happen to them then? They will
+be in the street, all of them, she will cough and beg and knock her head
+against some wall, as she did to-day, and the children will cry....
+Then she will fall down, be taken to the police station and to the
+hospital, she will die, and the children...”
+“Oh, no.... God will not let it be!” broke at last from Sonia’s
+overburdened bosom.
+She listened, looking imploringly at him, clasping her hands in dumb
+entreaty, as though it all depended upon him.
+Raskolnikov got up and began to walk about the room. A minute passed.
+Sonia was standing with her hands and her head hanging in terrible
+dejection.
+“And can’t you save? Put by for a rainy day?” he asked, stopping
+suddenly before her.
+“No,” whispered Sonia.
+“Of course not. Have you tried?” he added almost ironically.
+“Yes.”
+“And it didn’t come off! Of course not! No need to ask.”
+And again he paced the room. Another minute passed.
+“You don’t get money every day?”
+Sonia was more confused than ever and colour rushed into her face again.
+“No,” she whispered with a painful effort.
+“It will be the same with Polenka, no doubt,” he said suddenly.
+“No, no! It can’t be, no!” Sonia cried aloud in desperation, as though
+she had been stabbed. “God would not allow anything so awful!”
+“He lets others come to it.”
+“No, no! God will protect her, God!” she repeated beside herself.
+“But, perhaps, there is no God at all,” Raskolnikov answered with a sort
+of malignance, laughed and looked at her.
+Sonia’s face suddenly changed; a tremor passed over it. She looked at
+him with unutterable reproach, tried to say something, but could not
+speak and broke into bitter, bitter sobs, hiding her face in her hands.
+“You say Katerina Ivanovna’s mind is unhinged; your own mind is
+unhinged,” he said after a brief silence.
+Five minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence, not
+looking at her. At last he went up to her; his eyes glittered. He put
+his two hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her tearful
+face. His eyes were hard, feverish and piercing, his lips were
+twitching. All at once he bent down quickly and dropping to the
+ground, kissed her foot. Sonia drew back from him as from a madman. And
+certainly he looked like a madman.
+“What are you doing to me?” she muttered, turning pale, and a sudden
+anguish clutched at her heart.
+He stood up at once.
+“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of
+humanity,” he said wildly and walked away to the window. “Listen,” he
+added, turning to her a minute later. “I said just now to an insolent
+man that he was not worth your little finger... and that I did my sister
+honour making her sit beside you.”
+“Ach, you said that to them! And in her presence?” cried Sonia,
+frightened. “Sit down with me! An honour! Why, I’m... dishonourable....
+Ah, why did you say that?”
+“It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of you,
+but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that’s
+true,” he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have
+destroyed and betrayed yourself _for nothing_. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t
+it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at
+the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you
+are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? Tell me,”
+he went on almost in a frenzy, “how this shame and degradation can exist
+in you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be
+better, a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end
+it all!”
+“But what would become of them?” Sonia asked faintly, gazing at him with
+eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion.
+Raskolnikov looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face; so she
+must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, and earnestly
+she had thought out in her despair how to end it and so earnestly, that
+now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had not even noticed
+the cruelty of his words. (The significance of his reproaches and his
+peculiar attitude to her shame she had, of course, not noticed either,
+and that, too, was clear to him.) But he saw how monstrously the thought
+of her disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long
+tortured her. “What, what,” he thought, “could hitherto have hindered
+her from putting an end to it?” Only then he realised what those poor
+little orphan children and that pitiful half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna,
+knocking her head against the wall in her consumption, meant for Sonia.
+But, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her character and
+the amount of education she had after all received, she could not in any
+case remain so. He was still confronted by the question, how could she
+have remained so long in that position without going out of her mind,
+since she could not bring herself to jump into the water? Of course he
+knew that Sonia’s position was an exceptional case, though unhappily not
+unique and not infrequent, indeed; but that very exceptionalness, her
+tinge of education, her previous life might, one would have thought,
+have killed her at the first step on that revolting path. What held her
+up--surely not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched
+her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her
+heart; he saw that. He saw through her as she stood before him....
+“There are three ways before her,” he thought, “the canal, the madhouse,
+or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind and turns
+the heart to stone.”
+The last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he was
+young, abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not help believing
+that the last end was the most likely.
+“But can that be true?” he cried to himself. “Can that creature who has
+still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously drawn at last
+into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process already have
+begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear it till now,
+because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No, no, that cannot
+be!” he cried, as Sonia had just before. “No, what has kept her from the
+canal till now is the idea of sin and they, the children.... And if she
+has not gone out of her mind... but who says she has not gone out of her
+mind? Is she in her senses? Can one talk, can one reason as she does?
+How can she sit on the edge of the abyss of loathsomeness into which she
+is slipping and refuse to listen when she is told of danger? Does she
+expect a miracle? No doubt she does. Doesn’t that all mean madness?”
+He stayed obstinately at that thought. He liked that explanation indeed
+better than any other. He began looking more intently at her.
+“So you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?” he asked her.
+Sonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer.
+“What should I be without God?” she whispered rapidly, forcibly,
+glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.
+“Ah, so that is it!” he thought.
+“And what does God do for you?” he asked, probing her further.
+Sonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak
+chest kept heaving with emotion.
+“Be silent! Don’t ask! You don’t deserve!” she cried suddenly, looking
+sternly and wrathfully at him.
+“That’s it, that’s it,” he repeated to himself.
+“He does everything,” she whispered quickly, looking down again.
+“That’s the way out! That’s the explanation,” he decided, scrutinising
+her with eager curiosity, with a new, strange, almost morbid feeling.
+He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, those soft
+blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that
+little body still shaking with indignation and anger--and it all seemed
+to him more and more strange, almost impossible. “She is a religious
+maniac!” he repeated to himself.
+There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it every
+time he paced up and down the room. Now he took it up and looked at it.
+It was the New Testament in the Russian translation. It was bound in
+leather, old and worn.
+“Where did you get that?” he called to her across the room.
+She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table.
+“It was brought me,” she answered, as it were unwillingly, not looking
+at him.
+“Who brought it?”
+“Lizaveta, I asked her for it.”
+“Lizaveta! strange!” he thought.
+Everything about Sonia seemed to him stranger and more wonderful every
+moment. He carried the book to the candle and began to turn over the
+pages.
+“Where is the story of Lazarus?” he asked suddenly.
+Sonia looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was
+standing sideways to the table.
+“Where is the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonia.”
+She stole a glance at him.
+“You are not looking in the right place.... It’s in the fourth gospel,”
+she whispered sternly, without looking at him.
+“Find it and read it to me,” he said. He sat down with his elbow on the
+table, leaned his head on his hand and looked away sullenly, prepared to
+listen.
+“In three weeks’ time they’ll welcome me in the madhouse! I shall be
+there if I am not in a worse place,” he muttered to himself.
+Sonia heard Raskolnikov’s request distrustfully and moved hesitatingly
+to the table. She took the book however.
+“Haven’t you read it?” she asked, looking up at him across the table.
+Her voice became sterner and sterner.
+“Long ago.... When I was at school. Read!”
+“And haven’t you heard it in church?”
+“I... haven’t been. Do you often go?”
+“N-no,” whispered Sonia.
+Raskolnikov smiled.
+“I understand.... And you won’t go to your father’s funeral to-morrow?”
+“Yes, I shall. I was at church last week, too... I had a requiem
+service.”
+“For whom?”
+“For Lizaveta. She was killed with an axe.”
+His nerves were more and more strained. His head began to go round.
+“Were you friends with Lizaveta?”
+“Yes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she
+couldn’t.... We used to read together and... talk. She will see God.”
+The last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was something new
+again: the mysterious meetings with Lizaveta and both of them--religious
+maniacs.
+“I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It’s infectious!”
+“Read!” he cried irritably and insistently.
+Sonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read
+to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the “unhappy lunatic.”
+“What for? You don’t believe?...” she whispered softly and as it were
+breathlessly.
+“Read! I want you to,” he persisted. “You used to read to Lizaveta.”
+Sonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking, her
+voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out the
+first syllable.
+“Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany...” she forced
+herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice broke like an
+overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.
+Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him
+and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on
+her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her
+to betray and unveil all that was her _own_. He understood that these
+feelings really were her _secret treasure_, which she had kept perhaps
+for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy
+father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of
+starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same
+time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with
+dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read
+to _him_ that he might hear it, and to read _now_ whatever might come of
+it!... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion.
+She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on
+reading the eleventh chapter of St. John. She went on to the nineteenth
+verse:
+“And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning
+their brother.
+“Then Martha as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming went and met
+Him: but Mary sat still in the house.
+“Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother
+had not died.
+“But I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give
+it Thee....”
+Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice would
+quiver and break again.
+“Jesus said unto her, thy brother shall rise again.
+“Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the
+resurrection, at the last day.
+“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that
+believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live.
+“And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest
+thou this?
+“She saith unto Him,”
+(And drawing a painful breath, Sonia read distinctly and forcibly as
+though she were making a public confession of faith.)
+“Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God Which
+should come into the world.”
+She stopped and looked up quickly at him, but controlling herself went
+on reading. Raskolnikov sat without moving, his elbows on the table and
+his eyes turned away. She read to the thirty-second verse.
+“Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at
+His feet, saying unto Him, Lord if Thou hadst been here, my brother had
+not died.
+“When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which
+came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled,
+“And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and
+see.
+“Jesus wept.
+“Then said the Jews, behold how He loved him!
+“And some of them said, could not this Man which opened the eyes of the
+blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?”
+Raskolnikov turned and looked at her with emotion. Yes, he had known it!
+She was trembling in a real physical fever. He had expected it. She was
+getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling of immense
+triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell; triumph and joy
+gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but she knew what she
+was reading by heart. At the last verse “Could not this Man which opened
+the eyes of the blind...” dropping her voice she passionately reproduced
+the doubt, the reproach and censure of the blind disbelieving Jews, who
+in another moment would fall at His feet as though struck by
+thunder, sobbing and believing.... “And _he, he_--too, is blinded and
+unbelieving, he, too, will hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! At
+once, now,” was what she was dreaming, and she was quivering with happy
+anticipation.
+“Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a
+cave, and a stone lay upon it.
+“Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was
+dead, saith unto Him, Lord by this time he stinketh: for he hath been
+dead four days.”
+She laid emphasis on the word _four_.
+“Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest
+believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
+“Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid.
+And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou
+hast heard Me.
+“And I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people which
+stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.
+“And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come
+forth.
+“And he that was dead came forth.”
+(She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were
+seeing it before her eyes.)
+“Bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about
+with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let him go.
+“Then many of the Jews which came to Mary and had seen the things which
+Jesus did believed on Him.”
+She could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair
+quickly.
+“That is all about the raising of Lazarus,” she whispered severely and
+abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise
+her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end was
+flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the
+poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely
+been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.
+“I came to speak of something,” Raskolnikov said aloud, frowning. He got
+up and went to Sonia. She lifted her eyes to him in silence. His face
+was particularly stern and there was a sort of savage determination in
+it.
+“I have abandoned my family to-day,” he said, “my mother and sister. I
+am not going to see them. I’ve broken with them completely.”
+“What for?” asked Sonia amazed. Her recent meeting with his mother and
+sister had left a great impression which she could not analyse. She
+heard his news almost with horror.
+“I have only you now,” he added. “Let us go together.... I’ve come to
+you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!”
+His eyes glittered “as though he were mad,” Sonia thought, in her turn.
+“Go where?” she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.
+“How do I know? I only know it’s the same road, I know that and nothing
+more. It’s the same goal!”
+She looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he was
+terribly, infinitely unhappy.
+“No one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have
+understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you.”
+“I don’t understand,” whispered Sonia.
+“You’ll understand later. Haven’t you done the same? You, too, have
+transgressed... have had the strength to transgress. You have laid
+hands on yourself, you have destroyed a life... _your own_ (it’s all the
+same!). You might have lived in spirit and understanding, but you’ll
+end in the Hay Market.... But you won’t be able to stand it, and if
+you remain alone you’ll go out of your mind like me. You are like a mad
+creature already. So we must go together on the same road! Let us go!”
+“What for? What’s all this for?” said Sonia, strangely and violently
+agitated by his words.
+“What for? Because you can’t remain like this, that’s why! You must look
+things straight in the face at last, and not weep like a child and cry
+that God won’t allow it. What will happen, if you should really be taken
+to the hospital to-morrow? She is mad and in consumption, she’ll soon
+die and the children? Do you mean to tell me Polenka won’t come to
+grief? Haven’t you seen children here at the street corners sent out
+by their mothers to beg? I’ve found out where those mothers live and in
+what surroundings. Children can’t remain children there! At seven the
+child is vicious and a thief. Yet children, you know, are the image of
+Christ: ‘theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.’ He bade us honour and love
+them, they are the humanity of the future....”
+“What’s to be done, what’s to be done?” repeated Sonia, weeping
+hysterically and wringing her hands.
+“What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all,
+and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don’t understand? You’ll
+understand later.... Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all
+trembling creation and all the ant-heap!... That’s the goal, remember
+that! That’s my farewell message. Perhaps it’s the last time I shall
+speak to you. If I don’t come to-morrow, you’ll hear of it all, and then
+remember these words. And some day later on, in years to come, you’ll
+understand perhaps what they meant. If I come to-morrow, I’ll tell you
+who killed Lizaveta.... Good-bye.”
+Sonia started with terror.
+“Why, do you know who killed her?” she asked, chilled with horror,
+looking wildly at him.
+“I know and will tell... you, only you. I have chosen you out. I’m not
+coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you. I chose you
+out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you and when
+Lizaveta was alive, I thought of it. Good-bye, don’t shake hands.
+To-morrow!”
+He went out. Sonia gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself was like
+one insane and felt it. Her head was going round.
+“Good heavens, how does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those
+words mean? It’s awful!” But at the same time _the idea_ did not enter
+her head, not for a moment! “Oh, he must be terribly unhappy!... He has
+abandoned his mother and sister.... What for? What has happened? And
+what had he in his mind? What did he say to her? He had kissed her foot
+and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he could not live
+without her.... Oh, merciful heavens!”
+Sonia spent the whole night feverish and delirious. She jumped up from
+time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into feverish
+sleep and dreamt of Polenka, Katerina Ivanovna and Lizaveta, of reading
+the gospel and him... him with pale face, with burning eyes... kissing
+her feet, weeping.
+On the other side of the door on the right, which divided Sonia’s room
+from Madame Resslich’s flat, was a room which had long stood empty. A
+card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over the
+canal advertising it to let. Sonia had long been accustomed to the
+room’s being uninhabited. But all that time Mr. Svidrigaïlov had been
+standing, listening at the door of the empty room. When Raskolnikov went
+out he stood still, thought a moment, went on tiptoe to his own room
+which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair and noiselessly carried it
+to the door that led to Sonia’s room. The conversation had struck him
+as interesting and remarkable, and he had greatly enjoyed it--so much so
+that he brought a chair that he might not in the future, to-morrow, for
+instance, have to endure the inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but
+might listen in comfort.
+CHAPTER V
+When next morning at eleven o’clock punctually Raskolnikov went into the
+department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his name in
+to Porfiry Petrovitch, he was surprised at being kept waiting so long:
+it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned. He had expected
+that they would pounce upon him. But he stood in the waiting-room, and
+people, who apparently had nothing to do with him, were continually
+passing to and fro before him. In the next room which looked like an
+office, several clerks were sitting writing and obviously they had
+no notion who or what Raskolnikov might be. He looked uneasily and
+suspiciously about him to see whether there was not some guard, some
+mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his escape. But there was
+nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of clerks absorbed in petty
+details, then other people, no one seemed to have any concern with him.
+He might go where he liked for them. The conviction grew stronger in him
+that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the
+earth, had seen everything, they would not have let him stand and wait
+like that. And would they have waited till he elected to appear at
+eleven? Either the man had not yet given information, or... or simply
+he knew nothing, had seen nothing (and how could he have seen anything?)
+and so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom
+exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination. This conjecture
+had begun to grow strong the day before, in the midst of all his
+alarm and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing for a fresh
+conflict, he was suddenly aware that he was trembling--and he felt a
+rush of indignation at the thought that he was trembling with fear at
+facing that hateful Porfiry Petrovitch. What he dreaded above all was
+meeting that man again; he hated him with an intense, unmitigated hatred
+and was afraid his hatred might betray him. His indignation was such
+that he ceased trembling at once; he made ready to go in with a cold and
+arrogant bearing and vowed to himself to keep as silent as possible,
+to watch and listen and for once at least to control his overstrained
+nerves. At that moment he was summoned to Porfiry Petrovitch.
+He found Porfiry Petrovitch alone in his study. His study was a room
+neither large nor small, furnished with a large writing-table, that
+stood before a sofa, upholstered in checked material, a bureau, a
+bookcase in the corner and several chairs--all government furniture,
+of polished yellow wood. In the further wall there was a closed door,
+beyond it there were no doubt other rooms. On Raskolnikov’s entrance
+Porfiry Petrovitch had at once closed the door by which he had come in
+and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently genial
+and good-tempered air, and it was only after a few minutes that
+Raskolnikov saw signs of a certain awkwardness in him, as though he had
+been thrown out of his reckoning or caught in something very secret.
+“Ah, my dear fellow! Here you are... in our domain”... began Porfiry,
+holding out both hands to him. “Come, sit down, old man... or perhaps
+you don’t like to be called ‘my dear fellow’ and ‘old man!’--_tout
+court_? Please don’t think it too familiar.... Here, on the sofa.”
+Raskolnikov sat down, keeping his eyes fixed on him. “In our domain,”
+the apologies for familiarity, the French phrase _tout court_, were all
+characteristic signs.
+“He held out both hands to me, but he did not give me one--he drew it
+back in time,” struck him suspiciously. Both were watching each other,
+but when their eyes met, quick as lightning they looked away.
+“I brought you this paper... about the watch. Here it is. Is it all
+right or shall I copy it again?”
+“What? A paper? Yes, yes, don’t be uneasy, it’s all right,” Porfiry
+Petrovitch said as though in haste, and after he had said it he took the
+paper and looked at it. “Yes, it’s all right. Nothing more is needed,”
+he declared with the same rapidity and he laid the paper on the table.
+A minute later when he was talking of something else he took it from the
+table and put it on his bureau.
+“I believe you said yesterday you would like to question me...
+formally... about my acquaintance with the murdered woman?” Raskolnikov
+was beginning again. “Why did I put in ‘I believe’” passed through
+his mind in a flash. “Why am I so uneasy at having put in that ‘_I
+believe_’?” came in a second flash. And he suddenly felt that his
+uneasiness at the mere contact with Porfiry, at the first words, at the
+first looks, had grown in an instant to monstrous proportions, and that
+this was fearfully dangerous. His nerves were quivering, his emotion was
+increasing. “It’s bad, it’s bad! I shall say too much again.”
+“Yes, yes, yes! There’s no hurry, there’s no hurry,” muttered Porfiry
+Petrovitch, moving to and fro about the table without any apparent aim,
+as it were making dashes towards the window, the bureau and the table,
+at one moment avoiding Raskolnikov’s suspicious glance, then again
+standing still and looking him straight in the face.
+His fat round little figure looked very strange, like a ball rolling
+from one side to the other and rebounding back.
+“We’ve plenty of time. Do you smoke? have you your own? Here, a
+cigarette!” he went on, offering his visitor a cigarette. “You know I am
+receiving you here, but my own quarters are through there, you know, my
+government quarters. But I am living outside for the time, I had to
+have some repairs done here. It’s almost finished now.... Government
+quarters, you know, are a capital thing. Eh, what do you think?”
+“Yes, a capital thing,” answered Raskolnikov, looking at him almost
+ironically.
+“A capital thing, a capital thing,” repeated Porfiry Petrovitch, as
+though he had just thought of something quite different. “Yes, a capital
+thing,” he almost shouted at last, suddenly staring at Raskolnikov and
+stopping short two steps from him.
+This stupid repetition was too incongruous in its ineptitude with the
+serious, brooding and enigmatic glance he turned upon his visitor.
+But this stirred Raskolnikov’s spleen more than ever and he could not
+resist an ironical and rather incautious challenge.
+“Tell me, please,” he asked suddenly, looking almost insolently at him
+and taking a kind of pleasure in his own insolence. “I believe it’s a
+sort of legal rule, a sort of legal tradition--for all investigating
+lawyers--to begin their attack from afar, with a trivial, or at least
+an irrelevant subject, so as to encourage, or rather, to divert the man
+they are cross-examining, to disarm his caution and then all at once to
+give him an unexpected knock-down blow with some fatal question. Isn’t
+that so? It’s a sacred tradition, mentioned, I fancy, in all the manuals
+of the art?”
+“Yes, yes.... Why, do you imagine that was why I spoke about government
+quarters... eh?”
+And as he said this Porfiry Petrovitch screwed up his eyes and winked;
+a good-humoured, crafty look passed over his face. The wrinkles on his
+forehead were smoothed out, his eyes contracted, his features broadened
+and he suddenly went off into a nervous prolonged laugh, shaking all
+over and looking Raskolnikov straight in the face. The latter forced
+himself to laugh, too, but when Porfiry, seeing that he was laughing,
+broke into such a guffaw that he turned almost crimson, Raskolnikov’s
+repulsion overcame all precaution; he left off laughing, scowled and
+stared with hatred at Porfiry, keeping his eyes fixed on him while his
+intentionally prolonged laughter lasted. There was lack of precaution on
+both sides, however, for Porfiry Petrovitch seemed to be laughing in
+his visitor’s face and to be very little disturbed at the annoyance with
+which the visitor received it. The latter fact was very significant
+in Raskolnikov’s eyes: he saw that Porfiry Petrovitch had not been
+embarrassed just before either, but that he, Raskolnikov, had perhaps
+fallen into a trap; that there must be something, some motive here
+unknown to him; that, perhaps, everything was in readiness and in
+another moment would break upon him...
+He went straight to the point at once, rose from his seat and took his
+cap.
+“Porfiry Petrovitch,” he began resolutely, though with considerable
+irritation, “yesterday you expressed a desire that I should come to you
+for some inquiries” (he laid special stress on the word “inquiries”). “I
+have come and if you have anything to ask me, ask it, and if not, allow
+me to withdraw. I have no time to spare.... I have to be at the funeral
+of that man who was run over, of whom you... know also,” he added,
+feeling angry at once at having made this addition and more irritated at
+his anger. “I am sick of it all, do you hear? and have long been. It’s
+partly what made me ill. In short,” he shouted, feeling that the phrase
+about his illness was still more out of place, “in short, kindly examine
+me or let me go, at once. And if you must examine me, do so in the
+proper form! I will not allow you to do so otherwise, and so meanwhile,
+good-bye, as we have evidently nothing to keep us now.”
+“Good heavens! What do you mean? What shall I question you about?”
+cackled Porfiry Petrovitch with a change of tone, instantly leaving off
+laughing. “Please don’t disturb yourself,” he began fidgeting from place
+to place and fussily making Raskolnikov sit down. “There’s no hurry,
+there’s no hurry, it’s all nonsense. Oh, no, I’m very glad you’ve come
+to see me at last... I look upon you simply as a visitor. And as for
+my confounded laughter, please excuse it, Rodion Romanovitch. Rodion
+Romanovitch? That is your name?... It’s my nerves, you tickled me
+so with your witty observation; I assure you, sometimes I shake with
+laughter like an india-rubber ball for half an hour at a time.... I’m
+often afraid of an attack of paralysis. Do sit down. Please do, or I
+shall think you are angry...”
+Raskolnikov did not speak; he listened, watching him, still frowning
+angrily. He did sit down, but still held his cap.
+“I must tell you one thing about myself, my dear Rodion Romanovitch,”
+Porfiry Petrovitch continued, moving about the room and again avoiding
+his visitor’s eyes. “You see, I’m a bachelor, a man of no consequence
+and not used to society; besides, I have nothing before me, I’m set, I’m
+running to seed and... and have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that in
+our Petersburg circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but
+respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before
+they can find a subject for conversation--they are dumb, they sit
+opposite each other and feel awkward. Everyone has subjects of
+conversation, ladies for instance... people in high society always have
+their subjects of conversation, _c’est de rigueur_, but people of the
+middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied
+and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public
+interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don’t want to deceive one
+another, I don’t know. What do you think? Do put down your cap, it
+looks as if you were just going, it makes me uncomfortable... I am so
+delighted...”
+Raskolnikov put down his cap and continued listening in silence with
+a serious frowning face to the vague and empty chatter of Porfiry
+Petrovitch. “Does he really want to distract my attention with his silly
+babble?”
+“I can’t offer you coffee here; but why not spend five minutes with a
+friend?” Porfiry pattered on, “and you know all these official
+duties... please don’t mind my running up and down, excuse it, my dear
+fellow, I am very much afraid of offending you, but exercise is
+absolutely indispensable for me. I’m always sitting and so glad to be
+moving about for five minutes... I suffer from my sedentary life... I
+always intend to join a gymnasium; they say that officials of all ranks,
+even Privy Councillors, may be seen skipping gaily there; there you have
+it, modern science... yes, yes.... But as for my duties here, inquiries
+and all such formalities... you mentioned inquiries yourself just now...
+I assure you these interrogations are sometimes more embarrassing for
+the interrogator than for the interrogated.... You made the observation
+yourself just now very aptly and wittily.” (Raskolnikov had made no
+observation of the kind.) “One gets into a muddle! A regular muddle! One
+keeps harping on the same note, like a drum! There is to be a reform and
+we shall be called by a different name, at least, he-he-he! And as for
+our legal tradition, as you so wittily called it, I thoroughly agree
+with you. Every prisoner on trial, even the rudest peasant, knows that
+they begin by disarming him with irrelevant questions (as you so happily
+put it) and then deal him a knock-down blow, he-he-he!--your felicitous
+comparison, he-he! So you really imagined that I meant by ‘government
+quarters’... he-he! You are an ironical person. Come. I won’t go on! Ah,
+by the way, yes! One word leads to another. You spoke of formality just
+now, apropos of the inquiry, you know. But what’s the use of formality?
+In many cases it’s nonsense. Sometimes one has a friendly chat and gets
+a good deal more out of it. One can always fall back on formality, allow
+me to assure you. And after all, what does it amount to? An examining
+lawyer cannot be bounded by formality at every step. The work of
+investigation is, so to speak, a free art in its own way, he-he-he!”
+Porfiry Petrovitch took breath a moment. He had simply babbled on
+uttering empty phrases, letting slip a few enigmatic words and again
+reverting to incoherence. He was almost running about the room, moving
+his fat little legs quicker and quicker, looking at the ground, with his
+right hand behind his back, while with his left making gesticulations
+that were extraordinarily incongruous with his words. Raskolnikov
+suddenly noticed that as he ran about the room he seemed twice to stop
+for a moment near the door, as though he were listening.
+“Is he expecting anything?”
+“You are certainly quite right about it,” Porfiry began gaily, looking
+with extraordinary simplicity at Raskolnikov (which startled him and
+instantly put him on his guard); “certainly quite right in laughing so
+wittily at our legal forms, he-he! Some of these elaborate psychological
+methods are exceedingly ridiculous and perhaps useless, if one adheres
+too closely to the forms. Yes... I am talking of forms again. Well, if
+I recognise, or more strictly speaking, if I suspect someone or other to
+be a criminal in any case entrusted to me... you’re reading for the law,
+of course, Rodion Romanovitch?”
+“Yes, I was...”
+“Well, then it is a precedent for you for the future--though don’t
+suppose I should venture to instruct you after the articles you publish
+about crime! No, I simply make bold to state it by way of fact, if I
+took this man or that for a criminal, why, I ask, should I worry him
+prematurely, even though I had evidence against him? In one case I may
+be bound, for instance, to arrest a man at once, but another may be in
+quite a different position, you know, so why shouldn’t I let him walk
+about the town a bit? he-he-he! But I see you don’t quite understand, so
+I’ll give you a clearer example. If I put him in prison too soon, I
+may very likely give him, so to speak, moral support, he-he! You’re
+laughing?”
+Raskolnikov had no idea of laughing. He was sitting with compressed
+lips, his feverish eyes fixed on Porfiry Petrovitch’s.
+“Yet that is the case, with some types especially, for men are so
+different. You say ‘evidence’. Well, there may be evidence. But
+evidence, you know, can generally be taken two ways. I am an examining
+lawyer and a weak man, I confess it. I should like to make a proof, so
+to say, mathematically clear. I should like to make a chain of evidence
+such as twice two are four, it ought to be a direct, irrefutable proof!
+And if I shut him up too soon--even though I might be convinced _he_
+was the man, I should very likely be depriving myself of the means of
+getting further evidence against him. And how? By giving him, so to
+speak, a definite position, I shall put him out of suspense and set his
+mind at rest, so that he will retreat into his shell. They say that at
+Sevastopol, soon after Alma, the clever people were in a terrible fright
+that the enemy would attack openly and take Sevastopol at once. But when
+they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege, they were delighted,
+I am told and reassured, for the thing would drag on for two months at
+least. You’re laughing, you don’t believe me again? Of course, you’re
+right, too. You’re right, you’re right. These are special cases, I
+admit. But you must observe this, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, the
+general case, the case for which all legal forms and rules are intended,
+for which they are calculated and laid down in books, does not exist at
+all, for the reason that every case, every crime, for instance, so soon
+as it actually occurs, at once becomes a thoroughly special case and
+sometimes a case unlike any that’s gone before. Very comic cases of that
+sort sometimes occur. If I leave one man quite alone, if I don’t touch
+him and don’t worry him, but let him know or at least suspect every
+moment that I know all about it and am watching him day and night, and
+if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he’ll be bound to lose his
+head. He’ll come of himself, or maybe do something which will make it as
+plain as twice two are four--it’s delightful. It may be so with a simple
+peasant, but with one of our sort, an intelligent man cultivated on a
+certain side, it’s a dead certainty. For, my dear fellow, it’s a very
+important matter to know on what side a man is cultivated. And then
+there are nerves, there are nerves, you have overlooked them! Why, they
+are all sick, nervous and irritable!... And then how they all suffer
+from spleen! That I assure you is a regular gold-mine for us. And it’s
+no anxiety to me, his running about the town free! Let him, let him walk
+about for a bit! I know well enough that I’ve caught him and that he
+won’t escape me. Where could he escape to, he-he? Abroad, perhaps? A
+Pole will escape abroad, but not here, especially as I am watching
+and have taken measures. Will he escape into the depths of the country
+perhaps? But you know, peasants live there, real rude Russian peasants.
+A modern cultivated man would prefer prison to living with such
+strangers as our peasants. He-he! But that’s all nonsense, and on
+the surface. It’s not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is
+_psychologically_ unable to escape me, he-he! What an expression!
+Through a law of nature he can’t escape me if he had anywhere to go.
+Have you seen a butterfly round a candle? That’s how he will keep
+circling and circling round me. Freedom will lose its attractions. He’ll
+begin to brood, he’ll weave a tangle round himself, he’ll worry himself
+to death! What’s more he will provide me with a mathematical proof--if I
+only give him long enough interval.... And he’ll keep circling round
+me, getting nearer and nearer and then--flop! He’ll fly straight into my
+mouth and I’ll swallow him, and that will be very amusing, he-he-he! You
+don’t believe me?”
+Raskolnikov made no reply; he sat pale and motionless, still gazing with
+the same intensity into Porfiry’s face.
+“It’s a lesson,” he thought, turning cold. “This is beyond the cat
+playing with a mouse, like yesterday. He can’t be showing off his power
+with no motive... prompting me; he is far too clever for that... he must
+have another object. What is it? It’s all nonsense, my friend, you are
+pretending, to scare me! You’ve no proofs and the man I saw had no
+real existence. You simply want to make me lose my head, to work me up
+beforehand and so to crush me. But you are wrong, you won’t do it! But
+why give me such a hint? Is he reckoning on my shattered nerves? No, my
+friend, you are wrong, you won’t do it even though you have some trap
+for me... let us see what you have in store for me.”
+And he braced himself to face a terrible and unknown ordeal. At times
+he longed to fall on Porfiry and strangle him. This anger was what he
+dreaded from the beginning. He felt that his parched lips were flecked
+with foam, his heart was throbbing. But he was still determined not to
+speak till the right moment. He realised that this was the best
+policy in his position, because instead of saying too much he would be
+irritating his enemy by his silence and provoking him into speaking too
+freely. Anyhow, this was what he hoped for.
+“No, I see you don’t believe me, you think I am playing a harmless joke
+on you,” Porfiry began again, getting more and more lively, chuckling
+at every instant and again pacing round the room. “And to be sure you’re
+right: God has given me a figure that can awaken none but comic ideas in
+other people; a buffoon; but let me tell you, and I repeat it, excuse
+an old man, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, you are a man still young, so to
+say, in your first youth and so you put intellect above everything, like
+all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you and
+that’s for all the world like the old Austrian _Hof-kriegsrath_, as
+far as I can judge of military matters, that is: on paper they’d beaten
+Napoleon and taken him prisoner, and there in their study they worked it
+all out in the cleverest fashion, but look you, General Mack surrendered
+with all his army, he-he-he! I see, I see, Rodion Romanovitch, you are
+laughing at a civilian like me, taking examples out of military history!
+But I can’t help it, it’s my weakness. I am fond of military science.
+And I’m ever so fond of reading all military histories. I’ve certainly
+missed my proper career. I ought to have been in the army, upon my
+word I ought. I shouldn’t have been a Napoleon, but I might have been a
+major, he-he! Well, I’ll tell you the whole truth, my dear fellow, about
+this _special case_, I mean: actual fact and a man’s temperament, my
+dear sir, are weighty matters and it’s astonishing how they sometimes
+deceive the sharpest calculation! I--listen to an old man--am speaking
+seriously, Rodion Romanovitch” (as he said this Porfiry Petrovitch, who
+was scarcely five-and-thirty, actually seemed to have grown old; even
+his voice changed and he seemed to shrink together) “Moreover, I’m
+a candid man... am I a candid man or not? What do you say? I fancy I
+really am: I tell you these things for nothing and don’t even expect a
+reward for it, he-he! Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid
+thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of
+life, and what tricks it can play! So that it sometimes is hard for a
+poor examining lawyer to know where he is, especially when he’s liable
+to be carried away by his own fancy, too, for you know he is a man after
+all! But the poor fellow is saved by the criminal’s temperament, worse
+luck for him! But young people carried away by their own wit don’t think
+of that ‘when they overstep all obstacles,’ as you wittily and cleverly
+expressed it yesterday. He will lie--that is, the man who is a _special
+case_, the incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion;
+you might think he would triumph and enjoy the fruits of his wit, but at
+the most interesting, the most flagrant moment he will faint. Of course
+there may be illness and a stuffy room as well, but anyway! Anyway he’s
+given us the idea! He lied incomparably, but he didn’t reckon on his
+temperament. That’s what betrays him! Another time he will be carried
+away by his playful wit into making fun of the man who suspects him, he
+will turn pale as it were on purpose to mislead, but his paleness will
+be _too natural_, too much like the real thing, again he has given us
+an idea! Though his questioner may be deceived at first, he will think
+differently next day if he is not a fool, and, of course, it is like
+that at every step! He puts himself forward where he is not wanted,
+speaks continually when he ought to keep silent, brings in all sorts of
+allegorical allusions, he-he! Comes and asks why didn’t you take me long
+ago? he-he-he! And that can happen, you know, with the cleverest man,
+the psychologist, the literary man. The temperament reflects everything
+like a mirror! Gaze into it and admire what you see! But why are you so
+pale, Rodion Romanovitch? Is the room stuffy? Shall I open the window?”
+“Oh, don’t trouble, please,” cried Raskolnikov and he suddenly broke
+into a laugh. “Please don’t trouble.”
+Porfiry stood facing him, paused a moment and suddenly he too laughed.
+Raskolnikov got up from the sofa, abruptly checking his hysterical
+laughter.
+“Porfiry Petrovitch,” he began, speaking loudly and distinctly, though
+his legs trembled and he could scarcely stand. “I see clearly at last
+that you actually suspect me of murdering that old woman and her sister
+Lizaveta. Let me tell you for my part that I am sick of this. If you
+find that you have a right to prosecute me legally, to arrest me, then
+prosecute me, arrest me. But I will not let myself be jeered at to my
+face and worried...”
+His lips trembled, his eyes glowed with fury and he could not restrain
+his voice.
+“I won’t allow it!” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table. “Do
+you hear that, Porfiry Petrovitch? I won’t allow it.”
+“Good heavens! What does it mean?” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, apparently
+quite frightened. “Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow, what is the
+matter with you?”
+“I won’t allow it,” Raskolnikov shouted again.
+“Hush, my dear man! They’ll hear and come in. Just think, what could we
+say to them?” Porfiry Petrovitch whispered in horror, bringing his face
+close to Raskolnikov’s.
+“I won’t allow it, I won’t allow it,” Raskolnikov repeated mechanically,
+but he too spoke in a sudden whisper.
+Porfiry turned quickly and ran to open the window.
+“Some fresh air! And you must have some water, my dear fellow. You’re
+ill!” and he was running to the door to call for some when he found a
+decanter of water in the corner. “Come, drink a little,” he whispered,
+rushing up to him with the decanter. “It will be sure to do you good.”
+Porfiry Petrovitch’s alarm and sympathy were so natural that Raskolnikov
+was silent and began looking at him with wild curiosity. He did not take
+the water, however.
+“Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow, you’ll drive yourself out of your
+mind, I assure you, ach, ach! Have some water, do drink a little.”
+He forced him to take the glass. Raskolnikov raised it mechanically to
+his lips, but set it on the table again with disgust.
+“Yes, you’ve had a little attack! You’ll bring back your illness again,
+my dear fellow,” Porfiry Petrovitch cackled with friendly sympathy,
+though he still looked rather disconcerted. “Good heavens, you must
+take more care of yourself! Dmitri Prokofitch was here, came to see me
+yesterday--I know, I know, I’ve a nasty, ironical temper, but what they
+made of it!... Good heavens, he came yesterday after you’d been. We
+dined and he talked and talked away, and I could only throw up my hands
+in despair! Did he come from you? But do sit down, for mercy’s sake, sit
+down!”
+“No, not from me, but I knew he went to you and why he went,”
+Raskolnikov answered sharply.
+“You knew?”
+“I knew. What of it?”
+“Why this, Rodion Romanovitch, that I know more than that about you;
+I know about everything. I know how you went _to take a flat_ at night
+when it was dark and how you rang the bell and asked about the blood, so
+that the workmen and the porter did not know what to make of it. Yes, I
+understand your state of mind at that time... but you’ll drive yourself
+mad like that, upon my word! You’ll lose your head! You’re full of
+generous indignation at the wrongs you’ve received, first from destiny,
+and then from the police officers, and so you rush from one thing to
+another to force them to speak out and make an end of it all, because
+you are sick of all this suspicion and foolishness. That’s so, isn’t
+it? I have guessed how you feel, haven’t I? Only in that way you’ll
+lose your head and Razumihin’s, too; he’s too _good_ a man for such
+a position, you must know that. You are ill and he is good and your
+illness is infectious for him... I’ll tell you about it when you are
+more yourself.... But do sit down, for goodness’ sake. Please rest, you
+look shocking, do sit down.”
+Raskolnikov sat down; he no longer shivered, he was hot all over. In
+amazement he listened with strained attention to Porfiry Petrovitch who
+still seemed frightened as he looked after him with friendly solicitude.
+But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt a strange
+inclination to believe. Porfiry’s unexpected words about the flat had
+utterly overwhelmed him. “How can it be, he knows about the flat then,”
+he thought suddenly, “and he tells it me himself!”
+“Yes, in our legal practice there was a case almost exactly similar, a
+case of morbid psychology,” Porfiry went on quickly. “A man confessed to
+murder and how he kept it up! It was a regular hallucination; he brought
+forward facts, he imposed upon everyone and why? He had been partly, but
+only partly, unintentionally the cause of a murder and when he knew that
+he had given the murderers the opportunity, he sank into dejection, it
+got on his mind and turned his brain, he began imagining things and he
+persuaded himself that he was the murderer. But at last the High Court
+of Appeal went into it and the poor fellow was acquitted and put under
+proper care. Thanks to the Court of Appeal! Tut-tut-tut! Why, my dear
+fellow, you may drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse
+to work upon your nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about
+blood! I’ve studied all this morbid psychology in my practice. A man
+is sometimes tempted to jump out of a window or from a belfry. Just the
+same with bell-ringing.... It’s all illness, Rodion Romanovitch! You
+have begun to neglect your illness. You should consult an experienced
+doctor, what’s the good of that fat fellow? You are lightheaded! You
+were delirious when you did all this!”
+For a moment Raskolnikov felt everything going round.
+“Is it possible, is it possible,” flashed through his mind, “that he is
+still lying? He can’t be, he can’t be.” He rejected that idea, feeling
+to what a degree of fury it might drive him, feeling that that fury
+might drive him mad.
+“I was not delirious. I knew what I was doing,” he cried, straining
+every faculty to penetrate Porfiry’s game, “I was quite myself, do you
+hear?”
+“Yes, I hear and understand. You said yesterday you were not delirious,
+you were particularly emphatic about it! I understand all you can tell
+me! A-ach!... Listen, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow. If you were
+actually a criminal, or were somehow mixed up in this damnable business,
+would you insist that you were not delirious but in full possession
+of your faculties? And so emphatically and persistently? Would it be
+possible? Quite impossible, to my thinking. If you had anything on
+your conscience, you certainly ought to insist that you were delirious.
+That’s so, isn’t it?”
+There was a note of slyness in this inquiry. Raskolnikov drew back on
+the sofa as Porfiry bent over him and stared in silent perplexity at
+him.
+“Another thing about Razumihin--you certainly ought to have said that he
+came of his own accord, to have concealed your part in it! But you don’t
+conceal it! You lay stress on his coming at your instigation.”
+Raskolnikov had not done so. A chill went down his back.
+“You keep telling lies,” he said slowly and weakly, twisting his lips
+into a sickly smile, “you are trying again to show that you know all
+my game, that you know all I shall say beforehand,” he said, conscious
+himself that he was not weighing his words as he ought. “You want to
+frighten me... or you are simply laughing at me...”
+He still stared at him as he said this and again there was a light of
+intense hatred in his eyes.
+“You keep lying,” he said. “You know perfectly well that the best
+policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to
+conceal as little as possible. I don’t believe you!”
+“What a wily person you are!” Porfiry tittered, “there’s no catching
+you; you’ve a perfect monomania. So you don’t believe me? But still you
+do believe me, you believe a quarter; I’ll soon make you believe the
+whole, because I have a sincere liking for you and genuinely wish you
+good.”
+Raskolnikov’s lips trembled.
+“Yes, I do,” went on Porfiry, touching Raskolnikov’s arm genially, “you
+must take care of your illness. Besides, your mother and sister are here
+now; you must think of them. You must soothe and comfort them and you do
+nothing but frighten them...”
+“What has that to do with you? How do you know it? What concern is it of
+yours? You are keeping watch on me and want to let me know it?”
+“Good heavens! Why, I learnt it all from you yourself! You don’t
+notice that in your excitement you tell me and others everything. From
+Razumihin, too, I learnt a number of interesting details yesterday. No,
+you interrupted me, but I must tell you that, for all your wit, your
+suspiciousness makes you lose the common-sense view of things. To return
+to bell-ringing, for instance. I, an examining lawyer, have betrayed a
+precious thing like that, a real fact (for it is a fact worth having),
+and you see nothing in it! Why, if I had the slightest suspicion of you,
+should I have acted like that? No, I should first have disarmed your
+suspicions and not let you see I knew of that fact, should have diverted
+your attention and suddenly have dealt you a knock-down blow (your
+expression) saying: ‘And what were you doing, sir, pray, at ten or
+nearly eleven at the murdered woman’s flat and why did you ring the bell
+and why did you ask about blood? And why did you invite the porters
+to go with you to the police station, to the lieutenant?’ That’s how
+I ought to have acted if I had a grain of suspicion of you. I ought to
+have taken your evidence in due form, searched your lodging and perhaps
+have arrested you, too... so I have no suspicion of you, since I have
+not done that! But you can’t look at it normally and you see nothing, I
+say again.”
+Raskolnikov started so that Porfiry Petrovitch could not fail to
+perceive it.
+“You are lying all the while,” he cried, “I don’t know your object,
+but you are lying. You did not speak like that just now and I cannot be
+mistaken!”
+“I am lying?” Porfiry repeated, apparently incensed, but preserving
+a good-humoured and ironical face, as though he were not in the least
+concerned at Raskolnikov’s opinion of him. “I am lying... but how did
+I treat you just now, I, the examining lawyer? Prompting you and giving
+you every means for your defence; illness, I said, delirium, injury,
+melancholy and the police officers and all the rest of it? Ah! He-he-he!
+Though, indeed, all those psychological means of defence are not very
+reliable and cut both ways: illness, delirium, I don’t remember--that’s
+all right, but why, my good sir, in your illness and in your delirium
+were you haunted by just those delusions and not by any others? There
+may have been others, eh? He-he-he!”
+Raskolnikov looked haughtily and contemptuously at him.
+“Briefly,” he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in so
+doing pushing Porfiry back a little, “briefly, I want to know, do you
+acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me, Porfiry
+Petrovitch, tell me once for all and make haste!”
+“What a business I’m having with you!” cried Porfiry with a perfectly
+good-humoured, sly and composed face. “And why do you want to know, why
+do you want to know so much, since they haven’t begun to worry you? Why,
+you are like a child asking for matches! And why are you so uneasy? Why
+do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!”
+“I repeat,” Raskolnikov cried furiously, “that I can’t put up with it!”
+“With what? Uncertainty?” interrupted Porfiry.
+“Don’t jeer at me! I won’t have it! I tell you I won’t have it. I can’t
+and I won’t, do you hear, do you hear?” he shouted, bringing his fist
+down on the table again.
+“Hush! Hush! They’ll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of
+yourself. I am not joking,” Porfiry whispered, but this time there was
+not the look of old womanish good nature and alarm in his face. Now
+he was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all
+mystification.
+But this was only for an instant. Raskolnikov, bewildered, suddenly fell
+into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed the command to
+speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of fury.
+“I will not allow myself to be tortured,” he whispered, instantly
+recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and
+driven to even greater fury by the thought. “Arrest me, search me, but
+kindly act in due form and don’t play with me! Don’t dare!”
+“Don’t worry about the form,” Porfiry interrupted with the same sly
+smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Raskolnikov. “I invited
+you to see me quite in a friendly way.”
+“I don’t want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And, here,
+I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to arrest me?”
+He took up his cap and went to the door.
+“And won’t you see my little surprise?” chuckled Porfiry, again taking
+him by the arm and stopping him at the door.
+He seemed to become more playful and good-humoured which maddened
+Raskolnikov.
+“What surprise?” he asked, standing still and looking at Porfiry in
+alarm.
+“My little surprise, it’s sitting there behind the door, he-he-he!”
+(He pointed to the locked door.) “I locked him in that he should not
+escape.”
+“What is it? Where? What?...”
+Raskolnikov walked to the door and would have opened it, but it was
+locked.
+“It’s locked, here is the key!”
+And he brought a key out of his pocket.
+“You are lying,” roared Raskolnikov without restraint, “you lie, you
+damned punchinello!” and he rushed at Porfiry who retreated to the other
+door, not at all alarmed.
+“I understand it all! You are lying and mocking so that I may betray
+myself to you...”
+“Why, you could not betray yourself any further, my dear Rodion
+Romanovitch. You are in a passion. Don’t shout, I shall call the
+clerks.”
+“You are lying! Call the clerks! You knew I was ill and tried to work
+me into a frenzy to make me betray myself, that was your object! Produce
+your facts! I understand it all. You’ve no evidence, you have only
+wretched rubbishly suspicions like Zametov’s! You knew my character, you
+wanted to drive me to fury and then to knock me down with priests and
+deputies.... Are you waiting for them? eh! What are you waiting for?
+Where are they? Produce them?”
+“Why deputies, my good man? What things people will imagine! And to do
+so would not be acting in form as you say, you don’t know the business,
+my dear fellow.... And there’s no escaping form, as you see,” Porfiry
+muttered, listening at the door through which a noise could be heard.
+“Ah, they’re coming,” cried Raskolnikov. “You’ve sent for them! You
+expected them! Well, produce them all: your deputies, your witnesses,
+what you like!... I am ready!”
+But at this moment a strange incident occurred, something so unexpected
+that neither Raskolnikov nor Porfiry Petrovitch could have looked for
+such a conclusion to their interview.
+CHAPTER VI
+When he remembered the scene afterwards, this is how Raskolnikov saw it.
+The noise behind the door increased, and suddenly the door was opened a
+little.
+“What is it?” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, annoyed. “Why, I gave orders...”
+For an instant there was no answer, but it was evident that there were
+several persons at the door, and that they were apparently pushing
+somebody back.
+“What is it?” Porfiry Petrovitch repeated, uneasily.
+“The prisoner Nikolay has been brought,” someone answered.
+“He is not wanted! Take him away! Let him wait! What’s he doing here?
+How irregular!” cried Porfiry, rushing to the door.
+“But he...” began the same voice, and suddenly ceased.
+Two seconds, not more, were spent in actual struggle, then someone gave
+a violent shove, and then a man, very pale, strode into the room.
+This man’s appearance was at first sight very strange. He stared
+straight before him, as though seeing nothing. There was a determined
+gleam in his eyes; at the same time there was a deathly pallor in his
+face, as though he were being led to the scaffold. His white lips were
+faintly twitching.
+He was dressed like a workman and was of medium height, very young,
+slim, his hair cut in round crop, with thin spare features. The man whom
+he had thrust back followed him into the room and succeeded in seizing
+him by the shoulder; he was a warder; but Nikolay pulled his arm away.
+Several persons crowded inquisitively into the doorway. Some of them
+tried to get in. All this took place almost instantaneously.
+“Go away, it’s too soon! Wait till you are sent for!... Why have you
+brought him so soon?” Porfiry Petrovitch muttered, extremely annoyed,
+and as it were thrown out of his reckoning.
+But Nikolay suddenly knelt down.
+“What’s the matter?” cried Porfiry, surprised.
+“I am guilty! Mine is the sin! I am the murderer,” Nikolay articulated
+suddenly, rather breathless, but speaking fairly loudly.
+For ten seconds there was silence as though all had been struck dumb;
+even the warder stepped back, mechanically retreated to the door, and
+stood immovable.
+“What is it?” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, recovering from his momentary
+stupefaction.
+“I... am the murderer,” repeated Nikolay, after a brief pause.
+“What... you... what... whom did you kill?” Porfiry Petrovitch was
+obviously bewildered.
+Nikolay again was silent for a moment.
+“Alyona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta Ivanovna, I... killed... with
+an axe. Darkness came over me,” he added suddenly, and was again silent.
+He still remained on his knees. Porfiry Petrovitch stood for some
+moments as though meditating, but suddenly roused himself and waved back
+the uninvited spectators. They instantly vanished and closed the door.
+Then he looked towards Raskolnikov, who was standing in the corner,
+staring wildly at Nikolay and moved towards him, but stopped short,
+looked from Nikolay to Raskolnikov and then again at Nikolay, and
+seeming unable to restrain himself darted at the latter.
+“You’re in too great a hurry,” he shouted at him, almost angrily. “I
+didn’t ask you what came over you.... Speak, did you kill them?”
+“I am the murderer.... I want to give evidence,” Nikolay pronounced.
+“Ach! What did you kill them with?”
+“An axe. I had it ready.”
+“Ach, he is in a hurry! Alone?”
+Nikolay did not understand the question.
+“Did you do it alone?”
+“Yes, alone. And Mitka is not guilty and had no share in it.”
+“Don’t be in a hurry about Mitka! A-ach! How was it you ran downstairs
+like that at the time? The porters met you both!”
+“It was to put them off the scent... I ran after Mitka,” Nikolay replied
+hurriedly, as though he had prepared the answer.
+“I knew it!” cried Porfiry, with vexation. “It’s not his own tale he is
+telling,” he muttered as though to himself, and suddenly his eyes rested
+on Raskolnikov again.
+He was apparently so taken up with Nikolay that for a moment he had
+forgotten Raskolnikov. He was a little taken aback.
+“My dear Rodion Romanovitch, excuse me!” he flew up to him, “this won’t
+do; I’m afraid you must go... it’s no good your staying... I will...
+you see, what a surprise!... Good-bye!”
+And taking him by the arm, he showed him to the door.
+“I suppose you didn’t expect it?” said Raskolnikov who, though he had
+not yet fully grasped the situation, had regained his courage.
+“You did not expect it either, my friend. See how your hand is
+trembling! He-he!”
+“You’re trembling, too, Porfiry Petrovitch!”
+“Yes, I am; I didn’t expect it.”
+They were already at the door; Porfiry was impatient for Raskolnikov to
+be gone.
+“And your little surprise, aren’t you going to show it to me?”
+Raskolnikov said, sarcastically.
+“Why, his teeth are chattering as he asks, he-he! You are an ironical
+person! Come, till we meet!”
+“I believe we can say _good-bye_!”
+“That’s in God’s hands,” muttered Porfiry, with an unnatural smile.
+As he walked through the office, Raskolnikov noticed that many people
+were looking at him. Among them he saw the two porters from _the_ house,
+whom he had invited that night to the police station. They stood there
+waiting. But he was no sooner on the stairs than he heard the voice of
+Porfiry Petrovitch behind him. Turning round, he saw the latter running
+after him, out of breath.
+“One word, Rodion Romanovitch; as to all the rest, it’s in God’s hands,
+but as a matter of form there are some questions I shall have to ask
+you... so we shall meet again, shan’t we?”
+And Porfiry stood still, facing him with a smile.
+“Shan’t we?” he added again.
+He seemed to want to say something more, but could not speak out.
+“You must forgive me, Porfiry Petrovitch, for what has just passed... I
+lost my temper,” began Raskolnikov, who had so far regained his courage
+that he felt irresistibly inclined to display his coolness.
+“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it,” Porfiry replied, almost gleefully.
+“I myself, too... I have a wicked temper, I admit it! But we shall meet
+again. If it’s God’s will, we may see a great deal of one another.”
+“And will get to know each other through and through?” added
+Raskolnikov.
+“Yes; know each other through and through,” assented Porfiry Petrovitch,
+and he screwed up his eyes, looking earnestly at Raskolnikov. “Now
+you’re going to a birthday party?”
+“To a funeral.”
+“Of course, the funeral! Take care of yourself, and get well.”
+“I don’t know what to wish you,” said Raskolnikov, who had begun to
+descend the stairs, but looked back again. “I should like to wish you
+success, but your office is such a comical one.”
+“Why comical?” Porfiry Petrovitch had turned to go, but he seemed to
+prick up his ears at this.
+“Why, how you must have been torturing and harassing that poor Nikolay
+psychologically, after your fashion, till he confessed! You must have
+been at him day and night, proving to him that he was the murderer, and
+now that he has confessed, you’ll begin vivisecting him again. ‘You are
+lying,’ you’ll say. ‘You are not the murderer! You can’t be! It’s not
+your own tale you are telling!’ You must admit it’s a comical business!”
+“He-he-he! You noticed then that I said to Nikolay just now that it was
+not his own tale he was telling?”
+“How could I help noticing it!”
+“He-he! You are quick-witted. You notice everything! You’ve really a
+playful mind! And you always fasten on the comic side... he-he! They say
+that was the marked characteristic of Gogol, among the writers.”
+“Yes, of Gogol.”
+“Yes, of Gogol.... I shall look forward to meeting you.”
+“So shall I.”
+Raskolnikov walked straight home. He was so muddled and bewildered that
+on getting home he sat for a quarter of an hour on the sofa, trying to
+collect his thoughts. He did not attempt to think about Nikolay; he
+was stupefied; he felt that his confession was something inexplicable,
+amazing--something beyond his understanding. But Nikolay’s confession
+was an actual fact. The consequences of this fact were clear to him at
+once, its falsehood could not fail to be discovered, and then they
+would be after him again. Till then, at least, he was free and must do
+something for himself, for the danger was imminent.
+But how imminent? His position gradually became clear to him.
+Remembering, sketchily, the main outlines of his recent scene with
+Porfiry, he could not help shuddering again with horror. Of course,
+he did not yet know all Porfiry’s aims, he could not see into all his
+calculations. But he had already partly shown his hand, and no one knew
+better than Raskolnikov how terrible Porfiry’s “lead” had been for
+him. A little more and he _might_ have given himself away completely,
+circumstantially. Knowing his nervous temperament and from the first
+glance seeing through him, Porfiry, though playing a bold game, was
+bound to win. There’s no denying that Raskolnikov had compromised
+himself seriously, but no _facts_ had come to light as yet; there was
+nothing positive. But was he taking a true view of the position? Wasn’t
+he mistaken? What had Porfiry been trying to get at? Had he really some
+surprise prepared for him? And what was it? Had he really been expecting
+something or not? How would they have parted if it had not been for the
+unexpected appearance of Nikolay?
+Porfiry had shown almost all his cards--of course, he had risked
+something in showing them--and if he had really had anything up his
+sleeve (Raskolnikov reflected), he would have shown that, too. What was
+that “surprise”? Was it a joke? Had it meant anything? Could it have
+concealed anything like a fact, a piece of positive evidence? His
+yesterday’s visitor? What had become of him? Where was he to-day? If
+Porfiry really had any evidence, it must be connected with him....
+He sat on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in
+his hands. He was still shivering nervously. At last he got up, took his
+cap, thought a minute, and went to the door.
+He had a sort of presentiment that for to-day, at least, he might
+consider himself out of danger. He had a sudden sense almost of joy; he
+wanted to make haste to Katerina Ivanovna’s. He would be too late for
+the funeral, of course, but he would be in time for the memorial dinner,
+and there at once he would see Sonia.
+He stood still, thought a moment, and a suffering smile came for a
+moment on to his lips.
+“To-day! To-day,” he repeated to himself. “Yes, to-day! So it must
+be....”
+But as he was about to open the door, it began opening of itself. He
+started and moved back. The door opened gently and slowly, and there
+suddenly appeared a figure--yesterday’s visitor _from underground_.
+The man stood in the doorway, looked at Raskolnikov without speaking,
+and took a step forward into the room. He was exactly the same as
+yesterday; the same figure, the same dress, but there was a great change
+in his face; he looked dejected and sighed deeply. If he had only put
+his hand up to his cheek and leaned his head on one side he would have
+looked exactly like a peasant woman.
+“What do you want?” asked Raskolnikov, numb with terror. The man was
+still silent, but suddenly he bowed down almost to the ground, touching
+it with his finger.
+“What is it?” cried Raskolnikov.
+“I have sinned,” the man articulated softly.
+“How?”
+“By evil thoughts.”
+They looked at one another.
+“I was vexed. When you came, perhaps in drink, and bade the porters go
+to the police station and asked about the blood, I was vexed that they
+let you go and took you for drunken. I was so vexed that I lost my
+sleep. And remembering the address we came here yesterday and asked for
+you....”
+“Who came?” Raskolnikov interrupted, instantly beginning to recollect.
+“I did, I’ve wronged you.”
+“Then you come from that house?”
+“I was standing at the gate with them... don’t you remember? We have
+carried on our trade in that house for years past. We cure and prepare
+hides, we take work home... most of all I was vexed....”
+And the whole scene of the day before yesterday in the gateway came
+clearly before Raskolnikov’s mind; he recollected that there had
+been several people there besides the porters, women among them.
+He remembered one voice had suggested taking him straight to the
+police-station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and even
+now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned round
+and made him some answer....
+So this was the solution of yesterday’s horror. The most awful thought
+was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for himself
+on account of such a _trivial_ circumstance. So this man could tell
+nothing except his asking about the flat and the blood stains. So
+Porfiry, too, had nothing but that _delirium_, no facts but this
+_psychology_ which _cuts both ways_, nothing positive. So if no more
+facts come to light (and they must not, they must not!) then... then
+what can they do to him? How can they convict him, even if they arrest
+him? And Porfiry then had only just heard about the flat and had not
+known about it before.
+“Was it you who told Porfiry... that I’d been there?” he cried, struck
+by a sudden idea.
+“What Porfiry?”
+“The head of the detective department?”
+“Yes. The porters did not go there, but I went.”
+“To-day?”
+“I got there two minutes before you. And I heard, I heard it all, how he
+worried you.”
+“Where? What? When?”
+“Why, in the next room. I was sitting there all the time.”
+“What? Why, then you were the surprise? But how could it happen? Upon my
+word!”
+“I saw that the porters did not want to do what I said,” began the man;
+“for it’s too late, said they, and maybe he’ll be angry that we did not
+come at the time. I was vexed and I lost my sleep, and I began making
+inquiries. And finding out yesterday where to go, I went to-day. The
+first time I went he wasn’t there, when I came an hour later he couldn’t
+see me. I went the third time, and they showed me in. I informed him of
+everything, just as it happened, and he began skipping about the room
+and punching himself on the chest. ‘What do you scoundrels mean by it?
+If I’d known about it I should have arrested him!’ Then he ran out,
+called somebody and began talking to him in the corner, then he turned
+to me, scolding and questioning me. He scolded me a great deal; and I
+told him everything, and I told him that you didn’t dare to say a word
+in answer to me yesterday and that you didn’t recognise me. And he
+fell to running about again and kept hitting himself on the chest, and
+getting angry and running about, and when you were announced he told
+me to go into the next room. ‘Sit there a bit,’ he said. ‘Don’t move,
+whatever you may hear.’ And he set a chair there for me and locked
+me in. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I may call you.’ And when Nikolay’d been
+brought he let me out as soon as you were gone. ‘I shall send for you
+again and question you,’ he said.”
+“And did he question Nikolay while you were there?”
+“He got rid of me as he did of you, before he spoke to Nikolay.”
+The man stood still, and again suddenly bowed down, touching the ground
+with his finger.
+“Forgive me for my evil thoughts, and my slander.”
+“May God forgive you,” answered Raskolnikov.
+And as he said this, the man bowed down again, but not to the ground,
+turned slowly and went out of the room.
+“It all cuts both ways, now it all cuts both ways,” repeated
+Raskolnikov, and he went out more confident than ever.
+“Now we’ll make a fight for it,” he said, with a malicious smile, as he
+went down the stairs. His malice was aimed at himself; with shame and
+contempt he recollected his “cowardice.”
+PART V
+CHAPTER I
+The morning that followed the fateful interview with Dounia and
+her mother brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch.
+Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept
+as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before
+fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been
+gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch
+immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had
+jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, and looking at
+his noble, clear-skinned countenance which had grown fattish of
+late, Pyotr Petrovitch for an instant was positively comforted in the
+conviction that he would find another bride and, perhaps, even a better
+one. But coming back to the sense of his present position, he turned
+aside and spat vigorously, which excited a sarcastic smile in Andrey
+Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, the young friend with whom he was staying.
+That smile Pyotr Petrovitch noticed, and at once set it down against his
+young friend’s account. He had set down a good many points against him
+of late. His anger was redoubled when he reflected that he ought not to
+have told Andrey Semyonovitch about the result of yesterday’s interview.
+That was the second mistake he had made in temper, through impulsiveness
+and irritability.... Moreover, all that morning one unpleasantness
+followed another. He even found a hitch awaiting him in his legal case
+in the senate. He was particularly irritated by the owner of the flat
+which had been taken in view of his approaching marriage and was being
+redecorated at his own expense; the owner, a rich German tradesman,
+would not entertain the idea of breaking the contract which had just
+been signed and insisted on the full forfeit money, though Pyotr
+Petrovitch would be giving him back the flat practically redecorated. In
+the same way the upholsterers refused to return a single rouble of the
+instalment paid for the furniture purchased but not yet removed to the
+flat.
+“Am I to get married simply for the sake of the furniture?” Pyotr
+Petrovitch ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a
+gleam of desperate hope. “Can all that be really so irrevocably over?
+Is it no use to make another effort?” The thought of Dounia sent a
+voluptuous pang through his heart. He endured anguish at that moment,
+and if it had been possible to slay Raskolnikov instantly by wishing it,
+Pyotr Petrovitch would promptly have uttered the wish.
+“It was my mistake, too, not to have given them money,” he thought, as
+he returned dejectedly to Lebeziatnikov’s room, “and why on earth was I
+such a Jew? It was false economy! I meant to keep them without a penny
+so that they should turn to me as their providence, and look at them!
+foo! If I’d spent some fifteen hundred roubles on them for the trousseau
+and presents, on knick-knacks, dressing-cases, jewellery, materials, and
+all that sort of trash from Knopp’s and the English shop, my position
+would have been better and... stronger! They could not have refused me
+so easily! They are the sort of people that would feel bound to return
+money and presents if they broke it off; and they would find it hard to
+do it! And their conscience would prick them: how can we dismiss a man
+who has hitherto been so generous and delicate?.... H’m! I’ve made a
+blunder.”
+And grinding his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovitch called himself a
+fool--but not aloud, of course.
+He returned home, twice as irritated and angry as before. The
+preparations for the funeral dinner at Katerina Ivanovna’s excited
+his curiosity as he passed. He had heard about it the day before; he
+fancied, indeed, that he had been invited, but absorbed in his own cares
+he had paid no attention. Inquiring of Madame Lippevechsel who was busy
+laying the table while Katerina Ivanovna was away at the cemetery, he
+heard that the entertainment was to be a great affair, that all the
+lodgers had been invited, among them some who had not known the dead
+man, that even Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov was invited in spite of
+his previous quarrel with Katerina Ivanovna, that he, Pyotr Petrovitch,
+was not only invited, but was eagerly expected as he was the most
+important of the lodgers. Amalia Ivanovna herself had been invited with
+great ceremony in spite of the recent unpleasantness, and so she was
+very busy with preparations and was taking a positive pleasure in them;
+she was moreover dressed up to the nines, all in new black silk, and she
+was proud of it. All this suggested an idea to Pyotr Petrovitch and he
+went into his room, or rather Lebeziatnikov’s, somewhat thoughtful. He
+had learnt that Raskolnikov was to be one of the guests.
+Andrey Semyonovitch had been at home all the morning. The attitude of
+Pyotr Petrovitch to this gentleman was strange, though perhaps natural.
+Pyotr Petrovitch had despised and hated him from the day he came to stay
+with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid of him. He
+had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Petersburg simply from
+parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object. He had heard
+of Andrey Semyonovitch, who had once been his ward, as a leading young
+progressive who was taking an important part in certain interesting
+circles, the doings of which were a legend in the provinces. It had
+impressed Pyotr Petrovitch. These powerful omniscient circles who
+despised everyone and showed everyone up had long inspired in him a
+peculiar but quite vague alarm. He had not, of course, been able to form
+even an approximate notion of what they meant. He, like everyone, had
+heard that there were, especially in Petersburg, progressives of some
+sort, nihilists and so on, and, like many people, he exaggerated and
+distorted the significance of those words to an absurd degree. What for
+many years past he had feared more than anything was _being shown
+up_ and this was the chief ground for his continual uneasiness at the
+thought of transferring his business to Petersburg. He was afraid of
+this as little children are sometimes panic-stricken. Some years before,
+when he was just entering on his own career, he had come upon two cases
+in which rather important personages in the province, patrons of his,
+had been cruelly shown up. One instance had ended in great scandal
+for the person attacked and the other had very nearly ended in serious
+trouble. For this reason Pyotr Petrovitch intended to go into the
+subject as soon as he reached Petersburg and, if necessary, to
+anticipate contingencies by seeking the favour of “our younger
+generation.” He relied on Andrey Semyonovitch for this and before
+his visit to Raskolnikov he had succeeded in picking up some current
+phrases. He soon discovered that Andrey Semyonovitch was a commonplace
+simpleton, but that by no means reassured Pyotr Petrovitch. Even if he
+had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it
+would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doctrines, the ideas, the
+systems, with which Andrey Semyonovitch pestered him had no interest for
+him. He had his own object--he simply wanted to find out at once what
+was happening _here_. Had these people any power or not? Had he anything
+to fear from them? Would they expose any enterprise of his? And what
+precisely was now the object of their attacks? Could he somehow make up
+to them and get round them if they really were powerful? Was this the
+thing to do or not? Couldn’t he gain something through them? In fact
+hundreds of questions presented themselves.
+Andrey Semyonovitch was an anæmic, scrofulous little man, with strangely
+flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk
+and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather
+soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in
+speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure.
+He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did
+not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Andrey Semyonovitch
+really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the cause of progress
+and “our younger generation” from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous
+and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited,
+half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in
+fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve,
+however sincerely.
+Though Lebeziatnikov was so good-natured, he, too, was beginning to
+dislike Pyotr Petrovitch. This happened on both sides unconsciously.
+However simple Andrey Semyonovitch might be, he began to see that Pyotr
+Petrovitch was duping him and secretly despising him, and that “he was
+not the right sort of man.” He had tried expounding to him the system of
+Fourier and the Darwinian theory, but of late Pyotr Petrovitch began to
+listen too sarcastically and even to be rude. The fact was he had begun
+instinctively to guess that Lebeziatnikov was not merely a commonplace
+simpleton, but, perhaps, a liar, too, and that he had no connections of
+any consequence even in his own circle, but had simply picked things up
+third-hand; and that very likely he did not even know much about his own
+work of propaganda, for he was in too great a muddle. A fine person he
+would be to show anyone up! It must be noted, by the way, that Pyotr
+Petrovitch had during those ten days eagerly accepted the strangest
+praise from Andrey Semyonovitch; he had not protested, for instance,
+when Andrey Semyonovitch belauded him for being ready to contribute to
+the establishment of the new “commune,” or to abstain from christening
+his future children, or to acquiesce if Dounia were to take a lover a
+month after marriage, and so on. Pyotr Petrovitch so enjoyed hearing
+his own praises that he did not disdain even such virtues when they were
+attributed to him.
+Pyotr Petrovitch had had occasion that morning to realise some
+five-per-cent bonds and now he sat down to the table and counted over
+bundles of notes. Andrey Semyonovitch who hardly ever had any money
+walked about the room pretending to himself to look at all those bank
+notes with indifference and even contempt. Nothing would have convinced
+Pyotr Petrovitch that Andrey Semyonovitch could really look on the money
+unmoved, and the latter, on his side, kept thinking bitterly that Pyotr
+Petrovitch was capable of entertaining such an idea about him and
+was, perhaps, glad of the opportunity of teasing his young friend by
+reminding him of his inferiority and the great difference between them.
+He found him incredibly inattentive and irritable, though he, Andrey
+Semyonovitch, began enlarging on his favourite subject, the foundation
+of a new special “commune.” The brief remarks that dropped from Pyotr
+Petrovitch between the clicking of the beads on the reckoning frame
+betrayed unmistakable and discourteous irony. But the “humane” Andrey
+Semyonovitch ascribed Pyotr Petrovitch’s ill-humour to his recent breach
+with Dounia and he was burning with impatience to discourse on that
+theme. He had something progressive to say on the subject which
+might console his worthy friend and “could not fail” to promote his
+development.
+“There is some sort of festivity being prepared at that... at the
+widow’s, isn’t there?” Pyotr Petrovitch asked suddenly, interrupting
+Andrey Semyonovitch at the most interesting passage.
+“Why, don’t you know? Why, I was telling you last night what I think
+about all such ceremonies. And she invited you too, I heard. You were
+talking to her yesterday...”
+“I should never have expected that beggarly fool would have spent on
+this feast all the money she got from that other fool, Raskolnikov. I
+was surprised just now as I came through at the preparations there, the
+wines! Several people are invited. It’s beyond everything!” continued
+Pyotr Petrovitch, who seemed to have some object in pursuing the
+conversation. “What? You say I am asked too? When was that? I don’t
+remember. But I shan’t go. Why should I? I only said a word to her in
+passing yesterday of the possibility of her obtaining a year’s salary as
+a destitute widow of a government clerk. I suppose she has invited me on
+that account, hasn’t she? He-he-he!”
+“I don’t intend to go either,” said Lebeziatnikov.
+“I should think not, after giving her a thrashing! You might well
+hesitate, he-he!”
+“Who thrashed? Whom?” cried Lebeziatnikov, flustered and blushing.
+“Why, you thrashed Katerina Ivanovna a month ago. I heard so
+yesterday... so that’s what your convictions amount to... and the woman
+question, too, wasn’t quite sound, he-he-he!” and Pyotr Petrovitch, as
+though comforted, went back to clicking his beads.
+“It’s all slander and nonsense!” cried Lebeziatnikov, who was always
+afraid of allusions to the subject. “It was not like that at all, it
+was quite different. You’ve heard it wrong; it’s a libel. I was simply
+defending myself. She rushed at me first with her nails, she pulled
+out all my whiskers.... It’s permissable for anyone, I should hope,
+to defend himself and I never allow anyone to use violence to me on
+principle, for it’s an act of despotism. What was I to do? I simply
+pushed her back.”
+“He-he-he!” Luzhin went on laughing maliciously.
+“You keep on like that because you are out of humour yourself.... But
+that’s nonsense and it has nothing, nothing whatever to do with the
+woman question! You don’t understand; I used to think, indeed, that
+if women are equal to men in all respects, even in strength (as is
+maintained now) there ought to be equality in that, too. Of course, I
+reflected afterwards that such a question ought not really to arise,
+for there ought not to be fighting and in the future society fighting is
+unthinkable... and that it would be a queer thing to seek for equality
+in fighting. I am not so stupid... though, of course, there is
+fighting... there won’t be later, but at present there is... confound
+it! How muddled one gets with you! It’s not on that account that I
+am not going. I am not going on principle, not to take part in the
+revolting convention of memorial dinners, that’s why! Though, of course,
+one might go to laugh at it.... I am sorry there won’t be any priests at
+it. I should certainly go if there were.”
+“Then you would sit down at another man’s table and insult it and those
+who invited you. Eh?”
+“Certainly not insult, but protest. I should do it with a good object. I
+might indirectly assist the cause of enlightenment and propaganda. It’s
+a duty of every man to work for enlightenment and propaganda and the
+more harshly, perhaps, the better. I might drop a seed, an idea.... And
+something might grow up from that seed. How should I be insulting them?
+They might be offended at first, but afterwards they’d see I’d done them
+a service. You know, Terebyeva (who is in the community now) was blamed
+because when she left her family and... devoted... herself, she wrote to
+her father and mother that she wouldn���t go on living conventionally and
+was entering on a free marriage and it was said that that was too harsh,
+that she might have spared them and have written more kindly. I think
+that’s all nonsense and there’s no need of softness; on the contrary,
+what’s wanted is protest. Varents had been married seven years, she
+abandoned her two children, she told her husband straight out in a
+letter: ‘I have realised that I cannot be happy with you. I can never
+forgive you that you have deceived me by concealing from me that there
+is another organisation of society by means of the communities. I have
+only lately learned it from a great-hearted man to whom I have given
+myself and with whom I am establishing a community. I speak plainly
+because I consider it dishonest to deceive you. Do as you think best.
+Do not hope to get me back, you are too late. I hope you will be happy.’
+That’s how letters like that ought to be written!”
+“Is that Terebyeva the one you said had made a third free marriage?”
+“No, it’s only the second, really! But what if it were the fourth, what
+if it were the fifteenth, that’s all nonsense! And if ever I regretted
+the death of my father and mother, it is now, and I sometimes think
+if my parents were living what a protest I would have aimed at them! I
+would have done something on purpose... I would have shown them! I would
+have astonished them! I am really sorry there is no one!”
+“To surprise! He-he! Well, be that as you will,” Pyotr Petrovitch
+interrupted, “but tell me this; do you know the dead man’s daughter, the
+delicate-looking little thing? It’s true what they say about her, isn’t
+it?”
+“What of it? I think, that is, it is my own personal conviction that
+this is the normal condition of women. Why not? I mean, _distinguons_.
+In our present society it is not altogether normal, because it is
+compulsory, but in the future society it will be perfectly normal,
+because it will be voluntary. Even as it is, she was quite right: she
+was suffering and that was her asset, so to speak, her capital which
+she had a perfect right to dispose of. Of course, in the future
+society there will be no need of assets, but her part will have another
+significance, rational and in harmony with her environment. As to Sofya
+Semyonovna personally, I regard her action as a vigorous protest against
+the organisation of society, and I respect her deeply for it; I rejoice
+indeed when I look at her!”
+“I was told that you got her turned out of these lodgings.”
+Lebeziatnikov was enraged.
+“That’s another slander,” he yelled. “It was not so at all! That was all
+Katerina Ivanovna’s invention, for she did not understand! And I never
+made love to Sofya Semyonovna! I was simply developing her, entirely
+disinterestedly, trying to rouse her to protest.... All I wanted was her
+protest and Sofya Semyonovna could not have remained here anyway!”
+“Have you asked her to join your community?”
+“You keep on laughing and very inappropriately, allow me to tell
+you. You don’t understand! There is no such rôle in a community. The
+community is established that there should be no such rôles. In a
+community, such a rôle is essentially transformed and what is stupid
+here is sensible there, what, under present conditions, is unnatural
+becomes perfectly natural in the community. It all depends on the
+environment. It’s all the environment and man himself is nothing. And
+I am on good terms with Sofya Semyonovna to this day, which is a proof
+that she never regarded me as having wronged her. I am trying now to
+attract her to the community, but on quite, quite a different footing.
+What are you laughing at? We are trying to establish a community of
+our own, a special one, on a broader basis. We have gone further in our
+convictions. We reject more! And meanwhile I’m still developing Sofya
+Semyonovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!”
+“And you take advantage of her fine character, eh? He-he!”
+“No, no! Oh, no! On the contrary.”
+“Oh, on the contrary! He-he-he! A queer thing to say!”
+“Believe me! Why should I disguise it? In fact, I feel it strange myself
+how timid, chaste and modern she is with me!”
+“And you, of course, are developing her... he-he! trying to prove to her
+that all that modesty is nonsense?”
+“Not at all, not at all! How coarsely, how stupidly--excuse me saying
+so--you misunderstand the word development! Good heavens, how... crude
+you still are! We are striving for the freedom of women and you have
+only one idea in your head.... Setting aside the general question
+of chastity and feminine modesty as useless in themselves and indeed
+prejudices, I fully accept her chastity with me, because that’s for her
+to decide. Of course if she were to tell me herself that she wanted me,
+I should think myself very lucky, because I like the girl very much; but
+as it is, no one has ever treated her more courteously than I, with more
+respect for her dignity... I wait in hopes, that’s all!”
+“You had much better make her a present of something. I bet you never
+thought of that.”
+“You don’t understand, as I’ve told you already! Of course, she is in
+such a position, but it’s another question. Quite another question!
+You simply despise her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly consider
+deserving of contempt, you refuse to take a humane view of a fellow
+creature. You don’t know what a character she is! I am only sorry that
+of late she has quite given up reading and borrowing books. I used
+to lend them to her. I am sorry, too, that with all the energy and
+resolution in protesting--which she has already shown once--she has
+little self-reliance, little, so to say, independence, so as to
+break free from certain prejudices and certain foolish ideas. Yet she
+thoroughly understands some questions, for instance about kissing of
+hands, that is, that it’s an insult to a woman for a man to kiss her
+hand, because it’s a sign of inequality. We had a debate about it and
+I described it to her. She listened attentively to an account of the
+workmen’s associations in France, too. Now I am explaining the question
+of coming into the room in the future society.”
+“And what’s that, pray?”
+“We had a debate lately on the question: Has a member of the community
+the right to enter another member’s room, whether man or woman, at any
+time... and we decided that he has!”
+“It might be at an inconvenient moment, he-he!”
+Lebeziatnikov was really angry.
+“You are always thinking of something unpleasant,” he cried with
+aversion. “Tfoo! How vexed I am that when I was expounding our system, I
+referred prematurely to the question of personal privacy! It’s always
+a stumbling-block to people like you, they turn it into ridicule before
+they understand it. And how proud they are of it, too! Tfoo! I’ve often
+maintained that that question should not be approached by a novice till
+he has a firm faith in the system. And tell me, please, what do you
+find so shameful even in cesspools? I should be the first to be ready
+to clean out any cesspool you like. And it’s not a question of
+self-sacrifice, it’s simply work, honourable, useful work which is
+as good as any other and much better than the work of a Raphael and a
+Pushkin, because it is more useful.”
+“And more honourable, more honourable, he-he-he!”
+“What do you mean by ‘more honourable’? I don’t understand such
+expressions to describe human activity. ‘More honourable,’ ‘nobler’--all
+those are old-fashioned prejudices which I reject. Everything which is
+_of use_ to mankind is honourable. I only understand one word: _useful_!
+You can snigger as much as you like, but that’s so!”
+Pyotr Petrovitch laughed heartily. He had finished counting the money
+and was putting it away. But some of the notes he left on the table. The
+“cesspool question” had already been a subject of dispute between them.
+What was absurd was that it made Lebeziatnikov really angry, while it
+amused Luzhin and at that moment he particularly wanted to anger his
+young friend.
+“It’s your ill-luck yesterday that makes you so ill-humoured and
+annoying,” blurted out Lebeziatnikov, who in spite of his “independence”
+and his “protests” did not venture to oppose Pyotr Petrovitch and still
+behaved to him with some of the respect habitual in earlier years.
+“You’d better tell me this,” Pyotr Petrovitch interrupted with haughty
+displeasure, “can you... or rather are you really friendly enough with
+that young person to ask her to step in here for a minute? I think
+they’ve all come back from the cemetery... I heard the sound of
+steps... I want to see her, that young person.”
+“What for?” Lebeziatnikov asked with surprise.
+“Oh, I want to. I am leaving here to-day or to-morrow and therefore I
+wanted to speak to her about... However, you may be present during the
+interview. It’s better you should be, indeed. For there’s no knowing
+what you might imagine.”
+“I shan’t imagine anything. I only asked and, if you’ve anything to say
+to her, nothing is easier than to call her in. I’ll go directly and you
+may be sure I won’t be in your way.”
+Five minutes later Lebeziatnikov came in with Sonia. She came in very
+much surprised and overcome with shyness as usual. She was always shy in
+such circumstances and was always afraid of new people, she had been as
+a child and was even more so now.... Pyotr Petrovitch met her “politely
+and affably,” but with a certain shade of bantering familiarity which in
+his opinion was suitable for a man of his respectability and weight
+in dealing with a creature so young and so _interesting_ as she. He
+hastened to “reassure” her and made her sit down facing him at the
+table. Sonia sat down, looked about her--at Lebeziatnikov, at the notes
+lying on the table and then again at Pyotr Petrovitch and her eyes
+remained riveted on him. Lebeziatnikov was moving to the door. Pyotr
+Petrovitch signed to Sonia to remain seated and stopped Lebeziatnikov.
+“Is Raskolnikov in there? Has he come?” he asked him in a whisper.
+“Raskolnikov? Yes. Why? Yes, he is there. I saw him just come in....
+Why?”
+“Well, I particularly beg you to remain here with us and not to leave
+me alone with this... young woman. I only want a few words with her,
+but God knows what they may make of it. I shouldn’t like Raskolnikov to
+repeat anything.... You understand what I mean?”
+“I understand!” Lebeziatnikov saw the point. “Yes, you are right.... Of
+course, I am convinced personally that you have no reason to be uneasy,
+but... still, you are right. Certainly I’ll stay. I’ll stand here at the
+window and not be in your way... I think you are right...”
+Pyotr Petrovitch returned to the sofa, sat down opposite Sonia, looked
+attentively at her and assumed an extremely dignified, even severe
+expression, as much as to say, “don’t you make any mistake, madam.”
+Sonia was overwhelmed with embarrassment.
+“In the first place, Sofya Semyonovna, will you make my excuses to your
+respected mamma.... That’s right, isn’t it? Katerina Ivanovna stands
+in the place of a mother to you?” Pyotr Petrovitch began with great
+dignity, though affably.
+It was evident that his intentions were friendly.
+“Quite so, yes; the place of a mother,” Sonia answered, timidly and
+hurriedly.
+“Then will you make my apologies to her? Through inevitable
+circumstances I am forced to be absent and shall not be at the dinner in
+spite of your mamma’s kind invitation.”
+“Yes... I’ll tell her... at once.”
+And Sonia hastily jumped up from her seat.
+“Wait, that’s not all,” Pyotr Petrovitch detained her, smiling at her
+simplicity and ignorance of good manners, “and you know me little, my
+dear Sofya Semyonovna, if you suppose I would have ventured to trouble
+a person like you for a matter of so little consequence affecting myself
+only. I have another object.”
+Sonia sat down hurriedly. Her eyes rested again for an instant on the
+grey-and-rainbow-coloured notes that remained on the table, but she
+quickly looked away and fixed her eyes on Pyotr Petrovitch. She felt it
+horribly indecorous, especially for _her_, to look at another person’s
+money. She stared at the gold eye-glass which Pyotr Petrovitch held
+in his left hand and at the massive and extremely handsome ring with a
+yellow stone on his middle finger. But suddenly she looked away and, not
+knowing where to turn, ended by staring Pyotr Petrovitch again straight
+in the face. After a pause of still greater dignity he continued.
+“I chanced yesterday in passing to exchange a couple of words with
+Katerina Ivanovna, poor woman. That was sufficient to enable me to
+ascertain that she is in a position--preternatural, if one may so
+express it.”
+“Yes... preternatural...” Sonia hurriedly assented.
+“Or it would be simpler and more comprehensible to say, ill.”
+“Yes, simpler and more comprehen... yes, ill.”
+“Quite so. So then from a feeling of humanity and so to speak
+compassion, I should be glad to be of service to her in any way,
+foreseeing her unfortunate position. I believe the whole of this
+poverty-stricken family depends now entirely on you?”
+“Allow me to ask,” Sonia rose to her feet, “did you say something to her
+yesterday of the possibility of a pension? Because she told me you had
+undertaken to get her one. Was that true?”
+“Not in the slightest, and indeed it’s an absurdity! I merely hinted at
+her obtaining temporary assistance as the widow of an official who had
+died in the service--if only she has patronage... but apparently your
+late parent had not served his full term and had not indeed been in the
+service at all of late. In fact, if there could be any hope, it would be
+very ephemeral, because there would be no claim for assistance in
+that case, far from it.... And she is dreaming of a pension already,
+he-he-he!... A go-ahead lady!”
+“Yes, she is. For she is credulous and good-hearted, and she believes
+everything from the goodness of her heart and... and... and she is like
+that... yes... You must excuse her,” said Sonia, and again she got up to
+go.
+“But you haven’t heard what I have to say.”
+“No, I haven’t heard,” muttered Sonia.
+“Then sit down.” She was terribly confused; she sat down again a third
+time.
+“Seeing her position with her unfortunate little ones, I should be glad,
+as I have said before, so far as lies in my power, to be of service,
+that is, so far as is in my power, not more. One might for instance get
+up a subscription for her, or a lottery, something of the sort, such as
+is always arranged in such cases by friends or even outsiders desirous
+of assisting people. It was of that I intended to speak to you; it might
+be done.”
+“Yes, yes... God will repay you for it,” faltered Sonia, gazing intently
+at Pyotr Petrovitch.
+“It might be, but we will talk of it later. We might begin it to-day, we
+will talk it over this evening and lay the foundation so to speak. Come
+to me at seven o’clock. Mr. Lebeziatnikov, I hope, will assist us. But
+there is one circumstance of which I ought to warn you beforehand and
+for which I venture to trouble you, Sofya Semyonovna, to come here. In
+my opinion money cannot be, indeed it’s unsafe to put it into Katerina
+Ivanovna’s own hands. The dinner to-day is a proof of that. Though she
+has not, so to speak, a crust of bread for to-morrow and... well, boots
+or shoes, or anything; she has bought to-day Jamaica rum, and even,
+I believe, Madeira and... and coffee. I saw it as I passed through.
+To-morrow it will all fall upon you again, they won’t have a crust of
+bread. It’s absurd, really, and so, to my thinking, a subscription ought
+to be raised so that the unhappy widow should not know of the money, but
+only you, for instance. Am I right?”
+“I don’t know... this is only to-day, once in her life.... She was
+so anxious to do honour, to celebrate the memory.... And she is very
+sensible... but just as you think and I shall be very, very... they will
+all be... and God will reward... and the orphans...”
+Sonia burst into tears.
+“Very well, then, keep it in mind; and now will you accept for the
+benefit of your relation the small sum that I am able to spare, from me
+personally. I am very anxious that my name should not be mentioned in
+connection with it. Here... having so to speak anxieties of my own, I
+cannot do more...”
+And Pyotr Petrovitch held out to Sonia a ten-rouble note carefully
+unfolded. Sonia took it, flushed crimson, jumped up, muttered something
+and began taking leave. Pyotr Petrovitch accompanied her ceremoniously
+to the door. She got out of the room at last, agitated and distressed,
+and returned to Katerina Ivanovna, overwhelmed with confusion.
+All this time Lebeziatnikov had stood at the window or walked about the
+room, anxious not to interrupt the conversation; when Sonia had gone he
+walked up to Pyotr Petrovitch and solemnly held out his hand.
+“I heard and _saw_ everything,” he said, laying stress on the last verb.
+“That is honourable, I mean to say, it’s humane! You wanted to avoid
+gratitude, I saw! And although I cannot, I confess, in principle
+sympathise with private charity, for it not only fails to eradicate the
+evil but even promotes it, yet I must admit that I saw your action with
+pleasure--yes, yes, I like it.”
+“That’s all nonsense,” muttered Pyotr Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted,
+looking carefully at Lebeziatnikov.
+“No, it’s not nonsense! A man who has suffered distress and annoyance as
+you did yesterday and who yet can sympathise with the misery of others,
+such a man... even though he is making a social mistake--is still
+deserving of respect! I did not expect it indeed of you, Pyotr
+Petrovitch, especially as according to your ideas... oh, what a drawback
+your ideas are to you! How distressed you are for instance by your
+ill-luck yesterday,” cried the simple-hearted Lebeziatnikov, who felt
+a return of affection for Pyotr Petrovitch. “And, what do you want with
+marriage, with _legal_ marriage, my dear, noble Pyotr Petrovitch? Why do
+you cling to this _legality_ of marriage? Well, you may beat me if you
+like, but I am glad, positively glad it hasn’t come off, that you are
+free, that you are not quite lost for humanity.... you see, I’ve spoken
+my mind!”
+“Because I don’t want in your free marriage to be made a fool of and
+to bring up another man’s children, that’s why I want legal marriage,”
+Luzhin replied in order to make some answer.
+He seemed preoccupied by something.
+“Children? You referred to children,” Lebeziatnikov started off like
+a warhorse at the trumpet call. “Children are a social question and a
+question of first importance, I agree; but the question of children has
+another solution. Some refuse to have children altogether, because they
+suggest the institution of the family. We’ll speak of children later,
+but now as to the question of honour, I confess that’s my weak point.
+That horrid, military, Pushkin expression is unthinkable in the
+dictionary of the future. What does it mean indeed? It’s nonsense,
+there will be no deception in a free marriage! That is only the natural
+consequence of a legal marriage, so to say, its corrective, a protest.
+So that indeed it’s not humiliating... and if I ever, to suppose an
+absurdity, were to be legally married, I should be positively glad of
+it. I should say to my wife: ‘My dear, hitherto I have loved you, now
+I respect you, for you’ve shown you can protest!’ You laugh! That’s
+because you are incapable of getting away from prejudices. Confound
+it all! I understand now where the unpleasantness is of being deceived
+in a legal marriage, but it’s simply a despicable consequence of a
+despicable position in which both are humiliated. When the deception is
+open, as in a free marriage, then it does not exist, it’s unthinkable.
+Your wife will only prove how she respects you by considering you
+incapable of opposing her happiness and avenging yourself on her for
+her new husband. Damn it all! I sometimes dream if I were to be married,
+pfoo! I mean if I were to marry, legally or not, it’s just the same,
+I should present my wife with a lover if she had not found one for
+herself. ‘My dear,’ I should say, ‘I love you, but even more than that I
+desire you to respect me. See!’ Am I not right?”
+Pyotr Petrovitch sniggered as he listened, but without much merriment.
+He hardly heard it indeed. He was preoccupied with something else and
+even Lebeziatnikov at last noticed it. Pyotr Petrovitch seemed excited
+and rubbed his hands. Lebeziatnikov remembered all this and reflected
+upon it afterwards.
+CHAPTER II
+It would be difficult to explain exactly what could have originated the
+idea of that senseless dinner in Katerina Ivanovna’s disordered brain.
+Nearly ten of the twenty roubles, given by Raskolnikov for Marmeladov’s
+funeral, were wasted upon it. Possibly Katerina Ivanovna felt obliged to
+honour the memory of the deceased “suitably,” that all the lodgers,
+and still more Amalia Ivanovna, might know “that he was in no way their
+inferior, and perhaps very much their superior,” and that no one had the
+right “to turn up his nose at him.” Perhaps the chief element was that
+peculiar “poor man’s pride,” which compels many poor people to spend
+their last savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order
+to do “like other people,” and not to “be looked down upon.” It is very
+probable, too, that Katerina Ivanovna longed on this occasion, at
+the moment when she seemed to be abandoned by everyone, to show those
+“wretched contemptible lodgers” that she knew “how to do things, how
+to entertain” and that she had been brought up “in a genteel, she might
+almost say aristocratic colonel’s family” and had not been meant for
+sweeping floors and washing the children’s rags at night. Even the
+poorest and most broken-spirited people are sometimes liable to these
+paroxysms of pride and vanity which take the form of an irresistible
+nervous craving. And Katerina Ivanovna was not broken-spirited; she
+might have been killed by circumstance, but her spirit could not have
+been broken, that is, she could not have been intimidated, her will
+could not be crushed. Moreover Sonia had said with good reason that her
+mind was unhinged. She could not be said to be insane, but for a year
+past she had been so harassed that her mind might well be overstrained.
+The later stages of consumption are apt, doctors tell us, to affect the
+intellect.
+There was no great variety of wines, nor was there Madeira; but wine
+there was. There was vodka, rum and Lisbon wine, all of the poorest
+quality but in sufficient quantity. Besides the traditional rice and
+honey, there were three or four dishes, one of which consisted of
+pancakes, all prepared in Amalia Ivanovna’s kitchen. Two samovars were
+boiling, that tea and punch might be offered after dinner. Katerina
+Ivanovna had herself seen to purchasing the provisions, with the help
+of one of the lodgers, an unfortunate little Pole who had somehow been
+stranded at Madame Lippevechsel’s. He promptly put himself at Katerina
+Ivanovna’s disposal and had been all that morning and all the day before
+running about as fast as his legs could carry him, and very anxious
+that everyone should be aware of it. For every trifle he ran to Katerina
+Ivanovna, even hunting her out at the bazaar, at every instant called
+her “_Pani_.” She was heartily sick of him before the end, though
+she had declared at first that she could not have got on without this
+“serviceable and magnanimous man.” It was one of Katerina Ivanovna’s
+characteristics to paint everyone she met in the most glowing colours.
+Her praises were so exaggerated as sometimes to be embarrassing; she
+would invent various circumstances to the credit of her new acquaintance
+and quite genuinely believe in their reality. Then all of a sudden she
+would be disillusioned and would rudely and contemptuously repulse the
+person she had only a few hours before been literally adoring. She
+was naturally of a gay, lively and peace-loving disposition, but from
+continual failures and misfortunes she had come to desire so _keenly_
+that all should live in peace and joy and should not _dare_ to break the
+peace, that the slightest jar, the smallest disaster reduced her almost
+to frenzy, and she would pass in an instant from the brightest hopes and
+fancies to cursing her fate and raving, and knocking her head against
+the wall.
+Amalia Ivanovna, too, suddenly acquired extraordinary importance in
+Katerina Ivanovna’s eyes and was treated by her with extraordinary
+respect, probably only because Amalia Ivanovna had thrown herself heart
+and soul into the preparations. She had undertaken to lay the table,
+to provide the linen, crockery, etc., and to cook the dishes in her
+kitchen, and Katerina Ivanovna had left it all in her hands and gone
+herself to the cemetery. Everything had been well done. Even the
+table-cloth was nearly clean; the crockery, knives, forks and glasses
+were, of course, of all shapes and patterns, lent by different lodgers,
+but the table was properly laid at the time fixed, and Amalia Ivanovna,
+feeling she had done her work well, had put on a black silk dress and
+a cap with new mourning ribbons and met the returning party with some
+pride. This pride, though justifiable, displeased Katerina Ivanovna for
+some reason: “as though the table could not have been laid except by
+Amalia Ivanovna!” She disliked the cap with new ribbons, too. “Could she
+be stuck up, the stupid German, because she was mistress of the house,
+and had consented as a favour to help her poor lodgers! As a favour!
+Fancy that! Katerina Ivanovna’s father who had been a colonel and almost
+a governor had sometimes had the table set for forty persons, and then
+anyone like Amalia Ivanovna, or rather Ludwigovna, would not have been
+allowed into the kitchen.”
+Katerina Ivanovna, however, put off expressing her feelings for the
+time and contented herself with treating her coldly, though she decided
+inwardly that she would certainly have to put Amalia Ivanovna down
+and set her in her proper place, for goodness only knew what she was
+fancying herself. Katerina Ivanovna was irritated too by the fact that
+hardly any of the lodgers invited had come to the funeral, except
+the Pole who had just managed to run into the cemetery, while to the
+memorial dinner the poorest and most insignificant of them had turned
+up, the wretched creatures, many of them not quite sober. The older
+and more respectable of them all, as if by common consent, stayed away.
+Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin, for instance, who might be said to be the most
+respectable of all the lodgers, did not appear, though Katerina Ivanovna
+had the evening before told all the world, that is Amalia Ivanovna,
+Polenka, Sonia and the Pole, that he was the most generous,
+noble-hearted man with a large property and vast connections, who had
+been a friend of her first husband’s, and a guest in her father’s
+house, and that he had promised to use all his influence to secure her
+a considerable pension. It must be noted that when Katerina Ivanovna
+exalted anyone’s connections and fortune, it was without any ulterior
+motive, quite disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of adding to
+the consequence of the person praised. Probably “taking his cue” from
+Luzhin, “that contemptible wretch Lebeziatnikov had not turned up
+either. What did he fancy himself? He was only asked out of kindness
+and because he was sharing the same room with Pyotr Petrovitch and was a
+friend of his, so that it would have been awkward not to invite him.”
+Among those who failed to appear were “the genteel lady and her
+old-maidish daughter,” who had only been lodgers in the house for the
+last fortnight, but had several times complained of the noise and uproar
+in Katerina Ivanovna’s room, especially when Marmeladov had come
+back drunk. Katerina Ivanovna heard this from Amalia Ivanovna who,
+quarrelling with Katerina Ivanovna, and threatening to turn the whole
+family out of doors, had shouted at her that they “were not worth the
+foot” of the honourable lodgers whom they were disturbing. Katerina
+Ivanovna determined now to invite this lady and her daughter, “whose
+foot she was not worth,” and who had turned away haughtily when she
+casually met them, so that they might know that “she was more noble in
+her thoughts and feelings and did not harbour malice,” and might see
+that she was not accustomed to her way of living. She had proposed to
+make this clear to them at dinner with allusions to her late father’s
+governorship, and also at the same time to hint that it was exceedingly
+stupid of them to turn away on meeting her. The fat colonel-major (he
+was really a discharged officer of low rank) was also absent, but it
+appeared that he had been “not himself” for the last two days. The party
+consisted of the Pole, a wretched looking clerk with a spotty face and
+a greasy coat, who had not a word to say for himself, and smelt
+abominably, a deaf and almost blind old man who had once been in the
+post office and who had been from immemorial ages maintained by someone
+at Amalia Ivanovna’s.
+A retired clerk of the commissariat department came, too; he was
+drunk, had a loud and most unseemly laugh and only fancy--was without
+a waistcoat! One of the visitors sat straight down to the table without
+even greeting Katerina Ivanovna. Finally one person having no suit
+appeared in his dressing-gown, but this was too much, and the efforts of
+Amalia Ivanovna and the Pole succeeded in removing him. The Pole brought
+with him, however, two other Poles who did not live at Amalia Ivanovna’s
+and whom no one had seen here before. All this irritated Katerina
+Ivanovna intensely. “For whom had they made all these preparations
+then?” To make room for the visitors the children had not even been laid
+for at the table; but the two little ones were sitting on a bench in the
+furthest corner with their dinner laid on a box, while Polenka as a big
+girl had to look after them, feed them, and keep their noses wiped like
+well-bred children’s.
+Katerina Ivanovna, in fact, could hardly help meeting her guests with
+increased dignity, and even haughtiness. She stared at some of them with
+special severity, and loftily invited them to take their seats. Rushing
+to the conclusion that Amalia Ivanovna must be responsible for those who
+were absent, she began treating her with extreme nonchalance, which the
+latter promptly observed and resented. Such a beginning was no good omen
+for the end. All were seated at last.
+Raskolnikov came in almost at the moment of their return from the
+cemetery. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly delighted to see him, in the
+first place, because he was the one “educated visitor, and, as everyone
+knew, was in two years to take a professorship in the university,” and
+secondly because he immediately and respectfully apologised for having
+been unable to be at the funeral. She positively pounced upon him, and
+made him sit on her left hand (Amalia Ivanovna was on her right). In
+spite of her continual anxiety that the dishes should be passed round
+correctly and that everyone should taste them, in spite of the agonising
+cough which interrupted her every minute and seemed to have grown worse
+during the last few days, she hastened to pour out in a half whisper to
+Raskolnikov all her suppressed feelings and her just indignation at
+the failure of the dinner, interspersing her remarks with lively and
+uncontrollable laughter at the expense of her visitors and especially of
+her landlady.
+“It’s all that cuckoo’s fault! You know whom I mean? Her, her!” Katerina
+Ivanovna nodded towards the landlady. “Look at her, she’s making round
+eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and can’t understand.
+Pfoo, the owl! Ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) And what does she put on that
+cap for? (Cough-cough-cough.) Have you noticed that she wants everyone
+to consider that she is patronising me and doing me an honour by being
+here? I asked her like a sensible woman to invite people, especially
+those who knew my late husband, and look at the set of fools she has
+brought! The sweeps! Look at that one with the spotty face. And those
+wretched Poles, ha-ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) Not one of them has ever
+poked his nose in here, I’ve never set eyes on them. What have they come
+here for, I ask you? There they sit in a row. Hey, _pan_!” she cried
+suddenly to one of them, “have you tasted the pancakes? Take some more!
+Have some beer! Won’t you have some vodka? Look, he’s jumped up and is
+making his bows, they must be quite starved, poor things. Never mind,
+let them eat! They don’t make a noise, anyway, though I’m really afraid
+for our landlady’s silver spoons... Amalia Ivanovna!” she addressed her
+suddenly, almost aloud, “if your spoons should happen to be stolen,
+I won’t be responsible, I warn you! Ha-ha-ha!” She laughed turning to
+Raskolnikov, and again nodding towards the landlady, in high glee at her
+sally. “She didn’t understand, she didn’t understand again! Look how
+she sits with her mouth open! An owl, a real owl! An owl in new ribbons,
+ha-ha-ha!”
+Here her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing that
+lasted five minutes. Drops of perspiration stood out on her forehead
+and her handkerchief was stained with blood. She showed Raskolnikov
+the blood in silence, and as soon as she could get her breath began
+whispering to him again with extreme animation and a hectic flush on her
+cheeks.
+“Do you know, I gave her the most delicate instructions, so to speak,
+for inviting that lady and her daughter, you understand of whom I am
+speaking? It needed the utmost delicacy, the greatest nicety, but she
+has managed things so that that fool, that conceited baggage, that
+provincial nonentity, simply because she is the widow of a major, and
+has come to try and get a pension and to fray out her skirts in the
+government offices, because at fifty she paints her face (everybody
+knows it)... a creature like that did not think fit to come, and has
+not even answered the invitation, which the most ordinary good manners
+required! I can’t understand why Pyotr Petrovitch has not come? But
+where’s Sonia? Where has she gone? Ah, there she is at last! what is it,
+Sonia, where have you been? It’s odd that even at your father’s funeral
+you should be so unpunctual. Rodion Romanovitch, make room for her
+beside you. That’s your place, Sonia... take what you like. Have some of
+the cold entrée with jelly, that’s the best. They’ll bring the pancakes
+directly. Have they given the children some? Polenka, have you got
+everything? (Cough-cough-cough.) That’s all right. Be a good girl, Lida,
+and, Kolya, don’t fidget with your feet; sit like a little gentleman.
+What are you saying, Sonia?”
+Sonia hastened to give her Pyotr Petrovitch’s apologies, trying to
+speak loud enough for everyone to hear and carefully choosing the most
+respectful phrases which she attributed to Pyotr Petrovitch. She added
+that Pyotr Petrovitch had particularly told her to say that, as soon as
+he possibly could, he would come immediately to discuss _business_ alone
+with her and to consider what could be done for her, etc., etc.
+Sonia knew that this would comfort Katerina Ivanovna, would flatter her
+and gratify her pride. She sat down beside Raskolnikov; she made him a
+hurried bow, glancing curiously at him. But for the rest of the time
+she seemed to avoid looking at him or speaking to him. She seemed
+absent-minded, though she kept looking at Katerina Ivanovna, trying
+to please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna had been able to get
+mourning; Sonia was wearing dark brown, and Katerina Ivanovna had on her
+only dress, a dark striped cotton one.
+The message from Pyotr Petrovitch was very successful. Listening to
+Sonia with dignity, Katerina Ivanovna inquired with equal dignity how
+Pyotr Petrovitch was, then at once whispered almost aloud to
+Raskolnikov that it certainly would have been strange for a man of
+Pyotr Petrovitch’s position and standing to find himself in such
+“extraordinary company,” in spite of his devotion to her family and his
+old friendship with her father.
+“That’s why I am so grateful to you, Rodion Romanovitch, that you have
+not disdained my hospitality, even in such surroundings,” she added
+almost aloud. “But I am sure that it was only your special affection for
+my poor husband that has made you keep your promise.”
+Then once more with pride and dignity she scanned her visitors, and
+suddenly inquired aloud across the table of the deaf man: “Wouldn’t he
+have some more meat, and had he been given some wine?” The old man made
+no answer and for a long while could not understand what he was asked,
+though his neighbours amused themselves by poking and shaking him. He
+simply gazed about him with his mouth open, which only increased the
+general mirth.
+“What an imbecile! Look, look! Why was he brought? But as to Pyotr
+Petrovitch, I always had confidence in him,” Katerina Ivanovna
+continued, “and, of course, he is not like...” with an extremely stern
+face she addressed Amalia Ivanovna so sharply and loudly that the latter
+was quite disconcerted, “not like your dressed up draggletails whom
+my father would not have taken as cooks into his kitchen, and my late
+husband would have done them honour if he had invited them in the
+goodness of his heart.”
+“Yes, he was fond of drink, he was fond of it, he did drink!” cried the
+commissariat clerk, gulping down his twelfth glass of vodka.
+“My late husband certainly had that weakness, and everyone knows
+it,” Katerina Ivanovna attacked him at once, “but he was a kind and
+honourable man, who loved and respected his family. The worst of it was
+his good nature made him trust all sorts of disreputable people, and he
+drank with fellows who were not worth the sole of his shoe. Would you
+believe it, Rodion Romanovitch, they found a gingerbread cock in his
+pocket; he was dead drunk, but he did not forget the children!”
+“A cock? Did you say a cock?” shouted the commissariat clerk.
+Katerina Ivanovna did not vouchsafe a reply. She sighed, lost in
+thought.
+“No doubt you think, like everyone, that I was too severe with him,” she
+went on, addressing Raskolnikov. “But that’s not so! He respected me, he
+respected me very much! He was a kind-hearted man! And how sorry I was
+for him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and look at me, I used to
+feel so sorry for him, I used to want to be kind to him and then would
+think to myself: ‘Be kind to him and he will drink again,’ it was only
+by severity that you could keep him within bounds.”
+“Yes, he used to get his hair pulled pretty often,” roared the
+commissariat clerk again, swallowing another glass of vodka.
+“Some fools would be the better for a good drubbing, as well as having
+their hair pulled. I am not talking of my late husband now!” Katerina
+Ivanovna snapped at him.
+The flush on her cheeks grew more and more marked, her chest heaved. In
+another minute she would have been ready to make a scene. Many of the
+visitors were sniggering, evidently delighted. They began poking the
+commissariat clerk and whispering something to him. They were evidently
+trying to egg him on.
+“Allow me to ask what are you alluding to,” began the clerk, “that is
+to say, whose... about whom... did you say just now... But I don’t care!
+That’s nonsense! Widow! I forgive you.... Pass!”
+And he took another drink of vodka.
+Raskolnikov sat in silence, listening with disgust. He only ate from
+politeness, just tasting the food that Katerina Ivanovna was continually
+putting on his plate, to avoid hurting her feelings. He watched Sonia
+intently. But Sonia became more and more anxious and distressed; she,
+too, foresaw that the dinner would not end peaceably, and saw with
+terror Katerina Ivanovna’s growing irritation. She knew that she, Sonia,
+was the chief reason for the ‘genteel’ ladies’ contemptuous treatment of
+Katerina Ivanovna’s invitation. She had heard from Amalia Ivanovna that
+the mother was positively offended at the invitation and had asked the
+question: “How could she let her daughter sit down beside _that young
+person_?” Sonia had a feeling that Katerina Ivanovna had already heard
+this and an insult to Sonia meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than an
+insult to herself, her children, or her father, Sonia knew that
+Katerina Ivanovna would not be satisfied now, “till she had shown those
+draggletails that they were both...” To make matters worse someone
+passed Sonia, from the other end of the table, a plate with two hearts
+pierced with an arrow, cut out of black bread. Katerina Ivanovna flushed
+crimson and at once said aloud across the table that the man who sent it
+was “a drunken ass!”
+Amalia Ivanovna was foreseeing something amiss, and at the same time
+deeply wounded by Katerina Ivanovna’s haughtiness, and to restore the
+good-humour of the company and raise herself in their esteem she began,
+apropos of nothing, telling a story about an acquaintance of hers “Karl
+from the chemist’s,” who was driving one night in a cab, and that “the
+cabman wanted him to kill, and Karl very much begged him not to kill,
+and wept and clasped hands, and frightened and from fear pierced his
+heart.” Though Katerina Ivanovna smiled, she observed at once that
+Amalia Ivanovna ought not to tell anecdotes in Russian; the latter was
+still more offended, and she retorted that her “_Vater aus Berlin_ was a
+very important man, and always went with his hands in pockets.” Katerina
+Ivanovna could not restrain herself and laughed so much that Amalia
+Ivanovna lost patience and could scarcely control herself.
+“Listen to the owl!” Katerina Ivanovna whispered at once, her
+good-humour almost restored, “she meant to say he kept his hands in
+his pockets, but she said he put his hands in people’s pockets.
+(Cough-cough.) And have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that all these
+Petersburg foreigners, the Germans especially, are all stupider than
+we! Can you fancy anyone of us telling how ‘Karl from the chemist’s’
+‘pierced his heart from fear’ and that the idiot, instead of punishing
+the cabman, ‘clasped his hands and wept, and much begged.’ Ah, the fool!
+And you know she fancies it’s very touching and does not suspect how
+stupid she is! To my thinking that drunken commissariat clerk is a great
+deal cleverer, anyway one can see that he has addled his brains with
+drink, but you know, these foreigners are always so well behaved
+and serious.... Look how she sits glaring! She is angry, ha-ha!
+(Cough-cough-cough.)”
+Regaining her good-humour, Katerina Ivanovna began at once telling
+Raskolnikov that when she had obtained her pension, she intended to open
+a school for the daughters of gentlemen in her native town T----.
+This was the first time she had spoken to him of the project, and she
+launched out into the most alluring details. It suddenly appeared that
+Katerina Ivanovna had in her hands the very certificate of honour of
+which Marmeladov had spoken to Raskolnikov in the tavern, when he told
+him that Katerina Ivanovna, his wife, had danced the shawl dance
+before the governor and other great personages on leaving school. This
+certificate of honour was obviously intended now to prove Katerina
+Ivanovna’s right to open a boarding-school; but she had armed herself
+with it chiefly with the object of overwhelming “those two stuck-up
+draggletails” if they came to the dinner, and proving incontestably
+that Katerina Ivanovna was of the most noble, “she might even say
+aristocratic family, a colonel’s daughter and was far superior to
+certain adventuresses who have been so much to the fore of late.” The
+certificate of honour immediately passed into the hands of the drunken
+guests, and Katerina Ivanovna did not try to retain it, for it actually
+contained the statement _en toutes lettres_, that her father was of the
+rank of a major, and also a companion of an order, so that she really
+was almost the daughter of a colonel.
+Warming up, Katerina Ivanovna proceeded to enlarge on the peaceful and
+happy life they would lead in T----, on the gymnasium teachers whom
+she would engage to give lessons in her boarding-school, one a most
+respectable old Frenchman, one Mangot, who had taught Katerina Ivanovna
+herself in old days and was still living in T----, and would no doubt
+teach in her school on moderate terms. Next she spoke of Sonia who would
+go with her to T---- and help her in all her plans. At this someone at
+the further end of the table gave a sudden guffaw.
+Though Katerina Ivanovna tried to appear to be disdainfully unaware of
+it, she raised her voice and began at once speaking with conviction of
+Sonia’s undoubted ability to assist her, of “her gentleness, patience,
+devotion, generosity and good education,” tapping Sonia on the cheek and
+kissing her warmly twice. Sonia flushed crimson, and Katerina Ivanovna
+suddenly burst into tears, immediately observing that she was “nervous
+and silly, that she was too much upset, that it was time to finish, and
+as the dinner was over, it was time to hand round the tea.”
+At that moment, Amalia Ivanovna, deeply aggrieved at taking no part in
+the conversation, and not being listened to, made one last effort,
+and with secret misgivings ventured on an exceedingly deep and weighty
+observation, that “in the future boarding-school she would have to pay
+particular attention to _die Wäsche_, and that there certainly must be a
+good _dame_ to look after the linen, and secondly that the young ladies
+must not novels at night read.”
+Katerina Ivanovna, who certainly was upset and very tired, as well as
+heartily sick of the dinner, at once cut short Amalia Ivanovna, saying
+“she knew nothing about it and was talking nonsense, that it was the
+business of the laundry maid, and not of the directress of a high-class
+boarding-school to look after _die Wäsche_, and as for novel-reading,
+that was simply rudeness, and she begged her to be silent.” Amalia
+Ivanovna fired up and getting angry observed that she only “meant her
+good,” and that “she had meant her very good,” and that “it was long
+since she had paid her _gold_ for the lodgings.”
+Katerina Ivanovna at once “set her down,” saying that it was a lie to
+say she wished her good, because only yesterday when her dead husband
+was lying on the table, she had worried her about the lodgings. To this
+Amalia Ivanovna very appropriately observed that she had invited those
+ladies, but “those ladies had not come, because those ladies _are_
+ladies and cannot come to a lady who is not a lady.” Katerina Ivanovna
+at once pointed out to her, that as she was a slut she could not judge
+what made one really a lady. Amalia Ivanovna at once declared that her
+“_Vater aus Berlin_ was a very, very important man, and both hands in
+pockets went, and always used to say: ‘Poof! poof!’” and she leapt
+up from the table to represent her father, sticking her hands in her
+pockets, puffing her cheeks, and uttering vague sounds resembling “poof!
+poof!” amid loud laughter from all the lodgers, who purposely encouraged
+Amalia Ivanovna, hoping for a fight.
+But this was too much for Katerina Ivanovna, and she at once declared,
+so that all could hear, that Amalia Ivanovna probably never had a
+father, but was simply a drunken Petersburg Finn, and had certainly once
+been a cook and probably something worse. Amalia Ivanovna turned as red
+as a lobster and squealed that perhaps Katerina Ivanovna never had a
+father, “but she had a _Vater aus Berlin_ and that he wore a long coat
+and always said poof-poof-poof!”
+Katerina Ivanovna observed contemptuously that all knew what her family
+was and that on that very certificate of honour it was stated in print
+that her father was a colonel, while Amalia Ivanovna’s father--if she
+really had one--was probably some Finnish milkman, but that probably she
+never had a father at all, since it was still uncertain whether her name
+was Amalia Ivanovna or Amalia Ludwigovna.
+At this Amalia Ivanovna, lashed to fury, struck the table with her fist,
+and shrieked that she was Amalia Ivanovna, and not Ludwigovna, “that
+her _Vater_ was named Johann and that he was a burgomeister, and that
+Katerina Ivanovna’s _Vater_ was quite never a burgomeister.” Katerina
+Ivanovna rose from her chair, and with a stern and apparently calm voice
+(though she was pale and her chest was heaving) observed that “if she
+dared for one moment to set her contemptible wretch of a father on a
+level with her papa, she, Katerina Ivanovna, would tear her cap off her
+head and trample it under foot.” Amalia Ivanovna ran about the room,
+shouting at the top of her voice, that she was mistress of the house and
+that Katerina Ivanovna should leave the lodgings that minute; then she
+rushed for some reason to collect the silver spoons from the table.
+There was a great outcry and uproar, the children began crying. Sonia
+ran to restrain Katerina Ivanovna, but when Amalia Ivanovna shouted
+something about “the yellow ticket,” Katerina Ivanovna pushed Sonia
+away, and rushed at the landlady to carry out her threat.
+At that minute the door opened, and Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin appeared
+on the threshold. He stood scanning the party with severe and vigilant
+eyes. Katerina Ivanovna rushed to him.
+CHAPTER III
+“Pyotr Petrovitch,” she cried, “protect me... you at least! Make this
+foolish woman understand that she can’t behave like this to a lady in
+misfortune... that there is a law for such things.... I’ll go to the
+governor-general himself.... She shall answer for it.... Remembering my
+father’s hospitality protect these orphans.”
+“Allow me, madam.... Allow me.” Pyotr Petrovitch waved her off. “Your
+papa as you are well aware I had not the honour of knowing” (someone
+laughed aloud) “and I do not intend to take part in your everlasting
+squabbles with Amalia Ivanovna.... I have come here to speak of my own
+affairs... and I want to have a word with your stepdaughter, Sofya...
+Ivanovna, I think it is? Allow me to pass.”
+Pyotr Petrovitch, edging by her, went to the opposite corner where Sonia
+was.
+Katerina Ivanovna remained standing where she was, as though
+thunderstruck. She could not understand how Pyotr Petrovitch could deny
+having enjoyed her father’s hospitality. Though she had invented it
+herself, she believed in it firmly by this time. She was struck too
+by the businesslike, dry and even contemptuous menacing tone of Pyotr
+Petrovitch. All the clamour gradually died away at his entrance. Not
+only was this “serious business man” strikingly incongruous with the
+rest of the party, but it was evident, too, that he had come upon some
+matter of consequence, that some exceptional cause must have brought him
+and that therefore something was going to happen. Raskolnikov, standing
+beside Sonia, moved aside to let him pass; Pyotr Petrovitch did not
+seem to notice him. A minute later Lebeziatnikov, too, appeared in the
+doorway; he did not come in, but stood still, listening with marked
+interest, almost wonder, and seemed for a time perplexed.
+“Excuse me for possibly interrupting you, but it’s a matter of
+some importance,” Pyotr Petrovitch observed, addressing the company
+generally. “I am glad indeed to find other persons present. Amalia
+Ivanovna, I humbly beg you as mistress of the house to pay careful
+attention to what I have to say to Sofya Ivanovna. Sofya Ivanovna,”
+he went on, addressing Sonia, who was very much surprised and already
+alarmed, “immediately after your visit I found that a hundred-rouble
+note was missing from my table, in the room of my friend Mr.
+Lebeziatnikov. If in any way whatever you know and will tell us where
+it is now, I assure you on my word of honour and call all present to
+witness that the matter shall end there. In the opposite case I shall be
+compelled to have recourse to very serious measures and then... you must
+blame yourself.”
+Complete silence reigned in the room. Even the crying children were
+still. Sonia stood deadly pale, staring at Luzhin and unable to say a
+word. She seemed not to understand. Some seconds passed.
+“Well, how is it to be then?” asked Luzhin, looking intently at her.
+“I don’t know.... I know nothing about it,” Sonia articulated faintly at
+last.
+“No, you know nothing?” Luzhin repeated and again he paused for some
+seconds. “Think a moment, mademoiselle,” he began severely, but still,
+as it were, admonishing her. “Reflect, I am prepared to give you time
+for consideration. Kindly observe this: if I were not so entirely
+convinced I should not, you may be sure, with my experience venture to
+accuse you so directly. Seeing that for such direct accusation before
+witnesses, if false or even mistaken, I should myself in a certain sense
+be made responsible, I am aware of that. This morning I changed for
+my own purposes several five-per-cent securities for the sum of
+approximately three thousand roubles. The account is noted down in my
+pocket-book. On my return home I proceeded to count the money--as Mr.
+Lebeziatnikov will bear witness--and after counting two thousand three
+hundred roubles I put the rest in my pocket-book in my coat pocket.
+About five hundred roubles remained on the table and among them three
+notes of a hundred roubles each. At that moment you entered (at my
+invitation)--and all the time you were present you were exceedingly
+embarrassed; so that three times you jumped up in the middle of the
+conversation and tried to make off. Mr. Lebeziatnikov can bear witness
+to this. You yourself, mademoiselle, probably will not refuse to confirm
+my statement that I invited you through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, solely in
+order to discuss with you the hopeless and destitute position of your
+relative, Katerina Ivanovna (whose dinner I was unable to attend),
+and the advisability of getting up something of the nature of a
+subscription, lottery or the like, for her benefit. You thanked me and
+even shed tears. I describe all this as it took place, primarily to
+recall it to your mind and secondly to show you that not the slightest
+detail has escaped my recollection. Then I took a ten-rouble note from
+the table and handed it to you by way of first instalment on my part
+for the benefit of your relative. Mr. Lebeziatnikov saw all this. Then
+I accompanied you to the door--you being still in the same state of
+embarrassment--after which, being left alone with Mr. Lebeziatnikov I
+talked to him for ten minutes--then Mr. Lebeziatnikov went out and I
+returned to the table with the money lying on it, intending to count
+it and to put it aside, as I proposed doing before. To my surprise one
+hundred-rouble note had disappeared. Kindly consider the position.
+Mr. Lebeziatnikov I cannot suspect. I am ashamed to allude to such
+a supposition. I cannot have made a mistake in my reckoning, for the
+minute before your entrance I had finished my accounts and found the
+total correct. You will admit that recollecting your embarrassment, your
+eagerness to get away and the fact that you kept your hands for some
+time on the table, and taking into consideration your social position
+and the habits associated with it, I was, so to say, with horror and
+positively against my will, _compelled_ to entertain a suspicion--a
+cruel, but justifiable suspicion! I will add further and repeat that in
+spite of my positive conviction, I realise that I run a certain risk in
+making this accusation, but as you see, I could not let it pass. I have
+taken action and I will tell you why: solely, madam, solely, owing
+to your black ingratitude! Why! I invite you for the benefit of your
+destitute relative, I present you with my donation of ten roubles and
+you, on the spot, repay me for all that with such an action. It is too
+bad! You need a lesson. Reflect! Moreover, like a true friend I beg
+you--and you could have no better friend at this moment--think what you
+are doing, otherwise I shall be immovable! Well, what do you say?”
+“I have taken nothing,” Sonia whispered in terror, “you gave me ten
+roubles, here it is, take it.”
+Sonia pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, untied a corner of it,
+took out the ten-rouble note and gave it to Luzhin.
+“And the hundred roubles you do not confess to taking?” he insisted
+reproachfully, not taking the note.
+Sonia looked about her. All were looking at her with such awful, stern,
+ironical, hostile eyes. She looked at Raskolnikov... he stood against
+the wall, with his arms crossed, looking at her with glowing eyes.
+“Good God!” broke from Sonia.
+“Amalia Ivanovna, we shall have to send word to the police and therefore
+I humbly beg you meanwhile to send for the house porter,” Luzhin said
+softly and even kindly.
+“_Gott der Barmherzige_! I knew she was the thief,” cried Amalia
+Ivanovna, throwing up her hands.
+“You knew it?” Luzhin caught her up, “then I suppose you had some reason
+before this for thinking so. I beg you, worthy Amalia Ivanovna, to
+remember your words which have been uttered before witnesses.”
+There was a buzz of loud conversation on all sides. All were in
+movement.
+“What!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, suddenly realising the position, and
+she rushed at Luzhin. “What! You accuse her of stealing? Sonia? Ah, the
+wretches, the wretches!”
+And running to Sonia she flung her wasted arms round her and held her as
+in a vise.
+“Sonia! how dared you take ten roubles from him? Foolish girl! Give it
+to me! Give me the ten roubles at once--here!”
+And snatching the note from Sonia, Katerina Ivanovna crumpled it up and
+flung it straight into Luzhin’s face. It hit him in the eye and fell
+on the ground. Amalia Ivanovna hastened to pick it up. Pyotr Petrovitch
+lost his temper.
+“Hold that mad woman!” he shouted.
+At that moment several other persons, besides Lebeziatnikov, appeared in
+the doorway, among them the two ladies.
+“What! Mad? Am I mad? Idiot!” shrieked Katerina Ivanovna. “You are an
+idiot yourself, pettifogging lawyer, base man! Sonia, Sonia take his
+money! Sonia a thief! Why, she’d give away her last penny!” and Katerina
+Ivanovna broke into hysterical laughter. “Did you ever see such an
+idiot?” she turned from side to side. “And you too?” she suddenly saw
+the landlady, “and you too, sausage eater, you declare that she is a
+thief, you trashy Prussian hen’s leg in a crinoline! She hasn’t been
+out of this room: she came straight from you, you wretch, and sat down
+beside me, everyone saw her. She sat here, by Rodion Romanovitch. Search
+her! Since she’s not left the room, the money would have to be on her!
+Search her, search her! But if you don’t find it, then excuse me, my
+dear fellow, you’ll answer for it! I’ll go to our Sovereign, to our
+Sovereign, to our gracious Tsar himself, and throw myself at his feet,
+to-day, this minute! I am alone in the world! They would let me in! Do
+you think they wouldn’t? You’re wrong, I will get in! I will get in!
+You reckoned on her meekness! You relied upon that! But I am not so
+submissive, let me tell you! You’ve gone too far yourself. Search her,
+search her!”
+And Katerina Ivanovna in a frenzy shook Luzhin and dragged him towards
+Sonia.
+“I am ready, I’ll be responsible... but calm yourself, madam, calm
+yourself. I see that you are not so submissive!... Well, well, but as to
+that...” Luzhin muttered, “that ought to be before the police... though
+indeed there are witnesses enough as it is.... I am ready.... But in
+any case it’s difficult for a man... on account of her sex.... But with
+the help of Amalia Ivanovna... though, of course, it’s not the way to do
+things.... How is it to be done?”
+“As you will! Let anyone who likes search her!” cried Katerina Ivanovna.
+“Sonia, turn out your pockets! See! Look, monster, the pocket is empty,
+here was her handkerchief! Here is the other pocket, look! D’you see,
+d’you see?”
+And Katerina Ivanovna turned--or rather snatched--both pockets inside
+out. But from the right pocket a piece of paper flew out and describing
+a parabola in the air fell at Luzhin’s feet. Everyone saw it, several
+cried out. Pyotr Petrovitch stooped down, picked up the paper in two
+fingers, lifted it where all could see it and opened it. It was a
+hundred-rouble note folded in eight. Pyotr Petrovitch held up the note
+showing it to everyone.
+“Thief! Out of my lodging. Police, police!” yelled Amalia Ivanovna.
+“They must to Siberia be sent! Away!”
+Exclamations arose on all sides. Raskolnikov was silent, keeping his
+eyes fixed on Sonia, except for an occasional rapid glance at Luzhin.
+Sonia stood still, as though unconscious. She was hardly able to feel
+surprise. Suddenly the colour rushed to her cheeks; she uttered a cry
+and hid her face in her hands.
+“No, it wasn’t I! I didn’t take it! I know nothing about it,” she cried
+with a heartrending wail, and she ran to Katerina Ivanovna, who clasped
+her tightly in her arms, as though she would shelter her from all the
+world.
+“Sonia! Sonia! I don’t believe it! You see, I don’t believe it!” she
+cried in the face of the obvious fact, swaying her to and fro in her
+arms like a baby, kissing her face continually, then snatching at her
+hands and kissing them, too, “you took it! How stupid these people are!
+Oh dear! You are fools, fools,” she cried, addressing the whole room,
+“you don’t know, you don’t know what a heart she has, what a girl she
+is! She take it, she? She’d sell her last rag, she’d go barefoot to help
+you if you needed it, that’s what she is! She has the yellow passport
+because my children were starving, she sold herself for us! Ah, husband,
+husband! Do you see? Do you see? What a memorial dinner for you!
+Merciful heavens! Defend her, why are you all standing still? Rodion
+Romanovitch, why don’t you stand up for her? Do you believe it, too? You
+are not worth her little finger, all of you together! Good God! Defend
+her now, at least!”
+The wail of the poor, consumptive, helpless woman seemed to produce a
+great effect on her audience. The agonised, wasted, consumptive face,
+the parched blood-stained lips, the hoarse voice, the tears unrestrained
+as a child’s, the trustful, childish and yet despairing prayer for help
+were so piteous that everyone seemed to feel for her. Pyotr Petrovitch
+at any rate was at once moved to _compassion_.
+“Madam, madam, this incident does not reflect upon you!” he cried
+impressively, “no one would take upon himself to accuse you of being an
+instigator or even an accomplice in it, especially as you have proved
+her guilt by turning out her pockets, showing that you had no previous
+idea of it. I am most ready, most ready to show compassion, if poverty,
+so to speak, drove Sofya Semyonovna to it, but why did you refuse to
+confess, mademoiselle? Were you afraid of the disgrace? The first step?
+You lost your head, perhaps? One can quite understand it.... But how
+could you have lowered yourself to such an action? Gentlemen,” he
+addressed the whole company, “gentlemen! Compassionate and, so to say,
+commiserating these people, I am ready to overlook it even now in spite
+of the personal insult lavished upon me! And may this disgrace be a
+lesson to you for the future,” he said, addressing Sonia, “and I will
+carry the matter no further. Enough!”
+Pyotr Petrovitch stole a glance at Raskolnikov. Their eyes met, and the
+fire in Raskolnikov’s seemed ready to reduce him to ashes. Meanwhile
+Katerina Ivanovna apparently heard nothing. She was kissing and hugging
+Sonia like a madwoman. The children, too, were embracing Sonia on
+all sides, and Polenka--though she did not fully understand what was
+wrong--was drowned in tears and shaking with sobs, as she hid her pretty
+little face, swollen with weeping, on Sonia’s shoulder.
+“How vile!” a loud voice cried suddenly in the doorway.
+Pyotr Petrovitch looked round quickly.
+“What vileness!” Lebeziatnikov repeated, staring him straight in the
+face.
+Pyotr Petrovitch gave a positive start--all noticed it and recalled it
+afterwards. Lebeziatnikov strode into the room.
+“And you dared to call me as witness?” he said, going up to Pyotr
+Petrovitch.
+“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” muttered Luzhin.
+“I mean that you... are a slanderer, that’s what my words mean!”
+Lebeziatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his short-sighted
+eyes.
+He was extremely angry. Raskolnikov gazed intently at him, as though
+seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Pyotr
+Petrovitch indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment.
+“If you mean that for me,...” he began, stammering. “But what’s the
+matter with you? Are you out of your mind?”
+“I’m in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard
+everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own
+even now it is not quite logical.... What you have done it all for I
+can’t understand.”
+“Why, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical
+riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!”
+“You may be a drunkard, perhaps, vile man, but I am not! I never touch
+vodka, for it’s against my convictions. Would you believe it, he, he
+himself, with his own hands gave Sofya Semyonovna that hundred-rouble
+note--I saw it, I was a witness, I’ll take my oath! He did it, he!”
+repeated Lebeziatnikov, addressing all.
+“Are you crazy, milksop?” squealed Luzhin. “She is herself before
+you--she herself here declared just now before everyone that I gave her
+only ten roubles. How could I have given it to her?”
+“I saw it, I saw it,” Lebeziatnikov repeated, “and though it is against
+my principles, I am ready this very minute to take any oath you like
+before the court, for I saw how you slipped it in her pocket. Only
+like a fool I thought you did it out of kindness! When you were saying
+good-bye to her at the door, while you held her hand in one hand, with
+the other, the left, you slipped the note into her pocket. I saw it, I
+saw it!”
+Luzhin turned pale.
+“What lies!” he cried impudently, “why, how could you, standing by the
+window, see the note? You fancied it with your short-sighted eyes. You
+are raving!”
+“No, I didn’t fancy it. And though I was standing some way off, I saw
+it all. And though it certainly would be hard to distinguish a note from
+the window--that’s true--I knew for certain that it was a hundred-rouble
+note, because, when you were going to give Sofya Semyonovna ten roubles,
+you took up from the table a hundred-rouble note (I saw it because I
+was standing near then, and an idea struck me at once, so that I did not
+forget you had it in your hand). You folded it and kept it in your hand
+all the time. I didn’t think of it again until, when you were getting
+up, you changed it from your right hand to your left and nearly dropped
+it! I noticed it because the same idea struck me again, that you meant
+to do her a kindness without my seeing. You can fancy how I watched you
+and I saw how you succeeded in slipping it into her pocket. I saw it, I
+saw it, I’ll take my oath.”
+Lebeziatnikov was almost breathless. Exclamations arose on all hands
+chiefly expressive of wonder, but some were menacing in tone. They all
+crowded round Pyotr Petrovitch. Katerina Ivanovna flew to Lebeziatnikov.
+“I was mistaken in you! Protect her! You are the only one to take her
+part! She is an orphan. God has sent you!”
+Katerina Ivanovna, hardly knowing what she was doing, sank on her knees
+before him.
+“A pack of nonsense!” yelled Luzhin, roused to fury, “it’s all nonsense
+you’ve been talking! ‘An idea struck you, you didn’t think, you
+noticed’--what does it amount to? So I gave it to her on the sly on
+purpose? What for? With what object? What have I to do with this...?”
+“What for? That’s what I can’t understand, but that what I am telling
+you is the fact, that’s certain! So far from my being mistaken, you
+infamous criminal man, I remember how, on account of it, a question
+occurred to me at once, just when I was thanking you and pressing
+your hand. What made you put it secretly in her pocket? Why you did it
+secretly, I mean? Could it be simply to conceal it from me, knowing that
+my convictions are opposed to yours and that I do not approve of private
+benevolence, which effects no radical cure? Well, I decided that you
+really were ashamed of giving such a large sum before me. Perhaps,
+too, I thought, he wants to give her a surprise, when she finds a whole
+hundred-rouble note in her pocket. (For I know, some benevolent people
+are very fond of decking out their charitable actions in that way.) Then
+the idea struck me, too, that you wanted to test her, to see whether,
+when she found it, she would come to thank you. Then, too, that you
+wanted to avoid thanks and that, as the saying is, your right hand
+should not know... something of that sort, in fact. I thought of so
+many possibilities that I put off considering it, but still thought it
+indelicate to show you that I knew your secret. But another idea struck
+me again that Sofya Semyonovna might easily lose the money before she
+noticed it, that was why I decided to come in here to call her out of
+the room and to tell her that you put a hundred roubles in her pocket.
+But on my way I went first to Madame Kobilatnikov’s to take them the
+‘General Treatise on the Positive Method’ and especially to recommend
+Piderit’s article (and also Wagner’s); then I come on here and what a
+state of things I find! Now could I, could I, have all these ideas and
+reflections if I had not seen you put the hundred-rouble note in her
+pocket?”
+When Lebeziatnikov finished his long-winded harangue with the logical
+deduction at the end, he was quite tired, and the perspiration streamed
+from his face. He could not, alas, even express himself correctly
+in Russian, though he knew no other language, so that he was quite
+exhausted, almost emaciated after this heroic exploit. But his speech
+produced a powerful effect. He had spoken with such vehemence, with such
+conviction that everyone obviously believed him. Pyotr Petrovitch felt
+that things were going badly with him.
+“What is it to do with me if silly ideas did occur to you?” he shouted,
+“that’s no evidence. You may have dreamt it, that’s all! And I tell you,
+you are lying, sir. You are lying and slandering from some spite against
+me, simply from pique, because I did not agree with your free-thinking,
+godless, social propositions!”
+But this retort did not benefit Pyotr Petrovitch. Murmurs of disapproval
+were heard on all sides.
+“Ah, that’s your line now, is it!” cried Lebeziatnikov, “that’s
+nonsense! Call the police and I’ll take my oath! There’s only one thing
+I can’t understand: what made him risk such a contemptible action. Oh,
+pitiful, despicable man!”
+“I can explain why he risked such an action, and if necessary, I, too,
+will swear to it,” Raskolnikov said at last in a firm voice, and he
+stepped forward.
+He appeared to be firm and composed. Everyone felt clearly, from the
+very look of him that he really knew about it and that the mystery would
+be solved.
+“Now I can explain it all to myself,” said Raskolnikov, addressing
+Lebeziatnikov. “From the very beginning of the business, I suspected
+that there was some scoundrelly intrigue at the bottom of it. I began
+to suspect it from some special circumstances known to me only, which
+I will explain at once to everyone: they account for everything. Your
+valuable evidence has finally made everything clear to me. I beg all,
+all to listen. This gentleman (he pointed to Luzhin) was recently
+engaged to be married to a young lady--my sister, Avdotya Romanovna
+Raskolnikov. But coming to Petersburg he quarrelled with me, the day
+before yesterday, at our first meeting and I drove him out of my room--I
+have two witnesses to prove it. He is a very spiteful man.... The day
+before yesterday I did not know that he was staying here, in your room,
+and that consequently on the very day we quarrelled--the day before
+yesterday--he saw me give Katerina Ivanovna some money for the funeral,
+as a friend of the late Mr. Marmeladov. He at once wrote a note to
+my mother and informed her that I had given away all my money, not
+to Katerina Ivanovna but to Sofya Semyonovna, and referred in a most
+contemptible way to the... character of Sofya Semyonovna, that is,
+hinted at the character of my attitude to Sofya Semyonovna. All this you
+understand was with the object of dividing me from my mother and sister,
+by insinuating that I was squandering on unworthy objects the money
+which they had sent me and which was all they had. Yesterday evening,
+before my mother and sister and in his presence, I declared that I had
+given the money to Katerina Ivanovna for the funeral and not to Sofya
+Semyonovna and that I had no acquaintance with Sofya Semyonovna and had
+never seen her before, indeed. At the same time I added that he,
+Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin, with all his virtues, was not worth Sofya
+Semyonovna’s little finger, though he spoke so ill of her. To his
+question--would I let Sofya Semyonovna sit down beside my sister, I
+answered that I had already done so that day. Irritated that my mother
+and sister were unwilling to quarrel with me at his insinuations, he
+gradually began being unpardonably rude to them. A final rupture took
+place and he was turned out of the house. All this happened yesterday
+evening. Now I beg your special attention: consider: if he had now
+succeeded in proving that Sofya Semyonovna was a thief, he would
+have shown to my mother and sister that he was almost right in his
+suspicions, that he had reason to be angry at my putting my sister on
+a level with Sofya Semyonovna, that, in attacking me, he was protecting
+and preserving the honour of my sister, his betrothed. In fact he might
+even, through all this, have been able to estrange me from my family,
+and no doubt he hoped to be restored to favour with them; to say nothing
+of revenging himself on me personally, for he has grounds for supposing
+that the honour and happiness of Sofya Semyonovna are very precious to
+me. That was what he was working for! That’s how I understand it. That’s
+the whole reason for it and there can be no other!”
+It was like this, or somewhat like this, that Raskolnikov wound up his
+speech which was followed very attentively, though often interrupted by
+exclamations from his audience. But in spite of interruptions he spoke
+clearly, calmly, exactly, firmly. His decisive voice, his tone of
+conviction and his stern face made a great impression on everyone.
+“Yes, yes, that’s it,” Lebeziatnikov assented gleefully, “that must be
+it, for he asked me, as soon as Sofya Semyonovna came into our room,
+whether you were here, whether I had seen you among Katerina Ivanovna’s
+guests. He called me aside to the window and asked me in secret. It was
+essential for him that you should be here! That’s it, that’s it!”
+Luzhin smiled contemptuously and did not speak. But he was very pale. He
+seemed to be deliberating on some means of escape. Perhaps he would have
+been glad to give up everything and get away, but at the moment this
+was scarcely possible. It would have implied admitting the truth of
+the accusations brought against him. Moreover, the company, which had
+already been excited by drink, was now too much stirred to allow it. The
+commissariat clerk, though indeed he had not grasped the whole position,
+was shouting louder than anyone and was making some suggestions very
+unpleasant to Luzhin. But not all those present were drunk; lodgers came
+in from all the rooms. The three Poles were tremendously excited
+and were continually shouting at him: “The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!” and
+muttering threats in Polish. Sonia had been listening with strained
+attention, though she too seemed unable to grasp it all; she seemed as
+though she had just returned to consciousness. She did not take her
+eyes off Raskolnikov, feeling that all her safety lay in him. Katerina
+Ivanovna breathed hard and painfully and seemed fearfully exhausted.
+Amalia Ivanovna stood looking more stupid than anyone, with her mouth
+wide open, unable to make out what had happened. She only saw that Pyotr
+Petrovitch had somehow come to grief.
+Raskolnikov was attempting to speak again, but they did not let him.
+Everyone was crowding round Luzhin with threats and shouts of abuse.
+But Pyotr Petrovitch was not intimidated. Seeing that his accusation of
+Sonia had completely failed, he had recourse to insolence:
+“Allow me, gentlemen, allow me! Don’t squeeze, let me pass!” he said,
+making his way through the crowd. “And no threats, if you please! I
+assure you it will be useless, you will gain nothing by it. On the
+contrary, you’ll have to answer, gentlemen, for violently obstructing
+the course of justice. The thief has been more than unmasked, and I
+shall prosecute. Our judges are not so blind and... not so drunk, and
+will not believe the testimony of two notorious infidels, agitators, and
+atheists, who accuse me from motives of personal revenge which they are
+foolish enough to admit.... Yes, allow me to pass!”
+“Don’t let me find a trace of you in my room! Kindly leave at once, and
+everything is at an end between us! When I think of the trouble I’ve
+been taking, the way I’ve been expounding... all this fortnight!”
+“I told you myself to-day that I was going, when you tried to keep me;
+now I will simply add that you are a fool. I advise you to see a doctor
+for your brains and your short sight. Let me pass, gentlemen!”
+He forced his way through. But the commissariat clerk was unwilling to
+let him off so easily: he picked up a glass from the table, brandished
+it in the air and flung it at Pyotr Petrovitch; but the glass flew
+straight at Amalia Ivanovna. She screamed, and the clerk, overbalancing,
+fell heavily under the table. Pyotr Petrovitch made his way to his room
+and half an hour later had left the house. Sonia, timid by nature, had
+felt before that day that she could be ill-treated more easily than
+anyone, and that she could be wronged with impunity. Yet till that
+moment she had fancied that she might escape misfortune by care,
+gentleness and submissiveness before everyone. Her disappointment was
+too great. She could, of course, bear with patience and almost without
+murmur anything, even this. But for the first minute she felt it too
+bitter. In spite of her triumph and her justification--when her first
+terror and stupefaction had passed and she could understand it all
+clearly--the feeling of her helplessness and of the wrong done to her
+made her heart throb with anguish and she was overcome with hysterical
+weeping. At last, unable to bear any more, she rushed out of the room
+and ran home, almost immediately after Luzhin’s departure. When amidst
+loud laughter the glass flew at Amalia Ivanovna, it was more than the
+landlady could endure. With a shriek she rushed like a fury at Katerina
+Ivanovna, considering her to blame for everything.
+“Out of my lodgings! At once! Quick march!”
+And with these words she began snatching up everything she could lay
+her hands on that belonged to Katerina Ivanovna, and throwing it on the
+floor. Katerina Ivanovna, pale, almost fainting, and gasping for breath,
+jumped up from the bed where she had sunk in exhaustion and darted at
+Amalia Ivanovna. But the battle was too unequal: the landlady waved her
+away like a feather.
+“What! As though that godless calumny was not enough--this vile creature
+attacks me! What! On the day of my husband’s funeral I am turned out of
+my lodging! After eating my bread and salt she turns me into the street,
+with my orphans! Where am I to go?” wailed the poor woman, sobbing and
+gasping. “Good God!” she cried with flashing eyes, “is there no justice
+upon earth? Whom should you protect if not us orphans? We shall see!
+There is law and justice on earth, there is, I will find it! Wait a bit,
+godless creature! Polenka, stay with the children, I’ll come back. Wait
+for me, if you have to wait in the street. We will see whether there is
+justice on earth!”
+And throwing over her head that green shawl which Marmeladov had
+mentioned to Raskolnikov, Katerina Ivanovna squeezed her way through the
+disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who still filled the room, and,
+wailing and tearful, she ran into the street--with a vague intention
+of going at once somewhere to find justice. Polenka with the two little
+ones in her arms crouched, terrified, on the trunk in the corner of the
+room, where she waited trembling for her mother to come back. Amalia
+Ivanovna raged about the room, shrieking, lamenting and throwing
+everything she came across on the floor. The lodgers talked
+incoherently, some commented to the best of their ability on what had
+happened, others quarrelled and swore at one another, while others
+struck up a song....
+“Now it’s time for me to go,” thought Raskolnikov. “Well, Sofya
+Semyonovna, we shall see what you’ll say now!”
+And he set off in the direction of Sonia’s lodgings.
+CHAPTER IV
+Raskolnikov had been a vigorous and active champion of Sonia against
+Luzhin, although he had such a load of horror and anguish in his own
+heart. But having gone through so much in the morning, he found a sort
+of relief in a change of sensations, apart from the strong personal
+feeling which impelled him to defend Sonia. He was agitated too,
+especially at some moments, by the thought of his approaching interview
+with Sonia: he _had_ to tell her who had killed Lizaveta. He knew the
+terrible suffering it would be to him and, as it were, brushed away the
+thought of it. So when he cried as he left Katerina Ivanovna’s, “Well,
+Sofya Semyonovna, we shall see what you’ll say now!” he was still
+superficially excited, still vigorous and defiant from his triumph over
+Luzhin. But, strange to say, by the time he reached Sonia’s lodging, he
+felt a sudden impotence and fear. He stood still in hesitation at the
+door, asking himself the strange question: “Must he tell her who killed
+Lizaveta?” It was a strange question because he felt at the very time
+not only that he could not help telling her, but also that he could
+not put off the telling. He did not yet know why it must be so, he
+only _felt_ it, and the agonising sense of his impotence before
+the inevitable almost crushed him. To cut short his hesitation and
+suffering, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonia from the
+doorway. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in
+her hands, but seeing Raskolnikov she got up at once and came to meet
+him as though she were expecting him.
+“What would have become of me but for you?” she said quickly, meeting
+him in the middle of the room.
+Evidently she was in haste to say this to him. It was what she had been
+waiting for.
+Raskolnikov went to the table and sat down on the chair from which she
+had only just risen. She stood facing him, two steps away, just as she
+had done the day before.
+“Well, Sonia?” he said, and felt that his voice was trembling, “it was
+all due to ‘your social position and the habits associated with it.’ Did
+you understand that just now?”
+Her face showed her distress.
+“Only don’t talk to me as you did yesterday,” she interrupted him.
+“Please don’t begin it. There is misery enough without that.”
+She made haste to smile, afraid that he might not like the reproach.
+“I was silly to come away from there. What is happening there now? I
+wanted to go back directly, but I kept thinking that... you would come.”
+He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was turning them out of their lodging
+and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere “to seek justice.”
+“My God!” cried Sonia, “let’s go at once....”
+And she snatched up her cape.
+“It’s everlastingly the same thing!” said Raskolnikov, irritably.
+“You’ve no thought except for them! Stay a little with me.”
+“But... Katerina Ivanovna?”
+“You won’t lose Katerina Ivanovna, you may be sure, she’ll come to you
+herself since she has run out,” he added peevishly. “If she doesn’t find
+you here, you’ll be blamed for it....”
+Sonia sat down in painful suspense. Raskolnikov was silent, gazing at
+the floor and deliberating.
+“This time Luzhin did not want to prosecute you,” he began, not looking
+at Sonia, “but if he had wanted to, if it had suited his plans, he would
+have sent you to prison if it had not been for Lebeziatnikov and me.
+Ah?”
+“Yes,” she assented in a faint voice. “Yes,” she repeated, preoccupied
+and distressed.
+“But I might easily not have been there. And it was quite an accident
+Lebeziatnikov’s turning up.”
+Sonia was silent.
+“And if you’d gone to prison, what then? Do you remember what I said
+yesterday?”
+Again she did not answer. He waited.
+“I thought you would cry out again ‘don’t speak of it, leave off.’”
+Raskolnikov gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. “What, silence
+again?” he asked a minute later. “We must talk about something, you
+know. It would be interesting for me to know how you would decide a
+certain ‘problem’ as Lebeziatnikov would say.” (He was beginning to lose
+the thread.) “No, really, I am serious. Imagine, Sonia, that you had
+known all Luzhin’s intentions beforehand. Known, that is, for a fact,
+that they would be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna and the children and
+yourself thrown in--since you don’t count yourself for anything--Polenka
+too... for she’ll go the same way. Well, if suddenly it all depended on
+your decision whether he or they should go on living, that is whether
+Luzhin should go on living and doing wicked things, or Katerina Ivanovna
+should die? How would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?”
+Sonia looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar in this
+hesitating question, which seemed approaching something in a roundabout
+way.
+“I felt that you were going to ask some question like that,” she said,
+looking inquisitively at him.
+“I dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?”
+“Why do you ask about what could not happen?” said Sonia reluctantly.
+“Then it would be better for Luzhin to go on living and doing wicked
+things? You haven’t dared to decide even that!”
+“But I can’t know the Divine Providence.... And why do you ask what
+can’t be answered? What’s the use of such foolish questions? How could
+it happen that it should depend on my decision--who has made me a judge
+to decide who is to live and who is not to live?”
+“Oh, if the Divine Providence is to be mixed up in it, there is no doing
+anything,” Raskolnikov grumbled morosely.
+“You’d better say straight out what you want!” Sonia cried in distress.
+“You are leading up to something again.... Can you have come simply to
+torture me?”
+She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at
+her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.
+“Of course you’re right, Sonia,” he said softly at last. He was suddenly
+changed. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless defiance was gone.
+Even his voice was suddenly weak. “I told you yesterday that I was not
+coming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I’ve said is to ask
+forgiveness.... I said that about Luzhin and Providence for my own sake.
+I was asking forgiveness, Sonia....”
+He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete in
+his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.
+And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred
+for Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened
+of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he
+met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was
+love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real
+feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It only meant that
+_that_ minute had come.
+He hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly he
+turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonia, and without
+uttering a word sat down mechanically on her bed.
+His sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he had
+stood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that “he must
+not lose another minute.”
+“What’s the matter?” asked Sonia, dreadfully frightened.
+He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way he
+had intended to “tell” and he did not understand what was happening to
+him now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him and
+waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and sank. It
+was unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His lips worked,
+helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of terror passed
+through Sonia’s heart.
+“What’s the matter?” she repeated, drawing a little away from him.
+“Nothing, Sonia, don’t be frightened.... It’s nonsense. It really is
+nonsense, if you think of it,” he muttered, like a man in delirium. “Why
+have I come to torture you?” he added suddenly, looking at her. “Why,
+really? I keep asking myself that question, Sonia....”
+He had perhaps been asking himself that question a quarter of an hour
+before, but now he spoke helplessly, hardly knowing what he said and
+feeling a continual tremor all over.
+“Oh, how you are suffering!” she muttered in distress, looking intently
+at him.
+“It’s all nonsense.... Listen, Sonia.” He suddenly smiled, a pale
+helpless smile for two seconds. “You remember what I meant to tell you
+yesterday?”
+Sonia waited uneasily.
+“I said as I went away that perhaps I was saying good-bye for ever, but
+that if I came to-day I would tell you who... who killed Lizaveta.”
+She began trembling all over.
+“Well, here I’ve come to tell you.”
+“Then you really meant it yesterday?” she whispered with difficulty.
+“How do you know?” she asked quickly, as though suddenly regaining her
+reason.
+Sonia’s face grew paler and paler, and she breathed painfully.
+“I know.”
+She paused a minute.
+“Have they found him?” she asked timidly.
+“No.”
+“Then how do you know about _it_?” she asked again, hardly audibly and
+again after a minute’s pause.
+He turned to her and looked very intently at her.
+“Guess,” he said, with the same distorted helpless smile.
+A shudder passed over her.
+“But you... why do you frighten me like this?” she said, smiling like a
+child.
+“I must be a great friend of _his_... since I know,” Raskolnikov went
+on, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his eyes
+away. “He... did not mean to kill that Lizaveta... he... killed her
+accidentally.... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone and
+he went there... and then Lizaveta came in... he killed her too.”
+Another awful moment passed. Both still gazed at one another.
+“You can’t guess, then?” he asked suddenly, feeling as though he were
+flinging himself down from a steeple.
+“N-no...” whispered Sonia.
+“Take a good look.”
+As soon as he had said this again, the same familiar sensation froze his
+heart. He looked at her and all at once seemed to see in her face the
+face of Lizaveta. He remembered clearly the expression in Lizaveta’s
+face, when he approached her with the axe and she stepped back to the
+wall, putting out her hand, with childish terror in her face, looking
+as little children do when they begin to be frightened of something,
+looking intently and uneasily at what frightens them, shrinking back and
+holding out their little hands on the point of crying. Almost the same
+thing happened now to Sonia. With the same helplessness and the same
+terror, she looked at him for a while and, suddenly putting out her left
+hand, pressed her fingers faintly against his breast and slowly began to
+get up from the bed, moving further from him and keeping her eyes fixed
+even more immovably on him. Her terror infected him. The same fear
+showed itself on his face. In the same way he stared at her and almost
+with the same _childish_ smile.
+“Have you guessed?” he whispered at last.
+“Good God!” broke in an awful wail from her bosom.
+She sank helplessly on the bed with her face in the pillows, but a
+moment later she got up, moved quickly to him, seized both his hands
+and, gripping them tight in her thin fingers, began looking into his
+face again with the same intent stare. In this last desperate look she
+tried to look into him and catch some last hope. But there was no hope;
+there was no doubt remaining; it was all true! Later on, indeed, when
+she recalled that moment, she thought it strange and wondered why she
+had seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said, for
+instance, that she had foreseen something of the sort--and yet now, as
+soon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had really foreseen
+this very thing.
+“Stop, Sonia, enough! don’t torture me,” he begged her miserably.
+It was not at all, not at all like this he had thought of telling her,
+but this is how it happened.
+She jumped up, seeming not to know what she was doing, and, wringing her
+hands, walked into the middle of the room; but quickly went back and sat
+down again beside him, her shoulder almost touching his. All of a sudden
+she started as though she had been stabbed, uttered a cry and fell on
+her knees before him, she did not know why.
+“What have you done--what have you done to yourself?” she said in
+despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms
+round him, and held him tightly.
+Raskolnikov drew back and looked at her with a mournful smile.
+“You are a strange girl, Sonia--you kiss me and hug me when I tell you
+about that.... You don’t think what you are doing.”
+“There is no one--no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!” she
+cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke into
+violent hysterical weeping.
+A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at
+once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes
+and hung on his eyelashes.
+“Then you won’t leave me, Sonia?” he said, looking at her almost with
+hope.
+“No, no, never, nowhere!” cried Sonia. “I will follow you, I will follow
+you everywhere. Oh, my God! Oh, how miserable I am!... Why, why didn’t I
+know you before! Why didn’t you come before? Oh, dear!”
+“Here I have come.”
+“Yes, now! What’s to be done now?... Together, together!” she repeated
+as it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. “I’ll follow you to
+Siberia!”
+He recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came to
+his lips.
+“Perhaps I don’t want to go to Siberia yet, Sonia,” he said.
+Sonia looked at him quickly.
+Again after her first passionate, agonising sympathy for the unhappy man
+the terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed tone she
+seemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. She
+knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now all
+these questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could not
+believe it: “He, he is a murderer! Could it be true?”
+“What’s the meaning of it? Where am I?” she said in complete
+bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. “How could you,
+you, a man like you.... How could you bring yourself to it?... What does
+it mean?”
+“Oh, well--to plunder. Leave off, Sonia,” he answered wearily, almost
+with vexation.
+Sonia stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried:
+“You were hungry! It was... to help your mother? Yes?”
+“No, Sonia, no,” he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. “I was
+not so hungry.... I certainly did want to help my mother, but... that’s
+not the real thing either.... Don’t torture me, Sonia.”
+Sonia clasped her hands.
+“Could it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could
+believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet
+rob and murder! Ah,” she cried suddenly, “that money you gave Katerina
+Ivanovna... that money.... Can that money...”
+“No, Sonia,” he broke in hurriedly, “that money was not it. Don’t worry
+yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, the
+day I gave it to you.... Razumihin saw it... he received it for me....
+That money was mine--my own.”
+Sonia listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to comprehend.
+“And _that_ money.... I don’t even know really whether there was any
+money,” he added softly, as though reflecting. “I took a purse off her
+neck, made of chamois leather... a purse stuffed full of something...
+but I didn’t look in it; I suppose I hadn’t time.... And the
+things--chains and trinkets--I buried under a stone with the purse next
+morning in a yard off the V---- Prospect. They are all there now....”
+Sonia strained every nerve to listen.
+“Then why... why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?” she
+asked quickly, catching at a straw.
+“I don’t know.... I haven’t yet decided whether to take that money or
+not,” he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he
+gave a brief ironical smile. “Ach, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?”
+The thought flashed through Sonia’s mind, wasn’t he mad? But she
+dismissed it at once. “No, it was something else.” She could make
+nothing of it, nothing.
+“Do you know, Sonia,” he said suddenly with conviction, “let me tell
+you: if I’d simply killed because I was hungry,” laying stress on
+every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, “I should
+be _happy_ now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you,” he
+cried a moment later with a sort of despair, “what would it matter to
+you if I were to confess that I did wrong? What do you gain by such
+a stupid triumph over me? Ah, Sonia, was it for that I’ve come to you
+to-day?”
+Again Sonia tried to say something, but did not speak.
+“I asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have left.”
+“Go where?” asked Sonia timidly.
+“Not to steal and not to murder, don’t be anxious,” he smiled bitterly.
+“We are so different.... And you know, Sonia, it’s only now, only this
+moment that I understand _where_ I asked you to go with me yesterday!
+Yesterday when I said it I did not know where. I asked you for one
+thing, I came to you for one thing--not to leave me. You won’t leave me,
+Sonia?”
+She squeezed his hand.
+“And why, why did I tell her? Why did I let her know?” he cried a minute
+later in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. “Here you expect
+an explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and waiting for it, I see
+that. But what can I tell you? You won’t understand and will only suffer
+misery... on my account! Well, you are crying and embracing me again.
+Why do you do it? Because I couldn’t bear my burden and have come to
+throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can
+you love such a mean wretch?”
+“But aren’t you suffering, too?” cried Sonia.
+Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again for an
+instant softened it.
+“Sonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a great
+deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn’t have
+come. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never mind! That’s
+not the point. I must speak now, but I don’t know how to begin.”
+He paused and sank into thought.
+“Ach, we are so different,” he cried again, “we are not alike. And why,
+why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that.”
+“No, no, it was a good thing you came,” cried Sonia. “It’s better I
+should know, far better!”
+He looked at her with anguish.
+“What if it were really that?” he said, as though reaching a conclusion.
+“Yes, that’s what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I
+killed her.... Do you understand now?”
+“N-no,” Sonia whispered naïvely and timidly. “Only speak, speak, I shall
+understand, I shall understand _in myself_!” she kept begging him.
+“You’ll understand? Very well, we shall see!” He paused and was for some
+time lost in meditation.
+“It was like this: I asked myself one day this question--what if
+Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had
+not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his
+career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things,
+there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had
+to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you
+understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there had
+been no other means? Wouldn’t he have felt a pang at its being so far
+from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I
+worried myself fearfully over that ‘question’ so that I was awfully
+ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would
+not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck
+him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there
+was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way,
+he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it!
+Well, I too... left off thinking about it... murdered her, following
+his example. And that’s exactly how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes,
+Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that’s just how it
+was.”
+Sonia did not think it at all funny.
+“You had better tell me straight out... without examples,” she begged,
+still more timidly and scarcely audibly.
+He turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands.
+“You are right again, Sonia. Of course that’s all nonsense, it’s almost
+all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcely
+anything, my sister happened to have a good education and was condemned
+to drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was a
+student, but I couldn’t keep myself at the university and was forced
+for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in ten
+or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or
+clerk with a salary of a thousand roubles” (he repeated it as though it
+were a lesson) “and by that time my mother would be worn out with grief
+and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while my
+sister... well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it’s a hard
+thing to pass everything by all one’s life, to turn one’s back upon
+everything, to forget one’s mother and decorously accept the insults
+inflicted on one’s sister. Why should one? When one has buried them to
+burden oneself with others--wife and children--and to leave them again
+without a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman’s
+money and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother,
+to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leaving
+it--and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up
+a completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence....
+Well... that’s all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did
+wrong.... Well, that’s enough.”
+He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his head
+sink.
+“Oh, that’s not it, that’s not it,” Sonia cried in distress. “How could
+one... no, that’s not right, not right.”
+“You see yourself that it’s not right. But I’ve spoken truly, it’s the
+truth.”
+“As though that could be the truth! Good God!”
+“I’ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful
+creature.”
+“A human being--a louse!”
+“I too know it wasn’t a louse,” he answered, looking strangely at
+her. “But I am talking nonsense, Sonia,” he added. “I’ve been talking
+nonsense a long time.... That’s not it, you are right there. There were
+quite, quite other causes for it! I haven’t talked to anyone for so
+long, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now.”
+His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an
+uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen
+through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too
+was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow
+comprehensible, but yet... “But how, how! Good God!” And she wrung her
+hands in despair.
+“No, Sonia, that’s not it,” he began again suddenly, raising his head,
+as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were
+roused him--“that’s not it! Better... imagine--yes, it’s certainly
+better--imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive
+and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let’s have it all out
+at once! They’ve talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just
+now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that
+perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed
+for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food,
+no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I
+turned sulky and wouldn’t. (Yes, sulkiness, that’s the right word for
+it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You’ve been in my den, you’ve seen
+it.... And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp
+the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn’t
+go out of it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days together,
+and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing
+nothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I
+went all day without; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At
+night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for
+candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies
+an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and
+thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strange
+dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy
+that... No, that’s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept
+asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid--and I
+know they are--yet I won’t be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one
+waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.... Afterwards I
+understood that that would never come to pass, that men won’t change and
+that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it.
+Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia,... that’s so!...
+And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will
+have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their
+eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he
+who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now
+and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!”
+Though Raskolnikov looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer cared
+whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he
+was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too long without
+talking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become his
+faith and code.
+“I divined then, Sonia,” he went on eagerly, “that power is only
+vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only
+one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first
+time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever
+thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is
+that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to
+go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted
+_to have the daring_... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the
+daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!”
+“Oh hush, hush,” cried Sonia, clasping her hands. “You turned away from
+God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!”
+“Then Sonia, when I used to lie there in the dark and all this became
+clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?”
+“Hush, don’t laugh, blasphemer! You don’t understand, you don’t
+understand! Oh God! He won’t understand!”
+“Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil
+leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!” he repeated with gloomy insistence. “I
+know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all
+over to myself, lying there in the dark.... I’ve argued it all over with
+myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how
+sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it
+and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don’t
+suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a
+wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn’t suppose that
+I didn’t know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether
+I had the right to gain power--I certainly hadn’t the right--or that if
+I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn’t
+so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his
+goal without asking questions.... If I worried myself all those days,
+wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly
+of course that I wasn’t Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that
+battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder
+without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn’t
+want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn’t to help my mother I did
+the murder--that’s nonsense--I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and
+power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it;
+I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a
+benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in
+my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn’t have cared at that
+moment.... And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It
+was not so much the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it all
+now.... Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder
+again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led
+me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse
+like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or
+not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling
+creature or whether I have the _right_...”
+“To kill? Have the right to kill?” Sonia clasped her hands.
+“Ach, Sonia!” he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort,
+but was contemptuously silent. “Don’t interrupt me, Sonia. I want to
+prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me
+since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such
+a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come to you
+now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to
+you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman’s I only went to
+_try_.... You may be sure of that!”
+“And you murdered her!”
+“But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to
+commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went!
+Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself
+once for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that killed that old
+woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!” he cried in a
+sudden spasm of agony, “let me be!”
+He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands as
+in a vise.
+“What suffering!” A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.
+“Well, what am I to do now?” he asked, suddenly raising his head and
+looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.
+“What are you to do?” she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had been
+full of tears suddenly began to shine. “Stand up!” (She seized him by
+the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) “Go at once,
+this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the
+earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say
+to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.
+Will you go, will you go?” she asked him, trembling all over, snatching
+his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes
+full of fire.
+He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.
+“You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?” he asked gloomily.
+“Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.”
+“No! I am not going to them, Sonia!”
+“But how will you go on living? What will you live for?” cried Sonia,
+“how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your mother? (Oh, what
+will become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned your
+mother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh,
+God!” she cried, “why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by
+himself! What will become of you now?”
+“Don’t be a child, Sonia,” he said softly. “What wrong have I done
+them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That’s only a
+phantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a
+virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not going to them.
+And what should I say to them--that I murdered her, but did not dare to
+take the money and hid it under a stone?” he added with a bitter smile.
+“Why, they would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting
+it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn’t understand and they don’t deserve
+to understand. Why should I go to them? I won’t. Don’t be a child,
+Sonia....”
+“It will be too much for you to bear, too much!” she repeated, holding
+out her hands in despairing supplication.
+“Perhaps I’ve been unfair to myself,” he observed gloomily, pondering,
+“perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I’ve been in too great
+a hurry to condemn myself. I’ll make another fight for it.”
+A haughty smile appeared on his lips.
+“What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!”
+“I shall get used to it,” he said grimly and thoughtfully. “Listen,” he
+began a minute later, “stop crying, it’s time to talk of the facts: I’ve
+come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track....”
+“Ach!” Sonia cried in terror.
+“Well, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Siberia and now you are
+frightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I shall
+make a struggle for it and they won’t do anything to me. They’ve no real
+evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but
+to-day things are going better. All the facts they know can be explained
+two ways, that’s to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, do
+you understand? And I shall, for I’ve learnt my lesson. But they will
+certainly arrest me. If it had not been for something that happened,
+they would have done so to-day for certain; perhaps even now they will
+arrest me to-day.... But that’s no matter, Sonia; they’ll let me out
+again... for there isn’t any real proof against me, and there won’t be,
+I give you my word for it. And they can’t convict a man on what they
+have against me. Enough.... I only tell you that you may know.... I will
+try to manage somehow to put it to my mother and sister so that they
+won’t be frightened.... My sister’s future is secure, however, now, I
+believe... and my mother’s must be too.... Well, that’s all. Be careful,
+though. Will you come and see me in prison when I am there?”
+“Oh, I will, I will.”
+They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they had
+been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He looked at
+Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he
+felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a
+strange and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had felt that
+all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least part
+of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned towards him, he
+suddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier than before.
+“Sonia,” he said, “you’d better not come and see me when I am in
+prison.”
+Sonia did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.
+“Have you a cross on you?” she asked, as though suddenly thinking of it.
+He did not at first understand the question.
+“No, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I have
+another, a copper one that belonged to Lizaveta. I changed with
+Lizaveta: she gave me her cross and I gave her my little ikon. I will
+wear Lizaveta’s now and give you this. Take it... it’s mine! It’s mine,
+you know,” she begged him. “We will go to suffer together, and together
+we will bear our cross!”
+“Give it me,” said Raskolnikov.
+He did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he drew back the
+hand he held out for the cross.
+“Not now, Sonia. Better later,” he added to comfort her.
+“Yes, yes, better,” she repeated with conviction, “when you go to meet
+your suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I’ll put it on you,
+we will pray and go together.”
+At that moment someone knocked three times at the door.
+“Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?” they heard in a very familiar and
+polite voice.
+Sonia rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of Mr.
+Lebeziatnikov appeared at the door.
+CHAPTER V
+Lebeziatnikov looked perturbed.
+“I’ve come to you, Sofya Semyonovna,” he began. “Excuse me... I thought
+I should find you,” he said, addressing Raskolnikov suddenly, “that is,
+I didn’t mean anything... of that sort... But I just thought... Katerina
+Ivanovna has gone out of her mind,” he blurted out suddenly, turning
+from Raskolnikov to Sonia.
+Sonia screamed.
+“At least it seems so. But... we don’t know what to do, you see! She
+came back--she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps
+beaten.... So it seems at least,... She had run to your father’s former
+chief, she didn’t find him at home: he was dining at some other
+general’s.... Only fancy, she rushed off there, to the other general’s,
+and, imagine, she was so persistent that she managed to get the chief to
+see her, had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You can imagine what
+happened. She was turned out, of course; but, according to her own
+story, she abused him and threw something at him. One may well believe
+it.... How it is she wasn’t taken up, I can’t understand! Now she is
+telling everyone, including Amalia Ivanovna; but it’s difficult to
+understand her, she is screaming and flinging herself about.... Oh yes,
+she shouts that since everyone has abandoned her, she will take the
+children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and the children
+will sing and dance, and she too, and collect money, and will go every
+day under the general’s window... ‘to let everyone see well-born
+children, whose father was an official, begging in the street.’ She
+keeps beating the children and they are all crying. She is teaching Lida
+to sing ‘My Village,’ the boy to dance, Polenka the same. She is tearing
+up all the clothes, and making them little caps like actors; she means
+to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of music.... She won’t
+listen to anything.... Imagine the state of things! It’s beyond
+anything!”
+Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him almost
+breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room,
+putting on her things as she went. Raskolnikov followed her and
+Lebeziatnikov came after him.
+“She has certainly gone mad!” he said to Raskolnikov, as they went out
+into the street. “I didn’t want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I said
+‘it seemed like it,’ but there isn’t a doubt of it. They say that in
+consumption the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it’s a pity I
+know nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn’t
+listen.”
+“Did you talk to her about the tubercles?”
+“Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood!
+But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he
+has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your
+conviction that he won’t?”
+“Life would be too easy if it were so,” answered Raskolnikov.
+“Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for
+Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have
+been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the
+insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific
+man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such
+treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the
+physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a
+logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He
+gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it, they
+say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too, how far
+success was due to that treatment remains uncertain.... So it seems at
+least.”
+Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he
+lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate. Lebeziatnikov
+woke up with a start, looked about him and hurried on.
+Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in the middle
+of it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and tattered
+paper, at the dust, at his sofa.... From the yard came a loud continuous
+knocking; someone seemed to be hammering... He went to the window, rose
+on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of
+absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was
+hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the
+window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out
+of the windows... He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down
+on the sofa.
+Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!
+Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now
+that he had made her more miserable.
+“Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison
+her life? Oh, the meanness of it!”
+“I will remain alone,” he said resolutely, “and she shall not come to
+the prison!”
+Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a
+strange thought.
+“Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia,” he thought suddenly.
+He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts surging
+through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dounia came in. At
+first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he
+had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same place
+as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost
+vacantly at her.
+“Don’t be angry, brother; I’ve only come for one minute,” said Dounia.
+Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and soft.
+He saw that she too had come to him with love.
+“Brother, now I know all, _all_. Dmitri Prokofitch has explained and
+told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a
+stupid and contemptible suspicion.... Dmitri Prokofitch told me that
+there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it with such
+horror. I don’t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you must
+be, and that that indignation may have a permanent effect on you. That’s
+what I am afraid of. As for your cutting yourself off from us, I don’t
+judge you, I don’t venture to judge you, and forgive me for having
+blamed you for it. I feel that I too, if I had so great a trouble,
+should keep away from everyone. I shall tell mother nothing _of this_,
+but I shall talk about you continually and shall tell her from you that
+you will come very soon. Don’t worry about her; _I_ will set her mind at
+rest; but don’t you try her too much--come once at least; remember that
+she is your mother. And now I have come simply to say” (Dounia began
+to get up) “that if you should need me or should need... all my life or
+anything... call me, and I’ll come. Good-bye!”
+She turned abruptly and went towards the door.
+“Dounia!” Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. “That Razumihin,
+Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow.”
+Dounia flushed slightly.
+“Well?” she asked, waiting a moment.
+“He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love....
+Good-bye, Dounia.”
+Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.
+“But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that
+you... give me such a parting message?”
+“Never mind.... Good-bye.”
+He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked at
+him uneasily, and went out troubled.
+No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one)
+when he had longed to take her in his arms and _say good-bye_ to her,
+and even _to tell_ her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.
+“Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and
+will feel that I stole her kiss.”
+“And would _she_ stand that test?” he went on a few minutes later to
+himself. “No, she wouldn’t; girls like that can’t stand things! They
+never do.”
+And he thought of Sonia.
+There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was
+fading. He took up his cap and went out.
+He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all
+this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And
+if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this
+continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession
+of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long.
+He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had
+begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute
+about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it;
+it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a
+foretaste of an eternity “on a square yard of space.” Towards evening
+this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.
+“With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or
+something, one can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Dounia,
+as well as to Sonia,” he muttered bitterly.
+He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to
+him.
+“Only fancy, I’ve been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she’s
+carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya Semyonovna and
+I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making
+the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the
+cross-roads and in front of shops; there’s a crowd of fools running
+after them. Come along!”
+“And Sonia?” Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.
+“Simply frantic. That is, it’s not Sofya Semyonovna’s frantic, but
+Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova’s frantic too. But Katerina
+Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They’ll be
+taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have....
+They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Sofya
+Semyonovna’s, quite close.”
+On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one
+where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally
+of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina Ivanovna could
+be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle
+likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna in her old dress
+with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way
+on one side, was really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her
+wasted consumptive face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out
+of doors in the sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home.
+But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew
+more intense. She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed
+them, told them before the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began
+explaining to them why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by
+their not understanding, beat them.... Then she would make a rush at the
+crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she
+immediately appealed to him to see what these children “from a genteel,
+one may say aristocratic, house” had been brought to. If she heard
+laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the scoffers
+and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their
+heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the madwoman with the
+frightened children. The frying-pan of which Lebeziatnikov had spoken
+was not there, at least Raskolnikov did not see it. But instead of
+rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began clapping her wasted hands,
+when she made Lida and Kolya dance and Polenka sing. She too joined in
+the singing, but broke down at the second note with a fearful cough,
+which made her curse in despair and even shed tears. What made her most
+furious was the weeping and terror of Kolya and Lida. Some effort had
+been made to dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The
+boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look like a Turk.
+There had been no costume for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap,
+or rather a night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with
+a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Katerina
+Ivanovna’s grandmother’s and had been preserved as a family possession.
+Polenka was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her
+mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her
+mother’s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was terribly
+frightened of the street and the crowd. Sonia followed Katerina
+Ivanovna, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Katerina
+Ivanovna was not to be persuaded.
+“Leave off, Sonia, leave off,” she shouted, speaking fast, panting and
+coughing. “You don’t know what you ask; you are like a child! I’ve
+told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German. Let
+everyone, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets,
+though their father was an honourable man who served all his life in
+truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the service.” (Katerina
+Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly
+believed it.) “Let that wretch of a general see it! And you are silly,
+Sonia: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I
+won’t go on so! Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, is that you?” she cried, seeing
+Raskolnikov and rushing up to him. “Explain to this silly girl, please,
+that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn their
+living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are
+an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary. And that general
+will lose his post, you’ll see! We shall perform under his windows every
+day, and if the Tsar drives by, I’ll fall on my knees, put the children
+before me, show them to him, and say ‘Defend us father.’ He is the
+father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he’ll protect us, you’ll
+see, and that wretch of a general.... Lida, _tenez vous droite_! Kolya,
+you’ll dance again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What
+are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to do with them, Rodion
+Romanovitch? If you only knew how stupid they are! What’s one to do with
+such children?”
+And she, almost crying herself--which did not stop her uninterrupted,
+rapid flow of talk--pointed to the crying children. Raskolnikov tried
+to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her vanity,
+that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like
+an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a
+boarding-school.
+“A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,” cried Katerina
+Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. “No, Rodion Romanovitch, that
+dream is over! All have forsaken us!... And that general.... You know,
+Rodion Romanovitch, I threw an inkpot at him--it happened to be standing
+in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my
+name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels!
+But enough of them, now I’ll provide for the children myself, I won’t
+bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for us!” she pointed
+to Sonia. “Polenka, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two
+farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after
+us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing
+at?” (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) “It’s all because Kolya here
+is so stupid; I have such a bother with him. What do you want, Polenka?
+Tell me in French, _parlez-moi français_. Why, I’ve taught you, you know
+some phrases. Else how are you to show that you are of good family, well
+brought-up children, and not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren’t
+going to have a Punch and Judy show in the street, but to sing a genteel
+song.... Ah, yes,... What are we to sing? You keep putting me out,
+but we... you see, we are standing here, Rodion Romanovitch, to find
+something to sing and get money, something Kolya can dance to.... For,
+as you can fancy, our performance is all impromptu.... We must talk it
+over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky,
+where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be noticed
+at once. Lida knows ‘My Village’ only, nothing but ‘My Village,’ and
+everyone sings that. We must sing something far more genteel.... Well,
+have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only you’d help your mother!
+My memory’s quite gone, or I should have thought of something. We really
+can’t sing ‘An Hussar.’ Ah, let us sing in French, ‘Cinq sous,’ I have
+taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will
+see at once that you are children of good family, and that will be much
+more touching.... You might sing ‘Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre,’
+for that’s quite a child’s song and is sung as a lullaby in all the
+aristocratic houses.
+“_Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre Ne sait quand reviendra_...”
+she began singing. “But no, better sing ‘Cinq sous.’ Now, Kolya, your
+hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other
+way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!
+“_Cinq sous, cinq sous Pour monter notre menage_.”
+(Cough-cough-cough!) “Set your dress straight, Polenka, it’s slipped
+down on your shoulders,” she observed, panting from coughing. “Now it’s
+particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all may
+see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice
+should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your fault, Sonia,
+with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is quite
+deformed by it.... Why, you’re all crying again! What’s the matter,
+stupids? Come, Kolya, begin. Make haste, make haste! Oh, what an
+unbearable child!
+“Cinq sous, cinq sous.
+“A policeman again! What do you want?”
+A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that
+moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat--a solid-looking
+official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which delighted
+Katerina Ivanovna and had its effect on the policeman)--approached and
+without a word handed her a green three-rouble note. His face wore
+a look of genuine sympathy. Katerina Ivanovna took it and gave him a
+polite, even ceremonious, bow.
+“I thank you, honoured sir,” she began loftily. “The causes that have
+induced us (take the money, Polenka: you see there are generous and
+honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in distress).
+You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family--I might even say of
+aristocratic connections--and that wretch of a general sat eating
+grouse... and stamped at my disturbing him. ‘Your excellency,’ I said,
+‘protect the orphans, for you knew my late husband, Semyon Zaharovitch,
+and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his
+only daughter.’... That policeman again! Protect me,” she cried to the
+official. “Why is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run
+away from one of them. What do you want, fool?”
+“It’s forbidden in the streets. You mustn’t make a disturbance.”
+“It’s you’re making a disturbance. It’s just the same as if I were
+grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?”
+“You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven’t got one, and in
+that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?”
+“What, a license?” wailed Katerina Ivanovna. “I buried my husband
+to-day. What need of a license?”
+“Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself,” began the official. “Come along;
+I will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd. You are
+ill.”
+“Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don’t know,” screamed Katerina
+Ivanovna. “We are going to the Nevsky.... Sonia, Sonia! Where is she?
+She is crying too! What’s the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida, where
+are you going?” she cried suddenly in alarm. “Oh, silly children! Kolya,
+Lida, where are they off to?...”
+Kolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their
+mother’s mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off
+at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere.
+Weeping and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them. She was
+a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and panting for
+breath. Sonia and Polenka rushed after them.
+“Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful
+children!... Polenka! catch them.... It’s for your sakes I...”
+She stumbled as she ran and fell down.
+“She’s cut herself, she’s bleeding! Oh, dear!” cried Sonia, bending over
+her.
+All ran up and crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the
+first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the
+policeman who muttered, “Bother!” with a gesture of impatience, feeling
+that the job was going to be a troublesome one.
+“Pass on! Pass on!” he said to the crowd that pressed forward.
+“She’s dying,” someone shouted.
+“She’s gone out of her mind,” said another.
+“Lord have mercy upon us,” said a woman, crossing herself. “Have they
+caught the little girl and the boy? They’re being brought back, the
+elder one’s got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!”
+When they examined Katerina Ivanovna carefully, they saw that she had
+not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood
+that stained the pavement red was from her chest.
+“I’ve seen that before,” muttered the official to Raskolnikov and
+Lebeziatnikov; “that’s consumption; the blood flows and chokes the
+patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago...
+nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What’s to be done though?
+She is dying.”
+“This way, this way, to my room!” Sonia implored. “I live here!... See,
+that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste,” she turned
+from one to the other. “Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!”
+Thanks to the official’s efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman
+even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia’s
+room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still
+flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself. Raskolnikov,
+Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and were
+followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed
+to the very door. Polenka came in holding Kolya and Lida, who
+were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the
+Kapernaumovs’ room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange
+appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his
+wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several
+open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these,
+Svidrigaïlov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked at him
+with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having
+noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The
+official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now
+for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran
+himself.
+Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased
+for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at
+Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with
+a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the
+bed, supporting her on both sides.
+“Where are the children?” she said in a faint voice. “You’ve brought
+them, Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!”
+Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes,
+looking about her.
+“So that’s how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room.”
+She looked at her with a face of suffering.
+“We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well,
+here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I’ve had
+enough! The ball is over.” (Cough!) “Lay me down, let me die in peace.”
+They laid her back on the pillow.
+“What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a rouble to spare.
+I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have
+suffered.... And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!”
+She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,
+turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute,
+but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and
+difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.
+“I said to him, your excellency,” she ejaculated, gasping after each
+word. “That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips,
+make haste! _Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!_ Tap with your heels, be a
+graceful child!
+“_Du hast Diamanten und Perlen_
+“What next? That’s the thing to sing.
+“_Du hast die schönsten Augen Mädchen, was willst du mehr?_
+“What an idea! _Was willst du mehr?_ What things the fool invents! Ah,
+yes!
+“In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.
+“Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your
+father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those
+days! Oh that’s the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I’ve
+forgotten. Remind me! How was it?”
+She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly
+hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word,
+with a look of growing terror.
+“In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in
+my breast!...”
+“Your excellency!” she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and
+a flood of tears, “protect the orphans! You have been their father’s
+guest... one may say aristocratic....” She started, regaining
+consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once
+recognised Sonia.
+“Sonia, Sonia!” she articulated softly and caressingly, as though
+surprised to find her there. “Sonia darling, are you here, too?”
+They lifted her up again.
+“Enough! It’s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!”
+she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the
+pillow.
+She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long.
+Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg
+moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.
+Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless
+with her head pressed to the dead woman’s wasted bosom. Polenka threw
+herself at her mother’s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though
+Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling
+that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other’s
+little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened
+their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy
+dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.
+And how did “the certificate of merit” come to be on the bed beside
+Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.
+He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.
+“She is dead,” he said.
+“Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you,” said Svidrigaïlov,
+coming up to them.
+Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew.
+Svidrigaïlov drew Raskolnikov further away.
+“I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know
+it’s a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I
+will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good orphan asylum,
+and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming
+of age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about them. And I
+will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn’t she? So
+tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I am spending her ten thousand.”
+“What is your motive for such benevolence?” asked Raskolnikov.
+“Ah! you sceptical person!” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “I told you I had no
+need of that money. Won’t you admit that it’s simply done from humanity?
+She wasn’t ‘a louse,’ you know” (he pointed to the corner where the
+dead woman lay), “was she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you’ll
+agree, is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to
+die? And if I didn’t help them, Polenka would go the same way.”
+He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his
+eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing his own
+phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at
+Svidrigaïlov.
+“How do you know?” he whispered, hardly able to breathe.
+“Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich’s, the other side of the wall.
+Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and devoted
+friend of mine. I am a neighbour.”
+“You?”
+“Yes,” continued Svidrigaïlov, shaking with laughter. “I assure you
+on my honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that you have interested me
+enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well,
+here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am. You’ll
+see that you can get on with me!”
+PART VI
+CHAPTER I
+A strange period began for Raskolnikov: it was as though a fog had
+fallen upon him and wrapped him in a dreary solitude from which there
+was no escape. Recalling that period long after, he believed that his
+mind had been clouded at times, and that it had continued so, with
+intervals, till the final catastrophe. He was convinced that he had been
+mistaken about many things at that time, for instance as to the date
+of certain events. Anyway, when he tried later on to piece his
+recollections together, he learnt a great deal about himself from what
+other people told him. He had mixed up incidents and had explained
+events as due to circumstances which existed only in his imagination. At
+times he was a prey to agonies of morbid uneasiness, amounting sometimes
+to panic. But he remembered, too, moments, hours, perhaps whole days,
+of complete apathy, which came upon him as a reaction from his previous
+terror and might be compared with the abnormal insensibility, sometimes
+seen in the dying. He seemed to be trying in that latter stage to escape
+from a full and clear understanding of his position. Certain essential
+facts which required immediate consideration were particularly irksome
+to him. How glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the
+neglect of which would have threatened him with complete, inevitable
+ruin.
+He was particularly worried about Svidrigaïlov, he might be said to be
+permanently thinking of Svidrigaïlov. From the time of Svidrigaïlov’s
+too menacing and unmistakable words in Sonia’s room at the moment of
+Katerina Ivanovna’s death, the normal working of his mind seemed to
+break down. But although this new fact caused him extreme uneasiness,
+Raskolnikov was in no hurry for an explanation of it. At times, finding
+himself in a solitary and remote part of the town, in some wretched
+eating-house, sitting alone lost in thought, hardly knowing how he had
+come there, he suddenly thought of Svidrigaïlov. He recognised
+suddenly, clearly, and with dismay that he ought at once to come to an
+understanding with that man and to make what terms he could. Walking
+outside the city gates one day, he positively fancied that they had
+fixed a meeting there, that he was waiting for Svidrigaïlov. Another
+time he woke up before daybreak lying on the ground under some bushes
+and could not at first understand how he had come there.
+But during the two or three days after Katerina Ivanovna’s death, he
+had two or three times met Svidrigaïlov at Sonia’s lodging, where he
+had gone aimlessly for a moment. They exchanged a few words and made no
+reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly agreed not
+to speak of it for a time.
+Katerina Ivanovna’s body was still lying in the coffin, Svidrigaïlov was
+busy making arrangements for the funeral. Sonia too was very busy. At
+their last meeting Svidrigaïlov informed Raskolnikov that he had made
+an arrangement, and a very satisfactory one, for Katerina Ivanovna’s
+children; that he had, through certain connections, succeeded in getting
+hold of certain personages by whose help the three orphans could be at
+once placed in very suitable institutions; that the money he had settled
+on them had been of great assistance, as it is much easier to place
+orphans with some property than destitute ones. He said something
+too about Sonia and promised to come himself in a day or two to see
+Raskolnikov, mentioning that “he would like to consult with him, that
+there were things they must talk over....”
+This conversation took place in the passage on the stairs. Svidrigaïlov
+looked intently at Raskolnikov and suddenly, after a brief pause,
+dropping his voice, asked: “But how is it, Rodion Romanovitch; you
+don’t seem yourself? You look and you listen, but you don’t seem to
+understand. Cheer up! We’ll talk things over; I am only sorry, I’ve
+so much to do of my own business and other people’s. Ah, Rodion
+Romanovitch,” he added suddenly, “what all men need is fresh air, fresh
+air... more than anything!”
+He moved to one side to make way for the priest and server, who
+were coming up the stairs. They had come for the requiem service. By
+Svidrigaïlov’s orders it was sung twice a day punctually. Svidrigaïlov
+went his way. Raskolnikov stood still a moment, thought, and followed
+the priest into Sonia’s room. He stood at the door. They began quietly,
+slowly and mournfully singing the service. From his childhood the
+thought of death and the presence of death had something oppressive
+and mysteriously awful; and it was long since he had heard the requiem
+service. And there was something else here as well, too awful and
+disturbing. He looked at the children: they were all kneeling by the
+coffin; Polenka was weeping. Behind them Sonia prayed, softly and, as it
+were, timidly weeping.
+“These last two days she hasn’t said a word to me, she hasn’t glanced at
+me,” Raskolnikov thought suddenly. The sunlight was bright in the room;
+the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, “Give rest, oh Lord....”
+Raskolnikov stayed all through the service. As he blessed them and
+took his leave, the priest looked round strangely. After the service,
+Raskolnikov went up to Sonia. She took both his hands and let her
+head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly gesture bewildered
+Raskolnikov. It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of
+repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the
+furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he interpreted it.
+Sonia said nothing. Raskolnikov pressed her hand and went out. He felt
+very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some solitude, he
+would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend his whole life
+there. But although he had almost always been by himself of late, he had
+never been able to feel alone. Sometimes he walked out of the town on to
+the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier
+the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near
+him. It did not frighten him, but greatly annoyed him, so that he
+made haste to return to the town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter
+restaurants and taverns, to walk in busy thoroughfares. There he felt
+easier and even more solitary. One day at dusk he sat for an hour
+listening to songs in a tavern and he remembered that he positively
+enjoyed it. But at last he had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again,
+as though his conscience smote him. “Here I sit listening to singing,
+is that what I ought to be doing?” he thought. Yet he felt at once
+that that was not the only cause of his uneasiness; there was something
+requiring immediate decision, but it was something he could not clearly
+understand or put into words. It was a hopeless tangle. “No, better the
+struggle again! Better Porfiry again... or Svidrigaïlov.... Better some
+challenge again... some attack. Yes, yes!” he thought. He went out of
+the tavern and rushed away almost at a run. The thought of Dounia and
+his mother suddenly reduced him almost to a panic. That night he woke
+up before morning among some bushes in Krestovsky Island, trembling
+all over with fever; he walked home, and it was early morning when he
+arrived. After some hours’ sleep the fever left him, but he woke up
+late, two o’clock in the afternoon.
+He remembered that Katerina Ivanovna’s funeral had been fixed for that
+day, and was glad that he was not present at it. Nastasya brought him
+some food; he ate and drank with appetite, almost with greediness. His
+head was fresher and he was calmer than he had been for the last three
+days. He even felt a passing wonder at his previous attacks of panic.
+The door opened and Razumihin came in.
+“Ah, he’s eating, then he’s not ill,” said Razumihin. He took a chair
+and sat down at the table opposite Raskolnikov.
+He was troubled and did not attempt to conceal it. He spoke with evident
+annoyance, but without hurry or raising his voice. He looked as though
+he had some special fixed determination.
+“Listen,” he began resolutely. “As far as I am concerned, you may all go
+to hell, but from what I see, it’s clear to me that I can’t make head or
+tail of it; please don’t think I’ve come to ask you questions. I don’t
+want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your secrets, I dare say
+I shouldn’t stay to listen, I should go away cursing. I have only come
+to find out once for all whether it’s a fact that you are mad? There is
+a conviction in the air that you are mad or very nearly so. I admit
+I’ve been disposed to that opinion myself, judging from your stupid,
+repulsive and quite inexplicable actions, and from your recent behavior
+to your mother and sister. Only a monster or a madman could treat them
+as you have; so you must be mad.”
+“When did you see them last?”
+“Just now. Haven’t you seen them since then? What have you been doing
+with yourself? Tell me, please. I’ve been to you three times already.
+Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She had made up
+her mind to come to you; Avdotya Romanovna tried to prevent her; she
+wouldn’t hear a word. ‘If he is ill, if his mind is giving way, who can
+look after him like his mother?’ she said. We all came here together, we
+couldn’t let her come alone all the way. We kept begging her to be calm.
+We came in, you weren’t here; she sat down, and stayed ten minutes,
+while we stood waiting in silence. She got up and said: ‘If he’s
+gone out, that is, if he is well, and has forgotten his mother, it’s
+humiliating and unseemly for his mother to stand at his door begging for
+kindness.’ She returned home and took to her bed; now she is in a fever.
+‘I see,’ she said, ‘that he has time for _his girl_.’ She means by _your
+girl_ Sofya Semyonovna, your betrothed or your mistress, I don’t know. I
+went at once to Sofya Semyonovna’s, for I wanted to know what was going
+on. I looked round, I saw the coffin, the children crying, and
+Sofya Semyonovna trying them on mourning dresses. No sign of you. I
+apologised, came away, and reported to Avdotya Romanovna. So that’s all
+nonsense and you haven’t got a girl; the most likely thing is that you
+are mad. But here you sit, guzzling boiled beef as though you’d not had
+a bite for three days. Though as far as that goes, madmen eat too, but
+though you have not said a word to me yet... you are not mad! That I’d
+swear! Above all, you are not mad! So you may go to hell, all of you,
+for there’s some mystery, some secret about it, and I don’t intend to
+worry my brains over your secrets. So I’ve simply come to swear at you,”
+he finished, getting up, “to relieve my mind. And I know what to do
+now.”
+“What do you mean to do now?”
+“What business is it of yours what I mean to do?”
+“You are going in for a drinking bout.”
+“How... how did you know?”
+“Why, it’s pretty plain.”
+Razumihin paused for a minute.
+“You always have been a very rational person and you’ve never been mad,
+never,” he observed suddenly with warmth. “You’re right: I shall drink.
+Good-bye!”
+And he moved to go out.
+“I was talking with my sister--the day before yesterday, I think it
+was--about you, Razumihin.”
+“About me! But... where can you have seen her the day before yesterday?”
+Razumihin stopped short and even turned a little pale.
+One could see that his heart was throbbing slowly and violently.
+“She came here by herself, sat there and talked to me.”
+“She did!”
+“Yes.”
+“What did you say to her... I mean, about me?”
+“I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn’t
+tell her you love her, because she knows that herself.”
+“She knows that herself?”
+“Well, it’s pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened to me,
+you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give them into your
+keeping, Razumihin. I say this because I know quite well how you love
+her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know that she too
+may love you and perhaps does love you already. Now decide for yourself,
+as you know best, whether you need go in for a drinking bout or not.”
+“Rodya! You see... well.... Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to go?
+Of course, if it’s all a secret, never mind.... But I... I shall find
+out the secret... and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous nonsense
+and that you’ve made it all up. Anyway you are a capital fellow, a
+capital fellow!...”
+“That was just what I wanted to add, only you interrupted, that that was
+a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave it to
+time, don’t worry about it. You’ll know it all in time when it must be.
+Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh
+air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant
+by that.”
+Razumihin stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent
+conclusion.
+“He’s a political conspirator! He must be. And he’s on the eve of some
+desperate step, that’s certain. It can only be that! And... and Dounia
+knows,” he thought suddenly.
+“So Avdotya Romanovna comes to see you,” he said, weighing each
+syllable, “and you’re going to see a man who says we need more air, and
+so of course that letter... that too must have something to do with it,”
+he concluded to himself.
+“What letter?”
+“She got a letter to-day. It upset her very much--very much indeed. Too
+much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to. Then... then
+she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part... then she began
+warmly thanking me for something; then she went to her room and locked
+herself in.”
+“She got a letter?” Raskolnikov asked thoughtfully.
+“Yes, and you didn’t know? hm...”
+They were both silent.
+“Good-bye, Rodion. There was a time, brother, when I.... Never mind,
+good-bye. You see, there was a time.... Well, good-bye! I must be off
+too. I am not going to drink. There’s no need now.... That’s all stuff!”
+He hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him, he
+suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away:
+“Oh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Porfiry’s, that
+old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has confessed
+and given the proofs. It’s one of those very workmen, the painter, only
+fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you believe it, all
+that scene of fighting and laughing with his companions on the stairs
+while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he got up on
+purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of mind of the
+young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it’s his own explanation, he
+has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about it! Well, he’s simply
+a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in disarming the suspicions of
+the lawyers--so there’s nothing much to wonder at, I suppose! Of course
+people like that are always possible. And the fact that he couldn’t keep
+up the character, but confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But
+what a fool I was! I was frantic on their side!”
+“Tell me, please, from whom did you hear that, and why does it interest
+you so?” Raskolnikov asked with unmistakable agitation.
+“What next? You ask me why it interests me!... Well, I heard it from
+Porfiry, among others... It was from him I heard almost all about it.”
+“From Porfiry?”
+“From Porfiry.”
+“What... what did he say?” Raskolnikov asked in dismay.
+“He gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after his
+fashion.”
+“He explained it? Explained it himself?”
+“Yes, yes; good-bye. I’ll tell you all about it another time, but now
+I’m busy. There was a time when I fancied... But no matter, another
+time!... What need is there for me to drink now? You have made me drunk
+without wine. I am drunk, Rodya! Good-bye, I’m going. I’ll come again
+very soon.”
+He went out.
+“He’s a political conspirator, there’s not a doubt about it,” Razumihin
+decided, as he slowly descended the stairs. “And he’s drawn his sister
+in; that’s quite, quite in keeping with Avdotya Romanovna’s character.
+There are interviews between them!... She hinted at it too... So many of
+her words.... and hints... bear that meaning! And how else can all this
+tangle be explained? Hm! And I was almost thinking... Good heavens,
+what I thought! Yes, I took leave of my senses and I wronged him! It was
+his doing, under the lamp in the corridor that day. Pfoo! What a crude,
+nasty, vile idea on my part! Nikolay is a brick, for confessing.... And
+how clear it all is now! His illness then, all his strange actions...
+before this, in the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy....
+But what’s the meaning now of that letter? There’s something in that,
+too, perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect...! No, I must find out!”
+He thought of Dounia, realising all he had heard and his heart throbbed,
+and he suddenly broke into a run.
+As soon as Razumihin went out, Raskolnikov got up, turned to the window,
+walked into one corner and then into another, as though forgetting the
+smallness of his room, and sat down again on the sofa. He felt, so to
+speak, renewed; again the struggle, so a means of escape had come.
+“Yes, a means of escape had come! It had been too stifling, too
+cramping, the burden had been too agonising. A lethargy had come upon
+him at times. From the moment of the scene with Nikolay at Porfiry’s he
+had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape. After Nikolay’s
+confession, on that very day had come the scene with Sonia; his
+behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike anything he
+could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler, instantly and
+fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Sonia, he had agreed
+in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his
+mind!
+“And Svidrigaïlov was a riddle... He worried him, that was true, but
+somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to come
+with Svidrigaïlov. Svidrigaïlov, too, might be a means of escape; but
+Porfiry was a different matter.
+“And so Porfiry himself had explained it to Razumihin, had explained it
+_psychologically_. He had begun bringing in his damned psychology again!
+Porfiry? But to think that Porfiry should for one moment believe that
+Nikolay was guilty, after what had passed between them before Nikolay’s
+appearance, after that tête-à-tête interview, which could have only
+_one_ explanation? (During those days Raskolnikov had often recalled
+passages in that scene with Porfiry; he could not bear to let his mind
+rest on it.) Such words, such gestures had passed between them, they
+had exchanged such glances, things had been said in such a tone and had
+reached such a pass, that Nikolay, whom Porfiry had seen through at the
+first word, at the first gesture, could not have shaken his conviction.
+“And to think that even Razumihin had begun to suspect! The scene in the
+corridor under the lamp had produced its effect then. He had rushed to
+Porfiry.... But what had induced the latter to receive him like that?
+What had been his object in putting Razumihin off with Nikolay? He must
+have some plan; there was some design, but what was it? It was true that
+a long time had passed since that morning--too long a time--and no sight
+nor sound of Porfiry. Well, that was a bad sign....”
+Raskolnikov took his cap and went out of the room, still pondering. It
+was the first time for a long while that he had felt clear in his mind,
+at least. “I must settle Svidrigaïlov,” he thought, “and as soon as
+possible; he, too, seems to be waiting for me to come to him of my own
+accord.” And at that moment there was such a rush of hate in his
+weary heart that he might have killed either of those two--Porfiry or
+Svidrigaïlov. At least he felt that he would be capable of doing it
+later, if not now.
+“We shall see, we shall see,” he repeated to himself.
+But no sooner had he opened the door than he stumbled upon Porfiry
+himself in the passage. He was coming in to see him. Raskolnikov was
+dumbfounded for a minute, but only for one minute. Strange to say, he
+was not very much astonished at seeing Porfiry and scarcely afraid of
+him. He was simply startled, but was quickly, instantly, on his guard.
+“Perhaps this will mean the end? But how could Porfiry have approached
+so quietly, like a cat, so that he had heard nothing? Could he have been
+listening at the door?”
+“You didn’t expect a visitor, Rodion Romanovitch,” Porfiry explained,
+laughing. “I’ve been meaning to look in a long time; I was passing by
+and thought why not go in for five minutes. Are you going out? I won’t
+keep you long. Just let me have one cigarette.”
+“Sit down, Porfiry Petrovitch, sit down.” Raskolnikov gave his visitor
+a seat with so pleased and friendly an expression that he would have
+marvelled at himself, if he could have seen it.
+The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man
+will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand,
+yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.
+Raskolnikov seated himself directly facing Porfiry, and looked at him
+without flinching. Porfiry screwed up his eyes and began lighting a
+cigarette.
+“Speak, speak,” seemed as though it would burst from Raskolnikov’s
+heart. “Come, why don’t you speak?”
+CHAPTER II
+“Ah these cigarettes!” Porfiry Petrovitch ejaculated at last, having
+lighted one. “They are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I
+can’t give them up! I cough, I begin to have tickling in my throat and
+a difficulty in breathing. You know I am a coward, I went lately to
+Dr. B----n; he always gives at least half an hour to each patient. He
+positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me: ‘Tobacco’s bad for
+you,’ he said, ‘your lungs are affected.’ But how am I to give it up?
+What is there to take its place? I don’t drink, that’s the mischief,
+he-he-he, that I don’t. Everything is relative, Rodion Romanovitch,
+everything is relative!”
+“Why, he’s playing his professional tricks again,” Raskolnikov thought
+with disgust. All the circumstances of their last interview suddenly
+came back to him, and he felt a rush of the feeling that had come upon
+him then.
+“I came to see you the day before yesterday, in the evening; you didn’t
+know?” Porfiry Petrovitch went on, looking round the room. “I came into
+this very room. I was passing by, just as I did to-day, and I thought
+I’d return your call. I walked in as your door was wide open, I looked
+round, waited and went out without leaving my name with your servant.
+Don’t you lock your door?”
+Raskolnikov’s face grew more and more gloomy. Porfiry seemed to guess
+his state of mind.
+“I’ve come to have it out with you, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow!
+I owe you an explanation and must give it to you,” he continued with a
+slight smile, just patting Raskolnikov’s knee.
+But almost at the same instant a serious and careworn look came into his
+face; to his surprise Raskolnikov saw a touch of sadness in it. He had
+never seen and never suspected such an expression in his face.
+“A strange scene passed between us last time we met, Rodion Romanovitch.
+Our first interview, too, was a strange one; but then... and one thing
+after another! This is the point: I have perhaps acted unfairly to you;
+I feel it. Do you remember how we parted? Your nerves were unhinged and
+your knees were shaking and so were mine. And, you know, our behaviour
+was unseemly, even ungentlemanly. And yet we are gentlemen, above all,
+in any case, gentlemen; that must be understood. Do you remember what we
+came to?... and it was quite indecorous.”
+“What is he up to, what does he take me for?” Raskolnikov asked himself
+in amazement, raising his head and looking with open eyes on Porfiry.
+“I’ve decided openness is better between us,” Porfiry Petrovitch went
+on, turning his head away and dropping his eyes, as though unwilling to
+disconcert his former victim and as though disdaining his former wiles.
+“Yes, such suspicions and such scenes cannot continue for long. Nikolay
+put a stop to it, or I don’t know what we might not have come to. That
+damned workman was sitting at the time in the next room--can you realise
+that? You know that, of course; and I am aware that he came to you
+afterwards. But what you supposed then was not true: I had not sent for
+anyone, I had made no kind of arrangements. You ask why I hadn’t? What
+shall I say to you? it had all come upon me so suddenly. I had scarcely
+sent for the porters (you noticed them as you went out, I dare say).
+An idea flashed upon me; I was firmly convinced at the time, you see,
+Rodion Romanovitch. Come, I thought--even if I let one thing slip for
+a time, I shall get hold of something else--I shan’t lose what I want,
+anyway. You are nervously irritable, Rodion Romanovitch, by temperament;
+it’s out of proportion with other qualities of your heart and character,
+which I flatter myself I have to some extent divined. Of course I did
+reflect even then that it does not always happen that a man gets up and
+blurts out his whole story. It does happen sometimes, if you make a
+man lose all patience, though even then it’s rare. I was capable of
+realising that. If I only had a fact, I thought, the least little fact
+to go upon, something I could lay hold of, something tangible, not
+merely psychological. For if a man is guilty, you must be able to get
+something substantial out of him; one may reckon upon most surprising
+results indeed. I was reckoning on your temperament, Rodion Romanovitch,
+on your temperament above all things! I had great hopes of you at that
+time.”
+“But what are you driving at now?” Raskolnikov muttered at last, asking
+the question without thinking.
+“What is he talking about?” he wondered distractedly, “does he really
+take me to be innocent?”
+“What am I driving at? I’ve come to explain myself, I consider it my
+duty, so to speak. I want to make clear to you how the whole business,
+the whole misunderstanding arose. I’ve caused you a great deal of
+suffering, Rodion Romanovitch. I am not a monster. I understand what
+it must mean for a man who has been unfortunate, but who is proud,
+imperious and above all, impatient, to have to bear such treatment!
+I regard you in any case as a man of noble character and not without
+elements of magnanimity, though I don’t agree with all your convictions.
+I wanted to tell you this first, frankly and quite sincerely, for above
+all I don’t want to deceive you. When I made your acquaintance, I felt
+attracted by you. Perhaps you will laugh at my saying so. You have a
+right to. I know you disliked me from the first and indeed you’ve no
+reason to like me. You may think what you like, but I desire now to do
+all I can to efface that impression and to show that I am a man of heart
+and conscience. I speak sincerely.”
+Porfiry Petrovitch made a dignified pause. Raskolnikov felt a rush of
+renewed alarm. The thought that Porfiry believed him to be innocent
+began to make him uneasy.
+“It’s scarcely necessary to go over everything in detail,” Porfiry
+Petrovitch went on. “Indeed, I could scarcely attempt it. To begin with
+there were rumours. Through whom, how, and when those rumours came to
+me... and how they affected you, I need not go into. My suspicions
+were aroused by a complete accident, which might just as easily not have
+happened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no need to go into that
+either. Those rumours and that accident led to one idea in my mind. I
+admit it openly--for one may as well make a clean breast of it--I was
+the first to pitch on you. The old woman’s notes on the pledges and
+the rest of it--that all came to nothing. Yours was one of a hundred.
+I happened, too, to hear of the scene at the office, from a man who
+described it capitally, unconsciously reproducing the scene with great
+vividness. It was just one thing after another, Rodion Romanovitch, my
+dear fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas? From a
+hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make
+a proof, as the English proverb says, but that’s only from the rational
+point of view--you can’t help being partial, for after all a lawyer
+is only human. I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you
+remember, on your first visit we talked of it? I jeered at you at the
+time, but that was only to lead you on. I repeat, Rodion Romanovitch,
+you are ill and impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest
+and... had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt
+the same, so that your article seemed familiar to me. It was conceived
+on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy and suppressed
+enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthusiasm in young people is
+dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a literary
+amateur, I am awfully fond of such first essays, full of the heat of
+youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your
+article is absurd and fantastic, but there’s a transparent sincerity,
+a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It’s a
+gloomy article, but that’s what’s fine in it. I read your article and
+put it aside, thinking as I did so ‘that man won’t go the common way.’
+Well, I ask you, after that as a preliminary, how could I help being
+carried away by what followed? Oh, dear, I am not saying anything, I
+am not making any statement now. I simply noted it at the time. What is
+there in it? I reflected. There’s nothing in it, that is really nothing
+and perhaps absolutely nothing. And it’s not at all the thing for
+the prosecutor to let himself be carried away by notions: here I have
+Nikolay on my hands with actual evidence against him--you may think what
+you like of it, but it’s evidence. He brings in his psychology, too; one
+has to consider him, too, for it’s a matter of life and death. Why am
+I explaining this to you? That you may understand, and not blame my
+malicious behaviour on that occasion. It was not malicious, I assure
+you, he-he! Do you suppose I didn’t come to search your room at the
+time? I did, I did, he-he! I was here when you were lying ill in bed,
+not officially, not in my own person, but I was here. Your room was
+searched to the last thread at the first suspicion; but _umsonst_! I
+thought to myself, now that man will come, will come of himself and
+quickly, too; if he’s guilty, he’s sure to come. Another man wouldn’t,
+but he will. And you remember how Mr. Razumihin began discussing the
+subject with you? We arranged that to excite you, so we purposely spread
+rumours, that he might discuss the case with you, and Razumihin is not a
+man to restrain his indignation. Mr. Zametov was tremendously struck by
+your anger and your open daring. Think of blurting out in a restaurant
+‘I killed her.’ It was too daring, too reckless. I thought so myself, if
+he is guilty he will be a formidable opponent. That was what I thought
+at the time. I was expecting you. But you simply bowled Zametov over
+and... well, you see, it all lies in this--that this damnable psychology
+can be taken two ways! Well, I kept expecting you, and so it was, you
+came! My heart was fairly throbbing. Ach!
+“Now, why need you have come? Your laughter, too, as you came in, do you
+remember? I saw it all plain as daylight, but if I hadn’t expected you
+so specially, I should not have noticed anything in your laughter. You
+see what influence a mood has! Mr. Razumihin then--ah, that stone, that
+stone under which the things were hidden! I seem to see it somewhere
+in a kitchen garden. It was in a kitchen garden, you told Zametov and
+afterwards you repeated that in my office? And when we began picking
+your article to pieces, how you explained it! One could take every word
+of yours in two senses, as though there were another meaning hidden.
+“So in this way, Rodion Romanovitch, I reached the furthest limit, and
+knocking my head against a post, I pulled myself up, asking myself what
+I was about. After all, I said, you can take it all in another sense if
+you like, and it’s more natural so, indeed. I couldn’t help admitting
+it was more natural. I was bothered! ‘No, I’d better get hold of some
+little fact’ I said. So when I heard of the bell-ringing, I held my
+breath and was all in a tremor. ‘Here is my little fact,’ thought I, and
+I didn’t think it over, I simply wouldn’t. I would have given a thousand
+roubles at that minute to have seen you with my own eyes, when you
+walked a hundred paces beside that workman, after he had called you
+murderer to your face, and you did not dare to ask him a question
+all the way. And then what about your trembling, what about your
+bell-ringing in your illness, in semi-delirium?
+“And so, Rodion Romanovitch, can you wonder that I played such pranks on
+you? And what made you come at that very minute? Someone seemed to
+have sent you, by Jove! And if Nikolay had not parted us... and do you
+remember Nikolay at the time? Do you remember him clearly? It was a
+thunderbolt, a regular thunderbolt! And how I met him! I didn’t believe
+in the thunderbolt, not for a minute. You could see it for yourself;
+and how could I? Even afterwards, when you had gone and he began making
+very, very plausible answers on certain points, so that I was surprised
+at him myself, even then I didn’t believe his story! You see what it is
+to be as firm as a rock! No, thought I, _Morgenfrüh_. What has Nikolay
+got to do with it!”
+“Razumihin told me just now that you think Nikolay guilty and had
+yourself assured him of it....”
+His voice failed him, and he broke off. He had been listening in
+indescribable agitation, as this man who had seen through and through
+him, went back upon himself. He was afraid of believing it and did not
+believe it. In those still ambiguous words he kept eagerly looking for
+something more definite and conclusive.
+“Mr. Razumihin!” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, seeming glad of a question
+from Raskolnikov, who had till then been silent. “He-he-he! But I had to
+put Mr. Razumihin off; two is company, three is none. Mr. Razumihin is
+not the right man, besides he is an outsider. He came running to me
+with a pale face.... But never mind him, why bring him in? To return
+to Nikolay, would you like to know what sort of a type he is, how I
+understand him, that is? To begin with, he is still a child and not
+exactly a coward, but something by way of an artist. Really, don’t laugh
+at my describing him so. He is innocent and responsive to influence. He
+has a heart, and is a fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells
+stories, they say, so that people come from other villages to hear him.
+He attends school too, and laughs till he cries if you hold up a finger
+to him; he will drink himself senseless--not as a regular vice, but at
+times, when people treat him, like a child. And he stole, too, then,
+without knowing it himself, for ‘How can it be stealing, if one picks it
+up?’ And do you know he is an Old Believer, or rather a dissenter? There
+have been Wanderers[*] in his family, and he was for two years in his
+village under the spiritual guidance of a certain elder. I learnt all
+this from Nikolay and from his fellow villagers. And what’s more, he
+wanted to run into the wilderness! He was full of fervour, prayed at
+night, read the old books, ‘the true’ ones, and read himself crazy.
+[*] A religious sect.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
+“Petersburg had a great effect upon him, especially the women and the
+wine. He responds to everything and he forgot the elder and all that. I
+learnt that an artist here took a fancy to him, and used to go and see
+him, and now this business came upon him.
+“Well, he was frightened, he tried to hang himself! He ran away! How can
+one get over the idea the people have of Russian legal proceedings? The
+very word ‘trial’ frightens some of them. Whose fault is it? We shall
+see what the new juries will do. God grant they do good! Well, in
+prison, it seems, he remembered the venerable elder; the Bible, too,
+made its appearance again. Do you know, Rodion Romanovitch, the force of
+the word ‘suffering’ among some of these people! It’s not a question of
+suffering for someone’s benefit, but simply, ‘one must suffer.’ If they
+suffer at the hands of the authorities, so much the better. In my time
+there was a very meek and mild prisoner who spent a whole year in prison
+always reading his Bible on the stove at night and he read himself
+crazy, and so crazy, do you know, that one day, apropos of nothing, he
+seized a brick and flung it at the governor; though he had done him
+no harm. And the way he threw it too: aimed it a yard on one side
+on purpose, for fear of hurting him. Well, we know what happens to
+a prisoner who assaults an officer with a weapon. So ‘he took his
+suffering.’
+“So I suspect now that Nikolay wants to take his suffering or something
+of the sort. I know it for certain from facts, indeed. Only he doesn’t
+know that I know. What, you don’t admit that there are such fantastic
+people among the peasants? Lots of them. The elder now has begun
+influencing him, especially since he tried to hang himself. But he’ll
+come and tell me all himself. You think he’ll hold out? Wait a bit,
+he’ll take his words back. I am waiting from hour to hour for him to
+come and abjure his evidence. I have come to like that Nikolay and am
+studying him in detail. And what do you think? He-he! He answered me
+very plausibly on some points, he obviously had collected some evidence
+and prepared himself cleverly. But on other points he is simply at sea,
+knows nothing and doesn’t even suspect that he doesn’t know!
+“No, Rodion Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn’t come in! This is a fantastic,
+gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart
+of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood ‘renews,’ when
+comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a
+heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage,
+but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over
+a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the
+crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for
+a theory. He committed the murder and couldn’t take the money, and what
+he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn’t enough for
+him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and
+rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to
+recall the bell-ringing, he wanted to feel the cold shiver over again....
+Well, that we grant, was through illness, but consider this: he is
+a murderer, but looks upon himself as an honest man, despises others,
+poses as injured innocence. No, that’s not the work of a Nikolay, my
+dear Rodion Romanovitch!”
+All that had been said before had sounded so like a recantation that
+these words were too great a shock. Raskolnikov shuddered as though he
+had been stabbed.
+“Then... who then... is the murderer?” he asked in a breathless voice,
+unable to restrain himself.
+Porfiry Petrovitch sank back in his chair, as though he were amazed at
+the question.
+“Who is the murderer?” he repeated, as though unable to believe his
+ears. “Why, _you_, Rodion Romanovitch! You are the murderer,” he added,
+almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction.
+Raskolnikov leapt from the sofa, stood up for a few seconds and sat down
+again without uttering a word. His face twitched convulsively.
+“Your lip is twitching just as it did before,” Porfiry Petrovitch
+observed almost sympathetically. “You’ve been misunderstanding me, I
+think, Rodion Romanovitch,” he added after a brief pause, “that’s why
+you are so surprised. I came on purpose to tell you everything and deal
+openly with you.”
+“It was not I murdered her,” Raskolnikov whispered like a frightened
+child caught in the act.
+“No, it was you, you Rodion Romanovitch, and no one else,” Porfiry
+whispered sternly, with conviction.
+They were both silent and the silence lasted strangely long, about ten
+minutes. Raskolnikov put his elbow on the table and passed his fingers
+through his hair. Porfiry Petrovitch sat quietly waiting. Suddenly
+Raskolnikov looked scornfully at Porfiry.
+“You are at your old tricks again, Porfiry Petrovitch! Your old method
+again. I wonder you don’t get sick of it!”
+“Oh, stop that, what does that matter now? It would be a different
+matter if there were witnesses present, but we are whispering alone. You
+see yourself that I have not come to chase and capture you like a hare.
+Whether you confess it or not is nothing to me now; for myself, I am
+convinced without it.”
+“If so, what did you come for?” Raskolnikov asked irritably. “I ask you
+the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why don’t you take
+me to prison?”
+“Oh, that’s your question! I will answer you, point for point. In the
+first place, to arrest you so directly is not to my interest.”
+“How so? If you are convinced you ought....”
+“Ach, what if I am convinced? That’s only my dream for the time. Why
+should I put you in safety? You know that’s it, since you ask me to do
+it. If I confront you with that workman for instance and you say to him
+‘were you drunk or not? Who saw me with you? I simply took you to be
+drunk, and you were drunk, too.’ Well, what could I answer, especially
+as your story is a more likely one than his? for there’s nothing but
+psychology to support his evidence--that’s almost unseemly with his ugly
+mug, while you hit the mark exactly, for the rascal is an inveterate
+drunkard and notoriously so. And I have myself admitted candidly several
+times already that that psychology can be taken in two ways and that the
+second way is stronger and looks far more probable, and that apart from
+that I have as yet nothing against you. And though I shall put you in
+prison and indeed have come--quite contrary to etiquette--to inform you
+of it beforehand, yet I tell you frankly, also contrary to etiquette,
+that it won’t be to my advantage. Well, secondly, I’ve come to you
+because...”
+“Yes, yes, secondly?” Raskolnikov was listening breathless.
+“Because, as I told you just now, I consider I owe you an explanation. I
+don’t want you to look upon me as a monster, as I have a genuine liking
+for you, you may believe me or not. And in the third place I’ve come to
+you with a direct and open proposition--that you should surrender
+and confess. It will be infinitely more to your advantage and to my
+advantage too, for my task will be done. Well, is this open on my part
+or not?”
+Raskolnikov thought a minute.
+“Listen, Porfiry Petrovitch. You said just now you have nothing but
+psychology to go on, yet now you’ve gone on mathematics. Well, what if
+you are mistaken yourself, now?”
+“No, Rodion Romanovitch, I am not mistaken. I have a little fact even
+then, Providence sent it me.”
+“What little fact?”
+“I won’t tell you what, Rodion Romanovitch. And in any case, I haven’t
+the right to put it off any longer, I must arrest you. So think it over:
+it makes no difference to me _now_ and so I speak only for your sake.
+Believe me, it will be better, Rodion Romanovitch.”
+Raskolnikov smiled malignantly.
+“That’s not simply ridiculous, it’s positively shameless. Why, even if I
+were guilty, which I don’t admit, what reason should I have to confess,
+when you tell me yourself that I shall be in greater safety in prison?”
+“Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, don’t put too much faith in words, perhaps
+prison will not be altogether a restful place. That’s only theory and
+my theory, and what authority am I for you? Perhaps, too, even now I am
+hiding something from you? I can’t lay bare everything, he-he! And how
+can you ask what advantage? Don’t you know how it would lessen your
+sentence? You would be confessing at a moment when another man has taken
+the crime on himself and so has muddled the whole case. Consider that! I
+swear before God that I will so arrange that your confession shall
+come as a complete surprise. We will make a clean sweep of all these
+psychological points, of a suspicion against you, so that your crime
+will appear to have been something like an aberration, for in truth it
+was an aberration. I am an honest man, Rodion Romanovitch, and will keep
+my word.”
+Raskolnikov maintained a mournful silence and let his head sink
+dejectedly. He pondered a long while and at last smiled again, but his
+smile was sad and gentle.
+“No!” he said, apparently abandoning all attempt to keep up appearances
+with Porfiry, “it’s not worth it, I don’t care about lessening the
+sentence!”
+“That’s just what I was afraid of!” Porfiry cried warmly and, as it
+seemed, involuntarily. “That’s just what I feared, that you wouldn’t
+care about the mitigation of sentence.”
+Raskolnikov looked sadly and expressively at him.
+“Ah, don’t disdain life!” Porfiry went on. “You have a great deal of
+it still before you. How can you say you don’t want a mitigation of
+sentence? You are an impatient fellow!”
+“A great deal of what lies before me?”
+“Of life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it? Seek
+and ye shall find. This may be God’s means for bringing you to Him. And
+it’s not for ever, the bondage....”
+“The time will be shortened,” laughed Raskolnikov.
+“Why, is it the bourgeois disgrace you are afraid of? It may be that you
+are afraid of it without knowing it, because you are young! But anyway
+_you_ shouldn’t be afraid of giving yourself up and confessing.”
+“Ach, hang it!” Raskolnikov whispered with loathing and contempt, as
+though he did not want to speak aloud.
+He got up again as though he meant to go away, but sat down again in
+evident despair.
+“Hang it, if you like! You’ve lost faith and you think that I am
+grossly flattering you; but how long has your life been? How much do
+you understand? You made up a theory and then were ashamed that it broke
+down and turned out to be not at all original! It turned out something
+base, that’s true, but you are not hopelessly base. By no means so base!
+At least you didn’t deceive yourself for long, you went straight to the
+furthest point at one bound. How do I regard you? I regard you as one
+of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts
+their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and
+you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too,
+is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Nikolay is right in wanting to suffer.
+I know you don’t believe in it--but don’t be over-wise; fling yourself
+straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid--the flood
+will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. What
+bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before
+you. I know that you take all my words now for a set speech prepared
+beforehand, but maybe you will remember them after. They may be of use
+some time. That’s why I speak. It’s as well that you only killed the
+old woman. If you’d invented another theory you might perhaps have
+done something a thousand times more hideous. You ought to thank God,
+perhaps. How do you know? Perhaps God is saving you for something.
+But keep a good heart and have less fear! Are you afraid of the great
+expiation before you? No, it would be shameful to be afraid of it. Since
+you have taken such a step, you must harden your heart. There is justice
+in it. You must fulfil the demands of justice. I know that you don’t
+believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it
+down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!”
+Raskolnikov positively started.
+“But who are you? what prophet are you? From the height of what majestic
+calm do you proclaim these words of wisdom?”
+“Who am I? I am a man with nothing to hope for, that’s all. A man
+perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my day
+is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you.
+Though, who knows? maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke and come
+to nothing. Come, what does it matter, that you will pass into another
+class of men? It’s not comfort you regret, with your heart! What of
+it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It’s not time, but
+yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all will see you. The
+sun has before all to be the sun. Why are you smiling again? At my being
+such a Schiller? I bet you’re imagining that I am trying to get round
+you by flattery. Well, perhaps I am, he-he-he! Perhaps you’d better not
+believe my word, perhaps you’d better never believe it altogether--I’m
+made that way, I confess it. But let me add, you can judge for yourself,
+I think, how far I am a base sort of man and how far I am honest.”
+“When do you mean to arrest me?”
+“Well, I can let you walk about another day or two. Think it over, my
+dear fellow, and pray to God. It’s more in your interest, believe me.”
+“And what if I run away?” asked Raskolnikov with a strange smile.
+“No, you won’t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable
+dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man’s thought, for
+you’ve only to show him the end of your little finger and he’ll be ready
+to believe in anything for the rest of his life. But you’ve ceased to
+believe in your theory already, what will you run away with? And what
+would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for you, and
+what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an
+atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would you have? If
+you ran away, you’d come back to yourself. _You can’t get on without
+us._ And if I put you in prison--say you’ve been there a month, or two,
+or three--remember my word, you’ll confess of yourself and perhaps to
+your own surprise. You won’t know an hour beforehand that you are coming
+with a confession. I am convinced that you will decide, ‘to take your
+suffering.’ You don’t believe my words now, but you’ll come to it of
+yourself. For suffering, Rodion Romanovitch, is a great thing. Never
+mind my having grown fat, I know all the same. Don’t laugh at it,
+there’s an idea in suffering, Nikolay is right. No, you won’t run away,
+Rodion Romanovitch.”
+Raskolnikov got up and took his cap. Porfiry Petrovitch also rose.
+“Are you going for a walk? The evening will be fine, if only we don’t
+have a storm. Though it would be a good thing to freshen the air.”
+He, too, took his cap.
+“Porfiry Petrovitch, please don’t take up the notion that I have
+confessed to you to-day,” Raskolnikov pronounced with sullen insistence.
+“You’re a strange man and I have listened to you from simple curiosity.
+But I have admitted nothing, remember that!”
+“Oh, I know that, I’ll remember. Look at him, he’s trembling! Don’t
+be uneasy, my dear fellow, have it your own way. Walk about a bit, you
+won’t be able to walk too far. If anything happens, I have one request
+to make of you,” he added, dropping his voice. “It’s an awkward one, but
+important. If anything were to happen (though indeed I don’t believe
+in it and think you quite incapable of it), yet in case you were taken
+during these forty or fifty hours with the notion of putting an end to
+the business in some other way, in some fantastic fashion--laying hands
+on yourself--(it’s an absurd proposition, but you must forgive me for
+it) do leave a brief but precise note, only two lines, and mention the
+stone. It will be more generous. Come, till we meet! Good thoughts and
+sound decisions to you!”
+Porfiry went out, stooping and avoiding looking at Raskolnikov. The
+latter went to the window and waited with irritable impatience till he
+calculated that Porfiry had reached the street and moved away. Then he
+too went hurriedly out of the room.
+CHAPTER III
+He hurried to Svidrigaïlov’s. What he had to hope from that man he
+did not know. But that man had some hidden power over him. Having once
+recognised this, he could not rest, and now the time had come.
+On the way, one question particularly worried him: had Svidrigaïlov been
+to Porfiry’s?
+As far as he could judge, he would swear to it, that he had not. He
+pondered again and again, went over Porfiry’s visit; no, he hadn’t been,
+of course he hadn’t.
+But if he had not been yet, would he go? Meanwhile, for the present he
+fancied he couldn’t. Why? He could not have explained, but if he could,
+he would not have wasted much thought over it at the moment. It all
+worried him and at the same time he could not attend to it. Strange to
+say, none would have believed it perhaps, but he only felt a faint vague
+anxiety about his immediate future. Another, much more important anxiety
+tormented him--it concerned himself, but in a different, more vital way.
+Moreover, he was conscious of immense moral fatigue, though his mind was
+working better that morning than it had done of late.
+And was it worth while, after all that had happened, to contend with
+these new trivial difficulties? Was it worth while, for instance, to
+manoeuvre that Svidrigaïlov should not go to Porfiry’s? Was it worth
+while to investigate, to ascertain the facts, to waste time over anyone
+like Svidrigaïlov?
+Oh, how sick he was of it all!
+And yet he was hastening to Svidrigaïlov; could he be expecting
+something _new_ from him, information, or means of escape? Men will
+catch at straws! Was it destiny or some instinct bringing them together?
+Perhaps it was only fatigue, despair; perhaps it was not Svidrigaïlov
+but some other whom he needed, and Svidrigaïlov had simply presented
+himself by chance. Sonia? But what should he go to Sonia for now? To beg
+her tears again? He was afraid of Sonia, too. Sonia stood before him as
+an irrevocable sentence. He must go his own way or hers. At that moment
+especially he did not feel equal to seeing her. No, would it not be
+better to try Svidrigaïlov? And he could not help inwardly owning that
+he had long felt that he must see him for some reason.
+But what could they have in common? Their very evil-doing could not
+be of the same kind. The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently
+depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly malignant. Such
+stories were told about him. It is true he was befriending Katerina
+Ivanovna’s children, but who could tell with what motive and what it
+meant? The man always had some design, some project.
+There was another thought which had been continually hovering of late
+about Raskolnikov’s mind, and causing him great uneasiness. It was so
+painful that he made distinct efforts to get rid of it. He sometimes
+thought that Svidrigaïlov was dogging his footsteps. Svidrigaïlov had
+found out his secret and had had designs on Dounia. What if he had them
+still? Wasn’t it practically certain that he had? And what if, having
+learnt his secret and so having gained power over him, he were to use it
+as a weapon against Dounia?
+This idea sometimes even tormented his dreams, but it had never
+presented itself so vividly to him as on his way to Svidrigaïlov.
+The very thought moved him to gloomy rage. To begin with, this would
+transform everything, even his own position; he would have at once to
+confess his secret to Dounia. Would he have to give himself up perhaps
+to prevent Dounia from taking some rash step? The letter? This morning
+Dounia had received a letter. From whom could she get letters in
+Petersburg? Luzhin, perhaps? It’s true Razumihin was there to protect
+her, but Razumihin knew nothing of the position. Perhaps it was his duty
+to tell Razumihin? He thought of it with repugnance.
+In any case he must see Svidrigaïlov as soon as possible, he decided
+finally. Thank God, the details of the interview were of little
+consequence, if only he could get at the root of the matter; but
+if Svidrigaïlov were capable... if he were intriguing against
+Dounia--then...
+Raskolnikov was so exhausted by what he had passed through that month
+that he could only decide such questions in one way; “then I shall kill
+him,” he thought in cold despair.
+A sudden anguish oppressed his heart, he stood still in the middle of
+the street and began looking about to see where he was and which way he
+was going. He found himself in X. Prospect, thirty or forty paces from
+the Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second storey of
+the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the windows were wide
+open; judging from the figures moving at the windows, the rooms were
+full to overflowing. There were sounds of singing, of clarionet and
+violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He could hear women shrieking.
+He was about to turn back wondering why he had come to the X. Prospect,
+when suddenly at one of the end windows he saw Svidrigaïlov, sitting
+at a tea-table right in the open window with a pipe in his mouth.
+Raskolnikov was dreadfully taken aback, almost terrified. Svidrigaïlov
+was silently watching and scrutinising him and, what struck Raskolnikov
+at once, seemed to be meaning to get up and slip away unobserved.
+Raskolnikov at once pretended not to have seen him, but to be looking
+absent-mindedly away, while he watched him out of the corner of his eye.
+His heart was beating violently. Yet, it was evident that Svidrigaïlov
+did not want to be seen. He took the pipe out of his mouth and was on
+the point of concealing himself, but as he got up and moved back his
+chair, he seemed to have become suddenly aware that Raskolnikov had seen
+him, and was watching him. What had passed between them was much the
+same as what happened at their first meeting in Raskolnikov’s room. A
+sly smile came into Svidrigaïlov’s face and grew broader and
+broader. Each knew that he was seen and watched by the other. At last
+Svidrigaïlov broke into a loud laugh.
+“Well, well, come in if you want me; I am here!” he shouted from the
+window.
+Raskolnikov went up into the tavern. He found Svidrigaïlov in a tiny
+back room, adjoining the saloon in which merchants, clerks and numbers
+of people of all sorts were drinking tea at twenty little tables to the
+desperate bawling of a chorus of singers. The click of billiard balls
+could be heard in the distance. On the table before Svidrigaïlov stood
+an open bottle and a glass half full of champagne. In the room he found
+also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking red-cheeked girl
+of eighteen, wearing a tucked-up striped skirt, and a Tyrolese hat with
+ribbons. In spite of the chorus in the other room, she was singing some
+servants’ hall song in a rather husky contralto, to the accompaniment of
+the organ.
+“Come, that’s enough,” Svidrigaïlov stopped her at Raskolnikov’s
+entrance. The girl at once broke off and stood waiting respectfully.
+She had sung her guttural rhymes, too, with a serious and respectful
+expression in her face.
+“Hey, Philip, a glass!” shouted Svidrigaïlov.
+“I won’t drink anything,” said Raskolnikov.
+“As you like, I didn��t mean it for you. Drink, Katia! I don’t want
+anything more to-day, you can go.” He poured her out a full glass, and
+laid down a yellow note.
+Katia drank off her glass of wine, as women do, without putting it down,
+in twenty gulps, took the note and kissed Svidrigaïlov’s hand, which he
+allowed quite seriously. She went out of the room and the boy trailed
+after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the street.
+Svidrigaïlov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him
+was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip,
+was by now an old friend and very obsequious.
+The door leading to the saloon had a lock on it. Svidrigaïlov was at
+home in this room and perhaps spent whole days in it. The tavern was
+dirty and wretched, not even second-rate.
+“I was going to see you and looking for you,” Raskolnikov began, “but
+I don’t know what made me turn from the Hay Market into the X. Prospect
+just now. I never take this turning. I turn to the right from the Hay
+Market. And this isn’t the way to you. I simply turned and here you are.
+It is strange!”
+“Why don’t you say at once ‘it’s a miracle’?”
+“Because it may be only chance.”
+“Oh, that’s the way with all you folk,” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “You won’t
+admit it, even if you do inwardly believe it a miracle! Here you say
+that it may be only chance. And what cowards they all are here, about
+having an opinion of their own, you can’t fancy, Rodion Romanovitch. I
+don’t mean you, you have an opinion of your own and are not afraid to
+have it. That’s how it was you attracted my curiosity.”
+“Nothing else?”
+“Well, that’s enough, you know,” Svidrigaïlov was obviously exhilarated,
+but only slightly so, he had not had more than half a glass of wine.
+“I fancy you came to see me before you knew that I was capable of having
+what you call an opinion of my own,” observed Raskolnikov.
+“Oh, well, it was a different matter. Everyone has his own plans. And
+apropos of the miracle let me tell you that I think you have been asleep
+for the last two or three days. I told you of this tavern myself, there
+is no miracle in your coming straight here. I explained the way myself,
+told you where it was, and the hours you could find me here. Do you
+remember?”
+“I don’t remember,” answered Raskolnikov with surprise.
+“I believe you. I told you twice. The address has been stamped
+mechanically on your memory. You turned this way mechanically and yet
+precisely according to the direction, though you are not aware of
+it. When I told you then, I hardly hoped you understood me. You give
+yourself away too much, Rodion Romanovitch. And another thing, I’m
+convinced there are lots of people in Petersburg who talk to themselves
+as they walk. This is a town of crazy people. If only we had scientific
+men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make most valuable
+investigations in Petersburg each in his own line. There are few places
+where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul
+of man as in Petersburg. The mere influences of climate mean so much.
+And it’s the administrative centre of all Russia and its character must
+be reflected on the whole country. But that is neither here nor there
+now. The point is that I have several times watched you. You walk out
+of your house--holding your head high--twenty paces from home you let it
+sink, and fold your hands behind your back. You look and evidently see
+nothing before nor beside you. At last you begin moving your lips and
+talking to yourself, and sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at
+last stand still in the middle of the road. That’s not at all the thing.
+Someone may be watching you besides me, and it won’t do you any good.
+It’s nothing really to do with me and I can’t cure you, but, of course,
+you understand me.”
+“Do you know that I am being followed?” asked Raskolnikov, looking
+inquisitively at him.
+“No, I know nothing about it,” said Svidrigaïlov, seeming surprised.
+“Well, then, let us leave me alone,” Raskolnikov muttered, frowning.
+“Very good, let us leave you alone.”
+“You had better tell me, if you come here to drink, and directed me
+twice to come here to you, why did you hide, and try to get away just
+now when I looked at the window from the street? I saw it.”
+“He-he! And why was it you lay on your sofa with closed eyes and
+pretended to be asleep, though you were wide awake while I stood in your
+doorway? I saw it.”
+“I may have had... reasons. You know that yourself.”
+“And I may have had my reasons, though you don’t know them.”
+Raskolnikov dropped his right elbow on the table, leaned his chin in the
+fingers of his right hand, and stared intently at Svidrigaïlov. For a
+full minute he scrutinised his face, which had impressed him before. It
+was a strange face, like a mask; white and red, with bright red lips,
+with a flaxen beard, and still thick flaxen hair. His eyes were somehow
+too blue and their expression somehow too heavy and fixed. There was
+something awfully unpleasant in that handsome face, which looked so
+wonderfully young for his age. Svidrigaïlov was smartly dressed in light
+summer clothes and was particularly dainty in his linen. He wore a huge
+ring with a precious stone in it.
+“Have I got to bother myself about you, too, now?” said Raskolnikov
+suddenly, coming with nervous impatience straight to the point. “Even
+though perhaps you are the most dangerous man if you care to injure me,
+I don’t want to put myself out any more. I will show you at once that I
+don’t prize myself as you probably think I do. I’ve come to tell you at
+once that if you keep to your former intentions with regard to my sister
+and if you think to derive any benefit in that direction from what has
+been discovered of late, I will kill you before you get me locked up.
+You can reckon on my word. You know that I can keep it. And in the
+second place if you want to tell me anything--for I keep fancying all
+this time that you have something to tell me--make haste and tell it,
+for time is precious and very likely it will soon be too late.”
+“Why in such haste?” asked Svidrigaïlov, looking at him curiously.
+“Everyone has his plans,” Raskolnikov answered gloomily and impatiently.
+“You urged me yourself to frankness just now, and at the first question
+you refuse to answer,” Svidrigaïlov observed with a smile. “You
+keep fancying that I have aims of my own and so you look at me with
+suspicion. Of course it’s perfectly natural in your position. But
+though I should like to be friends with you, I shan’t trouble myself
+to convince you of the contrary. The game isn’t worth the candle and I
+wasn’t intending to talk to you about anything special.”
+“What did you want me, for, then? It was you who came hanging about me.”
+“Why, simply as an interesting subject for observation. I liked the
+fantastic nature of your position--that’s what it was! Besides you are
+the brother of a person who greatly interested me, and from that person
+I had in the past heard a very great deal about you, from which I
+gathered that you had a great influence over her; isn’t that enough?
+Ha-ha-ha! Still I must admit that your question is rather complex, and
+is difficult for me to answer. Here, you, for instance, have come to me
+not only for a definite object, but for the sake of hearing something
+new. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?” persisted Svidrigaïlov with a sly
+smile. “Well, can’t you fancy then that I, too, on my way here in the
+train was reckoning on you, on your telling me something new, and on my
+making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we are!”
+“What profit could you make?”
+“How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend all
+my time and it’s my enjoyment, that’s to say it’s no great enjoyment,
+but one must sit somewhere; that poor Katia now--you saw her?... If only
+I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see I can eat this.”
+He pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a
+terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish.
+“Have you dined, by the way? I’ve had something and want nothing more.
+I don’t drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I never touch
+anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even
+that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it just now to wind
+myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and you see me in a
+peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just now like a
+schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I believe,” he
+pulled out his watch, “I can spend an hour with you. It’s half-past
+four now. If only I’d been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry
+officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty,
+and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you would tell me
+something new.”
+“But what are you, and why have you come here?”
+“What am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the
+cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa
+Petrovna and lived in the country. There you have my biography!”
+“You are a gambler, I believe?”
+“No, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper--not a gambler.”
+“You have been a card-sharper then?”
+“Yes, I’ve been a card-sharper too.”
+“Didn’t you get thrashed sometimes?”
+“It did happen. Why?”
+“Why, you might have challenged them... altogether it must have been
+lively.”
+“I won’t contradict you, and besides I am no hand at philosophy. I
+confess that I hastened here for the sake of the women.”
+“As soon as you buried Marfa Petrovna?”
+“Quite so,” Svidrigaïlov smiled with engaging candour. “What of it? You
+seem to find something wrong in my speaking like that about women?”
+“You ask whether I find anything wrong in vice?”
+“Vice! Oh, that’s what you are after! But I’ll answer you in order,
+first about women in general; you know I am fond of talking. Tell me,
+what should I restrain myself for? Why should I give up women, since I
+have a passion for them? It’s an occupation, anyway.”
+“So you hope for nothing here but vice?”
+“Oh, very well, for vice then. You insist on its being vice. But anyway
+I like a direct question. In this vice at least there is something
+permanent, founded indeed upon nature and not dependent on fantasy,
+something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember, for ever
+setting one on fire and, maybe, not to be quickly extinguished, even
+with years. You’ll agree it’s an occupation of a sort.”
+“That’s nothing to rejoice at, it’s a disease and a dangerous one.”
+“Oh, that’s what you think, is it! I agree, that it is a disease like
+everything that exceeds moderation. And, of course, in this one must
+exceed moderation. But in the first place, everybody does so in one way
+or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to be moderate
+and prudent, however mean it may be, but what am I to do? If I hadn’t
+this, I might have to shoot myself. I am ready to admit that a decent
+man ought to put up with being bored, but yet...”
+“And could you shoot yourself?”
+“Oh, come!” Svidrigaïlov parried with disgust. “Please don’t speak of
+it,” he added hurriedly and with none of the bragging tone he had shown
+in all the previous conversation. His face quite changed. “I admit it’s
+an unpardonable weakness, but I can’t help it. I am afraid of death and
+I dislike its being talked of. Do you know that I am to a certain extent
+a mystic?”
+“Ah, the apparitions of Marfa Petrovna! Do they still go on visiting
+you?”
+“Oh, don’t talk of them; there have been no more in Petersburg, confound
+them!” he cried with an air of irritation. “Let’s rather talk of that...
+though... H’m! I have not much time, and can’t stay long with you,
+it’s a pity! I should have found plenty to tell you.”
+“What’s your engagement, a woman?”
+“Yes, a woman, a casual incident.... No, that’s not what I want to talk
+of.”
+“And the hideousness, the filthiness of all your surroundings, doesn’t
+that affect you? Have you lost the strength to stop yourself?”
+“And do you pretend to strength, too? He-he-he! You surprised me just
+now, Rodion Romanovitch, though I knew beforehand it would be so.
+You preach to me about vice and æsthetics! You--a Schiller, you--an
+idealist! Of course that’s all as it should be and it would be
+surprising if it were not so, yet it is strange in reality.... Ah,
+what a pity I have no time, for you’re a most interesting type! And,
+by-the-way, are you fond of Schiller? I am awfully fond of him.”
+“But what a braggart you are,” Raskolnikov said with some disgust.
+“Upon my word, I am not,” answered Svidrigaïlov laughing. “However, I
+won’t dispute it, let me be a braggart, why not brag, if it hurts no
+one? I spent seven years in the country with Marfa Petrovna, so now when
+I come across an intelligent person like you--intelligent and highly
+interesting--I am simply glad to talk and, besides, I’ve drunk that
+half-glass of champagne and it’s gone to my head a little. And besides,
+there’s a certain fact that has wound me up tremendously, but about that
+I... will keep quiet. Where are you off to?” he asked in alarm.
+Raskolnikov had begun getting up. He felt oppressed and stifled and,
+as it were, ill at ease at having come here. He felt convinced that
+Svidrigaïlov was the most worthless scoundrel on the face of the earth.
+“A-ach! Sit down, stay a little!” Svidrigaïlov begged. “Let them bring
+you some tea, anyway. Stay a little, I won’t talk nonsense, about
+myself, I mean. I’ll tell you something. If you like I’ll tell you how a
+woman tried ‘to save’ me, as you would call it? It will be an answer to
+your first question indeed, for the woman was your sister. May I tell
+you? It will help to spend the time.”
+“Tell me, but I trust that you...”
+“Oh, don’t be uneasy. Besides, even in a worthless low fellow like me,
+Avdotya Romanovna can only excite the deepest respect.”
+CHAPTER IV
+“You know perhaps--yes, I told you myself,” began Svidrigaïlov, “that
+I was in the debtors’ prison here, for an immense sum, and had not
+any expectation of being able to pay it. There’s no need to go into
+particulars how Marfa Petrovna bought me out; do you know to what a
+point of insanity a woman can sometimes love? She was an honest woman,
+and very sensible, although completely uneducated. Would you believe
+that this honest and jealous woman, after many scenes of hysterics and
+reproaches, condescended to enter into a kind of contract with me which
+she kept throughout our married life? She was considerably older than
+I, and besides, she always kept a clove or something in her mouth. There
+was so much swinishness in my soul and honesty too, of a sort, as to
+tell her straight out that I couldn’t be absolutely faithful to her.
+This confession drove her to frenzy, but yet she seems in a way to have
+liked my brutal frankness. She thought it showed I was unwilling to
+deceive her if I warned her like this beforehand and for a jealous
+woman, you know, that’s the first consideration. After many tears an
+unwritten contract was drawn up between us: first, that I would never
+leave Marfa Petrovna and would always be her husband; secondly, that I
+would never absent myself without her permission; thirdly, that I would
+never set up a permanent mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Marfa
+Petrovna gave me a free hand with the maidservants, but only with her
+secret knowledge; fifthly, God forbid my falling in love with a woman of
+our class; sixthly, in case I--which God forbid--should be visited by
+a great serious passion I was bound to reveal it to Marfa Petrovna. On
+this last score, however, Marfa Petrovna was fairly at ease. She was a
+sensible woman and so she could not help looking upon me as a dissolute
+profligate incapable of real love. But a sensible woman and a jealous
+woman are two very different things, and that’s where the trouble
+came in. But to judge some people impartially we must renounce certain
+preconceived opinions and our habitual attitude to the ordinary people
+about us. I have reason to have faith in your judgment rather than
+in anyone’s. Perhaps you have already heard a great deal that was
+ridiculous and absurd about Marfa Petrovna. She certainly had some very
+ridiculous ways, but I tell you frankly that I feel really sorry for the
+innumerable woes of which I was the cause. Well, and that’s enough, I
+think, by way of a decorous _oraison funèbre_ for the most tender wife
+of a most tender husband. When we quarrelled, I usually held my tongue
+and did not irritate her and that gentlemanly conduct rarely failed to
+attain its object, it influenced her, it pleased her, indeed. These were
+times when she was positively proud of me. But your sister she couldn’t
+put up with, anyway. And however she came to risk taking such a
+beautiful creature into her house as a governess. My explanation is that
+Marfa Petrovna was an ardent and impressionable woman and simply fell
+in love herself--literally fell in love--with your sister. Well, little
+wonder--look at Avdotya Romanovna! I saw the danger at the first glance
+and what do you think, I resolved not to look at her even. But Avdotya
+Romanovna herself made the first step, would you believe it? Would you
+believe it too that Marfa Petrovna was positively angry with me at first
+for my persistent silence about your sister, for my careless reception
+of her continual adoring praises of Avdotya Romanovna. I don’t know
+what it was she wanted! Well, of course, Marfa Petrovna told Avdotya
+Romanovna every detail about me. She had the unfortunate habit of
+telling literally everyone all our family secrets and continually
+complaining of me; how could she fail to confide in such a delightful
+new friend? I expect they talked of nothing else but me and no doubt
+Avdotya Romanovna heard all those dark mysterious rumours that were
+current about me.... I don’t mind betting that you too have heard
+something of the sort already?”
+“I have. Luzhin charged you with having caused the death of a child. Is
+that true?”
+“Don’t refer to those vulgar tales, I beg,” said Svidrigaïlov with
+disgust and annoyance. “If you insist on wanting to know about all that
+idiocy, I will tell you one day, but now...”
+“I was told too about some footman of yours in the country whom you
+treated badly.”
+“I beg you to drop the subject,” Svidrigaïlov interrupted again with
+obvious impatience.
+“Was that the footman who came to you after death to fill your pipe?...
+you told me about it yourself.” Raskolnikov felt more and more
+irritated.
+Svidrigaïlov looked at him attentively and Raskolnikov fancied he caught
+a flash of spiteful mockery in that look. But Svidrigaïlov restrained
+himself and answered very civilly:
+“Yes, it was. I see that you, too, are extremely interested and shall
+feel it my duty to satisfy your curiosity at the first opportunity. Upon
+my soul! I see that I really might pass for a romantic figure with
+some people. Judge how grateful I must be to Marfa Petrovna for having
+repeated to Avdotya Romanovna such mysterious and interesting gossip
+about me. I dare not guess what impression it made on her, but in any
+case it worked in my interests. With all Avdotya Romanovna’s natural
+aversion and in spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect--she
+did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a
+girl’s heart is moved to _pity_, it’s more dangerous than anything. She
+is bound to want to ‘save him,’ to bring him to his senses, and lift
+him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and
+usefulness--well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once
+that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready.
+I think you are frowning, Rodion Romanovitch? There’s no need. As you
+know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I am drinking!)
+Do you know, I always, from the very beginning, regretted that it wasn’t
+your sister’s fate to be born in the second or third century A.D., as
+the daughter of a reigning prince or some governor or pro-consul in Asia
+Minor. She would undoubtedly have been one of those who would endure
+martyrdom and would have smiled when they branded her bosom with hot
+pincers. And she would have gone to it of herself. And in the fourth or
+fifth century she would have walked away into the Egyptian desert and
+would have stayed there thirty years living on roots and ecstasies and
+visions. She is simply thirsting to face some torture for someone, and
+if she can’t get her torture, she’ll throw herself out of a window. I’ve
+heard something of a Mr. Razumihin--he’s said to be a sensible fellow;
+his surname suggests it, indeed. He’s probably a divinity student. Well,
+he’d better look after your sister! I believe I understand her, and I am
+proud of it. But at the beginning of an acquaintance, as you know, one
+is apt to be more heedless and stupid. One doesn’t see clearly. Hang it
+all, why is she so handsome? It’s not my fault. In fact, it began on
+my side with a most irresistible physical desire. Avdotya Romanovna is
+awfully chaste, incredibly and phenomenally so. Take note, I tell you
+this about your sister as a fact. She is almost morbidly chaste, in
+spite of her broad intelligence, and it will stand in her way. There
+happened to be a girl in the house then, Parasha, a black-eyed
+wench, whom I had never seen before--she had just come from another
+village--very pretty, but incredibly stupid: she burst into tears,
+wailed so that she could be heard all over the place and caused scandal.
+One day after dinner Avdotya Romanovna followed me into an avenue in
+the garden and with flashing eyes _insisted_ on my leaving poor Parasha
+alone. It was almost our first conversation by ourselves. I, of course,
+was only too pleased to obey her wishes, tried to appear disconcerted,
+embarrassed, in fact played my part not badly. Then came interviews,
+mysterious conversations, exhortations, entreaties, supplications, even
+tears--would you believe it, even tears? Think what the passion for
+propaganda will bring some girls to! I, of course, threw it all on
+my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting for light, and finally
+resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the
+female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It’s the well-known
+resource--flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the
+truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part
+of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that
+leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it
+is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be
+a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the
+flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all
+stages of development and classes of society. A vestal virgin might be
+seduced by flattery. I can never remember without laughter how I once
+seduced a lady who was devoted to her husband, her children, and her
+principles. What fun it was and how little trouble! And the lady really
+had principles--of her own, anyway. All my tactics lay in simply being
+utterly annihilated and prostrate before her purity. I flattered her
+shamelessly, and as soon as I succeeded in getting a pressure of
+the hand, even a glance from her, I would reproach myself for having
+snatched it by force, and would declare that she had resisted, so that
+I could never have gained anything but for my being so unprincipled.
+I maintained that she was so innocent that she could not foresee my
+treachery, and yielded to me unconsciously, unawares, and so on. In
+fact, I triumphed, while my lady remained firmly convinced that she was
+innocent, chaste, and faithful to all her duties and obligations and
+had succumbed quite by accident. And how angry she was with me when I
+explained to her at last that it was my sincere conviction that she was
+just as eager as I. Poor Marfa Petrovna was awfully weak on the side of
+flattery, and if I had only cared to, I might have had all her property
+settled on me during her lifetime. (I am drinking an awful lot of wine
+now and talking too much.) I hope you won’t be angry if I mention now
+that I was beginning to produce the same effect on Avdotya Romanovna.
+But I was stupid and impatient and spoiled it all. Avdotya Romanovna had
+several times--and one time in particular--been greatly displeased by
+the expression of my eyes, would you believe it? There was sometimes a
+light in them which frightened her and grew stronger and stronger and
+more unguarded till it was hateful to her. No need to go into detail,
+but we parted. There I acted stupidly again. I fell to jeering in the
+coarsest way at all such propaganda and efforts to convert me; Parasha
+came on to the scene again, and not she alone; in fact there was a
+tremendous to-do. Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, if you could only see how your
+sister’s eyes can flash sometimes! Never mind my being drunk at this
+moment and having had a whole glass of wine. I am speaking the truth.
+I assure you that this glance has haunted my dreams; the very rustle of
+her dress was more than I could stand at last. I really began to think
+that I might become epileptic. I could never have believed that I could
+be moved to such a frenzy. It was essential, indeed, to be reconciled,
+but by then it was impossible. And imagine what I did then! To what
+a pitch of stupidity a man can be brought by frenzy! Never undertake
+anything in a frenzy, Rodion Romanovitch. I reflected that Avdotya
+Romanovna was after all a beggar (ach, excuse me, that’s not the word...
+but does it matter if it expresses the meaning?), that she lived by
+her work, that she had her mother and you to keep (ach, hang it, you
+are frowning again), and I resolved to offer her all my money--thirty
+thousand roubles I could have realised then--if she would run away with
+me here, to Petersburg. Of course I should have vowed eternal love,
+rapture, and so on. Do you know, I was so wild about her at that time
+that if she had told me to poison Marfa Petrovna or to cut her throat
+and to marry herself, it would have been done at once! But it ended in
+the catastrophe of which you know already. You can fancy how frantic I
+was when I heard that Marfa Petrovna had got hold of that scoundrelly
+attorney, Luzhin, and had almost made a match between them--which would
+really have been just the same thing as I was proposing. Wouldn’t it?
+Wouldn’t it? I notice that you’ve begun to be very attentive... you
+interesting young man....”
+Svidrigaïlov struck the table with his fist impatiently. He was flushed.
+Raskolnikov saw clearly that the glass or glass and a half of champagne
+that he had sipped almost unconsciously was affecting him--and he
+resolved to take advantage of the opportunity. He felt very suspicious
+of Svidrigaïlov.
+“Well, after what you have said, I am fully convinced that you have
+come to Petersburg with designs on my sister,” he said directly to
+Svidrigaïlov, in order to irritate him further.
+“Oh, nonsense,” said Svidrigaïlov, seeming to rouse himself. “Why, I
+told you... besides your sister can’t endure me.”
+“Yes, I am certain that she can’t, but that’s not the point.”
+“Are you so sure that she can’t?” Svidrigaïlov screwed up his eyes and
+smiled mockingly. “You are right, she doesn’t love me, but you can
+never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and
+mistress. There’s always a little corner which remains a secret to
+the world and is only known to those two. Will you answer for it that
+Avdotya Romanovna regarded me with aversion?”
+“From some words you’ve dropped, I notice that you still have
+designs--and of course evil ones--on Dounia and mean to carry them out
+promptly.”
+“What, have I dropped words like that?” Svidrigaïlov asked in naïve
+dismay, taking not the slightest notice of the epithet bestowed on his
+designs.
+“Why, you are dropping them even now. Why are you so frightened? What
+are you so afraid of now?”
+“Me--afraid? Afraid of you? You have rather to be afraid of me, _cher
+ami_. But what nonsense.... I’ve drunk too much though, I see that. I
+was almost saying too much again. Damn the wine! Hi! there, water!”
+He snatched up the champagne bottle and flung it without ceremony out of
+the window. Philip brought the water.
+“That’s all nonsense!” said Svidrigaïlov, wetting a towel and putting it
+to his head. “But I can answer you in one word and annihilate all your
+suspicions. Do you know that I am going to get married?”
+“You told me so before.”
+“Did I? I’ve forgotten. But I couldn’t have told you so for certain for
+I had not even seen my betrothed; I only meant to. But now I really
+have a betrothed and it’s a settled thing, and if it weren’t that I have
+business that can’t be put off, I would have taken you to see them
+at once, for I should like to ask your advice. Ach, hang it, only ten
+minutes left! See, look at the watch. But I must tell you, for it’s an
+interesting story, my marriage, in its own way. Where are you off to?
+Going again?”
+“No, I’m not going away now.”
+“Not at all? We shall see. I’ll take you there, I’ll show you my
+betrothed, only not now. For you’ll soon have to be off. You have to go
+to the right and I to the left. Do you know that Madame Resslich, the
+woman I am lodging with now, eh? I know what you’re thinking, that she’s
+the woman whose girl they say drowned herself in the winter. Come, are
+you listening? She arranged it all for me. You’re bored, she said,
+you want something to fill up your time. For, you know, I am a gloomy,
+depressed person. Do you think I’m light-hearted? No, I’m gloomy. I do
+no harm, but sit in a corner without speaking a word for three days at a
+time. And that Resslich is a sly hussy, I tell you. I know what she has
+got in her mind; she thinks I shall get sick of it, abandon my wife and
+depart, and she’ll get hold of her and make a profit out of her--in our
+class, of course, or higher. She told me the father was a broken-down
+retired official, who has been sitting in a chair for the last three
+years with his legs paralysed. The mamma, she said, was a sensible
+woman. There is a son serving in the provinces, but he doesn’t help;
+there is a daughter, who is married, but she doesn’t visit them. And
+they’ve two little nephews on their hands, as though their own children
+were not enough, and they’ve taken from school their youngest daughter,
+a girl who’ll be sixteen in another month, so that then she can be
+married. She was for me. We went there. How funny it was! I present
+myself--a landowner, a widower, of a well-known name, with connections,
+with a fortune. What if I am fifty and she is not sixteen? Who thinks
+of that? But it’s fascinating, isn’t it? It is fascinating, ha-ha! You
+should have seen how I talked to the papa and mamma. It was worth paying
+to have seen me at that moment. She comes in, curtseys, you can fancy,
+still in a short frock--an unopened bud! Flushing like a sunset--she had
+been told, no doubt. I don’t know how you feel about female faces, but
+to my mind these sixteen years, these childish eyes, shyness and tears
+of bashfulness are better than beauty; and she is a perfect little
+picture, too. Fair hair in little curls, like a lamb’s, full little rosy
+lips, tiny feet, a charmer!... Well, we made friends. I told them I was
+in a hurry owing to domestic circumstances, and the next day, that is
+the day before yesterday, we were betrothed. When I go now I take her on
+my knee at once and keep her there.... Well, she flushes like a sunset
+and I kiss her every minute. Her mamma of course impresses on her that
+this is her husband and that this must be so. It’s simply delicious! The
+present betrothed condition is perhaps better than marriage. Here you
+have what is called _la nature et la vérité_, ha-ha! I’ve talked to her
+twice, she is far from a fool. Sometimes she steals a look at me that
+positively scorches me. Her face is like Raphael’s Madonna. You know,
+the Sistine Madonna’s face has something fantastic in it, the face
+of mournful religious ecstasy. Haven’t you noticed it? Well, she’s
+something in that line. The day after we’d been betrothed, I bought her
+presents to the value of fifteen hundred roubles--a set of diamonds and
+another of pearls and a silver dressing-case as large as this, with all
+sorts of things in it, so that even my Madonna’s face glowed. I sat her
+on my knee, yesterday, and I suppose rather too unceremoniously--she
+flushed crimson and the tears started, but she didn’t want to show it.
+We were left alone, she suddenly flung herself on my neck (for the first
+time of her own accord), put her little arms round me, kissed me, and
+vowed that she would be an obedient, faithful, and good wife, would make
+me happy, would devote all her life, every minute of her life, would
+sacrifice everything, everything, and that all she asks in return is
+my _respect_, and that she wants ‘nothing, nothing more from me, no
+presents.’ You’ll admit that to hear such a confession, alone, from an
+angel of sixteen in a muslin frock, with little curls, with a flush
+of maiden shyness in her cheeks and tears of enthusiasm in her eyes is
+rather fascinating! Isn’t it fascinating? It’s worth paying for, isn’t
+it? Well... listen, we’ll go to see my betrothed, only not just now!”
+“The fact is this monstrous difference in age and development excites
+your sensuality! Will you really make such a marriage?”
+“Why, of course. Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who
+knows best how to deceive himself. Ha-ha! But why are you so keen about
+virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful man. Ha-ha-ha!”
+“But you have provided for the children of Katerina Ivanovna. Though...
+though you had your own reasons.... I understand it all now.”
+“I am always fond of children, very fond of them,” laughed Svidrigaïlov.
+“I can tell you one curious instance of it. The first day I came here I
+visited various haunts, after seven years I simply rushed at them. You
+probably notice that I am not in a hurry to renew acquaintance with my
+old friends. I shall do without them as long as I can. Do you know, when
+I was with Marfa Petrovna in the country, I was haunted by the thought
+of these places where anyone who knows his way about can find a great
+deal. Yes, upon my soul! The peasants have vodka, the educated young
+people, shut out from activity, waste themselves in impossible dreams
+and visions and are crippled by theories; Jews have sprung up and are
+amassing money, and all the rest give themselves up to debauchery. From
+the first hour the town reeked of its familiar odours. I chanced to be
+in a frightful den--I like my dens dirty--it was a dance, so called, and
+there was a _cancan_ such as I never saw in my day. Yes, there you
+have progress. All of a sudden I saw a little girl of thirteen, nicely
+dressed, dancing with a specialist in that line, with another one
+_vis-à-vis_. Her mother was sitting on a chair by the wall. You can’t
+fancy what a _cancan_ that was! The girl was ashamed, blushed, at
+last felt insulted, and began to cry. Her partner seized her and began
+whirling her round and performing before her; everyone laughed and--I
+like your public, even the _cancan_ public--they laughed and shouted,
+‘Serves her right--serves her right! Shouldn’t bring children!’ Well,
+it’s not my business whether that consoling reflection was logical or
+not. I at once fixed on my plan, sat down by the mother, and began by
+saying that I too was a stranger and that people here were ill-bred and
+that they couldn’t distinguish decent folks and treat them with respect,
+gave her to understand that I had plenty of money, offered to take them
+home in my carriage. I took them home and got to know them. They were
+lodging in a miserable little hole and had only just arrived from the
+country. She told me that she and her daughter could only regard my
+acquaintance as an honour. I found out that they had nothing of their
+own and had come to town upon some legal business. I proffered my
+services and money. I learnt that they had gone to the dancing saloon
+by mistake, believing that it was a genuine dancing class. I offered to
+assist in the young girl’s education in French and dancing. My offer was
+accepted with enthusiasm as an honour--and we are still friendly.... If
+you like, we’ll go and see them, only not just now.”
+“Stop! Enough of your vile, nasty anecdotes, depraved vile, sensual
+man!”
+“Schiller, you are a regular Schiller! _O la vertu va-t-elle se nicher?_
+But you know I shall tell you these things on purpose, for the pleasure
+of hearing your outcries!”
+“I dare say. I can see I am ridiculous myself,” muttered Raskolnikov
+angrily.
+Svidrigaïlov laughed heartily; finally he called Philip, paid his bill,
+and began getting up.
+“I say, but I am drunk, _assez causé_,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure.”
+“I should rather think it must be a pleasure!” cried Raskolnikov,
+getting up. “No doubt it is a pleasure for a worn-out profligate to
+describe such adventures with a monstrous project of the same sort in
+his mind--especially under such circumstances and to such a man as
+me.... It’s stimulating!”
+“Well, if you come to that,” Svidrigaïlov answered, scrutinising
+Raskolnikov with some surprise, “if you come to that, you are a thorough
+cynic yourself. You’ve plenty to make you so, anyway. You can understand
+a great deal... and you can do a great deal too. But enough. I sincerely
+regret not having had more talk with you, but I shan’t lose sight of
+you.... Only wait a bit.”
+Svidrigaïlov walked out of the restaurant. Raskolnikov walked out after
+him. Svidrigaïlov was not however very drunk, the wine had affected him
+for a moment, but it was passing off every minute. He was preoccupied
+with something of importance and was frowning. He was apparently excited
+and uneasy in anticipation of something. His manner to Raskolnikov had
+changed during the last few minutes, and he was ruder and more sneering
+every moment. Raskolnikov noticed all this, and he too was uneasy. He
+became very suspicious of Svidrigaïlov and resolved to follow him.
+They came out on to the pavement.
+“You go to the right, and I to the left, or if you like, the other way.
+Only _adieu, mon plaisir_, may we meet again.”
+And he walked to the right towards the Hay Market.
+CHAPTER V
+Raskolnikov walked after him.
+“What’s this?” cried Svidrigaïlov turning round, “I thought I said...”
+“It means that I am not going to lose sight of you now.”
+“What?”
+Both stood still and gazed at one another, as though measuring their
+strength.
+“From all your half tipsy stories,” Raskolnikov observed harshly, “I am
+_positive_ that you have not given up your designs on my sister, but
+are pursuing them more actively than ever. I have learnt that my sister
+received a letter this morning. You have hardly been able to sit still
+all this time.... You may have unearthed a wife on the way, but that
+means nothing. I should like to make certain myself.”
+Raskolnikov could hardly have said himself what he wanted and of what he
+wished to make certain.
+“Upon my word! I’ll call the police!”
+“Call away!”
+Again they stood for a minute facing each other. At last Svidrigaïlov’s
+face changed. Having satisfied himself that Raskolnikov was not
+frightened at his threat, he assumed a mirthful and friendly air.
+“What a fellow! I purposely refrained from referring to your affair,
+though I am devoured by curiosity. It’s a fantastic affair. I’ve put it
+off till another time, but you’re enough to rouse the dead.... Well, let
+us go, only I warn you beforehand I am only going home for a moment,
+to get some money; then I shall lock up the flat, take a cab and go to
+spend the evening at the Islands. Now, now are you going to follow me?”
+“I’m coming to your lodgings, not to see you but Sofya Semyonovna, to
+say I’m sorry not to have been at the funeral.”
+“That’s as you like, but Sofya Semyonovna is not at home. She has taken
+the three children to an old lady of high rank, the patroness of some
+orphan asylums, whom I used to know years ago. I charmed the old lady by
+depositing a sum of money with her to provide for the three children of
+Katerina Ivanovna and subscribing to the institution as well. I told her
+too the story of Sofya Semyonovna in full detail, suppressing nothing.
+It produced an indescribable effect on her. That’s why Sofya Semyonovna
+has been invited to call to-day at the X. Hotel where the lady is
+staying for the time.”
+“No matter, I’ll come all the same.”
+“As you like, it’s nothing to me, but I won’t come with you; here we are
+at home. By the way, I am convinced that you regard me with suspicion
+just because I have shown such delicacy and have not so far troubled
+you with questions... you understand? It struck you as extraordinary; I
+don’t mind betting it’s that. Well, it teaches one to show delicacy!”
+“And to listen at doors!”
+“Ah, that’s it, is it?” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “Yes, I should have been
+surprised if you had let that pass after all that has happened. Ha-ha!
+Though I did understand something of the pranks you had been up to and
+were telling Sofya Semyonovna about, what was the meaning of it? Perhaps
+I am quite behind the times and can’t understand. For goodness’ sake,
+explain it, my dear boy. Expound the latest theories!”
+“You couldn’t have heard anything. You’re making it all up!”
+“But I’m not talking about that (though I did hear something). No, I’m
+talking of the way you keep sighing and groaning now. The Schiller in
+you is in revolt every moment, and now you tell me not to listen at
+doors. If that’s how you feel, go and inform the police that you had
+this mischance: you made a little mistake in your theory. But if you are
+convinced that one mustn’t listen at doors, but one may murder old women
+at one’s pleasure, you’d better be off to America and make haste. Run,
+young man! There may still be time. I’m speaking sincerely. Haven’t you
+the money? I’ll give you the fare.”
+“I’m not thinking of that at all,” Raskolnikov interrupted with disgust.
+“I understand (but don’t put yourself out, don’t discuss it if you don’t
+want to). I understand the questions you are worrying over--moral ones,
+aren’t they? Duties of citizen and man? Lay them all aside. They are
+nothing to you now, ha-ha! You’ll say you are still a man and a citizen.
+If so you ought not to have got into this coil. It’s no use taking up a
+job you are not fit for. Well, you’d better shoot yourself, or don’t you
+want to?”
+“You seem trying to enrage me, to make me leave you.”
+“What a queer fellow! But here we are. Welcome to the staircase. You
+see, that’s the way to Sofya Semyonovna. Look, there is no one at home.
+Don’t you believe me? Ask Kapernaumov. She leaves the key with him. Here
+is Madame de Kapernaumov herself. Hey, what? She is rather deaf. Has she
+gone out? Where? Did you hear? She is not in and won’t be till late in
+the evening probably. Well, come to my room; you wanted to come and see
+me, didn’t you? Here we are. Madame Resslich’s not at home. She is a
+woman who is always busy, an excellent woman I assure you.... She might
+have been of use to you if you had been a little more sensible. Now,
+see! I take this five-per-cent bond out of the bureau--see what a lot
+I’ve got of them still--this one will be turned into cash to-day. I
+mustn’t waste any more time. The bureau is locked, the flat is locked,
+and here we are again on the stairs. Shall we take a cab? I’m going to
+the Islands. Would you like a lift? I’ll take this carriage. Ah, you
+refuse? You are tired of it! Come for a drive! I believe it will come on
+to rain. Never mind, we’ll put down the hood....”
+Svidrigaïlov was already in the carriage. Raskolnikov decided that his
+suspicions were at least for that moment unjust. Without answering a
+word he turned and walked back towards the Hay Market. If he had only
+turned round on his way he might have seen Svidrigaïlov get out not a
+hundred paces off, dismiss the cab and walk along the pavement. But he
+had turned the corner and could see nothing. Intense disgust drew him
+away from Svidrigaïlov.
+“To think that I could for one instant have looked for help from that
+coarse brute, that depraved sensualist and blackguard!” he cried.
+Raskolnikov’s judgment was uttered too lightly and hastily: there was
+something about Svidrigaïlov which gave him a certain original, even a
+mysterious character. As concerned his sister, Raskolnikov was convinced
+that Svidrigaïlov would not leave her in peace. But it was too tiresome
+and unbearable to go on thinking and thinking about this.
+When he was alone, he had not gone twenty paces before he sank, as
+usual, into deep thought. On the bridge he stood by the railing and
+began gazing at the water. And his sister was standing close by him.
+He met her at the entrance to the bridge, but passed by without seeing
+her. Dounia had never met him like this in the street before and was
+struck with dismay. She stood still and did not know whether to call
+to him or not. Suddenly she saw Svidrigaïlov coming quickly from the
+direction of the Hay Market.
+He seemed to be approaching cautiously. He did not go on to the
+bridge, but stood aside on the pavement, doing all he could to avoid
+Raskolnikov’s seeing him. He had observed Dounia for some time and had
+been making signs to her. She fancied he was signalling to beg her not
+to speak to her brother, but to come to him.
+That was what Dounia did. She stole by her brother and went up to
+Svidrigaïlov.
+“Let us make haste away,” Svidrigaïlov whispered to her, “I don’t want
+Rodion Romanovitch to know of our meeting. I must tell you I’ve been
+sitting with him in the restaurant close by, where he looked me up and
+I had great difficulty in getting rid of him. He has somehow heard of
+my letter to you and suspects something. It wasn’t you who told him, of
+course, but if not you, who then?”
+“Well, we’ve turned the corner now,” Dounia interrupted, “and my brother
+won’t see us. I have to tell you that I am going no further with you.
+Speak to me here. You can tell it all in the street.”
+“In the first place, I can’t say it in the street; secondly, you must
+hear Sofya Semyonovna too; and, thirdly, I will show you some papers....
+Oh well, if you won’t agree to come with me, I shall refuse to give
+any explanation and go away at once. But I beg you not to forget that
+a very curious secret of your beloved brother’s is entirely in my
+keeping.”
+Dounia stood still, hesitating, and looked at Svidrigaïlov with
+searching eyes.
+“What are you afraid of?” he observed quietly. “The town is not the
+country. And even in the country you did me more harm than I did you.”
+“Have you prepared Sofya Semyonovna?”
+“No, I have not said a word to her and am not quite certain whether she
+is at home now. But most likely she is. She has buried her stepmother
+to-day: she is not likely to go visiting on such a day. For the time I
+don’t want to speak to anyone about it and I half regret having spoken
+to you. The slightest indiscretion is as bad as betrayal in a thing like
+this. I live there in that house, we are coming to it. That’s the porter
+of our house--he knows me very well; you see, he’s bowing; he sees I’m
+coming with a lady and no doubt he has noticed your face already and you
+will be glad of that if you are afraid of me and suspicious. Excuse
+my putting things so coarsely. I haven’t a flat to myself; Sofya
+Semyonovna’s room is next to mine--she lodges in the next flat. The
+whole floor is let out in lodgings. Why are you frightened like a child?
+Am I really so terrible?”
+Svidrigaïlov’s lips were twisted in a condescending smile; but he was in
+no smiling mood. His heart was throbbing and he could scarcely breathe.
+He spoke rather loud to cover his growing excitement. But Dounia did not
+notice this peculiar excitement, she was so irritated by his remark that
+she was frightened of him like a child and that he was so terrible to
+her.
+“Though I know that you are not a man... of honour, I am not in the
+least afraid of you. Lead the way,” she said with apparent composure,
+but her face was very pale.
+Svidrigaïlov stopped at Sonia’s room.
+“Allow me to inquire whether she is at home.... She is not. How
+unfortunate! But I know she may come quite soon. If she’s gone out, it
+can only be to see a lady about the orphans. Their mother is dead....
+I’ve been meddling and making arrangements for them. If Sofya Semyonovna
+does not come back in ten minutes, I will send her to you, to-day if
+you like. This is my flat. These are my two rooms. Madame Resslich,
+my landlady, has the next room. Now, look this way. I will show you
+my chief piece of evidence: this door from my bedroom leads into two
+perfectly empty rooms, which are to let. Here they are... You must look
+into them with some attention.”
+Svidrigaïlov occupied two fairly large furnished rooms. Dounia was
+looking about her mistrustfully, but saw nothing special in the
+furniture or position of the rooms. Yet there was something to observe,
+for instance, that Svidrigaïlov’s flat was exactly between two sets of
+almost uninhabited apartments. His rooms were not entered directly
+from the passage, but through the landlady’s two almost empty rooms.
+Unlocking a door leading out of his bedroom, Svidrigaïlov showed Dounia
+the two empty rooms that were to let. Dounia stopped in the doorway, not
+knowing what she was called to look upon, but Svidrigaïlov hastened to
+explain.
+“Look here, at this second large room. Notice that door, it’s locked.
+By the door stands a chair, the only one in the two rooms. I brought it
+from my rooms so as to listen more conveniently. Just the other side of
+the door is Sofya Semyonovna’s table; she sat there talking to Rodion
+Romanovitch. And I sat here listening on two successive evenings, for
+two hours each time--and of course I was able to learn something, what
+do you think?”
+“You listened?”
+“Yes, I did. Now come back to my room; we can’t sit down here.”
+He brought Avdotya Romanovna back into his sitting-room and offered her
+a chair. He sat down at the opposite side of the table, at least seven
+feet from her, but probably there was the same glow in his eyes which
+had once frightened Dounia so much. She shuddered and once more looked
+about her distrustfully. It was an involuntary gesture; she evidently
+did not wish to betray her uneasiness. But the secluded position of
+Svidrigaïlov’s lodging had suddenly struck her. She wanted to ask
+whether his landlady at least were at home, but pride kept her from
+asking. Moreover, she had another trouble in her heart incomparably
+greater than fear for herself. She was in great distress.
+“Here is your letter,” she said, laying it on the table. “Can it be true
+what you write? You hint at a crime committed, you say, by my brother.
+You hint at it too clearly; you daren’t deny it now. I must tell you
+that I’d heard of this stupid story before you wrote and don’t believe a
+word of it. It’s a disgusting and ridiculous suspicion. I know the story
+and why and how it was invented. You can have no proofs. You promised to
+prove it. Speak! But let me warn you that I don’t believe you! I don’t
+believe you!”
+Dounia said this, speaking hurriedly, and for an instant the colour
+rushed to her face.
+“If you didn’t believe it, how could you risk coming alone to my rooms?
+Why have you come? Simply from curiosity?”
+“Don’t torment me. Speak, speak!”
+“There’s no denying that you are a brave girl. Upon my word, I thought
+you would have asked Mr. Razumihin to escort you here. But he was not
+with you nor anywhere near. I was on the look-out. It’s spirited of
+you, it proves you wanted to spare Rodion Romanovitch. But everything
+is divine in you.... About your brother, what am I to say to you? You’ve
+just seen him yourself. What did you think of him?”
+“Surely that’s not the only thing you are building on?”
+“No, not on that, but on his own words. He came here on two successive
+evenings to see Sofya Semyonovna. I’ve shown you where they sat. He made
+a full confession to her. He is a murderer. He killed an old woman, a
+pawnbroker, with whom he had pawned things himself. He killed her sister
+too, a pedlar woman called Lizaveta, who happened to come in while he
+was murdering her sister. He killed them with an axe he brought with
+him. He murdered them to rob them and he did rob them. He took money and
+various things.... He told all this, word for word, to Sofya Semyonovna,
+the only person who knows his secret. But she has had no share by word
+or deed in the murder; she was as horrified at it as you are now. Don’t
+be anxious, she won’t betray him.”
+“It cannot be,” muttered Dounia, with white lips. She gasped for breath.
+“It cannot be. There was not the slightest cause, no sort of ground....
+It’s a lie, a lie!”
+“He robbed her, that was the cause, he took money and things. It’s true
+that by his own admission he made no use of the money or things, but hid
+them under a stone, where they are now. But that was because he dared
+not make use of them.”
+“But how could he steal, rob? How could he dream of it?” cried Dounia,
+and she jumped up from the chair. “Why, you know him, and you’ve seen
+him, can he be a thief?”
+She seemed to be imploring Svidrigaïlov; she had entirely forgotten her
+fear.
+“There are thousands and millions of combinations and possibilities,
+Avdotya Romanovna. A thief steals and knows he is a scoundrel, but I’ve
+heard of a gentleman who broke open the mail. Who knows, very likely he
+thought he was doing a gentlemanly thing! Of course I should not have
+believed it myself if I’d been told of it as you have, but I believe my
+own ears. He explained all the causes of it to Sofya Semyonovna too, but
+she did not believe her ears at first, yet she believed her own eyes at
+last.”
+“What... were the causes?”
+“It’s a long story, Avdotya Romanovna. Here’s... how shall I tell
+you?--A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider
+that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a
+solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It’s galling too, of
+course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if
+he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his
+whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three
+thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from hunger, from lodging
+in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense of the charm of his social
+position and his sister’s and mother��s position too. Above all, vanity,
+pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may have good qualities
+too.... I am not blaming him, please don’t think it; besides, it’s not
+my business. A special little theory came in too--a theory of a
+sort--dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons,
+that is persons to whom the law does not apply owing to their
+superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the material, that
+is. It’s all right as a theory, _une théorie comme une autre_. Napoleon
+attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him was that a
+great many men of genius have not hesitated at wrongdoing, but have
+overstepped the law without thinking about it. He seems to have fancied
+that he was a genius too--that is, he was convinced of it for a time. He
+has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he
+could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law,
+and so he is not a man of genius. And that’s humiliating for a young man
+of any pride, in our day especially....”
+“But remorse? You deny him any moral feeling then? Is he like that?”
+“Ah, Avdotya Romanovna, everything is in a muddle now; not that it was
+ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their ideas,
+Avdotya Romanovna, broad like their land and exceedingly disposed to
+the fantastic, the chaotic. But it’s a misfortune to be broad without
+a special genius. Do you remember what a lot of talk we had together on
+this subject, sitting in the evenings on the terrace after supper? Why,
+you used to reproach me with breadth! Who knows, perhaps we were talking
+at the very time when he was lying here thinking over his plan. There
+are no sacred traditions amongst us, especially in the educated class,
+Avdotya Romanovna. At the best someone will make them up somehow for
+himself out of books or from some old chronicle. But those are for the
+most part the learned and all old fogeys, so that it would be almost
+ill-bred in a man of society. You know my opinions in general, though. I
+never blame anyone. I do nothing at all, I persevere in that. But
+we’ve talked of this more than once before. I was so happy indeed as to
+interest you in my opinions.... You are very pale, Avdotya Romanovna.”
+“I know his theory. I read that article of his about men to whom all is
+permitted. Razumihin brought it to me.”
+“Mr. Razumihin? Your brother’s article? In a magazine? Is there such an
+article? I didn’t know. It must be interesting. But where are you going,
+Avdotya Romanovna?”
+“I want to see Sofya Semyonovna,” Dounia articulated faintly. “How do I
+go to her? She has come in, perhaps. I must see her at once. Perhaps
+she...”
+Avdotya Romanovna could not finish. Her breath literally failed her.
+“Sofya Semyonovna will not be back till night, at least I believe not.
+She was to have been back at once, but if not, then she will not be in
+till quite late.”
+“Ah, then you are lying! I see... you were lying... lying all the
+time.... I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!” cried Dounia,
+completely losing her head.
+Almost fainting, she sank on to a chair which Svidrigaïlov made haste to
+give her.
+“Avdotya Romanovna, what is it? Control yourself! Here is some water.
+Drink a little....”
+He sprinkled some water over her. Dounia shuddered and came to herself.
+“It has acted violently,” Svidrigaïlov muttered to himself, frowning.
+“Avdotya Romanovna, calm yourself! Believe me, he has friends. We will
+save him. Would you like me to take him abroad? I have money, I can get
+a ticket in three days. And as for the murder, he will do all sorts of
+good deeds yet, to atone for it. Calm yourself. He may become a great
+man yet. Well, how are you? How do you feel?”
+“Cruel man! To be able to jeer at it! Let me go...”
+“Where are you going?”
+“To him. Where is he? Do you know? Why is this door locked? We came in
+at that door and now it is locked. When did you manage to lock it?”
+“We couldn’t be shouting all over the flat on such a subject. I am far
+from jeering; it’s simply that I’m sick of talking like this. But how
+can you go in such a state? Do you want to betray him? You will drive
+him to fury, and he will give himself up. Let me tell you, he is already
+being watched; they are already on his track. You will simply be giving
+him away. Wait a little: I saw him and was talking to him just now. He
+can still be saved. Wait a bit, sit down; let us think it over together.
+I asked you to come in order to discuss it alone with you and to
+consider it thoroughly. But do sit down!”
+“How can you save him? Can he really be saved?”
+Dounia sat down. Svidrigaïlov sat down beside her.
+“It all depends on you, on you, on you alone,” he began with glowing
+eyes, almost in a whisper and hardly able to utter the words for
+emotion.
+Dounia drew back from him in alarm. He too was trembling all over.
+“You... one word from you, and he is saved. I... I’ll save him. I have
+money and friends. I’ll send him away at once. I’ll get a passport,
+two passports, one for him and one for me. I have friends... capable
+people.... If you like, I’ll take a passport for you... for your
+mother.... What do you want with Razumihin? I love you too.... I love
+you beyond everything.... Let me kiss the hem of your dress, let me, let
+me.... The very rustle of it is too much for me. Tell me, ‘do that,’
+and I’ll do it. I’ll do everything. I will do the impossible. What you
+believe, I will believe. I’ll do anything--anything! Don’t, don’t look
+at me like that. Do you know that you are killing me?...”
+He was almost beginning to rave.... Something seemed suddenly to go to
+his head. Dounia jumped up and rushed to the door.
+“Open it! Open it!” she called, shaking the door. “Open it! Is there no
+one there?”
+Svidrigaïlov got up and came to himself. His still trembling lips slowly
+broke into an angry mocking smile.
+“There is no one at home,” he said quietly and emphatically. “The
+landlady has gone out, and it’s waste of time to shout like that. You
+are only exciting yourself uselessly.”
+“Where is the key? Open the door at once, at once, base man!”
+“I have lost the key and cannot find it.”
+“This is an outrage,” cried Dounia, turning pale as death. She rushed
+to the furthest corner, where she made haste to barricade herself with a
+little table.
+She did not scream, but she fixed her eyes on her tormentor and watched
+every movement he made.
+Svidrigaïlov remained standing at the other end of the room facing her.
+He was positively composed, at least in appearance, but his face was
+pale as before. The mocking smile did not leave his face.
+“You spoke of outrage just now, Avdotya Romanovna. In that case you
+may be sure I’ve taken measures. Sofya Semyonovna is not at home. The
+Kapernaumovs are far away--there are five locked rooms between. I am at
+least twice as strong as you are and I have nothing to fear, besides.
+For you could not complain afterwards. You surely would not be willing
+actually to betray your brother? Besides, no one would believe you. How
+should a girl have come alone to visit a solitary man in his lodgings?
+So that even if you do sacrifice your brother, you could prove nothing.
+It is very difficult to prove an assault, Avdotya Romanovna.”
+“Scoundrel!” whispered Dounia indignantly.
+“As you like, but observe I was only speaking by way of a general
+proposition. It’s my personal conviction that you are perfectly
+right--violence is hateful. I only spoke to show you that you need have
+no remorse even if... you were willing to save your brother of your
+own accord, as I suggest to you. You would be simply submitting to
+circumstances, to violence, in fact, if we must use that word. Think
+about it. Your brother’s and your mother’s fate are in your hands. I
+will be your slave... all my life... I will wait here.”
+Svidrigaïlov sat down on the sofa about eight steps from Dounia. She had
+not the slightest doubt now of his unbending determination. Besides, she
+knew him. Suddenly she pulled out of her pocket a revolver, cocked it
+and laid it in her hand on the table. Svidrigaïlov jumped up.
+“Aha! So that’s it, is it?” he cried, surprised but smiling maliciously.
+“Well, that completely alters the aspect of affairs. You’ve made things
+wonderfully easier for me, Avdotya Romanovna. But where did you get the
+revolver? Was it Mr. Razumihin? Why, it’s my revolver, an old friend!
+And how I’ve hunted for it! The shooting lessons I’ve given you in the
+country have not been thrown away.”
+“It’s not your revolver, it belonged to Marfa Petrovna, whom you killed,
+wretch! There was nothing of yours in her house. I took it when I began
+to suspect what you were capable of. If you dare to advance one step, I
+swear I’ll kill you.” She was frantic.
+“But your brother? I ask from curiosity,” said Svidrigaïlov, still
+standing where he was.
+“Inform, if you want to! Don’t stir! Don’t come nearer! I’ll shoot! You
+poisoned your wife, I know; you are a murderer yourself!” She held the
+revolver ready.
+“Are you so positive I poisoned Marfa Petrovna?”
+“You did! You hinted it yourself; you talked to me of poison.... I know
+you went to get it... you had it in readiness.... It was your doing....
+It must have been your doing.... Scoundrel!”
+“Even if that were true, it would have been for your sake... you would
+have been the cause.”
+“You are lying! I hated you always, always....”
+“Oho, Avdotya Romanovna! You seem to have forgotten how you softened
+to me in the heat of propaganda. I saw it in your eyes. Do you remember
+that moonlight night, when the nightingale was singing?”
+“That’s a lie,” there was a flash of fury in Dounia’s eyes, “that’s a
+lie and a libel!”
+“A lie? Well, if you like, it’s a lie. I made it up. Women ought not
+to be reminded of such things,” he smiled. “I know you will shoot, you
+pretty wild creature. Well, shoot away!”
+Dounia raised the revolver, and deadly pale, gazed at him, measuring the
+distance and awaiting the first movement on his part. Her lower lip was
+white and quivering and her big black eyes flashed like fire. He had
+never seen her so handsome. The fire glowing in her eyes at the moment
+she raised the revolver seemed to kindle him and there was a pang of
+anguish in his heart. He took a step forward and a shot rang out. The
+bullet grazed his hair and flew into the wall behind. He stood still and
+laughed softly.
+“The wasp has stung me. She aimed straight at my head. What’s this?
+Blood?” he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the blood, which flowed
+in a thin stream down his right temple. The bullet seemed to have just
+grazed the skin.
+Dounia lowered the revolver and looked at Svidrigaïlov not so much in
+terror as in a sort of wild amazement. She seemed not to understand what
+she was doing and what was going on.
+“Well, you missed! Fire again, I’ll wait,” said Svidrigaïlov softly,
+still smiling, but gloomily. “If you go on like that, I shall have time
+to seize you before you cock again.”
+Dounia started, quickly cocked the pistol and again raised it.
+“Let me be,” she cried in despair. “I swear I’ll shoot again. I... I’ll
+kill you.”
+“Well... at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you don’t...
+then.” His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward. Dounia shot
+again: it missed fire.
+“You haven’t loaded it properly. Never mind, you have another charge
+there. Get it ready, I’ll wait.”
+He stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at her with wild
+determination, with feverishly passionate, stubborn, set eyes. Dounia
+saw that he would sooner die than let her go. “And... now, of course she
+would kill him, at two paces!” Suddenly she flung away the revolver.
+“She’s dropped it!” said Svidrigaïlov with surprise, and he drew a deep
+breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his heart--perhaps not only
+the fear of death; indeed he may scarcely have felt it at that moment.
+It was the deliverance from another feeling, darker and more bitter,
+which he could not himself have defined.
+He went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist. She did not
+resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant eyes.
+He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able to
+utter a sound.
+“Let me go,” Dounia implored. Svidrigaïlov shuddered. Her voice now was
+quite different.
+“Then you don’t love me?” he asked softly. Dounia shook her head.
+“And... and you can’t? Never?” he whispered in despair.
+“Never!”
+There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of
+Svidrigaïlov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly
+he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it.
+Another moment passed.
+“Here’s the key.”
+He took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the table
+behind him, without turning or looking at Dounia.
+“Take it! Make haste!”
+He looked stubbornly out of the window. Dounia went up to the table to
+take the key.
+“Make haste! Make haste!” repeated Svidrigaïlov, still without turning
+or moving. But there seemed a terrible significance in the tone of that
+“make haste.”
+Dounia understood it, snatched up the key, flew to the door, unlocked it
+quickly and rushed out of the room. A minute later, beside herself, she
+ran out on to the canal bank in the direction of X. Bridge.
+Svidrigaïlov remained three minutes standing at the window. At last he
+slowly turned, looked about him and passed his hand over his forehead. A
+strange smile contorted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of
+despair. The blood, which was already getting dry, smeared his hand.
+He looked angrily at it, then wetted a towel and washed his temple.
+The revolver which Dounia had flung away lay near the door and suddenly
+caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it. It was a little pocket
+three-barrel revolver of old-fashioned construction. There were still
+two charges and one capsule left in it. It could be fired again. He
+thought a little, put the revolver in his pocket, took his hat and went
+out.
+CHAPTER VI
+He spent that evening till ten o’clock going from one low haunt to
+another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a certain
+“villain and tyrant,”
+“began kissing Katia.”
+Svidrigaïlov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers and
+the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to these
+clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to the
+left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a pleasure
+garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky
+three-year-old pine-tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a
+“Vauxhall,” which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was
+served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round it.
+A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken but exceedingly depressed
+German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the public. The
+clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight seemed imminent.
+Svidrigaïlov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened to them for
+a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud that there was no
+possibility of understanding them. The only fact that seemed certain was
+that one of them had stolen something and had even succeeded in
+selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share the spoil with his
+companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen object was a teaspoon
+belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the affair began to seem
+troublesome. Svidrigaïlov paid for the spoon, got up, and walked out of
+the garden. It was about six o’clock. He had not drunk a drop of wine
+all this time and had ordered tea more for the sake of appearances than
+anything.
+It was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came over
+the sky about ten o’clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the rain
+came down like a waterfall. The water fell not in drops, but beat on the
+earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every minute and each
+flash lasted while one could count five.
+Drenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the
+bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers. Then,
+putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his clothes,
+but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder and the
+rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the room
+without locking the door. He went straight to Sonia. She was at home.
+She was not alone: the four Kapernaumov children were with her. She
+was giving them tea. She received Svidrigaïlov in respectful silence,
+looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children all ran away at
+once in indescribable terror.
+Svidrigaïlov sat down at the table and asked Sonia to sit beside him.
+She timidly prepared to listen.
+“I may be going to America, Sofya Semyonovna,” said Svidrigaïlov, “and
+as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to make some
+arrangements. Well, did you see the lady to-day? I know what she said to
+you, you need not tell me.” (Sonia made a movement and blushed.) “Those
+people have their own way of doing things. As to your sisters and your
+brother, they are really provided for and the money assigned to them
+I’ve put into safe keeping and have received acknowledgments. You had
+better take charge of the receipts, in case anything happens. Here, take
+them! Well now, that’s settled. Here are three 5-per-cent bonds to the
+value of three thousand roubles. Take those for yourself, entirely for
+yourself, and let that be strictly between ourselves, so that no one
+knows of it, whatever you hear. You will need the money, for to go on
+living in the old way, Sofya Semyonovna, is bad, and besides there is no
+need for it now.”
+“I am so much indebted to you, and so are the children and my
+stepmother,” said Sonia hurriedly, “and if I’ve said so little... please
+don’t consider...”
+“That’s enough! that’s enough!”
+“But as for the money, Arkady Ivanovitch, I am very grateful to you,
+but I don’t need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don’t think me
+ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money....”
+“It’s for you, for you, Sofya Semyonovna, and please don’t waste words
+over it. I haven’t time for it. You will want it. Rodion Romanovitch
+has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Siberia.” (Sonia looked
+wildly at him, and started.) “Don’t be uneasy, I know all about it from
+himself and I am not a gossip; I won’t tell anyone. It was good advice
+when you told him to give himself up and confess. It would be much
+better for him. Well, if it turns out to be Siberia, he will go and
+you will follow him. That’s so, isn’t it? And if so, you’ll need money.
+You’ll need it for him, do you understand? Giving it to you is the same
+as my giving it to him. Besides, you promised Amalia Ivanovna to pay
+what’s owing. I heard you. How can you undertake such obligations so
+heedlessly, Sofya Semyonovna? It was Katerina Ivanovna’s debt and not
+yours, so you ought not to have taken any notice of the German woman.
+You can’t get through the world like that. If you are ever questioned
+about me--to-morrow or the day after you will be asked--don’t say
+anything about my coming to see you now and don’t show the money to
+anyone or say a word about it. Well, now good-bye.” (He got up.) “My
+greetings to Rodion Romanovitch. By the way, you’d better put the money
+for the present in Mr. Razumihin’s keeping. You know Mr. Razumihin? Of
+course you do. He’s not a bad fellow. Take it to him to-morrow or...
+when the time comes. And till then, hide it carefully.”
+Sonia too jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at Svidrigaïlov.
+She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the first moments she
+did not dare and did not know how to begin.
+“How can you... how can you be going now, in such rain?”
+“Why, be starting for America, and be stopped by rain! Ha, ha! Good-bye,
+Sofya Semyonovna, my dear! Live and live long, you will be of use to
+others. By the way... tell Mr. Razumihin I send my greetings to him.
+Tell him Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov sends his greetings. Be sure
+to.”
+He went out, leaving Sonia in a state of wondering anxiety and vague
+apprehension.
+It appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past eleven,
+he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The rain still
+persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the little flat where
+the parents of his betrothed lived, in Third Street in Vassilyevsky
+Island. He knocked some time before he was admitted, and his visit
+at first caused great perturbation; but Svidrigaïlov could be
+very fascinating when he liked, so that the first, and indeed very
+intelligent surmise of the sensible parents that Svidrigaïlov had
+probably had so much to drink that he did not know what he was doing
+vanished immediately. The decrepit father was wheeled in to see
+Svidrigaïlov by the tender and sensible mother, who as usual began the
+conversation with various irrelevant questions. She never asked a direct
+question, but began by smiling and rubbing her hands and then, if she
+were obliged to ascertain something--for instance, when Svidrigaïlov
+would like to have the wedding--she would begin by interested and
+almost eager questions about Paris and the court life there, and only
+by degrees brought the conversation round to Third Street. On other
+occasions this had of course been very impressive, but this time Arkady
+Ivanovitch seemed particularly impatient, and insisted on seeing his
+betrothed at once, though he had been informed, to begin with, that she
+had already gone to bed. The girl of course appeared.
+Svidrigaïlov informed her at once that he was obliged by very important
+affairs to leave Petersburg for a time, and therefore brought her
+fifteen thousand roubles and begged her accept them as a present from
+him, as he had long been intending to make her this trifling present
+before their wedding. The logical connection of the present with his
+immediate departure and the absolute necessity of visiting them for that
+purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not made clear. But it all went
+off very well; even the inevitable ejaculations of wonder and regret,
+the inevitable questions were extraordinarily few and restrained. On the
+other hand, the gratitude expressed was most glowing and was reinforced
+by tears from the most sensible of mothers. Svidrigaïlov got up,
+laughed, kissed his betrothed, patted her cheek, declared he would soon
+come back, and noticing in her eyes, together with childish curiosity, a
+sort of earnest dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though
+he felt sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be
+immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of mothers. He
+went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary excitement, but
+the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half whisper, settled some of
+the most important of their doubts, concluding that Svidrigaïlov was
+a great man, a man of great affairs and connections and of great
+wealth--there was no knowing what he had in his mind. He would start
+off on a journey and give away money just as the fancy took him, so that
+there was nothing surprising about it. Of course it was strange that he
+was wet through, but Englishmen, for instance, are even more eccentric,
+and all these people of high society didn’t think of what was said of
+them and didn’t stand on ceremony. Possibly, indeed, he came like that
+on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anyone. Above all, not a
+word should be said about it, for God knows what might come of it, and
+the money must be locked up, and it was most fortunate that Fedosya, the
+cook, had not left the kitchen. And above all not a word must be said
+to that old cat, Madame Resslich, and so on and so on. They sat up
+whispering till two o’clock, but the girl went to bed much earlier,
+amazed and rather sorrowful.
+Svidrigaïlov meanwhile, exactly at midnight, crossed the bridge on the
+way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a roaring
+wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the black
+waters of the Little Neva with a look of special interest, even inquiry.
+But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he turned and
+went towards Y. Prospect. He walked along that endless street for a long
+time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling in the dark on the
+wooden pavement, but continually looking for something on the right side
+of the street. He had noticed passing through this street lately that
+there was a hotel somewhere towards the end, built of wood, but fairly
+large, and its name he remembered was something like Adrianople. He was
+not mistaken: the hotel was so conspicuous in that God-forsaken place
+that he could not fail to see it even in the dark. It was a long,
+blackened wooden building, and in spite of the late hour there were
+lights in the windows and signs of life within. He went in and asked
+a ragged fellow who met him in the corridor for a room. The latter,
+scanning Svidrigaïlov, pulled himself together and led him at once to a
+close and tiny room in the distance, at the end of the corridor, under
+the stairs. There was no other, all were occupied. The ragged fellow
+looked inquiringly.
+“Is there tea?” asked Svidrigaïlov.
+“Yes, sir.”
+“What else is there?”
+“Veal, vodka, savouries.”
+“Bring me tea and veal.”
+“And you want nothing else?” he asked with apparent surprise.
+“Nothing, nothing.”
+The ragged man went away, completely disillusioned.
+“It must be a nice place,” thought Svidrigaïlov. “How was it I didn’t
+know it? I expect I look as if I came from a café chantant and have
+had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to know who stayed
+here?”
+He lighted the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It was a
+room so low-pitched that Svidrigaïlov could only just stand up in it;
+it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty, and the plain-stained
+chair and table almost filled it up. The walls looked as though they
+were made of planks, covered with shabby paper, so torn and dusty
+that the pattern was indistinguishable, though the general
+colour--yellow--could still be made out. One of the walls was cut short
+by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an attic but just under
+the stairs.
+Svidrigaïlov set down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank into
+thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose to a shout
+in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had not ceased from
+the moment he entered the room. He listened: someone was upbraiding and
+almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only one voice.
+Svidrigaïlov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he saw
+light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped through. The
+room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two occupants. One of
+them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed face, was standing
+in the pose of an orator, without his coat, with his legs wide apart to
+preserve his balance, and smiting himself on the breast. He reproached
+the other with being a beggar, with having no standing whatever. He
+declared that he had taken the other out of the gutter and he could turn
+him out when he liked, and that only the finger of Providence sees it
+all. The object of his reproaches was sitting in a chair, and had the
+air of a man who wants dreadfully to sneeze, but can’t. He sometimes
+turned sheepish and befogged eyes on the speaker, but obviously had not
+the slightest idea what he was talking about and scarcely heard it. A
+candle was burning down on the table; there were wine-glasses, a nearly
+empty bottle of vodka, bread and cucumber, and glasses with the dregs
+of stale tea. After gazing attentively at this, Svidrigaïlov turned away
+indifferently and sat down on the bed.
+The ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist asking
+him again whether he didn’t want anything more, and again receiving a
+negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidrigaïlov made haste to drink a
+glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat anything. He began
+to feel feverish. He took off his coat and, wrapping himself in the
+blanket, lay down on the bed. He was annoyed. “It would have been better
+to be well for the occasion,” he thought with a smile. The room was
+close, the candle burnt dimly, the wind was roaring outside, he heard
+a mouse scratching in the corner and the room smelt of mice and of
+leather. He lay in a sort of reverie: one thought followed another. He
+felt a longing to fix his imagination on something. “It must be a garden
+under the window,” he thought. “There’s a sound of trees. How I dislike
+the sound of trees on a stormy night, in the dark! They give one a
+horrid feeling.” He remembered how he had disliked it when he passed
+Petrovsky Park just now. This reminded him of the bridge over the Little
+Neva and he felt cold again as he had when standing there. “I never have
+liked water,” he thought, “even in a landscape,” and he suddenly smiled
+again at a strange idea: “Surely now all these questions of taste and
+comfort ought not to matter, but I’ve become more particular, like an
+animal that picks out a special place... for such an occasion. I ought
+to have gone into the Petrovsky Park! I suppose it seemed dark, cold,
+ha-ha! As though I were seeking pleasant sensations!... By the way, why
+haven’t I put out the candle?” he blew it out. “They’ve gone to bed next
+door,” he thought, not seeing the light at the crack. “Well, now, Marfa
+Petrovna, now is the time for you to turn up; it’s dark, and the very
+time and place for you. But now you won’t come!”
+He suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his design on
+Dounia, he had recommended Raskolnikov to trust her to Razumihin’s
+keeping. “I suppose I really did say it, as Raskolnikov guessed, to
+tease myself. But what a rogue that Raskolnikov is! He’s gone through a
+good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when he’s got over
+his nonsense. But now he’s _too_ eager for life. These young men
+are contemptible on that point. But, hang the fellow! Let him please
+himself, it’s nothing to do with me.”
+He could not get to sleep. By degrees Dounia’s image rose before him,
+and a shudder ran over him. “No, I must give up all that now,” he
+thought, rousing himself. “I must think of something else. It’s queer
+and funny. I never had a great hatred for anyone, I never particularly
+desired to avenge myself even, and that’s a bad sign, a bad sign, a bad
+sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never lost my temper--that’s
+a bad sign too. And the promises I made her just now, too--Damnation!
+But--who knows?--perhaps she would have made a new man of me
+somehow....”
+He ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Dounia’s image
+rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the first time,
+she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly at him, so that
+he might have seized her twice over and she would not have lifted a hand
+to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He recalled how at that
+instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he had felt a pang at his
+heart...
+“Aïe! Damnation, these thoughts again! I must put it away!”
+He was dozing off; the feverish shiver had ceased, when suddenly
+something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes. He
+started. “Ugh! hang it! I believe it’s a mouse,” he thought, “that’s the
+veal I left on the table.” He felt fearfully disinclined to pull off the
+blanket, get up, get cold, but all at once something unpleasant ran over
+his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and lighted the candle. Shaking
+with feverish chill he bent down to examine the bed: there was nothing.
+He shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet.
+He tried to catch it, but the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without
+leaving the bed, slipped between his fingers, ran over his hand and
+suddenly darted under the pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one
+instant felt something leap on his chest and dart over his body and down
+his back under his shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up.
+The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the blanket
+as before. The wind was howling under the window. “How disgusting,” he
+thought with annoyance.
+He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the
+window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold
+damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the
+blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of
+anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another,
+incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his
+mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or
+the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees
+roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling
+on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright,
+warm, almost hot day, a holiday--Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country
+cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with
+flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was
+surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with
+rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed
+particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant
+narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was
+reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came
+into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere--at the windows,
+the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself--were flowers.
+The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows
+were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were
+chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table
+covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was
+covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of
+flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a
+white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as
+though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was
+a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of
+her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her
+pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal.
+Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle
+beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself.
+She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed
+herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish
+soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn
+from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on
+a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled....
+Svidrigaïlov came to himself, got up from the bed and went to the
+window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously
+into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered with
+his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have been
+something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There, too,
+probably there were tea-tables and singing in the daytime. Now drops of
+rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it was dark as
+in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark blurs of
+objects. Svidrigaïlov, bending down with elbows on the window-sill,
+gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a cannon, followed
+by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the night. “Ah, the
+signal! The river is overflowing,” he thought. “By morning it will be
+swirling down the street in the lower parts, flooding the basements and
+cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and men will curse in the rain
+and wind as they drag their rubbish to their upper storeys. What time is
+it now?” And he had hardly thought it when, somewhere near, a clock on
+the wall, ticking away hurriedly, struck three.
+“Aha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I’ll go out at once
+straight to the park. I’ll choose a great bush there drenched with rain,
+so that as soon as one’s shoulder touches it, millions of drops drip on
+one’s head.”
+He moved away from the window, shut it, lighted the candle, put on his
+waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the candle,
+into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be asleep
+somewhere in the midst of candle-ends and all sorts of rubbish, to pay
+him for the room and leave the hotel. “It’s the best minute; I couldn’t
+choose a better.”
+He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding
+anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner
+between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange object
+which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little
+girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her
+clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of
+Svidrigaïlov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big
+black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been
+crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The child’s face
+was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. “How can she have come here?
+She must have hidden here and not slept all night.” He began questioning
+her. The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered away in her baby
+language, something about “mammy” and that “mammy would beat her,” and
+about some cup that she had “bwoken.” The child chattered on without
+stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a
+neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service
+of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken
+a cup of her mother’s and was so frightened that she had run away the
+evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in the
+rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard and
+spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the darkness
+and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it. He took her in his
+arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed, and began undressing
+her. The torn shoes which she had on her stockingless feet were as
+wet as if they had been standing in a puddle all night. When he had
+undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered her up and wrapped her in
+the blanket from her head downwards. She fell asleep at once. Then he
+sank into dreary musing again.
+“What folly to trouble myself,” he decided suddenly with an oppressive
+feeling of annoyance. “What idiocy!” In vexation he took up the candle
+to go and look for the ragged attendant again and make haste to go away.
+“Damn the child!” he thought as he opened the door, but he turned again
+to see whether the child was asleep. He raised the blanket carefully.
+The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm under the blanket,
+and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to say that flush seemed
+brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of childhood. “It’s a flush
+of fever,” thought Svidrigaïlov. It was like the flush from drinking, as
+though she had been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were
+hot and glowing; but what was this? He suddenly fancied that her long
+black eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a
+sly crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little
+girl were not asleep, but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in
+a smile. The corners of her mouth quivered, as though she were trying to
+control them. But now she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin,
+a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite
+unchildish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the
+shameless face of a French harlot. Now both eyes opened wide; they
+turned a glowing, shameless glance upon him; they laughed, invited
+him.... There was something infinitely hideous and shocking in that
+laugh, in those eyes, in such nastiness in the face of a child. “What,
+at five years old?” Svidrigaïlov muttered in genuine horror. “What does
+it mean?” And now she turned to him, her little face all aglow, holding
+out her arms.... “Accursed child!” Svidrigaïlov cried, raising his hand
+to strike her, but at that moment he woke up.
+He was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had not
+been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows.
+“I’ve had nightmare all night!” He got up angrily, feeling utterly
+shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he could
+see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept himself! He got up,
+put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the revolver in his
+pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a notebook out of his
+pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the title page wrote a few
+lines in large letters. Reading them over, he sank into thought with his
+elbows on the table. The revolver and the notebook lay beside him. Some
+flies woke up and settled on the untouched veal, which was still on
+the table. He stared at them and at last with his free right hand began
+trying to catch one. He tried till he was tired, but could not catch it.
+At last, realising that he was engaged in this interesting pursuit, he
+started, got up and walked resolutely out of the room. A minute later he
+was in the street.
+A thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigaïlov walked along the
+slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was picturing
+the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night, Petrovsky Island,
+the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the
+bush.... He began ill-humouredly staring at the houses, trying to think
+of something else. There was not a cabman or a passer-by in the street.
+The bright yellow, wooden, little houses looked dirty and dejected with
+their closed shutters. The cold and damp penetrated his whole body and
+he began to shiver. From time to time he came across shop signs and read
+each carefully. At last he reached the end of the wooden pavement and
+came to a big stone house. A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with
+its tail between its legs. A man in a greatcoat lay face downwards; dead
+drunk, across the pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower
+stood up on the left. “Bah!” he shouted, “here is a place. Why should
+it be Petrovsky? It will be in the presence of an official witness
+anyway....”
+He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where
+there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of
+the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them,
+wrapped in a grey soldier’s coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his
+head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigaïlov. His
+face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly
+printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both,
+Svidrigaïlov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes
+without speaking. At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man
+not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a
+word.
+“What do you want here?” he said, without moving or changing his
+position.
+“Nothing, brother, good morning,” answered Svidrigaïlov.
+“This isn’t the place.”
+“I am going to foreign parts, brother.”
+“To foreign parts?”
+“To America.”
+“America.”
+Svidrigaïlov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his
+eyebrows.
+“I say, this is not the place for such jokes!”
+“Why shouldn’t it be the place?”
+“Because it isn’t.”
+“Well, brother, I don’t mind that. It’s a good place. When you are
+asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”
+He put the revolver to his right temple.
+“You can’t do it here, it’s not the place,” cried Achilles, rousing
+himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.
+Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger.
+CHAPTER VII
+The same day, about seven o’clock in the evening, Raskolnikov was on
+his way to his mother’s and sister’s lodging--the lodging in Bakaleyev’s
+house which Razumihin had found for them. The stairs went up from
+the street. Raskolnikov walked with lagging steps, as though still
+hesitating whether to go or not. But nothing would have turned him back:
+his decision was taken.
+“Besides, it doesn’t matter, they still know nothing,” he thought, “and
+they are used to thinking of me as eccentric.”
+He was appallingly dressed: his clothes torn and dirty, soaked with a
+night’s rain. His face was almost distorted from fatigue, exposure, the
+inward conflict that had lasted for twenty-four hours. He had spent all
+the previous night alone, God knows where. But anyway he had reached a
+decision.
+He knocked at the door which was opened by his mother. Dounia was not
+at home. Even the servant happened to be out. At first Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna was speechless with joy and surprise; then she took him by
+the hand and drew him into the room.
+“Here you are!” she began, faltering with joy. “Don’t be angry with
+me, Rodya, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am laughing not
+crying. Did you think I was crying? No, I am delighted, but I’ve got
+into such a stupid habit of shedding tears. I’ve been like that ever
+since your father’s death. I cry for anything. Sit down, dear boy, you
+must be tired; I see you are. Ah, how muddy you are.”
+“I was in the rain yesterday, mother....” Raskolnikov began.
+“No, no,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurriedly interrupted, “you thought I
+was going to cross-question you in the womanish way I used to; don’t be
+anxious, I understand, I understand it all: now I’ve learned the ways
+here and truly I see for myself that they are better. I’ve made up my
+mind once for all: how could I understand your plans and expect you to
+give an account of them? God knows what concerns and plans you may have,
+or what ideas you are hatching; so it’s not for me to keep nudging your
+elbow, asking you what you are thinking about? But, my goodness! why
+am I running to and fro as though I were crazy...? I am reading your
+article in the magazine for the third time, Rodya. Dmitri Prokofitch
+brought it to me. Directly I saw it I cried out to myself: ‘There,
+foolish one,’ I thought, ‘that’s what he is busy about; that’s the
+solution of the mystery! Learned people are always like that. He may
+have some new ideas in his head just now; he is thinking them over and I
+worry him and upset him.’ I read it, my dear, and of course there was a
+great deal I did not understand; but that’s only natural--how should I?”
+“Show me, mother.”
+Raskolnikov took the magazine and glanced at his article. Incongruous
+as it was with his mood and his circumstances, he felt that strange and
+bitter sweet sensation that every author experiences the first time he
+sees himself in print; besides, he was only twenty-three. It lasted only
+a moment. After reading a few lines he frowned and his heart throbbed
+with anguish. He recalled all the inward conflict of the preceding
+months. He flung the article on the table with disgust and anger.
+“But, however foolish I may be, Rodya, I can see for myself that you
+will very soon be one of the leading--if not the leading man--in the
+world of Russian thought. And they dared to think you were mad! You
+don’t know, but they really thought that. Ah, the despicable creatures,
+how could they understand genius! And Dounia, Dounia was all but
+believing it--what do you say to that? Your father sent twice to
+magazines--the first time poems (I’ve got the manuscript and will show
+you) and the second time a whole novel (I begged him to let me copy it
+out) and how we prayed that they should be taken--they weren’t! I was
+breaking my heart, Rodya, six or seven days ago over your food and your
+clothes and the way you are living. But now I see again how foolish
+I was, for you can attain any position you like by your intellect and
+talent. No doubt you don’t care about that for the present and you are
+occupied with much more important matters....”
+“Dounia’s not at home, mother?”
+“No, Rodya. I often don’t see her; she leaves me alone. Dmitri
+Prokofitch comes to see me, it’s so good of him, and he always talks
+about you. He loves you and respects you, my dear. I don’t say that
+Dounia is very wanting in consideration. I am not complaining. She has
+her ways and I have mine; she seems to have got some secrets of late and
+I never have any secrets from you two. Of course, I am sure that Dounia
+has far too much sense, and besides she loves you and me... but I don’t
+know what it will all lead to. You’ve made me so happy by coming now,
+Rodya, but she has missed you by going out; when she comes in I’ll tell
+her: ‘Your brother came in while you were out. Where have you been all
+this time?’ You mustn’t spoil me, Rodya, you know; come when you can,
+but if you can’t, it doesn’t matter, I can wait. I shall know, anyway,
+that you are fond of me, that will be enough for me. I shall read what
+you write, I shall hear about you from everyone, and sometimes you’ll
+come yourself to see me. What could be better? Here you’ve come now to
+comfort your mother, I see that.”
+Here Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.
+“Here I am again! Don’t mind my foolishness. My goodness, why am I
+sitting here?” she cried, jumping up. “There is coffee and I don’t offer
+you any. Ah, that’s the selfishness of old age. I’ll get it at once!”
+“Mother, don’t trouble, I am going at once. I haven’t come for that.
+Please listen to me.”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna went up to him timidly.
+“Mother, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever you are
+told about me, will you always love me as you do now?” he asked suddenly
+from the fullness of his heart, as though not thinking of his words and
+not weighing them.
+“Rodya, Rodya, what is the matter? How can you ask me such a question?
+Why, who will tell me anything about you? Besides, I shouldn’t believe
+anyone, I should refuse to listen.”
+“I’ve come to assure you that I’ve always loved you and I am glad
+that we are alone, even glad Dounia is out,” he went on with the same
+impulse. “I have come to tell you that though you will be unhappy, you
+must believe that your son loves you now more than himself, and that all
+you thought about me, that I was cruel and didn’t care about you, was
+all a mistake. I shall never cease to love you.... Well, that’s enough:
+I thought I must do this and begin with this....”
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna embraced him in silence, pressing him to her
+bosom and weeping gently.
+“I don’t know what is wrong with you, Rodya,” she said at last. “I’ve
+been thinking all this time that we were simply boring you and now I see
+that there is a great sorrow in store for you, and that’s why you are
+miserable. I’ve foreseen it a long time, Rodya. Forgive me for speaking
+about it. I keep thinking about it and lie awake at nights. Your sister
+lay talking in her sleep all last night, talking of nothing but you. I
+caught something, but I couldn’t make it out. I felt all the morning
+as though I were going to be hanged, waiting for something, expecting
+something, and now it has come! Rodya, Rodya, where are you going? You
+are going away somewhere?”
+“Yes.”
+“That’s what I thought! I can come with you, you know, if you need
+me. And Dounia, too; she loves you, she loves you dearly--and Sofya
+Semyonovna may come with us if you like. You see, I am glad to look upon
+her as a daughter even... Dmitri Prokofitch will help us to go together.
+But... where... are you going?”
+“Good-bye, mother.”
+“What, to-day?” she cried, as though losing him for ever.
+“I can’t stay, I must go now....”
+“And can’t I come with you?”
+“No, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will
+reach Him.”
+“Let me bless you and sign you with the cross. That’s right, that’s
+right. Oh, God, what are we doing?”
+Yes, he was glad, he was very glad that there was no one there, that
+he was alone with his mother. For the first time after all those awful
+months his heart was softened. He fell down before her, he kissed her
+feet and both wept, embracing. And she was not surprised and did not
+question him this time. For some days she had realised that something
+awful was happening to her son and that now some terrible minute had
+come for him.
+“Rodya, my darling, my first born,” she said sobbing, “now you are just
+as when you were little. You would run like this to me and hug me and
+kiss me. When your father was living and we were poor, you comforted us
+simply by being with us and when I buried your father, how often we
+wept together at his grave and embraced, as now. And if I’ve been crying
+lately, it’s that my mother’s heart had a foreboding of trouble. The
+first time I saw you, that evening, you remember, as soon as we arrived
+here, I guessed simply from your eyes. My heart sank at once, and to-day
+when I opened the door and looked at you, I thought the fatal hour had
+come. Rodya, Rodya, you are not going away to-day?”
+“No!”
+“You’ll come again?”
+“Yes... I’ll come.”
+“Rodya, don’t be angry, I don’t dare to question you. I know I mustn’t.
+Only say two words to me--is it far where you are going?”
+“Very far.”
+“What is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?”
+“What God sends... only pray for me.” Raskolnikov went to the door, but
+she clutched him and gazed despairingly into his eyes. Her face worked
+with terror.
+“Enough, mother,” said Raskolnikov, deeply regretting that he had come.
+“Not for ever, it’s not yet for ever? You’ll come, you’ll come
+to-morrow?”
+“I will, I will, good-bye.” He tore himself away at last.
+It was a warm, fresh, bright evening; it had cleared up in the morning.
+Raskolnikov went to his lodgings; he made haste. He wanted to finish all
+before sunset. He did not want to meet anyone till then. Going up the
+stairs he noticed that Nastasya rushed from the samovar to watch him
+intently. “Can anyone have come to see me?” he wondered. He had a
+disgusted vision of Porfiry. But opening his door he saw Dounia. She
+was sitting alone, plunged in deep thought, and looked as though she had
+been waiting a long time. He stopped short in the doorway. She rose from
+the sofa in dismay and stood up facing him. Her eyes, fixed upon him,
+betrayed horror and infinite grief. And from those eyes alone he saw at
+once that she knew.
+“Am I to come in or go away?” he asked uncertainly.
+“I’ve been all day with Sofya Semyonovna. We were both waiting for you.
+We thought that you would be sure to come there.”
+Raskolnikov went into the room and sank exhausted on a chair.
+“I feel weak, Dounia, I am very tired; and I should have liked at this
+moment to be able to control myself.”
+He glanced at her mistrustfully.
+“Where were you all night?”
+“I don’t remember clearly. You see, sister, I wanted to make up my mind
+once for all, and several times I walked by the Neva, I remember that
+I wanted to end it all there, but... I couldn’t make up my mind,” he
+whispered, looking at her mistrustfully again.
+“Thank God! That was just what we were afraid of, Sofya Semyonovna and
+I. Then you still have faith in life? Thank God, thank God!”
+Raskolnikov smiled bitterly.
+“I haven’t faith, but I have just been weeping in mother’s arms; I
+haven’t faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don’t know
+how it is, Dounia, I don’t understand it.”
+“Have you been at mother’s? Have you told her?” cried Dounia,
+horror-stricken. “Surely you haven’t done that?”
+“No, I didn’t tell her... in words; but she understood a great deal.
+She heard you talking in your sleep. I am sure she half understands it
+already. Perhaps I did wrong in going to see her. I don’t know why I did
+go. I am a contemptible person, Dounia.”
+“A contemptible person, but ready to face suffering! You are, aren’t
+you?”
+“Yes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought of
+drowning myself, Dounia, but as I looked into the water, I thought that
+if I had considered myself strong till now I’d better not be afraid of
+disgrace,” he said, hurrying on. “It’s pride, Dounia.”
+“Pride, Rodya.”
+There was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be glad
+to think that he was still proud.
+“You don’t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?” he
+asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile.
+“Oh, Rodya, hush!” cried Dounia bitterly. Silence lasted for two
+minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Dounia stood at the
+other end of the table and looked at him with anguish. Suddenly he got
+up.
+“It’s late, it’s time to go! I am going at once to give myself up. But I
+don’t know why I am going to give myself up.”
+Big tears fell down her cheeks.
+“You are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?”
+“You doubted it?”
+She threw her arms round him.
+“Aren’t you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering?” she
+cried, holding him close and kissing him.
+“Crime? What crime?” he cried in sudden fury. “That I killed a vile
+noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one!... Killing
+her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor
+people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking
+of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? ‘A
+crime! a crime!’ Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice,
+now that I have decided to face this superfluous disgrace. It’s simply
+because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to,
+perhaps too for my advantage, as that... Porfiry... suggested!”
+“Brother, brother, what are you saying? Why, you have shed blood?” cried
+Dounia in despair.
+“Which all men shed,” he put in almost frantically, “which flows and has
+always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for which
+men are crowned in the Capitol and are called afterwards benefactors of
+mankind. Look into it more carefully and understand it! I too wanted to
+do good to men and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds
+to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not stupidity even, simply
+clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now
+that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.) By that
+stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to
+take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have
+been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison.... But I...
+I couldn’t carry out even the first step, because I am contemptible,
+that’s what’s the matter! And yet I won’t look at it as you do. If I had
+succeeded I should have been crowned with glory, but now I’m trapped.”
+“But that’s not so, not so! Brother, what are you saying?”
+“Ah, it’s not picturesque, not æsthetically attractive! I fail to
+understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more honourable.
+The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. I’ve never,
+never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever
+from seeing that what I did was a crime. I’ve never, never been stronger
+and more convinced than now.”
+The colour had rushed into his pale exhausted face, but as he uttered
+his last explanation, he happened to meet Dounia’s eyes and he saw such
+anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt that he
+had, anyway, made these two poor women miserable, that he was, anyway,
+the cause...
+“Dounia darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be forgiven
+if I am guilty). Good-bye! We won’t dispute. It’s time, high time to go.
+Don’t follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else to go.... But you
+go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to! It’s my last request
+of you. Don’t leave her at all; I left her in a state of anxiety, that
+she is not fit to bear; she will die or go out of her mind. Be with
+her! Razumihin will be with you. I’ve been talking to him.... Don’t cry
+about me: I’ll try to be honest and manly all my life, even if I am a
+murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make a name. I won’t disgrace you,
+you will see; I’ll still show.... Now good-bye for the present,” he
+concluded hurriedly, noticing again a strange expression in Dounia’s
+eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry,
+don’t cry: we are not parting for ever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I’d
+forgotten!”
+He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took
+from between the pages a little water-colour portrait on ivory. It was
+the portrait of his landlady’s daughter, who had died of fever, that
+strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at the
+delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave
+it to Dounia.
+“I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her,” he said
+thoughtfully. “To her heart I confided much of what has since been so
+hideously realised. Don’t be uneasy,” he returned to Dounia, “she was
+as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The great
+point is that everything now is going to be different, is going to
+be broken in two,” he cried, suddenly returning to his dejection.
+“Everything, everything, and am I prepared for it? Do I want it myself?
+They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What’s the object of these
+senseless sufferings? shall I know any better what they are for, when I
+am crushed by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old man after twenty
+years’ penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then? Why am I
+consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was contemptible when I stood
+looking at the Neva at daybreak to-day!”
+At last they both went out. It was hard for Dounia, but she loved him.
+She walked away, but after going fifty paces she turned round to look
+at him again. He was still in sight. At the corner he too turned and for
+the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was looking at him,
+he motioned her away with impatience and even vexation, and turned the
+corner abruptly.
+“I am wicked, I see that,” he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a
+moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. “But why are they so fond
+of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved
+me and I too had never loved anyone! _Nothing of all this would have
+happened._ But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so
+meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word
+that I am a criminal? Yes, that’s it, that’s it, that’s what they are
+sending me there for, that’s what they want. Look at them running to and
+fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at
+heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be
+wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!”
+He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could
+be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately--humbled by conviction.
+And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual
+bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should
+he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be
+so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that
+question since the previous evening, but still he went.
+CHAPTER VIII
+When he went into Sonia’s room, it was already getting dark. All day
+Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dounia had been
+waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering
+Svidrigaïlov’s words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the
+conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became.
+Dounia gained one comfort at least from that interview, that her
+brother would not be alone. He had gone to her, Sonia, first with his
+confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed it;
+she would go with him wherever fate might send him. Dounia did not ask,
+but she knew it was so. She looked at Sonia almost with reverence and
+at first almost embarrassed her by it. Sonia was almost on the point
+of tears. She felt herself, on the contrary, hardly worthy to look at
+Dounia. Dounia’s gracious image when she had bowed to her so attentively
+and respectfully at their first meeting in Raskolnikov’s room had
+remained in her mind as one of the fairest visions of her life.
+Dounia at last became impatient and, leaving Sonia, went to her
+brother’s room to await him there; she kept thinking that he would come
+there first. When she had gone, Sonia began to be tortured by the dread
+of his committing suicide, and Dounia too feared it. But they had spent
+the day trying to persuade each other that that could not be, and both
+were less anxious while they were together. As soon as they parted, each
+thought of nothing else. Sonia remembered how Svidrigaïlov had said to
+her the day before that Raskolnikov had two alternatives--Siberia or...
+Besides she knew his vanity, his pride and his lack of faith.
+“Is it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of death to
+make him live?” she thought at last in despair.
+Meanwhile the sun was setting. Sonia was standing in dejection, looking
+intently out of the window, but from it she could see nothing but the
+unwhitewashed blank wall of the next house. At last when she began to
+feel sure of his death--he walked into the room.
+She gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she turned
+pale.
+“Yes,” said Raskolnikov, smiling. “I have come for your cross, Sonia. It
+was you told me to go to the cross-roads; why is it you are frightened
+now it’s come to that?”
+Sonia gazed at him astonished. His tone seemed strange to her; a cold
+shiver ran over her, but in a moment she guessed that the tone and the
+words were a mask. He spoke to her looking away, as though to avoid
+meeting her eyes.
+“You see, Sonia, I’ve decided that it will be better so. There is one
+fact.... But it’s a long story and there’s no need to discuss it. But
+do you know what angers me? It annoys me that all those stupid brutish
+faces will be gaping at me directly, pestering me with their stupid
+questions, which I shall have to answer--they’ll point their fingers at
+me.... Tfoo! You know I am not going to Porfiry, I am sick of him. I’d
+rather go to my friend, the Explosive Lieutenant; how I shall surprise
+him, what a sensation I shall make! But I must be cooler; I’ve become
+too irritable of late. You know I was nearly shaking my fist at my
+sister just now, because she turned to take a last look at me. It’s
+a brutal state to be in! Ah! what am I coming to! Well, where are the
+crosses?”
+He seemed hardly to know what he was doing. He could not stay still or
+concentrate his attention on anything; his ideas seemed to gallop after
+one another, he talked incoherently, his hands trembled slightly.
+Without a word Sonia took out of the drawer two crosses, one of cypress
+wood and one of copper. She made the sign of the cross over herself and
+over him, and put the wooden cross on his neck.
+“It’s the symbol of my taking up the cross,” he laughed. “As though I
+had not suffered much till now! The wooden cross, that is the peasant
+one; the copper one, that is Lizaveta’s--you will wear yourself, show
+me! So she had it on... at that moment? I remember two things like
+these too, a silver one and a little ikon. I threw them back on the old
+woman’s neck. Those would be appropriate now, really, those are what I
+ought to put on now.... But I am talking nonsense and forgetting what
+matters; I’m somehow forgetful.... You see I have come to warn you,
+Sonia, so that you might know... that’s all--that’s all I came for. But
+I thought I had more to say. You wanted me to go yourself. Well, now I
+am going to prison and you’ll have your wish. Well, what are you crying
+for? You too? Don’t. Leave off! Oh, how I hate it all!”
+But his feeling was stirred; his heart ached, as he looked at her. “Why
+is she grieving too?” he thought to himself. “What am I to her? Why does
+she weep? Why is she looking after me, like my mother or Dounia? She’ll
+be my nurse.”
+“Cross yourself, say at least one prayer,” Sonia begged in a timid
+broken voice.
+“Oh certainly, as much as you like! And sincerely, Sonia, sincerely....”
+But he wanted to say something quite different.
+He crossed himself several times. Sonia took up her shawl and put
+it over her head. It was the green _drap de dames_ shawl of which
+Marmeladov had spoken, “the family shawl.” Raskolnikov thought of that
+looking at it, but he did not ask. He began to feel himself that he
+was certainly forgetting things and was disgustingly agitated. He was
+frightened at this. He was suddenly struck too by the thought that Sonia
+meant to go with him.
+“What are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I’ll go
+alone,” he cried in cowardly vexation, and almost resentful, he moved
+towards the door. “What’s the use of going in procession?” he muttered
+going out.
+Sonia remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even said
+good-bye to her; he had forgotten her. A poignant and rebellious doubt
+surged in his heart.
+“Was it right, was it right, all this?” he thought again as he went down
+the stairs. “Couldn’t he stop and retract it all... and not go?”
+But still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn’t ask
+himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that he
+had not said good-bye to Sonia, that he had left her in the middle of
+the room in her green shawl, not daring to stir after he had shouted
+at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same instant, another
+thought dawned upon him, as though it had been lying in wait to strike
+him then.
+“Why, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her--on
+business; on what business? I had no sort of business! To tell her I was
+_going_; but where was the need? Do I love her? No, no, I drove her away
+just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I’ve sunk! No,
+I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart
+ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to delay me, some
+friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what
+I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch, contemptible!”
+He walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go. But
+on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along it
+went to the Hay Market.
+He looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every object and
+could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped away. “In
+another week, another month I shall be driven in a prison van over this
+bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should like to remember
+this!” slipped into his mind. “Look at this sign! How shall I read those
+letters then? It’s written here ‘Campany,’ that’s a thing to remember,
+that letter _a_, and to look at it again in a month--how shall I look
+at it then? What shall I be feeling and thinking then?... How trivial
+it all must be, what I am fretting about now! Of course it must all be
+interesting... in its way... (Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?) I am
+becoming a baby, I am showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo! how
+people shove! that fat man--a German he must be--who pushed against
+me, does he know whom he pushed? There’s a peasant woman with a baby,
+begging. It’s curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might
+give her something, for the incongruity of it. Here’s a five copeck
+piece left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here... take it, my
+good woman!”
+“God bless you,” the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice.
+He went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very distasteful to be
+in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would have
+given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that he
+would not have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk and
+disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There
+was a ring round him. Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the crowd,
+stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short
+jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him,
+though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remembering where he
+was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly
+came over him, overwhelming him body and mind.
+He suddenly recalled Sonia’s words, “Go to the cross-roads, bow down to
+the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say
+aloud to the whole world, ‘I am a murderer.’” He trembled, remembering
+that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially
+of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively
+clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came
+over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and
+spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the
+tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot....
+He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and
+kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed
+down a second time.
+“He’s boozed,” a youth near him observed.
+There was a roar of laughter.
+“He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children
+and his country. He’s bowing down to all the world and kissing the great
+city of St. Petersburg and its pavement,” added a workman who was a
+little drunk.
+“Quite a young man, too!” observed a third.
+“And a gentleman,” someone observed soberly.
+“There’s no knowing who’s a gentleman and who isn’t nowadays.”
+These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words, “I am
+a murderer,” which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips,
+died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking
+round, he turned down a street leading to the police office. He had a
+glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt
+that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he
+saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia. She was hiding
+from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market-place. She had
+followed him then on his painful way! Raskolnikov at that moment felt
+and knew once for all that Sonia was with him for ever and would follow
+him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his
+heart... but he was just reaching the fatal place.
+He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third
+storey. “I shall be some time going up,” he thought. He felt as though
+the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time
+left for consideration.
+Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral
+stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and
+the same fumes and stench coming from them. Raskolnikov had not been
+here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but
+still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to
+collect himself, so as to enter _like a man_. “But why? what for?” he
+wondered, reflecting. “If I must drink the cup what difference does it
+make? The more revolting the better.” He imagined for an instant the
+figure of the “explosive lieutenant,” Ilya Petrovitch. Was he actually
+going to him? Couldn’t he go to someone else? To Nikodim Fomitch?
+Couldn’t he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomitch’s lodgings?
+At least then it would be done privately.... No, no! To the “explosive
+lieutenant”! If he must drink it, drink it off at once.
+Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office.
+There were very few people in it this time--only a house porter and a
+peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen.
+Raskolnikov walked into the next room. “Perhaps I still need not speak,”
+passed through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was
+settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner another clerk was
+seating himself. Zametov was not there, nor, of course, Nikodim Fomitch.
+“No one in?” Raskolnikov asked, addressing the person at the bureau.
+“Whom do you want?”
+“A-ah! Not a sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent the
+Russian... how does it go on in the fairy tale... I’ve forgotten! ‘At
+your service!’” a familiar voice cried suddenly.
+Raskolnikov shuddered. The Explosive Lieutenant stood before him. He
+had just come in from the third room. “It is the hand of fate,” thought
+Raskolnikov. “Why is he here?”
+“You’ve come to see us? What about?” cried Ilya Petrovitch. He
+was obviously in an exceedingly good humour and perhaps a trifle
+exhilarated. “If it’s on business you are rather early.[*] It’s only a
+chance that I am here... however I’ll do what I can. I must admit, I...
+what is it, what is it? Excuse me....”
+[*] Dostoevsky appears to have forgotten that it is after
+sunset, and that the last time Raskolnikov visited the
+police office at two in the afternoon he was reproached for
+coming too late.--TRANSLATOR.
+“Raskolnikov.”
+“Of course, Raskolnikov. You didn’t imagine I’d forgotten? Don’t think I
+am like that... Rodion Ro--Ro--Rodionovitch, that’s it, isn’t it?”
+“Rodion Romanovitch.”
+“Yes, yes, of course, Rodion Romanovitch! I was just getting at it. I
+made many inquiries about you. I assure you I’ve been genuinely grieved
+since that... since I behaved like that... it was explained to me
+afterwards that you were a literary man... and a learned one too... and
+so to say the first steps... Mercy on us! What literary or scientific
+man does not begin by some originality of conduct! My wife and I have
+the greatest respect for literature, in my wife it’s a genuine passion!
+Literature and art! If only a man is a gentleman, all the rest can be
+gained by talents, learning, good sense, genius. As for a hat--well,
+what does a hat matter? I can buy a hat as easily as I can a bun; but
+what’s under the hat, what the hat covers, I can’t buy that! I was even
+meaning to come and apologise to you, but thought maybe you’d... But I
+am forgetting to ask you, is there anything you want really? I hear your
+family have come?”
+“Yes, my mother and sister.”
+“I’ve even had the honour and happiness of meeting your sister--a highly
+cultivated and charming person. I confess I was sorry I got so hot with
+you. There it is! But as for my looking suspiciously at your fainting
+fit--that affair has been cleared up splendidly! Bigotry and fanaticism!
+I understand your indignation. Perhaps you are changing your lodging on
+account of your family’s arriving?”
+“No, I only looked in... I came to ask... I thought that I should find
+Zametov here.”
+“Oh, yes! Of course, you’ve made friends, I heard. Well, no, Zametov is
+not here. Yes, we’ve lost Zametov. He’s not been here since yesterday...
+he quarrelled with everyone on leaving... in the rudest way. He is a
+feather-headed youngster, that’s all; one might have expected something
+from him, but there, you know what they are, our brilliant young men.
+He wanted to go in for some examination, but it’s only to talk and
+boast about it, it will go no further than that. Of course it’s a very
+different matter with you or Mr. Razumihin there, your friend. Your
+career is an intellectual one and you won’t be deterred by failure. For
+you, one may say, all the attractions of life _nihil est_--you are an
+ascetic, a monk, a hermit!... A book, a pen behind your ear, a learned
+research--that’s where your spirit soars! I am the same way myself....
+Have you read Livingstone’s Travels?”
+“No.”
+“Oh, I have. There are a great many Nihilists about nowadays, you know,
+and indeed it is not to be wondered at. What sort of days are they? I
+ask you. But we thought... you are not a Nihilist of course? Answer me
+openly, openly!”
+“N-no...”
+“Believe me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself!
+Official duty is one thing but... you are thinking I meant to say
+_friendship_ is quite another? No, you’re wrong! It’s not friendship,
+but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of
+love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound
+to feel myself a man and a citizen.... You were asking about Zametov.
+Zametov will make a scandal in the French style in a house of bad
+reputation, over a glass of champagne... that’s all your Zametov is good
+for! While I’m perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty
+feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am married and
+have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is
+he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education... Then
+these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous.”
+Raskolnikov raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya
+Petrovitch, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a
+stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He
+looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end.
+“I mean those crop-headed wenches,” the talkative Ilya Petrovitch
+continued. “Midwives is my name for them. I think it a very satisfactory
+one, ha-ha! They go to the Academy, study anatomy. If I fall ill, am
+I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you say? Ha-ha!” Ilya
+Petrovitch laughed, quite pleased with his own wit. “It’s an immoderate
+zeal for education, but once you’re educated, that’s enough. Why abuse
+it? Why insult honourable people, as that scoundrel Zametov does? Why
+did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common
+they are, you can’t fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill
+themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard
+about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what
+was the name of that gentleman who shot himself?”
+“Svidrigaïlov,” someone answered from the other room with drowsy
+listlessness.
+Raskolnikov started.
+“Svidrigaïlov! Svidrigaïlov has shot himself!” he cried.
+“What, do you know Svidrigaïlov?”
+“Yes... I knew him.... He hadn’t been here long.”
+“Yes, that’s so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless habits and
+all of a sudden shot himself, and in such a shocking way.... He left
+in his notebook a few words: that he dies in full possession of his
+faculties and that no one is to blame for his death. He had money, they
+say. How did you come to know him?”
+“I... was acquainted... my sister was governess in his family.”
+“Bah-bah-bah! Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You had
+no suspicion?”
+“I saw him yesterday... he... was drinking wine; I knew nothing.”
+Raskolnikov felt as though something had fallen on him and was stifling
+him.
+“You’ve turned pale again. It’s so stuffy here...”
+“Yes, I must go,” muttered Raskolnikov. “Excuse my troubling you....”
+“Oh, not at all, as often as you like. It’s a pleasure to see you and I
+am glad to say so.”
+Ilya Petrovitch held out his hand.
+“I only wanted... I came to see Zametov.”
+“I understand, I understand, and it’s a pleasure to see you.”
+“I... am very glad... good-bye,” Raskolnikov smiled.
+He went out; he reeled, he was overtaken with giddiness and did not know
+what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself
+with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter pushed
+past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog in
+the lower storey kept up a shrill barking and that a woman flung a
+rolling-pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard.
+There, not far from the entrance, stood Sonia, pale and horror-stricken.
+She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of
+poignant agony, of despair, in her face. She clasped her hands. His lips
+worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute, grinned
+and went back to the police office.
+Ilya Petrovitch had sat down and was rummaging among some papers. Before
+him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs.
+“Hulloa! Back again! have you left something behind? What’s the matter?”
+Raskolnikov, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer.
+He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say
+something, but could not; only incoherent sounds were audible.
+“You are feeling ill, a chair! Here, sit down! Some water!”
+Raskolnikov dropped on to a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the
+face of Ilya Petrovitch, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both
+looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought.
+“It was I...” began Raskolnikov.
+“Drink some water.”
+Raskolnikov refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly,
+but distinctly said:
+“_It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with
+an axe and robbed them._”
+Ilya Petrovitch opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides.
+Raskolnikov repeated his statement.
+EPILOGUE
+I
+Siberia. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one of
+the administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a fortress,
+in the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class
+convict Rodion Raskolnikov has been confined for nine months. Almost a
+year and a half has passed since his crime.
+There had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered
+exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor
+misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit
+the smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the
+secret of _the pledge_ (the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which
+was found in the murdered woman’s hand. He described minutely how he
+had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its
+contents; he explained the mystery of Lizaveta’s murder; described how
+Koch and, after him, the student knocked, and repeated all they had said
+to one another; how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Nikolay
+and Dmitri shouting; how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards
+gone home. He ended by indicating the stone in the yard off the
+Voznesensky Prospect under which the purse and the trinkets were found.
+The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the
+judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he
+had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, without making
+use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the
+trinkets were like, or even how many there were. The fact that he had
+never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed
+incredible. There turned out to be in the purse three hundred and
+seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From being so long under the stone,
+some of the most valuable notes lying uppermost had suffered from the
+damp. They were a long while trying to discover why the accused man
+should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made
+a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers
+more versed in psychology admitted that it was possible he had really
+not looked into the purse, and so didn’t know what was in it when he
+hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that
+the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental
+derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of
+gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary
+insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover
+Raskolnikov’s hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by
+Dr. Zossimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant.
+All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not
+quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another
+element in the case.
+To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the
+criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question
+as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he
+answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was
+his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to
+provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three thousand
+roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder
+through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by
+privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess, he
+answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost
+coarse....
+The sentence however was more merciful than could have been expected,
+perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself,
+but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange
+and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration.
+There could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition
+of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he
+had stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his
+abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the
+murder of Lizaveta served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man
+commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Finally, the
+confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by
+the false evidence given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanaticism,
+and when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no
+suspicions even (Porfiry Petrovitch fully kept his word)--all this did
+much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the prisoner’s
+favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow discovered and
+proved that while Raskolnikov was at the university he had helped a poor
+consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on supporting
+him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a decrepit
+old father whom he had maintained almost from his thirteenth year,
+Raskolnikov had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral
+when he died. Raskolnikov’s landlady bore witness, too, that when they
+had lived in another house at Five Corners, Raskolnikov had rescued two
+little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This was
+investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts
+made an impression in his favour.
+And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating
+circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a
+term of eight years only.
+At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov’s mother fell ill. Dounia
+and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg during the
+trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from Petersburg, so
+as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time
+to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s
+illness was a strange nervous one and was accompanied by a partial
+derangement of her intellect.
+When Dounia returned from her last interview with her brother, she
+had found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening
+Razumihin and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother’s
+questions about Raskolnikov and made up a complete story for her
+mother’s benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia
+on a business commission, which would bring him in the end money and
+reputation.
+But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never
+asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the
+contrary, she had her own version of her son’s sudden departure; she
+told them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting
+that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that Rodya
+had many very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary for him to be
+in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be
+brilliant when certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured
+Razumihin that her son would be one day a great statesman, that his
+article and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was
+continually reading, she even read it aloud, almost took it to bed
+with her, but scarcely asked where Rodya was, though the subject was
+obviously avoided by the others, which might have been enough to awaken
+her suspicions.
+They began to be frightened at last at Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s strange
+silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of
+getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived
+on the hope of letters from her beloved Rodya. This was the cause of
+great uneasiness to Dounia; the idea occurred to her that her mother
+suspected that there was something terrible in her son’s fate and was
+afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any
+case, Dounia saw clearly that her mother was not in full possession of
+her faculties.
+It happened once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave
+such a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her
+without mentioning where Rodya was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and
+suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood
+lasted for a long time. Dounia saw at last that it was hard to deceive
+her and came to the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely
+silent on certain points; but it became more and more evident that
+the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dounia remembered her
+brother’s telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her
+sleep on the night after her interview with Svidrigaïlov and before the
+fatal day of the confession: had not she made out something from that?
+Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be
+succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would
+begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his
+future.... Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured her,
+pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps that they were pretending),
+but she still went on talking.
+Five months after Raskolnikov’s confession, he was sentenced. Razumihin
+and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last
+the moment of separation came. Dounia swore to her brother that the
+separation should not be for ever, Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in
+his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least
+of a secure livelihood during the next three or four years, and saving
+up a certain sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a country rich in every
+natural resource and in need of workers, active men and capital. There
+they would settle in the town where Rodya was and all together would
+begin a new life. They all wept at parting.
+Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great
+deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He worried
+so much about her that it alarmed Dounia. When he heard about his
+mother’s illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was particularly
+reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to her by
+Svidrigaïlov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to follow the
+party of convicts in which he was despatched to Siberia. Not a word
+passed between Raskolnikov and her on the subject, but both knew it
+would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely at his
+sister’s and Razumihin’s fervent anticipations of their happy future
+together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that their
+mother’s illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he at last
+set off.
+Two months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It was a quiet and
+sorrowful wedding; Porfiry Petrovitch and Zossimov were invited however.
+During all this period Razumihin wore an air of resolute determination.
+Dounia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she
+could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will.
+Among other things he began attending university lectures again in order
+to take his degree. They were continually making plans for the future;
+both counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least. Till
+then they rested their hopes on Sonia.
+Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her blessing to Dounia’s
+marriage with Razumihin; but after the marriage she became even more
+melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumihin told her how
+Raskolnikov had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father
+and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescuing two
+little children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Pulcheria
+Alexandrovna’s disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was
+continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with
+strangers in the street, though Dounia always accompanied her. In public
+conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would
+begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he had helped the
+student, how he had been burnt at the fire, and so on! Dounia did
+not know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid
+excitement, there was the risk of someone’s recalling Raskolnikov’s name
+and speaking of the recent trial. Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out the
+address of the mother of the two children her son had saved and insisted
+on going to see her.
+At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes
+begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One
+morning she declared that by her reckoning Rodya ought soon to be home,
+that she remembered when he said good-bye to her he said that they must
+expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming,
+began to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and
+put up new hangings and so on. Dounia was anxious, but said nothing and
+helped her to arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual
+fancies, in joyful day-dreams and tears, Pulcheria Alexandrovna was
+taken ill in the night and by morning she was feverish and delirious.
+It was brain fever. She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she
+dropped words which showed that she knew a great deal more about her
+son’s terrible fate than they had supposed.
+For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his mother’s death, though
+a regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached
+Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who wrote every month
+to the Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At
+first they found Sonia’s letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on
+they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for
+from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate
+brother’s life. Sonia’s letters were full of the most matter-of-fact
+detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Raskolnikov’s
+surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no
+conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of
+any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the
+simple facts--that is, his own words, an exact account of his health,
+what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her
+and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The
+picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness
+and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was given but
+facts.
+But Dounia and her husband could get little comfort out of the news,
+especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly sullen and not
+ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave
+him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and
+that when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last
+of her death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly
+affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them that, although
+he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off
+from everyone--he took a very direct and simple view of his new life;
+that he understood his position, expected nothing better for the time,
+had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and scarcely
+seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he
+had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his
+work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent
+about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that
+at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have
+his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else,
+declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote
+further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she
+had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were
+crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a
+rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that
+he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply
+from inattention and indifference.
+Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits,
+had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and
+rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and
+almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when
+she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him
+on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was
+brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to
+see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the
+sheds on the banks of the Irtish.
+About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some
+acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there
+was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an
+indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that the
+authorities were, through her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his task
+was lightened and so on.
+At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and
+uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone,
+that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days
+at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote
+that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of
+the hospital.
+II
+He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not
+the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes
+that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships!
+he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at
+least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to
+him--the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a
+student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited
+to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed
+of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia?
+Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he
+was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it with
+his contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his
+fetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It was
+wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he
+could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even
+shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperated
+conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except
+a simple _blunder_ which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just
+because he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief
+through some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to
+“the idiocy” of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.
+Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a
+continual sacrifice leading to nothing--that was all that lay before
+him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he
+would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to
+live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live
+in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to
+give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy.
+Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted
+more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he
+had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.
+And if only fate would have sent him repentance--burning repentance that
+would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the
+awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would
+have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life.
+But he did not repent of his crime.
+At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he
+had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison.
+But now in prison, _in freedom_, he thought over and criticised all his
+actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque
+as they had seemed at the fatal time.
+“In what way,” he asked himself, “was my theory stupider than others
+that have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has
+only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced
+by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange.
+Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!
+“Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is
+it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at
+rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law
+was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the
+law... and that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the
+benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of
+inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. But
+those men succeeded and so _they were right_, and I didn’t, and so I
+had no right to have taken that step.”
+It was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact
+that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.
+He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Why
+had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the
+desire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had not
+Svidrigaïlov overcome it, although he was afraid of death?
+In misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand that,
+at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he had
+perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and
+his convictions. He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be
+the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future
+resurrection.
+He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he
+could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at
+his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and
+prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in
+prison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of
+them, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much for
+a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away
+in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, and
+longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the
+green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he
+saw still more inexplicable examples.
+In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not
+want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome
+and unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much that
+surprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much
+that he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was
+the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. They
+seemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they at
+him with distrust and hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of his
+isolation, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasons
+were so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, political
+prisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as
+ignorant churls; but Raskolnikov could not look upon them like that.
+He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than the
+Poles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former
+officer and two seminarists. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly.
+He was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to hate him at
+last--why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised
+and laughed at his crime.
+“You’re a gentleman,” they used to say. “You shouldn’t hack about with
+an axe; that’s not a gentleman’s work.”
+The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with his
+gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke out
+one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury.
+“You’re an infidel! You don’t believe in God,” they shouted. “You ought
+to be killed.”
+He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted to
+kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at
+him in a perfect frenzy. Raskolnikov awaited him calmly and silently;
+his eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guard
+succeeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there would
+have been bloodshed.
+There was another question he could not decide: why were they all so
+fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met
+them, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet
+everybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow _him_,
+knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no
+particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents
+of pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between
+them and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to their
+relations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at their
+instructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives
+and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited
+Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they
+all took off their hats to her. “Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, you
+are our dear, good little mother,” coarse branded criminals said to that
+frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was
+delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round
+to watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, in
+fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her
+for help in their illnesses.
+He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When
+he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish
+and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a
+terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of
+Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts
+of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were
+endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once
+mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual
+and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never
+had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their
+moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples
+went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand
+one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched
+looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung
+his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to
+consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom
+to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They
+gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march
+the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken
+and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting
+and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in
+the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was
+summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned,
+because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they
+could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed
+on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something
+quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another,
+fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All
+men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and
+moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole
+world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and
+a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these
+men, no one had heard their words and their voices.
+Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so
+miserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so long.
+The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright spring
+days; in the prison ward the grating windows under which the sentinel
+paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice during
+his illness; each time she had to obtain permission, and it was
+difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especially
+in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the
+windows of the ward.
+One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep. On
+waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in the
+distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone.
+Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and
+moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the day
+after; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was
+discharged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts that
+Sofya Semyonovna was lying ill at home and was unable to go out.
+He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt that
+her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her,
+Sonia sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better,
+that she had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come and
+see him at his work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it.
+Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o’clock, he
+went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster
+and where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were only
+three of them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to the
+fortress to fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and
+laying it in the kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed on to the river
+bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at the
+wide deserted river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened before
+him, the sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank.
+In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black
+specks, the nomads’ tents. There there was freedom, there other men were
+living, utterly unlike those here; there time itself seemed to stand
+still, as though the age of Abraham and his flocks had not passed.
+Raskolnikov sat gazing, his thoughts passed into day-dreams, into
+contemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excited
+and troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she had come up
+noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early; the
+morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and the
+green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and
+paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand
+with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand
+to him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would
+repel it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always
+seemed vexed to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout
+her visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply
+grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance
+at her and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were
+alone, no one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time.
+How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to
+seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round
+her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she
+turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same
+moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her
+eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and
+that at last the moment had come....
+They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They
+were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the
+dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were
+renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the
+heart of the other.
+They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to
+wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before
+them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his
+being, while she--she only lived in his life.
+On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked,
+Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fancied
+that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at him
+differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they answered
+him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound
+to be so. Wasn’t everything now bound to be changed?
+He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her
+and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face.
+But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what
+infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all,
+_all_ the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence
+and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an
+external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not
+think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have
+analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped
+into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself
+out in his mind.
+Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically.
+The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the
+raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry
+him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with
+books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject
+and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it
+himself not long before his illness and she brought him the book without
+a word. Till now he had not opened it.
+He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: “Can
+her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at
+least....”
+She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken
+ill again. But she was so happy--and so unexpectedly happy--that she was
+almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, _only_ seven years! At
+the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready
+to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not
+know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would
+have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great
+suffering.
+But that is the beginning of a new story--the story of the gradual
+renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing
+from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life.
+That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is
+ended.",Crime and Punishment,Fyodor Dostoevsky,430,['Rodion Raskolnikov']
+"[Illustration: Had she taken sides with either of them, with a single
+movement, the victory would have been decided in that one’s favor.
+_Frontispiece_]
+THE CRYSTAL STOPPER
+by Maurice LeBlanc
+CONTENTS
+CHAPTER
+I.    THE ARRESTS
+II.    EIGHT FROM NINE LEAVES ONE
+III.    THE HOME LIFE OF ALEXIS DAUBRECO
+IV.    THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES
+V.    THE TWENTY-SEVEN
+VI.    THE DEATH-SENTENCE
+VII.    THE PROFILE OF NAPOLEON
+VIII.    THE LOVERS’ TOWER
+IX.    IN THE DARK
+X.    EXTRA-DRY?
+XI.    THE CROSS OF LORRAINE
+XII.    THE SCAFFOLD
+XIII.    THE LAST BATTLE
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+Had she taken sides with either of them, with a single movement,
+the victory would have been decided in that one’s favor.
+_Frontispiece_
+Lupin took his servant by the shoulders and shook him: “It said
+‘de’ Beaumont? Are you sure?”      40
+“Here, I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our enemies.
+Have you a feeding bottle?”      78
+“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “You
+mustn’t say that.”      84
+Lupin sprang to his feet. He was prepared for every upshot except
+this.      118
+“What we have to do is to stop the mischief and to-night, you
+understand, to-night the thing will be done.”      138
+The sight which she beheld struck her with stupefaction.      214
+Daubrecq ran up to Prasville out of breath and caught hold of him
+with his two enormous hands.      278
+CHAPTER I.
+THE ARRESTS
+The two boats fastened to the little pier that jutted out from the
+garden lay rocking in its shadow. Here and there lighted windows
+showed through the thick mist on the margins of the lake. The
+Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though it was late in
+the season, the end of September. A few stars appeared through the
+clouds. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water.
+Arsène Lupin left the summer-house where he was smoking a cigar
+and, bending forward at the end of the pier:
+“Growler?” he asked. “Masher?... Are you there?”
+A man rose from each of the boats, and one of them answered:
+“Yes, governor.”
+“Get ready. I hear the car coming with Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
+He crossed the garden, walked round a house in process of
+construction, the scaffolding of which loomed overhead, and
+cautiously opened the door on the Avenue de Ceinture. He was not
+mistaken: a bright light flashed round the bend and a large, open
+motor-car drew up, whence sprang two men in great-coats, with the
+collars turned up, and caps.
+It was Gilbert and Vaucheray: Gilbert, a young fellow of twenty or
+twenty-two, with an attractive cast of features and a supple and
+sinewy frame; Vaucheray, older, shorter, with grizzled hair and a
+pale, sickly face.
+“Well,” asked Lupin, “did you see him, the deputy?”
+“Yes, governor,” said Gilbert, “we saw him take the 7.40 tram for
+Paris, as we knew he would.”
+“Then we are free to act?”
+“Absolutely. The Villa Marie-Thérèse is ours to do as we please
+with.”
+The chauffeur had kept his seat. Lupin gave him his orders:
+“Don’t wait here. It might attract attention. Be back at half-past
+nine exactly, in time to load the car unless the whole business
+falls through.”
+“Why should it fall through?” observed Gilbert.
+The motor drove away; and Lupin, taking the road to the lake with
+his two companions, replied:
+“Why? Because I didn’t prepare the plan; and, when I don’t do a
+thing myself, I am only half-confident.”
+“Nonsense, governor! I’ve been working with you for three years
+now.... I’m beginning to know the ropes!”
+“Yes, my lad, you’re beginning,” said Lupin, “and that’s just
+why I’m afraid of blunders.... Here, get in with me.... And you,
+Vaucheray, take the other boat.... That’s it.... And now push off,
+boys . . . and make as little noise as you can.”
+Growler and Masher, the two oarsmen, made straight for the opposite
+bank, a little to the left of the casino.
+They met a boat containing a couple locked in each other’s arms,
+floating at random, and another in which a number of people were
+singing at the top of their voices. And that was all.
+Lupin shifted closer to his companion and said, under his breath:
+“Tell me, Gilbert, did you think of this job, or was it Vaucheray’s
+idea?”
+“Upon my word, I couldn’t tell you: we’ve both of us been discussing
+it for weeks.”
+“The thing is, I don’t trust Vaucheray: he’s a low ruffian when
+one gets to know him.... I can’t make out why I don’t get rid of
+him....”
+“Oh, governor!”
+“Yes, yes, I mean what I say: he’s a dangerous fellow, to say
+nothing of the fact that he has some rather serious peccadilloes on
+his conscience.”
+He sat silent for a moment and continued:
+“So you’re quite sure that you saw Daubrecq the deputy?”
+“Saw him with my own eyes, governor.”
+“And you know that he has an appointment in Paris?”
+“He’s going to the theatre.”
+“Very well; but his servants have remained behind at the Enghien
+villa....”
+“The cook has been sent away. As for the valet, Léonard, who is
+Daubrecq’s confidential man, he’ll wait for his master in Paris.
+They can’t get back from town before one o’clock in the morning.
+But....”
+“But what?”
+“We must reckon with a possible freak of fancy on Daubrecq’s part,
+a change of mind, an unexpected return, and so arrange to have
+everything finished and done with in an hour.”
+“And when did you get these details?”
+“This morning. Vaucheray and I at once thought that it was a
+favourable moment. I selected the garden of the unfinished house
+which we have just left as the best place to start from; for the
+house is not watched at night. I sent for two mates to row the
+boats; and I telephoned to you. That’s the whole story.”
+“Have you the keys?”
+“The keys of the front-door.”
+“Is that the villa which I see from here, standing in its own
+grounds?”
+“Yes, the Villa Marie-Thérèse; and as the two others, with the
+gardens touching it on either side, have been unoccupied since this
+day week, we shall be able to remove what we please at our leisure;
+and I swear to you, governor, it’s well worth while.”
+“The job’s much too simple,” mumbled Lupin. “No charm about it!”
+They landed in a little creek whence rose a few stone steps, under
+cover of a mouldering roof. Lupin reflected that shipping the
+furniture would be easy work. But, suddenly, he said:
+“There are people at the villa. Look . . . a light.”
+“It’s a gas-jet, governor. The light’s not moving.”
+The Growler stayed by the boats, with instructions to keep watch,
+while the Masher, the other rower, went to the gate on the Avenue
+de Ceinture, and Lupin and his two companions crept in the shadow
+to the foot of the steps.
+Gilbert went up first. Groping in the dark, he inserted first the
+big door-key and then the latch-key. Both turned easily in their
+locks, the door opened and the three men walked in.
+A gas-jet was flaring in the hall.
+“You see, governor....” said Gilbert.
+“Yes, yes,” said Lupin, in a low voice, “but it seems to me that the
+light which I saw shining did not come from here....”
+“Where did it come from then?”
+“I can’t say.... Is this the drawing-room?”
+“No,” replied Gilbert, who was not afraid to speak pretty loudly,
+“no. By way of precaution, he keeps everything on the first floor,
+in his bedroom and in the two rooms on either side of it.”
+“And where is the staircase?”
+“On the right, behind the curtain.”
+Lupin moved to the curtain and was drawing the hanging aside when,
+suddenly, at four steps on the left, a door opened and a head
+appeared, a pallid man’s head, with terrified eyes.
+“Help! Murder!” shouted the man.
+And he rushed back into the room.
+“It’s Léonard, the valet!” cried Gilbert.
+“If he makes a fuss, I’ll out him,” growled Vaucheray.
+“You’ll jolly well do nothing of the sort, do you hear, Vaucheray?”
+said Lupin, peremptorily. And he darted off in pursuit of the
+servant. He first went through a dining-room, where he saw a lamp
+still lit, with plates and a bottle around it, and he found Léonard
+at the further end of a pantry, making vain efforts to open the
+window:
+“Don’t move, sportie! No kid! Ah, the brute!”
+He had thrown himself flat on the floor, on seeing Léonard raise
+his arm at him. Three shots were fired in the dusk of the pantry;
+and then the valet came tumbling to the ground, seized by the legs
+by Lupin, who snatched his weapon from him and gripped him by the
+throat:
+“Get out, you dirty brute!” he growled. “He very nearly did for
+me.... Here, Vaucheray, secure this gentleman!”
+He threw the light of his pocket-lantern on the servant’s face and
+chuckled:
+“He’s not a pretty gentleman either.... You can’t have a very clear
+conscience, Léonard; besides, to play flunkey to Daubrecq the
+deputy...! Have you finished, Vaucheray? I don’t want to hang about
+here for ever!”
+“There’s no danger, governor,” said Gilbert.
+“Oh, really?... So you think that shots can’t be heard?...”
+“Quite impossible.”
+“No matter, we must look sharp. Vaucheray, take the lamp and let’s
+go upstairs.”
+He took Gilbert by the arm and, as he dragged him to the first
+floor:
+“You ass,” he said, “is that the way you make inquiries? Wasn’t I
+right to have my doubts?”
+“Look here, governor, I couldn’t know that he would change his mind
+and come back to dinner.”
+“One’s got to know everything when one has the honour of breaking
+into people’s houses. You numskull! I’ll remember you and
+Vaucheray . . . a nice pair of gossoons!...”
+The sight of the furniture on the first floor pacified Lupin and he
+started on his inventory with the satisfied air of a collector who
+has looked in to treat himself to a few works of art:
+“By Jingo! There’s not much of it, but what there is is pucka!
+There’s nothing the matter with this representative of the people
+in the question of taste. Four Aubusson chairs.... A bureau signed
+‘Percier-Fontaine,’ for a wager.... Two inlays by Gouttières.... A
+genuine Fragonard and a sham Nattier which any American millionaire
+will swallow for the asking: in short, a fortune.... And there are
+curmudgeons who pretend that there’s nothing but faked stuff left.
+Dash it all, why don’t they do as I do? They should look about!”
+Gilbert and Vaucheray, following Lupin’s orders and instructions,
+at once proceeded methodically to remove the bulkier pieces. The
+first boat was filled in half an hour; and it was decided that the
+Growler and the Masher should go on ahead and begin to load the
+motor-car.
+Lupin went to see them start. On returning to the house, it struck
+him, as he passed through the hall, that he heard a voice in the
+pantry. He went there and found Léonard lying flat on his stomach,
+quite alone, with his hands tied behind his back:
+“So it’s you growling, my confidential flunkey? Don’t get excited:
+it’s almost finished. Only, if you make too much noise, you’ll
+oblige us to take severer measures.... Do you like pears? We might
+give you one, you know: a choke-pear!...”
+As he went upstairs, he again heard the same sound and, stopping to
+listen, he caught these words, uttered in a hoarse, groaning voice,
+which came, beyond a doubt, from the pantry:
+“Help!... Murder!... Help!... I shall be killed!... Inform the
+commissary!”
+“The fellow’s clean off his chump!” muttered Lupin. “By Jove!... To
+disturb the police at nine o’clock in the evening: there’s a notion
+for you!”
+He set to work again. It took longer than he expected, for they
+discovered in the cupboards all sorts of valuable knick-knacks
+which it would have been very wrong to disdain and, on the other
+hand, Vaucheray and Gilbert were going about their investigations
+with signs of laboured concentration that nonplussed him.
+At long last, he lost his patience:
+“That will do!” he said. “We’re not going to spoil the whole job
+and keep the motor waiting for the sake of the few odd bits that
+remain. I’m taking the boat.”
+They were now by the waterside and Lupin went down the steps.
+Gilbert held him back:
+“I say, governor, we want one more look round five minutes, no
+longer.”
+“But what for, dash it all?”
+“Well, it’s like this: we were told of an old reliquary, something
+stunning....”
+“Well?”
+“We can’t lay our hands on it. And I was thinking.... There’s a
+cupboard with a big lock to it in the pantry.... You see, we can’t
+very well....”
+He was already on his way to the villa. Vaucheray ran back too.
+“I’ll give you ten minutes, not a second longer!” cried Lupin. “In
+ten minutes, I’m off.”
+But the ten minutes passed and he was still waiting.
+He looked at his watch:
+“A quarter-past nine,” he said to himself. “This is madness.”
+And he also remembered that Gilbert and Vaucheray had behaved
+rather queerly throughout the removal of the things, keeping
+close together and apparently watching each other. What could be
+happening?
+Lupin mechanically returned to the house, urged by a feeling of
+anxiety which he was unable to explain; and, at the same time,
+he listened to a dull sound which rose in the distance, from the
+direction of Enghien, and which seemed to be coming nearer....
+People strolling about, no doubt....
+He gave a sharp whistle and then went to the main gate, to take
+a glance down the avenue. But, suddenly, as he was opening the
+gate, a shot rang out, followed by a yell of pain. He returned at
+a run, went round the house, leapt up the steps and rushed to the
+dining-room:
+“Blast it all, what are you doing there, you two?”
+Gilbert and Vaucheray, locked in a furious embrace, were rolling on
+the floor, uttering cries of rage. Their clothes were dripping with
+blood. Lupin flew at them to separate them. But already Gilbert had
+got his adversary down and was wrenching out of his hand something
+which Lupin had no time to see. And Vaucheray, who was losing blood
+through a wound in the shoulder, fainted.
+“Who hurt him? You, Gilbert?” asked Lupin, furiously.
+“No, Léonard.”
+“Léonard? Why, he was tied up!”
+“He undid his fastenings and got hold of his revolver.”
+“The scoundrel! Where is he?”
+Lupin took the lamp and went into the pantry.
+The man-servant was lying on his back, with his arms outstretched, a
+dagger stuck in his throat and a livid face. A red stream trickled
+from his mouth.
+“Ah,” gasped Lupin, after examining him, “he’s dead!”
+“Do you think so?... Do you think so?” stammered Gilbert, in a
+trembling voice.
+“He’s dead, I tell you.”
+“It was Vaucheray . . . it was Vaucheray who did it....”
+Pale with anger, Lupin caught hold of him:
+“It was Vaucheray, was it?... And you too, you blackguard, since
+you were there and didn’t stop him! Blood! Blood! You know I won’t
+have it.... Well, it’s a bad lookout for you, my fine fellows....
+You’ll have to pay the damage! And you won’t get off cheaply
+either.... Mind the guillotine!” And, shaking him violently, “What
+was it? Why did he kill him?”
+“He wanted to go through his pockets and take the key of the
+cupboard from him. When he stooped over him, he saw that the man
+unloosed his arms. He got frightened . . . and he stabbed him....”
+“But the revolver-shot?”
+“It was Léonard . . . he had his revolver in his hand . . . he just
+had strength to take aim before he died....”
+“And the key of the cupboard?”
+“Vaucheray took it....”
+“Did he open it?”
+“And did he find what he was after?”
+“Yes.”
+“And you wanted to take the thing from him. What sort of thing was
+it? The reliquary? No, it was too small for that.... Then what was
+it? Answer me, will you?...”
+Lupin gathered from Gilbert’s silence and the determined expression
+on his face that he would not obtain a reply. With a threatening
+gesture, “I’ll make you talk, my man. Sure as my name’s Lupin, you
+shall come out with it. But, for the moment, we must see about
+decamping. Here, help me. We must get Vaucheray into the boat....”
+They had returned to the dining-room and Gilbert was bending over
+the wounded man, when Lupin stopped him:
+“Listen.”
+They exchanged one look of alarm.... Some one was speaking in
+the pantry . . . a very low, strange, very distant voice....
+Nevertheless, as they at once made certain, there was no one in the
+room, no one except the dead man, whose dark outline lay stretched
+upon the floor.
+And the voice spake anew, by turns shrill, stifled, bleating,
+stammering, yelling, fearsome. It uttered indistinct words, broken
+syllables.
+Lupin felt the top of his head covering with perspiration. What was
+this incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?
+He had knelt down by the man-servant’s side. The voice was silent
+and then began again:
+“Give us a better light,” he said to Gilbert.
+He was trembling a little, shaken with a nervous dread which he was
+unable to master, for there was no doubt possible: when Gilbert
+had removed the shade from the lamp, Lupin realized that the voice
+issued from the corpse itself, without a movement of the lifeless
+mass, without a quiver of the bleeding mouth.
+“Governor, I’ve got the shivers,” stammered Gilbert.
+Again the same voice, the same snuffling whisper.
+Suddenly, Lupin burst out laughing, seized the corpse and pulled it
+aside:
+“Exactly!” he said, catching sight of an object made of polished
+metal. “Exactly! That’s it!... Well, upon my word, it took me long
+enough!”
+On the spot on the floor which he had uncovered lay the receiver of
+a telephone, the cord of which ran up to the apparatus fixed on the
+wall, at the usual height.
+Lupin put the receiver to his ear. The noise began again at once,
+but it was a mixed noise, made up of different calls, exclamations,
+confused cries, the noise produced by a number of persons
+questioning one another at the same time.
+“Are you there?... He won’t answer. It’s awful.... They must have
+killed him. What is it?... Keep up your courage. There’s help on
+the way . . . police . . . soldiers....”
+“Dash it!” said Lupin, dropping the receiver.
+The truth appeared to him in a terrifying vision. Quite at the
+beginning, while the things upstairs were being moved, Léonard,
+whose bonds were not securely fastened, had contrived to
+scramble to his feet, to unhook the receiver, probably with his
+teeth, to drop it and to appeal for assistance to the Enghien
+telephone-exchange.
+And those were the words which Lupin had overheard, after the first
+boat started:
+“Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!”
+And this was the reply of the exchange. The police were hurrying to
+the spot. And Lupin remembered the sounds which he had heard from
+the garden, four or five minutes earlier, at most:
+“The police! Take to your heels!” he shouted, darting across the
+dining room.
+“What about Vaucheray?” asked Gilbert.
+“Sorry, can’t be helped!”
+But Vaucheray, waking from his torpor, entreated him as he passed:
+“Governor, you wouldn’t leave me like this!”
+Lupin stopped, in spite of the danger, and was lifting the wounded
+man, with Gilbert’s assistance, when a loud din arose outside:
+“Too late!” he said.
+At that moment, blows shook the hall-door at the back of the house.
+He ran to the front steps: a number of men had already turned the
+corner of the house at a rush. He might have managed to keep ahead
+of them, with Gilbert, and reach the waterside. But what chance was
+there of embarking and escaping under the enemy’s fire?
+He locked and bolted the door.
+“We are surrounded . . . and done for,” spluttered Gilbert.
+“Hold your tongue,” said Lupin.
+“But they’ve seen us, governor. There, they’re knocking.”
+“Hold your tongue,” Lupin repeated. “Not a word. Not a movement.”
+He himself remained unperturbed, with an utterly calm face and
+the pensive attitude of one who has all the time that he needs
+to examine a delicate situation from every point of view. He had
+reached one of those minutes which he called the “superior moments
+of existence,” those which alone give a value and a price to life.
+On such occasions, however threatening the danger, he always began
+by counting to himself, slowly--“One.... Two.... Three.... Four....
+Five.... Six”--until the beating of his heart became normal and
+regular. Then and not till then, he reflected, but with what
+intensity, with what perspicacity, with what a profound intuition
+of possibilities! All the factors of the problem were present in
+his mind. He foresaw everything. He admitted everything. And he
+took his resolution in all logic and in all certainty.
+After thirty or forty seconds, while the men outside were banging
+at the doors and picking the locks, he said to his companion:
+“Follow me.”
+Returning to the dining-room, he softly opened the sash and drew
+the Venetian blinds of a window in the side-wall. People were
+coming and going, rendering flight out of the question.
+Thereupon he began to shout with all his might, in a breathless
+voice:
+“This way!... Help!... I’ve got them!... This way!”
+He pointed his revolver and fired two shots into the tree-tops.
+Then he went back to Vaucheray, bent over him and smeared his
+face and hands with the wounded man’s blood. Lastly, turning upon
+Gilbert, he took him violently by the shoulders and threw him to
+the floor.
+“What do you want, governor? There’s a nice thing to do!”
+“Let me do as I please,” said Lupin, laying an imperative stress on
+every syllable. “I’ll answer for everything.... I’ll answer for the
+two of you.... Let me do as I like with you.... I’ll get you both
+out of prison.... But I can only do that if I’m free.”
+Excited cries rose through the open window.
+“This way!” he shouted. “I’ve got them! Help!”
+And, quietly, in a whisper:
+“Just think for a moment.... Have you anything to say to me?...
+Something that can be of use to us?”
+Gilbert was too much taken aback to understand Lupin’s plan and he
+struggled furiously. Vaucheray showed more intelligence; moreover,
+he had given up all hope of escape, because of his wound; and he
+snarled:
+“Let the governor have his way, you ass!... As long as he gets off,
+isn’t that the great thing?”
+Suddenly, Lupin remembered the article which Gilbert had put in his
+pocket, after capturing it from Vaucheray. He now tried to take it
+in his turn.
+“No, not that! Not if I know it!” growled Gilbert, managing to
+release himself.
+Lupin floored him once more. But two men suddenly appeared at the
+window; and Gilbert yielded and, handing the thing to Lupin, who
+pocketed it without looking at it, whispered:
+“Here you are, governor.... I’ll explain. You can be sure that....”
+He did not have time to finish.... Two policemen and others after
+them and soldiers who entered through every door and window came to
+Lupin’s assistance.
+Gilbert was at once seized and firmly bound. Lupin withdrew:
+“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “The beggar’s given me a lot of
+trouble. I wounded the other; but this one....”
+The commissary of police asked him, hurriedly:
+“Have you seen the man-servant? Have they killed him?”
+“I don’t know,” he answered.
+“You don’t know?...”
+“Why, I came with you from Enghien, on hearing of the murder! Only,
+while you were going round the left of the house, I went round the
+right. There was a window open. I climbed up just as these two
+ruffians were about to jump down. I fired at this one,” pointing to
+Vaucheray, “and seized hold of his pal.”
+How could he have been suspected? He was covered with blood. He
+had handed over the valet’s murderers. Half a score of people had
+witnessed the end of the heroic combat which he had delivered.
+Besides, the uproar was too great for any one to take the trouble
+to argue or to waste time in entertaining doubts. In the height
+of the first confusion, the people of the neighbourhood invaded
+the villa. One and all lost their heads. They ran to every side,
+upstairs, downstairs, to the very cellar. They asked one another
+questions, yelled and shouted; and no one dreamt of checking
+Lupin’s statements, which sounded so plausible.
+However, the discovery of the body in the pantry restored the
+commissary to a sense of his responsibility. He issued orders,
+had the house cleared and placed policemen at the gate to prevent
+any one from passing in or out. Then, without further delay,
+he examined the spot and began his inquiry. Vaucheray gave his
+name; Gilbert refused to give his, on the plea that he would only
+speak in the presence of a lawyer. But, when he was accused of
+the murder, he informed against Vaucheray, who defended himself
+by denouncing the other; and the two of them vociferated at the
+same time, with the evident wish to monopolize the commissary’s
+attention. When the commissary turned to Lupin, to request his
+evidence, he perceived that the stranger was no longer there.
+Without the least suspicion, he said to one of the policemen:
+“Go and tell that gentleman that I should like to ask him a few
+questions.”
+They looked about for the gentleman. Some one had seen him standing
+on the steps, lighting a cigarette. The next news was that he had
+given cigarettes to a group of soldiers and strolled toward the
+lake, saying that they were to call him if he was wanted.
+They called him. No one replied.
+But a soldier came running up. The gentleman had just got into
+a boat and was rowing away for all he was worth. The commissary
+looked at Gilbert and realized that he had been tricked:
+“Stop him!” he shouted. “Fire on him! He’s an accomplice!...”
+He himself rushed out, followed by two policemen, while the others
+remained with the prisoners. On reaching the bank, he saw the
+gentleman, a hundred yards away, taking off his hat to him in the
+dusk.
+One of the policemen discharged his revolver, without thinking.
+The wind carried the sound of words across the water. The gentleman
+was singing as he rowed:
+“Go, little bark,
+Float in the dark....”
+But the commissary saw a skiff fastened to the landing-stage of
+the adjoining property. He scrambled over the hedge separating the
+two gardens and, after ordering the soldiers to watch the banks of
+the lake and to seize the fugitive if he tried to put ashore, the
+commissary and two of his men pulled off in pursuit of Lupin.
+It was not a difficult matter, for they were able to follow his
+movements by the intermittent light of the moon and to see that he
+was trying to cross the lakes while bearing toward the right--that
+is to say, toward the village of Saint-Gratien. Moreover, the
+commissary soon perceived that, with the aid of his men and thanks
+perhaps to the comparative lightness of his craft, he was rapidly
+gaining on the other. In ten minutes he had decreased the interval
+between them by one half.
+“That’s it!” he cried. “We shan’t even need the soldiers to
+keep him from landing. I very much want to make the fellow’s
+acquaintance. He’s a cool hand and no mistake!”
+The funny thing was that the distance was now diminishing at an
+abnormal rate, as though the fugitive had lost heart at realizing
+the futility of the struggle. The policemen redoubled their
+efforts. The boat shot across the water with the swiftness of a
+swallow. Another hundred yards at most and they would reach the man.
+“Halt!” cried the commissary.
+The enemy, whose huddled shape they could make out in the boat,
+no longer moved. The sculls drifted with the stream. And this
+absence of all motion had something alarming about it. A ruffian of
+that stamp might easily lie in wait for his aggressors, sell his
+life dearly and even shoot them dead before they had a chance of
+attacking him.
+“Surrender!” shouted the commissary.
+The sky, at that moment, was dark. The three men lay flat at
+the bottom of their skiff, for they thought they perceived a
+threatening gesture.
+The boat, carried by its own impetus, was approaching the other.
+The commissary growled:
+“We won’t let ourselves be sniped. Let’s fire at him. Are you
+ready?” And he roared, once more, “Surrender . . . if not...!”
+No reply.
+The enemy did not budge.
+“Surrender!... Hands up!... You refuse?... So much the worse for
+you.... I’m counting.... One.... Two....”
+The policemen did not wait for the word of command. They fired and,
+at once, bending over their oars, gave the boat so powerful an
+impulse that it reached the goal in a few strokes.
+The commissary watched, revolver in hand, ready for the least
+movement. He raised his arm:
+“If you stir, I’ll blow out your brains!”
+But the enemy did not stir for a moment; and, when the boat was
+bumped and the two men, letting go their oars, prepared for the
+formidable assault, the commissary understood the reason of this
+passive attitude: there was no one in the boat. The enemy had
+escaped by swimming, leaving in the hands of the victor a certain
+number of the stolen articles, which, heaped up and surmounted
+by a jacket and a bowler hat, might be taken, at a pinch, in the
+semi-darkness, vaguely to represent the figure of a man.
+They struck matches and examined the enemy’s cast clothes. There
+were no initials in the hat. The jacket contained neither papers
+nor pocketbook. Nevertheless, they made a discovery which was
+destined to give the case no little celebrity and which had a
+terrible influence on the fate of Gilbert and Vaucheray: in one
+of the pockets was a visiting-card which the fugitive had left
+behind . . . the card of Arsène Lupin.
+At almost the same moment, while the police, towing the captured
+skiff behind them, continued their empty search and while the
+soldiers stood drawn up on the bank, straining their eyes to try
+and follow the fortunes of the naval combat, the aforesaid Arsène
+Lupin was quietly landing at the very spot which he had left two
+hours earlier.
+He was there met by his two other accomplices, the Growler and the
+Masher, flung them a few sentences by way of explanation, jumped
+into the motor-car, among Daubrecq the deputy’s armchairs and other
+valuables, wrapped himself in his furs and drove, by deserted
+roads, to his repository at Neuilly, where he left the chauffeur. A
+taxicab brought him back to Paris and put him down by the church of
+Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, not far from which, in the Rue Matignon,
+he had a flat, on the entresol-floor, of which none of his gang,
+excepting Gilbert, knew, a flat with a private entrance. He was
+glad to take off his clothes and rub himself down; for, in spite of
+his strong constitution, he felt chilled to the bone. On retiring
+to bed, he emptied the contents of his pockets, as usual, on the
+mantel-piece. It was not till then that he noticed, near his
+pocketbook and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into his
+hand at the last moment.
+And he was very much surprised. It was a decanter-stopper, a
+little crystal stopper, like those used for the bottles in a
+liqueur-stand. And this crystal stopper had nothing particular
+about it. The most that Lupin observed was that the knob, with its
+many facets, was gilded right down to the indent. But, to tell
+the truth, this detail did not seem to him of a nature to attract
+special notice.
+“And it was this bit of glass to which Gilbert and Vaucheray
+attached such stubborn importance!” he said to himself. “It was for
+this that they killed the valet, fought each other, wasted their
+time, risked prison . . . trial . . . the scaffold!...”
+Too tired to linger further upon this matter, exciting though it
+appeared to him, he replaced the stopper on the chimney-piece and
+got into bed.
+He had bad dreams. Gilbert and Vaucheray were kneeling on the
+flags of their cells, wildly stretching out their hands to him and
+yelling with fright:
+“Help!... Help!” they cried.
+But, notwithstanding all his efforts, he was unable to move. He
+himself was fastened by invisible bonds. And, trembling, obsessed
+by a monstrous vision, he watched the dismal preparations, the
+cutting of the condemned men’s hair and shirt-collars, the squalid
+tragedy.
+“By Jove!” he said, when he woke after a series of nightmares.
+“There’s a lot of bad omens! Fortunately, we don’t err on the side
+of superstition. Otherwise...!” And he added, “For that matter,
+we have a talisman which, to judge by Gilbert and Vaucheray’s
+behaviour, should be enough, with Lupin’s help, to frustrate bad
+luck and secure the triumph of the good cause. Let’s have a look at
+that crystal stopper!”
+He sprang out of bed to take the thing and examine it more closely.
+An exclamation escaped him. The crystal stopper had disappeared....
+CHAPTER II.
+EIGHT FROM NINE LEAVES ONE
+Notwithstanding my friendly relations with Lupin and the many
+flattering proofs of his confidence which he has given me, there is
+one thing which I have never been quite able to fathom, and that is
+the organization of his gang.
+The existence of the gang is an undoubted fact. Certain adventures
+can be explained only by countless acts of devotion, invincible
+efforts of energy and powerful cases of complicity, representing so
+many forces which all obey one mighty will. But how is this will
+exerted? Through what intermediaries, through what subordinates?
+That is what I do not know. Lupin keeps his secret; and the secrets
+which Lupin chooses to keep are, so to speak, impenetrable.
+The only supposition which I can allow myself to make is that
+this gang, which, in my opinion, is very limited in numbers and
+therefore all the more formidable, is completed and extended
+indefinitely by the addition of independent units, provisional
+associates, picked up in every class of society and in every
+country of the world, who are the executive agents of an authority
+with which, in many cases, they are not even acquainted. The
+companions, the initiates, the faithful adherents--men who play the
+leading parts under the direct command of Lupin--move to and fro
+between these secondary agents and the master.
+Gilbert and Vaucheray evidently belonged to the main gang. And that
+is why the law showed itself so implacable in their regard. For the
+first time, it held accomplices of Lupin in its clutches--declared,
+undisputed accomplices--and those accomplices had committed a
+murder. If the murder was premeditated, if the accusation of
+deliberate homicide could be supported by substantial proofs,
+it meant the scaffold. Now there was, at the very least, one
+self-evident proof, the cry for assistance which Léonard had sent
+over the telephone a few minutes before his death:
+“Help!... Murder!... I shall be killed!...”
+The desperate appeal had been heard by two men, the operator on
+duty and one of his fellow-clerks, who swore to it positively. And
+it was in consequence of this appeal that the commissary of police,
+who was at once informed, had proceeded to the Villa Marie-Thérèse,
+escorted by his men and a number of soldiers off duty.
+Lupin had a very clear notion of the danger from the first. The
+fierce struggle in which he had engaged against society was
+entering upon a new and terrible phase. His luck was turning.
+It was no longer a matter of attacking others, but of defending
+himself and saving the heads of his two companions.
+A little memorandum, which I have copied from one of the note-books
+in which he often jots down a summary of the situations that
+perplex him, will show us the workings of his brain:
+“One definite fact, to begin with, is that Gilbert and Vaucheray
+humbugged me. The Enghien expedition, undertaken ostensibly with
+the object of robbing the Villa Marie-Thérèse, had a secret
+purpose. This purpose obsessed their minds throughout the
+operations; and what they were looking for, under the furniture
+and in the cupboards, was one thing and one thing alone: the
+crystal stopper. Therefore, if I want to see clear ahead, I must
+first of all know what this means. It is certain that, for some
+hidden reason, that mysterious piece of glass possesses an
+incalculable value in their eyes. And not only in theirs, for,
+last night, some one was bold enough and clever enough to enter
+my flat and steal the object in question from me.”
+This theft of which he was the victim puzzled Lupin curiously.
+Two problems, both equally difficult of solution, presented
+themselves to his mind. First, who was the mysterious visitor?
+Gilbert, who enjoyed his entire confidence and acted as his private
+secretary, was the only one who knew of the retreat in the Rue
+Matignon. Now Gilbert was in prison. Was Lupin to suppose that
+Gilbert had betrayed him and put the police on his tracks? In
+that case, why were they content with taking the crystal stopper,
+instead of arresting him, Lupin?
+But there was something much stranger still. Admitting that they
+had been able to force the doors of his flat--and this he was
+compelled to admit, though there was no mark to show it--how had
+they succeeded in entering the bedroom? He turned the key and
+pushed the bolt as he did every evening, in accordance with a habit
+from which he never departed. And, nevertheless--the fact was
+undeniable--the crystal stopper had disappeared without the lock or
+the bolt having been touched. And, although Lupin flattered himself
+that he had sharp ears, even when asleep, not a sound had waked him!
+He took no great pains to probe the mystery. He knew those problems
+too well to hope that this one could be solved other than in the
+course of events. But, feeling very much put out and exceedingly
+uneasy, he then and there locked up his entresol flat in the Rue
+Matignon and swore that he would never set foot in it again.
+And he applied himself forthwith to the question of corresponding
+with Vaucheray or Gilbert.
+Here a fresh disappointment awaited him. It was so clearly
+understood, both at the Santé Prison and at the Law Courts,
+that all communication between Lupin and the prisoners must be
+absolutely prevented, that a multitude of minute precautions were
+ordered by the prefect of police and minutely observed by the
+lowest subordinates. Tried policemen, always the same men, watched
+Gilbert and Vaucheray, day and night, and never let them out of
+their sight.
+Lupin, at this time, had not yet promoted himself to the
+crowning honour of his career, the post of chief of the
+detective-service,[A] and, consequently, was not able to take steps
+at the Law Courts to insure the execution of his plans. After a
+fortnight of fruitless endeavours, he was obliged to bow.
+He did so with a raging heart and a growing sense of anxiety.
+“The difficult part of a business,” he often says, “is not the
+finish, but the start.”
+Where was he to start in the present circumstances? What road was
+he to follow?
+His thoughts recurred to Daubrecq the deputy, the original owner
+of the crystal stopper, who probably knew its importance. On the
+other hand, how was Gilbert aware of the doings and mode of life of
+Daubrecq the deputy? What means had he employed to keep him under
+observation? Who had told him of the place where Daubrecq spent the
+evening of that day? These were all interesting questions to solve.
+Daubrecq had moved to his winter quarters in Paris immediately
+after the burglary at the Villa Marie-Thérèse and was now living in
+his own house, on the left-hand side of the little Square Lamartine
+that opens out at the end of the Avenue Victor-Hugo.
+First disguising himself as an old gentleman of private means,
+strolling about, cane in hand, Lupin spent his time in the
+neighbourhood, on the benches of the square and the avenue. He
+made a discovery on the first day. Two men, dressed as workmen,
+but behaving in a manner that left no doubt as to their aims, were
+watching the deputy’s house. When Daubrecq went out, they set off
+in pursuit of him; and they were immediately behind him when he
+came home again. At night, as soon as the lights were out, they
+went away.
+Lupin shadowed them in his turn. They were detective-officers.
+“Hullo, hullo!” he said to himself. “This is hardly what I
+expected. So the Daubrecq bird is under suspicion?”
+But, on the fourth day, at nightfall, the two men were joined by
+six others, who conversed with them in the darkest part of the
+Square Lamartine. And, among these new arrivals, Lupin was vastly
+astonished to recognize, by his figure and bearing, the famous
+Prasville, the erstwhile barrister, sportsman and explorer, now
+favourite at the Élysée, who, for some mysterious reason, had been
+pitchforked into the headquarters of police as secretary-general,
+with the reversion of the prefecture.
+And, suddenly, Lupin remembered: two years ago, Prasville and
+Daubrecq the deputy had had a personal encounter on the Place du
+Palais-Bourbon. The incident made a great stir at the time. No one
+knew the cause of it. Prasville had sent his seconds to Daubrecq on
+the same day; but Daubrecq refused to fight.
+A little while later, Prasville was appointed secretary-general.
+“Very odd, very odd,” said Lupin, who remained plunged in thought,
+while continuing to observe Prasville’s movements.
+At seven o’clock Prasville’s group of men moved away a few yards,
+in the direction of the Avenue Henri-Martin. The door of a small
+garden on the right of the house opened and Daubrecq appeared. The
+two detectives followed close behind him and, when he took the
+Rue-Taitbout train, jumped on after him.
+Prasville at once walked across the square and rang the bell. The
+garden-gate was between the house and the porter’s lodge. The
+portress came and opened it. There was a brief conversation, after
+which Prasville and his companions were admitted.
+“A domiciliary visit,” said Lupin. “Secret and illegal. By the
+strict rules of politeness, I ought to be invited. My presence is
+indispensable.”
+Without the least hesitation he went up to the house, the door of
+which had not been closed, and, passing in front of the portress,
+who was casting her eyes outside, he asked, in the hurried tones of
+a person who is late for an appointment:
+“Have the gentlemen come?”
+“Yes, you will find them in the study.”
+His plan was quite simple: if any one met him, he would pretend to
+be a tradesman. But there was no need for this subterfuge. He was
+able, after crossing an empty hall, to enter a dining-room which
+also had no one in it, but which, through the panes of a glass
+partition that separated the dining-room from the study, afforded
+him a view of Prasville and his five companions.
+Prasville opened all the drawers with the aid of false keys. Next,
+he examined all the papers, while his companions took down the
+books from the shelves, shook the pages of each separately and felt
+inside the bindings.
+“Of course, it’s a paper they’re looking for,” said Lupin.
+“Bank-notes, perhaps....”
+Prasville exclaimed:
+“What rot! We shan’t find a thing!”
+Yet he obviously did not abandon all hope of discovering what he
+wanted, for he suddenly seized the four bottles in a liqueur-stand,
+took out the four stoppers and inspected them.
+“Hullo!” thought Lupin. “Now he’s going for decanter-stoppers! Then
+it’s not a question of a paper? Well, I give it up.”
+Prasville next lifted and examined different objects; and he asked:
+“How often have you been here?”
+“Six times last winter,” was the reply.
+“And you have searched the house thoroughly?”
+“Every one of the rooms, for days at a time, while he was visiting
+his constituency.”
+“Still . . . still....” And he added, “Has he no servant at present?”
+“No, he is looking for one. He has his meals out and the portress
+keeps the house as best she can. The woman is devoted to us....”
+Prasville persisted in his investigations for nearly an hour and a
+half, shifting and fingering all the knick-knacks, but taking care
+to put everything back exactly where he found it. At nine o’clock,
+however, the two detectives who had followed Daubrecq burst into
+the study:
+“He’s coming back!”
+“On foot?”
+“Yes.”
+“Have we time?”
+“Oh, dear, yes!”
+Prasville and the men from the police-office withdrew, without
+undue haste, after taking a last glance round the room to make sure
+that there was nothing to betray their visit.
+The position was becoming critical for Lupin. He ran the risk of
+knocking up against Daubrecq, if he went away, or of not being
+able to get out, if he remained. But, on ascertaining that the
+dining-room windows afforded a direct means of exit to the square,
+he resolved to stay. Besides, the opportunity of obtaining a close
+view of Daubrecq was too good to refuse; and, as Daubrecq had
+been out to dinner, there was not much chance of his entering the
+dining-room.
+Lupin, therefore, waited, holding himself ready to hide behind a
+velvet curtain that could be drawn across the glazed partition in
+case of need.
+He heard the sound of doors opening and shutting. Some one walked
+into the study and switched on the light. He recognized Daubrecq.
+The deputy was a stout, thickset, bull-necked man, very nearly
+bald, with a fringe of gray whiskers round his chin and wearing a
+pair of black eye-glasses under his spectacles, for his eyes were
+weak and strained. Lupin noticed the powerful features, the square
+chin, the prominent cheek-bones. The hands were brawny and covered
+with hair, the legs bowed; and he walked with a stoop, bearing
+first on one hip and then on the other, which gave him something
+of the gait of a gorilla. But the face was topped by an enormous,
+lined forehead, indented with hollows and dotted with bumps.
+There was something bestial, something savage, something repulsive
+about the man’s whole personality. Lupin remembered that, in the
+Chamber of Deputies, Daubrecq was nicknamed “The Wild Man of the
+Woods” and that he was so labelled not only because he stood aloof
+and hardly ever mixed with his fellow-members, but also because of
+his appearance, his behaviour, his peculiar gait and his remarkable
+muscular development.
+He sat down to his desk, took a meerschaum pipe from his pocket,
+selected a packet of caporal among several packets of tobacco which
+lay drying in a bowl, tore open the wrapper, filled his pipe and
+lit it. Then he began to write letters.
+Presently he ceased his work and sat thinking, with his attention
+fixed on a spot on his desk.
+He lifted a little stamp-box and examined it. Next, he verified
+the position of different articles which Prasville had touched and
+replaced; and he searched them with his eyes, felt them with his
+hands, bending over them as though certain signs, known to himself
+alone, were able to tell him what he wished to know.
+Lastly, he grasped the knob on an electric bell-push and rang. The
+portress appeared a minute later.
+He asked:
+“They’ve been, haven’t they?”
+And, when the woman hesitated about replying, he insisted:
+“Come, come, Clémence, did you open this stamp-box?”
+“No, sir.”
+“Well, I fastened the lid down with a little strip of gummed paper.
+The strip has been broken.”
+“But I assure you, . . .” the woman began.
+“Why tell lies,” he said, “considering that I myself instructed you
+to lend yourself to those visits?”
+“The fact is....”
+“The fact is that you want to keep on good terms with both
+sides.... Very well!” He handed her a fifty-franc note and
+repeated, “Have they been?”
+“Yes.”
+“The same men as in the spring?”
+“Yes, all five of them . . . with another one, who ordered them
+about.”
+“A tall, dark man?”
+“Yes.”
+Lupin saw Daubrecq’s mouth hardening; and Daubrecq continued:
+“Is that all?”
+“There was one more, who came after they did and joined them . . .
+and then, just now, two more, the pair who usually keep watch
+outside the house.”
+“Did they remain in the study?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“And they went away when I came back? A few minutes before,
+perhaps?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“That will do.”
+The woman left the room. Daubrecq returned to his letter-writing.
+Then, stretching out his arm, he made some marks on a white
+writing-tablet, at the end of his desk, and rested it against the
+desk, as though he wished to keep it in sight. The marks were
+figures; and Lupin was able to read the following subtraction-sum:
+“9 − 8 = 1”
+And Daubrecq, speaking between his teeth, thoughtfully uttered the
+syllables:
+“Eight from nine leaves one.... There’s not a doubt about that,”
+he added, aloud. He wrote one more letter, a very short one, and
+addressed the envelope with an inscription which Lupin was able to
+decipher when the letter was placed beside the writing-tablet:
+“To Monsieur Prasville,
+Secretary-general of the Prefecture of Police.”
+Then he rang the bell again:
+“Clémence,” he said, to the portress, “did you go to school as a
+child?”
+“Yes, sir, of course I did.”
+“And were you taught arithmetic?”
+“Why, sir....”
+“Well, you’re not very good at subtraction.”
+“What makes you say that?”
+“Because you don’t know that nine minus eight equals one. And
+that, you see, is a fact of the highest importance. Life becomes
+impossible if you are ignorant of that fundamental truth.”
+He rose, as he spoke, and walked round the room, with his hands
+behind his back, swaying upon his hips. He did so once more. Then,
+stopping at the dining-room, he opened the door:
+“For that matter, there’s another way of putting the problem. Take
+eight from nine; and one remains. And the one who remains is here,
+eh? Correct! And monsieur supplies us with a striking proof, does
+he not?”
+He patted the velvet curtain in which Lupin had hurriedly wrapped
+himself:
+“Upon my word, sir, you must be stifling under this! Not to say
+that I might have amused myself by sticking a dagger through the
+curtain. Remember Hamlet’s madness and Polonius’ death: ‘How now! A
+rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!’ Come along, Mr. Polonius, come out
+of your hole.”
+It was one of those positions to which Lupin was not accustomed and
+which he loathed. To catch others in a trap and pull their leg was
+all very well; but it was a very different thing to have people
+teasing him and roaring with laughter at his expense. Yet what
+could he answer back?
+“You look a little pale, Mr. Polonius.... Hullo! Why, it’s the
+respectable old gentleman who has been hanging about the square for
+some days! So you belong to the police too, Mr. Polonius? There,
+there, pull yourself together, I sha’n’t hurt you!... But you see,
+Clémence, how right my calculation was. You told me that nine spies
+had been to the house. I counted a troop of eight, as I came along,
+eight of them in the distance, down the avenue. Take eight from
+nine and one remains: the one who evidently remained behind to see
+what he could see. _Ecce homo!_”
+“Well? And then?” said Lupin, who felt a mad craving to fly at the
+fellow and reduce him to silence.
+“And then? Nothing at all, my good man.... What more do you want?
+The farce is over. I will only ask you to take this little note to
+Master Prasville, your employer. Clémence, please show Mr. Polonius
+out. And, if ever he calls again, fling open the doors wide to
+him. Pray look upon this as your home, Mr. Polonius. Your servant,
+sir!...”
+Lupin hesitated. He would have liked to talk big and to come out
+with a farewell phrase, a parting speech, like an actor making
+a showy exit from the stage, and at least to disappear with the
+honours of war. But his defeat was so pitiable that he could think
+of nothing better than to bang his hat on his head and stamp his
+feet as he followed the portress down the hall. It was a poor
+revenge.
+“You rascally beggar!” he shouted, once he was outside the door,
+shaking his fist at Daubrecq’s windows. “Wretch, scum of the earth,
+deputy, you shall pay for this!... Oh, he allows himself...! Oh, he
+has the cheek to...! Well, I swear to you, my fine fellow, that,
+one of these days....”
+He was foaming with rage, all the more as, in his innermost heart,
+he recognized the strength of his new enemy and could not deny the
+masterly fashion in which he had managed this business. Daubrecq’s
+coolness, the assurance with which he hoaxed the police-officials,
+the contempt with which he lent himself to their visits at his
+house and, above all, his wonderful self-possession, his easy
+bearing and the impertinence of his conduct in the presence of
+the ninth person who was spying on him: all this denoted a man of
+character, a strong man, with a well-balanced mind, lucid, bold,
+sure of himself and of the cards in his hand.
+But what were those cards? What game was he playing? Who held the
+stakes? And how did the players stand on either side? Lupin could
+not tell. Knowing nothing, he flung himself headlong into the thick
+of the fray, between adversaries desperately involved, though he
+himself was in total ignorance of their positions, their weapons,
+their resources and their secret plans. For, when all was said, he
+could not admit that the object of all those efforts was to obtain
+possession of a crystal stopper!
+One thing alone pleased him: Daubrecq had not penetrated his
+disguise. Daubrecq believed him to be in the employ of the police.
+Neither Daubrecq nor the police, therefore, suspected the intrusion
+of a third thief in the business. This was his one and only trump,
+a trump that gave him a liberty of action to which he attached the
+greatest importance.
+Without further delay, he opened the letter which Daubrecq had
+handed him for the secretary-general of police. It contained these
+few lines:
+“Within reach of your hand, my dear Prasville, within reach of
+your hand! You touched it! A little more and the trick was
+done.... But you’re too big a fool. And to think that they
+couldn’t hit upon any one better than you to make me bite the
+dust. Poor old France! Good-bye, Prasville. But, if I catch you
+in the act, it will be a bad lookout for you: my maxim is to
+shoot at sight.
+“DAUBRECQ”
+“‘Within reach of your hand,’” repeated Lupin, after reading the
+note. “And to think that the rogue may be writing the truth! The
+most elementary hiding-places are the safest. We must look into
+this, all the same. And, also, we must find out why Daubrecq is
+the object of such strict supervision and obtain a few particulars
+about the fellow generally.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+The information supplied to Lupin by a private inquiry-office
+consisted of the following details:
+“ALEXIS DAUBRECQ, deputy of the Bouches-du-Rhône for the past
+two years; sits among the independent members. Political
+opinions not very clearly defined, but electoral position
+exceedingly strong, because of the enormous sums which he
+spends in nursing his constituency. No private income.
+Nevertheless, has a house in Paris, a villa at Enghien and
+another at Nice and loses heavily at play, though no one
+knows where the money comes from. Has great influence and
+obtains all he wants without making up to ministers or,
+apparently, having either friends or connections in political
+circles.”
+“That’s a trade docket,” said Lupin to himself. “What I want is
+a domestic docket, a police docket, which will tell me about the
+gentleman’s private life and enable me to work more easily in this
+darkness and to know if I’m not getting myself into a tangle by
+bothering about the Daubrecq bird. And time’s getting short, hang
+it!”
+One of the residences which Lupin occupied at that period and
+which he used oftener than any of the others was in the Rue
+Chateaubriand, near the Arc de l’Étoile. He was known there by the
+name of Michel Beaumont. He had a snug flat here and was looked
+after by a man-servant, Achille, who was utterly devoted to his
+interests and whose chief duty was to receive and repeat the
+telephone-messages addressed to Lupin by his followers.
+Lupin, on returning home, learnt, with great astonishment, that a
+woman had been waiting to see him for over an hour:
+“What! Why, no one ever comes to see me here! Is she young?”
+“No.... I don’t think so.”
+“You don’t think so!”
+“She’s wearing a lace shawl over her head, instead of a hat, and
+you can’t see her face.... She’s more like a clerk . . . or a woman
+employed in a shop. She’s not well-dressed....”
+“Whom did she ask for?”
+“M. Michel Beaumont,” replied the servant.
+“Queer. And why has she called?”
+“All she said was that it was about the Enghien business.... So I
+thought that....”
+“What! The Enghien business! Then she knows that I am mixed up in
+that business.... She knows that, by applying here....”
+“I could not get anything out of her, but I thought, all the same,
+that I had better let her in.”
+“Quite right. Where is she?”
+“In the drawing-room. I’ve put on the lights.”
+Lupin walked briskly across the hall and opened the door of the
+drawing-room:
+“What are you talking about?” he said, to his man. “There’s no one
+here.”
+“No one here?” said Achille, running up.
+And the room, in fact, was empty.
+“Well, on my word, this takes the cake!” cried the servant. “It
+wasn’t twenty minutes ago that I came and had a look, to make sure.
+She was sitting over there. And there’s nothing wrong with my
+eyesight, you know.”
+“Look here, look here,” said Lupin, irritably. “Where were you
+while the woman was waiting?”
+“In the hall, governor! I never left the hall for a second! I
+should have seen her go out, blow it!”
+“Still, she’s not here now....”
+“So I see,” moaned the man, quite flabbergasted.
+“She must have got tired of waiting and gone away. But, dash it
+all, I should like to know how she got out!”
+“How she got out?” said Lupin. “It doesn’t take a wizard to tell
+that.”
+“What do you mean?”
+“She got out through the window. Look, it’s still ajar. We are on
+the ground-floor.... The street is almost always deserted, in the
+evenings. There’s no doubt about it.”
+He had looked around him and satisfied himself that nothing had
+been taken away or moved. The room, for that matter, contained
+no knick-knack of any value, no important paper that might have
+explained the woman’s visit, followed by her sudden disappearance.
+And yet why that inexplicable flight?
+“Has any one telephoned?” he asked.
+“No.”
+“Any letters?”
+“Yes, one letter by the last post.”
+“Where is it?”
+“I put it on your mantel-piece, governor, as usual.”
+Lupin’s bedroom was next to the drawing-room, but Lupin had
+permanently bolted the door between the two. He, therefore, had to
+go through the hall again.
+Lupin switched on the electric light and, the next moment, said:
+“I don’t see it....”
+“Yes.... I put it next to the flower-bowl.”
+“There’s nothing here at all.”
+“You must be looking in the wrong place, governor.”
+But Achille moved the bowl, lifted the clock, bent down to the
+grate, in vain: the letter was not there.
+“Oh blast it, blast it!” he muttered. “She’s done it . . . she’s
+taken it.... And then, when she had the letter, she cleared out....
+Oh, the slut!...”
+Lupin said:
+“You’re mad! There’s no way through between the two rooms.”
+“Then who did take it, governor?”
+They were both of them silent. Lupin strove to control his anger
+and collect his ideas. He asked:
+“Did you look at the envelope?”
+“Yes.”
+“Anything particular about it?”
+“Yes, it looked as if it had been written in a hurry, or scribbled,
+rather.”
+“How was the address worded?... Do you remember?” asked Lupin, in a
+voice strained with anxiety.
+“Yes, I remembered it, because it struck me as funny....”
+“But speak, will you? Speak!”
+“It said, ‘_Monsieur de Beaumont, Michel_.’”
+[Illustration: Lupin took his servant by the shoulders and shook
+him: “It said ‘de’ Beaumont? Are you sure?”]
+Lupin took his servant by the shoulders and shook him:
+“It said ‘de’ Beaumont? Are you sure? And ‘Michel’ after ‘Beaumont’?”
+“Quite certain.”
+“Ah!” muttered Lupin, with a choking throat. “It was a letter from
+Gilbert!”
+He stood motionless, a little pale, with drawn features. There was
+no doubt about it: the letter was from Gilbert. It was the form of
+address which, by Lupin’s orders, Gilbert had used for years in
+corresponding with him. Gilbert had at last--after long waiting and
+by dint of endless artifices--found a means of getting a letter
+posted from his prison and had hastily written to him. And now the
+letter was intercepted! What did it say? What instructions had
+the unhappy prisoner given? What help was he praying for? What
+stratagem did he suggest?
+Lupin looked round the room, which, contrary to the drawing-room,
+contained important papers. But none of the locks had been forced;
+and he was compelled to admit that the woman had no other object
+than to get hold of Gilbert’s letter.
+Constraining himself to keep his temper, he asked:
+“Did the letter come while the woman was here?”
+“At the same time. The porter rang at the same moment.”
+“Could she see the envelope?”
+“Yes.”
+The conclusion was evident. It remained to discover how the visitor
+had been able to effect her theft. By slipping from one window to
+the other, outside the flat? Impossible: Lupin found the window of
+his room shut. By opening the communicating door? Impossible: Lupin
+found it locked and barred with its two inner bolts.
+Nevertheless, a person cannot pass through a wall by a mere
+operation of will. To go in or out of a room requires a passage;
+and, as the act was accomplished in the space of a few minutes, it
+was necessary, in the circumstances, that the passage should be
+previously in existence, that it should already have been contrived
+in the wall and, of course, known to the woman. This hypothesis
+simplified the search by concentrating it upon the door; for the
+wall was quite bare, without a cupboard, chimney-piece or hangings
+of any kind, and unable to conceal the least outlet.
+Lupin went back to the drawing-room and prepared to make a study
+of the door. But he at once gave a start. He perceived, at the
+first glance, that the left lower panel of the six small panels
+contained within the cross-bars of the door no longer occupied its
+normal position and that the light did not fall straight upon it.
+On leaning forward, he saw two little tin tacks sticking out on
+either side and holding the panel in place, similar to a wooden
+board behind a picture-frame. He had only to shift these. The panel
+at once came out.
+Achille gave a cry of amazement. But Lupin objected:
+“Well? And what then? We are no better off than before. Here is an
+empty oblong, eight or nine inches wide by sixteen inches high.
+You’re not going to pretend that a woman can slip through an
+opening which would not admit the thinnest child of ten years old!”
+“No, but she can have put her arm through and drawn the bolts.”
+“The bottom bolt, yes,” said Lupin. “But the top bolt, no: the
+distance is far too great. Try for yourself and see.”
+Achille tried and had to give up the attempt.
+Lupin did not reply. He stood thinking for a long time. Then,
+suddenly, he said:
+“Give me my hat . . . my coat....”
+He hurried off, urged by an imperative idea. And, the moment he
+reached the street, he sprang into a taxi:
+“Rue Matignon, quick!...”
+As soon as they came to the house where he had been robbed of the
+crystal stopper, he jumped out of the cab, opened his private
+entrance, went upstairs, ran to the drawing-room, turned on the
+light and crouched at the foot of the door leading to his bedroom.
+He had guessed right. One of the little panels was loosened in the
+same manner.
+And, just as in his other flat in the Rue Chateaubriand, the
+opening was large enough to admit a man’s arm and shoulder, but not
+to allow him to draw the upper bolt.
+“Hang!” he shouted, unable any longer to master the rage that had
+been seething within him for the last two hours. “Blast! Shall I
+never have finished with this confounded business?”
+In fact, an incredible ill-luck seemed to dog his footsteps,
+compelling him to grope about at random, without permitting him
+to use the elements of success which his own persistency or the
+very force of things placed within his grasp. Gilbert gave him
+the crystal stopper. Gilbert sent him a letter. And both had
+disappeared at that very moment.
+And it was not, as he had until then believed, a series of
+fortuitous and independent circumstances. No, it was manifestly
+the effect of an adverse will pursuing a definite object with
+prodigious ability and incredible boldness, attacking him, Lupin,
+in the recesses of his safest retreats and baffling him with blows
+so severe and so unexpected that he did not even know against whom
+he had to defend himself. Never, in the course of his adventures,
+had he encountered such obstacles as now.
+And, little by little, deep down within himself, there grew a
+haunting dread of the future. A date loomed before his eyes, the
+terrible date which he unconsciously assigned to the law to perform
+its work of vengeance, the date upon which, in the light of a wan
+April morning, two men would mount the scaffold, two men who had
+stood by him, two comrades whom he had been unable to save from
+paying the awful penalty....
+[A] See 813, by Maurice Leblanc, translated by Alexander Teixeira
+de Mattos.
+CHAPTER III.
+THE HOME LIFE OF ALEXIS DAUBRECQ
+When Daubrecq the deputy came in from lunch on the day after the
+police had searched his house he was stopped by Clémence, his
+portress, who told him that she had found a cook who could be
+thoroughly relied on.
+The cook arrived a few minutes later and produced first-rate
+characters, signed by people with whom it was easy to take up her
+references. She was a very active woman, although of a certain age,
+and agreed to do the work of the house by herself, without the
+help of a man-servant, this being a condition upon which Daubrecq
+insisted.
+Her last place was with a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Comte
+Saulevat, to whom Daubrecq at once telephoned. The count’s steward
+gave her a perfect character, and she was engaged.
+As soon as she had fetched her trunk, she set to work and cleaned
+and scrubbed until it was time to cook the dinner.
+Daubrecq dined and went out.
+At eleven o’clock, after the portress had gone to bed, the cook
+cautiously opened the garden-gate. A man came up.
+“Is that you?” she asked.
+“Yes, it’s I, Lupin.”
+She took him to her bedroom on the third floor, overlooking the
+garden, and at once burst into lamentations:
+“More of your tricks and nothing but tricks! Why can’t you leave me
+alone, instead of sending me to do your dirty work?”
+“How can I help it, you dear old Victoire?[B] When I want a person
+of respectable appearance and incorruptible morals, I think of you.
+You ought to be flattered.”
+“That’s all you care about me!” she cried. “You run me into danger
+once more; and you think it’s funny!”
+“What are you risking?”
+“How do you mean, what am I risking? All my characters are false.”
+“Characters are always false.”
+“And suppose M. Daubrecq finds out? Suppose he makes inquiries?”
+“He has made inquiries.”
+“Eh? What’s that?”
+“He has telephoned to the steward of Comte Saulevat, in whose
+service you say that you have had the honour of being.”
+“There, you see, I’m done for!”
+“The count’s steward could not say enough in your praise.”
+“He does not know me.”
+“But I know him. I got him his situation with Comte Saulevat. So
+you understand....”
+Victoire seemed to calm down a little:
+“Well,” she said, “God’s will be done . . . or rather yours. And
+what do you expect me to do in all this?”
+“First, to put me up. You were my wet-nurse once. You can very well
+give me half your room now. I’ll sleep in the armchair.”
+“And next?”
+“Next? To supply me with such food as I want.”
+“And next?”
+“Next? To undertake, with me and under my direction, a regular
+series of searches with a view....”
+“To what?”
+“To discovering the precious object of which I spoke to you.”
+“What’s that?”
+“A crystal stopper.”
+“A crystal stopper.... Saints above! A nice business! And, if we
+don’t find your confounded stopper, what then?”
+Lupin took her gently by the arm and, in a serious voice:
+“If we don’t find it, Gilbert, young Gilbert whom you know and
+love, will stand every chance of losing his head; and so will
+Vaucheray.”
+“Vaucheray I don’t mind . . . a dirty rascal like him! But
+Gilbert....”
+“Have you seen the papers this evening? Things are looking worse
+than ever. Vaucheray, as might be expected, accuses Gilbert
+of stabbing the valet; and it so happens that the knife which
+Vaucheray used belonged to Gilbert. That came out this morning.
+Whereupon Gilbert, who is intelligent in his way, but easily
+frightened, blithered and launched forth into stories and lies
+which will end in his undoing. That’s how the matter stands. Will
+you help me?”
+*       *       *       *       *
+The deputy came home at midnight.
+Thenceforth, for several days, Lupin moulded his existence upon
+Daubrecq’s, beginning his investigations the moment the deputy
+left the house. He pursued them methodically, dividing each room
+into sections which he did not abandon until he had been through
+the tiniest nooks and corners and, so to speak, exhausted every
+possible device.
+Victoire searched also. And nothing was forgotten. Table-legs,
+chair-rungs, floor-boards, mouldings, mirror- and picture-frames,
+clocks, plinths, curtain-borders, telephone-holders and electric
+fittings: everything that an ingenious imagination could have
+selected as a hiding-place was overhauled.
+And they also watched the deputy’s least actions, his most
+unconscious movements, the expression of his face, the books which
+he read and the letters which he wrote.
+It was easy enough. He seemed to live his life in the light of day.
+No door was ever shut. He received no visits. And his existence
+worked with mechanical regularity. He went to the Chamber in the
+afternoon, to the club in the evening.
+“Still,” said Lupin, “there must be something that’s not orthodox
+behind all this.”
+“There’s nothing of the sort,” moaned Victoire. “You’re wasting
+your time and we shall be bowled out.”
+The presence of the detectives and their habit of walking up and
+down outside the windows drove her mad. She refused to admit that
+they were there for any other purpose than to trap her, Victoire.
+And, each time that she went shopping, she was quite surprised that
+one of those men did not lay his hand upon her shoulder.
+One day she returned all upset. Her basket of provisions was
+shaking on her arm.
+“What’s the matter, my dear Victoire?” said Lupin. “You’re looking
+green.”
+“Green? I dare say I do. So would you look green....”
+She had to sit down and it was only after making repeated efforts
+that she succeeded in stuttering:
+“A man . . . a man spoke to me . . . at the fruiterer’s.”
+“By jingo! Did he want you to run away with him?”
+“No, he gave me a letter....”
+“Then what are you complaining about? It was a love-letter, of
+course!”
+“No. ‘It’s for your governor,’ said he. ‘My governor?’ I said.
+‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for the gentleman who’s staying in your room.’”
+“What’s that?”
+This time, Lupin had started:
+“Give it here,” he said, snatching the letter from her. The
+envelope bore no address. But there was another, inside it, on
+which he read:
+“_Monsieur Arsène Lupin_,
+“_℅ Victoire._”
+“The devil!” he said. “This is a bit thick!” He tore open the
+second envelope. It contained a sheet of paper with the following
+words, written in large capitals:
+“Everything you are doing is useless and dangerous.... Give
+it up.”
+Victoire uttered one moan and fainted. As for Lupin, he felt
+himself blush up to his eyes, as though he had been grossly
+insulted. He experienced all the humiliation which a duellist would
+undergo if he heard the most secret advice which he had received
+from his seconds repeated aloud by a mocking adversary.
+However, he held his tongue. Victoire went back to her work. As for
+him, he remained in his room all day, thinking.
+That night he did not sleep.
+And he kept saying to himself:
+“What is the good of thinking? I am up against one of those
+problems which are not solved by any amount of thought. It is
+certain that I am not alone in the matter and that, between
+Daubrecq and the police, there is, in addition to the third thief
+that I am, a fourth thief who is working on his own account, who
+knows me and who reads my game clearly. But who is this fourth
+thief? And am I mistaken, by any chance? And . . . oh, rot!...
+Let’s get to sleep!...”
+But he could not sleep; and a good part of the night went in this
+way.
+At four o’clock in the morning he seemed to hear a noise in the
+house. He jumped up quickly and, from the top of the staircase, saw
+Daubrecq go down the first flight and turn toward the garden.
+A minute later, after opening the gate, the deputy returned with a
+man whose head was buried in an enormous fur collar and showed him
+into his study.
+Lupin had taken his precautions in view of any such contingency. As
+the windows of the study and those of his bedroom, both of which
+were at the back of the house, overlooked the garden, he fastened a
+rope-ladder to his balcony, unrolled it softly and let himself down
+by it until it was level with the top of the study windows.
+These windows were closed by shutters; but, as they were bowed,
+there remained a semi-circular space at the top; and Lupin, though
+he could not hear, was able to see all that went on inside.
+He then realized that the person whom he had taken for a man was
+a woman: a woman who was still young, though her dark hair was
+mingled with gray; a tall woman, elegantly but quite unobtrusively
+dressed, whose handsome features bore the expression of weariness
+and melancholy which long suffering gives.
+“Where the deuce have I seen her before?” Lupin asked himself. “For
+I certainly know that face, that look, that expression.”
+She stood leaning against the table, listening impassively to
+Daubrecq, who was also standing and who was talking very excitedly.
+He had his back turned to Lupin; but Lupin, leaning forward, caught
+sight of a glass in which the deputy’s image was reflected. And he
+was startled to see the strange look in his eyes, the air of fierce
+and brutal desire with which Daubrecq was staring at his visitor.
+It seemed to embarrass her too, for she sat down with lowered lids.
+Then Daubrecq leant over her and it appeared as though he were
+ready to fling his long arms, with their huge hands, around her.
+And, suddenly, Lupin perceived great tears rolling down the woman’s
+sad face.
+Whether or not it was the sight of those tears that made Daubrecq
+lose his head, with a brusque movement he clutched the woman and
+drew her to him. She repelled him, with a violence full of hatred.
+And, after a brief struggle, during which Lupin caught a glimpse
+of the man’s bestial and contorted features, the two of them stood
+face to face, railing at each other like mortal enemies.
+Then they stopped. Daubrecq sat down. There was mischief in his
+face, and sarcasm as well. And he began to talk again, with sharp
+taps on the table, as though he were dictating terms.
+She no longer stirred. She sat haughtily in her chair and towered
+over him, absent-minded, with roaming eyes. Lupin, captivated
+by that powerful and sorrowful countenance, continued to watch
+her; and he was vainly seeking to remember of what or of whom she
+reminded him, when he noticed that she had turned her head slightly
+and that she was imperceptibly moving her arm.
+And her arm strayed farther and farther and her hand crept along
+the table and Lupin saw that, at the end of the table, there stood
+a water-bottle with a gold-topped stopper. The hand reached the
+water-bottle, felt it, rose gently and seized the stopper. A quick
+movement of the head, a glance, and the stopper was put back in its
+place. Obviously, it was not what the woman hoped to find.
+“Dash it!” said Lupin. “She’s after the crystal stopper too! The
+matter is becoming more complicated daily; there’s no doubt about
+it.”
+But, on renewing his observation of the visitor, he was astounded
+to note the sudden and unexpected expression of her countenance,
+a terrible, implacable, ferocious expression. And he saw that her
+hand was continuing its stealthy progress round the table and that,
+with an uninterrupted and crafty sliding movement, it was pushing
+back books and, slowly and surely, approaching a dagger whose blade
+gleamed among the scattered papers.
+It gripped the handle.
+Daubrecq went on talking. Behind his back, the hand rose steadily,
+little by little; and Lupin saw the woman’s desperate and furious
+eyes fixed upon the spot in the neck where she intended to plant
+the knife:
+“You’re doing a very silly thing, fair lady,” thought Lupin.
+And he already began to turn over in his mind the best means of
+escaping and of taking Victoire with him.
+She hesitated, however, with uplifted arm. But it was only a
+momentary weakness. She clenched her teeth. Her whole face,
+contracted with hatred, became yet further convulsed. And she made
+the dread movement.
+At the same instant Daubrecq crouched and, springing from his seat,
+turned and seized the woman’s frail wrist in mid-air.
+Oddly enough, he addressed no reproach to her, as though the deed
+which she had attempted surprised him no more than any ordinary,
+very natural and simple act. He shrugged his shoulders, like a
+man accustomed to that sort of danger, and strode up and down in
+silence.
+She had dropped the weapon and was now crying, holding her head
+between her hands, with sobs that shook her whole frame.
+He next came up to her and said a few words, once more tapping the
+table as he spoke.
+She made a sign in the negative and, when he insisted, she, in her
+turn, stamped her foot on the floor and exclaimed, loud enough for
+Lupin to hear:
+“Never!... Never!...”
+Thereupon, without another word, Daubrecq fetched the fur cloak
+which she had brought with her and hung it over the woman’s
+shoulders, while she shrouded her face in a lace wrap.
+And he showed her out.
+Two minutes later, the garden-gate was locked again. “Pity I can’t
+run after that strange person,” thought Lupin, “and have a chat
+with her about the Daubrecq bird. Seems to me that we two could do
+a good stroke of business together.”
+In any case, there was one point to be cleared up: Daubrecq the
+deputy, whose life was so orderly, so apparently respectable, was
+in the habit of receiving visits at night, when his house was no
+longer watched by the police.
+He sent Victoire to arrange with two members of his gang to keep
+watch for several days. And he himself remained awake next night.
+As on the previous morning, he heard a noise at four o’clock. As on
+the previous morning, the deputy let some one in.
+Lupin ran down his ladder and, when he came to the free space above
+the shutters, saw a man crawling at Daubrecq’s feet, flinging
+his arms round Daubrecq’s knees in frenzied despair and weeping,
+weeping convulsively.
+Daubrecq, laughing, pushed him away repeatedly, but the man clung
+to him. He behaved almost like one out of his mind and, at last, in
+a genuine fit of madness, half rose to his feet, took the deputy
+by the throat and flung him back in a chair. Daubrecq struggled,
+powerless at first, while his veins swelled in his temples. But
+soon, with a strength far beyond the ordinary, he regained the
+mastery and deprived his adversary of all power of movement. Then,
+holding him with one hand, with the other he gave him two great
+smacks in the face.
+The man got up, slowly. He was livid and could hardly stand
+on his legs. He waited for a moment, as though to recover his
+self-possession. Then, with a terrifying calmness, he drew a
+revolver from his pocket and levelled it at Daubrecq.
+Daubrecq did not flinch. He even smiled, with a defiant air and
+without displaying more excitement than if he had been aimed at
+with a toy pistol.
+The man stood for perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, facing his
+enemy, with outstretched arm. Then, with the same deliberate
+slowness, revealing a self-control which was all the more
+impressive because it followed upon a fit of extreme excitement,
+he put up his revolver and, from another pocket, produced his
+note-case.
+Daubrecq took a step forward.
+The man opened the pocketbook. A sheaf of bank-notes appeared in
+sight.
+Daubrecq seized and counted them. They were thousand-franc notes,
+and there were thirty of them.
+The man looked on, without a movement of revolt, without a
+protest. He obviously understood the futility of words. Daubrecq
+was one of those who do not relent. Why should his visitor waste
+time in beseeching him or even in revenging himself upon him by
+uttering vain threats and insults? He had no hope of striking that
+unassailable enemy. Even Daubrecq’s death would not deliver him
+from Daubrecq.
+He took his hat and went away.
+At eleven o’clock in the morning Victoire, on returning from her
+shopping, handed Lupin a note from his accomplices.
+He opened it and read:
+“The man who came to see Daubrecq last night is Langeroux the
+deputy, leader of the independent left. A poor man, with a
+large family.”
+“Come,” said Lupin, “Daubrecq is nothing more nor less than a
+blackmailer; but, by Jupiter, he has jolly effective ways of going
+to work!”
+Events tended to confirm Lupin’s supposition. Three days later he
+saw another visitor hand Daubrecq an important sum of money. And,
+two days after that, one came and left a pearl necklace behind him.
+The first was called Dachaumont, a senator and ex-cabinet-minister.
+The second was the Marquis d’Albufex, a Bonapartist deputy,
+formerly chief political agent in France of Prince Napoleon.
+The scene, in each of these cases, was very similar to Langeroux
+the deputy’s interview, a violent tragic scene, ending in
+Daubrecq’s victory.
+“And so on and so forth,” thought Lupin, when he received these
+particulars. “I have been present at four visits. I shall know no
+more if there are ten, or twenty, or thirty.... It is enough for
+me to learn the names of the visitors from my friends on sentry-go
+outside. Shall I go and call on them?... What for? They have no
+reason to confide in me.... On the other hand, am I to stay on
+here, delayed by investigations which lead to nothing and which
+Victoire can continue just as well without me?”
+He was very much perplexed. The news of the inquiry into the
+case of Gilbert and Vaucheray was becoming worse and worse, the
+days were slipping by, and not an hour passed without his asking
+himself, in anguish, whether all his efforts--granting that he
+succeeded--would not end in farcical results, absolutely foreign to
+the aim which he was pursuing.
+For, after all, supposing that he did fathom Daubrecq’s underhand
+dealings, would that give him the means of rescuing Gilbert and
+Vaucheray?
+That day an incident occurred which put an end to his indecision.
+After lunch Victoire heard snatches of a conversation which
+Daubrecq held with some one on the telephone. Lupin gathered, from
+what Victoire reported, that the deputy had an appointment with a
+lady for half-past eight and that he was going to take her to a
+theatre:
+“I shall get a pit-tier box, like the one we had six weeks ago,”
+Daubrecq had said. And he added, with a laugh, “I hope that I shall
+not have the burglars in during that time.”
+There was not a doubt in Lupin’s mind. Daubrecq was about to spend
+his evening in the same manner in which he had spent the evening
+six weeks ago, while they were breaking into his villa at Enghien.
+To know the person whom he was to meet and perhaps thus to discover
+how Gilbert and Vaucheray had learnt that Daubrecq would be away
+from eight o’clock in the evening until one o’clock in the morning:
+these were matters of the utmost importance.
+Lupin left the house in the afternoon, with Victoire’s assistance.
+He knew through her that Daubrecq was coming home for dinner
+earlier than usual.
+He went to his flat in the Rue Chateaubriand, telephoned for three
+of his friends, dressed and made himself up in his favourite
+character of a Russian prince, with fair hair and moustache and
+short-cut whiskers.
+The accomplices arrived in a motor-car.
+At that moment, Achille, his man, brought him a telegram, addressed
+to M. Michel Beaumont, Rue Chateaubriand, which ran:
+“Do not come to theatre this evening. Danger of your intervention
+spoiling everything.”
+There was a flower-vase on the chimney-piece beside him. Lupin took
+it and smashed it to pieces.
+“That’s it, that’s it,” he snarled. “They are playing with me as I
+usually play with others. Same behaviour. Same tricks. Only there’s
+this difference....”
+What difference? He hardly knew. The truth was that he too was
+baffled and disconcerted to the inmost recesses of his being and
+that he was continuing to act only from obstinacy, from a sense of
+duty, so to speak, and without putting his ordinary good humour and
+high spirits into the work.
+“Come along,” he said to his accomplices.
+By his instructions, the chauffeur set them down near the Square
+Lamartine, but kept the motor going. Lupin foresaw that Daubrecq,
+in order to escape the detectives watching the house, would jump
+into the first taxi; and he did not intend to be outdistanced.
+He had not allowed for Daubrecq’s cleverness.
+At half-past seven both leaves of the garden-gate were flung open,
+a bright light flashed and a motor-cycle darted across the road,
+skirted the square, turned in front of the motor-car and shot away
+toward the Bois at a speed so great that they would have been mad
+to go in pursuit of it.
+“Good-bye, Daisy!” said Lupin, trying to jest, but really overcome
+with rage.
+He eyed his accomplices in the hope that one of them would venture
+to give a mocking smile. How pleased he would have been to vent his
+nerves on them!
+“Let’s go home,” he said to his companions.
+He gave them some dinner; then he smoked a cigar and they set off
+again in the car and went the round of the theatres, beginning
+with those which were giving light operas and musical comedies,
+for which he presumed that Daubrecq and his lady would have a
+preference. He took a stall, inspected the lower-tier boxes and
+went away again.
+He next drove to the more serious theatres: the Renaissance, the
+Gymnase.
+At last, at ten o’clock in the evening, he saw a pit-tier box at
+the Vaudeville almost entirely protected from inspection by its two
+screens; and, on tipping the boxkeeper, was told that it contained
+a short, stout, elderly gentleman and a lady who was wearing a
+thick lace veil.
+The next box was free. He took it, went back to his friends to give
+them their instructions and sat down near the couple.
+During the entr’acte, when the lights went up, he perceived
+Daubrecq’s profile. The lady remained at the back of the box,
+invisible. The two were speaking in a low voice; and, when the
+curtain rose again, they went on speaking, but in such a way that
+Lupin could not distinguish a word.
+Ten minutes passed. Some one tapped at their door. It was one of
+the men from the box-office.
+“Are you M. le Député Daubrecq, sir?” he asked.
+“Yes,” said Daubrecq, in a voice of surprise. “But how do you know
+my name?”
+“There’s a gentleman asking for you on the telephone. He told me to
+go to Box 22.”
+“But who is it?”
+“M. le Marquis d’Albufex.”
+“Eh?”
+“What am I to say, sir?”
+“I’m coming.... I’m coming....”
+Daubrecq rose hurriedly from his seat and followed the clerk to the
+box-office.
+He was not yet out of sight when Lupin sprang from his box, worked
+the lock of the next door and sat down beside the lady.
+She gave a stifled cry.
+“Hush!” he said. “I have to speak to you. It is most important.”
+“Ah!” she said, between her teeth. “Arsène Lupin!” He was
+dumbfounded. For a moment he sat quiet, open-mouthed. The woman
+knew him! And not only did she know him, but she had recognized
+him through his disguise! Accustomed though he was to the most
+extraordinary and unusual events, this disconcerted him.
+He did not even dream of protesting and stammered:
+“So you know?... So you know?...”
+He snatched at the lady’s veil and pulled it aside before she had
+time to defend herself:
+“What!” he muttered, with increased amazement. “Is it possible?”
+It was the woman whom he had seen at Daubrecq’s a few days earlier,
+the woman who had raised her dagger against Daubrecq and who had
+intended to stab him with all the strength of her hatred.
+It was her turn to be taken aback:
+“What! Have you seen me before?...”
+“Yes, the other night, at his house.... I saw what you tried to
+do....”
+She made a movement to escape. He held her back and, speaking with
+great eagerness:
+“I must know who you are,” he said. “That was why I had Daubrecq
+telephoned for.”
+She looked aghast:
+“Do you mean to say it was not the Marquis d’Albufex?”
+“No, it was one of my assistants.”
+“Then Daubrecq will come back?...”
+“Yes, but we have time.... Listen to me.... We must meet again....
+He is your enemy.... I will save you from him....”
+“Why should you? What is your object?”
+“Do not distrust me . . . it is quite certain that our interests
+are identical.... Where can I see you? To-morrow, surely? At what
+time? And where?”
+“Well....”
+She looked at him with obvious hesitation, not knowing what to do,
+on the point of speaking and yet full of uneasiness and doubt.
+He pressed her:
+“Oh, I entreat you . . . answer me just one word . . . and at
+once.... It would be a pity for him to find me here.... I entreat
+you....”
+She answered sharply:
+“My name doesn’t matter.... We will see each other first and you
+shall explain to me.... Yes, we will meet.... Listen, to-morrow, at
+three o’clock, at the corner of the Boulevard....”
+At that exact moment, the door of the box opened, so to speak, with
+a bang, and Daubrecq appeared.
+“Rats!” Lupin mumbled, under his breath, furious at being caught
+before obtaining what he wanted.
+Daubrecq gave a chuckle:
+“So that’s it.... I thought something was up.... Ah, the
+telephone-trick: a little out of date, sir! I had not gone half-way
+when I turned back.”
+He pushed Lupin to the front of the box and, sitting down beside
+the lady, said:
+“And, now my lord, who are we? A servant at the police-office,
+probably? There’s a professional look about that mug of yours.”
+He stared hard at Lupin, who did not move a muscle, and tried to
+put a name to the face, but failed to recognize the man whom he had
+called Polonius.
+Lupin, without taking his eyes from Daubrecq either, reflected.
+He would not for anything in the world have thrown up the game at
+that point or neglected this favourable opportunity of coming to an
+understanding with his mortal enemy.
+The woman sat in her corner, motionless, and watched them both.
+Lupin said:
+“Let us go outside, sir. That will make our interview easier.”
+“No, my lord, here,” grinned the deputy. “It will take place here,
+presently, during the entr’acte. Then we shall not be disturbing
+anybody.”
+“But....”
+“Save your breath, my man; you sha’n’t budge.”
+And he took Lupin by the coat-collar, with the obvious intention of
+not letting go of him before the interval.
+A rash move! Was it likely that Lupin would consent to remain in
+such an attitude, especially before a woman, a woman to whom he had
+offered his alliance, a woman--and he now thought of it for the
+first time--who was distinctly good-looking and whose grave beauty
+attracted him. His whole pride as a man rose at the thought.
+However, he said nothing. He accepted the heavy weight of the
+hand on his shoulder and even sat bent in two, as though beaten,
+powerless, almost frightened.
+“Eh, clever!” said the deputy, scoffingly. “We don’t seem to be
+swaggering quite so much.”
+The stage was full of actors who were arguing and making a noise.
+Daubrecq had loosened his grasp slightly and Lupin felt that the
+moment had come. With the edge of his hand, he gave him a violent
+blow in the hollow of the arm, as he might have done with a hatchet.
+The pain took Daubrecq off his guard. Lupin now released himself
+entirely and sprang at the other to clutch him by the throat. But
+Daubrecq had at once put himself on the defensive and stepped back
+and their four hands seized one another.
+They gripped with superhuman energy, the whole force of the two
+adversaries concentrating in those hands. Daubrecq’s were of
+monstrous size; and Lupin, caught in that iron vise, felt as though
+he were fighting not with a man, but with some terrible beast, a
+huge gorilla.
+They held each other against the door, bending low, like a pair of
+wrestlers groping and trying to lay hold of each other. Their bones
+creaked. Whichever gave way first was bound to be caught by the
+throat and strangled. And all this happened amid a sudden silence,
+for the actors on the stage were now listening to one of their
+number, who was speaking in a low voice.
+The woman stood back flat against the partition, looking at them
+in terror. Had she taken sides with either of them, with a single
+movement, the victory would at once have been decided in that one’s
+favour. But which of them should she assist? What could Lupin
+represent in her eyes? A friend? An enemy?
+She briskly made for the front of the box, forced back the screen
+and, leaning forward, seemed to give a signal. Then she returned
+and tried to slip to the door.
+Lupin, as though wishing to help her, said:
+“Why don’t you move the chair?”
+He was speaking of a heavy chair which had fallen down between him
+and Daubrecq and across which they were struggling.
+The woman stooped and pulled away the chair. That was what Lupin
+was waiting for. Once rid of the obstacle, he caught Daubrecq a
+smart kick on the shin with the tip of his patent-leather boot.
+The result was the same as with the blow which he had given him on
+the arm. The pain caused a second’s apprehension and distraction,
+of which he at once took advantage to beat down Daubrecq’s
+outstretched hands and to dig his ten fingers into his adversary’s
+throat and neck.
+Daubrecq struggled. Daubrecq tried to pull away the hands that were
+throttling him; but he was beginning to choke and felt his strength
+decreasing.
+“Aha, you old monkey!” growled Lupin, forcing him to the floor.
+“Why don’t you shout for help? How frightened you must be of a
+scandal!”
+At the sound of the fall there came a knocking at the partition, on
+the other side.
+“Knock away, knock away,” said Lupin, under his breath. “The play
+is on the stage. This is my business and, until I’ve mastered this
+gorilla....”
+It did not take him long. The deputy was choking. Lupin stunned him
+with a blow on the jaw; and all that remained for him to do was to
+take the woman away and make his escape with her before the alarm
+was given.
+But, when he turned round, he saw that the woman was gone.
+She could not be far. Darting from the box, he set off at a run,
+regardless of the programme-sellers and check-takers.
+On reaching the entrance-lobby, he saw her through an open door,
+crossing the pavement of the Chaussée d’Antin.
+She was stepping into a motor-car when he came up with her.
+The door closed behind her.
+He seized the handle and tried to pull at it.
+But a man jumped up inside and sent his fist flying into Lupin’s
+face, with less skill but no less force than Lupin had sent his
+into Daubrecq’s face.
+Stunned though he was by the blow, he nevertheless had ample time
+to recognize the man, in a sudden, startled vision, and also to
+recognize, under his chauffeur’s disguise, the man who was driving
+the car. It was the Growler and the Masher, the two men in charge
+of the boats on the Enghien night, two friends of Gilbert and
+Vaucheray: in short, two of Lupin’s own accomplices.
+*       *       *       *       *
+When he reached his rooms in the Rue Chateaubriand, Lupin, after
+washing the blood from his face, sat for over an hour in a chair,
+as though overwhelmed. For the first time in his life he was
+experiencing the pain of treachery. For the first time his comrades
+in the fight were turning against their chief.
+Mechanically, to divert his thoughts, he turned to his correspondence
+and tore the wrapper from an evening paper. Among the late news he
+found the following paragraphs:
+“THE VILLA MARIE-THERESE CASE”
+“The real identity of Vaucheray, one of the alleged murderers
+of Léonard the valet, has at last been ascertained. He is a
+miscreant of the worst type, a hardened criminal who has
+already twice been sentenced for murder, in default, under
+another name.
+“No doubt, the police will end by also discovering the
+real name of his accomplice, Gilbert. In any event, the
+examining-magistrate is determined to commit the prisoners
+for trial as soon as possible.
+“The public will have no reason to complain of the delays
+of the law.”
+In between other newspapers and prospectuses lay a letter.
+Lupin jumped when he saw it. It was addressed:
+“_Monsieur de Beaumont, Michel._”
+“Oh,” he gasped, “a letter from Gilbert!”
+It contained these few words:
+“Help, governor!... I am frightened. I am frightened....”
+Once again, Lupin spent a night alternating between sleeplessness
+and nightmares. Once again, he was tormented by atrocious and
+terrifying visions.
+[B] See _The Hollow Needle_ by Maurice Leblanc, translated by
+Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, and later volumes of the Lupin series.
+CHAPTER IV.
+THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES
+“Poor boy!” murmured Lupin, when his eyes fell on Gilbert’s letter
+next morning. “How he must feel it!”
+On the very first day when he saw him, he had taken a liking to
+that well-set-up youngster, so careless, gay and fond of life.
+Gilbert was devoted to him, would have accepted death at a sign
+from his master. And Lupin also loved his frankness, his good
+humour, his simplicity, his bright, open face.
+“Gilbert,” he often used to say, “you are an honest man. Do you
+know, if I were you, I should chuck the business and become an
+honest man for good.”
+“After you, governor,” Gilbert would reply, with a laugh.
+“Won’t you, though?”
+“No, governor. An honest man is a chap who works and grinds. It’s a
+taste which I may have had as a nipper; but they’ve made me lose it
+since.”
+“Who’s they?”
+Gilbert was silent. He was always silent when questioned about his
+early life; and all that Lupin knew was that he had been an orphan
+since childhood and that he had lived all over the place, changing
+his name and taking up the queerest jobs. The whole thing was a
+mystery which no one had been able to fathom; and it did not look
+as though the police would make much of it either.
+Nor, on the other hand, did it look as though the police would
+consider that mystery a reason for delaying proceedings. They would
+send Vaucheray’s accomplice for trial--under his name of Gilbert or
+any other name--and visit him with the same inevitable punishment.
+“Poor boy!” repeated Lupin. “They’re persecuting him like this
+only because of me. They are afraid of his escaping and they
+are in a hurry to finish the business: the verdict first and
+then . . . the execution.... Oh, the butchers!... A lad of twenty,
+who has committed no murder, who is not even an accomplice in the
+murder....”
+Alas, Lupin well knew that this was a thing impossible to prove and
+that he must concentrate his efforts upon another point. But upon
+which? Was he to abandon the trail of the crystal stopper?
+He could not make up his mind to that. His one and only diversion
+from the search was to go to Enghien, where the Growler and the
+Masher lived, and make sure that nothing had been seen of them
+since the murder at the Villa Marie-Thérèse. Apart from this, he
+applied himself to the question of Daubrecq and nothing else.
+He refused even to trouble his head about the problems set before
+him: the treachery of the Growler and the Masher; their connection
+with the gray-haired lady; the spying of which he himself was the
+object.
+“Steady, Lupin,” he said. “One only argues falsely in a fever.
+So hold your tongue. No inferences, above all things! Nothing is
+more foolish than to infer one fact from another before finding
+a certain starting-point. That’s where you get up a tree. Listen
+to your instinct. Act according to your instinct. And as you are
+persuaded, outside all argument, outside all logic, one might say,
+that this business turns upon that confounded stopper, go for it
+boldly. Have at Daubrecq and his bit of crystal!”
+Lupin did not wait to arrive at these conclusions before settling
+his actions accordingly. At the moment when he was stating them
+in his mind, three days after the scene at the Vaudeville, he was
+sitting, dressed like a retired tradesman, in an old overcoat, with
+a muffler round his neck, on a bench in the Avenue Victor-Hugo,
+at some distance from the Square Lamartine. Victoire had his
+instructions to pass by that bench at the same hour every morning.
+“Yes,” he repeated to himself, “the crystal stopper: everything
+turns on that.... Once I get hold of it....”
+Victoire arrived, with her shopping-basket on her arm. He at once
+noticed her extraordinary agitation and pallor:
+“What’s the matter?” asked Lupin, walking beside his old nurse.
+She went into a big grocer’s, which was crowded with people, and,
+turning to him:
+“Here,” she said, in a voice torn with excitement. “Here’s what
+you’ve been hunting for.”
+And, taking something from her basket, she gave it to him.
+Lupin stood astounded: in his hand lay the crystal stopper.
+“Can it be true? Can it be true?” he muttered, as though the ease
+of the solution had thrown him off his balance.
+But the fact remained, visible and palpable. He recognized by its
+shape, by its size, by the worn gilding of its facets, recognized
+beyond any possible doubt the crystal stopper which he had seen
+before. He even remarked a tiny, hardly noticeable little scratch
+on the stem which he remembered perfectly.
+However, while the thing presented all the same characteristics,
+it possessed no other that seemed out of the way. It was a crystal
+stopper, that was all. There was no really special mark to
+distinguish it from other stoppers. There was no sign upon it, no
+stamp; and, being cut from a single piece, it contained no foreign
+object.
+“What then?”
+And Lupin received a quick insight into the depth of his mistake.
+What good could the possession of that crystal stopper do him so
+long as he was ignorant of its value? That bit of glass had no
+existence in itself; it counted only through the meaning that
+attached to it. Before taking it, the thing was to be certain. And
+how could he tell that, in taking it, in robbing Daubrecq of it, he
+was not committing an act of folly?
+It was a question which was impossible of solution, but which
+forced itself upon him with singular directness.
+“No blunders!” he said to himself, as he pocketed the stopper. “In
+this confounded business, blunders are fatal.”
+He had not taken his eyes off Victoire. Accompanied by a shopman,
+she went from counter to counter, among the throng of customers.
+She next stood for some little while at the pay-desk and passed in
+front of Lupin.
+He whispered her instructions:
+“Meet me behind the Lycée Janson.”
+She joined him in an unfrequented street:
+“And suppose I’m followed?” she said.
+“No,” he declared. “I looked carefully. Listen to me. Where did you
+find the stopper?”
+“In the drawer of the table by his bed.”
+“But we had felt there already.”
+“Yes; and I did so again this morning. I expect he put it there
+last night.”
+“And I expect he’ll want to take it from there again,” said Lupin.
+“Very likely.”
+“And suppose he finds it gone?”
+Victoire looked frightened.
+“Answer me,” said Lupin. “If he finds it gone, he’ll accuse you of
+taking it, won’t he?”
+“Certainly.”
+“Then go and put it back, as fast as you can.”
+“Oh dear, oh dear!” she moaned. “I hope he won’t have had time to
+find out. Give it to me, quick.”
+“Here you are,” said Lupin.
+He felt in the pocket of his overcoat.
+“Well?” said Victoire, holding out her hand.
+“Well,” he said, after a moment, “it’s gone.”
+“What!”
+“Yes, upon my word, it’s gone . . . somebody’s taken it from me.”
+He burst into a peal of laughter, a laughter which, this time, was
+free from all bitterness.
+Victoire flew out at him:
+“Laugh away!... Putting me in such a predicament!...”
+“How can I help laughing? You must confess that it’s funny. It’s
+no longer a tragedy that we’re acting, but a fairy-tale, as much a
+fairy-tale as _Puss in Boots_ or _Jack and the Beanstalk_. I must
+write it when I get a few weeks to myself: _The Magic Stopper; or,
+The Mishaps of Poor Arsène._”
+“Well . . . who has taken it from you?”
+“What are you talking about?... It has flown away . . . vanished
+from my pocket: hey presto, begone!”
+He gave the old servant a gentle push and, in a more serious tone:
+“Go home, Victoire, and don’t upset yourself. Of course, some one
+saw you give me the stopper and took advantage of the crowd in the
+shop to pick my pocket of it. That only shows that we are watched
+more closely than I thought and by adversaries of the first rank.
+But, once more, be easy. Honest men always come by their own....
+Have you anything else to tell me?”
+“Yes. Some one came yesterday evening, while M. Daubrecq was out. I
+saw lights reflected upon the trees in the garden.”
+“The portress’ bedroom?”
+“The portress was up.”
+“Then it was some of those detective-fellows; they are still
+hunting. I’ll see you later, Victoire. You must let me in again.”
+“What! You want to....”
+“What do I risk? Your room is on the third floor. Daubrecq suspects
+nothing.”
+“But the others!”
+“The others? If it was to their interest to play me a trick, they’d
+have tried before now. I’m in their way, that’s all. They’re not
+afraid of me. So till later, Victoire, at five o’clock exactly.”
+One further surprise awaited Lupin. In the evening his old nurse
+told him that, having opened the drawer of the bedside table from
+curiosity, she had found the crystal stopper there again.
+Lupin was no longer to be excited by these miraculous incidents. He
+simply said to himself:
+“So it’s been brought back. And the person who brought it back and
+who enters this house by some unexplained means considered, as I
+did, that the stopper ought not to disappear. And yet Daubrecq,
+who knows that he is being spied upon to his very bedroom, has
+once more left the stopper in a drawer, as though he attached no
+importance to it at all! Now what is one to make of that?”
+Though Lupin did not make anything of it, nevertheless he could
+not escape certain arguments, certain associations of ideas that
+gave him the same vague foretaste of light which one receives on
+approaching the outlet of a tunnel.
+“It is inevitable, as the case stands,” he thought, “that there
+must soon be an encounter between myself and the others. From that
+moment I shall be master of the situation.”
+Five days passed, during which Lupin did not glean the slightest
+particular. On the sixth day Daubrecq received a visit, in the
+small hours, from a gentleman, Laybach the deputy, who, like his
+colleagues, dragged himself at his feet in despair and, when all
+was done, handed him twenty thousand francs.
+Two more days; and then, one night, posted on the landing of the
+second floor, Lupin heard the creaking of a door, the front-door,
+as he perceived, which led from the hall into the garden. In the
+darkness he distinguished, or rather divined, the presence of two
+persons, who climbed the stairs and stopped on the first floor,
+outside Daubrecq’s bedroom.
+What were they doing there? It was not possible to enter the room,
+because Daubrecq bolted his door every night. Then what were they
+hoping?
+Manifestly, a handiwork of some kind was being performed, as Lupin
+discovered from the dull sounds of rubbing against the door. Then
+words, uttered almost beneath a whisper, reached him:
+“Is it all right?”
+“Yes, quite, but, all the same, we’d better put it off till
+to-morrow, because....”
+Lupin did not hear the end of the sentence. The men were already
+groping their way downstairs. The hall-door was closed, very
+gently, and then the gate.
+“It’s curious, say what one likes,” thought Lupin. “Here is a house
+in which Daubrecq carefully conceals his rascalities and is on
+his guard, not without good reason, against spies; and everybody
+walks in and out as in a booth at a fair. Victoire lets me in,
+the portress admits the emissaries of the police: that’s well and
+good; but who is playing false in these people’s favour? Are we to
+suppose that they are acting alone? But what fearlessness! And how
+well they know their way about!”
+In the afternoon, during Daubrecq’s absence, he examined the
+door of the first-floor bedroom. And, at the first glance, he
+understood: one of the lower panels had been skilfully cut out and
+was only held in place by invisible tacks. The people, therefore,
+who had done this work were the same who had acted at his two
+places, in the Rue Matignon and the Rue Chateaubriand.
+He also found that the work dated back to an earlier period and
+that, as in his case, the opening had been prepared beforehand, in
+anticipation of favourable circumstances or of some immediate need.
+The day did not seem long to Lupin. Knowledge was at hand. Not only
+would he discover the manner in which his adversaries employed
+those little openings, which were apparently unemployable, since
+they did not allow a person to reach the upper bolts, but he would
+learn who the ingenious and energetic adversaries were with whom he
+repeatedly and inevitably found himself confronted.
+One incident annoyed him. In the evening Daubrecq, who had
+complained of feeling tired at dinner, came home at ten o’clock
+and, contrary to his usual custom, pushed the bolts of the
+hall-door. In that case, how would the others be able to carry
+out their plan and go to Daubrecq’s room? Lupin waited for an
+hour after Daubrecq put out his light. Then he went down to the
+deputy’s study, opened one of the windows ajar and returned to the
+third floor and fixed his rope-ladder so that, in case of need, he
+could reach the study without passing though the house. Lastly, he
+resumed his post on the second-floor landing.
+He did not have to wait long. An hour earlier than on the previous
+night some one tried to open the hall-door. When the attempt
+failed, a few minutes of absolute silence followed. And Lupin
+was beginning to think that the men had abandoned the idea, when
+he gave a sudden start. Some one had passed, without the least
+sound to interrupt the silence. He would not have known it, so
+utterly were the thing’s steps deadened by the stair-carpet, if the
+baluster-rail, which he himself held in his hand, had not shaken
+slightly. Some one was coming upstairs.
+And, as the ascent continued, Lupin became aware of the uncanny
+feeling that he heard nothing more than before. He knew, because of
+the rail, that a thing was coming and he could count the number of
+steps climbed by noting each vibration of the rail; but no other
+indication gave him that dim sensation of presence which we feel in
+distinguishing movements which we do not see, in perceiving sounds
+which we do not hear. And yet a blacker darkness ought to have
+taken shape within the darkness and something ought, at least, to
+modify the quality of the silence. No, he might well have believed
+that there was no one there.
+And Lupin, in spite of himself and against the evidence of his
+reason, ended by believing it, for the rail no longer moved and he
+thought that he might have been the sport of an illusion.
+And this lasted a long time. He hesitated, not knowing what to do,
+not knowing what to suppose. But an odd circumstance impressed him.
+A clock struck two. He recognized the chime of Daubrecq’s clock.
+And the chime was that of a clock from which one is not separated
+by the obstacle of a door.
+Lupin slipped down the stairs and went to the door. It was closed,
+but there was a space on the left, at the bottom, a space left by
+the removal of the little panel.
+He listened. Daubrecq, at that moment, turned in his bed; and his
+breathing was resumed, evenly and a little stertorously. And Lupin
+plainly heard the sound of rumpling garments. Beyond a doubt, the
+thing was there, fumbling and feeling through the clothes which
+Daubrecq had laid beside his bed.
+“Now,” thought Lupin, “we shall learn something. But how the deuce
+did the beggar get in? Has he managed to draw the bolts and open
+the door? But, if so, why did he make the mistake of shutting it
+again?”
+Not for a second--a curious anomaly in a man like Lupin, an anomaly
+to be explained only by the uncanny feeling which the whole
+adventure produced in him--not for a second did he suspect the very
+simple truth which was about to be revealed to him. Continuing his
+way down, he crouched on one of the bottom steps of the staircase,
+thus placing himself between the door of the bedroom and the
+hall-door, on the road which Daubrecq’s enemy must inevitably take
+in order to join his accomplices.
+He questioned the darkness with an unspeakable anguish. He was on
+the point of unmasking that enemy of Daubrecq’s, who was also his
+own adversary. He would thwart his plans. And the booty captured
+from Daubrecq he would capture in his turn, while Daubrecq slept
+and while the accomplices lurking behind the hall-door or outside
+the garden-gate vainly awaited their leader’s return.
+And that return took place. Lupin knew it by the renewed vibration
+of the balusters. And, once more, with every sense strained and
+every nerve on edge, he strove to discern the mysterious thing
+that was coming toward him. He suddenly realized it when only a
+few yards away. He himself, hidden in a still darker recess, could
+not be seen. And what he saw--in the very vaguest manner--was
+approaching stair by stair, with infinite precautions, holding on
+to each separate baluster.
+“Whom the devil have I to do with?” said Lupin to himself, while
+his heart thumped inside his chest.
+The catastrophe was hastened. A careless movement on Lupin’s part
+was observed by the stranger, who stopped short. Lupin was afraid
+lest the other should turn back and take to flight. He sprang at
+the adversary and was stupefied at encountering nothing but space
+and knocking against the stair-rail without seizing the form which
+he saw. But he at once rushed forward, crossed the best part of the
+hall and caught up his antagonist just as he was reaching the door
+opening on the garden.
+There was a cry of fright, answered by other cries on the further
+side of the door.
+“Oh, hang it, what’s this?” muttered Lupin, whose arms had closed,
+in the dark, round a little, tiny, trembling, whimpering thing.
+Suddenly understanding, he stood for a moment motionless and
+dismayed, at a loss what to do with his conquered prey. But the
+others were shouting and stamping outside the door. Thereupon,
+dreading lest Daubrecq should wake up, he slipped the little thing
+under his jacket, against his chest, stopped the crying with his
+handkerchief rolled into a ball and hurried up the three flights of
+stairs.
+[Illustration: “Here, I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our
+enemies. Have you a feeding bottle?”]
+“Here,” he said to Victoire, who woke with a start. “I’ve brought
+you the indomitable chief of our enemies, the Hercules of the gang.
+Have you a feeding-bottle about you?”
+He put down in the easy-chair a child of six or seven years of age,
+the tiniest little fellow in a gray jersey and a knitted woollen
+cap, whose pale and exquisitely pretty features were streaked with
+the tears that streamed from the terrified eyes.
+“Where did you pick that up?” asked Victoire, aghast.
+“At the foot of the stairs, as it was coming out of Daubrecq’s
+bedroom,” replied Lupin, feeling the jersey in the hope that the
+child had brought a booty of some kind from that room.
+Victoire was stirred to pity:
+“Poor little dear! Look, he’s trying not to cry!... Oh, saints
+above, his hands are like ice! Don’t be afraid, sonnie, we sha’n’t
+hurt you: the gentleman’s all right.”
+“Yes,” said Lupin, “the gentleman’s quite all right, but there’s
+another very wicked gentleman who’ll wake up if they go on making
+such a rumpus outside the hall-door. Do you hear them, Victoire?”
+“Who is it?”
+“The satellites of our young Hercules, the indomitable leader’s
+gang.”
+“Well...?” stammered Victoire, utterly unnerved.
+“Well, as I don’t want to be caught in the trap, I shall start by
+clearing out. Are you coming, Hercules?”
+He rolled the child in a blanket, so that only its head remained
+outside, gagged its mouth as gently as possible and made Victoire
+fasten it to his shoulders:
+“See, Hercules? We’re having a game. You never thought you’d find
+gentlemen to play pick-a-back with you at three o’clock in the
+morning! Come, whoosh, let’s fly away! You don’t get giddy, I hope?”
+He stepped across the window-ledge and set foot on one of the rungs
+of the ladder. He was in the garden in a minute.
+He had never ceased hearing and now heard more plainly still the
+blows that were being struck upon the front-door. He was astounded
+that Daubrecq was not awakened by so violent a din:
+“If I don’t put a stop to this, they’ll spoil everything,” he said
+to himself.
+He stood in an angle of the house, invisible in the darkness, and
+measured the distance between himself and the gate. The gate was
+open. To his right, he saw the steps, on the top of which the
+people were flinging themselves about; to his left, the building
+occupied by the portress.
+The woman had come out of her lodge and was standing near the
+people, entreating them:
+“Oh, do be quiet, do be quiet! He’ll come!”
+“Capital!” said Lupin. “The good woman is an accomplice of these as
+well. By Jingo, what a pluralist!”
+He rushed across to her and, taking her by the scruff of the neck,
+hissed:
+“Go and tell them I’ve got the child.... They can come and fetch it
+at my place, Rue Chateaubriand.”
+A little way off, in the avenue, stood a taxi which Lupin presumed
+to be engaged by the gang. Speaking authoritatively, as though he
+were one of the accomplices, he stepped into the cab and told the
+man to drive him home.
+“Well,” he said to the child, “that wasn’t much of a shake-up, was
+it?... What do you say to going to bye-bye on the gentleman’s bed?”
+As his servant, Achille, was asleep, Lupin made the little chap
+comfortable and stroked his hair for him. The child seemed numbed.
+His poor face was as though petrified into a stiff expression made
+up, at one and the same time, of fear and the wish not to show
+fear, of the longing to scream and a pitiful effort not to scream.
+“Cry, my pet, cry,” said Lupin. “It’ll do you good to cry.”
+The child did not cry, but the voice was so gentle and so kind that
+he relaxed his tense muscles; and, now that his eyes were calmer
+and his mouth less contorted, Lupin, who was examining him closely,
+found something that he recognized, an undoubted resemblance.
+This again confirmed certain facts which he suspected and which he
+had for some time been linking in his mind. Indeed, unless he was
+mistaken, the position was becoming very different and he would
+soon assume the direction of events. After that....
+A ring at the bell followed, at once, by two others, sharp ones.
+“Hullo!” said Lupin to the child. “Here’s mummy come to fetch you.
+Don’t move.”
+He ran and opened the door.
+A woman entered, wildly:
+“My son!” she screamed. “My son! Where is he?”
+“In my room,” said Lupin.
+Without asking more, thus proving that she knew the way, she rushed
+to the bedroom.
+“As I thought,” muttered Lupin. “The youngish woman with the gray
+hair: Daubrecq’s friend and enemy.”
+He walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Two men
+were striding up and down the opposite pavement: the Growler and
+the Masher.
+“And they’re not even hiding themselves,” he said to himself.
+“That’s a good sign. They consider that they can’t do without me
+any longer and that they’ve got to obey the governor. There remains
+the pretty lady with the gray hair. That will be more difficult.
+It’s you and I now, mummy.”
+He found the mother and the boy clasped in each other’s arms; and
+the mother, in a great state of alarm, her eyes moist with tears,
+was saying:
+“You’re not hurt? You’re sure? Oh, how frightened you must have
+been, my poor little Jacques!”
+“A fine little fellow,” said Lupin.
+She did not reply. She was feeling the child’s jersey, as Lupin had
+done, no doubt to see if he had succeeded in his nocturnal mission;
+and she questioned him in a whisper.
+“No, mummy,” said the child. “No, really.”
+She kissed him fondly and petted him, until, in a little while,
+the child, worn out with fatigue and excitement, fell asleep. She
+remained leaning over him for a long time. She herself seemed very
+much worn out and in need of rest.
+Lupin did not disturb her contemplation. He looked at her
+anxiously, with an attention which she did not perceive, and he
+noticed the wider rings round her eyes and the deeper marks of
+wrinkles. Yet he considered her handsomer than he had thought, with
+that touching beauty which habitual suffering gives to certain
+faces that are more human, more sensitive than others.
+She wore so sad an expression that, in a burst of instinctive
+sympathy, he went up to her and said: “I do not know what your
+plans are, but, whatever they may be, you stand in need of help.
+You cannot succeed alone.”
+“I am not alone.”
+“The two men outside? I know them. They’re no good. I beseech you,
+make use of me. You remember the other evening, at the theatre, in
+the private box? You were on the point of speaking. Do not hesitate
+to-day.”
+She turned her eyes on him, looked at him long and fixedly and, as
+though unable to escape that opposing will, she said:
+“What do you know exactly? What do you know about me?”
+“There are many things that I do not know. I do not know your name.
+But I know....”
+She interrupted him with a gesture; and, resolutely, in her turn,
+dominating the man who was compelling her to speak:
+“It doesn’t matter,” she exclaimed. “What you know, after all,
+is not much and is of no importance. But what are your plans?
+You offer me your help: with what view? For what work? You have
+flung yourself headlong into this business; I have been unable to
+undertake anything without meeting you on my path: you must be
+contemplating some aim.... What aim?”
+“What aim? Upon my word, it seems to me that my conduct....”
+“No, no,” she said, emphatically, “no phrases! What you and I want
+is certainties; and, to achieve them, absolute frankness. I will
+set you the example. M. Daubrecq possesses a thing of unparalleled
+value, not in itself, but for what it represents. That thing you
+know. You have twice held it in your hands. I have twice taken
+it from you. Well, I am entitled to believe that, when you tried
+to obtain possession of it, you meant to use the power which you
+attribute to it and to use it to your own advantage....”
+“What makes you say that?”
+“Yes, you meant to use it to forward your schemes, in the interest
+of your own affairs, in accordance with your habits as a....”
+“As a burglar and a swindler,” said Lupin, completing the sentence
+for her.
+She did not protest. He tried to read her secret thoughts in the
+depths of her eyes. What did she want with him? What was she afraid
+of? If she mistrusted him, had he not also reasons to mistrust
+that woman who had twice taken the crystal stopper from him to
+restore it to Daubrecq? Mortal enemy of Daubrecq’s though she were,
+up to what point did she remain subject to that man’s will? By
+surrendering himself to her, did he not risk surrendering himself
+to Daubrecq? And yet he had never looked upon graver eyes nor a
+more honest face.
+Without further hesitation, he stated:
+“My object is simple enough. It is the release of my friends
+Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
+“Is that true? Is that true?” she exclaimed, quivering all over and
+questioning him with an anxious glance.
+“If you knew me....”
+“I do know you.... I know who you are. For months, I have taken
+part in your life, without your suspecting it . . . and yet, for
+certain reasons, I still doubt....”
+He said, in a more decisive tone:
+“You do not know me. If you knew me, you would know that there can
+be no peace for me before my two companions have escaped the awful
+fate that awaits them.”
+She rushed at him, took him by the shoulders and positively
+distraught, said:
+“What? What did you say? The awful fate?... Then you believe . . .
+you believe....”
+“I really believe,” said Lupin, who felt how greatly this threat
+upset her, “I really believe that, if I am not in time, Gilbert and
+Vaucheray are done for.”
+[Illustration: “Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him
+fiercely. “You mustn’t say that.”]
+“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “Be
+quiet!... You mustn’t say that.... There is no reason.... It’s just
+you who suppose....”
+“It’s not only I, it’s Gilbert as well....”
+“What? Gilbert? How do you know?”
+“From himself?”
+“From him?”
+“Yes, from Gilbert, who has no hope left but in me; from Gilbert,
+who knows that only one man in the world can save him and who, a
+few days ago, sent me a despairing appeal from prison. Here is his
+letter.”
+She snatched the paper greedily and read in stammering accents:
+“Help, governor!... I am frightened!... I am frightened!...”
+She dropped the letter. Her hands fluttered in space. It was as
+though her staring eyes beheld the sinister vision which had
+already so often terrified Lupin. She gave a scream of horror,
+tried to rise and fainted.
+CHAPTER V.
+THE TWENTY-SEVEN
+The child was sleeping peacefully on the bed. The mother did not
+move from the sofa on which Lupin had laid her; but her easier
+breathing and the blood which was now returning to her face
+announced her impending recovery from her swoon.
+He observed that she wore a wedding-ring. Seeing a locket hanging
+from her bodice, he stooped and, turning it, found a miniature
+photograph representing a man of about forty and a lad--a stripling
+rather--in a schoolboy’s uniform. He studied the fresh, young face
+set in curly hair:
+“It’s as I thought,” he said. “Ah, poor woman!”
+The hand which he took between his grew warmer by degrees. The eyes
+opened, then closed again. She murmured:
+“Jacques....”
+“Do not distress yourself . . . it’s all right he’s asleep.”
+She recovered consciousness entirely. But, as she did not speak,
+Lupin put questions to her, to make her feel a gradual need of
+unbosoming herself. And he said, pointing to the locket:
+“The schoolboy is Gilbert, isn’t he?”
+“Yes,” she said.
+“And Gilbert is your son?”
+She gave a shiver and whispered:
+“Yes, Gilbert is my son, my eldest son.”
+So she was the mother of Gilbert, of Gilbert the prisoner at the
+Santé, relentlessly pursued by the authorities and now awaiting his
+trial for murder!
+Lupin continued:
+“And the other portrait?”
+“My husband.”
+“Your husband?”
+“Yes, he died three years ago.”
+She was now sitting up. Life quivered in her veins once more,
+together with the horror of living and the horror of all the
+ghastly things that threatened her. Lupin went on to ask:
+“What was your husband’s name?”
+She hesitated a moment and answered:
+“Mergy.”
+He exclaimed:
+“Victorien Mergy the deputy?”
+“Yes.”
+There was a long pause. Lupin remembered the incident and the stir
+which it had caused. Three years ago, Mergy the deputy had blown
+out his brains in the lobby of the Chamber, without leaving a word
+of explanation behind him; and no one had ever discovered the
+slightest reason for that suicide.
+“Do you know the reason?” asked Lupin, completing his thought aloud.
+“Yes, I know it.”
+“Gilbert, perhaps?”
+“No, Gilbert had disappeared for some years, turned out of doors
+and cursed by my husband. It was a very great sorrow, but there was
+another motive.”
+“What was that?” asked Lupin.
+But it was not necessary for Lupin to put further questions. Madame
+Mergy could keep silent no longer and, slowly at first, with all
+the anguish of that past which had to be called up, she told her
+story:
+“Twenty-five years ago, when my name was Clarisse Darcel and my
+parents living, I knew three young men at Nice. Their names will
+at once give you an insight into the present tragedy: they were
+Alexis Daubrecq, Victorien Mergy and Louis Prasville. The three
+were old acquaintances, had gone to college in the same year and
+served in the same regiment. Prasville, at that time, was in love
+with a singer at the opera-house at Nice. The two others, Mergy and
+Daubrecq, were in love with me. I shall be brief as regards all
+this and, for the rest, as regards the whole story, for the facts
+tell their own tale. I fell in love with Victorien Mergy from the
+first. Perhaps I was wrong not to declare myself at once. But true
+love is always timid, hesitating and shy; and I did not announce my
+choice until I felt quite certain and quite free. Unfortunately,
+that period of waiting, so delightful for those who cherish a
+secret passion, had permitted Daubrecq to hope. His anger was
+something horrible.”
+Clarisse Mergy stopped for a few seconds and resumed, in a stifled
+voice:
+“I shall never forget it.... The three of us were in the
+drawing-room. Oh, I can hear even now the terrible words of threat
+and hatred which he uttered! Victorien was absolutely astounded.
+He had never seen his friend like this, with that repugnant face,
+that bestial expression: yes, the expression of a wild beast....
+Daubrecq ground his teeth. He stamped his feet. His bloodshot
+eyes--he did not wear spectacles in those days--rolled in their
+sockets; and he kept on saying, ‘I shall be revenged.... I shall be
+revenged.... Oh, you don’t know what I am capable of!... I shall
+wait ten years, twenty years, if necessary.... But it will come
+like a thunderbolt.... Ah, you don’t know!... To be revenged....
+To do harm . . . for harm’s sake... what joy! I was born to do
+harm.... And you will both beseech my mercy on your knees, on your
+knees, yes, on your knees....’ At that moment, my father entered
+the room; and, with his assistance and the footman’s, Victorien
+Mergy flung the loathsome creature out of doors. Six weeks later, I
+married Victorien.”
+“And Daubrecq?” asked Lupin, interrupting her. “Did he not try....”
+“No, but on our wedding-day, Louis Prasville, who acted as my
+husband’s best man in defiance of Daubrecq’s opposition, went home
+to find the girl he loved, the opera-singer, dead, strangled....”
+“What!” said Lupin, with a start. “Had Daubrecq....”
+“It was known that Daubrecq had been persecuting her with his
+attentions for some days; but nothing more was known. It was
+impossible to discover who had gone in or out during Prasville’s
+absence. There was not a trace found of any kind: nothing,
+absolutely nothing.”
+“But Prasville....”
+“There was no doubt of the truth in Prasville’s mind or ours.
+Daubrecq had tried to run away with the girl, perhaps tried to
+force her, to hustle her and, in the course of the struggle,
+maddened, losing his head, caught her by the throat and killed
+her, perhaps without knowing what he was doing. But there was no
+evidence of all this; and Daubrecq was not even molested.”
+“And what became of him next?”
+“For some years we heard nothing of him. We knew only that he had
+lost all his money gambling and that he was travelling in America.
+And, in spite of myself, I forgot his anger and his threats and
+was only too ready to believe that he had ceased to love me and no
+longer harboured his schemes of revenge. Besides, I was so happy
+that I did not care to think of anything but my happiness, my love,
+my husband’s political career, the health of my son Antoine.”
+“Antoine?”
+“Yes, Antoine is Gilbert’s real name. The unhappy boy has at least
+succeeded in concealing his identity.”
+Lupin asked, with some hesitation:
+“At what period did . . . Gilbert . . . begin?”
+“I cannot tell you exactly. Gilbert--I prefer to call him that and
+not to pronounce his real name--Gilbert, as a child, was what he is
+to-day: lovable, liked by everybody, charming, but lazy and unruly.
+When he was fifteen, we put him to a boarding-school in one of the
+suburbs, with the deliberate object of not having him too much at
+home. After two years’ time he was expelled from school and sent
+back to us.”
+“Why?”
+“Because of his conduct. The masters had discovered that he used to
+slip out at night and also that he would disappear for weeks at a
+time, while pretending to be at home with us.”
+“What used he to do?”
+“Amuse himself backing horses, spending his time in cafés and
+public dancing-rooms.”
+“Then he had money?”
+“Yes.”
+“Who gave it him?”
+“His evil genius, the man who, secretly, unknown to his parents,
+enticed him away from school, the man who led him astray, who
+corrupted him, who took him from us, who taught him to lie, to
+waste his substance and to steal.”
+“Daubrecq?”
+“Daubrecq.”
+Clarisse Mergy put her hands together to hide the blushes on her
+forehead. She continued, in her tired voice:
+“Daubrecq had taken his revenge. On the day after my husband turned
+our unhappy child out of the house, Daubrecq sent us a most cynical
+letter in which he revealed the odious part which he had played
+and the machinations by which he had succeeded in depraving our
+son. And he went on to say, ‘The reformatory, one of these days....
+Later on, the assize-court.... And then, let us hope and trust, the
+scaffold!’”
+Lupin exclaimed:
+“What! Did Daubrecq plot the present business?”
+“No, no, that is only an accident. The hateful prophecy was
+just a wish which he expressed. But oh, how it terrified me! I
+was ailing at the time; my other son, my little Jacques, had
+just been born. And every day we heard of some fresh misdeed of
+Gilbert’s--forgeries, swindles--so much so that we spread the
+news, in our immediate surroundings, of his departure for abroad,
+followed by his death. Life was a misery; and it became still more
+so when the political storm burst in which my husband was to meet
+his death.”
+“What do you mean?”
+“A word will be enough: my husband’s name was on the list of the
+Twenty-seven.”
+“Ah!”
+The veil was suddenly lifted from Lupin’s eyes and he saw, as in a
+flash of lightning, a whole legion of things which, until then, had
+been hidden in the darkness.
+Clarisse Mergy continued, in a firmer voice:
+“Yes, his name was on it, but by mistake, by a piece of incredible
+ill-luck of which he was the victim. It is true that Victorien
+Mergy was a member of the committee appointed to consider the
+question of the Two-Seas Canal. It is true that he voted with the
+members who were in favour of the company’s scheme. He was even
+paid--yes, I tell you so plainly and I will mention the sum--he
+was paid fifteen thousand francs. But he was paid on behalf of
+another, of one of his political friends, a man in whom he had
+absolute confidence and of whom he was the blind, unconscious tool.
+He thought he was showing his friend a kindness; and it proved his
+own undoing. It was not until the day after the suicide of the
+chairman of the company and the disappearance of the secretary,
+the day on which the affair of the canal was published in the
+papers, with its whole series of swindles and abominations, that my
+husband knew that a number of his fellow-members had been bribed
+and learnt that the mysterious list, of which people suddenly began
+to speak, mentioned his name with theirs and with the names of
+other deputies, leaders of parties and influential politicians. Oh,
+what awful days those were! Would the list be published? Would his
+name come out? The torture of it! You remember the mad excitement
+in the Chamber, the atmosphere of terror and denunciation that
+prevailed. Who owned the list? Nobody could say. It was known to
+be in existence and that was all. Two names were sacrificed to
+public odium. Two men were swept away by the storm. And it remained
+unknown where the denunciation came from and in whose hands the
+incriminating documents were.”
+“Daubrecq,” suggested Lupin.
+“No, no!” cried Madame Mergy. “Daubrecq was nothing at that time:
+he had not yet appeared upon the scene. No, don’t you remember,
+the truth came out suddenly through the very man who was keeping
+it back: Germineaux, the ex-minister of justice, a cousin of the
+chairman of the Canal Company. As he lay dying of consumption,
+he wrote from his sick-bed to the prefect of police, bequeathing
+him that list of names, which, he said, would be found, after his
+death, in an iron chest in the corner of his room. The house was
+surrounded by police and the prefect took up his quarters by the
+sick man’s bedside. Germineaux died. The chest was opened and found
+to be empty.”
+“Daubrecq, this time,” Lupin declared.
+“Yes, Daubrecq,” said Madame Mergy, whose excitement was
+momentarily increasing. “Alexis Daubrecq, who, for six months,
+disguised beyond recognition, had acted as Germineaux’s secretary.
+It does not matter how he discovered that Germineaux was the
+possessor of the paper in question. The fact remains that he broke
+open the chest on the night before the death. So much was proved at
+the inquiry; and Daubrecq’s identity was established.”
+“But he was not arrested?”
+“What would have been the use? They knew well enough that he must
+have deposited the list in a place of safety. His arrest would have
+involved a scandal, the reopening of the whole case....”
+“So....”
+“So they made terms.”
+Lupin laughed:
+“That’s funny, making terms with Daubrecq!”
+“Yes, very funny,” said Madame Mergy, bitterly. “During this time
+he acted and without delay, shamelessly, making straight for the
+goal. A week after the theft, he went to the Chamber of Deputies,
+asked for my husband and bluntly demanded thirty thousand francs of
+him, to be paid within twenty-four hours. If not, he threatened him
+with exposure and disgrace. My husband knew the man he was dealing
+with, knew him to be implacable and filled with relentless hatred.
+He lost his head and shot himself.”
+“How absurd!” Lupin could not help saying. “How absurd! Daubrecq
+possesses a list of twenty-seven names. To give up any one of those
+names he is obliged, if he would have his accusation believed, to
+publish the list itself--that is to say, to part with the document,
+or at least a photograph of it. Well, in so doing, he creates a
+scandal, it is true, but he deprives himself, at the same time, of
+all further means of levying blackmail.”
+“Yes and no,” she said.
+“How do you know?”
+“Through Daubrecq himself. The villain came to see me and cynically
+told me of his interview with my husband and the words that had
+passed between them. Well, there is more than that list, more
+than that famous bit of paper on which the secretary put down the
+names and the amounts paid and to which, you will remember, the
+chairman of the company, before dying, affixed his signature in
+letters of blood. There is more than that. There are certain less
+positive proofs, which the people interested do not know of: the
+correspondence between the chairman and the secretary, between the
+chairman and his counsel, and so on. Of course, the list scribbled
+on the bit of paper is the only evidence that counts; it is the
+one incontestable proof which it would be no good copying or even
+photographing, for its genuineness can be tested most absolutely.
+But, all the same, the other proofs are dangerous. They have
+already been enough to do away with two deputies. And Daubrecq is
+marvelously clever at turning this fact to account. He selects his
+victim, frightens him out of his senses, points out to him the
+inevitable scandal; and the victim pays the required sum. Or else
+he kills himself, as my husband did. Do you understand now?”
+“Yes,” said Lupin.
+And, in the silence that followed, he drew a mental picture of
+Daubrecq’s life. He saw him the owner of that list, using his
+power, gradually emerging from the shadow, lavishly squandering the
+money which he extorted from his victims, securing his election as
+a district-councillor and deputy, holding sway by dint of threats
+and terror, unpunished, invulnerable, unattackable, feared by the
+government, which would rather submit to his orders than declare
+war upon him, respected by the judicial authorities: so powerful,
+in a word, that Prasville had been appointed secretary-general of
+police, over the heads of all who had prior claims, for the sole
+reason that he hated Daubrecq with a personal hatred.
+“And you saw him again?” he asked.
+“I saw him again. I had to. My husband was dead, but his honour
+remained untouched. Nobody suspected the truth. In order at least
+to defend the name which he left me, I accepted my first interview
+with Daubrecq.”
+“Your first, yes, for there have been others.”
+“Many others,” she said, in a strained voice, “yes, many
+others . . . at the theatre . . . or in the evening, at
+Enghien . . . or else in Paris, at night . . . for I was ashamed to
+meet that man and I did not want people to know it.... But it was
+necessary.... A duty more imperative than any other commanded it:
+the duty of avenging my husband....”
+She bent over Lupin and, eagerly:
+“Yes, revenge has been the motive of my conduct and the sole
+preoccupation of my life. To avenge my husband, to avenge my ruined
+son, to avenge myself for all the harm that he has done me: I had
+no other dream, no other object in life. That is what I wanted: to
+see that man crushed, reduced to poverty, to tears--as though he
+still knew how to cry!--sobbing in the throes of despair....”
+“You wanted his death,” said Lupin, remembering the scene between
+them in Daubrecq’s study.
+“No, not his death. I have often thought of it, I have even raised
+my arm to strike him, but what would have been the good? He must
+have taken his precautions. The paper would remain. And then there
+is no revenge in killing a man.... My hatred went further than
+that.... It demanded his ruin, his downfall; and, to achieve that,
+there was but one way: to cut his claws. Daubrecq, deprived of
+the document that gives him his immense power, ceases to exist.
+It means immediate bankruptcy and disaster . . . under the most
+wretched conditions. That is what I have sought.”
+“But Daubrecq must have been aware of your intentions?”
+“Certainly. And, I assure you, those were strange meetings of ours:
+I watching him closely, trying to guess his secret behind his
+actions and his words, and he . . . he....”
+“And he,” said Lupin, finishing Clarisse’s thought, “lying in wait
+for the prey which he desires . . . for the woman whom he has never
+ceased to love . . . whom he loves . . . and whom he covets with
+all his might and with all his furious passion....”
+She lowered her head and said, simply:
+“Yes.”
+A strange duel indeed was that which brought face to face those
+two beings separated by so many implacable things! How unbridled
+must Daubrecq’s passion be for him to risk that perpetual threat of
+death and to introduce to the privacy of his house this woman whose
+life he had shattered! But also how absolutely safe he must feel
+himself!
+“And your search ended . . . how?” asked Lupin.
+“My search,” she replied, “long remained without fruit. You know
+the methods of investigation which you have followed and which the
+police have followed on their side. Well, I myself employed them,
+years before either of you did, and in vain. I was beginning to
+despair. Then, one day, when I had gone to see Daubrecq in his
+villa at Enghien, I picked up under his writing-table a letter
+which he had begun to write, crumpled up and thrown into the
+waste-paper-basket. It consisted of a few lines in bad English;
+and I was able to read this: ‘Empty the crystal within, so as to
+leave a void which it is impossible to suspect.’ Perhaps I should
+not have attached to this sentence all the importance which it
+deserved, if Daubrecq, who was out in the garden, had not come
+running in and begun to turn out the waste-paper-basket, with an
+eagerness which was very significant. He gave me a suspicious look:
+‘There was a letter there,’ he said. I pretended not to understand.
+He did not insist, but his agitation did not escape me; and I
+continued my quest in this direction. A month later, I discovered,
+among the ashes in the drawing-room fireplace, the torn half of an
+English invoice. I gathered that a Stourbridge glass-blower, of the
+name of John Howard, had supplied Daubrecq with a crystal bottle
+made after a model. The word ‘crystal’ struck me at once. I went to
+Stourbridge, got round the foreman of the glass-works and learnt
+that the stopper of this bottle had been hollowed out inside, in
+accordance with the instruction in the order, so as to leave a
+cavity, the existence of which would escape observation.”
+Lupin nodded his head:
+“The thing tallies beyond a doubt. Nevertheless, it did not seem to
+me, that, even under the gilt layer.... And then the hiding-place
+would be very tiny!”
+“Tiny, but large enough,” she said. “On my return from England,
+I went to the police-office to see Prasville, whose friendship
+for me had remained unchanged. I did not hesitate to tell him,
+first, the reasons which had driven my husband to suicide and,
+secondly, the object of revenge which I was pursuing. When I
+informed him of my discoveries, he jumped for joy; and I felt
+that his hatred for Daubrecq was as strong as ever. I learnt
+from him that the list was written on a slip of exceedingly thin
+foreign-post-paper, which, when rolled up into a sort of pellet,
+would easily fit into an exceedingly limited space. Neither he nor
+I had the least hesitation. We knew the hiding-place. We agreed to
+act independently of each other, while continuing to correspond
+in secret. I put him in touch with Clémence, the portress in the
+Square Lamartine, who was entirely devoted to me....”
+“But less so to Prasville,” said Lupin, “for I can prove that she
+betrays him.”
+“Now perhaps, but not at the start; and the police searches were
+numerous. It was at that time, ten months ago, that Gilbert came
+into my life again. A mother never loses her love for her son,
+whatever he may do, whatever he may have done. And then Gilbert has
+such a way with him . . . well, you know him. He cried, kissed my
+little Jacques, his brother and I forgave him.”
+She stopped and, weary-voiced, with her eyes fixed on the floor,
+continued:
+“Would to Heaven that I had not forgiven him! Ah, if that hour
+could but return, how readily I should find the horrible courage
+to turn him away! My poor child . . . it was I who ruined him!...”
+And, pensively, “I should have had that or any sort of courage, if
+he had been as I pictured him to myself and as he himself told me
+that he had long been: bearing the marks of vice and dissipation,
+coarse, deteriorated.... But, though he was utterly changed in
+appearance, so much so that I could hardly recognize him, there
+was, from the point of view of--how shall I put it?--from the moral
+point of view, an undoubted improvement. You had helped him, lifted
+him; and, though his mode of life was hateful to me, nevertheless
+he retained a certain self-respect . . . a sort of underlying
+decency that showed itself on the surface once more.... He was gay,
+careless, happy.... And he used to talk of you with such affection!”
+She picked her words, betraying her embarrassment, not daring, in
+Lupin’s presence, to condemn the line of life which Gilbert had
+selected and yet unable to speak in favour of it.
+“What happened next?” asked Lupin.
+“I saw him very often. He would come to me by stealth, or else I
+went to him and we would go for walks in the country. In this way,
+I was gradually induced to tell him our story, of his father’s
+suicide and the object which I was pursuing. He at once took fire.
+He too wanted to avenge his father and, by stealing the crystal
+stopper, to avenge himself on Daubrecq for the harm which he had
+done him. His first idea--from which, I am bound to tell you, he
+never swerved--was to arrange with you.”
+“Well, then,” cried Lupin, “he ought to have....!”
+“Yes, I know . . . and I was of the same opinion. Unfortunately, my
+poor Gilbert--you know how weak he is!--was under the influence of
+one of his comrades.”
+“Vaucheray?”
+“Yes, Vaucheray, a saturnine spirit, full of bitterness and envy,
+an ambitious, unscrupulous, gloomy, crafty man, who had acquired a
+great empire over my son. Gilbert made the mistake of confiding in
+him and asking his advice. That was the origin of all the mischief.
+Vaucheray convinced him and convinced me as well that it would be
+better if we acted by ourselves. He studied the business, took
+the lead and finally organized the Enghien expedition and, under
+your direction, the burglary at the Villa Marie-Thérèse, which
+Prasville and his detectives had been unable to search thoroughly,
+because of the active watch maintained by Léonard the valet. It was
+a mad scheme. We ought either to have trusted in your experience
+entirely, or else to have left you out altogether, taking the risk
+of fatal mistakes and dangerous hesitations. But we could not help
+ourselves. Vaucheray ruled us. I agreed to meet Daubrecq at the
+theatre. During this time the thing took place. When I came home,
+at twelve o’clock at night, I heard the terrible result: Léonard
+murdered, my son arrested. I at once received an intuition of the
+future. Daubrecq’s appalling prophecy was being realized: it meant
+trial and sentence. And this through my fault, through the fault of
+me, the mother, who had driven my son toward the abyss from which
+nothing could extricate him now.”
+Clarisse wrung her hands and shivered from head to foot. What
+suffering can compare with that of a mother trembling for the head
+of her son? Stirred with pity, Lupin said:
+“We shall save him. Of that there is not the shadow of a doubt.
+But, it is necessary that I should know all the details. Finish
+your story, please. How did you know, on the same night, what had
+happened at Enghien?”
+She mastered herself and, with a face wrung with fevered anguish,
+replied:
+“Through two of your accomplices, or rather two accomplices of
+Vaucheray, to whom they were wholly devoted and who had chosen them
+to row the boats.”
+“The two men outside: the Growler and the Masher?”
+“Yes. On your return from the villa, when you landed after being
+pursued on the lake by the commissary of police, you said a few
+words to them, by way of explanation, as you went to your car. Mad
+with fright, they rushed to my place, where they had been before,
+and told me the hideous news. Gilbert was in prison! Oh, what
+an awful night! What was I to do? Look for you? Certainly; and
+implore your assistance. But where was I to find you?... It was
+then that the two whom you call the Growler and the Masher, driven
+into a corner by circumstances, decided to tell me of the part
+played by Vaucheray, his ambitions, his plan, which had long been
+ripening....”
+“To get rid of me, I suppose?” said Lupin, with a grin.
+“Yes. As Gilbert possessed your complete confidence, Vaucheray
+watched him and, in this way, got to know all the places which you
+live at. A few days more and, owning the crystal stopper, holding
+the list of the Twenty-seven, inheriting all Daubrecq’s power, he
+would have delivered you to the police, without compromising a
+single member of your gang, which he looked upon as thenceforth his.”
+“The ass!” muttered Lupin. “A muddler like that!” And he added, “So
+the panels of the doors....”
+“Were cut out by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest
+on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at
+whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a
+sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to
+wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your
+correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends
+revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son
+by making use of his brother, my little Jacques, who is himself
+so slight and so intelligent, so plucky, as you have seen. We set
+out that night. Acting on the information of my companions, I went
+to Gilbert’s rooms and found the keys of your flat in the Rue
+Matignon, where it appeared that you were to sleep. Unfortunately,
+I changed my mind on the way and thought much less of asking for
+your help than of recovering the crystal stopper, which, if it had
+been discovered at Enghien, must obviously be at your flat. I was
+right in my calculations. In a few minutes, my little Jacques,
+who had slipped into your bedroom, brought it to me. I went away
+quivering with hope. Mistress in my turn of the talisman, keeping
+it to myself, without telling Prasville, I had absolute power over
+Daubrecq. I could make him do all that I wanted; he would become
+the slave of my will and, instructed by me, would take every step
+in Gilbert’s favour and obtain that he should be given the means of
+escape or else that he should not be sentenced. It meant my boy’s
+safety.”
+“Well?”
+Clarisse rose from her seat, with a passionate movement of her
+whole being, leant over Lupin and said, in a hollow voice:
+“There was nothing in that piece of crystal, nothing, do you
+understand? No paper, no hiding-place! The whole expedition to
+Enghien was futile! The murder of Léonard was useless! The arrest
+of my son was useless! All my efforts were useless!”
+“But why? Why?”
+“Why? Because what you stole from Daubrecq was not the stopper made
+by his instructions, but the stopper which was sent to John Howard,
+the Stourbridge glassworker, to serve as a model.”
+If Lupin had not been in the presence of so deep a grief, he could
+not have refrained from one of those satirical outbursts with which
+the mischievous tricks of fate are wont to inspire him. As it was,
+he muttered between his teeth:
+“How stupid! And still more stupid as Daubrecq had been given the
+warning.”
+“No,” she said. “I went to Enghien on the same day. In all that
+business Daubrecq saw and sees nothing but an ordinary burglary, an
+annexation of his treasures. The fact that you took part in it put
+him off the scent.”
+“Still, the disappearance of the stopper....”
+“To begin with, the thing can have had but a secondary importance
+for him, as it is only the model.”
+“How do you know?”
+“There is a scratch at the bottom of the stem; and I have made
+inquiries in England since.”
+“Very well; but why did the key of the cupboard from which it was
+stolen never leave the man-servant’s possession? And why, in the
+second place, was it found afterward in the drawer of a table in
+Daubrecq’s house in Paris?”
+“Of course, Daubrecq takes care of it and clings to it in the way
+in which one clings to the model of any valuable thing. And that is
+why I replaced the stopper in the cupboard before its absence was
+noticed. And that also is why, on the second occasion, I made my
+little Jacques take the stopper from your overcoat-pocket and told
+the portress to put it back in the drawer.”
+“Then he suspects nothing?”
+“Nothing. He knows that the list is being looked for, but he does
+not know that Prasville and I are aware of the thing in which he
+hides it.”
+Lupin had risen from his seat and was walking up and down the room,
+thinking. Then he stood still beside Clarisse and asked:
+“When all is said, since the Enghien incident, you have not
+advanced a single step?”
+“Not one. I have acted from day to day, led by those two men or
+leading them, without any definite plan.”
+“Or, at least,” he said, “without any other plan than that of
+getting the list of the Twenty-seven from Daubrecq.”
+“Yes, but how? Besides, your tactics made things more difficult for
+me. It did not take us long to recognize your old servant Victoire
+in Daubrecq’s new cook and to discover, from what the portress told
+us, that Victoire was putting you up in her room; and I was afraid
+of your schemes.”
+“It was you, was it not, who wrote to me to retire from the
+contest?”
+“Yes.”
+“You also asked me not to go to the theatre on the Vaudeville
+night?”
+“Yes, the portress caught Victoire listening to Daubrecq’s
+conversation with me on the telephone; and the Masher, who was
+watching the house, saw you go out. I suspected, therefore, that
+you would follow Daubrecq that evening.”
+“And the woman who came here, late one afternoon....”
+“Was myself. I felt disheartened and wanted to see you.”
+“And you intercepted Gilbert’s letter?”
+“Yes, I recognized his writing on the envelope.”
+“But your little Jacques was not with you?”
+“No, he was outside, in a motor-car, with the Masher, who lifted
+him up to me through the drawing-room window; and he slipped into
+your bedroom through the opening in the panel.”
+“What was in the letter?”
+“As ill-luck would have it, reproaches. Gilbert accused you of
+forsaking him, of taking over the business on your own account. In
+short, it confirmed me in my distrust; and I ran away.”
+Lupin shrugged his shoulders with irritation:
+“What a shocking waste of time! And what a fatality that we were
+not able to come to an understanding earlier! You and I have been
+playing at hide-and-seek, laying absurd traps for each other, while
+the days were passing, precious days beyond repair.”
+“You see, you see,” she said, shivering, “you too are afraid of the
+future!”
+“No, I am not afraid,” cried Lupin. “But I am thinking of all the
+useful work that we could have done by this time, if we had united
+our efforts. I am thinking of all the mistakes and all the acts of
+imprudence which we should have been saved, if we had been working
+together. I am thinking that your attempt to-night to search the
+clothes which Daubrecq was wearing was as vain as the others and
+that, at this moment, thanks to our foolish duel, thanks to the din
+which we raised in his house, Daubrecq is warned and will be more
+on his guard than ever.”
+Clarisse Mergy shook her head:
+“No, no, I don’t think that; the noise will not have roused him,
+for we postponed the attempt for twenty-four hours so that the
+portress might put a narcotic in his wine.” And she added, slowly,
+“And then, you see, nothing can make Daubrecq be more on his guard
+than he is already. His life is nothing but one mass of precautions
+against danger. He leaves nothing to chance.... Besides, has he not
+all the trumps in his hand?”
+Lupin went up to her and asked:
+“What do you mean to convey? According to you, is there nothing to
+hope for on that side? Is there not a single means of attaining our
+end?”
+“Yes,” she murmured, “there is one, one only....”
+He noticed her pallor before she had time to hide her face between
+her hands again. And again a feverish shiver shook her frame.
+He seemed to understand the reason of her dismay; and, bending
+toward her, touched by her grief:
+“Please,” he said, “please answer me openly and frankly. It’s for
+Gilbert’s sake, is it not? Though the police, fortunately, have not
+been able to solve the riddle of his past, though the real name of
+Vaucheray’s accomplice has not leaked out, there is one man, at
+least, who knows it: isn’t that so? Daubrecq has recognized your
+son Antoine, through the alias of Gilbert, has he not?”
+“Yes, yes....”
+“And he promises to save him, doesn’t he? He offers you his
+freedom, his release, his escape, his life: that was what he
+offered you, was it not, on the night in his study, when you tried
+to stab him?”
+“Yes . . . yes . . . that was it....”
+“And he makes one condition, does he not? An abominable condition,
+such as would suggest itself to a wretch like that? I am right, am
+I not?”
+Clarisse did not reply. She seemed exhausted by her protracted
+struggle with a man who was gaining ground daily and against whom
+it was impossible for her to fight. Lupin saw in her the prey
+conquered in advance, delivered to the victor’s whim. Clarisse
+Mergy, the loving wife of that Mergy whom Daubrecq had really
+murdered, the terrified mother of that Gilbert whom Daubrecq had
+led astray, Clarisse Mergy, to save her son from the scaffold,
+must, come what may and however ignominious the position, yield
+to Daubrecq’s wishes. She would be the mistress, the wife, the
+obedient slave of Daubrecq, of that monster with the appearance and
+the ways of a wild beast, that unspeakable person of whom Lupin
+could not think without revulsion and disgust.
+Sitting down beside her, gently, with gestures of pity, he made her
+lift her head and, with his eyes on hers, said:
+“Listen to me. I swear that I will save your son: I swear it....
+Your son shall not die, do you understand?... There is not a power
+on earth that can allow your son’s head to be touched as long as I
+am alive.”
+“I believe you.... I trust your word.”
+“Do. It is the word of a man who does not know defeat. I shall
+succeed. Only, I entreat you to make me an irrevocable promise.”
+“What is that?”
+“You must not see Daubrecq again.”
+“I swear it.”
+“You must put from your mind any idea, any fear, however obscure,
+of an understanding between yourself and him . . . of any sort of
+bargain....”
+“I swear it.”
+She looked at him with an expression of absolute security and
+reliance; and he, under her gaze, felt the joy of devotion and an
+ardent longing to restore that woman’s happiness, or, at least, to
+give her the peace and oblivion that heal the worst wounds:
+“Come,” he said, in a cheerful tone, rising from his chair, “all
+will yet be well. We have two months, three months before us.
+It is more than I need . . . on condition, of course, that I
+am unhampered in my movements. And, for that, you will have to
+withdraw from the contest, you know.”
+“How do you mean?”
+“Yes, you must disappear for a time; go and live in the country.
+Have you no pity for your little Jacques? This sort of thing would
+end by shattering the poor little man’s nerves.... And he has
+certainly earned his rest, haven’t you, Hercules?”
+*       *       *       *       *
+The next day Clarisse Mergy, who was nearly breaking down under the
+strain of events and who herself needed repose, lest she should
+fall seriously ill, went, with her son, to board with a friend who
+had a house on the skirt of the Forest of Saint-Germain. She felt
+very weak, her brain was haunted by visions and her nerves were
+upset by troubles which the least excitement aggravated. She lived
+there for some days in a state of physical and mental inertia,
+thinking of nothing and forbidden to see the papers.
+One afternoon, while Lupin, changing his tactics, was working out
+a scheme for kidnapping and confining Daubrecq; while the Growler
+and the Masher, whom he had promised to forgive if he succeeded,
+were watching the enemy’s movements; while the newspapers were
+announcing the forthcoming trial for murder of Arsène Lupin’s two
+accomplices, one afternoon, at four o’clock, the telephone-bell
+rang suddenly in the flat in the Rue Chateaubriand.
+Lupin took down the receiver:
+“Hullo!”
+A woman’s voice, a breathless voice, said:
+“M. Michel Beaumont?”
+“You are speaking to him, madame. To whom have I the honour....”
+“Quick, monsieur, come at once; Madame Mergy has taken poison.”
+Lupin did not wait to hear details. He rushed out, sprang into his
+motor-car and drove to Saint-Germain.
+Clarisse’s friend was waiting for him at the door of the bedroom.
+“Dead?” he asked.
+“No,” she replied, “she did not take sufficient. The doctor has
+just gone. He says she will get over it.”
+“And why did she make the attempt?”
+“Her son Jacques has disappeared.”
+“Carried off?”
+“Yes, he was playing just inside the forest. A motor-car was seen
+pulling up. Then there were screams. Clarisse tried to run, but her
+strength failed and she fell to the ground, moaning, ‘It’s he . . .
+it’s that man . . . all is lost!’ She looked like a madwoman.”
+“Suddenly, she put a little bottle to her lips and swallowed the
+contents.”
+“What happened next?”
+“My husband and I carried her to her room. She was in great pain.”
+“How did you know my address, my name?”
+“From herself, while the doctor was attending to her. Then I
+telephoned to you.”
+“Has any one else been told?”
+“No, nobody. I know that Clarisse has had terrible things to
+bear . . . and that she prefers not to be talked about.”
+“Can I see her?”
+“She is asleep just now. And the doctor has forbidden all
+excitement.”
+“Is the doctor anxious about her?”
+“He is afraid of a fit of fever, any nervous strain, an attack of
+some kind which might cause her to make a fresh attempt on her
+life. And that would be....”
+“What is needed to avoid it?”
+“A week or a fortnight of absolute quiet, which is impossible as
+long as her little Jacques....”
+Lupin interrupted her:
+“You think that, if she got her son back....”
+“Oh, certainly, there would be nothing more to fear!”
+“You’re sure? You’re sure?... Yes, of course you are!... Well, when
+Madame Mergy wakes, tell her from me that I will bring her back her
+son this evening, before midnight. This evening, before midnight:
+it’s a solemn promise.”
+With these words, Lupin hurried out of the house and, stepping into
+his car, shouted to the driver:
+“Go to Paris, Square Lamartine, Daubrecq the deputy’s!”
+CHAPTER VI.
+THE DEATH-SENTENCE
+Lupin’s motor-car was not only an office, a writing-room furnished
+with books, stationery, pens and ink, but also a regular actor’s
+dressing-room, containing a complete make-up box, a trunk filled
+with every variety of wearing-apparel, another crammed with
+“properties”--umbrellas, walking-sticks, scarves, eye-glasses and
+so on--in short, a complete set of paraphernalia which enabled him
+to alter his appearance from top to toe in the course of a drive.
+The man who rang at Daubrecq the deputy’s gate, at six o-clock that
+evening, was a stout, elderly gentleman, in a black frock-coat, a
+bowler hat, spectacles and whiskers.
+The portress took him to the front-door of the house and rang the
+bell. Victoire appeared.
+Lupin asked:
+“Can M. Daubrecq see Dr. Vernes?”
+“M. Daubrecq is in his bedroom; and it is rather late....”
+“Give him my card, please.”
+He wrote the words, “From Mme. Mergy,” in the margin and added:
+“There, he is sure to see me.”
+“But . . .” Victoire began.
+“Oh, drop your buts, old dear, do as I say, and don’t make such a
+fuss about it!”
+She was utterly taken aback and stammered:
+“You! . . . is it you?”
+“No, it’s Louis XIV.!” And, pushing her into a corner of the hall,
+“Listen.... The moment I’m done with him, go up to your room, put
+your things together anyhow and clear out.”
+“What!”
+“Do as I tell you. You’ll find my car waiting down the avenue.
+Come, stir your stumps! Announce me. I’ll wait in the study.”
+“But it’s dark in there.”
+“Turn on the light.”
+She switched on the electric light and left Lupin alone.
+“It’s here,” he reflected, as he took a seat, “it’s here that
+the crystal stopper lives.... Unless Daubrecq always keeps it by
+him.... But no, when people have a good hiding-place, they make use
+of it. And this is a capital one; for none of us . . . so far....”
+Concentrating all his attention, he examined the objects in the
+room; and he remembered the note which Daubrecq wrote to Prasville:
+“Within reach of your hand, my dear Prasville!... You touched
+it! A little more and the trick was done....”
+Nothing seemed to have moved since that day. The same things were
+lying about on the desk: books, account-books, a bottle of ink, a
+stamp-box, pipes, tobacco, things that had been searched and probed
+over and over again.
+“The bounder!” thought Lupin. “He’s organized his business jolly
+cleverly. It’s all dove-tailed like a well-made play.”
+In his heart of hearts, though he knew exactly what he had come
+to do and how he meant to act, Lupin was thoroughly aware of the
+danger and uncertainty attending his visit to so powerful an
+adversary. It was quite within the bounds of possibility that
+Daubrecq, armed as he was, would remain master of the field and
+that the conversation would take an absolutely different turn from
+that which Lupin anticipated.
+And this prospect angered him somewhat.
+He drew himself up, as he heard a sound of footsteps approaching.
+Daubrecq entered.
+He entered without a word, made a sign to Lupin, who had risen
+from his chair, to resume his seat and himself sat down at the
+writing-desk. Glancing at the card which he held in his hand:
+“Dr. Vernes?”
+“Yes, monsieur le député, Dr. Vernes, of Saint-Germain.”
+“And I see that you come from Mme. Mergy. A patient of yours?”
+“A recent patient. I did not know her until I was called in to see
+her, the other day, in particularly tragic circumstances.”
+“Is she ill?”
+“Mme. Mergy has taken poison.”
+“What!”
+Daubrecq gave a start and he continued, without concealing his
+distress:
+“What’s that you say? Poison! Is she dead?”
+“No, the dose was not large enough. If no complications ensue, I
+consider that Mme. Mergy’s life is saved.”
+Daubrecq said nothing and sat silent, with his head turned to Lupin.
+“Is he looking at me? Are his eyes open or shut?” Lupin asked
+himself.
+It worried Lupin terribly not to see his adversary’s eyes, those
+eyes hidden by the double obstacle of spectacles and black glasses:
+weak, bloodshot eyes, Mme. Mergy had told him. How could he follow
+the secret train of the man’s thought without seeing the expression
+of his face? It was almost like fighting an enemy who wielded an
+invisible sword.
+Presently, Daubrecq spoke:
+“So Mme. Mergy’s life is saved.... And she has sent you to me.... I
+don’t quite understand.... I hardly know the lady.”
+“Now for the ticklish moment,” thought Lupin. “Have at him!”
+And, in a genial, good-natured and rather shy tone, he said:
+“No, monsieur le député, there are cases in which a doctor’s duty
+becomes very complex . . . very puzzling.... And you may think
+that, in taking this step.... However, to cut a long story short,
+while I was attending Mme. Mergy, she made a second attempt to
+poison herself.... Yes; the bottle, unfortunately, had been left
+within her reach. I snatched it from her. We had a struggle. And,
+railing in her fever, she said to me, in broken words, ‘He’s the
+man.... He’s the man.... Daubrecq the deputy.... Make him give
+me back my son. Tell him to . . . or else I would rather die....
+Yes, now, to-night.... I would rather die.’ That’s what she said,
+monsieur le député.... So I thought that I ought to let you know.
+It is quite certain that, in the lady’s highly nervous state of
+mind.... Of course, I don’t know the exact meaning of her words....
+I asked no questions of anybody . . . obeyed a spontaneous impulse
+and came straight to you.”
+Daubrecq reflected for a little while and said:
+“It amounts to this, doctor, that you have come to ask me if I know
+the whereabouts of this child whom I presume to have disappeared.
+Is that it?”
+“Yes.”
+“And, if I did happen to know, you would take him back to his
+mother?”
+There was a longer pause. Lupin asked himself:
+“Can he by chance have swallowed the story? Is the threat of
+that death enough? Oh, nonsense it’s out of the question!... And
+yet . . . and yet . . . he seems to be hesitating.”
+“Will you excuse me?” asked Daubrecq, drawing the telephone, on his
+writing-desk, toward him. “I have an urgent message.”
+“Certainly, monsieur le député.”
+Daubrecq called out:
+“Hullo!... 822.19, please, 822.19.”
+Having repeated the number, he sat without moving.
+Lupin smiled:
+“The headquarters of police, isn’t it? The secretary-general’s
+office....”
+“Yes, doctor.... How do you know?”
+“Oh, as a divisional surgeon, I sometimes have to ring them up.”
+And, within himself, Lupin asked:
+“What the devil does all this mean? The secretary-general is
+Prasville.... Then, what?...”
+Daubrecq put both receivers to his ears and said:
+“Are you 822.19? I want to speak to M. Prasville, the
+secretary-general.... Do you say he’s not there?... Yes, yes,
+he is: he’s always in his office at this time.... Tell him it’s
+M. Daubrecq.... M. Daubrecq the deputy . . . a most important
+communication.”
+“Perhaps I’m in the way?” Lupin suggested.
+“Not at all, doctor, not at all,” said Daubrecq. “Besides, what I
+have to say has a certain bearing on your errand.” And, into the
+telephone, “Hullo! M. Prasville?... Ah, it’s you, Prasville, old
+cock!... Why, you seem quite staggered! Yes, you’re right, it’s
+an age since you and I met. But, after all, we’ve never been far
+away in thought.... And I’ve had plenty of visits from you and
+your henchmen.... In my absence, it’s true. Hullo!.... What?...
+Oh, you’re in a hurry? I beg your pardon!... So am I, for that
+matter.... Well, to come to the point, there’s a little service I
+want to do you.... Wait, can’t you, you brute?... You won’t regret
+it.... It concerns your renown.... Hullo!... Are you listening?...
+Well, take half-a-dozen men with you . . . plain-clothes
+detectives, by preference: you’ll find them at the night-office....
+Jump into a taxi, two taxis, and come along here as fast as you
+can.... I’ve got a rare quarry for you, old chap. One of the upper
+ten . . . a lord, a marquis Napoleon himself . . . in a word,
+Arsène Lupin!”
+[Illustration: Lupin sprang to his feet. He was prepared for every
+upshot except this.]
+Lupin sprang to his feet. He was prepared for everything but this.
+Yet something within him stronger than astonishment, an impulse of
+his whole nature, made him say, with a laugh:
+“Oh, well done, well done!”
+Daubrecq bowed his head, by way of thanks, and muttered:
+“I haven’t quite finished.... A little patience, if you don’t
+mind.” And he continued, “Hullo! Prasville!... No, no, old chap,
+I’m not humbugging.... You’ll find Lupin here, with me, in my
+study.... Lupin, who’s worrying me like the rest of you.... Oh,
+one more or less makes no difference to me! But, all the same,
+this one’s a bit too pushing. And I am appealing to your sense
+of kindness. Rid me of the fellow, do.... Half-a-dozen of your
+satellites and the two who are pacing up and down outside my house
+will be enough.... Oh, while you’re about it, go up to the third
+floor and rope in my cook as well.... She’s the famous Victoire:
+you know, Master Lupin’s old nurse.... And, look here, one more
+tip, to show you how I love you: send a squad of men to the Rue
+Chateaubriand, at the corner of the Rue Balzac.... That’s where our
+national hero lives, under the name of Michel Beaumont.... Do you
+twig, old cockalorum? And now to business. Hustle!”
+When Daubrecq turned his head, Lupin was standing up, with clenched
+fists. His burst of admiration had not survived the rest of the
+speech and the revelations which Daubrecq had made about Victoire
+and the flat in the Rue Chateaubriand. The humiliation was too
+great; and Lupin no longer bothered to play the part of the small
+general practitioner. He had but one idea in his head: not to give
+way to the tremendous fit of rage that was urging him to rush at
+Daubrecq like a bull.
+Daubrecq gave the sort of little cluck which, with him, did
+duty for a laugh. He came waddling up, with his hands in his
+trouser-pockets, and said, incisively:
+“Don’t you think that this is all for the best? I’ve cleared the
+ground, relieved the situation.... At least, we now know where we
+stand. Lupin versus Daubrecq; and that’s all about it. Besides,
+think of the time saved! Dr. Vernes, the divisional surgeon, would
+have taken two hours to spin his yarn! Whereas, like this, Master
+Lupin will be compelled to get his little story told in thirty
+minutes . . . unless he wants to get himself collared and his
+accomplices nabbed. What a shock! What a bolt from the blue! Thirty
+minutes and not a minute more. In thirty minutes from now, you’ll
+have to clear out, scud away like a hare and beat a disordered
+retreat. Ha, ha, ha, what fun! I say, Polonius, you really are
+unlucky, each time you come up against Bibi Daubrecq! For it was
+you who were hiding behind that curtain, wasn’t it, my ill-starred
+Polonius?”
+Lupin did not stir a muscle. The one and only solution that would
+have calmed his feelings, that is to say, for him to throttle
+his adversary then and there, was so absurd that he preferred to
+accept Daubrecq’s gibes without attempting to retort, though each
+of them cut him like the lash of a whip. It was the second time,
+in the same room and in similar circumstances, that he had to bow
+before that Daubrecq of misfortune and maintain the most ridiculous
+attitude in silence. And he felt convinced in his innermost being
+that, if he opened his mouth, it would be to spit words of anger
+and insult in his victor’s face. What was the good? Was it not
+essential that he should keep cool and do the things which the new
+situation called for?
+“Well, M. Lupin, well?” resumed the deputy. “You look as if your
+nose were out of joint. Come, console yourself and admit that
+one sometimes comes across a joker who’s not quite such a mug as
+his fellows. So you thought that, because I wear spectacles and
+eye-glasses, I was blind? Bless my soul, I don’t say that I at once
+suspected Lupin behind Polonius and Polonius behind the gentleman
+who came and bored me in the box at the Vaudeville. No, no! But,
+all the same, it worried me. I could see that, between the police
+and Mme. Mergy, there was a third bounder trying to get a finger
+in the pie. And, gradually, what with the words let fall by the
+portress, what with watching the movements of my cook and making
+inquiries about her in the proper quarter, I began to understand.
+Then, the other night, came the lightning-flash. I heard the row in
+the house, in spite of my being asleep. I managed to reconstruct
+the incident, to follow up Mme. Mergy’s traces, first, to the Rue
+Chateaubriand and, afterward, to Saint-Germain.... And then . . .
+what then? I put different facts together: the Enghien burglary....
+Gilbert’s arrest . . . the inevitable treaty of alliance between
+the weeping mother and the leader of the gang... the old nurse
+installed as cook . . . all these people entering my house through
+the doors or through the windows.... And I knew what I had to
+do. Master Lupin was sniffing at the secret. The scent of the
+Twenty-seven attracted him. I had only to wait for his visit. The
+hour has arrived. Good-evening, Master Lupin.”
+Daubrecq paused. He had delivered his speech with the evident
+satisfaction of a man entitled to claim the appreciation of the
+most captious critics.
+As Lupin did not speak, he took out his watch: “I say! Only
+twenty-three minutes! How time flies! At this rate, we sha’n’t have
+time to come to an explanation.” And, stepping still closer to
+Lupin, “I’m bound to say, I’m disappointed. I thought that Lupin
+was a different sort of gentleman. So, the moment he meets a more
+or less serious adversary, the colossus falls to pieces? Poor young
+man! Have a glass of water, to bring you round!” Lupin did not
+utter a word, did not betray a gesture of irritation. With absolute
+composure, with a precision of movement that showed his perfect
+self-control and the clear plan of conduct which he had adopted, he
+gently pushed Daubrecq aside, went to the table and, in his turn,
+took down the receiver of the telephone:
+“I want 565.34, please,” he said.
+He waited until he was through; and then, speaking in a slow voice
+and picking out every syllable, he said:
+“Hullo!.... Rue Chateaubriand?... Is that you, Achille?... Yes,
+it’s the governor. Listen to me carefully, Achille.... You must
+leave the flat! Hullo!... Yes, at once. The police are coming in
+a few minutes. No, no, don’t lose your head.... You’ve got time.
+Only, do what I tell you. Is your bag still packed?... Good. And
+is one of the sides empty, as I told you?... Good. Well, go to my
+bedroom and stand with your face to the chimney-piece. Press with
+your left hand on the little carved rosette in front of the marble
+slab, in the middle, and with your right hand on the top of the
+mantel-shelf. You’ll see a sort of drawer, with two little boxes
+in it. Be careful. One of them contains all our papers; the other,
+bank-notes and jewellery. Put them both in the empty compartment
+of the bag. Take the bag in your hand and go as fast as you can,
+on foot, to the corner of the Avenue Victor-Hugo and the Avenue de
+Montespan. You’ll find the car waiting, with Victoire. I’ll join
+you there.... What?... My clothes? My knick-knacks?... Never mind
+about all that.... You be off. See you presently.”
+Lupin quietly pushed away the telephone. Then, taking Daubrecq by
+the arm, he made him sit in a chair by his side and said:
+“And now listen to me, Daubrecq.”
+“Oho!” grinned the deputy. “Calling each other by our surnames, are
+we?”
+“Yes,” said Lupin, “I allowed you to.” And, when Daubrecq released
+his arm with a certain misgiving, he said, “No, don’t be afraid. We
+sha’n’t come to blows. Neither of us has anything to gain by doing
+away with the other. A stab with a knife? What’s the good? No, sir!
+Words, nothing but words. Words that strike home, though. Here are
+mine: they are plain and to the point. Answer me in the same way,
+without reflecting: that’s far better. The boy?”
+“I have him.”
+“Give him back.”
+“No.”
+“Mme. Mergy will kill herself.”
+“No, she won’t.”
+“I tell you she will.”
+“And I tell you she will not.”
+“But she’s tried to, once.”
+“That’s just the reason why she won’t try again.”
+“Well, then....”
+“No.”
+Lupin, after a moment, went on:
+“I expected that. Also, I thought, on my way here, that you would
+hardly tumble to the story of Dr. Vernes and that I should have to
+use other methods.”
+“Lupin’s methods.”
+“As you say. I had made up my mind to throw off the mask. You
+pulled it off for me. Well done you! But that doesn’t change my
+plans.”
+“Speak.”
+Lupin took from a pocketbook a double sheet of foolscap paper,
+unfolded it and handed it to Daubrecq, saying:
+“Here is an exact, detailed inventory, with consecutive numbers,
+of the things removed by my friends and myself from your Villa
+Marie-Thérèse on the Lac d’Enghien. As you see, there are one
+hundred and thirteen items. Of those one hundred and thirteen
+items, sixty-eight, which have a red cross against them, have been
+sold and sent to America. The remainder, numbering forty-five, are
+in my possession . . . until further orders. They happen to be the
+pick of the bunch. I offer you them in return for the immediate
+surrender of the child.”
+Daubrecq could not suppress a movement of surprise:
+“Oho!” he said. “You seem very much bent upon it.”
+“Infinitely,” said Lupin, “for I am persuaded that a longer
+separation from her son will mean death to Mme. Mergy.”
+“And that upsets you, does it . . . Lothario?”
+“What!”
+Lupin planted himself in front of the other and repeated:
+“What! What do you mean?”
+“Nothing.... Nothing.... Something that crossed my mind....
+Clarisse Mergy is a young woman still and a pretty woman at that.”
+Lupin shrugged his shoulders:
+“You brute!” he mumbled. “You imagine that everybody is like
+yourself, heartless and pitiless. It takes your breath away, what,
+to think that a shark like me can waste his time playing the Don
+Quixote? And you wonder what dirty motive I can have? Don’t try
+to find out: it’s beyond your powers of perception. Answer me,
+instead: do you accept?”
+“So you’re serious?” asked Daubrecq, who seemed but little
+disturbed by Lupin’s contemptuous tone.
+“Absolutely. The forty-five pieces are in a shed, of which I will
+give you the address, and they will be handed over to you, if you
+call there, at nine o’clock this evening, with the child.”
+There was no doubt about Daubrecq’s reply. To him, the kidnapping
+of little Jacques had represented only a means of working upon
+Clarisse Mergy’s feelings and perhaps also a warning for her to
+cease the contest upon which she had engaged. But the threat of a
+suicide must needs show Daubrecq that he was on the wrong track.
+That being so, why refuse the favourable bargain which Arsène Lupin
+was now offering him?
+“I accept,” he said.
+“Here’s the address of my shed: 99, Rue Charles-Lafitte, Neuilly.
+You have only to ring the bell.”
+“And suppose I send Prasville, the secretary-general, instead?”
+“If you send Prasville,” Lupin declared, “the place is so arranged
+that I shall see him coming and that I shall have time to escape,
+after setting fire to the trusses of hay and straw which surround
+and conceal your credence-tables, clocks and Gothic virgins.”
+“But your shed will be burnt down....”
+“I don’t mind that: the police have their eye on it already. I am
+leaving it in any case.”
+“And how am I to know that this is not a trap?”
+“Begin by receiving the goods and don’t give up the child till
+afterward. I trust you, you see.”
+“Good,” said Daubrecq; “you’ve foreseen everything. Very well, you
+shall have the nipper; the fair Clarisse shall live; and we will
+all be happy. And now, if I may give you a word of advice, it is to
+pack off as fast as you can.”
+“Not yet.”
+“Eh?”
+“I said, not yet.”
+“But you’re mad! Prasville’s on his way!”
+“He can wait. I’ve not done.”
+“Why, what more do you want? Clarisse shall have her brat. Isn’t
+that enough for you?”
+“No.”
+“Why not?”
+“There is another son.”
+“Gilbert.”
+“Yes.”
+“Well?”
+“I want you to save Gilbert.”
+“What are you saying? I save Gilbert!”
+“You can, if you like; it only means taking a little trouble.”
+Until that moment Daubrecq had remained quite calm. He now suddenly
+blazed out and, striking the table with his fist:
+“No,” he cried, “not that! Never! Don’t reckon on me!... No, that
+would be too idiotic!”
+He walked up and down, in a state of intense excitement, with that
+queer step of his, which swayed him from right to left on each of
+his legs, like a wild beast, a heavy, clumsy bear. And, with a
+hoarse voice and distorted features, he shouted:
+“Let her come here! Let her come and beg for her son’s pardon!
+But let her come unarmed, not with criminal intentions, like
+last time! Let her come as a supplicant, as a tamed woman, as a
+submissive woman, who understands and accepts the situation . . .
+Gilbert? Gilbert’s sentence? The scaffold? Why, that is where my
+strength lies! What! For more than twenty years have I awaited my
+hour; and, when that hour strikes, when fortune brings me this
+unhoped-for chance, when I am at last about to know the joy of a
+full revenge--and such a revenge!--you think that I will give it
+up, give up the thing which I have been pursuing for twenty years?
+I save Gilbert? I? For nothing? For love? I, Daubrecq?... No, no,
+you can’t have studied my features!”
+He laughed, with a fierce and hateful laugh. Visibly, he saw before
+him, within reach of his hand, the prey which he had been hunting
+down so long. And Lupin also summoned up the vision of Clarisse,
+as he had seen her several days before, fainting, already beaten,
+fatally conquered, because all the hostile powers were in league
+against her.
+He contained himself and said:
+“Listen to me.”
+And, when Daubrecq moved away impatiently, he took him by the two
+shoulders, with that superhuman strength which Daubrecq knew, from
+having felt it in the box at the Vaudeville, and, holding him
+motionless in his grip, he said:
+“One last word.”
+“You’re wasting your breath,” growled the deputy.
+“One last word. Listen, Daubrecq: forget Mme. Mergy, give up all
+the nonsensical and imprudent acts which your pride and your
+passions are making you commit; put all that on one side and think
+only of your interest....”
+“My interest,” said Daubrecq, jestingly, “always coincides with my
+pride and with what you call my passions.”
+“Up to the present, perhaps. But not now, not now that I have taken
+a hand in the business. That constitutes a new factor, which you
+choose to ignore. You are wrong. Gilbert is my pal. Gilbert is my
+chum. Gilbert has to be saved from the scaffold. Use your influence
+to that end, and I swear to you, do you hear, I swear that we will
+leave you in peace. Gilbert’s safety, that’s all I ask. You will
+have no more battles to wage with Mme. Mergy, with me; there will
+be no more traps laid for you. You will be the master, free to act
+as you please. Gilbert’s safety, Daubrecq! If you refuse....”
+“What then?”
+“If you refuse, it will be war, relentless war; in other words, a
+certain defeat for you.”
+“Meaning thereby....”
+“Meaning thereby that I shall take the list of the Twenty-seven
+from you.”
+“Rot! You think so, do you?”
+“I swear it.”
+“What Prasville and all his men, what Clarisse Mergy, what nobody
+has been able to do, you think that you will do!”
+“I shall!”
+“And why? By favour of what saint will you succeed where everybody
+else has failed? There must be a reason?”
+“There is.”
+“What is it?”
+“My name is Arsène Lupin.”
+He had let go of Daubrecq, but held him for a time under the
+dominion of his authoritative glance and will. At last, Daubrecq
+drew himself up, gave him a couple of sharp taps on the shoulder
+and, with the same calm, the same intense obstinacy, said:
+“And my name’s Daubrecq. My whole life has been one desperate
+battle, one long series of catastrophes and routs in which I spent
+all my energies until victory came: complete, decisive, crushing,
+irrevocable victory. I have against me the police, the government,
+France, the world. What difference do you expect it to make to
+me if I have M. Arsène Lupin against me into the bargain? I will
+go further: the more numerous and skilful my enemies, the more
+cautiously I am obliged to play. And that is why, my dear sir,
+instead of having you arrested, as I might have done--yes, as I
+might have done and very easily--I let you remain at large and beg
+charitably to remind you that you must quit in less than three
+minutes.”
+“Then the answer is no?”
+“The answer is no.”
+“You won’t do anything for Gilbert?”
+“Yes, I shall continue to do what I have been doing since his
+arrest--that is to say, to exercise indirect influence with the
+minister of justice, so that the trial may be hurried on and end in
+the way in which I want to see it end.”
+“What!” cried Lupin, beside himself with indignation. “It’s because
+of you, it’s for you....”
+“Yes, it’s for me, Daubrecq; yes, by Jove! I have a trump card,
+the son’s head, and I am playing it. When I have procured a
+nice little death-sentence for Gilbert, when the days go by
+and Gilbert’s petition for a reprieve is rejected by my good
+offices, you shall see, M. Lupin, that his mummy will drop all her
+objections to calling herself Mme. Alexis Daubrecq and giving me an
+unexceptionable pledge of her good-will. That fortunate issue is
+inevitable, whether you like it or not. It is foredoomed. All I can
+do for you is to invite you to the wedding and the breakfast. Does
+that suit you? No? You persist in your sinister designs? Well, good
+luck, lay your traps, spread your nets, rub up your weapons and
+grind away at the Complete Foreign-post-paper Burglar’s Handbook.
+You’ll need it. And now, good-night. The rules of open-handed and
+disinterested hospitality demand that I should turn you out of
+doors. Hop it!”
+Lupin remained silent for some time. With his eyes fixed on
+Daubrecq, he seemed to be taking his adversary’s size, gauging his
+weight, estimating his physical strength, discussing, in fine, in
+which exact part to attack him. Daubrecq clenched his fists and
+worked out his plan of defence to meet the attack when it came.
+Half a minute passed. Lupin put his hand to his hip-pocket.
+Daubrecq did the same and grasped the handle of his revolver.
+A few seconds more. Coolly, Lupin produced a little gold box of the
+kind that ladies use for holding sweets, opened it and handed it to
+Daubrecq:
+“A lozenge?”
+“What’s that?” asked the other, in surprise.
+“Cough-drops.”
+“What for?”
+“For the draught you’re going to feel!”
+And, taking advantage of the momentary fluster into which Daubrecq
+was thrown by his sally, he quickly took his hat and slipped away.
+“Of course,” he said, as he crossed the hall, “I am knocked into
+fits. But all the same, that bit of commercial-traveller’s waggery
+was rather novel, in the circumstances. To expect a pill and
+receive a cough-drop is by way of being a sort of disappointment.
+It left the old chimpanzee quite flummoxed.”
+As he closed the gate, a motor-car drove up and a man sprang out
+briskly, followed by several others.
+Lupin recognized Prasville:
+“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général,” he muttered, “your humble
+servant. I have an idea that, some day, fate will bring us face
+to face: and I am sorry, for your sake; for you do not inspire me
+with any particular esteem and you have a bad time before you, on
+that day. Meanwhile, if I were not in such a hurry, I should wait
+till you leave and I should follow Daubrecq to find out in whose
+charge he has placed the child whom he is going to hand back to me.
+But I am in a hurry. Besides, I can’t tell that Daubrecq won’t act
+by telephone. So let us not waste ourselves in vain efforts, but
+rather join Victoire, Achille and our precious bag.”
+Two hours later, Lupin, after taking all his measures, was on the
+lookout in his shed at Neuilly and saw Daubrecq turn out of an
+adjoining street and walk along with a distrustful air.
+Lupin himself opened the double doors:
+“Your things are in here, monsieur le député,” he said. “You can go
+round and look. There is a job-master’s yard next door: you have
+only to ask for a van and a few men. Where is the child?”
+Daubrecq first inspected the articles and then took Lupin to the
+Avenue de Neuilly, where two closely veiled old ladies stood
+waiting with little Jacques.
+Lupin carried the child to his car, where Victoire was waiting for
+him.
+All this was done swiftly, without useless words and as though the
+parts had been got by heart and the various movements settled in
+advance, like so many stage entrances and exits.
+At ten o’clock in the evening Lupin kept his promise and handed
+little Jacques to his mother. But the doctor had to be hurriedly
+called in, for the child, upset by all those happenings, showed
+great signs of excitement and terror. It was more than a fortnight
+before he was sufficiently recovered to bear the strain of the
+removal which Lupin considered necessary. Mme. Mergy herself was
+only just fit to travel when the time came. The journey took place
+at night, with every possible precaution and under Lupin’s escort.
+He took the mother and son to a little seaside place in Brittany
+and entrusted them to Victoire’s care and vigilance.
+“At last,” he reflected, when he had seen them settled, “there
+is no one between the Daubrecq bird and me. He can do nothing
+more to Mme. Mergy and the kid; and she no longer runs the risk
+of diverting the struggle through her intervention. By Jingo, we
+have made blunders enough! First, I have had to disclose myself to
+Daubrecq. Secondly, I have had to surrender my share of the Enghien
+movables. True, I shall get those back, sooner or later; of that
+there is not the least doubt. But, all the same, we are not getting
+on; and, in a week from now, Gilbert and Vaucheray will be up for
+trial.”
+What Lupin felt most in the whole business was Daubrecq’s
+revelation of the whereabouts of the flat. The police had entered
+his place in the Rue Chateaubriand. The identity of Lupin and
+Michel Beaumont had been recognized and certain papers discovered;
+and Lupin, while pursuing his aim, while, at the same time,
+managing various enterprises on which he had embarked, while
+avoiding the searches of the police, which were becoming more
+zealous and persistent than ever, had to set to work and reorganize
+his affairs throughout on a fresh basis.
+His rage with Daubrecq, therefore, increased in proportion to the
+worry which the deputy caused him. He had but one longing, to
+pocket him, as he put it, to have him at his bidding by fair means
+or foul, to extract his secret from him. He dreamt of tortures
+fit to unloose the tongue of the most silent of men. The boot,
+the rack, red-hot pincers, nailed planks: no form of suffering,
+he thought, was more than the enemy deserved; and the end to be
+attained justified every means.
+“Oh,” he said to himself, “oh, for a decent bench of inquisitors
+and a couple of bold executioners!... What a time we should have!”
+Every afternoon the Growler and the Masher watched the road which
+Daubrecq took between the Square Lamartine, the Chamber of Deputies
+and his club. Their instructions were to choose the most deserted
+street and the most favourable moment and, one evening, to hustle
+him into a motor-car.
+Lupin, on his side, got ready an old building, standing in the
+middle of a large garden, not far from Paris, which presented all
+the necessary conditions of safety and isolation and which he
+called the Monkey’s Cage.
+Unfortunately, Daubrecq must have suspected something, for every
+time, so to speak, he changed his route, or took the underground or
+a tram; and the cage remained unoccupied.
+Lupin devised another plan. He sent to Marseilles for one of his
+associates, an elderly retired grocer called Brindebois, who
+happened to live in Daubrecq’s electoral district and interested
+himself in politics. Old Brindebois wrote to Daubrecq from
+Marseilles, announcing his visit. Daubrecq gave this important
+constituent a hearty welcome, and a dinner was arranged for the
+following week.
+The elector suggested a little restaurant on the left bank of the
+Seine, where the food, he said, was something wonderful. Daubrecq
+accepted.
+This was what Lupin wanted. The proprietor of the restaurant was
+one of his friends. The attempt, which was to take place on the
+following Thursday, was this time bound to succeed.
+Meanwhile, on the Monday of the same week, the trial of Gilbert and
+Vaucheray opened.
+*       *       *       *       *
+The reader will remember--and the case took place too recently for me
+to recapitulate its details--the really incomprehensible partiality
+which the presiding judge showed in his cross-examination of Gilbert.
+The thing was noticed and severely criticised at the time. Lupin
+recognized Daubrecq’s hateful influence.
+The attitude observed by the two prisoners differed greatly.
+Vaucheray was gloomy, silent, hard-faced. He cynically, in curt,
+sneering, almost defiant phrases, admitted the crimes of which he
+had formerly been guilty. But, with an inconsistency which puzzled
+everybody except Lupin, he denied any participation in the murder
+of Léonard the valet and violently accused Gilbert. His object, in
+thus linking his fate with Gilbert’s, was to force Lupin to take
+identical measures for the rescue of both his accomplices.
+Gilbert, on the other hand, whose frank countenance and dreamy,
+melancholy eyes won every sympathy, was unable to protect himself
+against the traps laid for him by the judge or to counteract
+Vaucheray’s lies. He burst into tears, talked too much, or else did
+not talk when he should have talked. Moreover, his counsel, one
+of the Leaders of the bar, was taken ill at the last moment--and
+here again Lupin saw the hand of Daubrecq--and he was replaced by
+a junior who spoke badly, muddied the whole case, set the jury
+against him and failed to wipe out the impression produced by the
+speeches of the advocate-general and of Vaucheray’s counsel.
+Lupin, who had the inconceivable audacity to be present on the last
+day of the trial, the Thursday, had no doubt as to the result. A
+verdict of guilty was certain in both cases.
+It was certain because all the efforts of the prosecution, thus
+supporting Vaucheray’s tactics, had tended to link the two
+prisoners closely together. It was certain, also and above all,
+because it concerned two of Lupin’s accomplices. From the opening
+of the inquiry before the magistrate until the delivery of the
+verdict, all the proceedings had been directed against Lupin;
+and this in spite of the fact that the prosecution, for want of
+sufficient evidence and also in order not to scatter its efforts
+over too wide an area, had decided not to include Lupin in the
+indictment. He was the adversary aimed at, the leader who must
+be punished in the person of his friends, the famous and popular
+scoundrel whose fascination in the eyes of the crowd must be
+destroyed for good and all. With Gilbert and Vaucheray executed,
+Lupin’s halo would fade away and the legend would be exploded.
+Lupin.... Lupin.... Arsène Lupin: it was the one name heard
+throughout the four days. The advocate-general, the presiding
+judge, the jury, the counsel, the witnesses had no other words
+on their lips. Every moment, Lupin was mentioned and cursed at,
+scoffed at, insulted and held responsible for all the crimes
+committed. It was as though Gilbert and Vaucheray figured only as
+supernumeraries, while the real criminal undergoing trial was he,
+Lupin, Master Lupin, Lupin the burglar, the leader of a gang of
+thieves, the forger, the incendiary, the hardened offender, the
+ex-convict, Lupin the murderer, Lupin stained with the blood of his
+victim, Lupin lurking in the shade, like a coward, after sending
+his friends to the foot of the scaffold.
+“Oh, the rascals know what they’re about!” he muttered. “It’s my
+debt which they are making my poor old Gilbert pay.”
+And the terrible tragedy went on.
+At seven o’clock in the evening, after a long deliberation, the
+jury returned to court and the foreman read out the answers to
+the questions put from the bench. The answer was “Yes” to every
+count of the indictment, a verdict of guilty without extenuating
+circumstances.
+The prisoners were brought in. Standing up, but staggering and
+white-faced, they received their sentence of death.
+And, amid the great, solemn silence, in which the anxiety of the
+onlookers was mingled with pity, the assize-president asked:
+“Have you anything more to say, Vaucheray?”
+“Nothing, monsieur le president. Now that my mate is sentenced as
+well as myself, I am easy.... We are both on the same footing....
+The governor must find a way to save the two of us.”
+“The governor?”
+“Yes, Arsène Lupin.”
+There was a laugh among the crowd.
+The president asked:
+“And you, Gilbert?”
+Tears streamed down the poor lad’s cheeks and he stammered a few
+inarticulate sentences. But, when the judge repeated his question,
+he succeeded in mastering himself and replied, in a trembling voice:
+“I wish to say, monsieur le president, that I am guilty of many
+things, that’s true.... I have done a lot of harm.... But, all the
+same, not this. No, I have not committed murder.... I have never
+committed murder.... And I don’t want to die.... it would be too
+horrible....”
+He swayed from side to side, supported by the warders, and he was
+heard to cry, like a child calling for help:
+“Governor.... save me!... Save me!... I don’t want to die!”
+Then, in the crowd, amid the general excitement, a voice rose above
+the surrounding clamour:
+“Don’t be afraid, little ‘un!... The governor’s here!”
+A tumult and hustling followed. The municipal guards and the
+policemen rushed into court and laid hold of a big, red-faced man,
+who was stated by his neighbours to be the author of that outburst
+and who struggled hand and foot.
+Questioned without delay, he gave his name, Philippe Bonel, an
+undertaker’s man, and declared that some one sitting beside him had
+offered him a hundred-franc note if he would consent, at the proper
+moment, to shout a few words which his neighbour scribbled on a bit
+of paper. How could he refuse?
+In proof of his statements, he produced the hundred-franc note and
+the scrap of paper.
+Philippe Bonel was let go.
+Meanwhile, Lupin, who of course had assisted energetically in the
+individual’s arrest and handed him over to the guards, left the
+law-courts, his heart heavy with anguish. His car was waiting for
+him on the quay. He flung himself into it, in despair, seized
+with so great a sorrow that he had to make an effort to restrain
+his tears. Gilbert’s cry, his voice wrung with affliction, his
+distorted features, his tottering frame: all this haunted his
+brain; and he felt as if he would never, for a single second,
+forget those impressions.
+He drove home to the new place which he had selected among his
+different residences and which occupied a corner of the Place de
+Clichy. He expected to find the Growler and the Masher, with whom
+he was to kidnap Daubrecq that evening. But he had hardly opened
+the door of his flat, when a cry escaped him: Clarisse stood before
+him; Clarisse, who had returned from Brittany at the moment of the
+verdict.
+[Illustration: “What we have to do is to stop the mischief and
+to-night, you understand, to-night the thing will be done.”]
+He at once gathered from her attitude and her pallor that she knew.
+And, at once, recovering his courage in her presence, without
+giving her time to speak, he exclaimed:
+“Yes, yes, yes . . . but it doesn’t matter. We foresaw that. We
+couldn’t prevent it. What we have to do is to stop the mischief.
+And to-night, you understand, to-night, the thing will be done.”
+Motionless and tragic in her sorrow, she stammered:
+“To-night?”
+“Yes. I have prepared everything. In two hours, Daubrecq will be
+in my hands. To-night, whatever means I have to employ, he shall
+speak.”
+“Do you mean that?” she asked, faintly, while a ray of hope began
+to light up her face.
+“He shall speak. I shall have his secret. I shall tear the list of
+the Twenty-seven from him. And that list will set your son free.”
+“Too late,” Clarisse murmured.
+“Too late? Why? Do you think that, in exchange for such a document,
+I shall not obtain Gilbert’s pretended escape?... Why, Gilbert will
+be at liberty in three days! In three days....”
+He was interrupted by a ring at the bell:
+“Listen, here are our friends. Trust me. Remember that I keep my
+promises. I gave you back your little Jacques. I shall give you
+back Gilbert.”
+He went to let the Growler and the Masher in and said:
+“Is everything ready? Is old Brindebois at the restaurant? Quick,
+let us be off!”
+“It’s no use, governor,” replied the Masher.
+“No use? What do you mean?”
+“There’s news.”
+“What news? Speak, man!”
+“Daubrecq has disappeared.”
+“Eh? What’s that? Daubrecq disappeared?”
+“Yes, carried off from his house, in broad daylight.”
+“The devil! By whom?”
+“Nobody knows . . . four men . . . there were pistols fired.... The
+police are on the spot. Prasville is directing the investigations.”
+Lupin did not move a limb. He looked at Clarisse Mergy, who lay
+huddled in a chair.
+He himself had to bow his head. Daubrecq carried off meant one more
+chance of success lost....
+CHAPTER VII.
+THE PROFILE OF NAPOLEON
+Soon as the prefect of police, the chief of the
+criminal-investigation department and the examining-magistrates had
+left Daubrecq’s house, after a preliminary and entirely fruitless
+inquiry, Prasville resumed his personal search.
+He was examining the study and the traces of the struggle which had
+taken place there, when the portress brought him a visiting-card,
+with a few words in pencil scribbled upon it.
+“Show the lady in,” he said.
+“The lady has some one with her,” said the portress.
+“Oh? Well, show the other person in as well.”
+Clarisse Mergy entered at once and introduced the gentleman with
+her, a gentleman in a black frock-coat, which was too tight for him
+and which looked as though it had not been brushed for ages. He was
+shy in his manner and seemed greatly embarrassed how to dispose
+of his old, rusty top-hat, his gingham umbrella, his one and only
+glove and his body generally.
+“M. Nicole,” said Clarisse, “a private teacher, who is acting as
+tutor to my little Jacques. M. Nicole has been of the greatest
+help to me with his advice during the past year. He worked out the
+whole story of the crystal stopper. I should like him, as well as
+myself--if you see no objection to telling me--to know the details
+of this kidnapping business, which alarms me and upsets my plans;
+yours too, I expect?”
+Prasville had every confidence in Clarisse Mergy. He knew her
+relentless hatred of Daubrecq and appreciated the assistance which
+she had rendered in the case. He therefore made no difficulties
+about telling her what he knew, thanks to certain clues and
+especially to the evidence of the portress.
+For that matter, the thing was exceedingly simple. Daubrecq, who
+had attended the trial of Gilbert and Vaucheray as a witness and
+who was seen in court during the speeches, returned home at six
+o’clock. The portress affirmed that he came in alone and that there
+was nobody in the house at the time. Nevertheless, a few minutes
+later, she heard shouts, followed by the sound of a struggle and
+two pistol-shots; and from her lodge she saw four masked men
+scuttle down the front steps, carrying Daubrecq the deputy, and
+hurry toward the gate. They opened the gate. At the same moment,
+a motor-car arrived outside the house. The four men bundled
+themselves into it; and the motor-car, which had hardly had time to
+stop, set off at full speed.
+“Were there not always two policemen on duty?” asked Clarisse.
+“They were there,” said Prasville, “but at a hundred and fifty
+yards’ distance; and Daubrecq was carried off so quickly that they
+were unable to interfere, although they hastened up as fast as they
+could.”
+“And did they discover nothing, find nothing?”
+“Nothing, or hardly anything.... Merely this.”
+“What is that?”
+“A little piece of ivory, which they picked up on the ground. There
+was a fifth party in the car; and the portress saw him get down
+while the others were hoisting Daubrecq in. As he was stepping
+back into the car, he dropped something and picked it up again at
+once. But the thing, whatever it was, must have been broken on the
+pavement; for this is the bit of ivory which my men found.”
+“But how did the four men manage to enter the house?” asked
+Clarisse.
+“By means of false keys, evidently, while the portress was doing
+her shopping, in the course of the afternoon; and they had no
+difficulty in secreting themselves, as Daubrecq keeps no other
+servants. I have every reason to believe that they hid in the
+room next door, which is the dining-room, and afterward attacked
+Daubrecq here, in the study. The disturbance of the furniture and
+other articles proves how violent the struggle was. We found a
+large-bore revolver, belonging to Daubrecq, on the carpet. One of
+the bullets had smashed the glass over the mantel-piece, as you
+see.”
+Clarisse turned to her companion for him to express an opinion. But
+M. Nicole, with his eyes obstinately lowered, had not budged from
+his chair and sat fumbling at the rim of his hat, as though he had
+not yet found a proper place for it.
+Prasville gave a smile. It was evident that he did not look upon
+Clarisse’s adviser as a man of first-rate intelligence:
+“The case is somewhat puzzling, monsieur,” he said, “is it not?”
+“Yes . . . yes,” M. Nicole confessed, “most puzzling.”
+“Then you have no little theory of your own upon the matter?”
+“Well, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I’m thinking that Daubrecq
+has many enemies.”
+“Ah, capital!”
+“And that several of those enemies, who are interested in his
+disappearance, must have banded themselves against him.”
+“Capital, capital!” said Prasville, with satirical approval.
+“Capital! Everything is becoming clear as daylight. It only remains
+for you to furnish us with a little suggestion that will enable us
+to turn our search in the right direction.”
+“Don’t you think, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that this broken
+bit of ivory which was picked up on the ground....”
+“No, M. Nicole, no. That bit of ivory belongs to something which we
+do not know and which its owner will at once make it his business
+to conceal. In order to trace the owner, we should at least be able
+to define the nature of the thing itself.”
+M. Nicole reflected and then began:
+“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, when Napoleon I fell from
+power....”
+“Oh, M. Nicole, oh, a lesson in French history!”
+“Only a sentence, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, just one
+sentence which I will ask your leave to complete. When Napoleon
+I fell from power, the Restoration placed a certain number of
+officers on half-pay. These officers were suspected by the
+authorities and kept under observation by the police. They remained
+faithful to the emperor’s memory; and they contrived to reproduce
+the features of their idol on all sorts of objects of everyday use;
+snuff-boxes, rings, breast-pins, pen-knives and so on.”
+“Well?”
+“Well, this bit comes from a walking-stick, or rather a sort of
+loaded cane, or life-preserver, the knob of which is formed of
+a piece of carved ivory. When you look at the knob in a certain
+way, you end by seeing that the outline represents the profile
+of the Little Corporal. What you have in your hand, monsieur le
+secrétaire;-général, is a bit of the ivory knob at the top of a
+half-pay officer’s life-preserver.”
+“Yes,” said Prasville, examining the exhibit, “yes, I can make out
+a profile . . . but I don’t see the inference....”
+“The inference is very simple. Among Daubrecq’s victims, among
+those whose names are inscribed on the famous list, is the
+descendant of a Corsican family in Napoleon’s service, which
+derived its wealth and title from the emperor and was afterward
+ruined under the Restoration. It is ten to one that this
+descendant, who was the leader of the Bonapartist party a few years
+ago, was the fifth person hiding in the motor-car. Need I state his
+name?”
+“The Marquis d’Albufex?” said Prasville.
+“The Marquis d’Albufex,” said M. Nicole.
+M. Nicole, who no longer seemed in the least worried with his hat,
+his glove and his umbrella, rose and said to Prasville:
+“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I might have kept my discovery
+to myself, and not told you of it until after the final victory,
+that is, after bringing you the list of the Twenty-seven. But
+matters are urgent. Daubrecq’s disappearance, contrary to what
+his kidnappers expect, may hasten on the catastrophe which you
+wish to avert. We must therefore act with all speed. Monsieur
+le secrétaire;-général, I ask for your immediate and practical
+assistance.”
+“In what way can I help you?” asked Prasville, who was beginning to
+be impressed by his quaint visitor.
+“By giving me, to-morrow, those particulars about the Marquis
+d’Albufex which it would take me personally several days to
+collect.”
+Prasville seemed to hesitate and turned his head toward Mme. Mergy.
+Clarisse said:
+“I beg of you to accept M. Nicole’s services. He is an invaluable
+and devoted ally. I will answer for him as I would for myself.”
+“What particulars do you require, monsieur?” asked Prasville.
+“Everything that concerns the Marquis d’Albufex: the position
+of his family, the way in which he spends his time, his family
+connections, the properties which he owns in Paris and in the
+country.”
+Prasville objected:
+“After all, whether it’s the marquis or another, Daubrecq’s
+kidnapper is working on our behalf, seeing that, by capturing the
+list, he disarms Daubrecq.”
+“And who says, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that he is not
+working on his own behalf?”
+“That is not possible, as his name is on the list.”
+“And suppose he erases it? Suppose you then find yourself dealing
+with a second blackmailer, even more grasping and more powerful
+than the first and one who, as a political adversary, is in a
+better position than Daubrecq to maintain the contest?”
+The secretary-general was struck by the argument. After a moment’s
+thought, he said:
+“Come and see me in my office at four o’clock to-morrow. I will
+give you the particulars. What is your address, in case I should
+want you?”
+“M. Nicole, 25, Place de Clichy. I am staying at a friend’s flat,
+which he has lent me during his absence.”
+The interview was at an end. M. Nicole thanked the
+secretary-general, with a very low bow, and walked out, accompanied
+by Mme. Mergy:
+“That’s an excellent piece of work,” he said, outside, rubbing his
+hands. “I can march into the police-office whenever I like, and set
+the whole lot to work.”
+Mme. Mergy, who was less hopefully inclined, said:
+“Alas, will you be in time? What terrifies me is the thought that
+the list may be destroyed.”
+“Goodness gracious me, by whom? By Daubrecq?”
+“No, but by the marquis, when he gets hold of it.”
+“He hasn’t got it yet! Daubrecq will resist long enough, at any
+rate, for us to reach him. Just think! Prasville is at my orders!”
+“Suppose he discovers who you are? The least inquiry will prove
+that there is no such person as M. Nicole.”
+“But it will not prove that M. Nicole is the same person as Arsène
+Lupin. Besides, make yourself easy. Prasville is not only beneath
+contempt as a detective: he has but one aim in life, which is to
+destroy his old enemy, Daubrecq. To achieve that aim, all means are
+equally good; and he will not waste time in verifying the identity
+of a M. Nicole who promises him Daubrecq. Not to mention that I
+was brought by you and that, when all is said, my little gifts did
+dazzle him to some extent. So let us go ahead boldly.”
+Clarisse always recovered confidence in Lupin’s presence. The
+future seemed less appalling to her; and she admitted, she forced
+herself to admit, that the chances of saving Gilbert were not
+lessened by that hideous death-sentence. But he could not prevail
+upon her to return to Brittany. She wanted to fight by his side.
+She wanted to be there and share all his hopes and all his
+disappointments.
+The next day the inquiries of the police confirmed what Prasville
+and Lupin already knew. The Marquis d’Albufex had been very deeply
+involved in the business of the canal, so deeply that Prince
+Napoleon was obliged to remove him from the management of his
+political campaign in France; and he kept up his very extravagant
+style of living only by dint of constant loans and makeshifts. On
+the other hand, in so far as concerned the kidnapping of Daubrecq,
+it was ascertained that, contrary to his usual custom, the marquis
+had not appeared in his club between six and seven that evening and
+had not dined at home. He did not come back until midnight; and
+then he came on foot.
+M. Nicole’s accusation, therefore, was receiving an early proof.
+Unfortunately--and Lupin was no more successful in his own
+attempts--it was impossible to obtain the least clue as to the
+motor-car, the chauffeur and the four people who had entered
+Daubrecq’s house. Were they associates of the marquis, compromised
+in the canal affair like himself? Were they men in his pay? Nobody
+knew.
+The whole search, consequently, had to be concentrated upon the
+marquis and the country-seats and houses which he might possess at
+a certain distance from Paris, a distance which, allowing for the
+average speed of a motor-car and the inevitable stoppages, could be
+put at sixty to ninety miles.
+Now d’Albufex, having sold everything that he ever had, possessed
+neither country-houses nor landed estates.
+They turned their attention to the marquis’ relations and intimate
+friends. Was he able on this side to dispose of some safe retreat
+in which to imprison Daubrecq?
+The result was equally fruitless.
+And the days passed. And what days for Clarisse Mergy! Each of them
+brought Gilbert nearer to the terrible day of reckoning. Each of
+them meant twenty-four hours less from the date which Clarisse had
+instinctively fixed in her mind. And she said to Lupin, who was
+racked with the same anxiety:
+“Fifty-five days more.... Fifty days more.... What can one do in so
+few days?... Oh, I beg of you.... I beg of you....”
+What could they do indeed? Lupin, who would not leave the task of
+watching the marquis to any one but himself, practically lived
+without sleeping. But the marquis had resumed his regular life;
+and, doubtless suspecting something, did not risk going away.
+Once alone, he went down to the Duc de Montmaur’s, in the daytime.
+The duke kept a pack of boar-hounds, with which he hunted the
+Forest of Durlaine. D’Albufex maintained no relations with him
+outside the hunt.
+“It is hardly likely,” said Prasville, “that the Duc de Montmaur,
+an exceedingly wealthy man, who is interested only in his estates
+and his hunting and takes no part in politics, should lend himself
+to the illegal detention of Daubrecq the deputy in his chateau.”
+Lupin agreed; but, as he did not wish to leave anything to chance,
+the next week, seeing d’Albufex go out one morning in riding-dress,
+he followed him to the Gare du Nord and took the same train.
+He got out at Aumale, where d’Albufex found a carriage at the
+station which took him to the Chateau de Montmaur.
+Lupin lunched quietly, hired a bicycle and came in view of the
+house at the moment when the guests were going into the park,
+in motor-cars or mounted. The Marquis d’Albufex was one of the
+horsemen.
+Thrice, in the course of the day, Lupin saw him cantering along.
+And he found him, in the evening, at the station, where d’Albufex
+rode up, followed by a huntsman.
+The proof, therefore, was conclusive; and there was nothing
+suspicious on that side. Why did Lupin, nevertheless, resolve not
+to be satisfied with appearances? And why, next day, did he send
+the Masher to find out things in the neighbourhood of Montmaur? It
+was an additional precaution, based upon no logical reason, but
+agreeing with his methodical and careful manner of acting.
+Two days later he received from the Masher, among other information
+of less importance, a list of the house-party at Montmaur and of
+all the servants and keepers.
+One name struck him, among those of the huntsmen. He at once wired:
+“Inquire about huntsman Sébastiani.”
+The Masher’s answer was received the next day:
+“Sébastiani, a Corsican, was recommended to the Duc de
+Montmaur by the Marquis d’Albufex. He lives at two or three
+miles from the house, in a hunting-lodge built among the
+ruins of the feudal stronghold which was the cradle of the
+Montmaur family.”
+“That’s it,” said Lupin to Clarisse Mergy, showing her the Masher’s
+letter. “That name, Sébastiani, at once reminded me that d’Albufex
+is of Corsican descent. There was a connection....”
+“Then what do you intend to do?”
+“If Daubrecq is imprisoned in those ruins, I intend to enter into
+communication with him.”
+“He will distrust you.”
+“No. Lately, acting on the information of the police, I ended by
+discovering the two old ladies who carried off your little Jacques
+at Saint-Germain and who brought him, the same evening, to Neuilly.
+They are two old maids, cousins of Daubrecq, who makes them a
+small monthly allowance. I have been to call on those Demoiselles
+Rousselot; remember the name and the address: 134 bis, Rue du Bac.
+I inspired them with confidence, promised them to find their cousin
+and benefactor; and the elder sister, Euphrasie Rousselot, gave me
+a letter in which she begs Daubrecq to trust M. Nicole entirely. So
+you see, I have taken every precaution. I shall leave to-night.”
+“We, you mean,” said Clarisse.
+“You!”
+“Can I go on living like this, in feverish inaction?” And she
+whispered, “I am no longer counting the days, the thirty-eight or
+forty days that remain to us: I am counting the hours.”
+Lupin felt that her resolution was too strong for him to try to
+combat it. They both started at five o’clock in the morning, by
+motor-car. The Growler went with them.
+So as not to arouse suspicion, Lupin chose a large town as his
+headquarters. At Amiens, where he installed Clarisse, he was only
+eighteen miles from Montmaur.
+At eight o’clock he met the Masher not far from the old fortress,
+which was known in the neighbourhood by the name of Mortepierre,
+and he examined the locality under his guidance.
+On the confines of the forest, the little river Ligier, which
+has dug itself a deep valley at this spot, forms a loop which is
+overhung by the enormous cliff of Mortepierre.
+“Nothing to be done on this side,” said Lupin. “The cliff is steep,
+over two hundred feet high, and the river hugs it all round.”
+Not far away they found a bridge that led to the foot of a path
+which wound, through the oaks and pines, up to a little esplanade,
+where stood a massive, iron-bound gate, studded with nails and
+flanked on either side by a large tower.
+“Is this where Sébastiani the huntsman lives?” asked Lupin.
+“Yes,” said the Masher, “with his wife, in a lodge standing in the
+midst of the ruins. I also learnt that he has three tall sons and
+that all the four were supposed to be away for a holiday on the day
+when Daubrecq was carried off.”
+“Oho!” said Lupin. “The coincidence is worth remembering. It seems
+likely enough that the business was done by those chaps and their
+father.”
+Toward the end of the afternoon Lupin availed himself of a breach
+to the right of the towers to scale the curtain. From there he was
+able to see the huntsman’s lodge and the few remains of the old
+fortress: here, a bit of wall, suggesting the mantel of a chimney;
+further away, a water-tank; on this side, the arches of a chapel;
+on the other, a heap of fallen stones.
+A patrol-path edged the cliff in front; and, at one of the ends
+of this patrol-path, there were the remains of a formidable
+donjon-keep razed almost level with the ground.
+Lupin returned to Clarisse Mergy in the evening. And from that
+time he went backward and forward between Amiens and Mortepierre,
+leaving the Growler and the Masher permanently on the watch.
+And six days passed. Sébastiani’s habits seemed to be subject
+solely to the duties of his post. He used to go up to the Chateau
+de Montmaur, walk about in the forest, note the tracks of the game
+and go his rounds at night.
+But, on the seventh day, learning that there was to be a meet and
+that a carriage had been sent to Aumale Station in the morning,
+Lupin took up his post in a cluster of box and laurels which
+surrounded the little esplanade in front of the gate.
+At two o’clock he heard the pack give tongue. They approached,
+accompanied by hunting-cries, and then drew farther away. He
+heard them again, about the middle of the afternoon, not quite so
+distinctly; and that was all. But suddenly, amid the silence, the
+sound of galloping horses reached his ears; and, a few minutes
+later, he saw two riders climbing the river-path.
+He recognized the Marquis d’Albufex and Sébastiani. On reaching the
+esplanade, they both alighted; and a woman--the huntsman’s wife, no
+doubt--opened the gate. Sébastiani fastened the horses’ bridles to
+rings fixed on a post at a few yards from Lupin and ran to join the
+marquis. The gate closed behind them.
+Lupin did not hesitate; and, though it was still broad daylight,
+relying upon the solitude of the place, he hoisted himself to the
+hollow of the breach. Passing his head through cautiously, he saw
+the two men and Sébastiani’s wife hurrying toward the ruins of the
+keep.
+The huntsman drew aside a hanging screen of ivy and revealed the
+entrance to a stairway, which he went down, as did d’Albufex,
+leaving his wife on guard on the terrace.
+There was no question of going in after them; and Lupin returned to
+his hiding-place. He did not wait long before the gate opened again.
+The Marquis d’Albufex seemed in a great rage. He was striking the
+leg of his boot with his whip and mumbling angry words which Lupin
+was able to distinguish when the distance became less great:
+“Ah, the hound!... I’ll make him speak.... I’ll come back to-night
+. . . to-night, at ten o’clock, do you hear, Sébastiani?... And we
+shall do what’s necessary.... Oh, the brute!”
+Sébastiani unfastened the horses. D’Albufex turned to the woman:
+“See that your sons keep a good watch.... If any one attempts to
+deliver him, so much the worse for him. The trapdoor is there. Can
+I rely upon them?”
+“As thoroughly as on myself, monsieur le marquis,” declared the
+huntsman. “They know what monsieur le marquis has done for me and
+what he means to do for them. They will shrink at nothing.”
+“Let us mount and get back to the hounds,” said d’Albufex.
+So things were going as Lupin had supposed. During these runs,
+d’Albufex, taking a line of his own, would push off to Mortepierre,
+without anybody’s suspecting his trick. Sébastiani, who was devoted
+to him body and soul, for reasons connected with the past into
+which it was not worth while to inquire, accompanied him; and
+together they went to see the captive, who was closely watched by
+the huntsman’s wife and his three sons.
+“That’s where we stand,” said Lupin to Clarisse Mergy, when he
+joined her at a neighbouring inn. “This evening the marquis
+will put Daubrecq to the question--a little brutally, but
+indispensably--as I intended to do myself.”
+“And Daubrecq will give up his secret,” said Clarisse, already
+quite upset.
+“I’m afraid so.”
+“Then....”
+“I am hesitating between two plans,” said Lupin, who seemed very
+calm. “Either to prevent the interview....”
+“How?”
+“By forestalling d’Albufex. At nine o’clock, the Growler, the
+Masher and I climb the ramparts, burst into the fortress, attack
+the keep, disarm the garrison . . . and the thing’s done: Daubrecq
+is ours.”
+“Unless Sébastiani’s sons fling him through the trapdoor to which
+the marquis alluded....”
+“For that reason,” said Lupin, “I intend to risk that violent
+measure only as a last resort and in case my other plan should not
+be practicable.”
+“What is the other plan?”
+“To witness the interview. If Daubrecq does not speak, it will
+give us the time to prepare to carry him off under more favourable
+conditions. If he speaks, if they compel him to reveal the place
+where the list of the Twenty-seven is hidden, I shall know the
+truth at the same time as d’Albufex, and I swear to God that I
+shall turn it to account before he does.”
+“Yes, yes,” said Clarisse. “But how do you propose to be present?”
+“I don’t know yet,” Lupin confessed. “It depends on certain
+particulars which the Masher is to bring me and on some which I
+shall find out for myself.”
+He left the inn and did not return until an hour later as night was
+falling. The Masher joined him.
+“Have you the little book?” asked Lupin.
+“Yes, governor. It was what I saw at the Aumale newspaper-shop. I
+got it for ten sous.”
+“Give it me.”
+The Masher handed him an old, soiled, torn pamphlet, entitled,
+on the cover, _A Visit to Mortepierre, 1824, with plans and
+illustrations_.
+Lupin at once looked for the plan of the donjon-keep.
+“That’s it,” he said. “Above the ground were three stories, which
+have been razed, and below the ground, dug out of the rock, two
+stories, one of which was blocked up by the rubbish, while the
+other.... There, that’s where our friend Daubrecq lies. The name is
+significant: the torture-chamber.... Poor, dear friend!... Between
+the staircase and the torture-chamber, two doors. Between those two
+doors, a recess in which the three brothers obviously sit, gun in
+hand.”
+“So it is impossible for you to get in that way without being seen.”
+“Impossible . . . unless I come from above, by the story that has
+fallen in, and look for a means of entrance through the ceiling....
+But that is very risky....”
+He continued to turn the pages of the book. Clarisse asked:
+“Is there no window to the room?”
+“Yes,” he said. “From below, from the river--I have just been
+there--you can see a little opening, which is also marked on the
+plan. But it is fifty yards up, sheer; and even then the rock
+overhangs the water. So that again is out of the question.”
+He glanced through a few pages of the book. The title of one
+chapter struck him: _The Lovers’ Towers_. He read the opening lines:
+“In the old days, the donjon was known to the people of the
+neighbourhood as the Lovers’ Tower, in memory of a fatal
+tragedy that marked it in the Middle Ages. The Comte de
+Mortepierre, having received proofs of his wife’s faithlessness,
+imprisoned her in the torture-chamber, where she spent twenty
+years. One night, her lover, the Sire de Tancarville, with
+reckless courage, set up a ladder in the river and then
+clambered up the face of the cliff till he came to the window
+of the room. After filing the bars, he succeeded in releasing
+the woman he loved and bringing her down with him by means of a
+rope. They both reached the top of the ladder, which was watched
+by his friends, when a shot was fired from the patrol-path and
+hit the man in the shoulder. The two lovers were hurled into
+space....”
+There was a pause, after he had read this, a long pause during
+which each of them drew a mental picture of the tragic escape.
+So, three or four centuries earlier, a man, risking his life, had
+attempted that surprising feat and would have succeeded but for the
+vigilance of some sentry who heard the noise. A man had ventured! A
+man had dared! A man done it!
+Lupin raised his eyes to Clarisse. She was looking at him . . .
+with such a desperate, such a beseeching look! The look of a mother
+who demanded the impossible and who would have sacrificed anything
+to save her son.
+“Masher,” he said, “get a strong rope, but very slender, so that I
+can roll it round my waist, and very long: fifty or sixty yards.
+You, Growler, go and look for three or four ladders and fasten them
+end to end.”
+“Why, what are you thinking of, governor?” cried the two
+accomplices. “What, you mean to.... But it’s madness!”
+“Madness? Why? What another has done I can do.”
+“But it’s a hundred chances to one that you break your neck.”
+“Well, you see, Masher, there’s one chance that I don’t.”
+“But, governor....”
+“That’s enough, my friends. Meet me in an hour on the river-bank.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+The preparations took long in the making. It was difficult to find
+the material for a fifty-foot ladder that would reach the first
+ledge of the cliff; and it required an endless effort and care to
+join the different sections.
+At last, a little after nine o’clock, it was set up in the middle
+of the river and held in position by a boat, the bows of which were
+wedged between two of the rungs, while the stern was rammed into
+the bank.
+The road through the river-valley was little used, and nobody came
+to interrupt the work. The night was dark, the sky heavy with
+moveless clouds.
+Lupin gave the Masher and the Growler their final instructions and
+said, with a laugh:
+“I can’t tell you how amused I am at the thought of seeing
+Daubrecq’s face when they proceed to take his scalp or slice his
+skin into ribbons. Upon my word, it’s worth the journey.”
+Clarisse also had taken a seat in the boat. He said to her:
+“Until we meet again. And, above all, don’t stir. Whatever happens,
+not a movement, not a cry.”
+“Can anything happen?” she asked.
+“Why, remember the Sire de Tancarville! It was at the very moment
+when he was achieving his object, with his true love in his arms,
+that an accident betrayed him. But be easy: I shall be all right.”
+She made no reply. She seized his hand and grasped it warmly
+between her own.
+He put his foot on the ladder and made sure that it did not sway
+too much. Then he went up.
+He soon reached the top rung.
+This was where the dangerous ascent began, a difficult ascent at
+the start, because of the excessive steepness, and developing,
+mid-way, into an absolute escalade.
+Fortunately, here and there were little hollows, in which his feet
+found a resting-place, and projecting stones, to which his hands
+clung. But twice those stones gave way and he slipped; and twice
+he firmly believed that all was lost. Finding a deeper hollow, he
+took a rest. He was worn out, felt quite ready to throw up the
+enterprise, asked himself if it was really worth while for him to
+expose himself to such danger:
+“I say!” he thought. “Seems to me you’re showing the white feather,
+Lupin, old boy. Throw up the enterprise? Then Daubrecq will babble
+his secret, the marquis will possess himself of the list, Lupin
+will return empty-handed, and Gilbert....”
+The long rope which he had fastened round his waist caused him
+needless inconvenience and fatigue. He fixed one of the ends to the
+strap of his trousers and let the rope uncoil all the way down the
+ascent, so that he could use it, on returning, as a hand-rail.
+Then he once more clutched at the rough surface of the cliff and
+continued the climb, with bruised nails and bleeding fingers. At
+every moment he expected the inevitable fall. And what discouraged
+him most was to hear the murmur of voices rising from the boat,
+murmur so distinct that it seemed as though he were not increasing
+the distance between his companions and himself.
+And he remembered the Sire de Tancarville, alone, he too, amid the
+darkness, who must have shivered at the noise of the stones which
+he loosened and sent bounding down the cliff. How the least sound
+reverberated through the silence! If one of Daubrecq’s guards
+was peering into the gloom from the Lovers’ Tower, it meant a
+shot . . . and death.
+And he climbed . . . he climbed.... He had climbed so long that he
+ended by imagining that the goal was passed. Beyond a doubt, he
+had slanted unawares to the right or left and he would finish at
+the patrol-path. What a stupid upshot! And what other upshot could
+there be to an attempt which the swift force of events had not
+allowed him to study and prepare?
+Madly, he redoubled his efforts, raised himself by a number of
+yards, slipped, recovered the lost ground, clutched a bunch of
+roots that came loose in his hand, slipped once more and was
+abandoning the game in despair when, suddenly, stiffening himself
+and contracting his whole frame, his muscles and his will, he
+stopped still: a sound of voices seemed to issue from the very rock
+which he was grasping.
+He listened. It came from the right. Turning his head, he thought
+that he saw a ray of light penetrating the darkness of space. By
+what effort of energy, by what imperceptible movements he succeeded
+in dragging himself to the spot he was never able exactly to
+realize. But suddenly he found himself on the ledge of a fairly
+wide opening, at least three yards deep, which dug into the wall of
+the cliff like a passage, while its other end, much narrower, was
+closed by three bars.
+Lupin crawled along. His head reached the bars. And he saw....
+CHAPTER VIII.
+THE LOVERS’ TOWER
+The torture-chamber showed beneath him. It was a large, irregular
+room, divided into unequal portions by the four wide, massive
+pillars that supported its arched roof. A smell of damp and mildew
+came from its walls and from its flags moistened by the water that
+trickled from without. Its appearance at any time must have been
+gruesome. But, at that moment, with the tall figures of Sébastiani
+and his sons, with the slanting gleams of light that fell between
+the pillars, with the vision of the captive chained down upon the
+truckle-bed, it assumed a sinister and barbarous aspect.
+Daubrecq was in the front part of the room, four or five yards down
+from the window at which Lupin lurked. In addition to the ancient
+chains that had been used to fasten him to his bed and to fasten
+the bed to an iron hook in the wall, his wrists and ankles were
+girt with leather thongs; and an ingenious arrangement caused his
+least movement to set in motion a bell hung to the nearest pillar.
+A lamp placed on a stool lit him full in the face.
+The Marquis d’Albufex was standing beside him. Lupin could see
+his pale features, his grizzled moustache, his long, lean form as
+he looked at his prisoner with an expression of content and of
+gratified hatred.
+A few minutes passed in profound silence. Then the marquis gave an
+order:
+“Light those three candles, Sébastiani, so that I can see him
+better.”
+And, when the three candles were lit and he had taken a long look
+at Daubrecq, he stooped over him and said, almost gently:
+“I can’t say what will be the end of you and me. But at any rate
+I shall have had some deuced happy moments in this room. You have
+done me so much harm, Daubrecq! The tears you have made me shed!
+Yes, real tears, real sobs of despair.... The money you have robbed
+me of! A fortune!... And my terror at the thought that you might
+give me away! You had but to utter my name to complete my ruin and
+bring about my disgrace!... Oh, you villain!...”
+Daubrecq did not budge. He had been deprived of his black glasses,
+but still kept his spectacles, which reflected the light from the
+candles. He had lost a good deal of flesh; and the bones stood out
+above his sunken cheeks.
+“Come along,” said d’Albufex. “The time has come to act. It seems
+that there are rogues prowling about the neighbourhood. Heaven
+forbid that they are here on your account and try to release you;
+for that would mean your immediate death, as you know.... Is the
+trapdoor still in working order, Sébastiani?”
+Sébastiani came nearer, knelt on one knee and lifted and turned a
+ring, at the foot of the bed, which Lupin had not noticed. One of
+the flagstones moved on a pivot, disclosing a black hole.
+“You see,” the marquis continued, “everything is provided for; and
+I have all that I want at hand, including dungeons: bottomless
+dungeons, says the legend of the castle. So there is nothing to
+hope for, no help of any kind. Will you speak?”
+Daubrecq did not reply; and he went on:
+“This is the fourth time that I am questioning you, Daubrecq. It is
+the fourth time that I have troubled to ask you for the document
+which you possess, in order that I may escape your blackmailing
+proceedings. It is the fourth time and the last. Will you speak?”
+The same silence as before. D’Albufex made a sign to Sébastiani.
+The huntsman stepped forward, followed by two of his sons. One of
+them held a stick in his hand.
+“Go ahead,” said d’Albufex, after waiting a few seconds.
+Sébastiani slackened the thongs that bound Daubrecq’s wrists and
+inserted and fixed the stick between the thongs.
+“Shall I turn, monsieur le marquis?”
+A further silence. The marquis waited. Seeing that Daubrecq did not
+flinch, he whispered:
+“Can’t you speak? Why expose yourself to physical suffering?”
+No reply.
+“Turn away, Sébastiani.”
+Sébastiani made the stick turn a complete circle. The thongs
+stretched and tightened. Daubrecq gave a groan.
+“You won’t speak? Still, you know that I won’t give way, that I
+can’t give way, that I hold you and that, if necessary, I shall
+torture you till you die of it. You won’t speak? You won’t?...
+Sébastiani, once more.”
+The huntsman obeyed. Daubrecq gave a violent start of pain and fell
+back on his bed with a rattle in his throat.
+“You fool!” cried the marquis, shaking with rage. “Why don’t you
+speak? What, haven’t you had enough of that list? Surely it’s
+somebody else’s turn! Come, speak.... Where is it? One word. One
+word only . . . and we will leave you in peace.... And, to-morrow,
+when I have the list, you shall be free. Free, do you understand?
+But, in Heaven’s name, speak!... Oh, the brute! Sébastiani, one
+more turn.”
+Sébastiani made a fresh effort. The bones cracked.
+“Help! Help!” cried Daubrecq, in a hoarse voice, vainly struggling
+to release himself. And, in a spluttering whisper, “Mercy . . .
+mercy.”
+It was a dreadful sight.... The faces of the three sons were
+horror-struck. Lupin shuddered, sick at heart, and realized that
+he himself could never have accomplished that abominable thing. He
+listened for the words that were bound to come. He must learn the
+truth. Daubrecq’s secret was about to be expressed in syllables,
+in words wrung from him by pain. And Lupin began to think of his
+retreat, of the car which was waiting for him, of the wild rush to
+Paris, of the victory at hand.
+“Speak,” whispered d’Albufex. “Speak and it will be over.”
+“Yes . . . yes . . .” gasped Daubrecq.
+“Well...?”
+“Later . . . to-morrow....”
+“Oh, you’re mad!... What are you talking about: to-morrow?...
+Sébastiani, another turn!”
+“No, no!” yelled Daubrecq. “Stop!”
+“Speak!”
+“Well, then . . . the paper.... I have hidden the paper....”
+But his pain was too great. He raised his head with a last effort,
+uttered incoherent words, succeeded in twice saying, “Marie....
+Marie....” and fell back, exhausted and lifeless.
+“Let go at once!” said d’Albufex to Sébastiani. “Hang it all, can
+we have overdone it?”
+But a rapid examination showed him that Daubrecq had only fainted.
+Thereupon, he himself, worn out with the excitement, dropped on
+the foot of the bed and, wiping the beads of perspiration from his
+forehead, stammered:
+“Oh, what a dirty business!”
+“Perhaps that’s enough for to-day,” said the huntsman, whose rough
+face betrayed a certain emotion. “We might try again to-morrow or
+the next day....”
+The marquis was silent. One of the sons handed him a flask of
+brandy. He poured out half a glass and drank it down at a draught:
+“To-morrow?” he said. “No. Here and now. One little effort more. At
+the stage which he has reached, it won’t be difficult.” And, taking
+the huntsman aside, “Did you hear what he said? What did he mean by
+that word, ‘Marie’? He repeated it twice.”
+“Yes, twice,” said the huntsman. “Perhaps he entrusted the document
+to a person called Marie.”
+“Not he!” protested d’Albufex. “He never entrusts anything to
+anybody. It means something different.”
+“But what, monsieur le marquis?”
+“We’ll soon find out, I’ll answer for it.”
+At that moment, Daubrecq drew a long breath and stirred on his
+couch.
+D’Albufex, who had now recovered all his composure and who did not
+take his eyes off the enemy, went up to him and said:
+“You see, Daubrecq, it’s madness to resist.... Once you’re beaten,
+there’s nothing for it but to submit to your conqueror, instead
+of allowing yourself to be tortured like an idiot.... Come, be
+sensible.”
+He turned to Sébastiani:
+“Tighten the rope . . . let him feel it a little that will wake him
+up.... He’s shamming death....” Sébastiani took hold of the stick
+again and turned until the cord touched the swollen flesh. Daubrecq
+gave a start.
+“That’ll do, Sébastiani,” said the marquis. “Our friend seems
+favourably disposed and understands the need for coming to terms.
+That’s so, Daubrecq, is it not? You prefer to have done with it?
+And you’re quite right!”
+The two men were leaning over the sufferer, Sébastiani with his
+hand on the stick, d’Albufex holding the lamp so as to throw the
+light on Daubrecq’s face: “His lips are moving . . . he’s going
+to speak. Loosen the rope a little, Sébastiani: I don’t want our
+friend to be hurt.... No, tighten it: I believe our friend is
+hesitating.... One turn more . . . stop!... That’s done it! Oh, my
+dear Daubrecq, if you can’t speak plainer than that, it’s no use!
+What? What did you say?”
+Arsène Lupin muttered an oath. Daubrecq was speaking and he, Lupin,
+could not hear a word of what he said! In vain, he pricked up his
+ears, suppressed the beating of his heart and the throbbing of his
+temples: not a sound reached him.
+“Confound it!” he thought. “I never expected this. What am I to do?”
+He was within an ace of covering Daubrecq with his revolver and
+putting a bullet into him which would cut short any explanation.
+But he reflected that he himself would then be none the wiser and
+that it was better to trust to events in the hope of making the
+most of them.
+Meanwhile the confession continued beneath him, indistinctly,
+interrupted by silences and mingled with moans. D’Albufex clung to
+his prey:
+“Go on!... Finish, can’t you?...”
+And he punctuated the sentences with exclamations of approval:
+“Good!... Capital!... Oh, how funny!... And no one suspected?...
+Not even Prasville?... What an ass!... Loosen a bit, Sébastiani:
+don’t you see that our friend is out of breath?... Keep calm,
+Daubrecq . . . don’t tire yourself.... And so, my dear fellow, you
+were saying....”
+That was the last. There was a long whispering to which d’Albufex
+listened without further interruption and of which Arsène Lupin
+could not catch the least syllable. Then the marquis drew himself
+up and exclaimed, joyfully:
+“That’s it!.... Thank you, Daubrecq. And, believe me, I shall
+never forget what you have just done. If ever you’re in need, you
+have only to knock at my door and there will always be a crust of
+bread for you in the kitchen and a glass of water from the filter.
+Sébastiani, look after monsieur le député as if he were one of
+your sons. And, first of all, release him from his bonds. It’s a
+heartless thing to truss one’s fellow-man like that, like a chicken
+on the spit!”
+“Shall we give him something to drink?” suggested the huntsman.
+“Yes, that’s it, give him a drink.”
+Sébastiani and his sons undid the leather straps, rubbed the
+bruised wrists, dressed them with an ointment and bandaged them.
+Then Daubrecq swallowed a few drops of brandy.
+“Feeling better?” said the marquis. “Pooh, it’s nothing much! In
+a few hours, it won’t show; and you’ll be able to boast of having
+been tortured, as in the good old days of the Inquisition. You
+lucky dog!”
+He took out his watch. “Enough said! Sébastiani, let your sons
+watch him in turns. You, take me to the station for the last train.”
+“Then are we to leave him like that, monsieur le marquis, free to
+move as he pleases?”
+“Why not? You don’t imagine that we are going to keep him here to
+the day of his death? No, Daubrecq, sleep quietly. I shall go to
+your place to-morrow afternoon; and, if the document is where you
+told me, a telegram shall be sent off at once and you shall be set
+free. You haven’t told me a lie, I suppose?”
+He went back to Daubrecq and, stooping over him again:
+“No humbug, eh? That would be very silly of you. I should lose a
+day, that’s all. Whereas you would lose all the days that remain to
+you to live. But no, the hiding-place is too good. A fellow doesn’t
+invent a thing like that for fun. Come on, Sébastiani. You shall
+have the telegram to-morrow.”
+“And suppose they don’t let you into the house, monsieur le
+marquis?”
+“Why shouldn’t they?”
+“The house in the Square Lamartine is occupied by Prasville’s men.”
+“Don’t worry, Sébastiani. I shall get in. If they don’t open the
+door, there’s always the window. And, if the window won’t open,
+I shall arrange with one of Prasville’s men. It’s a question of
+money, that’s all. And, thank goodness, I shan’t be short of that,
+henceforth! Good-night, Daubrecq.”
+He went out, accompanied by Sébastiani, and the heavy door closed
+after them.
+Lupin at once effected his retreat, in accordance with a plan which
+he had worked out during this scene.
+The plan was simple enough: to scramble, by means of his rope,
+to the bottom of the cliff, take his friends with him, jump into
+the motor-car and attack d’Albufex and Sébastiani on the deserted
+road that leads to Aumale Station. There could be no doubt about
+the issue of the contest. With d’Albufex and Sébastiani prisoners;
+it would be an easy matter to make one of them speak. D’Albufex
+had shown him how to set about it; and Clarisse Mergy would be
+inflexible where it was a question of saving her son.
+He took the rope with which he had provided himself and groped
+about to find a jagged piece of rock round which to pass it, so
+as to leave two equal lengths hanging, by which he could let
+himself down. But, when he found what he wanted, instead of
+acting swiftly--for the business was urgent--he stood motionless,
+thinking. His scheme failed to satisfy him at the last moment.
+“It’s absurd, what I’m proposing,” he said to himself. “Absurd and
+illogical. How can I tell that d’Albufex and Sébastiani will not
+escape me? How can I even tell that, once they are in my power,
+they will speak? No, I shall stay. There are better things to
+try . . . much better things. It’s not those two I must be at, but
+Daubrecq. He’s done for; he has not a kick left in him. If he has
+told the marquis his secret, there is no reason why he shouldn’t
+tell it to Clarisse and me, when we employ the same methods.
+That’s settled! We’ll kidnap the Daubrecq bird.” And he continued,
+“Besides, what do I risk? If the scheme miscarries, Clarisse and
+I will rush off to Paris and, together with Prasville, organize a
+careful watch in the Square Lamartine to prevent d’Albufex from
+benefiting by Daubrecq’s revelations. The great thing is for
+Prasville to be warned of the danger. He shall be.”
+The church-clock in a neighbouring village struck twelve. That gave
+Lupin six or seven hours to put his new plan into execution. He set
+to work forthwith.
+When moving away from the embrasure which had the window at the
+bottom of it, he had come upon a clump of small shrubs in one of
+the hollows of the cliff. He cut away a dozen of these, with his
+knife, and whittled them all down to the same size. Then he cut off
+two equal lengths from his rope. These were the uprights of the
+ladder. He fastened the twelve little sticks between the uprights
+and thus contrived a rope-ladder about six yards long.
+When he returned to this post, there was only one of the three sons
+beside Daubrecq’s bed in the torture-chamber. He was smoking his
+pipe by the lamp. Daubrecq was asleep.
+“Hang it!” thought Lupin. “Is the fellow going to sit there all
+night? In that case, there’s nothing for me to do but to slip
+off....”
+The idea that d’Albufex was in possession of the secret vexed him
+mightily. The interview at which he had assisted had left the clear
+impression in his mind that the marquis was working “on his own”
+and that, in securing the list, he intended not only to escape
+Daubrecq’s activity, but also to gain Daubrecq’s power and build up
+his fortune anew by the identical means which Daubrecq had employed.
+That would have meant, for Lupin, a fresh battle to wage against
+a fresh enemy. The rapid march of events did not allow of the
+contemplation of such a possibility. He must at all costs spike the
+Marquis d’Albufex’ guns by warning Prasville.
+However, Lupin remained held back by the stubborn hope of some
+incident that would give him the opportunity of acting.
+The clock struck half-past twelve.
+It struck one.
+The waiting became terrible, all the more so as an icy mist rose
+from the valley and Lupin felt the cold penetrate to his very
+marrow.
+He heard the trot of a horse in the distance:
+“Sébastiani returning from the station,” he thought.
+But the son who was watching in the torture-chamber, having
+finished his packet of tobacco, opened the door and asked his
+brothers if they had a pipeful for him. They made some reply; and
+he went out to go to the lodge.
+And Lupin was astounded. No sooner was the door closed than
+Daubrecq, who had been so sound asleep, sat up on his couch,
+listened, put one foot to the ground, followed by the other, and,
+standing up, tottering a little, but firmer on his legs than one
+would have expected, tried his strength.
+“Well” said Lupin, “the beggar doesn’t take long recovering. He
+can very well help in his own escape. There’s just one point that
+ruffles me: will he allow himself to be convinced? Will he consent
+to go with me? Will he not think that this miraculous assistance
+which comes to him straight from heaven is a trap laid by the
+marquis?”
+But suddenly Lupin remembered the letter which he had made
+Daubrecq’s old cousins write, the letter of recommendation, so to
+speak, which the elder of the two sisters Rousselot had signed with
+her Christian name, Euphrasie.
+It was in his pocket. He took it and listened. Not a sound, except
+the faint noise of Daubrecq’s footsteps on the flagstones. Lupin
+considered that the moment had come. He thrust his arm through the
+bars and threw the letter in.
+Daubrecq seemed thunderstruck.
+The letter had fluttered through the room and lay on the floor, at
+three steps from him. Where did it come from? He raised his head
+toward the window and tried to pierce the darkness that hid all
+the upper part of the room from his eyes. Then he looked at the
+envelope, without yet daring to touch it, as though he dreaded
+a snare. Then, suddenly, after a glance at the door, he stooped
+briskly, seized the envelope and opened it.
+“Ah,” he said, with a sigh of delight, when he saw the signature.
+He read the letter half-aloud:
+“Rely implicitly on the bearer of this note. He has succeeded
+in discovering the marquis’ secret, with the money which we
+gave him, and has contrived a plan of escape. Everything is
+prepared for your flight.
+“EUPHRASIE ROUSSELOT.”
+He read the letter again, repeated, “Euphrasie.... Euphrasie....”
+and raised his head once more.
+Lupin whispered:
+“It will take me two or three hours to file through one of the
+bars. Are Sébastiani and his sons coming back?”
+“Yes, they are sure to,” replied Daubrecq, in the same low voice,
+“but I expect they will leave me to myself.”
+“But they sleep next door?”
+“Yes.”
+“Won’t they hear?”
+“No, the door is too thick.”
+“Very well. In that case, it will soon be done. I have a
+rope-ladder. Will you be able to climb up alone, without my
+assistance?”
+“I think so.... I’ll try.... It’s my wrists that they’ve broken....
+Oh, the brutes! I can hardly move my hands . . . and I have very
+little strength left. But I’ll try all the same . . . needs
+must....”
+He stopped, listened and, with his finger to his mouth, whispered:
+“Hush!”
+When Sébastiani and his sons entered the room, Daubrecq, who had
+hidden the letter and lain down on his bed, pretended to wake with
+a start.
+The huntsman brought him a bottle of wine, a glass and some food:
+“How goes it, monsieur le député?” he cried. “Well, perhaps we did
+squeeze a little hard.... It’s very painful, that thumbscrewing.
+Seems they often did it at the time of the Great Revolution and
+Bonaparte . . . in the days of the _chauffeurs_.[C] A pretty
+invention! Nice and clean . . . no bloodshed.... And it didn’t
+last long either! In twenty minutes, you came out with the missing
+word!” Sébastiani burst out laughing. “By the way, monsieur le
+député, my congratulations! A capital hiding-place. Who would ever
+suspect it?... You see, what put us off, monsieur le marquis and
+me, was that name of Marie which you let out at first. You weren’t
+telling a lie; but there you are, you know: the word was only
+half-finished. We had to know the rest. Say what you like, it’s
+amusing! Just think, on your study-table! Upon my word, what a
+joke!”
+The huntsman rose and walked up and down the room, rubbing his
+hands:
+“Monsieur le marquis is jolly well pleased, so pleased, in fact,
+that he himself is coming to-morrow evening to let you out. Yes, he
+has thought it over; there will be a few formalities: you may have
+to sign a cheque or two, stump up, what, and make good monsieur le
+marquis’ expense and trouble. But what’s that to you? A trifle!
+Not to mention that, from now on, there will be no more chains, no
+more straps round your wrists; in short, you will be treated like
+a king! And I’ve even been told--look here!--to allow you a good
+bottle of old wine and a flask of brandy.”
+Sébastiani let fly a few more jests, then took the lamp, made a
+last examination of the room and said to his sons:
+“Let’s leave him to sleep. You also, take a rest, all three of you.
+But sleep with one eye open. One never can tell....” They withdrew.
+Lupin waited a little longer and asked, in a low voice:
+“Can I begin?”
+“Yes, but be careful. It’s not impossible that they may go on a
+round in an hour or two.”
+Lupin set to work. He had a very powerful file; and the iron of
+the bars, rusted and gnawed away by time, was, in places, almost
+reduced to dust. Twice Lupin stopped to listen, with ears pricked
+up. But it was only the patter of a rat over the rubbish in the
+upper story, or the flight of some night-bird; and he continued his
+task, encouraged by Daubrecq, who stood by the door, ready to warn
+him at the least alarm.
+“Oof!” he said, giving a last stroke of the file. “I’m glad that’s
+over, for, on my word, I’ve been a bit cramped in this cursed
+tunnel . . . to say nothing of the cold....”
+He bore with all his strength upon the bar, which he had sawn from
+below, and succeeded in forcing it down sufficiently for a man’s
+body to slip between the two remaining bars. Next, he had to go
+back to the end of the embrasure, the wider part, where he had left
+the rope-ladder. After fixing it to the bars, he called Daubrecq:
+“Psst!... It’s all right.... Are you ready?”
+“Yes . . . coming.... One more second, while I listen.... All
+right.... They’re asleep.... give me the ladder.”
+Lupin lowered it and asked:
+“Must I come down?”
+“No.... I feel a little weak . . . but I shall manage.”
+Indeed, he reached the window of the embrasure pretty quickly and
+crept along the passage in the wake of his rescuer. The open air,
+however, seemed to make him giddy. Also, to give himself strength,
+he had drunk half the bottle of wine; and he had a fainting-fit
+that kept him lying on the stones of the embrasure for half an
+hour. Lupin, losing patience, was fastening him to one end of the
+rope, of which the other end was knotted round the bars and was
+preparing to let him down like a bale of goods, when Daubrecq woke
+up, in better condition:
+“That’s over,” he said. “I feel fit now. Will it take long?”
+“Pretty long. We are a hundred and fifty yards up.”
+“How was it that d’Albufex did not foresee that it was possible to
+escape this way?”
+“The cliff is perpendicular.”
+“And you were able to....”
+“Well, your cousins insisted.... And then one has to live, you
+know, and they were free with their money.”
+“The dear, good souls!” said Daubrecq. “Where are they?”
+“Down below, in a boat.”
+“Is there a river, then?”
+“Yes, but we won’t talk, if you don’t mind. It’s dangerous.”
+“One word more. Had you been there long when you threw me the
+letter?”
+“No, no. A quarter of an hour or so. I’ll tell you all about it....
+Meanwhile, we must hurry.”
+Lupin went first, after recommending Daubrecq to hold tight to the
+rope and to come down backward. He would give him a hand at the
+difficult places.
+It took them over forty minutes to reach the platform of the ledge
+formed by the cliff; and Lupin had several times to help his
+companion, whose wrists, still bruised from the torture, had lost
+all their strength and suppleness.
+Over and over again, he groaned:
+“Oh, the swine, they’ve done for me!... The swine!... Ah,
+d’Albufex, I’ll make you pay dear for this!...”
+“Ssh!” said Lupin.
+“What’s the matter?”
+“A noise . . . up above....”
+Standing motionless on the platform, they listened. Lupin thought
+of the Sire de Tancarville and the sentry who had killed him with
+a shot from his harquebus. He shivered, feeling all the anguish of
+the silence and the darkness.
+“No,” he said, “I was mistaken.... Besides, it’s absurd.... They
+can’t hit us here.”
+“Who would hit us?”
+“No one . . . no one... it was a silly notion....��
+He groped about till he found the uprights of the ladder; then he
+said:
+“There, here’s the ladder. It is fixed in the bed of the river. A
+friend of mine is looking after it, as well as your cousins.”
+He whistled:
+“Here I am,” he said, in a low voice. “Hold the ladder fast.” And,
+to Daubrecq, “I’ll go first.”
+Daubrecq objected:
+“Perhaps it would be better for me to go down first.”
+“Why?”
+“I am very tired. You can tie your rope round my waist and hold
+me.... Otherwise, there is a danger that I might....”
+“Yes, you are right,” said Lupin. “Come nearer.”
+Daubrecq came nearer and knelt down on the rock. Lupin fastened the
+rope to him and then, stooping over, grasped one of the uprights in
+both hands to keep the ladder from shaking:
+“Off you go,” he said.
+At the same moment, he felt a violent pain in the shoulder:
+“Blast it!” he said, sinking to the ground.
+Daubrecq had stabbed him with a knife below the nape of the neck, a
+little to the right.
+“You blackguard! You blackguard!”
+He half-saw Daubrecq, in the dark, ridding himself of his rope, and
+heard him whisper:
+“You’re a bit of a fool, you know!... You bring me a letter
+from my Rousselot cousins, in which I recognize the writing of
+the elder, Adelaide, but which that sly puss of an Adelaide,
+suspecting something and meaning to put me on my guard, if
+necessary, took care to sign with the name of the younger sister,
+Euphrasie Rousselot. You see, I tumbled to it! So, with a little
+reflection . . . you are Master Arsène Lupin, are you not?
+Clarisse’s protector, Gilbert’s saviour.... Poor Lupin, I fear
+you’re in a bad way.... I don’t use the knife often; but, when I
+do, I use it with a vengeance.”
+He bent over the wounded man and felt in his pockets:
+“Give me your revolver, can’t you? You see, your friends will know
+at once that it is not their governor; and they will try to secure
+me.... And, as I have not much strength left, a bullet or two....
+Good-bye, Lupin. We shall meet in the next world, eh? Book me a
+nice flat, with all the latest conveniences.
+“Good-bye, Lupin. And my best thanks. For really I don’t know what
+I should have done without you. By Jove, d’Albufex was hitting me
+hard! It’ll be a joke to meet the beggar again!”
+Daubrecq had completed his preparations. He whistled once more. A
+reply came from the boat.
+“Here I am,” he said.
+With a last effort, Lupin put out his arm to stop him. But his
+hand touched nothing but space. He tried to call out, to warn his
+accomplices: his voice choked in his throat.
+He felt a terrible numbness creep over his whole being. His temples
+buzzed.
+Suddenly, shouts below. Then a shot. Then another, followed by a
+triumphant chuckle. And a woman’s wail and moans. And, soon after,
+two more shots.
+Lupin thought of Clarisse, wounded, dead perhaps; of Daubrecq,
+fleeing victoriously; of d’Albufex; of the crystal stopper, which
+one or other of the two adversaries would recover unresisted. Then
+a sudden vision showed him the Sire de Tancarville falling with the
+woman he loved. Then he murmured, time after time:
+“Clarisse.... Clarisse.... Gilbert....” A great silence overcame
+him; an infinite peace entered into him; and, without the least
+revolt, he received the impression that his exhausted body, with
+nothing now to hold it back, was rolling to the very edge of the
+rock, toward the abyss.
+[C] The name given to the brigands in the Vendée, who tortured
+their victims with fire to make them confess where their money was
+hidden.--_Translator’s Note._
+CHAPTER IX.
+IN THE DARK
+An hotel bedroom at Amiens.
+Lupin was recovering a little consciousness for the first time.
+Clarisse and the Masher were seated by his bedside.
+Both were talking; and Lupin listened to them, without opening his
+eyes. He learned that they had feared for his life, but that all
+danger was now removed. Next, in the course of the conversation, he
+caught certain words that revealed to him what had happened in the
+tragic night at Mortepierre: Daubrecq’s descent; the dismay of the
+accomplices, when they saw that it was not the governor; then the
+short struggle: Clarisse flinging herself on Daubrecq and receiving
+a wound in the shoulder; Daubrecq leaping to the bank; the Growler
+firing two revolver-shots and darting off in pursuit of him; the
+Masher clambering up the ladder and finding the governor in a swoon:
+“True as I live,” said the Masher, “I can’t make out even now how
+he did not roll over. There was a sort of hollow at that place, but
+it was a sloping hollow; and, half dead as he was, he must have
+hung on with his ten fingers. Crikey, it was time I came!”
+Lupin listened, listened in despair. He collected his strength to
+grasp and understand the words. But suddenly a terrible sentence
+was uttered: Clarisse, weeping, spoke of the eighteen days that had
+elapsed, eighteen more days lost to Gilbert’s safety.
+Eighteen days! The figure terrified Lupin. He felt that all was
+over, that he would never be able to recover his strength and
+resume the struggle and that Gilbert and Vaucheray were doomed....
+His brain slipped away from him. The fever returned and the
+delirium.
+*       *       *       *       *
+And more days came and went. It was perhaps the time of his life
+of which Lupin speaks with the greatest horror. He retained just
+enough consciousness and had sufficiently lucid moments to realize
+the position exactly. But he was not able to coordinate his ideas,
+to follow a line of argument nor to instruct or forbid his friends
+to adopt this or that line of conduct.
+Often, when he emerged from his torpor, he found his hand in
+Clarisse’s and, in that half-slumbering condition in which a fever
+keeps you, he would address strange words to her, words of love and
+passion, imploring her and thanking her and blessing her for all
+the light and joy which she had brought into his darkness.
+Then, growing calmer and not fully understanding what he had said,
+he tried to jest:
+“I have been delirious, have I not? What a heap of nonsense I must
+have talked!”
+But Lupin felt by Clarisse’s silence that he could safely talk
+as much nonsense as ever his fever suggested to him. She did not
+hear. The care and attention which she lavished on the patient, her
+devotion, her vigilance, her alarm at the least relapse: all this
+was meant not for him, but for the possible saviour of Gilbert. She
+anxiously watched the progress of his convalescence. How soon would
+he be fit to resume the campaign? Was it not madness to linger by
+his side, when every day carried away a little hope?
+Lupin never ceased repeating to himself, with the inward belief
+that, by so doing, he could influence the course of his illness:
+“I will get well.... I will get well....”
+And he lay for days on end without moving, so as not to disturb the
+dressing of his wound nor increase the excitement of his nerves in
+the smallest degree.
+He also strove not to think of Daubrecq. But the image of his dire
+adversary haunted him; and he reconstituted the various phases
+of the escape, the descent of the cliff.... One day, struck by a
+terrible memory, he exclaimed:
+“The list! The list of the Twenty-seven! Daubrecq must have it by
+now . . . or else d’Albufex. It was on the table!”
+Clarisse reassured him:
+“No one can have taken it,” she declared. “The Growler was in Paris
+that same day, with a note from me for Prasville, entreating him to
+redouble his watch in the Square Lamartine, so that no one should
+enter, especially d’Albufex....”
+“But Daubrecq?”
+“He is wounded. He cannot have gone home.”
+“Ah, well,” he said, “that’s all right!... But you too were
+wounded....”
+“A mere scratch on the shoulder.”
+Lupin was easier in his mind after these revelations. Nevertheless,
+he was pursued by stubborn notions which he was unable either to
+drive from his brain or to put into words. Above all, he thought
+incessantly of that name of “Marie” which Daubrecq’s sufferings
+had drawn from him. What did the name refer to? Was it the title
+of one of the books on the shelves, or a part of the title? Would
+the book in question supply the key to the mystery? Or was it the
+combination word of a safe? Was it a series of letters written
+somewhere: on a wall, on a paper, on a wooden panel, on the mount
+of a drawing, on an invoice?
+These questions, to which he was unable to find a reply, obsessed
+and exhausted him.
+One morning Arsène Lupin woke feeling a great deal better. The
+wound was closed, the temperature almost normal. The doctor, a
+personal friend, who came every day from Paris, promised that he
+might get up two days later. And, on that day, in the absence of
+his accomplices and of Mme. Mergy, all three of whom had left two
+days before, in quest of information, he had himself moved to the
+open window.
+He felt life return to him with the sunlight, with the balmy
+air that announced the approach of spring. He recovered the
+concatenation of his ideas; and facts once more took their place in
+his brain in their logical sequence and in accordance with their
+relations one to the other.
+In the evening he received a telegram from Clarisse to say that
+things were going badly and that she, the Growler and the Masher
+were all staying in Paris. He was much disturbed by this wire and
+had a less quiet night. What could the news be that had given rise
+to Clarisse’s telegram?
+But, the next day, she arrived in his room looking very pale, her
+eyes red with weeping, and, utterly worn out, dropped into a chair:
+“The appeal has been rejected,” she stammered.
+He mastered his emotion and asked, in a voice of surprise:
+“Were you relying on that?”
+“No, no,” she said, “but, all the same . . . one hopes in spite of
+one’s self.”
+“Was it rejected yesterday?”
+“A week ago. The Masher kept it from me; and I have not dared to
+read the papers lately.”
+“There is always the commutation of sentence,” he suggested.
+“The commutation? Do you imagine that they will commute the
+sentence of Arsène Lupin’s accomplices?”
+She ejaculated the words with a violence and a bitterness which he
+pretended not to notice; and he said:
+“Vaucheray perhaps not.... But they will take pity on Gilbert, on
+his youth....”
+“They will do nothing of the sort.”
+“How do you know?”
+“I have seen his counsel.”
+“You have seen his counsel! And you told him....”
+“I told him that I was Gilbert’s mother and I asked him whether,
+by proclaiming my son’s identity, we could not influence the
+result . . . or at least delay it.”
+“You would do that?” he whispered. “You would admit....”
+“Gilbert’s life comes before everything. What do I care about my
+name! What do I care about my husband’s name!”
+“And your little Jacques?” he objected. “Have you the right to ruin
+Jacques, to make him the brother of a man condemned to death?”
+She hung her head. And he resumed:
+“What did the counsel say?”
+“He said that an act of that sort would not help Gilbert in the
+remotest degree. And, in spite of all his protests, I could see
+that, as far as he was concerned, he had no illusions left and
+that the pardoning commission are bound to find in favour of the
+execution.”
+“The commission, I grant you; but what of the president of the
+Republic?”
+“The president always goes by the advice of the commission.”
+“He will not do so this time.”
+“And why not?”
+“Because we shall bring influence to bear upon him.”
+“How?”
+“By the conditional surrender of the list of the Twenty-seven!”
+“Have you it?”
+“No, but I shall have it.”
+His certainty had not wavered. He made the statement with equal
+calmness and faith in the infinite power of his will.
+She had lost some part of her confidence in him and she shrugged
+her shoulders lightly:
+“If d’Albufex has not purloined the list, one man alone can
+exercise any influence; one man alone: Daubrecq.”
+She spoke these words in a low and absent voice that made him
+shudder. Was she still thinking, as he had often seemed to feel, of
+going back to Daubrecq and paying him for Gilbert’s life?
+“You have sworn an oath to me,” he said. “I’m reminding you of it.
+It was agreed that the struggle with Daubrecq should be directed by
+me and that there would never be a possibility of any arrangement
+between you and him.”
+She retorted:
+“I don’t even know where he is. If I knew, wouldn’t you know?”
+It was an evasive answer. But he did not insist, resolving to watch
+her at the opportune time; and he asked her, for he had not yet
+been told all the details:
+“Then it’s not known what became of Daubrecq?”
+“No. Of course, one of the Growler’s bullets struck him. For, next
+day, we picked up, in a coppice, a handkerchief covered with blood.
+Also, it seems that a man was seen at Aumale Station, looking very
+tired and walking with great difficulty. He took a ticket for
+Paris, stepped into the first train and that is all....”
+“He must be seriously wounded,” said Lupin, “and he is nursing
+himself in some safe retreat. Perhaps, also, he considers it wise
+to lie low for a few weeks and avoid any traps on the part of the
+police, d’Albufex, you, myself and all his other enemies.”
+He stopped to think and continued:
+“What has happened at Mortepierre since Daubrecq’s escape? Has
+there been no talk in the neighbourhood?”
+“No, the rope was removed before daybreak, which proves that
+Sébastiani or his sons discovered Daubrecq’s flight on the same
+night. Sébastiani was away the whole of the next day.”
+“Yes, he will have informed the marquis. And where is the marquis
+himself?”
+“At home. And, from what the Growler has heard, there is nothing
+suspicious there either.”
+“Are they certain that he has not been inside Daubrecq’s house?”
+“As certain as they can be.”
+“Nor Daubrecq?”
+“Nor Daubrecq.”
+“Have you seen Prasville?”
+“Prasville is away on leave. But Chief-inspector Blanchon, who has
+charge of the case, and the detectives who are guarding the house
+declare that, in accordance with Prasville’s instructions, their
+watch is not relaxed for a moment, even at night; that one of them,
+turn and turn about, is always on duty in the study; and that no
+one, therefore, can have gone in.”
+“So, on principle,” Arsène Lupin concluded, “the crystal stopper
+must still be in Daubrecq’s study?”
+“If it was there before Daubrecq’s disappearance, it should be
+there now.”
+“And on the study-table.”
+“On the study-table? Why do you say that?”
+“Because I know,” said Lupin, who had not forgotten Sébastiani’s
+words.
+“But you don’t know the article in which the stopper is hidden?”
+“No. But a study-table, a writing-desk, is a limited space. One can
+explore it in twenty minutes. One can demolish it, if necessary, in
+ten.”
+The conversation had tired Arsène Lupin a little. As he did not
+wish to commit the least imprudence, he said to Clarisse:
+“Listen. I will ask you to give me two or three days more. This is
+Monday, the 4th of March. On Wednesday or Thursday, at latest, I
+shall be up and about. And you can be sure that we shall succeed.”
+“And, in the meantime....”
+“In the meantime, go back to Paris. Take rooms, with the Growler
+and the Masher, in the Hôtel Franklin, near the Trocadero, and keep
+a watch on Daubrecq’s house. You are free to go in and out as you
+please. Stimulate the zeal of the detectives on duty.”
+“Suppose Daubrecq returns?”
+“If he returns, that will be so much the better: we shall have him.”
+“And, if he only passes?”
+“In that case, the Growler and the Masher must follow him.”
+“And if they lose sight of him?”
+Lupin did not reply. No one felt more than he how fatal it was to
+remain inactive in a hotel bedroom and how useful his presence
+would have been on the battlefield! Perhaps even this vague idea
+had already prolonged his illness beyond the ordinary limits.
+He murmured:
+“Go now, please.”
+There was a constraint between them which increased as the awful
+day drew nigh. In her injustice, forgetting or wishing to forget
+that it was she who had forced her son into the Enghien enterprise,
+Mme. Mergy did not forget that the law was pursuing Gilbert with
+such rigour not so much because he was a criminal as because he
+was an accomplice of Arsène Lupin’s. And then, notwithstanding all
+his efforts, notwithstanding his prodigious expenditure of energy,
+what result had Lupin achieved, when all was said? How far had his
+intervention benefited Gilbert?
+After a pause, she rose and left him alone.
+The next day he was feeling rather low. But on the day after, the
+Wednesday, when his doctor wanted him to keep quiet until the end
+of the week, he said:
+“If not, what have I to fear?”
+“A return of the fever.”
+“Nothing worse?”
+“No. The wound is pretty well healed.”
+“Then I don’t care. I’ll go back with you in your car. We shall be
+in Paris by mid-day.”
+What decided Lupin to start at once was, first, a letter in which
+Clarisse told him that she had found Daubrecq’s traces, and, also,
+a telegram, published in the Amiens papers, which stated that the
+Marquis d’Albufex had been arrested for his complicity in the
+affair of the canal.
+Daubrecq was taking his revenge.
+Now the fact that Daubrecq was taking his revenge proved that the
+marquis had not been able to prevent that revenge by seizing the
+document which was on the writing-desk in the study. It proved
+that Chief-inspector Blanchon and the detectives had kept a good
+watch. It proved that the crystal stopper was still in the Square
+Lamartine.
+It was still there; and this showed either that Daubrecq had not
+ventured to go home, or else that his state of health hindered him
+from doing so, or else again that he had sufficient confidence in
+the hiding-place not to trouble to put himself out.
+In any case, there was no doubt as to the course to be pursued:
+Lupin must act and he must act smartly. He must forestall Daubrecq
+and get hold of the crystal stopper.
+When they had crossed the Bois de Boulogne and were nearing the
+Square Lamartine, Lupin took leave of the doctor and stopped the
+car. The Growler and the Masher, to whom he had wired, met him.
+“Where’s Mme. Mergy?” he asked.
+“She has not been back since yesterday; she sent us an express
+message to say that she saw Daubrecq leaving his cousins’ place and
+getting into a cab. She knows the number of the cab and will keep
+us informed.”
+“Nothing further?”
+“Nothing further.”
+“No other news?”
+“Yes, the _Paris-Midi_ says that d’Albufex opened his veins last
+night, with a piece of broken glass, in his cell at the Santé. He
+seems to have left a long letter behind him, confessing his fault,
+but accusing Daubrecq of his death and exposing the part played by
+Daubrecq in the canal affair.”
+“Is that all?”
+“No. The same paper stated that it has reason to believe that the
+pardoning commission, after examining the record, has rejected
+Vaucheray and Gilbert’s petition and that their counsel will
+probably be received in audience by the president on Friday.”
+Lupin gave a shudder.
+“They’re losing no time,” he said. “I can see that Daubrecq, on
+the very first day, put the screw on the old judicial machine. One
+short week more . . . and the knife falls. My poor Gilbert! If, on
+Friday next, the papers which your counsel submits to the president
+of the Republic do not contain the conditional offer of the list of
+the Twenty-seven, then, my poor Gilbert, you are done for!”
+“Come, come, governor, are you losing courage?”
+“I? Rot! I shall have the crystal stopper in an hour. In two hours,
+I shall see Gilbert’s counsel. And the nightmare will be over.”
+“Well done, governor! That’s like your old self. Shall we wait for
+you here?”
+“No, go back to your hotel. I’ll join you later.”
+They parted. Lupin walked straight to the house and rang the bell.
+A detective opened the door and recognized him:
+“M. Nicole, I believe?��
+“Yes,” he said. “Is Chief-inspector Blanchon here?”
+“He is.”
+“Can I speak to him?”
+The man took him to the study, where Chief-inspector Blanchon
+welcomed him with obvious pleasure.
+“Well, chief-inspector, one would say there was something new?”
+“M. Nicole, my orders are to place myself entirely at your
+disposal; and I may say that I am very glad to see you to-day.”
+“Why so?”
+“Because there is something new.”
+“Something serious?”
+“Something very serious.”
+“Quick, speak.”
+“Daubrecq has returned.”
+“Eh, what!” exclaimed Lupin, with a start. “Daubrecq returned? Is
+he here?”
+“No, he has gone.”
+“And did he come in here, in the study?”
+“Yes.”
+“This morning.”
+“And you did not prevent him?”
+“What right had I?”
+“And you left him alone?”
+“By his positive orders, yes, we left him alone.”
+Lupin felt himself turn pale. Daubrecq had come back to fetch the
+crystal stopper!
+He was silent for some time and repeated to himself:
+“He came back to fetch it.... He was afraid that it would be
+found and he has taken it.... Of course, it was inevitable . . .
+with d’Albufex arrested, with d’Albufex accused and accusing him,
+Daubrecq was bound to defend himself. It’s a difficult game for
+him. After months and months of mystery, the public is at last
+learning that the infernal being who contrived the whole tragedy
+of the Twenty-Seven and who ruins and kills his adversaries is he,
+Daubrecq. What would become of him if, by a miracle, his talisman
+did not protect him? He has taken it back.”
+And, trying to make his voice sound firm, he asked:
+“Did he stay long?”
+“Twenty seconds, perhaps.”
+“What! Twenty seconds? No longer?”
+“No longer.”
+“What time was it?”
+“Ten o’clock.”
+“Could he have known of the Marquis d’Albufex’ suicide by then?”
+“Yes. I saw the special edition of the _Paris-Midi_ in his pocket.”
+“That’s it, that’s it,” said Lupin. And he asked, “Did M. Prasville
+give you no special instructions in case Daubrecq should return?”
+“No. So, in M. Prasville’s absence, I telephoned to the
+police-office and I am waiting. The disappearance of Daubrecq the
+deputy caused a great stir, as you know, and our presence here has
+a reason, in the eyes of the public, as long as that disappearance
+continues. But, now that Daubrecq has returned, now that we have
+proofs that he is neither under restraint nor dead, how can we stay
+in the house?”
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Lupin, absently. “It doesn’t matter
+whether the house is guarded or not. Daubrecq has been; therefore
+the crystal stopper is no longer here.”
+He had not finished the sentence, when a question quite naturally
+forced itself upon his mind. If the crystal stopper was no longer
+there, would this not be obvious from some material sign? Had the
+removal of that object, doubtless contained within another object,
+left no trace, no void?
+It was easy to ascertain. Lupin had simply to examine the
+writing-desk, for he knew, from Sébastiani’s chaff, that this was
+the spot of the hiding-place. And the hiding-place could not be a
+complicated one, seeing that Daubrecq had not remained in the study
+for more than twenty seconds, just long enough, so to speak, to
+walk in and walk out again.
+Lupin looked. And the result was immediate. His memory had
+so faithfully recorded the picture of the desk, with all the
+articles lying on it, that the absence of one of them struck
+him instantaneously, as though that article and that alone were
+the characteristic sign which distinguished this particular
+writing-table from every other table in the world.
+“Oh,” he thought, quivering with delight, “everything fits in!
+Everything!... Down to that half-word which the torture drew from
+Daubrecq in the tower at Mortepierre! The riddle is solved. There
+need be no more hesitation, no more groping in the dark. The end is
+in sight.”
+And, without answering the inspector’s questions, he thought of the
+simplicity of the hiding-place and remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s
+wonderful story in which the stolen letter, so eagerly sought for,
+is, in a manner of speaking, displayed to all eyes. People do not
+suspect what does not appear to be hidden.
+“Well, well,” said Lupin, as he went out, greatly excited by his
+discovery, “I seem doomed, in this confounded adventure, to knock
+up against disappointments to the finish. Everything that I build
+crumbles to pieces at once. Every victory ends in disaster.”
+Nevertheless, he did not allow himself to be cast down. On the
+one hand, he now knew where Daubrecq the deputy hid the crystal
+stopper. On the other hand, he would soon learn from Clarisse Mergy
+where Daubrecq himself was lurking. The rest, to him, would be
+child’s play.
+The Growler and the Masher were waiting for him in the drawing-room
+of the Hôtel Franklin, a small family-hotel near the Trocadero.
+Mme. Mergy had not yet written to him.
+“Oh,” he said, “I can trust her! She will hang on to Daubrecq until
+she is certain.”
+However, toward the end of the afternoon, he began to grow
+impatient and anxious. He was fighting one of those battles--the
+last, he hoped--in which the least delay might jeopardize
+everything. If Daubrecq threw Mme. Mergy off the scent, how was he
+to be caught again? They no longer had weeks or days, but only a
+few hours, a terribly limited number of hours, in which to repair
+any mistakes that they might commit.
+He saw the proprietor of the hotel and asked him:
+“Are you sure that there is no express letter for my two friends?”
+“Quite sure, sir.”
+“Nor for me, M. Nicole?”
+“No, sir.”
+“That’s curious,” said Lupin. “We were certain that we should hear
+from Mme. Audran.”
+Audran was the name under which Clarisse was staying at the hotel.
+“But the lady has been,” said the proprietor.
+“What’s that?”
+“She came some time ago and, as the gentlemen were not there, left
+a letter in her room. Didn’t the porter tell you?”
+Lupin and his friends hurried upstairs. There was a letter on the
+table.
+“Hullo!” said Lupin. “It’s been opened! How is that? And why has it
+been cut about with scissors?”
+The letter contained the following lines:
+“Daubrecq has spent the week at the Hôtel Central. This morning
+he had his luggage taken to the Gare de ---- and telephoned to
+reserve a berth in the sleeping-car ---- for ----
+“I do not know when the train starts. But I shall be at the
+station all the afternoon. Come as soon as you can, all three
+of you. We will arrange to kidnap him.”
+“What next?” said the Masher. “At which station? And where’s the
+sleeping-car for? She has cut out just the words we wanted!”
+“Yes,” said the Growler. “Two snips with the scissors in each
+place; and the words which we most want are gone. Who ever saw such
+a thing? Has Mme. Mergy lost her head?”
+Lupin did not move. A rush of blood was beating at his temples with
+such violence that he glued his fists to them and pressed with all
+his might. His fever returned, burning and riotous, and his will,
+incensed to the verge of physical suffering, concentrated itself
+upon that stealthy enemy, which must be controlled then and there,
+if he himself did not wish to be irretrievably beaten.
+He muttered, very calmly:
+“Daubrecq has been here.”
+“Daubrecq!”
+“We can’t suppose that Mme. Mergy has been amusing herself by
+cutting out those two words. Daubrecq has been here. Mme. Mergy
+thought that she was watching him. He was watching her instead.”
+“How?”
+“Doubtless through that hall-porter who did not tell us that Mme.
+Mergy had been to the hotel, but who must have told Daubrecq.
+He came. He read the letter. And, by way of getting at us, he
+contented himself with cutting out the essential words.”
+“We can find out . . . we can ask....”
+“What’s the good? What’s the use of finding out how he came, when
+we know that he did come?”
+He examined the letter for some time, turned it over and over, then
+stood up and said:
+“Come along.”
+“Where to?”
+“Gare de Lyon.”
+“Are you sure?”
+“I am sure of nothing with Daubrecq. But, as we have to choose,
+according to the contents of the letter, between the Gare _de_
+l’Est and the Gare _de_ Lyon, [D] I am presuming that his business,
+his pleasure and his health are more likely to take Daubrecq in the
+direction of Marseilles and the Riviera than to the Gare de l’Est.”
+It was past seven when Lupin and his companions left the Hôtel
+Franklin. A motor-car took them across Paris at full speed, but
+they soon saw that Clarisse Mergy was not outside the station, nor
+in the waiting-rooms, nor on any of the platforms.
+“Still,” muttered Lupin, whose agitation grew as the obstacles
+increased, “still, if Daubrecq booked a berth in a sleeping-car, it
+can only have been in an evening train. And it is barely half-past
+seven!”
+A train was starting, the night express. They had time to rush
+along the corridor. Nobody . . . neither Mme. Mergy nor Daubrecq....
+But, as they were all three going, a porter accosted them near the
+refreshment-room:
+“Is one of you gentlemen looking for a lady?”
+“Yes, yes, . . . I am,” said Lupin. “Quick, what is it?”
+“Oh, it’s you, sir! The lady told me there might be three of you or
+two of you.... And I didn’t know....”
+“But, in heaven’s name, speak, man! What lady?”
+“The lady who spent the whole day on the pavement, with the
+luggage, waiting.”
+“Well, out with it! Has she taken a train?”
+“Yes, the _train-de-luxe_, at six-thirty: she made up her mind at
+the last moment, she told me to say. And I was also to say that the
+gentleman was in the same train and that they were going to Monte
+Carlo.”
+“Damn it!” muttered Lupin. “We ought to have taken the express just
+now! There’s nothing left but the evening trains, and they crawl!
+We’ve lost over three hours.”
+The wait seemed interminable. They booked their seats. They
+telephoned to the proprietor of the Hôtel Franklin to send on their
+letters to Monte Carlo. They dined. They read the papers. At last,
+at half-past nine, the train started.
+And so, by a really tragic series of circumstances, at the most
+critical moment of the contest, Lupin was turning his back on the
+battlefield and going away, at haphazard, to seek, he knew not
+where, and beat, he knew not how, the most formidable and elusive
+enemy that he had ever fought.
+And this was happening four days, five days at most, before the
+inevitable execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray.
+It was a bad and painful night for Lupin. The more he studied the
+situation the more terrible it appeared to him. On every side he
+was faced with uncertainty, darkness, confusion, helplessness.
+True, he knew the secret of the crystal stopper. But how was he to
+know that Daubrecq would not change or had not already changed his
+tactics? How was he to know that the list of the Twenty-seven was
+still inside that crystal stopper or that the crystal stopper was
+still inside the object where Daubrecq had first hidden it?
+And there was a further serious reason for alarm in the fact that
+Clarisse Mergy thought that she was shadowing and watching Daubrecq
+at a time when, on the contrary, Daubrecq was watching her, having
+her shadowed and dragging her, with diabolical cleverness, toward
+the places selected by himself, far from all help or hope of help.
+Oh, Daubrecq’s game was clear as daylight! Did not Lupin know the
+unhappy woman’s hesitations? Did he not know--and the Growler and
+the Masher confirmed it most positively--that Clarisse looked
+upon the infamous bargain planned by Daubrecq in the light of a
+possible, an acceptable thing? In that case, how could he, Lupin,
+succeed? The logic of events, so powerfully moulded by Daubrecq,
+led to a fatal result: the mother must sacrifice herself and, to
+save her son, throw her scruples, her repugnance, her very honour,
+to the winds!
+“Oh, you scoundrel!” snarled Lupin, in a fit of rage. “If I get
+hold of you, I’ll make you dance to a pretty tune! I wouldn’t be in
+your shoes for a great deal, when that happens.”
+They reached Monte Carlo at three o’clock in the afternoon. Lupin
+was at once disappointed not to see Clarisse on the platform at the
+station.
+He waited. No messenger came up to him.
+He asked the porters and ticket-collectors if they had noticed,
+among the crowd, two travellers answering to the description of
+Daubrecq and Clarisse. They had not.
+He had, therefore, to set to work and hunt through all the hotels
+and lodging-houses in the principality. Oh, the time wasted!
+By the following evening, Lupin knew, beyond a doubt, that Daubrecq
+and Clarisse were not at Monte Carlo, nor at Monaco, nor at the Cap
+d’Ail, nor at La Turbie, nor at Cap Martin.
+“Where can they be then?” he wondered, trembling with rage.
+At last, on the Saturday, he received, at the _poste restante_, a
+telegram which had been readdressed from the Hôtel Franklin and
+which said:
+“He got out at Cannes and is going on to San Remo, Hôtel Palace
+des Ambassadeurs.
+“CLARISSE.”
+The telegram was dated the day before.
+“Hang it!” exclaimed Lupin. “They passed through Monte Carlo. One
+of us ought to have remained at the station. I did think of it;
+but, in the midst of all that bustle....”
+Lupin and his friends took the first train for Italy.
+They crossed the frontier at twelve o’clock. The train entered the
+station at San Remo at twelve-forty.
+They at once saw an hotel-porter, with “Ambassadeurs-Palace” on
+his braided cap, who seemed to be looking for some one among the
+arrivals.
+Lupin went up to him:
+“Are you looking for M. Nicole?”
+“Yes, M. Nicole and two gentlemen.”
+“From a lady?”
+“Yes, Mme. Mergy.”
+“Is she staying at your hotel?”
+“No. She did not get out. She beckoned to me, described you three
+gentlemen and told me to say that she was going on to Genoa, to the
+Hôtel Continental.”
+“Was she by herself?”
+“Yes.”
+Lupin tipped the man, dismissed him and turned to his friends:
+“This is Saturday. If the execution takes place on Monday, there’s
+nothing to be done. But Monday is not a likely day.... What I have
+to do is to lay hands on Daubrecq to-night and to be in Paris on
+Monday, with the document. It’s our last chance. Let’s take it.”
+The Growler went to the booking-office and returned with three
+tickets for Genoa.
+The engine whistled.
+Lupin had a last hesitation:
+“No, really, it’s too childish! What are we doing? We ought to be
+in Paris, not here!... Just think!...”
+He was on the point of opening the door and jumping out on the
+permanent way. But his companions held him back. The train started.
+He sat down again.
+And they continued their mad pursuit, travelling at random, toward
+the unknown....
+And this happened two days before the inevitable execution of
+Gilbert and Vaucheray.
+[D] These are the only two main-line stations in Paris with
+the word _de_ in their name. The others have _du_, as the Gare
+du Nord or the Gare du Luxembourg, d’ as the Gare d’Orleans,
+or no participle at all, as the Gare Saint-Lazare or the Gare
+Montparnasse.--_Translator’s Note._
+CHAPTER X.
+EXTRA-DRY?
+On one of the hills that girdle Nice with the finest scenery in
+the world, between the Vallon de Saint-Silvestre and the Vallon
+de La Mantéga, stands a huge hotel which overlooks the town and
+the wonderful Baie des Anges. A crowd flocks to it from all parts,
+forming a medley of every class and nation.
+On the evening of the same Saturday when Lupin, the Growler and
+the Masher were plunging into Italy, Clarisse Mergy entered this
+hotel, asked for a bedroom facing south and selected No. 130, on
+the second floor, a room which had been vacant since that morning.
+The room was separated from No. 129 by two partition-doors. As soon
+as she was alone, Clarisse pulled back the curtain that concealed
+the first door, noiselessly drew the bolt and put her ear to the
+second door:
+“He is here,” she thought. “He is dressing to go to the club . . .
+as he did yesterday.”
+When her neighbour had gone, she went into the passage and,
+availing herself of a moment when there was no one in sight, walked
+up to the door of No. 129. The door was locked.
+She waited all the evening for her neighbour’s return and did not
+go to bed until two o’clock. On Sunday morning, she resumed her
+watch.
+The neighbour went out at eleven. This time he left the key in the
+door.
+Hurriedly turning the key, Clarisse entered boldly, went to the
+partition-door, raised the curtain, drew the bolt and found herself
+in her own room.
+In a few minutes, she heard two chambermaids doing the room in No.
+129.
+She waited until they were gone. Then, feeling sure that she would
+not be disturbed, she once more slipped into the other room.
+Her excitement made her lean against a chair. After days and nights
+of stubborn pursuit, after alternate hopes and disappointments,
+she had at last succeeded in entering a room occupied by Daubrecq.
+She could look about at her ease; and, if she did not discover the
+crystal stopper, she could at least hide in the space between the
+partition-doors, behind the hanging, see Daubrecq, spy upon his
+movements and surprise his secret.
+She looked around her. A travelling-bag at once caught her
+attention. She managed to open it; but her search was useless.
+She ransacked the trays of a trunk and the compartments of a
+portmanteau. She searched the wardrobe, the writing-table, the
+chest of drawers, the bathroom, all the tables, all the furniture.
+She found nothing.
+She gave a start when she saw a scrap of paper on the balcony,
+lying as though flung there by accident:
+“Can it be a trick of Daubrecq’s?” she thought, out loud. “Can that
+scrap of paper contain....”
+“No,” said a voice behind her, as she put her hand on the latch.
+She turned and saw Daubrecq.
+She felt neither astonishment nor alarm, nor even any embarrassment
+at finding herself face to face with him. She had suffered too
+deeply for months to trouble about what Daubrecq could think of her
+or say, at catching her in the act of spying.
+She sat down wearily.
+He grinned:
+“No, you’re out of it, dear friend. As the children say, you’re not
+‘burning’ at all. Oh, not a bit of it! And it’s so easy! Shall I
+help you? It’s next to you, dear friend, on that little table....
+And yet, by Jove, there’s not much on that little table! Something
+to read, something to write with, something to smoke, something
+to eat . . . and that’s all.... Will you have one of these
+candied fruits?... Or perhaps you would rather wait for the more
+substantial meal which I have ordered?”
+Clarisse made no reply. She did not even seem to listen to what he
+was saying, as though she expected other words, more serious words,
+which he could not fail to utter.
+He cleared the table of all the things that lay upon it and put
+them on the mantel-piece. Then he rang the bell.
+A head-waiter appeared. Daubrecq asked:
+“Is the lunch which I ordered ready?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“It’s for two, isn’t it?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“And the champagne?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“Extra-dry?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+Another waiter brought a tray and laid two covers on the table: a
+cold lunch, some fruit and a bottle of champagne in an ice-pail.
+Then the two waiters withdrew.
+“Sit down, dear lady. As you see, I was thinking of you and your
+cover is laid.”
+And, without seeming to observe that Clarisse was not at all
+prepared to do honour to his invitation, he sat down, began to eat
+and continued:
+“Yes, upon my word, I hoped that you would end by consenting to
+this little private meeting. During the past week, while you
+were keeping so assiduous a watch upon me, I did nothing but say
+to myself, ‘I wonder which she prefers: sweet champagne, dry
+champagne, or extra-dry?’ I was really puzzled. Especially after
+our departure from Paris. I had lost your tracks, that is to say,
+I feared that you had lost mine and abandoned the pursuit which
+was so gratifying to me. When I went for a walk, I missed your
+beautiful dark eyes, gleaming with hatred under your hair just
+touched with gray. But, this morning, I understood: the room next
+to mine was empty at last; and my friend Clarisse was able to take
+up her quarters, so to speak, by my bedside. From that moment I was
+reassured. I felt certain that, on coming back--instead of lunching
+in the restaurant as usual--I should find you arranging my things
+to your convenience and suiting your own taste. That was why I
+ordered two covers: one for your humble servant, the other for his
+fair friend.”
+She was listening to him now and in the greatest terror. So
+Daubrecq knew that he was spied upon! For a whole week he had seen
+through her and all her schemes!
+In a low voice, anxious-eyed, she asked:
+“You did it on purpose, did you not? You only went away to drag me
+with you?”
+“Yes,” he said.
+“But why? Why?”
+“Do you mean to say that you don’t know?” retorted Daubrecq,
+laughing with a little cluck of delight.
+She half-rose from her chair and, bending toward him, thought, as
+she thought each time, of the murder which she could commit, of the
+murder which she would commit. One revolver-shot and the odious
+brute was done for.
+Slowly her hand glided to the weapon concealed in her bodice.
+Daubrecq said:
+“One second, dear friend.... You can shoot presently; but I beg you
+first to read this wire which I have just received.”
+She hesitated, not knowing what trap he was laying for her; but he
+went on, as he produced a telegram:
+“It’s about your son.”
+“Gilbert?” she asked, greatly concerned.
+“Yes, Gilbert.... Here, read it.”
+She gave a yell of dismay. She had read:
+“Execution on Tuesday morning.”
+And she at once flung herself on Daubrecq, crying:
+“It’s not true!... It’s a lie . . . to madden me.... Oh, I know
+you: you are capable of anything! Confess! It won’t be on Tuesday,
+will it? In two days! No, no.... I tell you, we have four days yet,
+five days, in which to save him.... Confess it, confess it!”
+She had no strength left, exhausted by this fit of rebellion; and
+her voice uttered none but inarticulate sounds.
+He looked at her for a moment, then poured himself out a glass of
+champagne and drank it down at a gulp. He took a few steps up and
+down the room, came back to her and said:
+“Listen to me, _darling_....”
+The insult made her quiver with an unexpected energy. She drew
+herself up and, panting with indignation, said:
+“I forbid you.... I forbid you to speak to me like that. I will not
+accept such an outrage. You wretch!...”
+He shrugged his shoulders and resumed:
+“Pah, I see you’re not quite alive to the position. That comes,
+of course, because you still hope for assistance in some quarter.
+Prasville, perhaps? The excellent Prasville, whose right hand you
+are.... My dear friend, a forlorn hope.... You must know that
+Prasville is mixed up in the Canal affair! Not directly: that is
+to say, his name is not on the list of the Twenty-seven; but it is
+there under the name of one of his friends, an ex-deputy called
+Vorenglade, Stanislas Vorenglade, his man of straw, apparently: a
+penniless individual whom I left alone and rightly. I knew nothing
+of all that until this morning, when, lo and behold, I received a
+letter informing me of the existence of a bundle of documents which
+prove the complicity of our one and only Prasville! And who is my
+informant? Vorenglade himself! Vorenglade, who, tired of living in
+poverty, wants to extort money from Prasville, at the risk of being
+arrested, and who will be delighted to come to terms with me. And
+Prasville will get the sack. Oh, what a lark! I swear to you that
+he will get the sack, the villain! By Jove, but he’s annoyed me
+long enough! Prasville, old boy, you’ve deserved it....”
+He rubbed his hands together, revelling in his coming revenge. And
+he continued:
+“You see, my dear Clarisse . . . there’s nothing to be done in
+that direction. What then? What straw will you cling to? Why, I
+was forgetting: M. Arsène Lupin! Mr. Growler! Mr. Masher!... Pah,
+you’ll admit that those gentlemen have not shone and that all their
+feats of prowess have not prevented me from going my own little
+way. It was bound to be. Those fellows imagine that there’s no one
+to equal them. When they meet an adversary like myself, one who
+is not to be bounced, it upsets them and they make blunder after
+blunder, while still believing that they are hoodwinking him like
+mad. Schoolboys, that’s what they are! However, as you seem to have
+some illusions left about the aforesaid Lupin, as you are counting
+on that poor devil to crush me and to work a miracle in favour of
+your innocent Gilbert, come, let’s dispel that illusion. Oh! Lupin!
+Lord above, she believes in Lupin! She places her last hopes in
+Lupin! Lupin! Just wait till I prick you, my illustrious windbag!”
+He took up the receiver of the telephone which communicated with
+the hall of the hotel and said:
+“I’m No. 129, mademoiselle. Would you kindly ask the person
+sitting opposite your office to come up to me?... Huh!... Yes,
+mademoiselle, the gentleman in a gray felt hat. He knows. Thank
+you, mademoiselle.”
+Hanging up the receiver, he turned to Clarisse:
+“Don’t be afraid. The man is discretion itself. Besides, it’s
+the motto of his trade: ‘Discretion and dispatch.’ As a retired
+detective, he has done me a number of services, including that of
+following you while you were following me. Since our arrival in the
+south, he has been less busy with you; but that was because he was
+more busy elsewhere. Come in, Jacob.”
+He himself opened the door, and a short, thin man, with a red
+moustache, entered the room.
+“Please tell this lady, Jacob, in a few brief words, what you have
+done since Wednesday evening, when, after letting her get into the
+_train-de-luxe_ which was taking me from the Gare de Lyon to the
+south, you yourself remained on the platform at the station. Of
+course, I am not asking how you spent your time, except in so far
+as concerns the lady and the business with which I entrusted you.”
+Jacob dived into the inside-pocket of his jacket and produced a
+little note-book of which he turned over the pages and read them
+aloud in the voice of a man reading a report:
+“_Wednesday evening_, 8.15. Gare de Lyon. Wait for two gents,
+Growler and Masher. They come with another whom I don’t know
+yet, but who can only be M. Nicole. Give a porter ten francs
+for the loan of his cap and blouse. Accost the gents and tell
+them, from a lady, ‘that they were gone to Monte Carlo.’ Next,
+telephone to the porter at the Hôtel Franklin. All telegrams
+sent to his boss and dispatched by said boss will be read by
+said hotel-porter and, if necessary, intercepted.
+“_Thursday._ Monte Carlo. The three gents search the hotels.
+“_Friday._ Flying visits to La Turbie, the Cap d’Ail, Cap
+Martin. M. Daubrecq rings me up. Thinks it wiser to send the
+gents to Italy. Make the porter of the Hôtel Franklin send
+them a telegram appointing a meeting at San Remo.
+“_Saturday._ San Remo. Station platform. Give the porter of
+the Ambassadeurs-Palace ten francs for the loan of his cap.
+The three gents arrive. They speak to me. Explain to them that
+a lady traveller, Mme. Mergy, is going on to Genoa, to the
+Hôtel Continental. The gents hesitate. M. Nicole wants to get
+out. The others hold him back. The train starts. Good luck,
+gents! An hour later, I take the train for France and get out
+at Nice, to await fresh orders.”
+Jacob closed his note-book and concluded:
+“That’s all. To-day’s doings will be entered this evening.”
+“You can enter them now, M. Jacob. ‘12 noon. M. Daubrecq sends me
+to the Wagon-Lits Co. I book two berths in the Paris sleeping-car,
+by the 2.48 train, and send them to M. Daubrecq by express
+messenger. Then I take the 12.58 train for Vintimille, the
+frontier-station, where I spend the day on the platform watching
+all the travellers who come to France. Should Messrs. Nicole,
+Growler and Masher take it into their heads to leave Italy and
+return to Paris by way of Nice, my instructions are to telegraph to
+the headquarters of police that Master Arsène Lupin and two of his
+accomplices are in train number so-and-so.”
+While speaking, Daubrecq led Jacob to the door. He closed it after
+him, turned the key, pushed the bolt and, going up to Clarisse,
+said:
+“And now, _darling_, listen to me.”
+This time, she uttered no protest. What could she do against such
+an enemy, so powerful, so resourceful, who provided for everything,
+down to the minutest details, and who toyed with his adversaries in
+such an airy fashion? Even if she had hoped till then for Lupin’s
+interference, how could she do so now, when he was wandering
+through Italy in pursuit of a shadow?
+She understood at last why three telegrams which she had sent to
+the Hôtel Franklin had remained unanswered. Daubrecq was there,
+lurking in the dark, watching, establishing a void around her,
+separating her from her comrades in the fight, bringing her
+gradually, a beaten prisoner, within the four walls of that room.
+She felt her weakness. She was at the monster’s mercy. She must be
+silent and resigned.
+He repeated, with an evil delight:
+“Listen to me, darling. Listen to the irrevocable words which I
+am about to speak. Listen to them well. It is now 12 o’clock. The
+last train starts at 2.48: you understand, the last train that can
+bring me to Paris to-morrow, Monday, in time to save your son. The
+evening-trains would arrive too late. The _trains-de-luxe_ are full
+up. Therefore I shall have to start at 2.48. Am I to start?”
+“Yes.”
+“Our berths are booked. Will you come with me?”
+“Yes.”
+“You know my conditions for interfering?”
+“Yes.”
+“Do you accept them?”
+“Yes.”
+“You will marry me?”
+“Yes.”
+Oh, those horrible answers! The unhappy woman gave them in a
+sort of awful torpor, refusing even to understand what she was
+promising. Let him start first, let him snatch Gilbert from the
+engine of death whose vision haunted her day and night.... And
+then . . . and then . . . let what must come come....
+He burst out laughing:
+“Oh, you rogue, it’s easily said!... You’re ready to pledge
+yourself to anything, eh? The great thing is to save Gilbert,
+isn’t it? Afterward, when that noodle of a Daubrecq comes with his
+engagement-ring, not a bit of it! Nothing doing! We’ll laugh in his
+face!... No, no, enough of empty words. I don’t want promises that
+won’t be kept: I want facts, immediate facts.”
+He came and sat close beside her and stated, plainly:
+“This is what I propose . . . what must be . . . what shall be....
+I will ask, or rather I will demand, not Gilbert’s pardon, to
+begin with, but a reprieve, a postponement of the execution, a
+postponement of three or four weeks. They will invent a pretext of
+some sort: that’s not my affair. And, when Mme. Mergy has become
+Mme. Daubrecq, then and not till then will I ask for his pardon,
+that is to say, the commutation of his sentence. And make yourself
+quite easy: they’ll grant it.”
+“I accept.... I accept,” she stammered.
+He laughed once more:
+“Yes, you accept, because that will happen in a month’s time . . .
+and meanwhile you reckon on finding some trick, an assistance of
+some kind or another . . . M. Arsène Lupin....”
+“I swear it on the head of my son.”
+“The head of your son!... Why, my poor pet, you would sell yourself
+to the devil to save it from falling!...”
+“Oh, yes,” she whispered, shuddering. “I would gladly sell my soul!”
+He sidled up against her and, in a low voice:
+“Clarisse, it’s not your soul I ask for.... It’s something else....
+For more than twenty years my life has spun around that longing.
+You are the only woman I have ever loved.... Loathe me, hate me--I
+don’t care--but do not spurn me.... Am I to wait? To wait another
+month?... No, Clarisse, I have waited too many years already....”
+He ventured to touch her hand. Clarisse shrank back with such
+disgust that he was seized with fury and cried:
+“Oh, I swear to heaven, my beauty, the executioner won’t stand on
+such ceremony when he catches hold of your son!... And you give
+yourself airs! Why, think, it’ll happen in forty hours! Forty
+hours, no more, and you hesitate . . . and you have scruples, when
+your son’s life is at stake! Come, come, no whimpering, no silly
+sentimentality.... Look things in the face. By your own oath,
+you are my wife, you are my bride from this moment.... Clarisse,
+Clarisse, give me your lips....”
+Half-fainting, she had hardly the strength to put out her arm and
+push him away; and, with a cynicism in which all his abominable
+nature stood revealed, Daubrecq, mingling words of cruelty and
+words of passion, continued:
+“Save your son!... Think of the last morning: the preparations for
+the scaffold, when they snip away his shirt and cut his hair....
+Clarisse, Clarisse, I will save him.... Be sure of it.... All my
+life shall be yours.... Clarisse....”
+She no longer resisted. It was over. The loathsome brute’s lips
+were about to touch hers; and it had to be, and nothing could
+prevent it. It was her duty to obey the decree of fate. She had
+long known it. She understood it; and, closing her eyes, so as not
+to see the foul face that was slowly raised to hers, she repeated
+to herself:
+“My son . . . my poor son.”
+A few seconds passed: ten, twenty perhaps. Daubrecq did not move.
+Daubrecq did not speak. And she was astounded at that great silence
+and that sudden quiet. Did the monster, at the last moment, feel a
+scruple of remorse?
+She raised her eyelids.
+[Illustration: The sight which she beheld struck her with
+stupefaction.]
+The sight which she beheld struck her with stupefaction. Instead
+of the grinning features which she expected to see, she saw a
+motionless, unrecognizable face, contorted by an expression of
+unspeakable terror: and the eyes, invisible under the double
+impediment of the spectacles, seemed to be staring above her head,
+above the chair in which she lay prostrate.
+Clarisse turned her face. Two revolver-barrels, pointed at
+Daubrecq, showed on the right, a little above the chair. She saw
+only that: those two huge, formidable revolvers, gripped in two
+clenched hands. She saw only that and also Daubrecq’s face, which
+fear was discolouring little by little, until it turned livid. And,
+almost at the same time, some one slipped behind Daubrecq, sprang
+up fiercely, flung one of his arms round Daubrecq’s neck, threw
+him to the ground with incredible violence and applied a pad of
+cotton-wool to his face. A sudden smell of chloroform filled the
+room.
+Clarisse had recognized M. Nicole.
+“Come along, Growler!” he cried. “Come along, Masher! Drop your
+shooters: I’ve got him! He’s a limp rag.... Tie him up.”
+Daubrecq, in fact, was bending in two and falling on his knees like
+a disjointed doll. Under the action of the chloroform, the fearsome
+brute sank into impotence, became harmless and grotesque.
+The Growler and the Masher rolled him in one of the blankets of the
+bed and tied him up securely.
+“That’s it! That’s it!” shouted Lupin, leaping to his feet.
+And, in a sudden reaction of mad delight, he began to dance a wild
+jig in the middle of the room, a jig mingled with bits of can-can
+and the contortions of the cakewalk and the whirls of a dancing
+dervish and the acrobatic movements of a clown and the lurching
+steps of a drunken man. And he announced, as though they were the
+numbers in a music-hall performance:
+“The prisoner’s dance!... The captive’s hornpipe!... A _fantasia_
+on the corpse of a representative of the people!... The chloroform
+polka!... The two-step of the conquered goggles! _Ollé! Ollé!_ The
+blackmailer’s fandango! Hoot! Hoot! The McDaubrecq’s fling!... The
+turkey trot!... _And_ the bunny hug!... _And_ the grizzly bear!...
+The Tyrolean dance: tra-la-liety!... _Allons, enfants de la
+partie!_.... Zing, boum, boum! Zing, boum, boum!...”
+All his street-arab nature, all his instincts of gaiety, so long
+suppressed by his constant anxiety and disappointment, came out and
+betrayed themselves in roars of laughter, bursts of animal spirits
+and a picturesque need of childlike exuberance and riot.
+He gave a last high kick, turned a series of cartwheels round the
+room and ended by standing with his hands on his hips and one foot
+on Daubrecq’s lifeless body.
+“An allegorical _tableau_!” he announced. “The angel of virtue
+destroying the hydra of vice!”
+And the humour of the scene was twice as great because Lupin was
+appearing under the aspect of M. Nicole, in the clothes and figure
+of that wizened, awkward, nervous private tutor.
+A sad smile flickered across Mme. Mergy’s face, her first smile for
+many a long month. But, at once returning to the reality of things,
+she besought him:
+“Please, please . . . think of Gilbert!”
+He ran up to her, caught her in his arms and, obeying a spontaneous
+impulse, so frank that she could but laugh at it, gave her a
+resounding kiss on either cheek:
+“There, lady, that’s the kiss of a decent man! Instead of Daubrecq,
+it’s I kissing you.... Another word and I’ll do it again . . . and
+I’ll call you darling next.... Be angry with me, if you dare. Oh,
+how happy I am!”
+He knelt before her on one knee. And, respectfully:
+“I beg your pardon, madame. The fit is over.”
+And, getting up again, resuming his whimsical manner, he continued,
+while Clarisse wondered what he was driving at:
+“What’s the next article, madame? Your son’s pardon, perhaps?
+Certainly! Madame, I have the honour to grant you the pardon of
+your son, the commutation of his sentence to penal servitude for
+life and, to wind up with, his early escape. It’s settled, eh,
+Growler? Settled, Masher, what? You’ll both go with the boy to New
+Caledonia and arrange for everything. Oh, my dear Daubrecq, we owe
+you a great debt! But I’m not forgetting you, believe me! What
+would you like? A last pipe? Coming, coming!”
+He took one of the pipes from the mantel-piece, stooped over the
+prisoner, shifted his pad and thrust the amber mouth-piece between
+his teeth:
+“Draw, old chap, draw. Lord, how funny you look, with your plug
+over your nose and your cutty in your mouth. Come, puff away.
+By Jove, I forgot to fill your pipe! Where’s your tobacco, your
+favourite Maryland?... Oh, here we are!...”
+He took from the chimney an unopened yellow packet and tore off the
+government band:
+“His lordship’s tobacco! Ladies and gentlemen, keep your eyes on
+me! This is a great moment. I am about to fill his lordship’s pipe:
+by Jupiter, what an honour! Observe my movements! You see, I have
+nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeves!...”
+He turned back his cuffs and stuck out his elbows. Then he opened
+the packet and inserted his thumb and fore-finger, slowly,
+gingerly, like a conjurer performing a sleight-of-hand trick before
+a puzzled audience, and, beaming all over his face, extracted
+from the tobacco a glittering object which he held out before the
+spectators.
+Clarisse uttered a cry.
+It was the crystal stopper.
+She rushed at Lupin and snatched it from him:
+“That’s it; that’s the one!” she exclaimed, feverishly. “There’s no
+scratch on the stem! And look at this line running down the middle,
+where the gilt finishes.... That’s it; it unscrews!... Oh, dear,
+my strength’s going!...” She trembled so violently that Lupin took
+back the stopper and unscrewed it himself.
+The inside of the knob was hollow; and in the hollow space was a
+piece of paper rolled into a tiny pellet.
+“The foreign-post-paper,” he whispered, himself greatly excited,
+with quivering hands.
+There was a long silence. All four felt as if their hearts were
+ready to burst from their bodies; and they were afraid of what was
+coming.
+“Please, please . . .” stammered Clarisse.
+Lupin unfolded the paper.
+There was a set of names written one below the other, twenty-seven
+of them, the twenty-seven names of the famous list: Langeroux,
+Dechaumont, Vorenglade, d’Albufex, Victorien Mergy and the rest.
+And, at the foot, the signature of the chairman of the Two-Seas
+Canal Company, the signature written in letters of blood.
+Lupin looked at his watch:
+“A quarter to one,” he said. “We have twenty minutes to spare.
+Let’s have some lunch.”
+“But,” said Clarisse, who was already beginning to lose her head,
+“don’t forget....”
+He simply said:
+“All I know is that I’m dying of hunger.”
+He sat down at the table, cut himself a large slice of cold pie and
+said to his accomplices:
+“Growler? A bite? You, Masher?”
+“I could do with a mouthful, governor.”
+“Then hurry up, lads. And a glass of champagne to wash it down
+with: it’s the chloroform-patient’s treat. Your health, Daubrecq!
+Sweet champagne? Dry champagne? Extra-dry?”
+CHAPTER XI.
+THE CROSS OF LORRAINE
+The moment Lupin had finished lunch, he at once and, so to speak,
+without transition, recovered all his mastery and authority. The
+time for joking was past; and he must no longer yield to his love
+of astonishing people with claptrap and conjuring tricks. Now that
+he had discovered the crystal stopper in the hiding-place which he
+had guessed with absolute certainty, now that he possessed the list
+of the Twenty-seven, it became a question of playing off the last
+game of the rubber without delay.
+It was child’s play, no doubt, and what remained to be done
+presented no difficulty. Nevertheless, it was essential that he
+should perform these final actions with promptness, decision and
+infallible perspicacity. The smallest blunder was irretrievable.
+Lupin knew this; but his strangely lucid brain had allowed for
+every contingency. And the movements and words which he was now
+about to make and utter were all fully prepared and matured:
+“Growler, the commissionaire is waiting on the Boulevard Gambetta
+with his barrow and the trunk which we bought. Bring him here and
+have the trunk carried up. If the people of the hotel ask any
+questions, say it’s for the lady in No. 130.”
+Then, addressing his other companion:
+“Masher, go back to the station and take over the limousine. The
+price is arranged: ten thousand francs. Buy a chauffeur’s cap and
+overcoat and bring the car to the hotel.”
+“The money, governor.”
+Lupin opened a pocketbook which had been removed from Daubrecq’s
+jacket and produced a huge bundle of bank-notes. He separated ten
+of them:
+“Here you are. Our friend appears to have been doing well at the
+club. Off with you, Masher!”
+The two men went out through Clarisse’s room. Lupin availed himself
+of a moment when Clarisse Mergy was not looking to stow away the
+pocketbook with the greatest satisfaction:
+“I shall have done a fair stroke of business,” he said to himself.
+“When all the expenses are paid, I shall still be well to the good;
+and it’s not over yet.”
+Then turning to Clarisse Mergy, he asked:
+“Have you a bag?”
+“Yes, I bought one when I reached Nice, with some linen and a few
+necessaries; for I left Paris unprepared.”
+“Get all that ready. Then go down to the office. Say that you are
+expecting a trunk which a commissionaire is bringing from the
+station cloakroom and that you will want to unpack and pack it
+again in your room; and tell them that you are leaving.”
+When alone, Lupin examined Daubrecq carefully, felt in all his
+pockets and appropriated everything that seemed to present any sort
+of interest.
+The Growler was the first to return. The trunk, a large wicker
+hamper covered with black moleskin, was taken into Clarisse’s room.
+Assisted by Clarisse and the Growler, Lupin moved Daubrecq and put
+him in the trunk, in a sitting posture, but with his head bent so
+as to allow of the lid being fastened:
+“I don’t say that it’s as comfortable as your berth in a
+sleeping-car, my dear deputy,” Lupin observed. “But, all the same,
+it’s better than a coffin. At least, you can breathe. Three little
+holes in each side. You have nothing to complain of!”
+Then, unstopping a flask:
+“A drop more chloroform? You seem to love it!...”
+He soaked the pad once more, while, by his orders, Clarisse and the
+Growler propped up the deputy with linen, rugs and pillows, which
+they had taken the precaution to heap in the trunk.
+“Capital!” said Lupin. “That trunk is fit to go round the world.
+Lock it and strap it.”
+The Masher arrived, in a chauffeur’s livery:
+“The car’s below, governor.”
+“Good,” he said. “Take the trunk down between you. It would be
+dangerous to give it to the hotel-servants.”
+“But if any one meets us?”
+“Well, what then, Masher? Aren’t you a chauffeur? You’re carrying
+the trunk of your employer here present, the lady in No. 130, who
+will also go down, step into her motor . . . and wait for me two
+hundred yards farther on. Growler, you help to hoist the trunk up.
+Oh, first lock the partition-door!”
+Lupin went to the next room, closed the other door, shot the bolt,
+walked out, locked the door behind him and went down in the lift.
+In the office, he said:
+“M. Daubrecq has suddenly been called away to Monte Carlo. He asked
+me to say that he would not be back until Tuesday and that you were
+to keep his room for him. His things are all there. Here is the
+key.”
+He walked away quietly and went after the car, where he found
+Clarisse lamenting:
+“We shall never be in Paris to-morrow! It’s madness! The least
+breakdown....”
+“That’s why you and I are going to take the train. It’s safer....”
+He put her into a cab and gave his parting instructions to the two
+men:
+“Thirty miles an hour, on the average, do you understand? You’re
+to drive and rest, turn and turn about. At that rate, you ought
+to be in Paris between six and seven to-morrow evening. But don’t
+force the pace. I’m keeping Daubrecq, not because I want him for
+my plans, but as a hostage . . . and then by way of precaution....
+I like to feel that I can lay my hands on him during the next few
+days. So look after the dear fellow.... Give him a few drops of
+chloroform every three or four hours: it’s his one weakness.... Off
+with you, Masher.... And you, Daubrecq, don’t get excited up there.
+The roof’ll bear you all right.... If you feel at all sick, don’t
+mind... Off you go, Masher!”
+He watched the car move into the distance and then told the cabman
+to drive to a post-office, where he dispatched a telegram in these
+words:
+“_M. Prasville, Prefecture de Police, Paris_:
+“Person found. Will bring you document eleven o’clock to-morrow
+morning. Urgent communication.
+“CLARISSE.”
+Clarisse and Lupin reached the station by half-past two.
+“If only there’s room!” said Clarisse, who was alarmed at the least
+thing.
+“Room? Why, our berths are booked!”
+“By whom?”
+“By Jacob . . . by Daubrecq.”
+“How?”
+“Why, at the office of the hotel they gave me a letter which had
+come for Daubrecq by express. It was the two berths which Jacob
+had sent him. Also, I have his deputy’s pass. So we shall travel
+under the name of M. and Mme. Daubrecq and we shall receive all the
+attention due to our rank and station. You see, my dear madam, that
+everything’s arranged.”
+The journey, this time, seemed short to Lupin. Clarisse told him
+what she had done during the past few days. He himself explained
+the miracle of his sudden appearance in Daubrecq’s bedroom at the
+moment when his adversary believed him in Italy:
+“A miracle, no,” he said. “But still a remarkable phenomenon took
+place in me when I left San Remo, a sort of mysterious intuition
+which prompted me first to try and jump out of the train--and the
+Masher prevented me--and next to rush to the window, let down the
+glass and follow the porter of the Ambassadeurs-Palace, who had
+given me your message, with my eyes. Well, at that very minute,
+the porter aforesaid was rubbing his hands with an air of such
+satisfaction that, for no other reason, suddenly, I understood
+everything: I had been diddled, taken in by Daubrecq, as you
+yourself were. Heaps of little details flashed across my mind. My
+adversary’s scheme became clear to me from start to finish. Another
+minute . . . and the disaster would have been beyond remedy. I had,
+I confess, a few moments of real despair, at the thought that I
+should not be able to repair all the mistakes that had been made.
+It depended simply on the time-table of the trains, which would
+either allow me or would not allow me to find Daubrecq’s emissary
+on the railway-platform at San Remo. This time, at last, chance
+favoured me. We had hardly alighted at the first station when a
+train passed, for France. When we arrived at San Remo, the man was
+there. I had guessed right. He no longer wore his hotel-porter’s
+cap and frock-coat, but a jacket and bowler. He stepped into a
+second-class compartment. From that moment, victory was assured.”
+“But . . . how...?” asked Clarisse, who, in spite of the thoughts
+that obsessed her, was interested in Lupin’s story.
+“How did I find you? Lord, simply by not losing sight of Master
+Jacob, while leaving him free to move about as he pleased, knowing
+that he was bound to account for his actions to Daubrecq. In point
+of fact, this morning, after spending the night in a small hotel
+at Nice, he met Daubrecq on the Promenade des Anglais. They talked
+for some time. I followed them. Daubrecq went back to the hotel,
+planted Jacob in one of the passages on the ground-floor, opposite
+the telephone-office, and went up in the lift. Ten minutes later I
+knew the number of his room and knew that a lady had been occupying
+the next room, No. 130, since the day before. ‘I believe we’ve done
+it,’ I said to the Growler and the Masher. I tapped lightly at your
+door. No answer. And the door was locked.”
+“Well?” asked Clarisse.
+“Well, we opened it. Do you think there’s only one key in the world
+that will work a lock? So I walked in. Nobody in your room. But the
+partition-door was ajar. I slipped through it. Thenceforth, a mere
+hanging separated me from you, from Daubrecq and from the packet of
+tobacco which I saw on the chimney-slab.”
+“Then you knew the hiding-place?”
+“A look round Daubrecq’s study in Paris showed me that that packet
+of tobacco had disappeared. Besides....”
+“What?”
+“I knew, from certain confessions wrung from Daubrecq in the
+Lovers’ Tower, that the word Marie held the key to the riddle.
+Since then I had certainly thought of this word, but with the
+preconceived notion that it was spelt M A R I E. Well, it was
+really the first two syllables of another word, which I guessed, so
+to speak, only at the moment when I was struck by the absence of
+the packet of tobacco.”
+“What word do you mean?”
+“Maryland, Maryland tobacco, the only tobacco that Daubrecq smokes.”
+And Lupin began to laugh:
+“Wasn’t it silly? And, at the same time, wasn’t it clever of
+Daubrecq? We looked everywhere, we ransacked everything. Didn’t I
+unscrew the brass sockets of the electric lights to see if they
+contained a crystal stopper? But how could I have thought, how
+could any one, however great his perspicacity, have thought of
+tearing off the paper band of a packet of Maryland, a band put on,
+gummed, sealed, stamped and dated by the State, under the control
+of the Inland Revenue Office? Only think! The State the accomplice
+of such an act of infamy! The Inland R-r-r-revenue Awfice lending
+itself to such a trick! No, a thousand times no! The Régie[E] is
+not perfect. It makes matches that won’t light and cigarettes
+filled with hay. But there’s all the difference in the world
+between recognizing that fact and believing the Inland Revenue to
+be in league with Daubrecq with the object of hiding the list of
+the Twenty-seven from the legitimate curiosity of the government
+and the enterprising efforts of Arsène Lupin! Observe that all
+Daubrecq had to do, in order to introduce the crystal stopper, was
+to bear upon the band a little, loosen it, draw it back, unfold the
+yellow paper, remove the tobacco and fasten it up again. Observe
+also that all we had to do, in Paris, was to take the packet in
+our hands and examine it, in order to discover the hiding-place.
+No matter! The packet itself, the plug of Maryland made up and
+passed by the State and by the Inland Revenue Office, was a sacred,
+intangible thing, a thing above suspicion! And nobody opened it.
+That was how that demon of a Daubrecq allowed that untouched packet
+of tobacco to lie about for months on his table, among his pipes
+and among other unopened packets of tobacco. And no power on earth
+could have given any one even the vaguest notion of looking into
+that harmless little cube. I would have you observe, besides....”
+Lupin went on pursuing his remarks relative to the packet of
+Maryland and the crystal stopper. His adversary’s ingenuity and
+shrewdness interested him all the more inasmuch as Lupin had ended
+by getting the better of him. But to Clarisse these topics mattered
+much less than did her anxiety as to the acts which must be
+performed to save her son; and she sat wrapped in her own thoughts
+and hardly listened to him.
+“Are you sure,” she kept on repeating, “that you will succeed?”
+“Absolutely sure.”
+“But Prasville is not in Paris.”
+“If he’s not there, he’s at the Havre. I saw it in the paper
+yesterday. In any case, a telegram will bring him to Paris at once.”
+“And do you think that he has enough influence?”
+“To obtain the pardon of Vaucheray and Gilbert personally. No.
+If he had, we should have set him to work before now. But he is
+intelligent enough to understand the value of what we are bringing
+him and to act without a moment’s delay.”
+“But, to be accurate, are you not deceived as to that value?”
+“Was Daubrecq deceived? Was Daubrecq not in a better position than
+any of us to know the full power of that paper? Did he not have
+twenty proofs of it, each more convincing than the last? Think of
+all that he was able to do, for the sole reason that people knew
+him to possess the list. They knew it; and that was all. He did
+not use the list, but he had it. And, having it, he killed your
+husband. He built up his fortune on the ruin and the disgrace of
+the Twenty-seven. Only last week, one of the gamest of the lot,
+d’Albufex, cut his throat in a prison. No, take it from me, as
+the price of handing over that list, we could ask for anything we
+pleased. And we are asking for what? Almost nothing . . . less than
+nothing . . . the pardon of a child of twenty. In other words, they
+will take us for idiots. What! We have in our hands....”
+He stopped. Clarisse, exhausted by so much excitement, sat fast
+asleep in front of him.
+They reached Paris at eight o’clock in the morning.
+Lupin found two telegrams awaiting him at his flat in the Place de
+Clichy.
+One was from the Masher, dispatched from Avignon on the previous
+day and stating that all was going well and that they hoped to
+keep their appointment punctually that evening. The other was from
+Prasville, dated from the Havre and addressed to Clarisse:
+“Impossible return to-morrow Monday morning. Come to my office
+five o’clock. Reckon on you absolutely.”
+“Five o’clock!” said Clarisse. “How late!”
+“It’s a first-rate hour,” declared Lupin.
+“Still, if....”
+“If the execution is to take place to-morrow morning: is that what
+you mean to say?... Don’t be afraid to speak out, for the execution
+will not take place.”
+“The newspapers....”
+“You haven’t read the newspapers and you are not to read them.
+Nothing that they can say matters in the least. One thing alone
+matters: our interview with Prasville. Besides....”
+He took a little bottle from a cupboard and, putting his hand on
+Clarisse’s shoulder, said:
+“Lie down here, on the sofa, and take a few drops of this mixture.”
+“What’s it for?”
+“It will make you sleep for a few hours . . . and forget. That’s
+always so much gained.”
+“No, no,” protested Clarisse, “I don’t want to. Gilbert is not
+asleep. He is not forgetting.”
+“Drink it,” said Lupin, with gentle insistence. She yielded all of
+a sudden, from cowardice, from excessive suffering, and did as she
+was told and lay on the sofa and closed her eyes. In a few minutes
+she was asleep.
+Lupin rang for his servant:
+“The newspapers . . . quick!... Have you bought them?”
+“Here they are, governor.”
+Lupin opened one of them and at once read the following lines:
+“ARSENE LUPIN’S ACCOMPLICES”
+“We know from a positive source that Arsène Lupin’s accomplices,
+Gilbert and Vaucheray, will be executed to-morrow, Tuesday,
+morning. M. Deibler has inspected the scaffold. Everything is
+ready.”
+He raised his head with a defiant look.
+“Arsène Lupin’s accomplices! The execution of Arsène Lupin’s
+accomplices! What a fine spectacle! And what a crowd there will be
+to witness it! Sorry, gentlemen, but the curtain will not rise.
+Theatre closed by order of the authorities. And the authorities are
+myself!”
+He struck his chest violently, with an arrogant gesture:
+“The authorities are myself!”
+At twelve o’clock Lupin received a telegram which the Masher had
+sent from Lyons:
+“All well. Goods will arrive without damage.”
+At three o’clock Clarisse woke. Her first words were:
+“Is it to be to-morrow?”
+He did not answer. But she saw him look so calm and smiling that
+she felt herself permeated with an immense sense of peace and
+received the impression that everything was finished, disentangled,
+settled according to her companion’s will.
+They left the house at ten minutes past four. Prasville’s
+secretary, who had received his chief’s instructions by telephone,
+showed them into the office and asked them to wait. It was a
+quarter to five.
+Prasville came running in at five o’clock exactly and, at once,
+cried:
+“Have you the list?”
+“Yes.”
+“Give it me.”
+He put out his hand. Clarisse, who had risen from her chair, did
+not stir.
+Prasville looked at her for a moment, hesitated and sat down. He
+understood. In pursuing Daubrecq, Clarisse Mergy had not acted only
+from hatred and the desire for revenge. Another motive prompted
+her. The paper would not be handed over except upon conditions.
+“Sit down, please,” he said, thus showing that he accepted the
+discussion.
+Clarisse resumed her seat and, when she remained silent, Prasville
+said:
+“Speak, my friend, and speak quite frankly. I do not scruple to say
+that we wish to have that paper.”
+“If it is only a wish,” remarked Clarisse, whom Lupin had coached
+in her part down to the least detail, “if it is only a wish, I fear
+that we shall not be able to come to an arrangement.”
+Prasville smiled:
+“The wish, obviously, would lead us to make certain sacrifices.”
+“Every sacrifice,” said Mme. Mergy, correcting him.
+“Every sacrifice, provided, of course, that we keep within the
+bounds of acceptable requirements.”
+“And even if we go beyond those bounds,” said Clarisse, inflexibly.
+Prasville began to lose patience:
+“Come, what is it all about? Explain yourself.”
+“Forgive me, my friend, but I wanted above all to mark the
+great importance which you attach to that paper and, in view of
+the immediate transaction which we are about to conclude, to
+specify--what shall I say?--the value of my share in it. That
+value, which has no limits, must, I repeat, be exchanged for an
+unlimited value.”
+“Agreed,” said Prasville, querulously.
+“I presume, therefore, that it is unnecessary for me to trace the
+whole story of the business or to enumerate, on the one hand, the
+disasters which the possession of that paper would have allowed you
+to avert and, on the other hand, the incalculable advantages which
+you will be able to derive from its possession?”
+Prasville had to make an effort to contain himself and to answer in
+a tone that was civil, or nearly so:
+“I admit everything. Is that enough?”
+“I beg your pardon, but we cannot explain ourselves too plainly.
+And there is one point that remains to be cleared up. Are you in a
+position to treat, personally?”
+“How do you mean?”
+“I want to know not, of course, if you are empowered to settle this
+business here and now, but if, in dealing with me, you represent
+the views of those who know the business and who are qualified to
+settle it.”
+“Yes,” declared Prasville, forcibly.
+“So that I can have your answer within an hour after I have told
+you my conditions?”
+“Yes.”
+“Will the answer be that of the government?”
+“Yes.”
+Clarisse bent forward and, sinking her voice:
+“Will the answer be that of the Élysée?”
+Prasville appeared surprised. He reflected for a moment and then
+said:
+“Yes.”
+“It only remains for me to ask you to give me your word of honour
+that, however incomprehensible my conditions may appear to you, you
+will not insist on my revealing the reason. They are what they are.
+Your answer must be yes or no.”
+“I give you my word of honour,” said Prasville, formally.
+Clarisse underwent a momentary agitation that made her turn paler
+still. Then, mastering herself, with her eyes fixed on Prasville’s
+eyes, she said:
+“You shall have the list of the Twenty-seven in exchange for the
+pardon of Gilbert and Vaucheray.”
+“Eh? What?”
+Prasville leapt from his chair, looking absolutely dumbfounded:
+“The pardon of Gilbert and Vaucheray? Of Arsène Lupin’s
+accomplices?”
+“Yes,” she said.
+“The murderers of the Villa Marie-Thérèse? The two who are due to
+die to-morrow?”
+“Yes, those two,” she said, in a loud voice. “I ask? I demand their
+pardon.”
+“But this is madness! Why? Why should you?”
+“I must remind you, Prasville, that you gave me your word....”
+“Yes . . . yes.... I know.... But the thing is so unexpected....”
+“Why?”
+“Why? For all sorts of reasons!”
+“What reasons?”
+“Well . . . well, but . . . think! Gilbert and Vaucheray have been
+sentenced to death!”
+“Send them to penal servitude: that’s all you have to do.”
+“Impossible! The case has created an enormous sensation. They
+are Arsène Lupin’s accomplices. The whole world knows about the
+verdict.”
+“Well?”
+“Well, we cannot, no, we cannot go against the decrees of justice.”
+“You are not asked to do that. You are asked for a commutation of
+punishment as an act of mercy. Mercy is a legal thing.”
+“The pardoning-commission has given its finding....”
+“True, but there remains the president of the Republic.”
+“He has refused.”
+“He can reconsider his refusal.”
+“Impossible!”
+“Why?”
+“There’s no excuse for it.”
+“He needs no excuse. The right of mercy is absolute. It is
+exercised without control, without reason, without excuse or
+explanation. It is a _royal_ prerogative; the president of the
+Republic can wield it according to his good pleasure, or rather
+according to his conscience, in the best interests of the State.”
+“But it is too late! Everything is ready. The execution is to take
+place in a few hours.”
+“One hour is long enough to obtain your answer; you have just told
+us so.”
+“But this is confounded madness! There are insuperable obstacles
+to your conditions. I tell you again, it’s impossible, physically
+impossible.”
+“Then the answer is no?”
+“No! No! A thousand times no!”
+“In that case, there is nothing left for us to do but to go.”
+She moved toward the door. M. Nicole followed her. Prasville
+bounded across the room and barred their way:
+“Where are you going?”
+“Well, my friend, it seems to me that our conversation is at an
+end. As you appear to think, as, in fact, you are certain that the
+president of the Republic will not consider the famous list of the
+Twenty-seven to be worth....”
+“Stay where you are,” said Prasville.
+He turned the key in the door and began to pace the room, with his
+hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the floor.
+And Lupin, who had not breathed a word during the whole of this
+scene and who had prudently contented himself with playing a
+colourless part, said to himself:
+“What a fuss! What a lot of affectation to arrive at the inevitable
+result! As though Prasville, who is not a genius, but not an
+absolute blockhead either, would be likely to lose the chance of
+revenging himself on his mortal enemy! There, what did I say? The
+idea of hurling Daubrecq into the bottomless pit appeals to him.
+Come, we’ve won the rubber.”
+Prasville was opening a small inner door which led to the office of
+his private secretary.
+He gave an order aloud:
+“M. Lartigue, telephone to the Élysée and say that I request the
+favour of an audience for a communication of the utmost importance.”
+He closed the door, came back to Clarisse and said:
+“In any case, my intervention is limited to submitting your
+proposal.”
+“Once you submit it, it will be accepted.”
+A long silence followed. Clarisse’s features expressed so profound
+a delight that Prasville was struck by it and looked at her with
+attentive curiosity. For what mysterious reason did Clarisse wish
+to save Gilbert and Vaucheray? What was the incomprehensible link
+that bound her to those two men? What tragedy connected those three
+lives and, no doubt, Daubrecq’s in addition?
+“Go ahead, old boy,” thought Lupin, “cudgel your brains: you’ll
+never spot it! Ah, if we had asked for Gilbert’s pardon only, as
+Clarisse wished, you might have twigged the secret! But Vaucheray,
+that brute of a Vaucheray, there really could not be the least
+bond between Mme. Mergy and him..... Aha, by Jingo, it’s my turn
+now!... He’s watching me.... The inward soliloquy is turning
+upon myself.... ‘I wonder who that M. Nicole can be? Why has
+that little provincial usher devoted himself body and soul to
+Clarisse Mergy? Who is that old bore, if the truth were known? I
+made a mistake in not inquiring.... I must look into this.... I
+must rip off the beggar’s mask. For, after all, it’s not natural
+that a man should take so much trouble about a matter in which
+he is not directly interested. Why should he also wish to save
+Gilbert and Vaucheray? Why? Why should he?...” Lupin turned his
+head away. “Look out!... Look out!... There’s a notion passing
+through that red-tape-merchant’s skull: a confused notion which
+he can’t put into words. Hang it all, he mustn’t suspect M. Lupin
+under M. Nicole! The thing’s complicated enough as it is, in all
+conscience!...”
+But there was a welcome interruption. Prasville’s secretary came to
+say that the audience would take place in an hour’s time.
+“Very well. Thank you,” said Prasville. “That will do.”
+And, resuming the interview, with no further circumlocution,
+speaking like a man who means to put a thing through, he declared:
+“I think that we shall be able to manage it. But, first of all, so
+that I may do what I have undertaken to do, I want more precise
+information, fuller details. Where was the paper?”
+“In the crystal stopper, as we thought,” said Mme. Mergy.
+“And where was the crystal stopper?”
+“In an object which Daubrecq came and fetched, a few days ago, from
+the writing-desk in his study in the Square Lamartine, an object
+which I took from him yesterday.”
+“What sort of object?”
+“Simply a packet of tobacco, Maryland tobacco, which used to lie
+about on the desk.”
+Prasville was petrified. He muttered, guilelessly:
+“Oh, if I had only known! I’ve had my hand on that packet of
+Maryland a dozen times! How stupid of me!”
+“What does it matter?” said Clarisse. “The great thing is that the
+discovery is made.”
+Prasville pulled a face which implied that the discovery would have
+been much pleasanter if he himself had made it. Then he asked:
+“So you have the list?”
+“Yes.”
+“Show it to me.”
+And, when Clarisse hesitated, he added:
+“Oh, please, don’t be afraid! The list belongs to you, and I will
+give it back to you. But you must understand that I cannot take the
+step in question without making certain.”
+Clarisse consulted M. Nicole with a glance which did not escape
+Prasville. Then she said:
+“Here it is.”
+He seized the scrap of paper with a certain excitement, examined it
+and almost immediately said:
+“Yes, yes . . . the secretary’s writing: I recognize it.... And the
+signature of the chairman of the company: the signature in red....
+Besides, I have other proofs.... For instance, the torn piece which
+completes the left-hand top corner of this sheet....”
+He opened his safe and, from a special cash-box, produced a tiny
+piece of paper which he put against the top left corner:
+“That’s right. The torn edges fit exactly. The proof is undeniable.
+All that remains is to verify the make of this foreign-post-paper.”
+Clarisse was radiant with delight. No one would have believed that
+the most terrible torture had racked her for weeks and weeks and
+that she was still bleeding and quivering from its effects.
+While Prasville was holding the paper against a window-pane, she
+said to Lupin:
+“I insist upon having Gilbert informed this evening. He must be so
+awfully unhappy!”
+“Yes,” said Lupin. “Besides, you can go to his lawyer and tell him.”
+She continued:
+“And then I must see Gilbert to-morrow. Prasville can think what he
+likes.”
+“Of course. But he must first gain his cause at the Élysée.”
+“There can’t be any difficulty, can there?”
+“No. You saw that he gave way at once.”
+Prasville continued his examination with the aid of a
+magnifying-glass and compared the sheet with the scrap of torn
+paper. Next, he took from the cash-box some other sheets of
+letter-paper and examined one of these by holding it up to the
+light:
+“That’s done,” he said. “My mind is made up. Forgive me, dear
+friend: it was a very difficult piece of work.... I passed through
+various stages. When all is said, I had my suspicions . . . and not
+without cause....”
+“What do you mean?” asked Clarisse.
+“One second.... I must give an order first.”
+He called his secretary:
+“Please telephone at once to the Élysée, make my apologies and say
+that I shall not require the audience, for reasons which I will
+explain later.”
+He closed the door and returned to his desk. Clarisse and Lupin
+stood choking, looking at him in stupefaction, failing to
+understand this sudden change. Was he mad? Was it a trick on his
+part? A breach of faith? And was he refusing to keep his promise,
+now that he possessed the list?
+He held it out to Clarisse:
+“You can have it back.”
+“Have it back?”
+“And return it to Daubrecq.”
+“To Daubrecq?”
+“Unless you prefer to burn it.”
+“What do you say?”
+“I say that, if I were in your place, I would burn it.”
+“Why do you say that? It’s ridiculous!”
+“On the contrary, it is very sensible.”
+“But why? Why?”
+“Why? I will tell you. The list of the Twenty-seven, as we know
+for absolutely certain, was written on a sheet of letter-paper
+belonging to the chairman of the Canal Company, of which there are
+a few samples in this cash-box. Now all these samples have as a
+water-mark a little cross of Lorraine which is almost invisible,
+but which can just be seen in the thickness of the paper when you
+hold it up to the light. The sheet which you have brought me does
+not contain that little cross of Lorraine.”[F]
+Lupin felt a nervous trembling shake him from head to foot and he
+dared not turn his eyes on Clarisse, realizing what a terrible blow
+this was to her. He heard her stammer:
+“Then are we to suppose . . . that Daubrecq was taken in?”
+“Not a bit of it!” exclaimed Prasville. “It is you who have been
+taken in, my poor friend. Daubrecq has the real list, the list
+which he stole from the dying man’s safe.”
+“But this one....”
+“This one is a forgery.”
+“A forgery?”
+“An undoubted forgery. It was an admirable piece of cunning on
+Daubrecq’s part. Dazzled by the crystal stopper which he flashed
+before your eyes, you did nothing but look for that stopper in
+which he had stowed away no matter what, the first bit of paper
+that came to hand, while he quietly kept....”
+Prasville interrupted himself. Clarisse was walking up to him with
+short, stiff steps, like an automaton. She said:
+“Then....”
+“Then what, dear friend?”
+“You refuse?”
+“Certainly, I am obliged to; I have no choice.”
+“You refuse to take that step?”
+“Look here, how can I do what you ask? It’s not possible, on the
+strength of a valueless document....”
+“You won’t do it?... You won’t do it?... And, to-morrow
+morning . . . in a few hours . . . Gilbert....”
+She was frightfully pale, her face sunk, like the face of one
+dying. Her eyes opened wider and wider and her teeth chattered....
+Lupin, fearing the useless and dangerous words which she was about
+to utter, seized her by the shoulders and tried to drag her away.
+But she thrust him back with indomitable strength, took two or
+three more steps, staggered, as though on the point of falling,
+and, suddenly, in a burst of energy and despair, laid hold of
+Prasville and screamed:
+“You shall go to the Élysée!... You shall go at once!... You
+must!... You must save Gilbert!”
+“Please, please, my dear friend, calm yourself....”
+She gave a strident laugh:
+“Calm myself!... When, to-morrow morning, Gilbert.... Ah, no, no,
+I am terrified . . . it’s appalling.... Oh, run, you wretch, run!
+Obtain his pardon!... Don’t you understand? Gilbert.... Gilbert is
+my son! My son! My son!”
+Prasville gave a cry. The blade of a knife flashed in Clarisse’s
+hand and she raised her arm to strike herself. But the movement was
+not completed. M. Nicole caught her arm in its descent and, taking
+the knife from Clarisse, reducing her to helplessness, he said, in
+a voice that rang through the room like steel:
+“What you are doing is madness!... When I gave you my oath that I
+would save him! You must . . . live for him.... Gilbert shall not
+die.... How can he die, when . . . I gave you my oath?...”
+“Gilbert . . . my son . . .” moaned Clarisse.
+He clasped her fiercely, drew her against himself and put his hand
+over her mouth:
+“Enough! Be quiet!... I entreat you to be quiet.... Gilbert shall
+not die....”
+With irresistible authority, he dragged her away like a subdued
+child that suddenly becomes obedient; but, at the moment of opening
+the door, he turned to Prasville:
+“Wait for me here, monsieur,” he commanded, in an imperative tone.
+“If you care about that list of the Twenty-seven, the real list,
+wait for me. I shall be back in an hour, in two hours, at most; and
+then we will talk business.”
+And abruptly, to Clarisse:
+“And you, madame, a little courage yet. I command you to show
+courage, in Gilbert’s name.”
+He went away, through the passages, down the stairs, with a jerky
+step, holding Clarisse under the arm, as he might have held a
+lay-figure, supporting her, carrying her almost. A court-yard,
+another court-yard, then the street.
+Meanwhile, Prasville, surprised at first, bewildered by the course
+of events, was gradually recovering his composure and thinking.
+He thought of that M. Nicole, a mere supernumerary at first, who
+played beside Clarisse the part of one of those advisers to whom
+we cling in the serious crises of our lives and who suddenly,
+shaking off his torpor, appeared in the full light of day,
+resolute, masterful, mettlesome, brimming over with daring, ready
+to overthrow all the obstacles that fate placed on his path.
+Who was there that was capable of acting thus?
+Prasville started. The question had no sooner occurred to his mind
+than the answer flashed on him, with absolute certainty. All the
+proofs rose up, each more exact, each more convincing than the last.
+Hurriedly he rang. Hurriedly he sent for the chief
+detective-inspector on duty. And, feverishly:
+“Were you in the waiting-room, chief-inspector?”
+“Yes, monsieur le secrétaire;-général.”
+“Did you see a gentleman and a lady go out?”
+“Yes.”
+“Would you know the man again?”
+“Yes.”
+“Then don’t lose a moment, chief-inspector. Take six inspectors
+with you. Go to the Place de Clichy. Make inquiries about a man
+called Nicole and watch the house. The Nicole man is on his way
+back there.”
+“And if he comes out, monsieur le secrétaire;-général?”
+“Arrest him. Here’s a warrant.”
+He sat down to his desk and wrote a name on a form:
+“Here you are, chief-inspector. I will let the chief-detective
+know.”
+The chief-inspector seemed staggered:
+“But you spoke to me of a man called Nicole, monsieur le
+secrétaire;-général.”
+“Well?”
+“The warrant is in the name of Arsène Lupin.”
+“Arsène Lupin and the Nicole man are one and the same individual.”
+[E] The department of the French excise which holds the monopoly
+for the manufacture and sale of tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and
+matches.--_Translator’s Note._
+[F] The cross of Lorraine is a cross with two horizontal
+lines or bars across the upper half of the perpendicular
+beam.--_Translator’s Note._
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE SCAFFOLD
+“I will save him, I will save him,” Lupin repeated, without
+ceasing, in the taxicab in which he and Clarisse drove away. “I
+swear that I will save him.”
+Clarisse did not listen, sat as though numbed, as though possessed
+by some great nightmare of death, which left her ignorant of all
+that was happening outside her. And Lupin set forth his plans,
+perhaps more to reassure himself than to convince Clarisse:
+“No, no, the game is not lost yet. There is one trump left, a
+huge trump, in the shape of the letters and documents which
+Vorenglade, the ex-deputy, is offering to sell to Daubrecq and of
+which Daubrecq spoke to you yesterday at Nice. I shall buy those
+letters and documents of Stanislas Vorenglade at whatever price he
+chooses to name. Then we shall go back to the police-office and I
+shall say to Prasville, ‘Go to the Élysée at once.... Use the list
+as though it were genuine, save Gilbert from death and be content
+to acknowledge to-morrow, when Gilbert is saved, that the list is
+forged.... Be off, quickly!... If you refuse, well, if you refuse,
+the Vorenglade letters and documents shall be reproduced to-morrow,
+Tuesday, morning in one of the leading newspapers.’ Vorenglade will
+be arrested. And M. Prasville will find himself in prison before
+night.’”
+Lupin rubbed his hands:
+“He’ll do as he’s told!... He’ll do as he’s told!... I felt that
+at once, when I was with him. The thing appeared to me as a
+dead certainty. And I found Vorenglade’s address in Daubrecq’s
+pocket-books, so . . . driver, Boulevard Raspail!”
+They went to the address given. Lupin sprang from the cab, ran up
+three flights of stairs.
+The servant said that M. Vorenglade was away and would not be back
+until dinner-time next evening.
+“And don’t you know where he is?”
+“M. Vorenglade is in London, sir.”
+Lupin did not utter a word on returning to the cab. Clarisse, on
+her side, did not even ask him any questions, so indifferent had
+she become to everything, so absolutely did she look upon her son’s
+death as an accomplished fact.
+They drove to the Place de Clichy. As Lupin entered the house he
+passed two men who were just leaving the porter’s box. He was too
+much engrossed to notice them. They were Prasville’s inspectors.
+“No telegram?” he asked his servant.
+“No, governor,” replied Achille.
+“No news of the Masher and the Growler?”
+“No, governor, none.”
+“That’s all right,” he said to Clarisse, in a casual tone. “It’s
+only seven o’clock and we mustn’t reckon on seeing them before
+eight or nine. Prasville will have to wait, that’s all. I will
+telephone to him to wait.”
+He did so and was hanging up the receiver, when he heard a moan
+behind him. Clarisse was standing by the table, reading an
+evening-paper. She put her hand to her heart, staggered and fell.
+“Achille, Achille!” cried Lupin, calling his man. “Help me
+put her on my bed.... And then go to the cupboard and get me
+the medicine-bottle marked number four, the bottle with the
+sleeping-draught.”
+He forced open her teeth with the point of a knife and compelled
+her to swallow half the bottle:
+“Good,” he said. “Now the poor thing won’t wake till
+to-morrow . . . _after_.”
+He glanced through the paper, which was still clutched in Clarisse’
+hand, and read the following lines:
+“The strictest measures have been taken to keep order at the
+execution of Gilbert and Vaucheray, lest Arsène Lupin should
+make an attempt to rescue his accomplices from the last
+penalty. At twelve o’clock to-night a cordon of troops will
+be drawn across all the approaches to the Santé Prison. As
+already stated, the execution will take place outside the
+prison-walls, in the square formed by the Boulevard Arago
+and the Rue de la Santé.
+“We have succeeded in obtaining some details of the attitude
+of the two condemned men. Vaucheray observes a stolid sullenness
+and is awaiting the fatal event with no little courage:
+“‘Crikey,’ he says, ‘I can’t say I’m delighted; but I’ve got to
+go through it and I shall keep my end up.’ And he adds, ‘Death
+I don’t care a hang about! What worries me is the thought that
+they’re going to cut my head off. Ah, if the governor could
+only hit on some trick to send me straight off to the next
+world before I had time to say knife! A drop of Prussic acid,
+governor, if you please!’
+“Gilbert’s calmness is even more impressive, especially when
+we remember how he broke down at the trial. He retains an
+unshaken confidence in the omnipotence of Arsène Lupin:
+“‘The governor shouted to me before everybody not to be
+afraid, that he was there, that he answered for everything.
+Well, I’m not afraid. I shall rely on him until the last
+day, until the last minute, at the very foot of the
+scaffold. I know the governor! There’s no danger with him.
+He has promised and he will keep his word. If my head were
+off, he’d come and clap it on my shoulders and firmly!
+Arsène Lupin allow his chum Gilbert to die? Not he! Excuse
+my humour!’
+“There is a certain touching frankness in all this enthusiasm
+which is not without a dignity of its own. We shall see if
+Arsène Lupin deserves the confidence so blindly placed in him.”
+Lupin was hardly able to finish reading the article for the tears
+that dimmed his eyes: tears of affection, tears of pity, tears of
+distress.
+No, he did not deserve the confidence of his chum Gilbert.
+Certainly, he had performed impossibilities; but there are
+circumstances in which we must perform more than impossibilities,
+in which we must show ourselves stronger than fate; and, this
+time, fate had been stronger than he. Ever since the first day and
+throughout this lamentable adventure, events had gone contrary
+to his anticipations, contrary to logic itself. Clarisse and he,
+though pursuing an identical aim, had wasted weeks in fighting
+each other. Then, at the moment when they were uniting their
+efforts, a series of ghastly disasters had come one after the
+other: the kidnapping of little Jacques, Daubrecq’s disappearance,
+his imprisonment in the Lovers’ Tower, Lupin’s wound, his enforced
+inactivity, followed by the cunning manoeuvres that dragged
+Clarisse--and Lupin after her--to the south, to Italy. And then,
+as a crowning catastrophe, when, after prodigies of will-power,
+after miracles of perseverance, they were entitled to think that
+the Golden Fleece was won, it all came to nothing. The list of the
+Twenty-seven had no more value than the most insignificant scrap of
+paper.
+“The game’s up!” said Lupin. “It’s an absolute defeat. What if I
+do revenge myself on Daubrecq, ruin him and destroy him? He is the
+real victor, once Gilbert is going to die.”
+He wept anew, not with spite or rage, but with despair. Gilbert was
+going to die! The lad whom he called his chum, the best of his pals
+would be gone for ever, in a few hours. He could not save him. He
+was at the end of his tether. He did not even look round for a last
+expedient. What was the use?
+And his persuasion of his own helplessness was so deep, so definite
+that he felt no shock of any kind on receiving a telegram from the
+Masher that said:
+“Motor accident. Essential part broken. Long repair. Arrive
+to-morrow morning.”
+It was a last proof to show that fate had uttered its decree. He no
+longer thought of rebelling against the decision.
+He looked at Clarisse. She was peacefully sleeping; and this total
+oblivion, this absence of all consciousness, seemed to him so
+enviable that, suddenly yielding to a fit of cowardice, he seized
+the bottle, still half-filled with the sleeping-draught, and drank
+it down.
+Then he stretched himself on a couch and rang for his man:
+“Go to bed, Achille, and don’t wake me on any pretence whatever.”
+“Then there’s nothing to be done for Gilbert and Vaucheray,
+governor?” said Achille.
+“Nothing.”
+“Are they going through it?”
+“They are going through it.”
+Twenty minutes later Lupin fell into a heavy sleep. It was ten
+o’clock in the evening.
+*       *       *       *       *
+The night was full of incident and noise around the prison. At one
+o’clock in the morning the Rue de la Santé, the Boulevard Arago and
+all the streets abutting on the gaol were guarded by police, who
+allowed no one to pass without a regular cross-examination.
+For that matter, it was raining in torrents; and it seemed as
+though the lovers of this sort of show would not be very numerous.
+The public-houses were all closed by special order. At four o’clock
+three companies of infantry came and took up their positions along
+the pavements, while a battalion occupied the Boulevard Arago in
+case of a surprise. Municipal guards cantered up and down between
+the lines; a whole staff of police-magistrates, officers and
+functionaries, brought together for the occasion, moved about among
+the troops.
+The guillotine was set up in silence, in the middle of the square
+formed by the boulevard and the street; and the sinister sound of
+hammering was heard.
+But, at five o’clock, the crowd gathered, notwithstanding the rain,
+and people began to sing. They shouted for the footlights, called
+for the curtain to rise, were exasperated to see that, at the
+distance at which the barriers had been fixed, they could hardly
+distinguish the uprights of the guillotine.
+Several carriages drove up, bringing official persons dressed in
+black. There were cheers and hoots, whereupon a troop of mounted
+municipal guards scattered the groups and cleared the space to
+a distance of three hundred yards from the square. Two fresh
+companies of soldiers lined up.
+And suddenly there was a great silence. A vague white light fell
+from the dark sky. The rain ceased abruptly.
+Inside the prison, at the end of the passage containing the
+condemned cells, the men in black were conversing in low voices.
+Prasville was talking to the public prosecutor, who expressed his
+fears:
+“No, no,” declared Prasville, “I assure you, it will pass without
+an incident of any kind.”
+“Do your reports mention nothing at all suspicious, monsieur le
+secrétaire;-général?”
+“Nothing. And they can’t mention anything, for the simple reason
+that we have Lupin.”
+“Do you mean that?”
+“Yes, we know his hiding-place. The house where he lives, on the
+Place de Clichy, and where he went at seven o’clock last night, is
+surrounded. Moreover, I know the scheme which he had contrived to
+save his two accomplices. The scheme miscarried at the last moment.
+We have nothing to fear, therefore. The law will take its course.”
+Meanwhile, the hour had struck.
+They took Vaucheray first; and the governor of the prison ordered
+the door of his cell to be opened. Vaucheray leapt out of bed and
+cast eyes dilated with terror upon the men who entered.
+“Vaucheray, we have come to tell you....”
+“Stow that, stow that,” he muttered. “No words. I know all about
+it. Get on with the business.”
+One would have thought that he was in a hurry for it to be over
+as fast as possible, so readily did he submit to the usual
+preparations. But he would not allow any of them to speak to him:
+“No words,” he repeated. “What? Confess to the priest? Not worth
+while. I have shed blood. The law sheds my blood. It’s the good old
+rule. We’re quits.”
+Nevertheless, he stopped short for a moment:
+“I say, is my mate going through it too?”
+And, when he heard that Gilbert would go to the scaffold at the
+same time as himself, he had two or three seconds of hesitation,
+glanced at the bystanders, seemed about to speak, was silent and,
+at last, muttered:
+“It’s better so.... They’ll pull us through together . . . we’ll
+clink glasses together.”
+Gilbert was not asleep either, when the men entered his cell.
+Sitting on his bed, he listened to the terrible words, tried to
+stand up, began to tremble frightfully, from head to foot, like a
+skeleton when shaken, and then fell back, sobbing:
+“Oh, my poor mummy, poor mummy!” he stammered.
+They tried to question him about that mother, of whom he had never
+spoken; but his tears were interrupted by a sudden fit of rebellion
+and he cried:
+“I have done no murder.... I won’t die. I have done no murder....”
+“Gilbert,” they said, “show yourself a man.”
+“Yes, yes . . . but I have done no murder.... Why should I die?”
+His teeth chattered so loudly that words which he uttered became
+unintelligible. He let the men do their work, made his confession,
+heard mass and then, growing calmer and almost docile, with the
+voice of a little child resigning itself, murmured:
+“Tell my mother that I beg her forgiveness.”
+“Your mother?”
+“Yes.... Put what I say in the papers.... She will understand....
+And then....”
+“What, Gilbert?”
+“Well, I want the governor to know that I have not lost confidence.”
+He gazed at the bystanders, one after the other, as though he
+entertained the mad hope that “the governor” was one of them,
+disguised beyond recognition and ready to carry him off in his arms:
+“Yes,” he said, gently and with a sort of religious piety, “yes, I
+still have confidence, even at this moment.... Be sure and let him
+know, won’t you?... I am positive that he will not let me die. I am
+certain of it....”
+They guessed, from the fixed look in his eyes, that he saw Lupin,
+that he felt Lupin’s shadow prowling around and seeking an inlet
+through which to get to him. And never was anything more touching
+than the sight of that stripling--clad in the strait-jacket,
+with his arms and legs bound, guarded by thousands of men--whom
+the executioner already held in his inexorable hand and who,
+nevertheless, hoped on.
+Anguish wrung the hearts of all the beholders. Their eyes were
+dimmed with tears:
+“Poor little chap!” stammered some one.
+Prasville, touched like the rest and thinking of Clarisse,
+repeated, in a whisper:
+“Poor little chap!”
+But the hour struck, the preparations were finished. They set out.
+The two processions met in the passage. Vaucheray, on seeing
+Gilbert, snapped out:
+“I say, kiddie, the governor’s chucked us!”
+And he added a sentence which nobody, save Prasville, was able to
+understand:
+“Expect he prefers to pocket the proceeds of the crystal stopper.”
+They went down the staircases. They crossed the prison-yards. An
+endless, horrible distance.
+And, suddenly, in the frame of the great doorway, the wan light of
+day, the rain, the street, the outlines of houses, while far-off
+sounds came through the awful silence.
+They walked along the wall, to the corner of the boulevard.
+A few steps farther Vaucheray started back: he had seen!
+Gilbert crept along, with lowered head, supported by an
+executioner’s assistant and by the chaplain, who made him kiss the
+crucifix as he went.
+There stood the guillotine.
+“No, no,” shouted Gilbert, “I won’t.... I won’t.... Help! Help!”
+A last appeal, lost in space.
+The executioner gave a signal. Vaucheray was laid hold of, lifted,
+dragged along, almost at a run.
+And then came this staggering thing: a shot, a shot fired from the
+other side, from one of the houses opposite.
+The assistants stopped short.
+The burden which they were dragging had collapsed in their arms.
+“What is it? What’s happened?” asked everybody.
+“He’s wounded....”
+Blood spurted from Vaucheray’s forehead and covered his face.
+He spluttered:
+“That’s done it . . . one in a thousand! Thank you, governor, thank
+you.”
+“Finish him off! Carry him there!” said a voice, amid the general
+confusion.
+“But he’s dead!”
+“Get on with it . . . finish him off!”
+Tumult was at its height, in the little group of magistrates,
+officials and policemen. Every one was giving orders:
+“Execute him!... The law must take its course!... We have no right
+to delay! It would be cowardice!... Execute him!”
+“But the man’s dead!”
+“That makes no difference!... The law must be obeyed!... Execute
+him!”
+The chaplain protested, while two warders and Prasville kept their
+eyes on Gilbert. In the meantime, the assistants had taken up the
+corpse again and were carrying it to the guillotine.
+“Hurry up!” cried the executioner, scared and hoarse-voiced. “Hurry
+up!... And the other one to follow.... Waste no time....”
+He had not finished speaking, when a second report rang out. He
+spun round on his heels and fell, groaning:
+“It’s nothing . . . a wound in the shoulder.... Go on.... The next
+one’s turn!”
+But his assistants were running away, yelling with terror. The
+space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of
+police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison,
+helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the
+officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed
+through the archway two or three minutes before.
+In the meanwhile, a squad of policemen, detectives and soldiers
+were rushing upon the house, a little old-fashioned, three-storied
+house, with a ground-floor occupied by two shops which happened to
+be empty. Immediately after the first shot, they had seen, vaguely,
+at one of the windows on the second floor, a man holding a rifle in
+his hand and surrounded with a cloud of smoke.
+Revolver-shots were fired at him, but missed him. He, standing
+calmly on a table, took aim a second time, fired from the shoulder;
+and the crack of the second report was heard. Then he withdrew into
+the room.
+Down below, as nobody answered the peal at the bell, the assailants
+demolished the door, which gave way almost immediately. They
+made for the staircase, but their onrush was at once stopped, on
+the first floor, by an accumulation of beds, chairs and other
+furniture, forming a regular barricade and so close-entangled that
+it took the aggressors four or five minutes to clear themselves a
+passage.
+Those four or five minutes lost were enough to render all pursuit
+hopeless. When they reached the second floor they heard a voice
+shouting from above:
+“This way, friends! Eighteen stairs more. A thousand apologies for
+giving you so much trouble!”
+They ran up those eighteen stairs and nimbly at that! But, at the
+top, above the third story, was the garret, which was reached by a
+ladder and a trapdoor. And the fugitive had taken away the ladder
+and bolted the trapdoor.
+The reader will not have forgotten the sensation created by
+this amazing action, the editions of the papers issued in quick
+succession, the newsboys tearing and shouting through the streets,
+the whole metropolis on edge with indignation and, we may say, with
+anxious curiosity.
+But it was at the headquarters of police that the excitement
+developed into a paroxysm. Men flung themselves about on every
+side. Messages, telegrams, telephone calls followed one upon the
+other.
+At last, at eleven o’clock in the morning, there was a meeting in
+the office of the prefect of police, and Prasville was there. The
+chief-detective read a report of his inquiry, the results of which
+amounted to this: shortly before midnight yesterday some one had
+rung at the house on the Boulevard Arago. The portress, who slept
+in a small room on the ground-floor, behind one of the shops pulled
+the rope. A man came and tapped at her door. He said that he had
+come from the police on an urgent matter concerning to-morrow’s
+execution. The portress opened the door and was at once attacked,
+gagged and bound.
+Ten minutes later a lady and gentleman who lived on the first floor
+and who had just come home were also reduced to helplessness by the
+same individual and locked up, each in one of the two empty shops.
+The third-floor tenant underwent a similar fate, but in his own
+flat and his own bedroom, which the man was able to enter without
+being heard. The second floor was unoccupied, and the man took up
+his quarters there. He was now master of the house.
+“And there we are!” said the prefect of police, beginning to
+laugh, with a certain bitterness. “There we are! It’s as simple as
+shelling peas. Only, what surprises me is that he was able to get
+away so easily.”
+“I will ask you to observe, monsieur le préfet, that, being
+absolute master of the house from one o’clock in the morning, he
+had until five o’clock to prepare his flight.”
+“And that flight took place...?”
+“Over the roofs. At that spot the houses in the next street, the
+Rue de la Glacière, are quite near and there is only one break
+in the roofs, about three yards wide, with a drop of one yard in
+height.”
+“Well?”
+“Well, our man had taken away the ladder leading to the garret
+and used it as a foot-bridge. After crossing to the next block of
+buildings, all he had to do was to look through the windows until
+he found an empty attic, enter one of the houses in the Rue de la
+Glacière and walk out quietly with his hands in his pockets. In
+this way his flight, duly prepared beforehand, was effected very
+simply and without the least obstacle.”
+“But you had taken the necessary measures.”
+“Those which you ordered, monsieur le préfet. My men spent three
+hours last evening visiting all the houses, so as to make sure that
+there was no stranger hiding there. At the moment when they were
+leaving the last house I had the street barred. Our man must have
+slipped through during that few minutes’ interval.”
+“Capital! Capital! And there is no doubt in your minds, of course:
+it’s Arsène Lupin?”
+“Not a doubt. In the first place, it was all a question of his
+accomplices. And then . . . and then . . . no one but Arsène Lupin
+was capable of contriving such a master-stroke and carrying it out
+with that inconceivable boldness.”
+“But, in that case,” muttered the prefect of police--and, turning
+to Prasville, he continued--“but, in that case, my dear Prasville,
+the fellow of whom you spoke to me, the fellow whom you and the
+chief-detective have had watched since yesterday evening, in his
+flat in the Place de Clichy, that fellow is not Arsène Lupin?”
+“Yes, he is, monsieur le préfet. There is no doubt about that
+either.”
+“Then why wasn’t he arrested when he went out last night?”
+“He did not go out.”
+“I say, this is getting complicated!”
+“It’s quite simple, monsieur le préfet. Like all the houses in
+which traces of Arsène Lupin are to be found, the house in the
+Place de Clichy has two outlets.”
+“And you didn’t know it?”
+“I didn’t know it. I only discovered it this morning, on inspecting
+the flat.”
+“Was there no one in the flat?”
+“No. The servant, a man called Achille, went away this morning,
+taking with him a lady who was staying with Lupin.”
+“What was the lady’s name?”
+“I don’t know,” replied Prasville, after an imperceptible
+hesitation.
+“But you know the name under which Arsène Lupin passed?”
+“Yes. M. Nicole, a private tutor, master of arts and so on. Here is
+his card.”
+As Prasville finished speaking, an office-messenger came to tell
+the prefect of police that he was wanted immediately at the Élysée.
+The prime minister was there already.
+“I’m coming,” he said. And he added, between his teeth, “It’s to
+decide upon Gilbert’s fate.”
+Prasville ventured:
+“Do you think they will pardon him, monsieur le préfet?”
+“Never! After last night’s affair, it would make a most deplorable
+impression. Gilbert must pay his debt to-morrow morning.”
+The messenger had, at the same time, handed Prasville a
+visiting-card. Prasville now looked at it, gave a start and
+muttered:
+“Well, I’m hanged! What a nerve!”
+“What’s the matter?” asked the prefect of police.
+“Nothing, nothing, monsieur le préfet,” declared Prasville, who did
+not wish to share with another the honour of seeing this business
+through. “Nothing . . . an unexpected visit.... I hope soon to have
+the pleasure of telling you the result.”
+And he walked away, mumbling, with an air of amazement:
+“Well, upon my word! What a nerve the beggar has! What a nerve!”
+The visiting-card which he held in his hand bore these words:
++---------------------------------------------+
+|                                             |
+|                 _M. Nicole,_                |
+|                                             |
+|       _Master of Arts, Private Tutor._      |
+|                                             |
++---------------------------------------------+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+THE LAST BATTLE
+When Prasville returned to his office he saw M. Nicole sitting on a
+bench in the waiting-room, with his bent back, his ailing air, his
+gingham umbrella, his rusty hat and his single glove:
+“It’s he all right,” said Prasville, who had feared for a moment
+that Lupin might have sent another M. Nicole to see him. “And the
+fact that he has come in person proves that he does not suspect
+that I have seen through him.” And, for the third time, he said,
+“All the same, what a nerve!”
+He shut the door of his office and called his secretary:
+“M. Lartigue, I am having a rather dangerous person shown in here.
+The chances are that he will have to leave my office with the
+bracelets on. As soon as he is in my room, make all the necessary
+arrangements: send for a dozen inspectors and have them posted in
+the waiting-room and in your office. And take this as a definite
+instruction: the moment I ring, you are all to come in, revolvers
+in hand, and surround the fellow. Do you quite understand?”
+“Yes, monsieur le secrétaire;-général.”
+“Above all, no hesitation. A sudden entrance, in a body, revolvers
+in hand. Send M. Nicole in, please.”
+As soon as he was alone, Prasville covered the push of an electric
+bell on his desk with some papers and placed two revolvers of
+respectable dimensions behind a rampart of books.
+“And now,” he said to himself, “to sit tight. If he has the list,
+let’s collar it. If he hasn’t, let’s collar him. And, if possible,
+let’s collar both. Lupin and the list of the Twenty-seven, on the
+same day, especially after the scandal of this morning, would be a
+scoop in a thousand.”
+There was a knock at the door.
+“Come in!” said Prasville.
+And, rising from his seat:
+“Come in, M. Nicole, come in.”
+M. Nicole crept timidly into the room, sat down on the extreme edge
+of the chair to which Prasville pointed and said:
+“I have come . . . to resume . . . our conversation of yesterday....
+Please excuse the delay, monsieur.”
+“One second,” said Prasville. “Will you allow me?”
+He stepped briskly to the outer room and, seeing his secretary:
+“I was forgetting, M. Lartigue. Have the staircases and passages
+searched . . . in case of accomplices.”
+He returned, settled himself comfortably, as though for a long and
+interesting conversation, and began:
+“You were saying, M. Nicole?”
+“I was saying, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that I must
+apologize for keeping you waiting yesterday evening. I was detained
+by different matters. First of all, Mme. Mergy....”
+“Yes, you had to see Mme. Mergy home.”
+“Just so, and to look after her. You can understand the poor
+thing’s despair.... Her son Gilbert so near death.... And such a
+death!... At that time we could only hope for a miracle . . . an
+impossible miracle. I myself was resigned to the inevitable.... You
+know as well as I do, when fate shows itself implacable, one ends
+by despairing.”
+“But I thought,” observed Prasville, “that your intention, on
+leaving me, was to drag Daubrecq’s secret from him at all costs.”
+“Certainly. But Daubrecq was not in Paris.”
+“Oh?”
+“No. He was on his way to Paris in a motor-car.”
+“Have you a motor-car, M. Nicole?”
+“Yes, when I need it: an out-of-date concern, an old tin kettle of
+sorts. Well, he was on his way to Paris in a motor-car, or rather
+on the roof of a motor-car, inside a trunk in which I packed him.
+But, unfortunately, the motor was unable to reach Paris until after
+the execution. Thereupon....”
+Prasville stared at M. Nicole with an air of stupefaction. If he
+had retained the least doubt of the individual’s real identity,
+this manner of dealing with Daubrecq would have removed it. By
+Jingo! To pack a man in a trunk and pitch him on the top of a
+motor-car!... No one but Lupin would indulge in such a freak, no
+one but Lupin would confess it with that ingenuous coolness!
+“Thereupon,” echoed Prasville, “you decided what?”
+“I cast about for another method.”
+“What method?”
+“Why, surely, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, you know as well as
+I do!”
+“How do you mean?”
+“Why, weren’t you at the execution?”
+“I was.”
+“In that case, you saw both Vaucheray and the executioner hit, one
+mortally, the other with a slight wound. And you can’t fail to
+see....”
+“Oh,” exclaimed Prasville, dumbfounded, “you confess it? It was you
+who fired the shots, this morning?”
+“Come, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, think! What choice had I?
+The list of the Twenty-seven which you examined was a forgery.
+Daubrecq, who possessed the genuine one, would not arrive until a
+few hours after the execution. There was therefore but one way for
+me to save Gilbert and obtain his pardon; and that was to delay the
+execution by a few hours.”
+“Obviously.”
+“Well, of course. By killing that infamous brute, that hardened
+criminal, Vaucheray, and wounding the executioner, I spread
+disorder and panic; I made Gilbert’s execution physically and
+morally impossible; and I thus gained the few hours which were
+indispensable for my purpose.”
+“Obviously,” repeated Prasville.
+“Well, of course,” repeated Lupin, “it gives us all--the
+government, the president and myself--time to reflect and to see
+the question in a clearer light. What do you think of it, monsieur
+le secrétaire;-général?”
+Prasville thought a number of things, especially that this Nicole
+was giving proof, to use a vulgar phrase, of the most infernal
+cheek, of a cheek so great that Prasville felt inclined to ask
+himself if he was really right in identifying Nicole with Lupin and
+Lupin with Nicole.
+“I think, M. Nicole, that a man has to be a jolly good shot to kill
+a person whom he wants to kill, at a distance of a hundred yards,
+and to wound another person whom he only wants to wound.”
+“I have had some little practice,” said M. Nicole, with modest air.
+“And I also think that your plan can only be the fruit of a long
+preparation.”
+“Not at all! That’s where you’re wrong! It was absolutely
+spontaneous! If my servant, or rather the servant of the friend who
+lent me his flat in the Place de Clichy, had not shaken me out of
+my sleep, to tell me that he had once served as a shopman in that
+little house on the Boulevard Arago, that it did not hold many
+tenants and that there might be something to be done there, our
+poor Gilbert would have had his head cut off by now . . . and Mme.
+Mergy would most likely be dead.”
+“Oh, you think so?”
+“I am sure of it. And that was why I jumped at that faithful
+retainer’s suggestion. Only, you interfered with my plans, monsieur
+le secrétaire;-général.”
+“I did?”
+“Yes. You must needs go and take the three-cornered precaution of
+posting twelve men at the door of my house. I had to climb five
+flights of back stairs and go out through the servants’ corridor
+and the next house. Such useless fatigue!”
+“I am very sorry, M. Nicole. Another time....”
+“It was the same thing at eight o’clock this morning, when I was
+waiting for the motor which was bringing Daubrecq to me in his
+trunk: I had to march up and down the Place de Clichy, so as to
+prevent the car from stopping outside the door of my place and your
+men from interfering in my private affairs. Otherwise, once again,
+Gilbert and Clarisse Mergy would have been lost.”
+“But,” said Prasville, “those painful events, it seems to me, are
+only delayed for a day, two days, three days at most. To avert them
+for good and all we should want....”
+“The real list, I suppose?”
+“Exactly. And I daresay you haven’t got it.”
+“Yes, I have.”
+“The genuine list?”
+“The genuine, the undoubtedly genuine list.”
+“With the cross of Lorraine?”
+“With the cross of Lorraine.”
+Prasville was silent. He was labouring under violent emotion,
+now that the duel was commencing with that adversary of whose
+terrifying superiority he was well aware; and he shuddered at the
+idea that Arsène Lupin, the formidable Arsène Lupin, was there,
+in front of him, calm and placid, pursuing his aims with as much
+coolness as though he had all the weapons in his hands and were
+face to face with a disarmed enemy.
+Not yet daring to deliver a frontal attack, feeling almost
+intimidated, Prasville said:
+“So Daubrecq gave it up to you?”
+“Daubrecq gives nothing up. I took it.”
+“By main force, therefore?”
+“Oh, dear, no!” said M. Nicole, laughing. “Of course, I was ready
+to go to all lengths; and, when that worthy Daubrecq was dug
+out of the basket in which he had been travelling express, with
+an occasional dose of chloroform to keep his strength up, I had
+prepared things so that the fun might begin at once. Oh, no useless
+tortures . . . no vain sufferings! No.... Death, simply.... You
+press the point of a long needle on the chest, where the heart
+is, and insert it gradually, softly and gently. That’s all but
+the point would have been driven by Mme. Mergy. You understand: a
+mother is pitiless, a mother whose son is about to die!... ‘Speak,
+Daubrecq, or I’ll go deeper.... You won’t speak?... Then I’ll
+push another quarter of an inch . . . and another still.’ And the
+patient’s heart stops beating, the heart that feels the needle
+coming.... And another quarter of an inch . . . and one more.... I
+swear before Heaven that the villain would have spoken!... We leant
+over him and waited for him to wake, trembling with impatience, so
+urgent was our hurry.... Can’t you picture the scene, monsieur le
+secrétaire;-général? The scoundrel lying on a sofa, well bound,
+bare-chested, making efforts to throw off the fumes of chloroform
+that dazed him. He breathes quicker.... He gasps.... He recovers
+consciousness . . . his lips move.... Already, Clarisse Mergy
+whispers, ‘It’s I . . . it’s I, Clarisse.... Will you answer, you
+wretch?’ She has put her finger on Daubrecq’s chest, at the spot
+where the heart stirs like a little animal hidden under the skin.
+But she says to me, ‘His eyes . . . his eyes.... I can’t see them
+under the spectacles.... I want to see them.... ‘And I also want
+to see those eyes which I do not know, I want to see their anguish
+and I want to read in them, before I hear a word, the secret which
+is about to burst from the inmost recesses of the terrified body.
+I want to see. I long to see. The action which I am about to
+accomplish excites me beyond measure. It seems to me that, when I
+have seen the eyes, the veil will be rent asunder. I shall know
+things. It is a presentiment. It is the profound intuition of the
+truth that keeps me on tenterhooks. The eye-glasses are gone. But
+the thick opaque spectacles are there still. And I snatch them
+off, suddenly. And, suddenly, startled by a disconcerting vision,
+dazzled by the quick light that breaks in upon me and laughing,
+oh, but laughing fit to break my jaws, with my thumb--do you
+understand? with my thumb--hop, I force out the left eye!”
+M. Nicole was really laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws.
+And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious
+provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and
+mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing
+with a shrill laughter the sound of which made Prasville’s flesh
+creep:
+“Hop! Jump, Marquis! Out of your kennel, Towzer! What’s the use of
+two eyes? It’s one more than you want. Hop! I say, Clarisse, look
+at it rolling over the carpet! Mind Daubrecq’s eye! Be careful with
+the grate!”
+M. Nicole, who had risen and pretended to be hunting after
+something across the room, now sat down again, took from his pocket
+a thing shaped like a marble, rolled it in the hollow of his hand,
+chucked it in the air, like a ball, put it back in his fob and
+said, coolly:
+“Daubrecq’s left eye.”
+Prasville was utterly bewildered. What was his strange visitor
+driving at? What did all this story mean? Pale with excitement, he
+said:
+“Explain yourself.”
+“But it’s all explained, it seems to me. And it fits in so well
+with things as they were, fits in with all the conjectures which
+I had been making in spite of myself and which would inevitably
+have led to my solving the mystery, if that damned Daubrecq had
+not so cleverly sent me astray! Yes, think, follow the trend of
+my suppositions: ‘As the list is not to be discovered away from
+Daubrecq,’ I said to myself, ‘it cannot exist away from Daubrecq.
+And, as it is not to be discovered in the clothes he wears, it must
+be hidden deeper still, in himself, to speak plainly, in his flesh,
+under his skin....”
+“In his eye, perhaps?” suggested Prasville, by way of a joke....
+“In his eye? Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, you have said the
+word.”
+“What?”
+“I repeat, in his eye. And it is a truth that ought to have
+occurred to my mind logically, instead of being revealed to me by
+accident. And I will tell you why. Daubrecq knew that Clarisse
+had seen a letter from him instructing an English manufacturer
+to ‘empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which it was
+unpossible to suspect.’ Daubrecq was bound, in prudence, to divert
+any attempt at search. And it was for this reason that he had a
+crystal stopper made, ‘emptied within,’ after a model supplied by
+himself. And it is this crystal stopper which you and I have been
+after for months; and it is this crystal stopper which I dug out of
+a packet of tobacco. Whereas all I had to do....”
+“Was what?” asked Prasville, greatly puzzled.
+M. Nicole burst into a fresh fit of laughter:
+“Was simply to go for Daubrecq’s eye, that eye ‘emptied within so
+as to leave a void which it is impossible to suspect,’ the eye
+which you see before you.”
+And M. Nicole once more took the thing from his pocket and rapped
+the table with it, producing the sound of a hard body with each rap.
+Prasville whispered, in astonishment:
+“A glass eye!”
+“Why, of course!” cried M. Nicole, laughing gaily. “A glass eye!
+A common or garden decanter-stopper, which the rascal stuck
+into his eyesocket in the place of an eye which he had lost--a
+decanter-stopper, or, if you prefer, a crystal stopper, but the
+real one, this time, which he faked, which he hid behind the double
+bulwark of his spectacles and eye-glasses, which contained and
+still contains the talisman that enabled Daubrecq to work as he
+pleased in safety.”
+Prasville lowered his head and put his hand to his forehead to
+hide his flushed face: he was almost possessing the list of the
+Twenty-seven. It lay before him, on the table.
+Mastering his emotion, he said, in a casual tone:
+“So it is there still?”
+“At least, I suppose so,” declared M. Nicole.
+“What! You suppose so?”
+“I have not opened the hiding-place. I thought, monsieur le
+secrétaire;-général, I would reserve that honour for you.”
+Prasville put out his hand, took the thing up and inspected it. It
+was a block of crystal, imitating nature to perfection, with all
+the details of the eyeball, the iris, the pupil, the cornea.
+He at once saw a movable part at the back, which slid in a groove.
+He pushed it. The eye was hollow.
+There was a tiny ball of paper inside. He unfolded it, smoothed
+it out and, quickly, without delaying to make a preliminary
+examination of the names, the hand-writing or the signatures, he
+raised his arms and turned the paper to the light from the windows.
+“Is the cross of Lorraine there?” asked M. Nicole.
+“Yes, it is there,” replied Prasville. “This is the genuine list.”
+He hesitated a few seconds and remained with his arms raised, while
+reflecting what he would do. Then he folded up the paper again,
+replaced it in its little crystal sheath and put the whole thing in
+his pocket. M. Nicole, who was looking at him, asked:
+“Are you convinced?”
+“Absolutely.”
+“Then we are agreed?”
+“We are agreed.”
+There was a pause, during which the two men watched each other
+without appearing to. M. Nicole seemed to be waiting for the
+conversation to be resumed. Prasville, sheltered behind the piles
+of books on the table, sat with one hand grasping his revolver and
+the other touching the push of the electric bell. He felt the whole
+strength of his position with a keen zest. He held the list. He
+held Lupin:
+“If he moves,” he thought, “I cover him with my revolver and I
+ring. If he attacks me, I shoot.”
+And the situation appeared to him so pleasant that he prolonged it,
+with the exquisite relish of an epicure.
+In the end, M. Nicole took up the threads:
+“As we are agreed, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I think there
+is nothing left for you to do but to hurry. Is the execution to
+take place to-morrow?”
+“Yes, to-morrow.”
+“In that case, I shall wait here.”
+“Wait for what?”
+“The answer from the Élysée.”
+“Oh, is some one to bring you an answer?”
+“Yes.”
+“You, monsieur le secrétaire;-général.”
+Prasville shook his head:
+“You must not count on me, M. Nicole.”
+“Really?” said M. Nicole, with an air of surprise. “May I ask the
+reason?”
+“I have changed my mind.”
+“Is that all?”
+“That’s all. I have come to the conclusion that, as things stand,
+after this last scandal, it is impossible to try to do anything
+in Gilbert’s favour. Besides, an attempt in this direction at the
+Élysée, under present conditions, would constitute a regular case
+of blackmail, to which I absolutely decline to lend myself.”
+“You are free to do as you please, monsieur. Your scruples do you
+honour, though they come rather late, for they did not trouble you
+yesterday. But, in that case, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, as
+the compact between us is destroyed, give me back the list of the
+Twenty-seven.”
+“What for?”
+“So that I may apply to another spokesman.”
+“What’s the good? Gilbert is lost.”
+“Not at all, not at all. On the contrary, I consider that, now
+that his accomplice is dead, it will be much easier to grant him a
+pardon which everybody will look upon as fair and humane. Give me
+back the list.”
+“Upon my word, monsieur, you have a short memory and none too nice
+a conscience. Have you forgotten your promise of yesterday?”
+“Yesterday, I made a promise to a M. Nicole.”
+“Well?”
+“You are not M. Nicole.”
+“Indeed! Then, pray, who am I?”
+“Need I tell you?”
+M. Nicole made no reply, but began to laugh softly, as though
+pleased at the curious turn which the conversation was taking;
+and Prasville felt a vague misgiving at observing that fit of
+merriment. He grasped the butt-end of his revolver and wondered
+whether he ought not to ring for help.
+M. Nicole drew his chair close to the desk, put his two elbows on
+the table, looked Prasville straight in the face and jeered:
+“So, M. Prasville, you know who I am and you have the assurance to
+play this game with me?”
+“I have that assurance,” said Prasville, accepting the sneer
+without flinching.
+“Which proves that you consider me, Arsène Lupin--we may as well
+use the name: yes, Arsène Lupin--which proves that you consider me
+fool enough, dolt enough to deliver myself like this, bound hand
+and foot into your hands.”
+“Upon my word,” said Prasville, airily, patting the
+waistcoat-pocket in which he had secreted the crystal ball, “I
+don’t quite see what you can do, M. Nicole, now that Daubrecq’s eye
+is here, with the list of the Twenty-seven inside it.”
+“What I can do?” echoed M. Nicole, ironically.
+“Yes! The talisman no longer protects you; and you are now no
+better off than any other man who might venture into the very heart
+of the police-office, among some dozens of stalwart fellows posted
+behind each of those doors and some hundreds of others who will
+hasten up at the first signal.”
+M. Nicole shrugged his shoulders and gave Prasville a look of great
+commiseration:
+“Shall I tell you what is happening, monsieur le
+secrétaire;-général? Well, you too are having your head turned
+by all this business. Now that you possess the list, your state
+of mind has suddenly sunk to that of a Daubrecq or a d’Albufex.
+There is no longer even a question, in your thoughts, of taking it
+to your superiors, so that this ferment of disgrace and discord
+may be ended. No, no; a sodden temptation has seized upon you and
+intoxicated you; and, losing your head, you say to yourself, ‘It
+is here, in my pocket. With its aid, I am omnipotent. It means
+wealth, absolute, unbounded power. Why not benefit by it? Why not
+let Gilbert and Clarisse Mergy die? Why not lock up that idiot of
+a Lupin? Why not seize this unparalleled piece of fortune by the
+forelock?’”
+He bent toward Prasville and, very softly, in a friendly and
+confidential tone, said:
+“Don’t do that, my dear sir, don’t do it.”
+“And why not?”
+“It is not to your interest, believe me.”
+“Really!”
+“No. Or, if you absolutely insist on doing it, have the kindness
+first to consult the twenty-seven names on the list of which you
+have just robbed me and reflect, for a moment, on the name of the
+third person on it.”
+“Oh? And what is the name of that third person?”
+“It is the name of a friend of yours.”
+“What friend?”
+“Stanislas Vorenglade, the ex-deputy.”
+“And then?” said Prasville, who seemed to be losing some of his
+self-confidence.
+“Then? Ask yourself if an inquiry, however summary, would not end
+by discovering, behind that Stanislas Vorenglade, the name of one
+who shared certain little profits with him.”
+“And whose name is?”
+“Louis Prasville.”
+M. Nicole banged the table with his fist.
+“Enough of this humbug, monsieur! For twenty minutes, you and I
+have been beating about the bush. That will do. Let us understand
+each other. And, to begin with, drop your pistols. You can’t
+imagine that I am frightened of those playthings! Stand up, sir,
+stand up, as I am doing, and finish the business: I am in a hurry.”
+He put his hand on Prasville’s shoulder and, speaking with great
+deliberation, said:
+“If, within an hour from now, you are not back from the Élysée,
+bringing with you a line to say that the decree of pardon has been
+signed; if, within one hour and ten minutes, I, Arsène Lupin, do
+not walk out of this building safe and sound and absolutely free,
+this evening four Paris newspapers will receive four letters
+selected from the correspondence exchanged between Stanislas
+Vorenglade and yourself, the correspondence which Stanislas
+Vorenglade sold me this morning. Here’s your hat, here’s your
+overcoat, here’s your stick. Be off. I will wait for you.”
+Then happened this extraordinary and yet easily understood thing,
+that Prasville did not raise the slightest protest nor make the
+least show of fight. He received the sudden, far-reaching, utter
+conviction of what the personality known as Arsène Lupin meant,
+in all its breadth and fulness. He did not so much as think of
+carping, of pretending--as he had until then believed--that the
+letters had been destroyed by Vorenglade the deputy or, at any
+rate, that Vorenglade would not dare to hand them over, because,
+in so doing, Vorenglade was also working his own destruction. No,
+Prasville did not speak a word. He felt himself caught in a vise
+of which no human strength could force the jaws asunder. There was
+nothing to do but yield. He yielded.
+“Here, in an hour,” repeated M. Nicole.
+“In an hour,” said Prasville, tamely. Nevertheless, in order to
+know exactly where he stood, he added, “The letters, of course,
+will be restored to me against Gilbert’s pardon?”
+“No.”
+“How do you mean, no? In that case, there is no object in....”
+“They will be restored to you, intact, two months after the day
+when my friends and I have brought about Gilbert’s escape . . .
+thanks to the very slack watch which will be kept upon him, in
+accordance with your orders.”
+“Is that all?”
+“No, there are two further conditions: first, the immediate payment
+of a cheque for forty thousand francs.”
+“Forty thousand francs?”
+“The sum for which Stanislas Vorenglade sold me the letters. It is
+only fair....”
+“And next?”
+“Secondly, your resignation, within six months, of your present
+position.”
+“My resignation? But why?”
+M. Nicole made a very dignified gesture:
+“Because it is against public morals that one of the highest
+positions in the police-service should be occupied by a man whose
+hands are not absolutely clean. Make them send you to parliament or
+appoint you a minister, a councillor of State, an ambassador, in
+short, any post which your success in the Daubrecq case entitles
+you to demand. But not secretary-general of police; anything but
+that! The very thought of it disgusts me.”
+Prasville reflected for a moment. He would have rejoiced in the
+sudden destruction of his adversary and he racked his brain for the
+means to effect it. But he was helpless.
+He went to the door and called:
+“M. Lartigue.” And, sinking his voice, but not very low, for he
+wished M. Nicole to hear, “M. Lartigue, dismiss your men. It’s a
+mistake. And let no one come into my office while I am gone. This
+gentleman will wait for me here.”
+He came back, took the hat, stick and overcoat which M. Nicole
+handed him and went out.
+“Well done, sir,” said Lupin, between his teeth, when the door was
+closed. “You have behaved like a sportsman and a gentleman.... So
+did I, for that matter . . . perhaps with too obvious a touch of
+contempt . . . and a little too bluntly. But, tush, this sort of
+business has to be carried through with a high hand! The enemy’s
+got to be staggered! Besides, when one’s own conscience is clear,
+one can’t take up too bullying a tone with that sort of individual.
+Lift your head, Lupin. You have been the champion of outraged
+morality. Be proud of your work. And now take a chair, stretch out
+your legs and have a rest. You’ve deserved it.”
+When Prasville returned, he found Lupin sound asleep and had to tap
+him on the shoulder to wake him.
+“Is it done?” asked Lupin.
+“It’s done. The pardon will be signed presently. Here is the
+written promise.”
+“The forty thousand francs?”
+“Here’s your cheque.”
+“Good. It but remains for me to thank you, monsieur.”
+“So the correspondence....”
+“The Stanislas Vorenglade correspondence will be handed to you on
+the conditions stated. However, I am glad to be able to give you,
+here and now, as a sign of my gratitude, the four letters which I
+meant to send to the papers this evening.”
+“Oh, so you had them on you?” said Prasville.
+“I felt so certain, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that we should
+end by coming to an understanding.”
+He took from his hat a fat envelope, sealed with five red seals,
+which was pinned inside the lining, and handed it to Prasville, who
+thrust it into his pocket. Then he said:
+“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I don’t know when I shall
+have the pleasure of seeing you again. If you have the least
+communication to make to me, one line in the agony column of the
+_Journal_ will be sufficient. Just head it, ‘M. Nicole.’ Good-day
+to you.”
+And he withdrew.
+Prasville, when he was alone, felt as if he were waking from a
+nightmare during which he had performed incoherent actions over
+which his conscious mind had no control. He was almost thinking
+of ringing and causing a stir in the passages; but, just then,
+there was a tap at the door and one of the office-messengers came
+hurrying in.
+“What’s the matter?” asked Prasville.
+“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, it’s Monsieur le Député Daubrecq
+asking to see you . . . on a matter of the highest importance.”
+“Daubrecq!” exclaimed Prasville, in bewilderment. “Daubrecq here!
+Show him in.”
+[Illustration: Daubrecq ran up to Prasville out of breath and caught
+hold of him with his two enormous hands.]
+Daubrecq had not waited for the order. He ran up to Prasville, out
+of breath, with his clothes in disorder, a bandage over his left
+eye, no tie, no collar, looking like an escaped lunatic; and the
+door was not closed before he caught hold of Prasville with his two
+enormous hands:
+“Have you the list?”
+“Yes.”
+“Have you bought it?”
+“Yes.”
+“At the price of Gilbert’s pardon?”
+“Yes.”
+“Is it signed?”
+“Yes.”
+Daubrecq made a furious gesture:
+“You fool! You fool! You’ve been trapped! For hatred of me, I
+expect? And now you’re going to take your revenge?”
+“With a certain satisfaction, Daubrecq. Remember my little friend,
+the opera-dancer, at Nice.... It’s your turn now to dance.”
+“So it means prison?”
+“I should think so,” said Prasville. “Besides, it doesn’t matter.
+You’re done for, anyhow. Deprived of the list, without defence of
+any kind, you’re bound to fall to pieces of your own weight. And I
+shall be present at the break-up. That’s my revenge.”
+“And you believe that!” yelled Daubrecq, furiously. “You believe
+that they will wring my neck like a chicken’s and that I shall not
+know how to defend myself and that I have no claws left and no
+teeth to bite with! Well, my boy, if I do come to grief, there’s
+always one who will fall with me and that is Master Prasville, the
+partner of Stanislas Vorenglade, who is going to hand me every
+proof in existence against him, so that I may get him sent to
+gaol without delay. Aha, I’ve got you fixed, old chap! With those
+letters, you’ll go as I please, hang it all, and there will be fine
+days yet for Daubrecq the deputy! What! You’re laughing, are you?
+Perhaps those letters don’t exist?”
+Prasville shrugged his shoulders:
+“Yes, they exist. But Vorenglade no longer has them in his
+possession.”
+“Since when?”
+“Since this morning. Vorenglade sold them, two hours ago, for the
+sum of forty thousand francs; and I have bought them back at the
+same price.”
+Daubrecq burst into a great roar of laughter:
+“Lord, how funny! Forty thousand francs! You’ve paid forty thousand
+francs! To M. Nicole, I suppose, who sold you the list of the
+Twenty-seven? Well, would you like me to tell you the real name of
+M. Nicole? It’s Arsène Lupin!”
+“I know that.”
+“Very likely. But what you don’t know, you silly ass, is that I
+have come straight from Stanislas Vorenglade’s and that Stanislas
+Vorenglade left Paris four days ago! Oh, what a joke! They’ve sold
+you waste paper! And your forty thousand francs! What an ass! What
+an ass!”
+He walked out of the room, screaming with laughter and leaving
+Prasville absolutely dumbfounded.
+So Arsène Lupin possessed no proof at all; and, when he was
+threatening and commanding and treating Prasville with that airy
+insolence, it was all a farce, all bluff!
+“No, no, it’s impossible,” thought the secretary-general. “I have
+the sealed envelope.... It’s here.... I have only to open it.”
+He dared not open it. He handled it, weighed it, examined it....
+And doubt made its way so swiftly into his mind that he was not in
+the least surprised, when he did open it, to find that it contained
+four blank sheets of note-paper.
+“Well, well,” he said, “I am no match for those rascals. But all is
+not over yet.”
+And, in point of fact, all was not over. If Lupin had acted so
+daringly, it showed that the letters existed and that he relied
+upon buying them from Stanislas Vorenglade. But, as, on the other
+hand, Vorenglade was not in Paris, Prasville’s business was simply
+to forestall Lupin’s steps with regard to Vorenglade and obtain
+the restitution of those dangerous letters from Vorenglade at all
+costs. The first to arrive would be the victor.
+Prasville once more took his hat, coat and stick, went downstairs,
+stepped into a taxi and drove to Vorenglade’s flat.
+Here he was told that the ex-deputy was expected home from London
+at six o’clock that evening.
+It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Prasville therefore had plenty
+of time to prepare his plan.
+He arrived at the Gare du Nord at five o’clock and posted all
+around, in the waiting-rooms and in the railway-offices, the three
+or four dozen detectives whom he had brought with him.
+This made him feel easy. If M. Nicole tried to speak to Vorenglade,
+they would arrest Lupin. And, to make assurance doubly sure, they
+would arrest whosoever could be suspected of being either Lupin or
+one of Lupin’s emissaries.
+Moreover, Prasville made a close inspection of the whole station.
+He discovered nothing suspicious. But, at ten minutes to six,
+Chief-inspector Blanchon, who was with him, said:
+“Look, there’s Daubrecq.”
+Daubrecq it was; and the sight of his enemy exasperated the
+secretary-general to such a pitch that he was on the verge of
+having him arrested. But he reflected that he had no excuse, no
+right, no warrant for the arrest.
+Besides, Daubrecq’s presence proved, with still greater force,
+that everything now depended on Stanislas Vorenglade. Vorenglade
+possessed the letters: who would end by having them? Daubrecq?
+Lupin? Or he, Prasville?
+Lupin was not there and could not be there. Daubrecq was not in a
+position to fight. There could be no doubt, therefore, about the
+result: Prasville would reenter into possession of his letters and,
+through this very fact, would escape Daubrecq’s threats and Lupin’s
+threats and recover all his freedom of action against them.
+The train arrived.
+In accordance with orders, the stationmaster had issued
+instructions that no one was to be admitted to the platform.
+Prasville, therefore, walked on alone, in front of a number of his
+men, with Chief-inspector Blanchon at their head.
+The train drew up.
+Prasville almost at once saw Stanislas Vorenglade at the window of
+a first-class compartment, in the middle of the train.
+The ex-deputy alighted and then held out his hand to assist an old
+gentleman who was travelling with him.
+Prasville ran up to him and said, eagerly:
+“Vorenglade . . . I want to speak to you....”
+At the same moment, Daubrecq, who had managed to pass the barrier,
+appeared and exclaimed:
+“M. Vorenglade, I have had your letter. I am at your disposal.”
+Vorenglade looked at the two men, recognized Prasville, recognized
+Daubrecq, and smiled:
+“Oho, it seems that my return was awaited with some impatience!
+What’s it all about? Certain letters, I expect?”
+“Yes . . . yes . . .” replied the two men, fussing around him.
+“You’re too late,” he declared.
+“Eh? What? What do you mean?”
+“I mean that the letters are sold.”
+“Sold! To whom?”
+“To this gentleman,” said Vorenglade, pointing to his
+travelling-companion, “to this gentleman, who thought that the
+business was worth going out of his way for and who came to Amiens
+to meet me.”
+The old gentleman, a very old man wrapped in furs and leaning on
+his stick, took off his hat and bowed.
+“It’s Lupin,” thought Prasville, “it’s Lupin, beyond a doubt.”
+And he glanced toward the detectives, was nearly calling them, but
+the old gentleman explained:
+“Yes, I thought the letters were good enough to warrant a few
+hours’ railway journey and the cost of two return tickets.”
+“Two tickets?”
+“One for me and the other for one of my friends.”
+“One of your friends?”
+“Yes, he left us a few minutes ago and reached the front part of
+the train through the corridor. He was in a great hurry.”
+Prasville understood: Lupin had taken the precaution to bring an
+accomplice, and the accomplice was carrying off the letters. The
+game was lost, to a certainty. Lupin had a firm grip on his victim.
+There was nothing to do but submit and accept the conqueror’s
+conditions.
+“Very well, sir,” said Prasville. “We shall see each other when the
+time comes. Good-bye for the present, Daubrecq: you shall hear from
+me.” And, drawing Vorenglade aside, “As for you, Vorenglade, you
+are playing a dangerous game.”
+“Dear me!” said the ex-deputy. “And why?”
+The two men moved away.
+Daubrecq had not uttered a word and stood motionless, as though
+rooted to the ground.
+The old gentleman went up to him and whispered:
+“I say, Daubrecq, wake up, old chap.... It’s the chloroform, I
+expect....”
+Daubrecq clenched his fists and gave a muttered growl.
+“Ah, I see you know me!” said the old gentleman. “Then you will
+remember our interview, some months ago, when I came to see you
+in the Square Lamartine and asked you to intercede in Gilbert’s
+favour. I said to you that day, ‘Lay down your arms, save Gilbert
+and I will leave you in peace. If not, I shall take the list of the
+Twenty-seven from you; and then you’re done for.’ Well, I have a
+strong suspicion that done for is what you are. That comes of not
+making terms with kind M. Lupin. Sooner or later, you’re bound to
+lose your boots by it. However, let it be a lesson to you.... By
+the way, here’s your pocketbook which I forgot to give you. Excuse
+me if you find it lightened of its contents. There were not only a
+decent number of bank-notes in it, but also the receipt from the
+warehouse where you stored the Enghien things which you took back
+from me. I thought I might as well save you the trouble of taking
+them out yourself. It ought to be done by now. No, don’t thank me:
+it’s not worth mentioning. Good-bye, Daubrecq. And, if you should
+want a louis or two, to buy yourself a new decanter-stopper, drop
+me a line. Good-bye, Daubrecq.”
+He walked away.
+He had not gone fifty steps when he heard the sound of a shot.
+He turned round.
+Daubrecq had blown his brains out.
+“_De profundis!_” murmured Lupin, taking off his hat.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Two months later, Gilbert, whose sentence had been commuted to one
+of penal servitude for life, made his escape from the Île de Ré, on
+the day before that on which he was to have been transported to New
+Caledonia.
+It was a strange escape. Its least details remained difficult to
+understand; and, like the two shots on the Boulevard Arago, it
+greatly enhanced Arsène Lupin’s prestige.
+“Taken all round,” said Lupin to me, one day, after telling me the
+different episodes of the story, “taken all around, no enterprise
+has ever given me more trouble or cost me greater exertions than
+that confounded adventure which, if you don’t mind, we will call,
+_The Crystal Stopper; or, Never Say Die_. In twelve hours, between
+six o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening, I made
+up for six months of bad luck, blunders, gropings in the dark and
+reverses. I certainly count those twelve hours among the finest and
+the most glorious of my life.”
+“And Gilbert?” I asked. “What became of him?”
+“He is farming his own land, way down in Algeria, under his
+real name, his only name of Antoine Mergy. He is married to an
+Englishwoman, and they have a son whom he insisted on calling
+Arsène. I often receive a bright, chatty, warm-hearted letter from
+him.”
+“And Mme. Mergy?”
+“She and her little Jacques are living with them.”
+“Did you see her again?”
+“I did not.”
+“Really!”
+Lupin hesitated for a few moments and then said with a smile:
+“My dear fellow, I will let you into a secret that will make me
+seem ridiculous in your eyes. But you know that I have always
+been as sentimental as a schoolboy and as silly as a goose. Well,
+on the evening when I went back to Clarisse Mergy and told her
+the news of the day--part of which, for that matter, she already
+knew--I felt two things very thoroughly. One was that I entertained
+for her a much deeper feeling than I thought; the other that
+she, on the contrary, entertained for me a feeling which was not
+without contempt, not without a rankling grudge nor even a certain
+aversion.”
+“Nonsense! Why?”
+“Why? Because Clarisse Mergy is an exceedingly honest woman and
+because I am . . . just Arsène Lupin.”
+“Oh!”
+“Dear me, yes, an attractive bandit, a romantic and chivalrous
+cracksman, anything you please. For all that, in the eyes of a
+really honest woman, with an upright nature and a well-balanced
+mind, I am only the merest riff-raff.”
+I saw that the wound was sharper than he was willing to admit, and
+I said:
+“So you really loved her?”
+“I even believe,” he said, in a jesting tone, “that I asked her to
+marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?... So . . . I
+thought. What a rebuff!... It produced a coolness between us....
+Since then....”
+“You have forgotten her?”
+“Oh, certainly! But it required the consolations of one Italian,
+two Americans, three Russians, a German grand-duchess and a
+Chinawoman to do it!”
+“And, after that....?”
+“After that, so as to place an insuperable barrier between myself
+and her, I got married.”
+“Nonsense! You got married, you, Arsène Lupin?”
+“Married, wedded, spliced, in the most lawful fashion. One of the
+greatest names in France. An only daughter. A colossal fortune....
+What! You don’t know the story? Well, it’s worth hearing.”
+And, straightway, Lupin, who was in a confidential vein, began to
+tell me the story of his marriage to Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme,
+Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, to-day Sister Marie-Auguste, a humble
+nun in the Visitation Convent....[G]
+But, after the first few words, he stopped, as though his narrative
+had suddenly ceased to interest him, and he remained pensive.
+“What’s the matter, Lupin?”
+“The matter? Nothing.”
+“Yes, yes.... There . . . now you’re smiling.... Is it Daubrecq’s
+secret receptacle, his glass eye, that’s making you laugh?”
+“Not at all.”
+“What then?”
+“Nothing, I tell you . . . only a memory.”
+“A pleasant memory?”
+“Yes!... Yes, a delightful memory even. It was at night, off the
+Île de Ré, on the fishing-smack in which Clarisse and I were taking
+Gilbert away.... We were alone, the two of us, in the stern of the
+boat.... And I remember.... I talked.... I spoke words and more
+words.... I said all that I had on my heart.... And then . . . then
+came silence, a perturbing and disarming silence.”
+“Well?”
+“Well, I swear to you that the woman whom I took in my arms that
+night and kissed on the lips--oh, not for long: a few seconds only,
+but no matter!--I swear before heaven that she was something more
+than a grateful mother, something more than a friend yielding to
+a moment of susceptibility, that she was a woman also, a woman
+quivering with emotion....” And he continued, with a bitter laugh,
+“Who ran away next day, never to see me again.”
+He was silent once more. Then he whispered:
+“Clarisse.... Clarisse.... On the day when I am tired and
+disappointed and weary of life, I will come to you down there, in
+your little Arab house  . . . in that little white house, Clarisse,
+where you are waiting for me....”
+[G] See _The Confessions of Arsène Lupin_. By Maurice Leblanc.
+Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
+THE END",The Crystal Stopper,Maurice Leblanc,216,['Daubrecq']
+"Produced by David Brannan
+The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
+by
+Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
+CONTENTS
+I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day
+towards the end of March in the year 1892.  Holmes had received a
+telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply.  He
+made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood
+in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his
+pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message.  Suddenly he
+turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
+""I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,"" said
+he.  ""How do you define the word 'grotesque'?""
+""Strange--remarkable,"" I suggested.
+He shook his head at my definition.
+""There is surely something more than that,"" said he; ""some underlying
+suggestion of the tragic and the terrible.  If you cast your mind back
+to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a
+long-suffering public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has
+deepened into the criminal.  Think of that little affair of the
+red-headed men.  That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it
+ended in a desperate attempt at robbery.  Or, again, there was that
+most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which led straight to a
+murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on the alert.""
+""Have you it there?"" I asked.
+He read the telegram aloud.
+""Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience.  May I consult
+you?
+""Scott Eccles,
+""Post Office, Charing Cross.""
+""Man or woman?"" I asked.
+""Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram.
+She would have come.""
+""Will you see him?""
+""My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up
+Colonel Carruthers.  My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to
+pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was
+built.  Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile; audacity and
+romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world.  Can you
+ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however
+trivial it may prove?  But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.""
+A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a stout,
+tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was ushered into
+the room.  His life history was written in his heavy features and
+pompous manner.  From his spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a
+Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen, orthodox and conventional to
+the last degree. But some amazing experience had disturbed his native
+composure and left its traces in his bristling hair, his flushed, angry
+cheeks, and his flurried, excited manner. He plunged instantly into his
+business.
+""I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience, Mr. Holmes,""
+said he.  ""Never in my life have I been placed in such a situation.  It
+is most improper--most outrageous.  I must insist upon some
+explanation.""  He swelled and puffed in his anger.
+""Pray sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles,"" said Holmes in a soothing voice.
+""May I ask, in the first place, why you came to me at all?""
+""Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the
+police, and yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit that I
+could not leave it where it was.  Private detectives are a class with
+whom I have absolutely no sympathy, but none the less, having heard
+your name--""
+""Quite so.  But, in the second place, why did you not come at once?""
+Holmes glanced at his watch.
+""It is a quarter-past two,"" he said.  ""Your telegram was dispatched
+about one.  But no one can glance at your toilet and attire without
+seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking.""
+Our client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven chin.
+""You are right, Mr. Holmes.  I never gave a thought to my toilet. I was
+only too glad to get out of such a house.  But I have been running
+round making inquiries before I came to you.  I went to the house
+agents, you know, and they said that Mr. Garcia's rent was paid up all
+right and that everything was in order at Wisteria Lodge.""
+""Come, come, sir,"" said Holmes, laughing.  ""You are like my friend, Dr.
+Watson, who has a bad habit of telling his stories wrong end foremost.
+Please arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence,
+exactly what those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and
+unkempt, with dress boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of
+advice and assistance.""
+Our client looked down with a rueful face at his own unconventional
+appearance.
+""I'm sure it must look very bad, Mr. Holmes, and I am not aware that in
+my whole life such a thing has ever happened before.  But I will tell you
+the whole queer business, and when I have done so you will admit, I am
+sure, that there has been enough to excuse me.""
+But his narrative was nipped in the bud.  There was a bustle outside,
+and Mrs. Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust and
+official-looking individuals, one of whom was well known to us as
+Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic, gallant, and, within
+his limitations, a capable officer.  He shook hands with Holmes and
+introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes, of the Surrey Constabulary.
+""We are hunting together, Mr. Holmes, and our trail lay in this
+direction.""  He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor.  ""Are you Mr.
+John Scott Eccles, of Popham House, Lee?""
+""I am.""
+""We have been following you about all the morning.""
+""You traced him through the telegram, no doubt,"" said Holmes.
+""Exactly, Mr. Holmes.  We picked up the scent at Charing Cross
+Post-Office and came on here.""
+""But why do you follow me?  What do you want?""
+""We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which led up
+to the death last night of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, near
+Esher.""
+Our client had sat up with staring eyes and every tinge of colour
+struck from his astonished face.
+""Dead?  Did you say he was dead?""
+""Yes, sir, he is dead.""
+""But how?  An accident?""
+""Murder, if ever there was one upon earth.""
+""Good God!  This is awful!  You don't mean--you don't mean that I am
+suspected?""
+""A letter of yours was found in the dead man's pocket, and we know by
+it that you had planned to pass last night at his house.""
+""So I did.""
+""Oh, you did, did you?""
+Out came the official notebook.
+""Wait a bit, Gregson,"" said Sherlock Holmes.  ""All you desire is a
+plain statement, is it not?""
+""And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used against
+him.""
+""Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the room.  I
+think, Watson, a brandy and soda would do him no harm. Now, sir, I
+suggest that you take no notice of this addition to your audience, and
+that you proceed with your narrative exactly as you would have done had
+you never been interrupted.""
+Our visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned to
+his face.  With a dubious glance at the inspector's notebook, he
+plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.
+""I am a bachelor,"" said he, ""and being of a sociable turn I cultivate a
+large number of friends.  Among these are the family of a retired
+brewer called Melville, living at Abermarle Mansion, Kensington.  It
+was at his table that I met some weeks ago a young fellow named Garcia.
+He was, I understood, of Spanish descent and connected in some way with
+the embassy.  He spoke perfect English, was pleasing in his manners,
+and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.
+""In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow and I.
+He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and within two days of
+our meeting he came to see me at Lee.  One thing led to another, and it
+ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria
+Lodge, between Esher and Oxshott.  Yesterday evening I went to Esher to
+fulfil this engagement.
+""He had described his household to me before I went there.  He lived
+with a faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who looked after all
+his needs.  This fellow could speak English and did his housekeeping
+for him.  Then there was a wonderful cook, he said, a half-breed whom
+he had picked up in his travels, who could serve an excellent dinner.
+I remember that he remarked what a queer household it was to find in
+the heart of Surrey, and that I agreed with him, though it has proved a
+good deal queerer than I thought.
+""I drove to the place--about two miles on the south side of Esher.  The
+house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving
+drive which was banked with high evergreen shrubs.  It was an old,
+tumbledown building in a crazy state of disrepair.  When the trap
+pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and
+weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man
+whom I knew so slightly.  He opened the door himself, however, and
+greeted me with a great show of cordiality.  I was handed over to the
+manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag
+in his hand, to my bedroom.  The whole place was depressing.  Our
+dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be
+entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked
+so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him. He
+continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his nails, and
+gave other signs of nervous impatience.  The dinner itself was neither
+well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn
+servant did not help to enliven us.  I can assure you that many times
+in the course of the evening I wished that I could invent some excuse
+which would take me back to Lee.
+""One thing comes back to my memory which may have a bearing upon the
+business that you two gentlemen are investigating.  I thought nothing
+of it at the time.  Near the end of dinner a note was handed in by the
+servant.  I noticed that after my host had read it he seemed even more
+distrait and strange than before.  He gave up all pretence at
+conversation and sat, smoking endless cigarettes, lost in his own
+thoughts, but he made no remark as to the contents.  About eleven I was
+glad to go to bed.  Some time later Garcia looked in at my door--the
+room was dark at the time--and asked me if I had rung.  I said that I
+had not.  He apologized for having disturbed me so late, saying that it
+was nearly one o'clock.  I dropped off after this and slept soundly all
+night.
+""And now I come to the amazing part of my tale.  When I woke it was
+broad daylight.  I glanced at my watch, and the time was nearly nine.
+I had particularly asked to be called at eight, so I was very much
+astonished at this forgetfulness.  I sprang up and rang for the
+servant.  There was no response.  I rang again and again, with the same
+result.  Then I came to the conclusion that the bell was out of order.
+I huddled on my clothes and hurried downstairs in an exceedingly bad
+temper to order some hot water.  You can imagine my surprise when I
+found that there was no one there.  I shouted in the hall.  There was
+no answer.  Then I ran from room to room. All were deserted.  My host
+had shown me which was his bedroom the night before, so I knocked at
+the door. No reply.  I turned the handle and walked in.  The room was
+empty, and the bed had never been slept in.  He had gone with the rest.
+The foreign host, the foreign footman, the foreign cook, all had
+vanished in the night!  That was the end of my visit to Wisteria Lodge.""
+Sherlock Holmes was rubbing his hands and chuckling as he added this
+bizarre incident to his collection of strange episodes.
+""Your experience is, so far as I know, perfectly unique,"" said he.
+""May I ask, sir, what you did then?""
+""I was furious.  My first idea was that I had been the victim of some
+absurd practical joke.  I packed my things, banged the hall door behind
+me, and set off for Esher, with my bag in my hand. I called at Allan
+Brothers', the chief land agents in the village, and found that it was
+from this firm that the villa had been rented.  It struck me that the
+whole proceeding could hardly be for the purpose of making a fool of
+me, and that the main object must be to get out of the rent.  It is
+late in March, so quarter-day is at hand.  But this theory would not
+work.  The agent was obliged to me for my warning, but told me that the
+rent had been paid in advance.  Then I made my way to town and called
+at the Spanish embassy.  The man was unknown there.  After this I went
+to see Melville, at whose house I had first met Garcia, but I found
+that he really knew rather less about him than I did. Finally when I
+got your reply to my wire I came out to you, since I gather that you
+are a person who gives advice in difficult cases.  But now, Mr.
+Inspector, I understand, from what you said when you entered the room,
+that you can carry the story on, and that some tragedy had occurred. I
+can assure you that every word I have said is the truth, and that,
+outside of what I have told you, I know absolutely nothing about the
+fate of this man.  My only desire is to help the law in every possible
+way.""
+""I am sure of it, Mr. Scott Eccles--I am sure of it,"" said Inspector
+Gregson in a very amiable tone.  ""I am bound to say that everything
+which you have said agrees very closely with the facts as they have
+come to our notice.  For example, there was that note which arrived
+during dinner.  Did you chance to observe what became of it?""
+""Yes, I did.  Garcia rolled it up and threw it into the fire.""
+""What do you say to that, Mr. Baynes?""
+The country detective was a stout, puffy, red man, whose face was only
+redeemed from grossness by two extraordinarily bright eyes, almost
+hidden behind the heavy creases of cheek and brow.  With a slow smile
+he drew a folded and discoloured scrap of paper from his pocket.
+""It was a dog-grate, Mr. Holmes, and he overpitched it.  I picked this
+out unburned from the back of it.""
+Holmes smiled his appreciation.
+""You must have examined the house very carefully to find a single
+pellet of paper.""
+""I did, Mr. Holmes.  It's my way.  Shall I read it, Mr. Gregson?""
+The Londoner nodded.
+""The note is written upon ordinary cream-laid paper without watermark.
+It is a quarter-sheet.  The paper is cut off in two snips with a
+short-bladed scissors.  It has been folded over three times and sealed
+with purple wax, put on hurriedly and pressed down with some flat oval
+object.  It is addressed to Mr. Garcia, Wisteria Lodge. It says:
+""Our own colours, green and white.  Green open, white shut.  Main
+stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.  Godspeed.  D.
+""It is a woman's writing, done with a sharp-pointed pen, but the
+address is either done with another pen or by someone else.  It is
+thicker and bolder, as you see.""
+""A very remarkable note,"" said Holmes, glancing it over.  ""I must
+compliment you, Mr. Baynes, upon your attention to detail in your
+examination of it.  A few trifling points might perhaps be added. The
+oval seal is undoubtedly a plain sleeve-link--what else is of such a
+shape?  The scissors were bent nail scissors.  Short as the two snips
+are, you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each.""
+The country detective chuckled.
+""I thought I had squeezed all the juice out of it, but I see there was
+a little over,"" he said.  ""I'm bound to say that I make nothing of the
+note except that there was something on hand, and that a woman, as
+usual was at the bottom of it.""
+Mr. Scott Eccles had fidgeted in his seat during this conversation.
+""I am glad you found the note, since it corroborates my story,"" said
+he.  ""But I beg to point out that I have not yet heard what has
+happened to Mr. Garcia, nor what has become of his household.""
+""As to Garcia,"" said Gregson, ""that is easily answered.  He was found
+dead this morning upon Oxshott Common, nearly a mile from his home.
+His head had been smashed to pulp by heavy blows of a sandbag or some
+such instrument, which had crushed rather than wounded.  It is a lonely
+corner, and there is no house within a quarter of a mile of the spot.
+He had apparently been struck down first from behind, but his assailant
+had gone on beating him long after he was dead.  It was a most furious
+assault.  There are no footsteps nor any clue to the criminals.""
+""Robbed?""
+""No, there was no attempt at robbery.""
+""This is very painful--very painful and terrible,"" said Mr. Scott
+Eccles in a querulous voice, ""but it is really uncommonly hard on me.
+I had nothing to do with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion
+and meeting so sad an end.  How do I come to be mixed up with the case?""
+""Very simply, sir,"" Inspector Baynes answered.  ""The only document
+found in the pocket of the deceased was a letter from you saying that
+you would be with him on the night of his death. It was the envelope of
+this letter which gave us the dead man's name and address.  It was
+after nine this morning when we reached his house and found neither you
+nor anyone else inside it.  I wired to Mr. Gregson to run you down in
+London while I examined Wisteria Lodge.  Then I came into town, joined
+Mr. Gregson, and here we are.""
+""I think now,"" said Gregson, rising, ""we had best put this matter into
+an official shape.  You will come round with us to the station, Mr.
+Scott Eccles, and let us have your statement in writing.""
+""Certainly, I will come at once.  But I retain your services, Mr.
+Holmes.  I desire you to spare no expense and no pains to get at the
+truth.""
+My friend turned to the country inspector.
+""I suppose that you have no objection to my collaborating with you, Mr.
+Baynes?""
+""Highly honoured, sir, I am sure.""
+""You appear to have been very prompt and businesslike in all that you
+have done.  Was there any clue, may I ask, as to the exact hour that
+the man met his death?""
+""He had been there since one o'clock.  There was rain about that time,
+and his death had certainly been before the rain.""
+""But that is perfectly impossible, Mr. Baynes,"" cried our client. ""His
+voice is unmistakable.  I could swear to it that it was he who
+addressed me in my bedroom at that very hour.""
+""Remarkable, but by no means impossible,"" said Holmes, smiling.
+""You have a clue?"" asked Gregson.
+""On the face of it the case is not a very complex one, though it
+certainly presents some novel and interesting features.  A further
+knowledge of facts is necessary before I would venture to give a final
+and definite opinion.  By the way, Mr. Baynes, did you find anything
+remarkable besides this note in your examination of the house?""
+The detective looked at my friend in a singular way.
+""There were,"" said he, ""one or two _very_ remarkable things. Perhaps
+when I have finished at the police-station you would care to come out
+and give me your opinion of them.""
+""I am entirely at your service,"" said Sherlock Holmes, ringing the
+bell.  ""You will show these gentlemen out, Mrs. Hudson, and kindly send
+the boy with this telegram.  He is to pay a five-shilling reply.""
+We sat for some time in silence after our visitors had left. Holmes
+smoked hard, with his browns drawn down over his keen eyes, and his
+head thrust forward in the eager way characteristic of the man.
+""Well, Watson,"" he asked, turning suddenly upon me, ""what do you make
+of it?""
+""I can make nothing of this mystification of Scott Eccles.""
+""But the crime?""
+""Well, taken with the disappearance of the man's companions, I should
+say that they were in some way concerned in the murder and had fled
+from justice.""
+""That is certainly a possible point of view.  On the face of it you
+must admit, however, that it is very strange that his two servants
+should have been in a conspiracy against him and should have attacked
+him on the one night when he had a guest.  They had him alone at their
+mercy every other night in the week.""
+""Then why did they fly?""
+""Quite so.  Why did they fly?  There is a big fact.  Another big fact
+is the remarkable experience of our client, Scott Eccles. Now, my dear
+Watson, is it beyond the limits of human ingenuity to furnish an
+explanation which would cover both of these big facts?  If it were one
+which would also admit of the mysterious note with its very curious
+phraseology, why, then it would be worth accepting as a temporary
+hypothesis.  If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit
+themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a
+solution.""
+""But what is our hypothesis?""
+Holmes leaned back in his chair with half-closed eyes.
+""You must admit, my dear Watson, that the idea of a joke is impossible.
+There were grave events afoot, as the sequel showed, and the coaxing of
+Scott Eccles to Wisteria Lodge had some connection with them.""
+""But what possible connection?""
+""Let us take it link by link.  There is, on the face of it, something
+unnatural about this strange and sudden friendship between the young
+Spaniard and Scott Eccles.  It was the former who forced the pace.  He
+called upon Eccles at the other end of London on the very day after he
+first met him, and he kept in close touch with him until he got him
+down to Esher.  Now, what did he want with Eccles?  What could Eccles
+supply?  I see no charm in the man.  He is not particularly
+intelligent--not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin.
+Why, then, was he picked out from all the other people whom Garcia met
+as particularly suited to his purpose?  Has he any one outstanding
+quality?  I say that he has.  He is the very type of conventional
+British respectability, and the very man as a witness to impress
+another Briton.  You saw yourself how neither of the inspectors dreamed
+of questioning his statement, extraordinary as it was.""
+""But what was he to witness?""
+""Nothing, as things turned out, but everything had they gone another
+way.  That is how I read the matter.""
+""I see, he might have proved an alibi.""
+""Exactly, my dear Watson; he might have proved an alibi.  We will
+suppose, for argument's sake, that the household of Wisteria Lodge are
+confederates in some design.  The attempt, whatever it may be, is to
+come off, we will say, before one o'clock.  By some juggling of the
+clocks it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed
+earlier than he thought, but in any case it is likely that when Garcia
+went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more
+than twelve.  If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be back by
+the hour mentioned he had evidently a powerful reply to any accusation.
+Here was this irreproachable Englishman ready to swear in any court of
+law that the accused was in the house all the time.  It was an
+insurance against the worst.""
+""Yes, yes, I see that.  But how about the disappearance of the others?""
+""I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any
+insuperable difficulties.  Still, it is an error to argue in front of
+your data.  You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit
+your theories.""
+""And the message?""
+""How did it run?  'Our own colours, green and white.'  Sounds like
+racing.  'Green open, white shut.'  That is clearly a signal.  'Main
+stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.'  This is an
+assignation.  We may find a jealous husband at the bottom of it all.
+It was clearly a dangerous quest.  She would not have said 'Godspeed'
+had it not been so.  'D'--that should be a guide.""
+""The man was a Spaniard.  I suggest that 'D' stands for Dolores, a
+common female name in Spain.""
+""Good, Watson, very good--but quite inadmissable.  A Spaniard would
+write to a Spaniard in Spanish.  The writer of this note is certainly
+English.  Well, we can only possess our soul in patience until this
+excellent inspector come back for us. Meanwhile we can thank our lucky
+fate which has rescued us for a few short hours from the insufferable
+fatigues of idleness.""
+*           *           *
+An answer had arrived to Holmes's telegram before our Surrey officer
+had returned.  Holmes read it and was about to place it in his notebook
+when he caught a glimpse of my expectant face. He tossed it across with
+a laugh.
+""We are moving in exalted circles,"" said he.
+The telegram was a list of names and addresses:
+Lord Harringby, The Dingle; Sir George Ffolliott, Oxshott Towers; Mr.
+Hynes Hynes, J.P., Purdley Place; Mr. James Baker Williams, Forton Old
+Hall; Mr. Henderson, High Gable; Rev. Joshua Stone, Nether Walsling.
+""This is a very obvious way of limiting our field of operations,"" said
+Holmes.  ""No doubt Baynes, with his methodical mind, has already
+adopted some similar plan.""
+""I don't quite understand.""
+""Well, my dear fellow, we have already arrived at the conclusion that
+the message received by Garcia at dinner was an appointment or an
+assignation.  Now, if the obvious reading of it is correct, and in
+order to keep the tryst one has to ascend a main stair and seek the
+seventh door in a corridor, it is perfectly clear that the house is a
+very large one.  It is equally certain that this house cannot be more
+than a mile or two from Oxshott, since Garcia was walking in that
+direction and hoped, according to my reading of the facts, to be back
+in Wisteria Lodge in time to avail himself of an alibi, which would
+only be valid up to one o'clock.  As the number of large houses close
+to Oxshott must be limited, I adopted the obvious method of sending to
+the agents mentioned by Scott Eccles and obtaining a list of them.
+Here they are in this telegram, and the other end of our tangled skein
+must lie among them.""
+*           *           *
+It was nearly six o'clock before we found ourselves in the pretty
+Surrey village of Esher, with Inspector Baynes as our companion.
+Holmes and I had taken things for the night, and found comfortable
+quarters at the Bull.  Finally we set out in the company of the
+detective on our visit to Wisteria Lodge.  It was a cold, dark March
+evening, with a sharp wind and a fine rain beating upon our faces, a
+fit setting for the wild common over which our road passed and the
+tragic goal to which it led us.
+A cold and melancholy walk of a couple of miles brought us to a high
+wooden gate, which opened into a gloomy avenue of chestnuts. The curved
+and shadowed drive led us to a low, dark house, pitch-black against a
+slate-coloured sky. From the front window upon the left of the door
+there peeped a glimmer of a feeble light.
+""There's a constable in possession,"" said Baynes.  ""I'll knock at the
+window.""  He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on
+the pane.  Through the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a
+chair beside the fire, and heard a sharp cry from within the room.  An
+instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the
+door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand.
+""What's the matter, Walters?"" asked Baynes sharply.
+The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh
+of relief.
+""I am glad you have come, sir.  It has been a long evening, and I don't
+think my nerve is as good as it was.""
+""Your nerve, Walters?  I should not have thought you had a nerve in
+your body.""
+""Well, sir, it's this lonely, silent house and the queer thing in the
+kitchen.  Then when you tapped at the window I thought it had come
+again.""
+""That what had come again?""
+""The devil, sir, for all I know.  It was at the window.""
+""What was at the window, and when?""
+""It was just about two hours ago.  The light was just fading.  I was
+sitting reading in the chair.  I don't know what made me look up, but
+there was a face looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir,
+what a face it was!  I'll see it in my dreams.""
+""Tut, tut, Walters.  This is not talk for a police-constable.""
+""I know, sir, I know; but it shook me, sir, and there's no use to deny
+it.  It wasn't black, sir, nor was it white, nor any colour that I know
+but a kind of queer shade like clay with a splash of milk in it.  Then
+there was the size of it--it was twice yours, sir.  And the look of
+it--the great staring goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth like a
+hungry beast.  I tell you, sir, I couldn't move a finger, nor get my
+breath, till it whisked away and was gone.  Out I ran and through the
+shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.""
+""If I didn't know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black
+mark against you for this.  If it were the devil himself a constable on
+duty should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him.
+I suppose the whole thing is not a vision and a touch of nerves?""
+""That, at least, is very easily settled,"" said Holmes, lighting his
+little pocket lantern.  ""Yes,"" he reported, after a short examination
+of the grass bed, ""a number twelve shoe, I should say.  If he was all
+on the same scale as his foot he must certainly have been a giant.""
+""What became of him?""
+""He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road.""
+""Well,"" said the inspector with a grave and thoughtful face, ""whoever
+he may have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he's gone for the
+present, and we have more immediate things to attend to.  Now, Mr.
+Holmes, with your permission, I will show you round the house.""
+The various bedrooms and sitting-rooms had yielded nothing to a careful
+search.  Apparently the tenants had brought little or nothing with
+them, and all the furniture down to the smallest details had been taken
+over with the house.  A good deal of clothing with the stamp of Marx
+and Co., High Holborn, had been left behind.  Telegraphic inquiries had
+been already made which showed that Marx knew nothing of his customer
+save that he was a good payer.  Odds and ends, some pipes, a few
+novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire revolver, and
+a guitar were among the personal property.
+""Nothing in all this,"" said Baynes, stalking, candle in hand, from room
+to room.  ""But now, Mr. Holmes, I invite your attention to the kitchen.""
+It was a gloomy, high-ceilinged room at the back of the house, with a
+straw litter in one corner, which served apparently as a bed for the
+cook.  The table was piled with half-eaten dishes and dirty plates, the
+debris of last night's dinner.
+""Look at this,"" said Baynes.  ""What do you make of it?""
+He held up his candle before an extraordinary object which stood at the
+back of the dresser.  It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that
+it was difficult to say what it might have been. One could but say that
+it was black and leathery and that it bore some resemblance to a
+dwarfish, human figure.  At first, as I examined it, I thought that it
+was a mummified negro baby, and then it seemed a very twisted and
+ancient monkey.  Finally I was left in doubt as to whether it was
+animal or human.  A double band of white shells were strung round the
+centre of it.
+""Very interesting--very interesting, indeed!"" said Holmes, peering at
+this sinister relic.  ""Anything more?""
+In silence Baynes led the way to the sink and held forward his candle.
+The limbs and body of some large, white bird, torn savagely to pieces
+with the feathers still on, were littered all over it.  Holmes pointed
+to the wattles on the severed head.
+""A white cock,"" said he.  ""Most interesting!  It is really a very
+curious case.""
+But Mr. Baynes had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last. From
+under the sink he drew a zinc pail which contained a quantity of blood.
+Then from the table he took a platter heaped with small pieces of
+charred bone.
+""Something has been killed and something has been burned.  We raked all
+these out of the fire.  We had a doctor in this morning.  He says that
+they are not human.""
+Holmes smiled and rubbed his hands.
+""I must congratulate you, Inspector, on handling so distinctive and
+instructive a case.  Your powers, if I may say so without offence, seem
+superior to your opportunities.""
+Inspector Baynes's small eyes twinkled with pleasure.
+""You're right, Mr. Holmes.  We stagnate in the provinces.  A case of
+this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it.  What
+do you make of these bones?""
+""A lamb, I should say, or a kid.""
+""And the white cock?""
+""Curious, Mr. Baynes, very curious.  I should say almost unique.""
+""Yes, sir, there must have been some very strange people with some very
+strange ways in this house.  One of them is dead.  Did his companions
+follow him and kill him?  If they did we should have them, for every
+port is watched.  But my own views are different.  Yes, sir, my own
+views are very different.""
+""You have a theory then?""
+""And I'll work it myself, Mr. Holmes.  It's only due to my own credit
+to do so.  Your name is made, but I have still to make mine.  I should
+be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had solved it without your
+help.""
+Holmes laughed good-humoredly.
+""Well, well, Inspector,"" said he. ""Do you follow your path and I will
+follow mine.  My results are always very much at your service if you
+care to apply to me for them.  I think that I have seen all that I wish
+in this house, and that my time may be more profitably employed
+elsewhere.  Au revoir and good luck!""
+I could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost upon
+anyone but myself, that Holmes was on a hot scent.  As impassive as
+ever to the casual observer, there were none the less a subdued
+eagerness and suggestion of tension in his brightened eyes and brisker
+manner which assured me that the game was afoot.  After his habit he
+said nothing, and after mine I asked no questions.  Sufficient for me
+to share the sport and lend my humble help to the capture without
+distracting that intent brain with needless interruption.  All would
+come round to me in due time.
+I waited, therefore--but to my ever-deepening disappointment I waited
+in vain.  Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward.  One
+morning he spent in town, and I learned from a casual reference that he
+had visited the British Museum.  Save for this one excursion, he spent
+his days in long and often solitary walks, or in chatting with a number
+of village gossips whose acquaintance he had cultivated.
+""I'm sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to you,"" he
+remarked.  ""It is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the
+hedges and the catkins on the hazels once again. With a spud, a tin
+box, and an elementary book on botany, there are instructive days to be
+spent.""  He prowled about with this equipment himself, but it was a
+poor show of plants which he would bring back of an evening.
+Occasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baynes.  His fat,
+red face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes glittered as he
+greeted my companion.  He said little about the case, but from that
+little we gathered that he also was not dissatisfied at the course of
+events.  I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when,
+some five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in
+large letters:
+THE OXSHOTT MYSTERY
+A SOLUTION
+ARREST OF SUPPOSED ASSASSIN
+Holmes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read the
+headlines.
+""By Jove!"" he cried.  ""You don't mean that Baynes has got him?""
+""Apparently,"" said I as I read the following report:
+""Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring district
+when it was learned late last night that an arrest had been effected in
+connection with the Oxshott murder.  It will be remembered that Mr.
+Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on Oxshott Common, his body
+showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his
+servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show their participation
+in the crime.  It was suggested, but never proved, that the deceased
+gentleman may have had valuables in the house, and that their
+abstraction was the motive of the crime.  Every effort was made by
+Inspector Baynes, who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding
+place of the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had
+not gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had been already
+prepared.  It was certain from the first, however, that they would
+eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of one or two
+tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a
+man of most remarkable appearance--being a huge and hideous mulatto,
+with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid type.  This man has
+been seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by Constable
+Walters on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit
+Wisteria Lodge.  Inspector Baynes, considering that such a visit must
+have some purpose in view and was likely, therefore, to be repeated,
+abandoned the house but left an ambuscade in the shrubbery.  The man
+walked into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle in
+which Constable Downing was badly bitten by the savage.  We understand
+that when the prisoner is brought before the magistrates a remand will be
+applied for by the police, and that great developments are hoped from
+his capture.""
+""Really we must see Baynes at once,"" cried Holmes, picking up his hat.
+""We will just catch him before he starts.""  We hurried down the village
+street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just
+leaving his lodgings.
+""You've seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?"" he asked, holding one out to us.
+""Yes, Baynes, I've seen it.  Pray don't think it a liberty if I give
+you a word of friendly warning.""
+""Of warning, Mr. Holmes?""
+""I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced
+that you are on the right lines.  I don't want you to commit yourself
+too far unless you are sure.""
+""You're very kind, Mr. Holmes.""
+""I assure you I speak for your good.""
+It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over
+one of Mr. Baynes's tiny eyes.
+""We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes.  That's what I am
+doing.""
+""Oh, very good,"" said Holmes.  ""Don't blame me.""
+""No, sir; I believe you mean well by me.  But we all have our own
+systems, Mr. Holmes.  You have yours, and maybe I have mine.""
+""Let us say no more about it.""
+""You're welcome always to my news.  This fellow is a perfect savage, as
+strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil.  He chewed Downing's
+thumb nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word
+of English, and we can get nothing out of him but grunts.""
+""And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late master?""
+""I didn't say so, Mr. Holmes; I didn't say so.  We all have our little
+ways.  You try yours and I will try mine.  That's the agreement.""
+Holmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together.  ""I can't
+make the man out.  He seems to be riding for a fall.  Well, as he says,
+we must each try our own way and see what comes of it.  But there's
+something in Inspector Baynes which I can't quite understand.""
+""Just sit down in that chair, Watson,"" said Sherlock Holmes when we had
+returned to our apartment at the Bull.  ""I want to put you in touch
+with the situation, as I may need your help to-night. Let me show you
+the evolution of this case so far as I have been able to follow it.
+Simple as it has been in its leading features, it has none the less
+presented surprising difficulties in the way of an arrest.  There are
+gaps in that direction which we have still to fill.
+""We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the
+evening of his death.  We may put aside this idea of Baynes's that
+Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter.  The proof of this lies
+in the fact that it was _he_ who had arranged for the presence of Scott
+Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi.
+It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criminal
+enterprise, in hand that night in the course of which he met his death.
+I say 'criminal' because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires
+to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his
+life?  Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was
+directed.  So far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.
+""We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household.
+They were _all_ confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off
+when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the
+Englishman's evidence, and all would be well.  But the attempt was a
+dangerous one, and if Garcia did _not_ return by a certain hour it was
+probable that his own life had been sacrificed.  It had been arranged,
+therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for
+some prearranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a
+position afterwards to renew their attempt.  That would fully explain
+the facts, would it not?""
+The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I
+wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before.
+""But why should one servant return?""
+""We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious,
+something which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind.
+That would explain his persistence, would it not?""
+""Well, what is the next step?""
+""The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner.  It
+indicates a confederate at the other end.  Now, where was the other
+end?  I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large
+house, and that the number of large houses is limited. My first days in
+this village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the
+intervals of my botanical researches I made a reconnaissance of all the
+large houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants.
+One house, and only one, riveted my attention.  It is the famous old
+Jacobean grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott,
+and less than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy.  The other
+mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof
+from romance.  But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all accounts a
+curious man to whom curious adventures might befall. I concentrated my
+attention, therefore, upon him and his household.
+""A singular set of people, Watson--the man himself the most singular of
+them all.  I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to
+read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of
+my true business.  He is a man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray
+hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of
+an emperor--a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his
+parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the
+tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord.  His
+friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate
+brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of speech.
+You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of foreigners--one
+at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable--so our gaps are beginning to
+close.
+""These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of the
+household; but there is one other person who for our immediate purpose
+may be even more important.  Henderson has two children--girls of
+eleven and thirteen.  Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman
+of forty or thereabouts.  There is also one confidential manservant.
+This little group forms the real family, for they travel about
+together, and Henderson is a great traveller, always on the move.  It
+is only within the last weeks that he has returned, after a year's
+absence, to High Gable.  I may add that he is enormously rich, and
+whatever his whims may be he can very easily satisfy them.  For the
+rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the
+usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country house.
+""So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own
+observation.  There are no better instruments than discharged servants
+with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one.  I call it luck,
+but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it.
+As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems. It was my system which
+enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked in
+a moment of temper by his imperious employer.  He in turn had friends
+among the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their
+master.  So I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.
+""Curious people, Watson!  I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but
+very curious people anyway.  It's a double-winged house, and the
+servants live on one side, the family on the other. There's no link
+between the two save for Henderson's own servant, who serves the
+family's meals.  Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms
+the one connection.  Governess and children hardly go out at all,
+except into the garden.  Henderson never by any chance walks alone.
+His dark secretary is like his shadow.  The gossip among the servants
+is that their master is terribly afraid of something.  'Sold his soul
+to the devil in exchange for money,' says Warner, 'and expects his
+creditor to come up and claim his own.'  Where they came from, or who
+they are, nobody has an idea.  They are very violent.  Twice Henderson
+has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy
+compensation have kept him out of the courts.
+""Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information.
+We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and
+was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already
+been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel,
+and it was a woman.  Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess?  All our
+reasoning seems to point that way.  At any rate, we may take it as a
+hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail.  I may add that
+Miss Burnet's age and character make it certain that my first idea that
+there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.
+""If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of
+Garcia.  What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his
+death?  If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be
+sealed.  Still, in her heart, she must retain bitterness and hatred
+against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as
+she could to have revenge upon them.  Could we see her, then and try to
+use her?  That was my first thought.  But now we come to a sinister
+fact.  Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night
+of the murder.  From that evening she has utterly vanished.  Is she
+alive?  Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend
+whom she had summoned?  Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point
+which we still have to decide.
+""You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson. There is
+nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant.  Our whole scheme might
+seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman's disappearance
+counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary household any member of
+it might be invisible for a week.  And yet she may at the present
+moment be in danger of her life.  All I can do is to watch the house
+and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates.  We can't let such a
+situation continue.  If the law can do nothing we must take the risk
+ourselves.""
+""What do you suggest?""
+""I know which is her room.  It is accessible from the top of an
+outhouse.  My suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we
+can strike at the very heart of the mystery.""
+It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect.  The old house
+with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants,
+the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting
+ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour.
+But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made
+it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend.
+One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found.  I
+clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast.
+But it was not destined that our investigation should have so
+adventurous an ending.  It was about five o'clock, and the shadows of
+the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed
+into our room.
+""They've gone, Mr. Holmes.  They went by the last train.  The lady
+broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs.""
+""Excellent, Warner!"" cried Holmes, springing to his feet. ""Watson, the
+gaps are closing rapidly.""
+In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She
+bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent
+tragedy.  Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised
+it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark
+dots in the centre of the broad gray iris.  She was drugged with opium.
+""I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes,"" said our
+emissary, the discharged gardener.  ""When the carriage came out I
+followed it to the station.  She was like one walking in her sleep, but
+when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and
+struggled.  They pushed her into the carriage.  She fought her way out
+again.  I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are.  I shan't
+forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I'd have a
+short life if he had his way--the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil.""
+We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of
+the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug.
+Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained
+to him.
+""Why, sir, you've got me the very evidence I want,"" said the inspector
+warmly, shaking my friend by the hand.  ""I was on the same scent as you
+from the first.""
+""What!  You were after Henderson?""
+""Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable
+I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below.  It
+was just who would get his evidence first.""
+""Then why did you arrest the mulatto?""
+Baynes chuckled.
+""I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected,
+and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was
+in any danger.  I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our
+eyes were off him.  I knew he would be likely to clear off then and
+give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet.""
+Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder.
+""You will rise high in your profession.  You have instinct and
+intuition,"" said he.
+Baynes flushed with pleasure.
+""I've had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week.
+Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight.  But he
+must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away.  However,
+your man picked her up, and it all ends well.  We can't arrest without
+her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement the
+better.""
+""Every minute she gets stronger,"" said Holmes, glancing at the
+governess.  ""But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?""
+""Henderson,"" the inspector answered, ""is Don Murillo, once called the
+Tiger of San Pedro.""
+The Tiger of San Pedro!  The whole history of the man came back to me
+in a flash.  He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty
+tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to
+civilization.  Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient
+virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people
+for ten or twelve years.  His name was a terror through all Central
+America.  At the end of that time there was a universal rising against
+him.  But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first whisper
+of coming trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship
+which was manned by devoted adherents.  It was an empty palace which
+was stormed by the insurgents next day.  The dictator, his two
+children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them. From that
+moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a
+frequent subject for comment in the European press.
+""Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro,"" said Baynes. ""If you
+look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and
+white, same as in the note, Mr. Holmes.  Henderson he called himself,
+but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where
+his ship came in in '86.  They've been looking for him all the time for
+their revenge, but it is only now that they have begun to find him out.""
+""They discovered him a year ago,"" said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and
+was now intently following the conversation.  ""Once already his life
+has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him.  Now, again, it
+is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes
+safe.  But another will come, and yet another, until some day justice
+will be done; that is as certain as the rise of to-morrow's sun.""  Her
+thin hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her
+hatred.
+""But how come you into this matter, Miss Burnet?"" asked Holmes. ""How
+can an English lady join in such a murderous affair?""
+""I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which
+justice can be gained.  What does the law of England care for the
+rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shipload of
+treasure which this man has stolen?  To you they are like crimes
+committed in some other planet.  But _we_ know.  We have learned the
+truth in sorrow and in suffering.  To us there is no fiend in hell like
+Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victims still cry for
+vengeance.""
+""No doubt,"" said Holmes, ""he was as you say. I have heard that he was
+atrocious.  But how are you affected?""
+""I will tell you it all. This villain's policy was to murder, on one
+pretext or another, every man who showed such promise that he might in
+time come to be a dangerous rival.  My husband--yes, my real name is
+Signora Victor Durando--was the San Pedro minister in London.  He met
+me and married me there.  A nobler man never lived upon earth.
+Unhappily, Murillo heard of his excellence, recalled him on some
+pretext, and had him shot.  With a premonition of his fate he had
+refused to take me with him.  His estates were confiscated, and I was
+left with a pittance and a broken heart.
+""Then came the downfall of the tyrant.  He escaped as you have just
+described.  But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and
+dearest had suffered torture and death at his hands, would not let the
+matter rest.  They banded themselves into a society which should never
+be dissolved until the work was done. It was my part after we had
+discovered in the transformed Henderson the fallen despot, to attach
+myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his
+movements.  This I was able to do by securing the position of governess
+in his family.  He little knew that the woman who faced him at every
+meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour's notice
+into eternity.  I smiled on him, did my duty to his children, and bided
+my time.  An attempt was made in Paris and failed.  We zig-zagged
+swiftly here and there over Europe to throw off the pursuers and
+finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first
+arrival in England.
+""But here also the ministers of justice were waiting.  Knowing that he
+would return there, Garcia, who is the son of the former highest
+dignitary in San Pedro, was waiting with two trusty companions of
+humble station, all three fired with the same reasons for revenge. He
+could do little during the day, for Murillo took every precaution and
+never went out save with his satellite Lucas, or Lopez as he was known
+in the days of his greatness.  At night, however, he slept alone, and
+the avenger might find him.  On a certain evening, which had been
+prearranged, I sent my friend final instructions, for the man was
+forever on the alert and continually changed his room.  I was to see
+that the doors were open and the signal of a green or white light in a
+window which faced the drive was to give notice if all was safe or if
+the attempt had better be postponed.
+""But everything went wrong with us.  In some way I had excited the
+suspicion of Lopez, the secretary.  He crept up behind me and sprang
+upon me just as I had finished the note.  He and his master dragged me
+to my room and held judgment upon me as a convicted traitress.  Then
+and there they would have plunged their knives into me could they have
+seen how to escape the consequences of the deed.  Finally, after much
+debate, they concluded that my murder was too dangerous.  But they
+determined to get rid forever of Garcia.  They had gagged me, and
+Murillo twisted my arm round until I gave him the address.  I swear
+that he might have twisted it off had I understood what it would mean
+to Garcia.  Lopez addressed the note which I had written, sealed it
+with his sleeve-link, and sent it by the hand of the servant, Jose.
+How they murdered him I do not know, save that it was Murillo's hand
+who struck him down, for Lopez had remained to guard me.  I believe he
+must have waited among the gorse bushes through which the path winds
+and struck him down as he passed. At first they were of a mind to let
+him enter the house and to kill him as a detected burglar; but they
+argued that if they were mixed up in an inquiry their own identity
+would at once be publicly disclosed and they would be open to further
+attacks. With the death of Garcia, the pursuit might cease, since such
+a death might frighten others from the task.
+""All would now have been well for them had it not been for my knowledge
+of what they had done.  I have no doubt that there were times when my
+life hung in the balance.  I was confined to my room, terrorized by the
+most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit--see this
+stab on my shoulder and the bruises from end to end of my arms--and a
+gag was thrust into my mouth on the one occasion when I tried to call
+from the window.  For five days this cruel imprisonment continued, with
+hardly enough food to hold body and soul together.  This afternoon a
+good lunch was brought me, but the moment after I took it I knew that I
+had been drugged.  In a sort of dream I remember being half-led,
+half-carried to the carriage; in the same state I was conveyed to the
+train.  Only then, when the wheels were almost moving, did I suddenly
+realize that my liberty lay in my own hands.  I sprang out, they tried
+to drag me back, and had it not been for the help of this good man, who
+led me to the cab, I should never had broken away.  Now, thank God, I
+am beyond their power forever.""
+We had all listened intently to this remarkable statement.  It was
+Holmes who broke the silence.
+""Our difficulties are not over,"" he remarked, shaking his head. ""Our
+police work ends, but our legal work begins.""
+""Exactly,"" said I.  ""A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of
+self-defence.  There may be a hundred crimes in the background, but it
+is only on this one that they can be tried.""
+""Come, come,"" said Baynes cheerily, ""I think better of the law than
+that.  Self-defence is one thing.  To entice a man in cold blood with
+the object of murdering him is another, whatever danger you may fear
+from him.  No, no, we shall all be justified when we see the tenants of
+High Gable at the next Guildford Assizes.""
+*           *           *
+It is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to
+elapse before the Tiger of San Pedro should meet with his deserts.
+Wily and bold, he and his companion threw their pursuer off their track
+by entering a lodging-house in Edmonton Street and leaving by the
+back-gate into Curzon Square.  From that day they were seen no more in
+England.  Some six months afterwards the Marquess of Montalva and
+Signor Rulli, his secretary, were both murdered in their rooms at the
+Hotel Escurial at Madrid. The crime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the
+murderers were never arrested.  Inspector Baynes visited us at Baker
+Street with a printed description of the dark face of the secretary,
+and of the masterful features, the magnetic black eyes, and the tufted
+brows of his master.  We could not doubt that justice, if belated, had
+come at last.
+""A chaotic case, my dear Watson,"" said Holmes over an evening pipe. ""It
+will not be possible for you to present in that compact form which is
+dear to your heart.  It covers two continents, concerns two groups of
+mysterious persons, and is further complicated by the highly
+respectable presence of our friend, Scott Eccles, whose inclusion shows
+me that the deceased Garcia had a scheming mind and a well-developed
+instinct of self-preservation.  It is remarkable only for the fact that
+amid a perfect jungle of possibilities we, with our worthy
+collaborator, the inspector, have kept our close hold on the essentials
+and so been guided along the crooked and winding path.  Is there any
+point which is not quite clear to you?""
+""The object of the mulatto cook's return?""
+""I think that the strange creature in the kitchen may account for it.
+The man was a primitive savage from the backwoods of San Pedro, and
+this was his fetish.  When his companion and he had fled to some
+prearranged retreat--already occupied, no doubt by a confederate--the
+companion had persuaded him to leave so compromising an article of
+furniture.  But the mulatto's heart was with it, and he was driven back
+to it next day, when, on reconnoitering through the window, he found
+policeman Walters in possession.  He waited three days longer, and then
+his piety or his superstition drove him to try once more.  Inspector
+Baynes, who, with his usual astuteness, had minimized the incident
+before me, had really recognized its importance and had left a trap
+into which the creature walked.  Any other point, Watson?""
+""The torn bird, the pail of blood, the charred bones, all the mystery
+of that weird kitchen?""
+Holmes smiled as he turned up an entry in his note-book.
+""I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up on that and other
+points.  Here is a quotation from Eckermann's Voodooism and the Negroid
+Religions:
+""'The true voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importance without
+certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods.
+In extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed
+by cannibalism.  The more usual victims are a white cock, which is
+plucked in pieces alive, or a black goat, whose throat is cut and body
+burned.'
+""So you see our savage friend was very orthodox in his ritual. It is
+grotesque, Watson,"" Holmes added, as he slowly fastened his notebook,
+""but, as I have had occasion to remark, there is but one step from the
+grotesque to the horrible.""",The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,Arthur Conan Doyle,27,['Don Juan Murillo']
+"The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
+by
+Sax Rohmer
+CHAPTER I
+""A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor.""
+From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.
+""Ten-thirty!"" I said.  ""A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please.""
+I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
+sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a
+tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the
+hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:
+""Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!""
+It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!
+""Smith,"" I said, and gripped his hands hard, ""this is a delightful
+surprise!  Whatever--however--""
+""Excuse me, Petrie!"" he broke in.  ""Don't put it down to the sun!"" And
+he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
+I was too surprised to speak.
+""No doubt you will think me mad,"" he continued, and, dimly, I could see
+him at the window, peering out into the road, ""but before you are many
+hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious.  Ah,
+nothing suspicious!  Perhaps I am first this time.""  And, stepping back
+to the writing-table he relighted the lamp.
+""Mysterious enough for you?"" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished
+MS.  ""A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly
+healthy--what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that,
+if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you
+independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all
+the rest.""
+I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to
+justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes were
+too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.  I
+got out the whisky and siphon, saying:
+""You have taken your leave early?""
+""I am not on leave,"" he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.  ""I am on
+duty.""
+""On duty!"" I exclaimed.  ""What, are you moved to London or something?""
+""I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me
+where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow.""
+There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
+its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the
+eyes.  ""Out with it!"" I said.  ""What is it all about?""
+Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.  Rolling back his
+left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part
+of the forearm.  It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an
+inch or so around.
+""Ever seen one like it?"" he asked.
+""Not exactly,"" I confessed.  ""It appears to have been deeply
+cauterized.""
+""Right!  Very deeply!"" he rapped.  ""A barb steeped in the venom of a
+hamadryad went in there!""
+A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention of that
+most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.
+""There's only one treatment,"" he continued, rolling his sleeve down
+again, ""and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
+I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that
+stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had
+hesitated.  Here's the point.  It was not an accident!""
+""What do you mean?""
+""I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
+the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by
+drop--from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and
+who caused it to be shot at me.""
+""What fiend is this?""
+""A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London, and
+who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
+traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government
+merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly
+believe--though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends
+largely upon the success of my mission.""
+To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created
+by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life
+Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.  I did not know what
+to think, what to believe.
+""I am wasting precious time!"" he rapped decisively, and, draining his
+glass, he stood up.  ""I came straight to you, because you are the only
+man I dare to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the
+only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has
+quitted Burma.  I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's
+imperative!  Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the
+strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or
+fiction?""
+I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional duties
+were not onerous.
+""Good man!"" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.  ""We start
+now.""
+""What, to-night?""
+""To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not
+dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute
+stretches.  But there is one move that must be made to-night and
+immediately.  I must warn Sir Crichton Davey.""
+""Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--""
+""Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions without
+question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can save him!  I
+do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence,
+but I know that my first duty is to warn him.  Let us walk down to the
+corner of the common and get a taxi.""
+How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum; for, when
+it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion is sudden and
+unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance and fail to find it:
+unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's
+highway.
+The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace from the
+wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the ordinary and the
+outre--has left no impression upon my mind.  Into the heart of a weird
+mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing my memories of those days I
+wonder that the busy thoroughfares through which we passed did not
+display before my eyes signs and portents--warnings.
+It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import that
+passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think) until we
+were come to our journey's end.  Then:
+""What's this?"" muttered my friend hoarsely.
+Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
+about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
+the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
+Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.
+""What has happened?"" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.
+The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and
+bearing commanded respect.
+""Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir.""
+Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and
+clutched my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had
+blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.
+""My God!"" he whispered.  ""I am too late!""
+With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of
+loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably was
+a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.  Other members of
+the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly
+hand of King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went,
+they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a
+menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded
+to hear.  Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon
+glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice,
+and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a respectful manner.
+A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed
+the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined
+with pictures and busts, and into a large library.  A group of people
+were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of
+Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a
+couch.  Another door communicated with a small study, and through the
+opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.  The
+uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre
+figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room, and the grim hub,
+around which all this ominous activity turned, made up a scene that
+etched itself indelibly on my mind.
+As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.
+""Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the
+immediate cause of death,"" he said.  ""Sir Crichton was addicted to
+cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with
+cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can establish the
+facts--if,"" he added, ""we ever arrive at them.  A most mysterious case!""
+Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in
+conversation, I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.
+The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smoking-jacket. He
+had been of spare but hardy build, with thin, aquiline features, which
+now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his
+sleeve, and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
+Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.  It was
+unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike
+the imprint of painted lips.  I examined it closely, and even tried to
+rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local
+inflammation, if it were not a birthmark.
+Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's
+private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark, and inquired if
+it were constitutional.  ""It is not, sir,"" answered Dr. Cleeve,
+overhearing my question.  ""I have already made that inquiry.  Does it
+suggest anything to your mind?  I must confess that it affords me no
+assistance.""
+""Nothing,"" I replied.  ""It is most curious.""
+""Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne,"" said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
+""but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.  I
+understand that Sir Crichton was--seized with illness in his study?""
+""Yes--at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he
+inside, as was our custom.""
+""The communicating door was kept closed?""
+""Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about ten-twenty-five,
+when a message came for Sir Crichton.  I took it in to him, and he then
+seemed in his usual health.""
+""What was the message?""
+""I could not say.  It was brought by a district messenger, and he
+placed it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt.""
+""And at half-past ten?""
+""Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a
+scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved me back.  His eyes
+were glaring horribly.  I had just reached his side when he fell,
+writhing, upon the floor.  He seemed past speech, but as I raised him
+and laid him upon the couch, he gasped something that sounded like 'The
+red hand!' Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!""
+Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to
+find this evidence confusing.
+""You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?""
+""I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel sure he
+referred to something in the study.""
+""What did you do?""
+""Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was
+absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed and
+fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.  There
+is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so
+that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was in
+the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
+earlier in the evening--and I am convinced that it offers no
+hiding-place--he could only have come out again by passing through
+here.""
+Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when
+meditating.
+""You had been at work here in this way for some time?""
+""Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book.""
+""Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?""
+""Yes,"" said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; ""though I attached
+no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton came
+out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves--you
+know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.  He had
+an idea that something was concealed there.""
+""Some THING or someone?""
+""'Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly, and he
+seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work.""
+""Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
+private investigation in the study.""
+CHAPTER II
+SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
+show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It
+was heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments
+and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs
+which showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no
+misogynist.  A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one
+wall.  The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
+green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only
+light.  The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.
+Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
+the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my
+friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!
+""Smell!"" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my
+nostrils.  It was scented with some pungent perfume.
+""What is it?""  I asked.
+""It is a rather rare essential oil,"" was the reply, ""which I have met
+with before, though never in Europe.  I begin to understand, Petrie.""
+He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps of
+paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the
+hearth.  I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was
+examining it curiously, when he turned, a strange expression upon his
+face.
+""Put that back, old man,"" he said quietly.
+Much surprised, I did as he directed.
+""Don't touch anything in the room.  It may be dangerous.""
+Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced
+the vase, and stood by the door of the study, watching him search,
+methodically, every inch of the room--behind the books, in all the
+ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves.
+""That will do,"" he said at last.  ""There is nothing here and I have no
+time to search farther.""
+We returned to the library.
+""Inspector Weymouth,"" said my friend, ""I have a particular reason for
+asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and
+the library locked.  Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever
+until you hear from me."" It spoke volumes for the mysterious
+credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted
+his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
+Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked like a
+groom out of livery was waiting.
+""Are you Wills?"" asked Smith.
+""Yes, sir.""
+""It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about
+the time of Sir Crichton's death?""
+""Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at
+the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
+Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on
+the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane.""
+""What kind of call?""
+The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened, seemed
+puzzled for a suitable description.
+""A sort of wail, sir,"" he said at last.  ""I never heard anything like
+it before, and don't want to again.""
+""Like this?"" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
+impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed, it
+was an eerie sound.
+""The same, sir, I think,"" he said, ""but much louder.""
+""That will do,"" said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
+in his voice.  ""But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house.""
+The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a
+small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep
+blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.  How
+impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the
+hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night had loosed a
+soul upon the infinite.
+""Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left is
+the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park.""
+""Are the study windows visible from there?""
+""Oh, yes, sir.""
+""Who occupies the adjoining house?""
+""Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town.""
+""Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
+offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?""
+""Yes, sir.""
+""Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's
+housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs.""
+Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to
+wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed
+to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.  My
+friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on
+our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story
+of the dying man's cry, ""The red hand!""; the hidden perils of the
+study; the wail in the lane--all were fitter incidents of delirium than
+of sane reality.  So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a
+nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door
+residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying:
+""Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.  It
+is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.  I thought
+I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he
+probably knows by now that I am here, too.""
+With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with
+leisure to think, to try to understand.
+The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had
+been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had
+died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most of the
+residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I
+gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so
+suddenly had found myself involved.
+By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?  Did Nayland Smith know?
+I rather suspected that he did.  What was the hidden significance of
+the perfumed envelope?  Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so
+evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had
+murdered Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had
+held office in India, and during his long term of service at home, had
+earned the good will of all, British and native alike.  Who was his
+secret enemy?
+Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.
+I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work
+had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.
+A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she
+glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively
+lovely nor of so unusual a type.  With the skin of a perfect blonde,
+she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with
+her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch
+had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.
+""Forgive me,"" she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying
+a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon my arm, ""if I
+startled you.  But--is it true that Sir Crichton Davey has
+been--murdered?""
+I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in
+my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths--only I
+wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque idea
+momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red lips due to
+art and not to nature, their kiss would leave--though not
+indelibly--just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand.
+But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred of the night's horrors,
+and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.  No doubt she was some friend or
+acquaintance of Sir Crichton who lived close by.
+""I cannot say that he has been murdered,"" I replied, acting upon the
+latter supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as
+possible.
+""But he is--Dead?""
+I nodded.
+She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
+Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder to
+support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.
+""I am quite well, thank you,"" she said.
+""You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite sure of
+yourself.""
+She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful
+eyes, and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I
+was entirely at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:
+""I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but--I
+think I have some information--for the police.  Will you give this
+to--whomever you think proper?""
+She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her
+dazzling glances, and hurried away.  She had gone no more than ten or
+twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her
+graceful, retreating figure, when she turned abruptly and came back.
+Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a
+distant corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General
+Platt-Houston, she made the following extraordinary request:
+""If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be
+grateful,""--she glanced at me with passionate intentness--""when you
+have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
+near him any more to-night!""
+Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
+Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
+had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!  I heard
+the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and, in the instant
+that Nayland Smith came running down the steps, I knew that I had
+nodded at my post.
+""Smith!""  I cried as he joined me, ""tell me what we must do!"" And
+rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.
+My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.
+""She was a big card to play,"" he said; ""but he did not know that I held
+one to beat it.""
+""What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?""
+""She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.  But a
+woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.  To our great good
+fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically
+Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident.  She was
+employed to get this letter placed in my hands.  Give it to me.""
+I did so.
+""She has succeeded.  Smell.""
+He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
+I recognized the strange perfume.
+""You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?  Can you doubt any
+longer?  She did not want you to share my fate, Petrie.""
+""Smith,"" I said unsteadily, ""I have followed your lead blindly in this
+horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation, but I must
+insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means.""
+""Just a few steps farther,"" he rejoined; ""as far as a cab.  We are
+hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.  The man
+whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy,
+tell-tale weapons.""
+Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
+something hissed past my ear, missed both Smith and me by a miracle,
+and, passing over the roof of the taxi, presumably fell in the enclosed
+garden occupying the center of the square.
+""What was that?"" I cried.
+""Get in--quickly!""  Smith rapped back.  ""It was attempt number one!
+More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.  He has noticed
+nothing.  Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look out behind.
+Good!  We've started.""
+The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back
+through the little window in the rear.
+""Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think.""
+Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.
+""Petrie,"" he said, ""if I escape alive from this business I shall know
+that I bear a charmed life.""
+I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his
+pipe.
+""You have asked me to explain matters,"" he continued, ""and I will do so
+to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why a servant of the
+British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in
+London, in the character of a detective.  I am here, Petrie--and I bear
+credentials from the very highest sources--because, quite by accident,
+I came upon a clew.  Following it up, in the ordinary course of
+routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of
+a certain man.  At the present stage of the case I should not be
+justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may
+say that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
+ambassador in London.""
+He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.
+""There is little to fear until we arrive home,"" he said calmly.
+""Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
+or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and
+formidable personality existing in the known world today.  He is a
+linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized
+languages, and in most of the barbaric.  He is an adept in all the arts
+and sciences which a great university could teach him.  He also is an
+adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of
+to-day can teach.  He has the brains of any three men of genius.
+Petrie, he is a mental giant.""
+""You amaze me!"" I said.
+""As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall dead in a
+Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?  No!  Because his last
+speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking.  What
+became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of
+the kind.  He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.  He
+alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton Davey
+murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the
+light it would have shown him to be the only living Englishman who
+understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.  I say to you
+solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.  Is there a man who would
+arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, who would
+teach the deaf to hear, the blind to see, that the millions only await
+their leader?  He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish
+campaign.  The others I can merely surmise.""
+""But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius controls
+this awful secret movement?""
+""Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel
+cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect,
+with all the resources of science past and present, with all the
+resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however,
+already has denied all knowledge of his existence.  Imagine that awful
+being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril
+incarnate in one man.""
+CHAPTER III
+I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong peg of
+brandy.
+""We have been followed here,"" I said.  ""Why did you make no attempt to
+throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?""
+Smith laughed.
+""Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE would find us.  And
+of what use to arrest his creatures?  We could prove nothing against
+them.  Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my
+life to-night--and by the same means that proved so successful in the
+case of poor Sir Crichton.""
+His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his
+feet, shaking his clenched fists towards the window.
+""The villain!"" he cried.  ""The fiendishly clever villain!  I suspected
+that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.  But I came too late,
+Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.  To think that I knew and yet
+failed to save him!""
+He resumed his seat, smoking hard.
+""Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,""
+he said.  ""He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given me credit
+for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.  He has thrown away
+one powerful weapon--to get such a message into my hands--and he thinks
+that once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as
+Sir Crichton died.  But without the indiscretion of your charming
+friend, I should have known what to expect when I receive her
+'information'--which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper.""
+""Smith,"" I broke in, ""who is she?""
+""She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.  I am
+inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but his will,
+except""--with a quizzical glance--""in a certain instance.""
+""How can you jest with some awful thing--Heaven knows what--hanging
+over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?  How
+did Sir Crichton die?""
+""He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not
+know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais, or rest-houses. Along
+a certain route--upon which I set eyes, for the first and only time,
+upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir
+Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little
+mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned, in those parts,
+the title of the 'Zayat Kiss.' The rest-houses along that route are
+shunned now.  I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I
+live.  It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory, and it
+is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.  This was my
+principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.  Even walls have ears
+where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned ignorance of the meaning of
+the mark, knowing that he would be almost certain to employ the same
+methods upon some other victim.  I wanted an opportunity to study the
+Zayat Kiss in operation, and I shall have one.""
+""But the scented envelopes?""
+""In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
+species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent, is
+sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.  I take it
+that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted by this orchid.
+You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches.  I
+doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.  After at least one
+unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton--you recall that he thought
+there was something concealed in his study on a previous
+occasion?--Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.  He may have a
+supply of these green orchids in his possession--possibly to feed the
+creature.""
+""What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
+Crichton's room tonight?""
+""You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.  I found
+a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it appeared
+to be the only means of entrance, that something has been dropped down;
+and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still
+be concealed either in the study or in the library.  But when I had
+obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived that the cry
+from the lane or from the park was a signal.  I noted that the
+movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow,
+on the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a two-storied
+wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.  What did the signal mean?
+That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair, and either had received
+the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing which someone on the roof had
+lowered down the straight chimney.  It was the signal to withdraw that
+deadly thing.  By means of the iron stairway at the rear of
+Major-General Platt-Houston's, I quite easily, gained access to the
+roof above Sir Crichton's study--and I found this.""
+Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed
+up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually large-sized
+split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.
+""My theory proven,"" he resumed.  ""Not anticipating a search on the
+roof, they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to
+prevent the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it
+had dropped in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that
+the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one
+slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it
+had done its work.  It might have got tangled, of course, but they
+reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writing-table
+for the prepared envelope.  From there to the hand of Sir
+Crichton--which, from having touched the envelope, would also be
+scented with the perfume--was a certain move.""
+""My God!  How horrible!"" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
+the dusky shadows of the room.  ""What is your theory respecting this
+creature--what shape, what color--?""
+""It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will venture no
+more at present, but I think it works in the dark.  The study was dark,
+remember, save for the bright patch beneath the reading-lamp. I have
+observed that the rear of this house is ivy-covered right up to and
+above your bedroom.  Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire,
+and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my
+removal, at any rate--if not yours.""
+""But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very
+least.""
+""You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
+and I tested my idea--successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.  Oh,
+dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
+dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat
+Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this
+evening.  To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase.""
+The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind, by the
+striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how trivialities thus
+assert themselves in moments of high tension.  I will proceed, then, by
+these punctuations, to the coming of the horror that it was written we
+should encounter.
+The clock across the common struck two.
+Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands
+with a solution of ammonia, Smith and I had followed the programme laid
+down.  It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply
+climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in
+the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.
+The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
+stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a
+sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger
+bed.  The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the
+center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a
+revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of
+the wardrobe.  I occupied a post between the windows.
+No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
+Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing the front
+of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.  The full moon had
+painted about the floor weird shadows of the clustering ivy, spreading
+the design gradually from the door, across the room, past the little
+table where the envelope lay, and finally to the foot of the bed.
+The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.
+A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself to the
+extreme edge of the moon's design.
+Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.  I
+could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told
+me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.
+Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.  I was icy cold,
+expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us.
+The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior of
+the room.
+Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left, I saw a
+lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the
+moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!
+One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which
+it grasped--and then another.  The man made absolutely no sound
+whatever.  The second hand disappeared--and reappeared.  It held a
+small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.
+The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape,
+as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped upon the carpet!
+""Stand still, for your life!"" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.
+A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon the
+coffee-table in the center.
+Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
+of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.
+It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red
+color!  It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its
+long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was
+proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless
+rapidly moving legs.  In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of
+the scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me.
+These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--Smith
+had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow
+of the golf club!
+I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread
+brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping, with incredible
+agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and, without once offering a
+mark for a revolver-shot, it merged into the shadows beneath the trees
+of the garden.  As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith
+dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.  Even
+that grim courage had been tried sorely.
+""Never mind the dacoit, Petrie,"" he said.  ""Nemesis will know where to
+find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
+Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the
+enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.  I
+understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of
+it--Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost
+past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not 'The red
+hand!' but 'The red ANT!'  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than
+an hour, to save him from such an end!""
+CHAPTER IV
+""THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O.
+boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at
+six A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an
+accident in leaving his ship.""
+Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above
+paragraph.
+""For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'"" he said.  ""Our visitor, who came by way
+of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
+Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.  Dr. Fu-Manchu
+does not overlook such lapses.""
+It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
+had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
+that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.
+The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector Weymouth
+of New Scotland Yard had called us up.
+""Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police Station
+at once,"" was the message.
+Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.
+""It is certainly something important,"" said my friend; ""and, if
+Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to
+be--probably something ghastly.""
+A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
+to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.
+Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in
+Burma.  Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the
+circumstances which first had brought him in contact with the sinister
+genius of the Yellow Movement.  His talk was rather of the sunshine of
+the East than of its shadows.
+But the drive concluded--and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
+of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and
+followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.
+The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.
+""Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard,"" he said; and his
+usually gruff voice had softened strangely.
+Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
+under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.  No one
+spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of
+the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets to
+tell, and now was burdened with another.
+The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's
+dead--dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a
+seaman of nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping
+and Shadwell.  His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown
+forehead; his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in
+one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were missing.
+""It was almost the same with Mason.""  The river police inspector was
+speaking.  ""A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own time on
+some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday night the
+ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.  His first
+two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left hand was
+mutilated frightfully.""
+He paused and glanced at Smith.
+""That lascar, too,"" he continued, ""that you came down to see, sir; you
+remember his hands?""
+Smith nodded.
+""He was not a lascar,"" he said shortly.  ""He was a dacoit.""
+Silence fell again.
+I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which had
+been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy, except
+that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
+This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
+for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing to
+the authors of these mysterious tragedies.
+It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but
+it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue was a false
+one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.
+""You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?"" questioned Weymouth,
+his eye on the strange relic.  ""Cadby was clever at disguise.""
+Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and
+tried to fit it on the dead detective.
+""Too small by inches!"" he jerked.  ""And look how it's padded in the
+crown.  This thing was made for a most abnormal head.""
+He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.
+""Where did you find him--exactly?"" he asked.
+""Limehouse Reach--under Commercial Dock Pier--exactly an hour ago.""
+""And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?""--to Weymouth.
+""Eight to a quarter past.""
+""You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?""
+""Roughly, twenty-four hours,"" I replied.
+""Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group, that he
+followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood of old Ratcliff
+Highway, and that he died the same night.  You are sure that is where
+he was going?""
+""Yes,"" said Weymouth; ""He was jealous of giving anything away, poor
+chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.  But he
+gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night in that
+district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said, to go to his
+rooms, and dress for the job.""
+""Did he keep any record of his cases?""
+""Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man with ambitions,
+sir!  You'll want to see his book.  Wait while I get his address; it's
+somewhere in Brixton.""
+He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's
+face.
+Nayland Smith was palpably excited.
+""He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie,"" he said.  ""There is
+no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track of Fu-Manchu!  Poor
+Mason had probably blundered on the scent, too, and he met with a
+similar fate.  Without other evidence, the fact that they both died in
+the same way as the dacoit would be conclusive, for we know that
+Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!""
+""What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?""
+""God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?""
+""There are no other marks of violence.""
+""But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor,"" interrupted Inspector
+Ryman.  ""Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the
+Crystal Palace last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as
+for Mason, he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!""
+Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+""Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died,"" he said simply.
+Weymouth returned from the telephone.
+""The address is No.--Cold Harbor Lane,"" he reported.  ""I shall not be
+able to come along, but you can't miss it; it's close by the Brixton
+Police Station.  There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in
+the world.  His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find
+in his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner--top shelf.
+Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key.""
+Smith nodded.
+""Come on, Petrie,"" he said.  ""We haven't a second to waste.""
+Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along
+Wapping High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I
+think, when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.
+""That pigtail!"" he cried.  ""I have left it behind!  We must have it,
+Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!""
+The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.
+""Don't wait for me,"" he directed hurriedly.  ""Here, take Weymouth's
+card.  Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come
+straight on to Scotland Yard and meet me there.""
+""But Smith,"" I protested, ""a few minutes can make no difference!""
+""Can't it!"" he snapped.  ""Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
+evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it
+already, but there is just a bare chance.""
+It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded no room for
+comment; and so lost in thought did I become that the cab was outside
+the house for which I was bound ere I realized that we had quitted the
+purlieus of Wapping.  Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop
+of events which had crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith
+from Burma.  Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton
+Davey, and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
+that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories jostling in
+my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's last victim, and the
+shadow of that giant evil seemed to be upon it like a palpable cloud.
+Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear and
+embarrassment in her manner.
+""I am Dr. Petrie,"" I said, ""and I regret that I bring bad news
+respecting Mr. Cadby.""
+""Oh, sir!"" she cried.  ""Don't tell me that anything has happened to
+him!"" And divining something of the mission on which I was come, for
+such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man: ""Oh, the poor,
+brave lad!""
+Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that
+hour, since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and
+spoke eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.
+""There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
+Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
+Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died.""
+At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such beliefs
+are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently composed I
+went on to explain what I thought necessary.  And now the old lady's
+embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow, and presently the truth
+came out:
+""There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir.""
+I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.
+""She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until
+half-past--and this morning again.  She came the third time about an
+hour ago, and has been upstairs since.""
+""Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?""
+Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.
+""Well, Doctor,"" she said, wiping her eyes the while, ""I DO.  And God
+knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him; but she is not the
+girl I should have liked a son of mine to take up with.""
+At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be
+serious.  Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly
+significant, for perhaps it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit
+followers was watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's
+approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely that I should forget the
+dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.  Was that lure of men
+even now in the house, completing her evil work?
+""I should never have allowed her in his rooms--"" began Mrs. Dolan
+again.  Then there was an interruption.
+A soft rustling reached my ears--intimately feminine.  The girl was
+stealing down!
+I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before
+me--back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
+bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
+to the door.
+She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a clinging
+silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.  The gaslight
+was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide
+its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim
+the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.  For it was she!
+""So I came in time,"" I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.
+""Oh!"" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back with her
+jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.
+""Give me whatever you have removed from here,"" I said sternly, ""and
+then prepare to accompany me.""
+She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.
+""I have taken nothing,"" she said.  Her breast was heaving tumultuously.
+""Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!""  And impulsively she threw herself
+forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking up into
+my face with passionate, pleading eyes.
+It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
+magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
+laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
+""Love in the East,"" he had said, ""is like the conjurer's mango-tree; it
+is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand."" Now, in those
+pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.  Her clothes or her
+hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all Fu-Manchu's servants, she was
+perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.  Her beauty was wholly
+intoxicating.
+But I thrust her away.
+""You have no claim to mercy,"" I said.  ""Do not count upon any.  What
+have you taken from here?""
+She grasped the lapels of my coat.
+""I will tell you all I can--all I dare,"" she panted eagerly, fearfully.
+""I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
+If you could only understand you would not be so cruel.""  Her slight
+accent added charm to the musical voice.  ""I am not free, as your
+English women are.  What I do I must do, for it is the will of my
+master, and I am only a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give
+me to the police.  You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to
+save you once.""
+I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
+had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my
+friend.  But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
+How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?  And
+now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
+""I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what
+have YOU to do with the police?  It is not your work to hound a woman
+to death.  Could you ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you
+loved, and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
+Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.  Do not
+be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and
+save me--from HIM."" The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath
+fanned my cheek.  ""Have mercy on me.""
+At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
+possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must come
+to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must
+necessarily be different from mine.  Irreconcilable as the thing may be
+with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed
+the girl to be a slave.  Then there remained that other reason why I
+loathed the idea of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to
+betrayal!  Must I soil my hands with such work?
+Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
+The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
+quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
+in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate of
+the man in whose room we stood.
+""You lured Cadby to his death,"" I said, and shook her off.
+""No, no!"" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  ""No, I swear by the holy
+name I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him--yes!  But,
+listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.  I
+could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.  I
+have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
+Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.  I came twice
+and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?""
+""If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes.""
+Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.  A new terror was to be
+read in her face.
+""I dare not!  I dare not!""
+""Then you would--if you dared?""
+She was watching me intently.
+""Not if YOU would go to find him,"" she said.
+And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice
+that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at
+all which the words implied.  She grasped my arm.
+""Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?""
+""The authorities--""
+""Ah!""  Her expression changed.  ""They can put me on the rack if they
+choose, but never one word would I speak--never one little word.""
+She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.
+""But I will speak for you.""
+Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
+""Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no
+longer be his slave.""
+My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
+warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt
+of.  For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her
+personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my
+judgment seat--had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to
+justice.  Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary.  What should I do?
+What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in
+which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
+Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I
+stepped across the room until I glanced back.  But she had gone!
+As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
+""Ma 'alesh!"" came her soft whisper; ""but I am afraid to trust you--yet.
+Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I
+wished it.  Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and
+hide me.""
+Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled cry from
+Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.  The front door
+opened and closed.
+CHAPTER V
+""Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff
+Highway,"" said Inspector Weymouth.
+""'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of the
+Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.
+There have never been any complaints that I know of.  I don't
+understand this.""
+We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of
+foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor
+Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that
+combustion had not been complete.
+""What do we make of this?"" said Smith.  ""'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar
+went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'
+(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out . . . booming
+sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . . not for days,
+or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make . . . snatch
+. . . pigtail . . .'""
+""The pigtail again!"" rapped Weymouth.
+""She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together,"" continued
+Smith.  ""They lay flat, and this was in the middle.  I see the hand of
+retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we have a reference to a
+hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several
+other persons) went up somewhere--presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's,
+and did not come down again.  Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a
+booming sound.  Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.  We
+have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's, but I
+feel inclined to put down the 'lascar' as the dacoit who was murdered
+by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.  But that Cadby meant
+to pay another visit to the place in a different 'make-up' or disguise,
+is evident, and that the Tuesday night proposed was last night is a
+reasonable deduction.  The reference to a pigtail is principally
+interesting because of what was found on Cadby's body.""
+Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.
+""Exactly ten-twenty-three,"" he said.  ""I will trouble you, Inspector,
+for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
+in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends.""
+Weymouth raised his eyebrows.
+""It might be risky.  What about an official visit?""
+Nayland Smith laughed.
+""Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to
+inspection.  No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman,
+with the incarnate essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most
+stupendous genius that the modern Orient has produced.""
+""I don't believe in disguises,"" said Weymouth, with a certain
+truculence.  ""It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to
+failure.  Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.
+Foster will make your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?""
+""A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.  I can rely
+on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure of my disguise.""
+""You are forgetting me, Smith,"" I said.
+He turned to me quickly.
+""Petrie,"" he replied, ""it is MY business, unfortunately, but it is no
+sort of hobby.""
+""You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?"" I said angrily.
+Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look of
+real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.
+""My dear old chap,"" he answered, ""that was really unkind.  You know
+that I meant something totally different.""
+""It's all right, Smith;"" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and
+wrung his hand heartily.  ""I can pretend to smoke opium as well as
+another.  I shall be going, too, Inspector.""
+As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes later
+two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
+accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into the
+wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business there was,
+to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--and I could have
+laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to
+farce.
+The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
+awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who, with
+all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him, pursued
+his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within this very
+area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom I had never
+seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!  Perhaps I was
+destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.
+I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid
+depths, and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.
+""We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
+is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
+Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your
+fellows will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the
+whistle.""
+""Yes,"" assented Weymouth; ""I've arranged for that.  If you are
+suspected, you shall give the alarm?""
+""I don't know,"" said Smith thoughtfully.  ""Even in that event I might
+wait awhile.""
+""Don't wait too long,"" advised the Inspector.  ""We shouldn't be much
+wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel, somewhere
+down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing.""
+The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
+entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been seated
+in the office springing up to salute the Inspector, who followed us in.
+""Guthrie and Lisle,"" he said briskly, ""get along and find a dark corner
+which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
+You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep on
+the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.  Don't
+move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders, and note
+everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong to this
+division?""
+The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.
+""Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt, but don't
+stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back way to
+Shen-Yan's?""
+The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.
+""There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir,"" replied one of them.  ""I
+know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.  Then we
+could get through to the front and watch from there.""
+""Good!"" cried the Inspector.  ""See you are not spotted, though; and if
+you hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside
+Shen-Yan's like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders.""
+Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.
+""Launch is waiting,"" he said.
+""Right,"" replied Smith thoughtfully.  ""I am half afraid, though, that
+the recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then
+Cadby.  Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know,
+there has been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks
+Cadby's notes are destroyed.""
+""The whole business is an utter mystery to me,"" confessed Ryman.  ""I'm
+told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding somewhere in
+London, and that you expect to find him at Shen-Yan's. Supposing he
+uses that place, which is possible, how do you know he's there
+to-night?""
+""I don't,"" said Smith; ""but it is the first clew we have had pointing
+to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives where Dr. Fu-Manchu
+is concerned.""
+""Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?""
+""I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary
+criminal.  He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put
+on earth for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose
+wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do
+you follow me?  He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making
+that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has
+ever dreamed of it.""
+Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out, passing down to the
+breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.  With her crew of three,
+the party numbered seven that swung out into the Pool, and, clearing
+the pier, drew in again and hugged the murky shore.
+The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding
+rainbanks to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again
+and show the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from
+the launch.  Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a
+moored barge, or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large
+vessel.  In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the
+ensuing darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the
+foreground of the night-piece.
+The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with lights
+about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.  The bank we were
+following offered a prospect even more gloomy--a dense, dark mass, amid
+which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones told of a dock gate, or sudden
+high lights leapt flaring to the eye.
+Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon
+us.  A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little
+craft.  A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We
+were dancing in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk
+had fallen again.
+Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate throbbing of
+our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company floating past the workshops of
+Brobdingnagian toilers.  The chill of the near water communicated
+itself to me, and I felt the protection of my shabby garments
+inadequate against it.
+Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous,
+mysterious--flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
+It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
+from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
+""Only a gasworks,"" came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had
+been watching those elfin fires.  ""But it always reminds me of a
+Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice.""
+The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the
+severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.
+""On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is--beyond
+that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's.""
+It was Inspector Ryman speaking.
+""Drop us somewhere handy, then,"" replied Smith, ""and lie close in, with
+your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't go far away.""
+From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
+had claimed at least one other victim.
+""Dead slow,"" came Ryman's order.  ""We'll put in to the Stone Stairs.""
+CHAPTER VI
+A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as
+Smith lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above
+which, crudely painted, were the words:
+""SHEN-YAN, Barber.""
+I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
+German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the
+window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden
+steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.
+We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only claim kinship
+with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of the grimy towel thrown
+across the back of the solitary chair.  A Yiddish theatrical bill of
+some kind, illustrated, adorned one of the walls, and another bill, in
+what may have been Chinese, completed the decorations.  From behind a
+curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed
+in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and,
+advancing, shook his head vigorously.
+""No shavee--no shavee,"" he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from
+one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.  ""Too late!  Shuttee
+shop!""
+""Don't you come none of it wi' me!"" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
+gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's
+nose.  ""Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee
+pipe, you yellow scum--savvy?""
+My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a
+vindictiveness that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of
+gentle persuasion.
+""Kop 'old o' that,"" he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
+yellow paw.  ""Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down,
+Charlie.  You can lay to it.""
+""No hab got pipee--"" began the other.
+Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.
+""Allee lightee,"" he said.  ""Full up--no loom.  You come see.""
+He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up a
+dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which was
+literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded with
+opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.  Every
+breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle of the
+floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls of which
+ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.  Most of the
+occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their
+bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.  These had not yet
+attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.
+""No loom--samee tella you,"" said Shen-Yan, complacently testing Smith's
+shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.
+Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
+pulling me down with him.
+""Two pipe quick,"" he said.  ""Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe--or plenty
+heap trouble.""
+A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:
+""Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver.""
+Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of the
+shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.  Holding
+a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old cocoa
+tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.  Slowly
+roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl of the metal
+pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a spirituous blue flame.
+""Pass it over,"" said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the
+assumed eagerness of a slave to the drug.
+Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips, and
+prepared another for me.
+""Whatever you do, don't inhale any,"" came Smith's whispered injunction.
+It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
+disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to
+smoke.  Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to
+sink lower and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways
+on the floor, Smith lying close beside me.
+""The ship's sinkin',"" droned a voice from one of the bunks.  ""Look at
+the rats.""
+Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense of
+isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world.  My
+throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.  The vicious
+atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped--
+Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, And there
+ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.
+Smith began to whisper softly.
+""We have carried it through successfully so far,"" he said.  ""I don't
+know if you have observed it, but there is a stair just behind you,
+half concealed by a ragged curtain.  We are near that, and well in the
+dark.  I have seen nothing suspicious so far--or nothing much.  But if
+there was anything going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we
+new arrivals were well doped.  S-SH!""
+He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed
+eyes I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had
+referred.  I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.
+The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room with
+a curiously lithe movement.
+The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded scant illumination,
+serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--here an extended hand, brown
+or yellow, there a sketchy, corpse-like face; whilst from all about
+rose obscene sighings and murmurings in far-away voices--an uncanny,
+animal chorus.  It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some
+Chinese Dante.  But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able
+to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a
+misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight,
+hunched body.  There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that
+masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
+yellow hands clasped one upon the other.
+Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
+apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements; but
+an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--that
+this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
+I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
+of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
+nearer, silently, bent and peering.
+He was watching us.
+Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
+There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
+The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
+in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed
+opium-smokers had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.
+Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness, I,
+too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending lower and
+lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.  I completely
+closed my eyes.
+Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming, I
+rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
+The man moved away.
+I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me--a hush
+in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad.  For just a
+moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back and front, we
+yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns, to some extent in
+the power of members of that most inscrutably mysterious race, the
+Chinese.
+""Good,"" whispered Smith at my side.  ""I don't think I could have done
+it.  He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
+Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.  Do you
+see that?""
+I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled
+down from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the
+room.
+They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
+curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
+The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.
+""Don't stir,"" whispered Smith.
+An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to
+me.  Who was the occupant of the room above?
+Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the
+floor, and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk,
+this time leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.
+""Did you see his right hand?"" whispered Smith.  ""A dacoit!  They come
+here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu is up there.""
+""What shall we do?""--softly.
+""Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile to
+bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.  I will
+give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.  You are
+nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows, I can
+then deal with him.""
+Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit, who
+recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately took his
+departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay, ascended the
+mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth, whose
+nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.  Then, as the
+softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right of the outer door--
+""Up you go, Petrie,"" cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous and
+further dissimulation useless.
+I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket of the
+rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went blundering up in
+complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries clamored from behind,
+with a muffled scream rising above them all.  But Nayland Smith was
+close behind as I raced along a covered gangway, in a purer air, and at
+my heels when I crashed open a door at the end and almost fell into the
+room beyond.
+What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon it
+of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung by a brass
+chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.  But from the moment
+that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there, I think if the place
+had been an Aladdin's palace I should have had no eyes for any of its
+wonders.
+He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his
+smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large, long and bony, and
+he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their
+thinness.  He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse,
+neutral-colored hair.
+Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of
+writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was
+wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human
+soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a
+brilliant green.  But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
+(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring
+them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the
+threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence.
+I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the malignant
+force of the man was something surpassing my experience.  He was
+surprised by this sudden intrusion--yes, but no trace of fear showed
+upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.  And, as I
+paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his gaze from mine.
+""IT'S FU-MANCHU!"" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice that was
+almost a scream.  ""IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!  Shoot him dead if--""
+The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped from
+under me.
+One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
+unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy
+water, which closed over my head.
+Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my
+own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
+But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I
+was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down the
+black terror that had me by the throat--terror of the darkness about
+me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I was cast
+amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.
+""Smith!"" I cried. . . . ""Help!  Help!""
+My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about to cry out again,
+when, mustering all my presence of mind and all my failing courage, I
+recognized that I had better employment of my energies, and began to
+swim straight ahead, desperately determined to face all the horrors of
+this place--to die hard if die I must.
+A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed into the
+water beside me!
+I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.
+Another fiery drop--and another!
+I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.  I had reached one
+bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell from above, and the scream
+of hysteria quivered, unuttered, in my throat.
+Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
+I threw my head back and raised my eyes.
+No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it was merely a
+question of time for the floor to collapse.  For it was beginning to
+emit a dull, red glow.
+The room above me was in flames!
+It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through the
+cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--for the death
+trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.
+My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear the
+flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.  Shortly
+that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the flames
+grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding the
+building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--showed
+me that there was no escape!
+By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.  By
+that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of
+Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!
+Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a
+trap--but the bottom three were missing!
+Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light--the light of what should
+be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding a new dread to
+the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.  But something it showed
+me . . . a projecting beam a few feet above the water . . . and directly
+below the iron ladder!
+""Merciful Heaven!"" I breathed.  ""Have I the strength?""
+A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible
+force.  I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.
+My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest aching
+dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired muscles to work,
+and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.  Nearer I swam
+. . . nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon the water, which now had all
+the seeming of a pool of blood.  Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came
+to my ears.  I was nearly spent . . . I was in the shadow of the beam!  If
+I could throw up one arm. . .
+A shrill scream sounded far above me!
+""Petrie!  Petrie!""  (That voice must be Smith's!)  ""Don't touch the
+beam!  For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few
+seconds and I can get to you!""
+Another few seconds!  Was that possible?
+I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
+sight which that night yet had offered.
+Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the
+hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!
+""I can't reach him!""
+It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--and saw
+the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!  With it
+came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
+deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  ""Here!  Here!  Be
+quick!  Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be
+quick!""
+A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders as the speaker
+bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith; and I think it was my
+wonder at knowing her for the girl whom that day I had surprised in
+Cadby's rooms which saved my life.
+For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that
+beautiful, flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild
+with fear . . . for me!
+Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I,
+with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the
+lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion
+was even nearer than I had supposed.  My last distinct memory is of the
+bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the
+pool beneath us.  Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
+sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had
+striven to reach.
+""The severed fingers--"" I said; and swooned.
+How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our
+way through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
+My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
+me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.
+A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us, and a clangor
+and shouting drew momentarily nearer.
+""It's the engines coming,"" explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
+""Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the
+trap, broke the oil-lamp.""
+""Is everybody out?""
+""So far as we know.""
+""Fu-Manchu?""
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+""No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back--""
+""Do you think he may--""
+""No,"" he said tensely.  ""Not until I see him lying dead before me shall
+I believe it.""
+Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.
+""Smith, where is she?"" I cried.  ""Where is she?""
+""I don't know,"" he answered.
+""She's given us the slip, Doctor,"" said Inspector Weymouth, as a
+fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.  ""So has
+Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.  We've got six
+or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep, but I suppose we shall
+have to let 'em go again.  Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was
+disguised as a Chinaman.  I expect that's why she managed to slip away.""
+I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue, how
+the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby had brought
+life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith had dropped it as
+he threw his arm about me on the ladder.  Her mask the girl might have
+retained, but her wig, I felt certain, had been dropped into the water.
+It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing upon the
+blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop, and Smith and I
+were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God knows how many
+crimes, that I had an idea.
+""Smith,"" I said, ""did you bring the pigtail with you that was found on
+Cadby?""
+""Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner.""
+""Have you got it now?""
+""No. I met the owner.""
+I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket lent to
+me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.
+""We shall never really excel at this business,"" continued Nayland
+Smith.  ""We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us,
+Petrie, what it meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her
+your life--I had to square the account.""
+CHAPTER VII
+NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at the nocturne in
+silver and green which lay beneath me.  To the west of the shrubbery,
+with its broken canopy of elms and beyond the copper beech which marked
+the center of its mazes, a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where
+it swept into a broad.  Faint bird-calls floated over the water.
+These, with the whisper of leaves, alone claimed the ear.
+Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to
+my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors; to my ears, every
+sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful hand of Fu-Manchu was
+stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors
+upon its inmates.
+""Well,"" said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, ""we had dared to
+hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!""
+The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
+upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
+sensitive face of the clergyman.
+""You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?""
+Nayland Smith smoked furiously.
+""Mr. Eltham,"" he replied, ""you see in me a man groping in the dark.  I
+am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than upon the day
+when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew; I am here.  Your affair, I
+believe, stands thus: A series of attempted burglaries, or something of
+the kind, has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
+with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and, occupying a
+compartment to yourselves, you both slept.  Your daughter awoke, and
+saw someone else in the carriage--a yellow-faced man who held a case of
+instruments in his hands.""
+""Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the
+telephone.  The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he
+observed that my daughter was awake, he stepped towards her.""
+""What did he do with the case in his hands?""
+""She did not notice--or did not mention having noticed.  In fact, as
+was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls nothing more,
+beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me, without succeeding, felt
+hands grasp her shoulders--and swooned.""
+""But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train.""
+""Greba has no recollection of having done so.""
+""Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.  When did you
+awake?""
+""I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me.""
+""Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
+You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?""
+Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.
+""It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in
+China, Mr. Smith,"" he said; ""but my not having mentioned it may seem
+so.  The fact is""--his sensitive face flushed in palpable
+embarrassment--""I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
+I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly--I solemnly declare
+to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly--I stirred up certain deep-seated
+prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty--my duty.  I think you asked
+me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896 until 1900--four
+years.""
+""I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham,"" said Smith, with an odd note
+in his voice.  ""I have been endeavoring to think where I had come
+across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.  I am happy to have met
+you, sir.""
+The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his
+head, with its scanty fair hair.
+""Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to
+see in the dusk.""
+""It remains.  Redmoat--a corruption of Round Moat--was formerly a
+priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536."" His pedantic
+manner was quaint at times. ""But the moat is no longer flooded. In
+fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic
+strength of the place""--he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed
+again--""it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and--other
+arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot,"" he added apologetically.
+""And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
+inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner.""
+He left us.
+""Who is our host?"" I asked, as the door closed.
+Smith smiled.
+""You are wondering what caused the 'episcopal cloud?'"" he suggested.
+""Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
+culminated in the Boxer Risings.""
+""Good heavens, Smith!"" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
+personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words
+awakened.
+""He evidently should be on our danger list,"" my friend continued
+quickly; ""but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that
+I think it probable that someone else has only just recalled his
+existence to mind.  The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he
+may be a poor hand at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of
+Christian women from death--and worse.""
+""J. D. Eltham--"" I began.
+""Is 'Parson Dan'!"" rapped Smith, ""the 'Fighting Missionary,' the man
+who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor held the
+hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.  That's who the Rev.
+J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to, now, I have yet to find out.
+He is keeping something back--something which has made him an object of
+interest to Young China!""
+During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
+hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
+consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
+Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
+and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
+No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
+from the subject uppermost in our minds.
+These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of the
+circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown
+issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
+So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party at
+Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful, so
+almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it to be
+the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed to the library,
+we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.
+""Redmoat,"" said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, ""has latterly become the theater
+of strange doings.""
+He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table and
+candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded dim
+illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby, lolled smoking on the
+window-seat, and I sat near to him.  Nayland Smith paced restlessly up
+and down the room.
+""Some months ago, almost a year,"" continued the clergyman, ""a
+burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest, and
+the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection."" He waved
+his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about the shadowed room.
+""It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for--playing at
+forts to run away with me.""  He smiled an apology.  ""I virtually
+fortified Redmoat--against trespassers of any kind, I mean.  You have
+seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.  This is
+artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork; a portion of the
+ancient castrum."" Again he waved indicatively, this time toward the
+window.
+""When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended by its
+environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by barbed-wire
+fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream, a
+tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road, but
+nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.  On the south
+is the remaining part of the moat--now my kitchen garden; but from
+there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again, and the
+barbed wire must also be counted with.
+""The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.  There
+is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original steps
+of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head.""
+He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.
+""My secret defenses remain to be mentioned,"" he resumed; and, opening a
+cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries, with a number of electric
+bells upon the wall behind.  ""The more vulnerable spots are connected
+at night with these bells,"" he said triumphantly.  ""Any attempt to
+scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of
+these ringing.  A stray cow raised one false alarm,"" he added, ""and a
+careless rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion.""
+He was so boyish--so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive--that it was
+difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.  I could
+only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
+wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
+It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as,
+faintly, he was ashamed of his ""fortifications.""  ""But,"" rapped Smith,
+""it was not the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate
+precautions.""
+Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.
+""I am aware,"" he said, ""that having invoked official aid, I must be
+perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was
+responsible for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but
+the electrical contrivance followed, later, as a result of several
+disturbed nights.  My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they
+said, after dusk.  No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but
+certainly we found traces.  I must admit that.
+""Then--I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar
+one--a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling person, over
+by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.  It was the
+incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led me
+to speak to the police, little as I desired to--er--court publicity.""
+Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across the sloping
+lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.  A dog was howling
+dismally somewhere.
+""Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?"" he jerked.  ""On
+our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death of his
+collie a few nights ago.""
+The clergyman's face clouded.
+""That, certainly, was alarming,"" he confessed.
+""I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon came
+down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival it ran,
+barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.  He went to
+look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among the bushes, quite
+dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully beaten about the head.""
+""The gates were locked,"" Denby interrupted, ""and no one could have got
+out of the grounds without a ladder and someone to assist him.  But
+there was no sign of a living thing about.  Edwards and I searched
+every corner.""
+""How long has that other dog taken to howling?"" inquired Smith.
+""Only since Rex's death,"" said Denby quickly.
+""It is my mastiff,"" explained the clergyman, ""and he is confined in the
+yard.  He is never allowed on this side of the house.""
+Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.
+""I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham,"" he said, ""but what was
+the nature of the warning to which you referred, and from whom did it
+come?""
+Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.
+""I have been so unfortunate,"" he said at last, ""in my previous efforts,
+that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
+contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!""
+Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.
+""Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?"" he cried.  ""Now I understand!
+Why have you not told me before?  That is the key for which I have
+vainly been seeking.  Your troubles date from the time of your decision
+to return?""
+""Yes, I must admit it,"" confessed the clergyman diffidently.
+""And your warning came from China?""
+""It did.""
+""From a Chinaman?""
+""From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat.""
+""Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?  And
+you reject his advice?  Listen to me.""  Smith was intensely excited
+now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.  ""The
+Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!""
+""I do not follow you, Mr. Smith.""
+""No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret
+machine, and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I
+understand, this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has
+saved your life!  You would be a dead man now if it were not for your
+friend in China!  My dear sir, you must accept his counsel.""
+Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, ""Parson
+Dan"" showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.
+""No, sir!"" replied the clergyman--and the change in his voice was
+startling.  ""I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going.""
+The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence in
+his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.
+""Then only One can protect you,"" cried Smith, ""for, by Heaven, no MAN
+will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan can do no possible good
+at present.  It must do harm.  Your experience in 1900 should be fresh
+in your memory.""
+""Hard words, Mr. Smith.""
+""The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious to
+international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is a barrel of
+gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.  I do not willingly stand
+between any man and what he chooses to consider his duty, but I insist
+that you abandon your visit to the interior of China!""
+""You insist, Mr. Smith?""
+""As your guest, I regret the necessity for reminding you that I hold
+authority to enforce it.""
+Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing
+harsh and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.
+There was a short, silent interval.
+""This is what I had feared and expected,"" said the clergyman.  ""This
+was my reason for not seeking official protection.""
+""The phantom Yellow Peril,"" said Nayland Smith, ""to-day materializes
+under the very eyes of the Western world.""
+""The 'Yellow Peril'!""
+""You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right hand of
+friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!  The peace of
+the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper with
+tremendous issues.""
+Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.
+""You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith,"" he said; ""but I like you for it.
+I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again with you
+to-morrow.""
+Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never experienced such an
+overwhelming sense of imminent peril--of a sinister presence--as
+oppressed me at that moment.  The very atmosphere of Redmoat was
+impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil
+perfume.  And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream--the
+scream of a woman in direst fear.
+""My God, it's Greba!"" whispered Mr. Eltham.
+CHAPTER VIII
+IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.  But
+none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham
+prone by the French windows.
+These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in
+the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.  Nayland Smith was at
+my elbow.
+""Get my bag"" I said.  ""She has swooned.  It is nothing serious.""
+Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering
+incoherently; but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I
+having administered a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly
+and opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.
+I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm she
+retired to her own rooms.
+It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
+I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
+Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves of
+her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.
+When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty
+confusion.
+""We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham.""
+She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
+""I am almost afraid to tell father,"" she began rapidly.  ""He will think
+me imaginative, but you have been so kind.  It was two green eyes!  Oh!
+Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from the steps leading to the lawn.
+And they shone like the eyes of a cat.""
+The words thrilled me strangely.
+""Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?""
+""The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was something dreadful,
+most dreadful, in their appearance.  I feel foolish and silly for
+having fainted, twice in two days!  But the suspense is telling upon
+me, I suppose.  Father thinks""--she was becoming charmingly
+confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician--""that
+shut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us."" I noted, with
+concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.  ""But since our return
+someone else has been in Redmoat!""
+""Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?""
+""Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.  What does it ALL
+mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me that some awful Chinaman is
+seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.  But if the same man wants to
+kill my father, why has he not done so?""
+""I am afraid you puzzle me.""
+""Of course, I must do so.  But--the man in the train.  He could have
+killed us both quite easily!  And--last night someone was in father's
+room.""
+""In his room!""
+""I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.  My room is the next
+one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.  There was nothing; so I
+said it was the howling of the dog that had frightened me.""
+""How could anyone get into his room?""
+""I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man.""
+""Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?""
+""You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have
+been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been
+neglected.  Is there any creature, any large creature, which could
+climb up the wall to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long,
+thin body?""
+For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her
+eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.  She was not
+of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck;
+her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded
+and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the
+anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes,
+who would not have been?  But the mere idea of this thing which she
+believed to be in Redmoat, without the apparition of the green eyes,
+must have prostrated a victim of ""nerves.""
+""Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?""
+She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips
+together.
+""As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked, I glanced from
+my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn into shadow, and just
+disappearing in this shadow was something--something of a brown color,
+marked with sections!""
+""What size and shape?""
+""It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape; but I saw quite
+six feet of it flash across the grass!""
+""Did you hear anything?""
+""A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more.""
+She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of
+understanding and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but
+occupied the position of a father-confessor.
+""Have you any idea,"" I said, ""how it came about that you awoke in the
+train yesterday whilst your father did not?""
+""We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some
+way.  I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an
+old traveler and drank the whole of his cupful!""
+Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.
+""Dr. Petrie,"" said the girl quickly, ""what do you think they want to do
+to him?""
+""Ah!"" I replied, ""I wish I knew that.""
+""Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
+is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite of
+father's 'fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.  He
+drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it.""
+As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
+through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as he
+threw the weight of his big body upon it.
+I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
+smoking and talking.
+""Eltham has influential Chinese friends,"" he said; ""but they dare not
+have him in Nan-Yang at present.  He knows the country as he knows
+Norfolk; he would see things!
+""His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.  The attempt in
+the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.  But whilst
+Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London, by the way)
+they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.  In case
+no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided for getting at
+him here!""
+""But how, Smith?""
+""That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant.""
+""Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?""
+""It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages, and so
+forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every foot of the
+place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for; and as for a tunnel
+under the moat, the house stands on a solid mass of Roman masonry, a
+former camp of Hadrian's time.  I have seen a very old plan of the
+Round Moat Priory as it was called.  There is no entrance and no exit
+save by the steps.  So how was the dog killed?""
+I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.
+""We are in the thick of it here,"" I said.
+""We are always in the thick of it,"" replied Smith.  ""Our danger is no
+greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?  That
+man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments?  Then
+the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been the eyes
+of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--something
+calling for the presence of the master?""
+""He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him.""
+""Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.  But God help
+the victim of Chinese mercy!""
+I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress, refilling my
+pipe and seating myself at the open window.  Having looked upon the
+awful Chinese doctor, the memory of his face, with its filmed green
+eyes, could never leave me.  The idea that he might be near at that
+moment was a poor narcotic.
+The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.
+When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
+the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the
+sloping turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green
+sea.  The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and
+fragrant with country scents.
+It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious
+death--that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What
+uncanny secret did it hold?
+Caesar became silent.
+As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
+cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed, now
+recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.
+I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past
+midnight.
+As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
+of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way that
+sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end of his chain,
+shook the building in which he was confined.  It was as I stood up to
+lean from the window and commanded a view of the corner of the house
+that he broke loose.
+With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I heard his heavy
+body fall against the wooden wall.  There followed a strange, guttural
+cry . . . and the growling of the dog died away at the rear of the house.
+He was out!  But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a
+dog.  Of what was he in pursuit?
+At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not
+know.  I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe
+shape was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went
+crashing into the undergrowth.
+Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the
+only spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.
+""Is that you, Miss Eltham?"" I asked.
+""Oh, Dr. Petrie!"" she said.  ""I am so glad you are awake.  Can we do
+nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed.""
+""Did you see what he went after?""
+""No,"" she called back, and drew her breath sharply.
+For a strange figure went racing across the grass.  It was that of a
+man in a blue dressing-gown, who held a lantern high before him, and a
+revolver in his right hand.  Coincident with my recognition of Mr.
+Eltham he leaped, plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.
+But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:
+""Come back!  Come back, Eltham!""
+I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.  A
+terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
+something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
+He just had dropped from a first-floor window.
+""The man is mad!"" he snapped.  ""Heaven knows what lurks there!  He
+should not have gone alone!""
+Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.  The
+sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over stumps and lashed
+by low-sweeping branches, we struggled forward to where the clergyman
+knelt amongst the bushes.  He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was
+revealed by the dim light.
+""Look!"" he cried.
+The body of the dog lay at his feet.
+It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his
+death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad to
+find traces of life.
+""Drag him out.  He is not dead,"" I said.
+""And hurry,"" rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.
+So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
+We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.
+By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed; and almost
+immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.  The white faces of the
+house servants showed at one window, and Miss Eltham called to me from
+her room:
+""Is he dead?""
+""No,"" I replied; ""only stunned.""
+We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.  It had
+been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull was not
+broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.
+""Will you attend to him, Doctor?"" asked Eltham.  ""We must see that the
+villain does not escape.""
+His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
+clergyman we knew:  this was ""Parson Dan"" again.
+I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with the others
+went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.  As I was washing a
+bad wound between the mastiff's ears, Miss Eltham joined me.  It was
+the sound of her voice, I think, rather than my more scientific
+ministration, which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his
+tail wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--one of
+which was injured.
+Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in charge of his
+young mistress and joined the search party.  They had entered the
+shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.
+""There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
+the grounds,"" said Eltham amazedly.
+We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith, angry but
+thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit in
+moments of perplexity.
+CHAPTER IX
+WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the
+electrical contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
+It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
+and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was
+intact, and bore no signs of having been tampered with.
+Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.
+At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west of
+the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the surrounding
+laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle, but no human
+footprint could be found.
+""The ground is dry,"" said Smith.  ""We cannot expect much.""
+""In my opinion,"" I said, ""someone tried to get at Caesar; his presence
+is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose.""
+""I think so, too,"" agreed Smith.  ""But why did this person make for
+here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?  I am open
+to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during the day whilst
+the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.  But how in the name of all
+that's wonderful does he GET OUT?  He must possess the attributes of a
+bird.""
+I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend of her
+description of the thing which she had seen passing into this strangely
+haunted shrubbery.
+""That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie,"" he
+said.  ""Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us to
+a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.  My view of
+the case to date stands thus:
+""(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
+is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way to
+stay in England.
+""(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in
+England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+""(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham
+are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a
+train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room
+coffee.  An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia.
+""(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made
+for his return.  These lead to:
+""(a) The death of Denby's collie;
+""(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
+""(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.
+""So that the clearing up of my fourth point--id est, the discovery of
+the nature of these preparations--becomes our immediate concern.  The
+prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone to
+gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.  The
+dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt that
+Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time.""
+""But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?""
+Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.
+""From a visit by someone--perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself,"" he said in a
+hushed voice.  ""The object of that visit I hope we may never learn; for
+that would mean that it had been achieved.""
+""Smith,"" I said, ""I do not altogether understand you; but do you think
+he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?  It would be
+like him.""
+""I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world to
+be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!""
+Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby, who came to
+report that he had examined the moat, the roadside, and the bank of the
+stream, but found no footprints or clew of any kind.
+""No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think,"" he said.  And
+his voice had awe in it.
+That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood for
+traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin hard by;
+but vainly.
+""May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?"" I
+asked Smith.
+""I think not,"" he replied.  ""You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
+Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
+Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a
+character that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
+to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
+that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes.""
+There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from
+one's nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.
+All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
+whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
+for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
+nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.
+I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
+knife raised above my breast!
+Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which we had
+no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that the climax was
+reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough; for there in that
+quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand grips with one of the
+mysterious horrors which characterized the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+It was upon us before we realized it.  There is no incidental music to
+the dramas of real life.
+As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight, I remember
+thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie to my fears that we
+bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar, who had been a docile
+patient all day, began howling again; and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.
+I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
+when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
+was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act, a
+desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled
+afterwards, his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to
+seek her face, and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his
+chair, and dashed across the grass to the trees.
+""Did you see it?"" he yelled.  ""Did you see it?""
+He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery a
+shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.
+""Greba, go in and fasten the windows,"" cried Eltham.  ""Mr. Smith, will
+you enter the bushes from the west.  Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards,
+Edwards--"" And he was off across the lawn with the nervous activity of
+a cat.
+As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's voice
+from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.  It was to surround the
+shrubbery.
+Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.  Then
+a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.
+Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.
+I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of
+geranium and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the
+elms.  Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's
+answering voice.
+""Denby!"" I cried, and yet louder:  ""Denby!""
+But the silence fell again.
+Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
+grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before
+me.  Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I
+pressed on into the midst of the thicket.
+""Vernon!"" came Eltham's voice from one side.
+""Bear more to the right, Edwards,"" I heard Nayland Smith cry directly
+ahead of me.
+With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon
+me, I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
+elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
+Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a
+big rhododendron and completed the party.
+We stood quite still for a moment.
+A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.
+""Where is he?""
+I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
+to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:
+""Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!""
+His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
+horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech, with
+shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.
+From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.
+""Quick!  Lights!"" rapped Smith.  ""Every lamp you have!""
+Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the
+lawn, a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his
+jaw set hard.  He met my eye.
+""God forgive me!"" he said.  ""I could do murder to-night!""
+He was a man composed of strange perplexities.
+It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
+to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
+sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
+We found his revolver, but there was no one there--nothing.
+When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
+Smith so haggard.
+""What in Heaven's name can we do?"" he muttered.  ""What does it mean?""
+He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.
+""Search!  Everywhere,"" said Eltham hoarsely.
+He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among the
+flowers like a madman, muttering:  ""Vernon!  Vernon!""  For close upon
+an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
+within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
+in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
+Some of the servants assisted too.
+It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together again on
+the terrace.  One and then another would give up, until only Eltham and
+Smith were missing.  Then they came back together from examining the
+steps to the lower gate.
+Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.
+Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal, snapping his
+teeth together and tugging at his ear.
+Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his tumultuous
+thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off across the
+grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.  I think his
+idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.  He surprised
+himself, and all of us.
+For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.  I ran to him.
+He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!
+Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came to be
+there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us, uttered one
+short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.  Then we were carrying
+Denby back to the house, with the mastiff howling a marche funebre.
+We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
+Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of the
+thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
+Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the
+river:
+""Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!""
+""But the dog--"" I began.
+Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.
+""I know he's crippled,"" he whispered.  ""But if anything human lurks
+there, the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!
+Why did we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!""  He raised his voice
+again.  ""Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us.""
+The scheme succeeded.
+Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ringing
+inside the house.
+""Wait!"" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.
+A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.  ""Above the
+moat,"" he panted.  And we were off en masse round the edge of the trees.
+It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our seeing a
+narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord hanging by two
+hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.  There was no sound.
+""He's out!"" screamed Eltham.  ""Down the steps!""
+We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
+he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
+Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.  But
+no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog was borne
+to our ears.
+""Curse it!  he's crippled,"" hissed Smith.  ""Without him, as well pursue
+a shadow!""
+A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one
+enough: A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
+to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.  A
+slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the
+top, and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.
+""It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw,"" said Smith, ""as
+he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted him in
+her father's room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless slipped in
+during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--bringing the
+prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.  They concealed
+themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--and during the night
+made the cache.  The excavated earth would be disposed of on the
+flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.  You see, the
+problem of getting IN was never a big one.  But owing to the 'defenses'
+it was impossible (whilst Eltham was in residence at any rate) to get
+OUT after dark.  For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
+Redmoat was essential.  His servant--for he needed assistance--must
+have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!  During the
+day they could come or go by the gates, as we have already noted.""
+""You think it was the Doctor himself?""
+""It seems possible.  Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham saw
+from the window last night?""
+Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had
+planned to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned
+from Denby.  For Denby was not dead.
+It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish visitor at
+the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned (judging from the
+evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into the cache--to which
+he must have lain in such dangerous proximity as to render detection of
+the dummy bush possible in removing him.  The quickest expedient, then,
+had been to draw him beneath.  When the search of the shrubbery was
+concluded, his body had been borne to the edge of the bushes and laid
+where we found it.
+Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision had
+been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing the secret
+of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone had
+terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.
+Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
+consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated; his
+memory had completely deserted him!
+This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
+was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence, slightly
+below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine, of a
+minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.  Then,
+unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain; for
+undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed to
+efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.
+The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms was a
+mystery--a mystery which defied Western science: one of the many
+strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+CHAPTER X
+SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
+without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention or
+had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
+increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.
+One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk, in glancing
+through a number of papers which I had brought in with me, I chanced
+upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less directly
+upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.
+No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
+of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in
+England, the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his
+existence.  This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel
+assured that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
+meet with an incredulous reception.
+I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening chapters
+of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult it would be for my
+reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings, to credit any human being
+with a callous villainy great enough to conceive and to put into
+execution such a death pest as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
+One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing--against
+however vile an enemy--such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.  So
+thinking, my eye was caught by the following:--
+EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
+NEW YORK.
+""Secret service men of the United States Government are searching the
+South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island of Maui, who,
+it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions to Chinese in
+Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.
+""Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese, has
+increased so terribly that the authorities have started a searching
+inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion dealer of Maui.
+""Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
+and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the
+bite of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less
+poisonous insect in support of the statement.
+""The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a
+growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt down the scorpion
+dealer at any cost.""
+Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
+Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that, if
+I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it therein
+as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.
+A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The Star also
+furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences of the deep-seated
+unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested itself so far from its
+center as peaceful England in the person of the sinister Doctor.
+""HONG KONG, Friday.
+""Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday, was
+charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with intent to kill,
+which is equivalent to attempted murder.  The prisoner, who was not
+defended, pleaded guilty.  The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who
+prosecuted, asked for a remand until Monday, which was granted.
+""Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
+the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.  It is
+reported that this man, who was arrested last night, was in possession
+of incriminating documentary evidence.""
+Later.
+""Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice has
+disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by the Canton Triad
+Society, the directors of which had enjoined the assassination of Sir
+F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.  In a report prepared by
+the accomplice for dispatch to Canton, also found on his person, he
+expressed regret that the attempt had failed.""--Reuter.
+""It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese
+soldiers and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named
+Said Effendi, near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.
+""They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
+about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.
+""The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
+the most vigorous representations on the subject.""--Reuter.
+Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:--
+""HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.--ELTHAM.""
+I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and threw
+himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.  I showed him
+the cutting.
+""I am glad, for Eltham's sake--and for the girl's,"" was his comment.
+""But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
+retribution delayed!""
+Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had
+begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom
+a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace
+the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.
+""I have seen Sir Lionel Barton,"" he said abruptly; ""and, to put the
+whole thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months
+that I have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere
+in Egypt.  He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of
+his letter to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu
+would have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new
+keyhole to the gate of the Indian Empire!""
+Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
+those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his
+end.  Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had
+penetrated to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden
+Mecca, he now had turned his attention again to Tibet--thereby signing
+his own death-warrant.
+""That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?"" I suggested.
+Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.
+""England at present is the web,"" he replied.  ""The spider will be
+waiting.  Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man
+to shepherd.  You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat
+place completely hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a
+jungle.  Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is
+working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like
+an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half
+a menagerie and half a circus.  He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese
+body-servant, and Heaven only knows what other strange people!""
+""Chinese!""
+""Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like
+him.  Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an
+unpleasant face.  He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged
+upon the Spanish notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan
+temples.  By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the
+landing-stage--including his Tibetan notes.""
+""Significant!""
+""Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
+to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore that it is
+unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.  I left him dictating
+the book from memory, at the rate of about two hundred words a minute.""
+""He is wasting no time.""
+""Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
+he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he
+has unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
+and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.  It
+is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
+after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six
+weeks; then he is off again.""
+""What do you propose to do?""
+""What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
+I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.  No
+sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms, and when
+I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes wherever a
+stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.  There's a steamy
+smell about the place that is almost malarious, and the whole of the
+west front is covered with a sort of monkey-creeper, which he has
+imported at some time or other.  It has a close, exotic perfume that is
+quite in the picture.  I tell you, the place was made for murder.""
+""Have you taken any precautions?""
+""I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house,
+but--""
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+""What is Sir Lionel like?""
+""A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown
+of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache,
+keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely
+shaves--I don't know which.  I left him striding about among the
+thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way
+through his antique furniture, works of reference, manuscripts,
+mummies, spears, pottery and what not--sometimes kicking a book from
+his course, or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican
+mask--alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!""
+For some time we were silent.
+""Smith"" I said, ""we are making no headway in this business.  With all
+the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us, still
+pursues his devilish, inscrutable way.""
+Nayland Smith nodded.
+""And we don't know all,"" he said.  ""We mark such and such a man as one
+alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him--if we have time.  Perhaps
+he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie, of those
+others who may die every week by his murderous agency?  We cannot know
+EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.  I never see a report of
+someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide, of a sudden, though
+seemingly natural death, without wondering.  I tell you, Fu-Manchu is
+omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.  I said that Sir Lionel
+must bear a charmed life.  The fact that WE are alive is a miracle.""
+He glanced at his watch.
+""Nearly eleven,"" he said.  ""But sleep seems a waste of time--apart from
+its dangers.""
+We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock at the room
+door.
+""Come in!"" I cried.
+A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.  His jaw looked very
+square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone like steel as he took it
+from her and opened the envelope.  He glanced at the form, stood up and
+passed it to me, reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.
+""God help us, Petrie!"" he said.
+This was the message:
+""Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house at once.--WEYMOUTH,
+INSPECTOR.""
+CHAPTER XI
+ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon midnight
+when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue, at the farther
+end of which, as seen through a tunnel, the moonlight glittered upon
+the windows of Rowan House, Sir Lionel Barton's home.
+Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw that
+it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.  The facade
+showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper which he had mentioned,
+and the air was pungent with an odor of decaying vegetation, with which
+mingled the heavy perfume of the little nocturnal red flowers which
+bloomed luxuriantly upon the creeper.
+The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted to
+the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
+with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
+apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
+the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
+The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath
+the trees.
+To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents upon
+the floor, the detective conducted us.
+""Good heavens!"" I cried, ""what's that?""
+Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently across
+the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a golden streak.
+I stood looking after it with startled eyes.  Inspector Weymouth
+laughed dryly.
+""It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor,"" he said.
+""This house is full of surprises--and mysteries.""
+His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed the
+door ere proceeding further.
+""Where is he?"" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  ""How was it done?""
+Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.
+""I thought you would like to hear what led up to it--so far as we
+know--before seeing him?""
+Smith nodded.
+""Well,"" continued the Inspector, ""the man you arranged to send down
+from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the road
+outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.  He saw and
+heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten, when a young lady
+turned up and went in.""
+""A young lady?""
+""Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found, after
+getting home, that her bag, with her purse in, was missing, and she
+came back to see if she had left it here.  She gave the alarm.  My man
+heard the row from the road and came in.  Then he ran out and rang us
+up.  I immediately wired for you.""
+""He heard the row, you say.  What row?""
+""Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!""
+Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.
+""Describe what he saw when he came in.""
+""He saw a negro footman--there isn't an Englishman in the house--trying
+to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay and another
+colored man beating their foreheads and howling.  There was no sense to
+be got out of any of them, so he started to investigate for himself.
+He had taken the bearings of the place earlier in the evening, and from
+the light in a window on the ground floor had located the study; so he
+set out to look for the door.  When he found it, it was locked from the
+inside.""
+""Well?""
+""He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from the
+shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.  He
+looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.  What he saw
+accounted for her hysterics.""
+Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.
+""All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
+lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
+lay Sir Lionel Barton.""
+""My God!  Yes.  Go on.""
+""There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
+shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor, you
+understand.""  The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands.
+""Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open, and was
+just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says.""
+He paused.
+""What did he see?"" demanded Smith shortly.
+""A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.  It moved
+over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away from him and
+towards a curtain at the other end of the study.""
+Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.
+""Where did he first see this green mist?""
+""He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case.""
+""Yes; go on.""
+""It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after seeing a thing
+like that.  He did.  He turned the body over, and Sir Lionel looked
+horrible.  He was quite dead.  Then Croxted--that's the man's
+name--went over to this curtain.  There was a glass door--shut.  He
+opened it, and it gave on a conservatory--a place stacked from the
+tiled floor to the glass roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside,
+but enough light came from the study--it's really a drawing-room, by
+the way--as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
+of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.  On
+the steps lay a dead Chinaman.""
+""A dead Chinaman!""
+""A dead CHINAMAN.""
+""Doctor seen them?"" rapped Smith.
+""Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.  Contradicted
+himself three times.  But there's no need for another opinion--until we
+get the coroner's.""
+""And Croxted?""
+""Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab.""
+""What ails him?""
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully knocked
+the ash from his cigar.
+""He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right
+away.  He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by
+the throat.""
+""Did he mean that literally?""
+""I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course.""
+Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.
+""Got any theory?"" he jerked.
+Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.
+""Not one that includes the green mist,"" he said.  ""Shall we go in now?""
+We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
+household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
+Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed the
+Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
+and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows of the
+hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.  We entered Sir
+Lionel's study--an apartment which I despair of describing.
+Nayland Smith's words, ""an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,""
+leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked with
+curious litter--loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.  In a clearing by
+the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case, and about it lay a
+number of utensils for camp cookery.  The odor of rotting vegetation,
+mingled with the insistent perfume of the strange night-blooming
+flowers, was borne in through the open window.
+In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus, lay a
+figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards, and arms
+thrust forward and over the side of the ancient Egyptian mummy case.
+My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.
+""Good God!""
+Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression to
+Inspector Weymouth.
+""You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?"" he rapped.
+""No,"" began Weymouth, ""but--""
+""This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary.""
+""What!"" shouted Weymouth.
+""Where is the other--the Chinaman--quick!"" cried Smith.
+""I have had him left where he was found--on the conservatory steps,""
+said the Inspector.
+Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door, a glimpse
+might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.  Holding back the curtain
+to allow more light to penetrate, he bent forward over a crumpled-up
+figure which lay upon the steps below.
+""It is!"" he cried aloud.  ""It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee.""
+Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
+then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
+over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves; a great
+wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards the curtained
+doorway.
+It was a breath of the East--that stretched out a yellow hand to the
+West.  It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith--lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of
+Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to
+combat the insidious enemy.
+""One thing is evident,"" said Smith:  ""no one in the house, Strozza
+excepted, knew that Sir Lionel was absent.""
+""How do you arrive at that?"" asked Weymouth.
+""The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.  If they had
+seen him go out they would know that it must be someone else who lies
+here.""
+""What about the Chinaman?""
+""Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
+through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
+when his master was absent from the room.""
+""Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the
+Chinaman?""
+""Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the
+inside.  What killed Strozza?"" retorted Smith.
+""You will have noted,"" continued the Inspector, ""that the secretary is
+wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she
+looked in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her
+employer--and consequently to put us on the wrong scent.""
+""He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would be
+sure to make that mistake,"" rapped Smith.
+""Why?"" I asked.
+""Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See.""  Smith stooped
+and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.  ""There lies
+the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.  It contained the mummy of
+some notable person who flourished under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel
+told me that a number of valuable ornaments and jewels probably were
+secreted amongst the wrappings.  He proposed to open the thing and to
+submit the entire contents to examination to-night. He evidently
+changed his mind--fortunately for himself.""
+I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.
+""Then what has become of the mummy?""
+Nayland Smith laughed dryly.
+""It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently,"" he said.
+""Look at Strozza's face.""
+He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the
+contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--suggestive
+were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside the
+dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
+Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective, carried
+Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
+His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the
+other, and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower
+teeth.  There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's,
+had been tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.
+The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from the damp
+shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of the creeping
+plant, swept constantly through the open window.  Inspector Weymouth
+carefully relighted his cigar.
+""I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith,"" he said.  ""Strozza, knowing Sir
+Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
+for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the
+inside.  Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the
+conservatory--""
+""And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there for
+some mysterious reason of his own,"" interrupted Smith.
+""Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--""
+""Suppose we say the mummy?""
+Weymouth laughed uneasily.
+""Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without opening
+the door or the window killed Strozza.""
+""And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
+apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay
+concealed,"" Smith continued.  ""For once in a way, Inspector, Dr.
+Fu-Manchu has employed an ally which even his giant will was incapable
+entirely to subjugate.  What blind force--what terrific agent of
+death--had he confined in that sarcophagus!""
+""You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?"" I said.  ""If you are
+correct, his power indeed is more than human.""
+Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.  He
+surveyed me curiously.
+""Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely is
+sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group, though
+probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.  He is
+unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part was to
+assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a hidden
+enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus clearly
+spoiled the scheme.""
+""And led to the death--""
+""Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that.""
+""Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?""
+My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.
+""You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the
+Doctor--Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?""
+I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining the
+garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.  It lay
+sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge, he turned it over.
+""Heavy,"" he muttered; ""but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
+He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!""
+He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine, and out of the
+mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or ""cork.""
+""This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing,"" he said.
+""Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell.""
+I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
+voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open, and a big
+man, who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore a fur-lined overcoat,
+rushed impetuously into the room.
+""Sir Lionel!"" cried Smith eagerly.  ""I warned you!  And see, you have
+had a very narrow escape.""
+Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor, then from Smith
+to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.  He dropped into one of
+the few chairs unstacked with books.
+""Mr. Smith,"" he said, with emotion, ""what does this mean?  Tell
+me--quickly.""
+In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--or so much
+as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened, sitting quite still
+the while--an unusual repose in a man of such evidently tremendous
+nervous activity.
+""He came for the jewels,"" he said slowly, when Smith was finished; and
+his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.  ""I was wrong to
+submit him to the temptation.  God knows what Kwee was doing in hiding.
+Perhaps he had come to murder me, as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I
+find it hard to believe.  But--I don't think this is the handiwork of
+your Chinese doctor."" He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.
+Smith stared at him in surprise.  ""What do you mean, Sir Lionel?""
+The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus with
+something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.
+""I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night,"" he continued.
+""You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew of my
+absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at the Traveler's.
+He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon""--again he looked
+toward the mummy case--""the tomb of Mekara; and he knew that the
+sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.  He begged me not
+to open it.""
+Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.
+""What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?"" he asked.
+Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.
+""One,"" he replied at last, ""which amused me--at the time.  I must
+inform you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my
+absence in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to
+Alexandria--was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the
+Pharaoh of the Exodus; in short, one of the magicians who contested in
+magic arts with Moses.  I thought the discovery unique, until Professor
+Rembold furnished me with some curious particulars respecting the death
+of M. Page le Roi, the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me.""
+We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.
+""M. le Roi,"" continued Barton, ""discovered, but kept secret, the tomb
+of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.  It appears that he
+opened the mummy case on the spot--these priests were of royal line,
+and are buried in the valley of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab
+servants deserted him for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he
+was found dead, apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed
+up by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.  But he
+begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara.""
+A silence fell.
+The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi, which I
+now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly, coming
+from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.
+""How long had it lain in the docks?"" jerked Smith.
+""For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith, but
+neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts respecting
+Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God that I did not
+see . . . whatever came out of that sarcophagus.""
+Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  ""I am glad you did not, Sir
+Lionel,"" he said; ""for whatever the priest Mekara has to do with the
+matter, by means of his sarcophagus, Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first
+attempt upon your life.  He has failed, but I hope you will accompany
+me from here to a hotel.  He will not fail twice.""
+CHAPTER XII
+IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
+Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious
+inquiry at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange
+chronicle.  And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had
+frightened me.
+I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
+They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down the
+following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
+of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
+(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
+escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber
+stopper?  (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the
+green mist a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's
+imagination--or had he actually seen it?
+Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
+was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his
+depth.  ""It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the
+Psychical Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of
+Mandalay,"" he had said only that morning.
+""Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
+brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.  For
+my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason it out for
+yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.  Don't work so much
+upon the datum of the green mist, but keep to the FACTS which are
+established.""
+I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused, pipe in
+hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady and all the small
+household were out.
+Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
+door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.
+Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer, took out
+my revolver, and stood up.
+There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs in the
+dark!
+Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
+with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the
+rustling sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially
+opened door.  I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the
+horrors at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
+My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
+gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
+Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.
+""Who's there?"" I cried.  ""Answer, or I fire!""
+""Ah!  no,"" came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  ""Put it down--that
+pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you.""
+The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped in a
+hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence, looking
+into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--if her own
+statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions this girl, whose
+association with the Doctor was one of the most profound mysteries of
+the case, had risked--I cannot say what; unnameable punishment,
+perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases from a terrible death.
+For what was she come now?
+Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her, and
+watching me with great passionate eyes.
+""How--"" I began.
+But she shook her head impatiently.
+""HE has a duplicate key of the house door,"" was her amazing statement.
+""I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must
+arrange to replace the lock.""
+She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my
+shoulders.  ""I have come again to ask you to take me away from him,""
+she said simply.
+And she lifted her face to me.
+Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
+with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
+Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint conception
+of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the
+East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the most
+seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.  In that electric
+moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had bartered
+honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.
+""I will see that you are placed under proper protection,"" I said
+firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.  ""It is quite absurd to talk
+of slavery here in England.  You are a free agent, or you could not be
+here now.  Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions.""
+""Ah!"" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a
+cloud of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress.
+""No?  He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
+Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia, the
+desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer, the
+shame.  Bah!""
+How beautiful she was in her indignation!
+""Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
+to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
+who is brown, and""--whisper--""two hundred and fifty a Circassian, who
+is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?""
+She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my
+eyes, half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in
+gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim
+shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit
+for the walled gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible,
+in the prosaic setting of my rooms.
+""To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss,"" she said,
+wrapping her cloak quickly about her.  ""You see me as I am.""  Her
+garments exhaled a faint perfume, and it reminded me of another meeting
+I had had with her.  I looked into the challenging eyes.
+""Your request is but a pretense,"" I said.  ""Why do you keep the secrets
+of that man, when they mean death to so many?""
+""Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--seen her
+thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.  I have seen men flogged
+until they prayed for death as a boon.  I have known the lash myself.
+Death!  What does it matter?""
+She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again, and with
+only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful to hear such
+words from a girl who, save for her singular type of beauty, might have
+been a cultured European.
+""Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.  Tell
+me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman,"" I said.
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+""I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off""--she clutched me
+nervously--""so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
+beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is my
+master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him--by force, do you
+understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.  Ah!  but
+you do not understand, with your 'proper authorities'--your police.
+Police!  Ah, I have said enough.""
+A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl started and laid
+her hands upon my shoulders again.  There were tears glittering among
+the curved black lashes.
+""You do not understand,"" she whispered.  ""Oh, will you never understand
+and release me from him!  I must go.  Already I have remained too long.
+Listen.  Go out without delay.  Remain out--at a hotel, where you will,
+but do not stay here.""
+""And Nayland Smith?""
+""What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my
+lips?  You are in danger--you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here
+to-night.""
+She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she
+turned, stamping her foot passionately.
+""You have hands and arms,"" she cried, ""and yet you let me go.  Be
+warned, then; fly from here--"" She broke off with something that
+sounded like a sob.
+I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the
+arch-murderer, Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down
+the stairs, I heard her open and close the door--the door of which Dr.
+Fu-Manchu held the key.  Still I stood where she had parted from me,
+and was so standing when a key grated in the lock and Nayland Smith
+came running up.
+""Did you see her?"" I began.
+But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told him of
+my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.
+""How can she have passed through London in that costume?"" I cried in
+bewilderment.  ""Where can she have come from?""
+Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture into
+the familiar cracked briar.
+""She might have traveled in a car or in a cab,"" he said; ""and
+undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.  You
+should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we have had
+that woman in our power, the third time we have let her go free.""
+""Smith,"" I replied, ""I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
+me a warning.  She disarms me.""
+""Because you can see she is in love with you?"" he suggested, and burst
+into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
+""She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know the
+Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.  She
+fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!  If
+you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her
+down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she
+knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection
+that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking; it is so, I assure
+you.  And she would adore you for your savagery, deeming you forceful
+and strong!""
+""Smith,"" I said, ""be serious.  You know what her warning meant before.""
+""I can guess what it means now,"" he rapped.  ""Hallo!""
+Someone was furiously ringing the bell.
+""No one at home?"" said my friend.  ""I will go.  I think I know what it
+is.""
+A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.
+""From Weymouth,"" he explained, ""by district messenger.  I left him
+behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any evidence which
+subsequently he found.  This will be fragments of the mummy.""
+""What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?""
+""Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else was in the
+sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.  A sarcophagus, I find, is
+practically airtight, so that the use of the rubber stopper becomes
+evident--ventilation.  How this person killed Strozza I have yet to
+learn.""
+""Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green
+mist?""
+Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
+""The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.  Remember,
+we have only one man's word that it existed.  It is at best a confusing
+datum to which we must not attach a factitious importance.""
+He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop in the
+lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.  Suddenly the
+lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining, such as is usual in
+tea-chests. This lining was partially attached to one side of the box,
+so that the action of removing the lid at once raised and tilted it.
+Then happened a singular thing.
+Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--an oily
+vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less, born of a memory and of
+some words of my beautiful visitor, came to me.
+""RUN, SMITH!"" I screamed.  ""The door! the door, for your life!
+Fu-Manchu sent that box!""  I threw my arms round him.  As he bent
+forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.  I dragged him
+back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.  We entered my
+bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light, I saw that Smith's tanned
+face was unusually drawn, and touched with pallor.
+""It is a poisonous gas!"" I said hoarsely; ""in many respects identical
+with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove it to be
+something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!  It is the fumes of
+chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching powder works.  We have been
+blind--I particularly.  Don't you see?  There was no one in the
+sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough of that fearful stuff to have
+suffocated a regiment!""
+Smith clenched his fists convulsively.
+""My God!"" he said, ""how can I hope to deal with the author of such a
+scheme?  I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case
+being overturned, and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid
+of the string--after Sir Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take
+it, is heavier than air.""
+""Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470,"" I said; ""two and a half
+times heavier than air.  You can pour it from jar to jar like a
+liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.  In these respects this
+stuff appears to be similar; the points of difference would not
+interest you.  The sarcophagus would have emptied through the vent, and
+the gas have dispersed, with no clew remaining--except the smell.""
+""I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course, was unfamiliar
+with it.  You may remember that you were prevented from doing so by the
+arrival of Sir Lionel?  The scent of those infernal flowers must
+partially have drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the
+stuff, capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--""
+""Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where
+Kwee was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient
+draught to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the
+floor now.  I will go and open both windows.""
+Nayland raised his haggard face.
+""He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel
+Barton,"" he said; ""and contemptuously--you note the attitude,
+Petrie?--contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is
+justified.  I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is
+by no wit of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure.""
+CHAPTER XIII
+I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the
+stranger things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank--a
+void--this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate
+it, without preamble.  It was thus:
+I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.  My
+veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was
+about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my
+burning body.
+This, I thought, was death.
+Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and
+tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.  Panting,
+but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.
+Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
+felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.  I waded and
+plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose
+impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.  I wondered
+why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea flashed to my mind
+that I was become blind!
+Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.  I became aware
+of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
+Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.  It grew
+steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain--like a
+liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
+But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.
+It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
+kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
+Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had a
+distinct NOTE.
+Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.  These
+tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the
+serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance,
+each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely
+with those of another.  The carpet was of such richness that I stood
+knee-deep in its pile.  And this, too, was fashioned all over with
+golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the
+design--stealthily.
+At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table with
+dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.  It
+bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and
+books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with
+instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
+litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming
+an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.  A lamp hung
+above this table, suspended by golden chains from the ceiling--which
+was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in
+the purple shadows above.
+In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind
+this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side
+of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and
+left the other side in purplish shadow.  From a plain brass bowl upon
+the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially
+obscured that dreadful face.
+From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
+who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the
+nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
+I had eyes only for him.
+For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire,
+to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the
+carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like
+a cold douche.  I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face,
+that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite
+Chinese dragon tapestry.  The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be
+as a jungle and became a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but
+merely a carpet.  But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with
+the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and
+overflowing about it were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to
+me.
+Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
+temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
+faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the
+table--grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of
+gray horror.  It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily
+wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied
+brain acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted
+our poor human wits.  The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An
+intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I
+looked down.  As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I
+dreamed that I wore increased in length, curled sinuously upward,
+twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!
+Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a
+false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea that my head lay
+softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead.
+Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kiss--and the
+recollection thrilled me strangely.  Dreamily content I lay, and a
+voice stole to my ears:
+""They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not
+understand?"" In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had
+died, and that this musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact
+of my own dissolution.
+But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
+For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.  I
+never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash
+that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic, jangling crash,
+as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then, I half opened my
+eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad
+in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim
+ankles surrounded by gold bands.  The girl was gone, even as I told
+myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been
+consigned by some error to the paradise of Mohammed.
+Then--a complete blank.
+My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and
+though my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain,
+some moments more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to
+a steel collar--that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
+I moaned weakly.
+""Smith!"" I muttered, ""Where are you?  Smith!""
+On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
+all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
+and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
+passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw
+the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.  I could
+recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine; but my mind
+retained no impression of our having passed it--only a vague memory of
+a rush of footsteps--a blow.  Then, my vision of the hall of dragons,
+and now this real awakening to a worse reality.
+Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside
+me.  My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
+collar about it.
+""Smith,"" I groaned; and I shook the still form.  ""Smith, old man--speak
+to me!  Smith!""
+Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr.
+Fu-Manchu and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for
+me--what had I to face?
+He stirred beneath my trembling hands.
+""Thank God!""  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
+with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet
+obsessed with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at
+the realization that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese
+doctor in the flesh.  Smith began incoherent mutterings.
+""Sand-bagged! . . . Look out, Petrie! . . . He has us at last! . . .
+Oh, Heavens!"" . . . He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.
+""All right, old man,"" I said.  ""We are both alive!  So let's be
+thankful.""
+A moment's silence, a groan, then:
+""Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me--""
+""Dry up, Smith,"" I said slowly.  ""I'm not a child.  There is no
+question of being dragged into the matter.  I'm here; and if I can be
+of any use, I'm glad I am here!""
+He grasped my hand.
+""There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head
+throbs!--in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of
+it!--in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed into
+the car--and it was all over, before--"" His voice grew faint.  ""God!
+they gave me an awful knock!""
+""Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for--""
+""Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen what I have
+seen--""
+Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
+across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.  The place
+had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy--some noisome cellar.  A door
+was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.  Its light
+showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the slime-coated walls of a
+dungeon some fifteen feet square--shone upon the long yellow robe of
+the man who stood watching us, upon the malignant, intellectual
+countenance.
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
+and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.  How can I
+paint the individual who now stood before us--perhaps the greatest
+genius of modern times?
+Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a
+face like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very
+presence.  Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together,
+chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our
+boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
+carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern in a
+niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes
+which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed a viridescence
+which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye of the cat--and
+the film intermittently clouded their brightness--but I can speak of
+them no more.
+I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense a
+force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being.  He spoke.
+His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
+his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
+""Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too
+far.  I have seriously turned my attention to you.""
+He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated, but discolored in a
+way that was familiar to me.  I studied his eyes with a new
+professional interest, which even the extremity of our danger could not
+wholly banish.  Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
+oddly contracted--a pin-point.
+Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.
+""You have presumed,"" continued Fu-Manchu, ""to meddle with a
+world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
+You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China
+Movement--the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent
+meddler--I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for
+you!""
+He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long eyes as he
+looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty of the man was inherent; it
+was entirely untheatrical.  Still Smith remained silent.
+""So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!""
+added Fu-Manchu.
+""Opium will very shortly do the same for you!"" I rapped at him savagely.
+Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.
+""That is a matter of opinion, Doctor,"" he said.  ""You may have lacked
+the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--and
+in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice in the
+future.""
+""You will not long outlive me,"" I replied.  ""And our deaths will not
+profit you, incidentally; because--"" Smith's foot touched mine.
+""Because?"" inquired Fu-Manchu softly. ""Ah! Mr. Smith is so prudent! He
+is thinking that I have FILES!"" He pronounced the word in a way that
+made me shudder. ""Mr. Smith has seen a WIRE JACKET! Have you ever seen
+a wire jacket? As a surgeon its functions would interest you!""
+I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling
+sound, a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot
+upward.  A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered
+grotesquely into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony
+hand and fondled the little creature, crooning to it.
+""One of my pets, Mr. Smith,"" he said, suddenly opening his eyes fully
+so that they blazed like green lamps.  ""I have others, equally useful.
+My scorpions--have you met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and
+hamadryads?  Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
+I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
+visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland Smith
+will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!  And we must not forget my
+black spiders, with their diamond eyes--my spiders, that sit in the
+dark and watch--then leap!""
+He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back to
+the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran from
+the cellar.
+""O God of Cathay!"" he cried, ""by what death shall these die--these
+miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!""
+Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof, his
+lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.
+""He is mad!"" I whispered to Smith.  ""God help us, the man is a
+dangerous homicidal maniac!""
+Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head
+grimly.
+""Dangerous, yes, I agree,"" he muttered; ""his existence is a danger to
+the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert.""
+Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and, turning
+abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.  At
+the threshold be looked back.
+""You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?"" he said, in a soft voice.
+""To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!""
+Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.
+""You were in Rangoon in 1908?"" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--""you remember
+the Call?""
+From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact
+direction--came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling
+cadences, which, in that dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed
+figure at the door, seemed to pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon
+Smith was truly extraordinary.  His face showed grayly in the faint
+light, and I heard him draw a hissing breath through clenched teeth.
+""It calls for you!"" said Fu-Manchu. ""At half-past twelve it calls for
+Graham Guthrie!""
+The door closed and darkness mantled us again.
+""Smith,"" I said, ""what was that?""  The horrors about us were playing
+havoc with my nerves.
+""It was the Call of Siva!"" replied Smith hoarsely.
+""What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?""
+""I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.  But it means
+death!""
+CHAPTER XIV
+THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
+and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.  I confess
+that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland Smith and I stood in
+the path of the most stupendous genius who in the world's history had
+devoted his intellect to crime.  I knew that the enormous wealth of the
+political group backing Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe
+and to America greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist
+trained at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
+gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.  His
+mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--from the path of
+that secret movement which was progressing in the Far East.  Smith and
+I were two such obstacles; and of all the horrible devices at his
+command, I wondered, and my tortured brain refused to leave the
+subject, by which of them were we doomed to be dispatched?
+Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might be wriggling
+towards me over the slime of the stones, some poisonous spider be
+preparing to drop from the roof!  Fu-Manchu might have released a
+serpent in the cellar, or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome
+disease!
+""Smith,"" I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, ""I can't bear this
+suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--""
+""Don't worry,"" came the reply; ""he intends to learn our plans first.""
+""You mean--?""
+""You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?""
+""Oh, my God!"" I groaned; ""can this be England?""
+Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel collar
+about his neck.
+""I have one great hope,"" he said, ""since you share my captivity, but we
+must neglect no minor chance.  Try with your pocket-knife if you can
+force the lock.  I am trying to break this one.""
+Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
+immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with the
+small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped one
+blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.  It came
+from beneath my feet.
+""Smith,"" I whispered, ""listen!""
+The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
+Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.
+Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.  I held my
+breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.
+A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.  It
+widened--became an oblong.  A trap was lifted, and within a yard of me,
+there rose a dimly seen head.  Horror I had expected--and death, or
+worse.  Instead, I saw a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of
+curling hair; I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
+clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.
+The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone
+floor.  In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision,
+with her clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet
+encased in little red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my
+vision, materialized.  It was difficult to believe that we were in
+modern, up-to-date England; easy to dream that we were the captives of
+a caliph, in a dungeon in old Bagdad.
+""My prayers are answered,"" said Smith softly.  ""She has come to save
+YOU.""
+""S-sh!"" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely,
+fearfully.  ""A sound and he will kill us all.""
+She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my
+penknife--and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned
+and released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
+to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.
+""Your knife,"" she whispered to me.  ""Leave it on the floor.  He will
+think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!""
+Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.  I
+rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band
+about one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she
+carried.  We stood in a low-arched passage.
+""Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I tell you,""
+she ordered.
+Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed her to
+lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.  In that order we
+proceeded, and came to stone steps, which we ascended.
+""Keep to the wall on the left,"" came a whisper.  ""There is danger on
+the right.""
+With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed
+forward.  The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was
+steamy, and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a
+faint animal scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued
+stir about me, infinitely suggestive--mysterious.
+Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
+A gong sounded.  We stopped.
+The din of distant drumming came to my ears.
+""Where in Heaven's name are we?"" hissed Smith in my ear; ""that is a
+tom-tom!""
+""S-sh!  S-sh!""
+The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
+or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air; and it
+reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman who was now
+leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her own lips, had
+told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible phantasmagoria
+she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness standing out
+richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.  Not once, but a
+thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature of the tie which
+bound her to the sinister Doctor.
+Silence fell.
+""Quick!  This way!""
+Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and
+led us along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the
+open air.  But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled
+path, with a fresh breeze blowing in my face, and along until,
+unmistakably, I stood upon the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to
+our tread; and looking downward beneath the handkerchief, I saw the
+gleam of water beneath my feet.
+""Be careful!""  I was warned, and found myself stepping into a narrow
+boat--a punt.
+Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled out
+into the stream.
+""Don't speak!"" she directed.
+My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking, or if
+the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar and this
+silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our guide
+who might have stepped out of the pages of ""The Arabian Nights"" were
+fantasy--the mockery of sleep.
+Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
+whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
+or the Styx.
+The punt touched a bank.
+""You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes,"" said the girl, with
+her soft, charming accent, ""but I rely upon your honor not to remove
+the handkerchiefs until then.  You owe me this.""
+""We do!"" said Smith fervently.
+I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand was
+placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.  Arrived on
+the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.
+""You must not go back,"" I whispered.  ""We will take care of you.  You
+must not return to that place.""
+""Let me go!"" she said.  ""When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
+you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police
+protection!  You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me
+betray him!  For what?  For what?""  She wrenched herself free.  ""How
+little you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
+Until the clock strikes!""
+She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
+from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.
+""What is her secret?"" muttered Smith, beside me.  ""Why does she cling
+to that monster?""
+The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike; it
+struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off, and so was
+Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left the moon shone
+upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.
+It was Windsor Castle.
+""Half-past ten,"" cried Smith.  ""Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!""
+We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last train to
+Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner of the
+compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.  Neither of us, I
+think, could have managed another twenty yards.  With a lesser stake
+than a human life at issue, I doubt if we should have attempted that
+dash to Windsor station.
+""Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one,"" panted Smith.  ""That gives us
+thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side of the river and reach his
+hotel.""
+""Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?  Did we come up or down
+stream?""
+""I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the
+riverside.  It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I
+shall set Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for
+nothing.  Our escape will warn him.""
+I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration from my
+forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar with the
+broadcut Latakia mixture.
+""Smith,"" I said at last, ""what was that horrible wailing we heard, and
+what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?  I noticed how it
+affected you.""
+My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.
+""There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909,"" he
+replied:  ""an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly wailing
+was associated with it.""
+""In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?""
+""It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
+A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on
+business connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to
+his room, locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the
+courtyard.  Broke his neck, of course.""
+""Suicide?""
+""Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.  For
+instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!""
+""In the courtyard?""
+""In the courtyard!""
+""Was it murder by any chance?""
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+""His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in.""
+""But the wailing business?""
+""That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor, named
+Lafitte, died in exactly the same way.""
+""At the same place?""
+""At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.  Here is the
+extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared the room with him,
+and actually saw him go!""
+""Saw him leap from the window?""
+""Yes.  The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
+I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of
+Lafitte than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it
+personally.  He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told
+me that the cry seemed to come from above him.""
+""It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house.""
+""Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--the sort of
+moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason, had just gone to
+the window.  His friend saw him look out.  The next moment with a
+dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--and crashed down into the
+courtyard!""
+""What then?""
+""Martin ran to the window and looked down.  Lafitte's scream had
+aroused the place, of course.  But there was absolutely nothing to
+account for the occurrence.  There was no balcony, no ledge, by means
+of which anyone could reach the window.""
+""But how did you come to recognize the cry?""
+""I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time; and one night this
+uncanny howling aroused me.  I heard it quite distinctly, and am never
+likely to forget it.  It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the
+next room, an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!""
+""Did you change your quarters?""
+""No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class
+establishment--several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in
+Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native
+quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was
+reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story,
+which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District
+Superintendent no end of trouble.""
+""Was there anything unusual about the bodies?""
+""They all developed marks after death, as though they had been
+strangled!  The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though
+it was not appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be
+the five heads of Siva.""
+""Were the deaths confined to Europeans?""
+""Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.  At first
+there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
+committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
+The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma.""
+""Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?""
+""Yes.  I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear, moonlight night,
+and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from the top deck of the steamer
+aboard which I was traveling!  My God!  to think that the fiend
+Fu-Manchu has brought That to England!""
+""But brought what, Smith?"" I cried, in perplexity.  ""What has he
+brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?  What is it?  What CAN it
+be?""
+""A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of
+Burma--the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
+Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie.""
+CHAPTER XV
+THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and
+began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang out the
+gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above them all to vie
+with the deep voice of Big Ben.
+I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering
+above the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of
+some of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor
+constellation.  From the subdued blaze that showed the public
+supper-rooms I looked up to the hundreds of starry points marking the
+private apartments of those giant inns.
+I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some bird
+of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.  There,
+floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs, were these less
+gregarious units, each something of a mystery to his fellow-guests,
+each in his separate cell; and each as remote from real human
+companionship as if that cell were fashioned, not in the bricks of
+London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!
+In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
+all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of
+death.  As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the
+man outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.
+""One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer,"" he said
+thoughtfully, ""and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to
+Guthrie's rooms.  There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so
+on?""
+""There is,"" I replied quickly.  ""I have seen the vans delivering there.
+But have we time?""
+""Yes.  Lead on.""
+We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
+with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
+wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand, but on
+the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel, and
+came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated the
+interior and a number of men were at work among the casks, crates and
+packages stacked about the place.  We entered.
+""Hallo!"" cried a man in a white overall, ""where d'you think you're
+going?""
+Smith grasped him by the arm.
+""I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen from
+the entrance hall,"" he said.  ""Will you please lead the way?""
+""Here--"" began the other, staring.
+""Don't waste time!"" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority which
+he knew so well how to assume.  ""It's a matter of life and death.  Lead
+the way, I say!""
+""Police, sir?"" asked the man civilly.
+""Yes,"" said Smith; ""hurry!""
+Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries,
+kitchens, laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those
+mysterious labyrinths which have no existence for the guest above, but
+which contain the machinery that renders these modern khans the
+Aladdin's palaces they are.  On a second-floor landing we met a man in
+a tweed suit, to whom our cicerone presented us.
+""Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police.""
+The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.
+""Who are you?"" he asked.  ""You're not from Scotland Yard, at any rate!""
+Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.
+""If you are the hotel detective,"" he said, ""take us without delay to
+Mr. Graham Guthrie.""
+A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing at the
+card in his hand.
+""Excuse me, sir,"" he said deferentially, ""but, of course, I didn't know
+who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions to give you every
+assistance.""
+""Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?""
+""He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
+without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third
+floor.""
+Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:
+""Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?"" asked
+Smith.
+""I have!"" was the startling reply.  ""That accounts for your finding me
+where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.  But about eleven
+o'clock, when the theater people began to come in, I had a hazy sort of
+impression that someone or something slipped past in the
+crowd--something that had no business in the hotel.""
+We got out of the lift.
+""I don't quite follow you,"" said Smith.  ""If you thought you saw
+something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
+impression regarding it.""
+""That's the funny part of the business,"" answered the man doggedly.  ""I
+didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could have sworn
+that there was something crawling up behind a party--two ladies and two
+gentlemen.""
+""A dog, for instance?""
+""It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party
+passed me, there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it
+hadn't come in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but
+without result."" He stopped abruptly.  ""No. 189--Mr. Guthrie's door,
+sir.""
+Smith knocked.
+""Hallo!"" came a muffled voice; ""what do you want?""
+""Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important.""
+He turned to the hotel detective.
+""Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift,"" he
+instructed; ""and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
+But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders.""
+The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered in my ear:
+""Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!""
+Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
+thick-set man--gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the
+true fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
+Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card and an
+open letter.
+""Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie,"" he said; ""so no doubt you will
+realize that the business which brings me and my friend, Dr. Petrie,
+here at such an hour is of the first importance.""
+He switched off the light.
+""There is no time for ceremony,"" he explained.  ""It is now twenty-five
+minutes past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your
+life!""
+""Mr. Smith,"" said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas, was seated on
+the edge of the bed, ""you alarm me very greatly.  I may mention that I
+was advised of your presence in England this morning.""
+""Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu--Dr.
+Fu-Manchu?""
+""Only what I was told to-day--that he is the agent of an advanced
+political group.""
+""It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.  A
+more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
+implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!""
+Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
+and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
+whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours, I
+think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.
+""But, Mr. Smith,"" he said, ""surely I am safe enough here!  The place is
+full of American visitors at present, and I have had to be content with
+a room right at the top; so that the only danger I apprehend is that of
+fire.""
+""There is another danger,"" replied Smith.  ""The fact that you are at
+the top of the building enhances that danger.  Do you recall anything
+of the mysterious epidemic which broke out in Rangoon in 1908--the
+deaths due to the Call of Siva?""
+""I read of it in the Indian papers,"" said Guthrie uneasily.  ""Suicides,
+were they not?""
+""No!"" snapped Smith.  ""Murders!""
+There was a brief silence.
+""From what I recall of the cases,"" said Guthrie, ""that seems
+impossible.  In several instances the victims threw themselves from the
+windows of locked rooms--and the windows were quite inaccessible.""
+""Exactly,"" replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver gleamed
+dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.  ""Except that
+your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night are identical.  Silence,
+please, I hear a clock striking.""
+It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness
+complete.  In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed
+below, high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the
+starving crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept
+about me.  Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great
+metropolis, a man may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.
+I was glad that I was not alone in that room--marked with the
+death-mark of Fu-Manchu; and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed
+his unexpected company.
+I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became so
+peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here--I
+refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a
+visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
+made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
+I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
+dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
+It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence of the
+priests of death.
+A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences to a
+new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.
+""My God!"" hissed Guthrie, ""what was that?""
+""The Call of Siva,"" whispered Smith.
+""Don't stir, for your life!""
+Guthrie was breathing hard.
+I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
+that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of the
+Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not ashamed to
+confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.  It was
+awful--that tense waiting--for--what?
+Three taps sounded--very distinctly upon the window.
+Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.
+""It's supernatural!"" he muttered--all that was Celtic in his blood
+recoiling from the omen.  ""Nothing human can reach that window!""
+""S-sh!"" from Smith.  ""Don't stir.""
+The tapping was repeated.
+Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.  He
+threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.  I joined him;
+and we looked out into the empty air.
+""Don't come too near, Petrie!"" he warned over his shoulder.
+One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down at the
+moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames, at the
+silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot Tower starting
+above them all.
+Three taps sounded on the panes above us.
+In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so
+uncanny as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in
+the air?  Was it actually in the room?
+""Don't let me go, Petrie!"" whispered Smith suddenly.  ""Get a tight hold
+on me!""
+That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful fascination
+was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!  Wildly I threw my arms
+about him, and Guthrie leaped forward to help.
+Smith leaned from the window and looked up.
+One choking cry he gave--smothered, inarticulate--and I found him
+slipping from my grip--being drawn out of the window--drawn to his
+death!
+""Hold him, Guthrie!"" I gasped hoarsely.  ""My God, he's going!  Hold
+him!""
+My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
+The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
+carrying me with him.
+But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went hurtling
+through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape--flashing past
+the open window into the gulf of the night.
+""The light!  The light!""  I cried.
+Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes starting
+from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken cord which
+showed tight about his throat.
+""It was a Thug!"" screamed Guthrie.  ""Get the rope off!  He's choking!""
+My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.
+""A knife!  Quick!""  I cried.  ""I have lost mine!""
+Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.  I
+somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck, and
+severed the deadly silken thing.
+Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.
+When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
+been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the
+brow--close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.
+""The mark of Kali,"" he said.  ""The man was a phansigar--a religious
+strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his service I might have
+expected that he would have Thugs.  A group of these fiends would seem
+to have fled into Burma; so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was
+really an outbreak of thuggee--on slightly improved lines!  I had
+suspected something of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for
+Thugs near Rangoon.  My unexpected resistance led the strangler to
+bungle the rope.  You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
+That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced by the group
+operating in Burma, was to throw the line about the victim's neck and
+jerk him from the window.  A man leaning from an open window is very
+nicely poised: it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.  No
+loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell, remained
+in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we see at once what
+commended the system to Fu-Manchu.""
+Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.
+""I owe you my life, Mr. Smith,"" he said.  ""If you had come five minutes
+later--""
+He grasped Smith's hand.
+""You see,"" Guthrie continued, ""no one thought of looking for a Thug in
+Burma!  And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as
+monkeys, and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck,
+they are entirely at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for
+the business!""
+""He slipped in late this evening,"" said Smith.  ""The hotel detective
+saw him, but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise,
+despite their having changed the scene of their operations, not one
+could have survived.""
+""Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?"" I asked.
+""Yes,"" was the reply; ""and I know of what you are thinking.  The
+steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron roof over the
+top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there as the Colassie
+passed on the deck below.""
+""But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?"" I continued.
+""Partly religious,"" he explained, ""and partly to wake the victims!  You
+are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
+such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has
+secret knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but,
+despite all, at last I begin to score.""
+""You do,"" I agreed; ""but your victory took you near to death.""
+""I owe my life to you, Petrie,"" he said.  ""Once to your strength of
+arm, and once to--""
+""Don't speak of her, Smith,"" I interrupted.  ""Dr. Fu-Manchu may have
+discovered the part she played!  In which event--""
+""God help her!""
+CHAPTER XVI
+UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips
+with the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic
+prospect, with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.
+All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become an irony and a
+mockery to us--who knew how an evil demigod had his sacrificial altars
+amid our sweetest groves.  This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon
+that soft autumnal day.
+""The net is closing in,"" said Nayland Smith.
+""Let us hope upon a big catch,"" I replied, with a laugh.
+Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs of
+Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.  The
+peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.
+This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus far we had
+chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we were narrowing the
+resources of that enemy of the white race who was writing his name over
+England in characters of blood.  To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not
+hope; but at least there was every promise of destroying one of the
+enemy's strongholds.
+We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames, with
+Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from which
+miraculously we had escaped--a house used by the most highly organized
+group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.  Even if we
+found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it vacated by
+Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.  But it would
+be a base destroyed.
+We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
+were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve--all of them
+experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
+Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
+situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us, we
+turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.  On an
+open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.  An old
+woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent, her chin resting
+in the palm of her hand.
+I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my
+friend no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some
+point from whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to
+know if this was the abode of our mysterious enemy--the place where he
+worked amid his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and
+his bacilli, reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his
+murder ministers.  Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove
+to be the hiding-place of the beautiful slave girl who was such a
+potent factor in the Doctor's plans, but a two-edged sword which yet we
+hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even in the hands of a master, a woman's
+beauty is a dangerous weapon.
+A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular sight met
+my gaze.
+Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy
+woman!  His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her
+out into the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing--silently,
+fiercely.
+Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that he
+was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached the
+scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
+to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
+leaped from the caravan.
+One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the
+river.
+Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.
+""After him, Petrie!"" he cried.  ""After him.  Don't let him escape.
+It's a dacoit!""
+My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my
+friend had lost his senses, the word ""dacoit"" was sufficient.
+I started down the road after the fleetly running man.  Never once did
+he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion to fear
+pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.  That sense
+of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days of our struggle
+with the titanic genius whose victory meant the victory of the yellow
+races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.  I was an
+actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.
+Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy who was
+no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood, the dacoits.
+I was close upon his heels.  But I was not prepared for him to leap in
+among the rushes at the margin of the stream; and seeing him do this I
+pulled up quickly.  Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that
+he held some object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I
+gained the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished
+completely.  Only ever-widening rings showed where he had been. I had
+him.
+For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from either
+bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could, if
+necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.  I
+waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this strange
+invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.  From the lane
+behind me came Smith's voice:
+""Don't let him escape, Petrie!""
+Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
+But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
+directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed above
+it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply, become
+entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance to right
+and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy--this grim
+going out of a life at glorious noonday--I turned away.  Smith had the
+woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards him when a faint
+splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.  From whence that
+saving instinct arose I cannot surmise, but to it I owed my life.  For
+as I rapidly lowered my head, something hummed past me, something that
+flew out over the grass bank, and fell with a jangle upon the dusty
+roadside.  A knife!
+I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint cry
+behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.  Nothing
+disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely of
+rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along, and
+her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon the
+river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.
+To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was
+amazed.  That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous
+attention I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?  He
+could not humanly have remained below water for so long; yet he
+certainly was not above, was not upon the surface, concealed amongst
+the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.
+There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed
+me.  It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be
+aiming a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened
+towards Smith.  My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked
+up the little weapon which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my
+hand rejoined my friend.
+He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
+exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with an
+extraordinary expression.
+""What does it mean, Smith?"" I began.
+But he interrupted me.
+""Where is the dacoit?"" he demanded rapidly.
+""Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,"" I replied, ""I
+cannot pretend to say.""
+The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.  Her laughter was
+musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith held captive; it was
+familiar, too.
+I started and looked closely into the wizened face.
+""He's tricked you,"" said Smith, an angry note in his voice.  ""What is
+that you have in your hand?""
+I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.
+""I know,"" he rapped.  ""I saw it.  He was in the water not three yards
+from where you stood.  You must have seen him.  Was there nothing
+visible?""
+""Nothing.""
+The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.
+""A wild-fowl,"" I added; ""nothing else.""
+""A wild-fowl,"" snapped Smith.  ""If you will consult your recollections
+of the habits of wild-fowl you will see that this particular specimen
+was a RARA AVIS. It's an old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is
+used in decoying.  A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!
+It's useless.  He has certainly made good his escape by now.""
+""Smith,"" I said, somewhat crestfallen, ""why are you detaining this
+gypsy woman?""
+""Gypsy woman!"" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made an impatient
+movement.  ""Use your eyes, old man.""
+He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud of
+disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.
+""A wet sponge will do the rest,"" he said.
+Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes of the
+captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming features of
+the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes, and she was
+submissive now.
+""This time,"" said my friend hardly, ""we have fairly captured her--and
+we will hold her.""
+From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.
+""The dacoit!""
+Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.
+Another call answered, and a third responded.  Then followed the flatly
+shrill note of a police whistle, and I noted a column of black vapor
+rising beyond the wall, mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a
+welcome offering.
+The surrounded mansion was in flames!
+""Curse it!"" rapped Smith.  ""So this time we were right.  But, of
+course, he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew
+that.  The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the
+very last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts.""
+""I lost one.""
+""No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests, and the
+house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's servants that
+nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford us no clew, Petrie;
+but we have secured a lever which should serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's
+world.""
+He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
+She looked up proudly.
+""You need not hold me so tight,"" she said, in her soft voice.  ""I will
+come with you.""
+That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me thus
+far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes; but of the
+many such scenes in that race-drama wherein Nayland Smith and Dr.
+Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none more bizarre than
+the one at my rooms that afternoon.
+Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into our
+confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London, for my friend's
+authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were, and one which excited
+no little comment; but the journey came to an end at last.  Now we were
+in my unpretentious sitting-room--the room wherein Smith first had
+unfolded to me the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret
+society which sought to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe
+and America beneath the scepter of Cathay.
+I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands; Smith
+restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened briar a dozen
+times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair the pseudogypsy was
+curled up.  A brief toilet had converted the wizened old woman's face
+into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.  Wildly picturesque she
+looked in her ragged Romany garb.  She held a cigarette in her fingers
+and watched us through lowered lashes.
+Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her
+fate, and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her
+beautiful eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have
+sustained unmoved.  Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that
+passionate Eastern soul, yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice
+of an arch-murderer she might be; but she was dangerously lovely.
+""That man who was with you,"" said Smith, suddenly turning upon her,
+""was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered a fisherman thirty
+miles above Prome only a month before I left.  The D.S.P. had placed a
+thousand rupees on his head.  Am I right?""
+The girl shrugged her shoulders.
+""Suppose--What then?"" she asked.
+""Suppose I handed you over to the police?"" suggested Smith.  But he
+spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we both had owed our
+lives to this girl.
+""As you please,"" she replied.  ""The police would learn nothing.""
+""You do not belong to the Far East,"" my friend said abruptly.  ""You may
+have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no kin of Fu-Manchu.""
+""That is true,"" she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.
+""Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?""
+She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.
+Smith walked to the door.
+""I must make out my report, Petrie,"" he said.  ""Look after the
+prisoner.""
+And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was expected of
+me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.  What attitude should I
+adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?  In a quandary, I stood
+watching the girl whom singular circumstances saw captive in my rooms.
+""You do not think we would harm you?"" I began awkwardly.  ""No harm
+shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?""
+She raised her brilliant eyes.
+""Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,"" she
+said; ""those others whom HE has sought for?""
+Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
+the drift of her words.
+""You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?""
+""Of killing ME!"" she flashed scornfully.  ""Do I seem one to fear for
+myself?""
+""Then what do you fear?"" I asked, in surprise.
+She looked at me oddly.
+""When I was seized and sold for a slave,"" she answered slowly, ""my
+sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child."" She spoke the word
+with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more
+soft.  ""My sister died in the desert.  My brother lived.  Better, far
+better, that he had died, too.""
+Her words impressed me intensely.
+""Of what are you speaking?"" I questioned.  ""You speak of slave-raids,
+of the desert.  Where did these things take place?  Of what country are
+you?""
+""Does it matter?"" she questioned in turn.  ""Of what country am I?  A
+slave has no country, no name.""
+""No name!"" I cried.
+""You may call me Karamaneh,"" she said.  ""As Karamaneh I was sold to Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.  We were cheap at the
+price he paid.""  She laughed shortly, wildly.
+""But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all that
+is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.  You ask
+me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.  Did your
+protection save Sir Crichton Davey?""
+I shook my head sadly.
+""You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I
+would, I dare not betray him.""
+I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her
+arguments?  What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts,
+and she who called herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her
+hand upon my arm.
+""Let me go,"" she pleaded.  ""He will kill him!  He will kill him!""
+Her voice shook with emotion.
+""He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to
+blame,"" I said angrily.  ""We arrested you; you are not here of your own
+free will.""
+She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
+could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.
+""Listen.""  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  ""If I help you to take
+Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--will you promise
+me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately go to the place
+where I shall guide you and release my brother; that you will let us
+both go free?""
+""I will,"" I said, without hesitation.  ""You may rest assured of it.""
+""But there is a condition,"" she added.
+""What is it?""
+""When I have told you where to capture him you must release me.""
+I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness where this girl
+was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?  That she would utterly
+decline to speak under any circumstances unless it suited her to do so
+I felt assured.  If she spoke the truth, in her proposed bargain there
+was no personal element; her conduct I now viewed in a new light.
+Humanity, I thought, dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.
+""I agree,"" I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame now with
+emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation, perhaps of fear.
+She laid her hands upon my shoulders.
+""You will be careful?"" she said pleadingly.
+""For your sake,"" I replied, ""I shall.""
+""Not for my sake.""
+""Then for your brother's.""
+""No."" Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  ""For your own.""
+CHAPTER XVII
+A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
+Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages, the last
+regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.  Between us and the
+cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land through which at this
+season there were, however, numerous dry paths.  Before us the flats
+again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon, with the promise of
+the cool breeze that the river flowed round the bend ahead.  It was
+very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps, as Nayland Smith and I
+tramped steadily towards our goal, broke the stillness of that lonely
+place.
+Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes, I had thought
+that we were ill-advised to adventure alone upon the capture of the
+formidable Chinese doctor; but we were following out our compact with
+Karamaneh; and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
+not be acquainted with her share in the matter.
+A light came into view far ahead of us.
+""That's the light, Petrie,"" said Smith.  ""If we keep that straight
+before us, according to our information we shall strike the hulk.""
+I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little
+weapon was curiously reassuring.  I have endeavored, perhaps in
+extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there
+rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other
+men.  The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
+the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered his
+path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.  I despair of
+conveying to those who may read this account any but the coldest
+conception of the man's evil power.
+Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.  We stood listening.
+""What?"" I asked.
+""You heard nothing?""
+I shook my head.
+Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.  He
+turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.
+""You don't think it's a trap?"" he jerked.  ""We are trusting her
+blindly.""
+Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms against the
+innuendo.
+""I don't,"" I said shortly.
+He nodded.  We pressed on.
+Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
+Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered always
+about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway, his line of
+communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.  The opium
+den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream, at that hour a
+smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.  Always he made
+his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant; and even if
+to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew for our future
+guidance.
+""Bear to the right,"" directed Smith.  ""We must reconnoiter before
+making our attack.""
+We took a path that led directly to the river bank.  Before us lay the
+gray expanse of water, and out upon it moved the busy shipping of the
+great mercantile city.  But this life of the river seemed widely
+removed from us.  The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with
+human activity.  Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it
+looked indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
+we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den, when
+upon such another night as this I had looked out upon a peaceful
+Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness, of utter
+detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.
+Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.
+""Karamaneh merely means a slave,"" he said irrelevantly.
+I made no comment.
+""There's the hulk,"" he added.
+The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level of the
+running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--for we
+perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--a rough pier showed.
+Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch of gloom which the moon
+threw far out upon the softly eddying water.  Only one dim light was
+visible amid this darkness.
+""That will be the cabin,"" said Smith.
+Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on to the
+staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down to the deck
+below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.  With every motion
+of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell, its rings creaking
+harshly, against the crazy railing.
+""How are we going to get down without being detected?"" whispered Smith.
+""We've got to risk it,"" I said grimly.
+Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder and
+commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared below the
+level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.
+The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave, I stumbled,
+and for one breathless moment looked down upon the glittering surface
+streaking the darkness beneath me.  My foot had slipped, and but that I
+had a firm grip upon the top rung, that instant, most probably, had
+marked the end of my share in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had
+a narrow escape.  I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the
+weird creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk, and the
+lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound of the splash
+as my revolver dropped into the river.
+Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.  He had
+witnessed my accident, but--
+""We must risk it,"" he whispered in my ear.  ""We dare not turn back now.""
+He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin, I perforce
+following.
+At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
+from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found
+ourselves.  It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of
+shelves loaded with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific
+paraphernalia, with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes,
+holding living organisms, and with instruments--some of them of a form
+unknown to my experience.  I saw too that books, papers and rolls of
+parchment littered the bare wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose
+above the confused sounds about me, incisive, commanding:
+""I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!""
+For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.
+The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
+clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
+intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects
+upon the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the
+shaded lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
+raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.  But,
+most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
+almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
+lay chained in the cell!
+Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.  A faint
+smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel of one of
+the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated, leaped
+and chattered a little marmoset.
+That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything--for anything
+except for what really happened.
+The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.  The
+lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
+momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.
+""Put up your hands!"" rapped Smith, ""and attempt no tricks."" His voice
+quivered with excitement.  ""The game's up, Fu-Manchu. Find something to
+tie him up with, Petrie.""
+I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him in the
+narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet like a living thing
+groaning, creaking--and the water lapped about the rotten woodwork with
+a sound infinitely dreary.
+""Put up your hands!"" ordered Smith imperatively.
+Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon the
+impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it, only menace,
+revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth, but leaving the filmed
+eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.
+He spoke softly, sibilantly.
+""I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves.""
+Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.  The
+gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced quickly over
+my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.
+A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
+eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.  A
+lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords, held
+a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.  A
+slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
+I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.
+""Smith!"" I whispered hoarsely, ""don't look around.  For God's sake keep
+him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife at my throat!""
+Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never
+wavered from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+He clenched his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently
+upon his jaw.
+I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed but
+a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.
+There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror than any
+of our meetings with the murder-group had brought to me before; and
+through my brain throbbed a thought: the girl had betrayed us!
+""You supposed that I was alone?"" suggested Fu-Manchu. ""So I was.""
+Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow mask when
+we had entered.
+""But my faithful servant followed you,"" he added.  ""I thank him.  The
+honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?""
+Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
+Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
+playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us in a
+whistling voice.
+""Don't stir!"" said Smith savagely.  ""I warn you!""
+Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.
+""May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?"" he asked.
+""This hulk has been watched since dawn,"" lied Smith brazenly.
+""So?""  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.  ""And to-day you
+compelled me to burn a house, and you have captured one of my people,
+too.  I congratulate you.  She would not betray me though lashed with
+scorpions.""
+The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of
+notepaper could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I
+think; but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.
+""An impasse,"" said Fu-Manchu. ""I have a proposal to make.  I assume
+that you would not accept my word for anything?""
+""I would not,"" replied Smith promptly.
+""Therefore,"" pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural alone
+marred his perfect English, ""I must accept yours.  Of your resources
+outside this cabin I know nothing.  You, I take it, know as little of
+mine.  My Burmese friend and Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you
+and I will follow.  We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three
+hundred yards.  You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging
+me your word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
+that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced my steps.
+I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you, at the expiration of
+the specified period, to act as you see fit.  Is it agreed?""
+Smith hesitated.  Then:
+""The dacoit must leave his knife also,"" he stipulated.  Fu-Manchu
+smiled his evil smile again.
+""Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?""
+""No!"" rapped Smith.  ""Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last.""
+A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin, with
+its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
+and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.
+""It will be awkward on the ladder,"" said Fu-Manchu. ""Dr. Petrie, I will
+accept your word to adhere to the terms.""
+""I promise,"" I said, the words almost choking me.
+We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier, and
+strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close cover of
+Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead, now
+gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit, dressed solely
+in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his huge knife, and
+sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.  Never before, I
+venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such a scene in that place.
+""Here we part,"" said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.
+The man threw his knife upon the ground.
+""Search him, Petrie,"" directed Smith.  ""He may have a second concealed.""
+The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty
+garments.
+""Now search Fu-Manchu.""
+This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense of
+revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I had touched a
+venomous reptile.
+Smith threw down his revolver.
+""I curse myself for an honorable fool,"" he said.  ""No one could dispute
+my right to shoot you dead where you stand.""
+Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion in
+Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance of my friend's
+word, and implicit faith in his keeping it, had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped
+just retribution at that moment.  Fiend though he was, I admired his
+courage; for all this he, too, must have known.
+The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.  Nayland Smith's
+next move filled me with surprise.  For just as, silently, I was
+thanking God for my escape, my friend began shedding his coat, collar,
+and waistcoat.
+""Pocket your valuables, and do the same,"" he muttered hoarsely.  ""We
+have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit.  To-night, Petrie, we
+literally have to run for our lives.""
+We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few men to
+owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.  At Smith's words I
+realized in a flash that such was to be our fate to-night.
+I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.  East and west,
+then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even
+as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the
+weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered--was
+answered again.
+""Three, at least,"" hissed Smith; ""three armed dacoits.  Hopeless.""
+""Take the revolver,"" I cried.  ""Smith, it's--""
+""No,"" he rapped, through clenched teeth.  ""A servant of the Crown in
+the East makes his motto:  'Keep your word, though it break your neck!'
+I don't think we need fear it being used against us.  Fu-Manchu avoids
+noisy methods.""
+So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.  It
+was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--and
+another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.
+Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
+was practically nil.
+At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
+decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran like
+panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell upon those
+yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives.  For a long time
+neither of us looked back.
+On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.
+Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.
+Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist the horrid
+fascination.
+I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.
+And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.  Two of the pursuing
+dacoits had outdistanced their fellow (or fellows), and were actually
+within three hundred yards of us.
+More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings, running bent
+forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.  The brilliant moonlight
+gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see, even at that distance, even
+in that quick, agonized glance, and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped
+knives.
+""As hard as you can go now,"" panted Smith.  ""We must make an attempt to
+break into the empty cottage.  Only chance.""
+I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
+cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done in
+time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
+either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.  My
+heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.  At
+last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
+when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.  Once I
+stumbled.
+""My God!"" came from Smith weakly.
+But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels, and
+panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard put to
+it by the killing pace we had made.
+""Smith,"" I whispered, ""look in front.  Someone!""
+As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself from the
+shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.  It could only be
+another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding, or not hearing, my faintly
+whispered words, crashed open the gate and hurled himself blindly at
+the door.
+It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
+into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as, with a
+last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost
+fell over his recumbent body.
+Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.  I kicked the
+foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned, the leading dacoit,
+his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon
+leaped wildly through the gateway.
+That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
+accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce of strength
+spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--as a full six inches
+of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.
+I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.
+A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
+and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.
+""Sorry, old man,"" whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
+Weakly he grasped my hand.  ""My fault.  I shouldn't have let you come.""
+From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long
+tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.  And the yellow
+face at the window was blotted out.
+One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his
+account.
+A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken
+window.
+Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the
+reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.  In
+the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles
+pattering upon the path outside stole to me.  Two runners, I thought
+there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail.  The
+room was full of pungent smoke.  I staggered to my feet as the gray
+figure with the revolver turned towards me.  Something familiar there
+was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought
+so.
+It was my gray rain-coat.
+""Karamaneh,"" I whispered.
+And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
+fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which
+sounded like ""God bless her!""
+The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that
+quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.
+""I followed you,"" she said.  ""Did you not know I should follow you?
+But I had to hide because of another who was following also.  I had but
+just reached this place when I saw you running towards me.""
+She broke off and turned to Smith.
+""This is your pistol,"" she said naively.  ""I found it in your bag.
+Will you please take it!""
+He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.
+""Now go.  Hurry!"" she said.  ""You are not safe yet.""
+""But you?"" I asked.
+""You have failed,"" she replied.  ""I must go back to him.  There is no
+other way.""
+Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous escape
+from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures, my friend
+and I stepped out into the moonlight.
+Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men, their glazed eyes
+upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.  Karamaneh had shot to kill,
+for both had bullets in their brains.  If God ever planned a more
+complex nature than hers--a nature more tumultuous with conflicting
+passions, I cannot conceive of it.  Yet her beauty was of the sweetest;
+and in some respects she had the heart of a child--this girl who could
+shoot so straight.
+""We must send the police to-night,"" said Smith.  ""Or the papers--""
+""Hurry,"" came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness of the
+cottage.
+It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.  But
+what could we do?
+""Tell us where we can communicate,"" began Smith.
+""Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!""
+We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
+faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.
+""Good-night, Karamaneh,"" I whispered softly.
+CHAPTER XVIII
+TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once
+useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic significance
+it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.  And in that parting I
+learned what Shakespeare meant by ""Sweet Sorrow.""
+There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood, a
+world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.  Not the
+least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was the mystery
+of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.  I sought to
+remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found one more congenial,
+yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one
+that led me to a precipice.
+East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of world-policies, as
+a physician, I admitted, could not deny, that truth.  Again, if
+Karamaneh were to be credited, she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had
+fallen into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the
+slave-drivers; had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
+With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to
+have passed.
+But if it were so?
+At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
+power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes in
+a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.
+Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
+Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
+persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
+And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family
+practice!--who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself
+past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
+wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute sway
+and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--no
+place--are excluded!
+But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist
+sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here, I have ventured
+to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I cannot hope that it holds
+equal charm for any other.  Let us return to that which it is my duty
+to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.
+It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
+Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned, since
+his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart of the
+metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few; places
+unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
+Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from the pulsing life
+of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.  Before a door sandwiched in
+between two dingy shop-fronts he paused and turned to me.
+""Whatever you see or hear,"" he cautioned, ""express no surprise.""
+A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
+caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
+reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang the
+bell beside the door.
+Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously
+ugly.
+Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
+attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons of the
+East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.  The woman
+immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us into an
+ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
+Following this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence
+proceeded bursts of discordant music, we entered a little room bare of
+furniture, with coarse matting for mural decorations, and a patternless
+red carpet on the floor.  In a niche burned a common metal lamp.
+The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged
+man with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified
+courtesy.  Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he
+appeared to be--drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.
+Placing his finger upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.
+We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
+music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
+aside I gave a start of surprise.
+Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
+three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company of
+Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.  Most of
+them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.  A girl was performing
+a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying the center of the
+floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon a guitar and by several
+members of the assembly who clapped their hands to the music or hummed
+a low, monotonous melody.
+Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated, and
+the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the
+room.  A buzz of conversation arose.
+""It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a
+certain class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London,"" Smith
+whispered.  ""The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor
+or host.  I have been here before on several occasions, but have always
+drawn blank.""
+He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.
+""Whom do you expect to find here?"" I asked.
+""It is a recognized meeting-place,"" said Smith in my ear.  ""It is
+almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group use it at times.""
+Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the
+spy-hole.  My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.
+""Do you recognize anyone?"" I whispered.
+""S-sh!""
+Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.  He
+obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some subtle wave
+of excitement which he communicated to me did I know that a new arrival
+was entering.  The hum of conversation died away, and in the ensuing
+silence I heard the rustle of draperies.  The newcomer was a woman,
+then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet managed to get my eyes to the
+level of the shutter.
+A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
+and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.  She
+wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across her
+face.  A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous she looked
+in that place--and she had disappeared from sight, having approached
+someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately beneath our point
+of vantage.
+From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
+was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
+surprising to those in the room as it was to me.
+Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--who, it
+would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity, but who was
+dressed for a society function rather than for a midnight expedition of
+so unusual a character?
+I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
+His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him to
+recognize the unknown?
+A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume which
+seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.  Only one woman
+known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.
+Then it was she!
+At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent
+forward.  Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.
+Again the strange perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing
+neither to right nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no
+longer doubted--recross the room and disappear.
+""The man she spoke to,"" hissed Smith.  ""We must see him!  We must have
+him!""
+He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.  It was
+empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come to the door of
+the big room when it was thrown open and a man came rapidly out, opened
+the street door before Smith could reach him, and was gone, slamming it
+fast.
+I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we
+gained the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by
+magic.  A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.
+""That is the girl,"" rapped Smith; ""but where in Heaven's name is the
+man to whom she brought the message?  I would give a hundred pounds to
+know what business is afoot.  To think that we have had such an
+opportunity and have thrown it away!""
+Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction of
+the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
+the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
+and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
+Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant
+antagonist.  The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment
+tonight in tarrying a moment too long might mean the victory of
+Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning of the balance which a wise
+providence had adjusted between the white and yellow races, was
+appalling.
+To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences at work to
+overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be, the whole of Europe
+and America beneath an Eastern rule, it seemed that a great yellow hand
+was stretched out over London.  Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the
+civilized world.  Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the
+millions whose fate he sought to command.
+""Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?"" said Smith.  ""What State
+secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant of the British Raj to
+be spirited away?  Upon whom now has Fu-Manchu set his death seal?""
+""Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary of
+the Doctor's.""
+""I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
+cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
+The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
+Curse it!""  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his left
+hand.  ""I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.  To think of
+the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation of just such a
+meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!"" Scarce heeding
+what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly Circus, and had
+walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.  I just dragged Smith
+aside in time to save him from the off-front wheel of a big Mercedes.
+Then the traffic was blocked, and we found ourselves dangerously penned
+in amidst the press of vehicles.
+Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers, who
+naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors, and just before
+that impassable barrier the arm of a London policeman was lowered and
+the stream moved on, a faint breath of perfume became perceptible to me.
+The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again, and
+there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.  I could not
+pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew that someone--someone
+who used that rare, fragrant essence--was leaning from the window of
+the car.
+""ANDAMAN--SECOND!"" floated a soft whisper.
+We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.
+Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen occupant of the
+car, had not detected the whispered words.  But I had no reason to
+doubt my senses, and I knew beyond question that Fu-Manchu's lovely
+slave, Karamaneh, had been within a yard of us, had recognized us, and
+had uttered those words for our guidance.
+On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering what
+""ANDAMAN--SECOND"" could possibly mean.
+""Hang it all!"" cried Smith, ""it might mean anything--the result of a
+race, for instance.""
+He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut
+mixture into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of
+turning in.
+""I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present upon whom
+it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt,"" he said, ""except
+ourselves.""
+We began methodically to go through the long list of names which we had
+compiled and to review our elaborate notes.  When, at last, I turned
+in, the night had given place to a new day.  But sleep evaded me, and
+""ANDAMAN--SECOND"" danced like a mocking phantom through my brain.
+Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.
+A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.
+""I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some black
+business was afoot last night,"" he said.  ""And it was.  Within
+pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.  Inspector
+Weymouth has just been on the 'phone.""
+""Norris West!"" I cried, ""the American aviator--and inventor--""
+""Of the West aero-torpedo--yes.  He's been offering it to the English
+War Office, and they have delayed too long.""
+I got out of bed.
+""What do you mean?""
+""I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu!""
+Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in
+dressing, how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had
+'phoned arrived, how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey;
+but, in a nervous whirl, these things slipped into the past, like the
+telegraph poles seen from the window of an express, and, still in that
+tense state, we came upon the scene of this newest outrage.
+Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
+in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall of
+his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver in his
+hand.
+The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had had to remove a
+piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.  A medical man was leaning
+over the recumbent figure in the striped pajama suit, and
+Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching him as Smith and I entered.
+""He has been heavily drugged,"" said the Doctor, sniffing at West's
+lips, ""but I cannot say what drug has been used.  It isn't chloroform
+or anything of that nature.  He can safely be left to sleep it off, I
+think.""
+I agreed, after a brief examination.
+""It's most extraordinary,"" said Weymouth.  ""He rang up the Yard about
+an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.  Then
+the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
+front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors
+up.  Nothing is disturbed.""
+""The plans of the aero-torpedo?"" rapped Smith.
+""I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"" replied the detective,
+""and that is locked all right.  I think he must have taken an overdose
+of something and had illusions.  But in case there was anything in what
+he mumbled (you could hardly understand him) I thought it as well to
+send for you.""
+""Quite right,"" said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.  ""Lay
+him on the bed, Inspector.""
+It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.
+Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been sleeping
+in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary invasion mentioned
+by the drugged man.  It was a small room--the chambers were of that
+kind which are let furnished--and very neat.  A safe with a combination
+lock stood in a corner.  The window was open about a foot at the top.
+Smith tried the safe and found it fast.  He stood for a moment clicking
+his teeth together, by which I knew him to be perplexed.  He walked
+over to the window and threw it up.  We both looked out.
+""You see,"" came Weymouth's voice, ""it is altogether too far from the
+court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder with
+one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could get up
+there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--for them to
+have fixed it from there.""
+Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an
+iron bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he
+stooped, with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw
+what it was that had attracted his attention.
+Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a
+confused series of marks--tracks call them what you will.
+Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.
+""What is it, Petrie?"" he said amazedly.  ""Some kind of bird has been
+here, and recently.""  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.
+""I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith,"" he muttered.
+Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.
+""No,"" he returned reflectively; ""come to think of it, neither did I.""
+He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.
+""Do you think it was all an illusion?"" asked the detective.
+""What about those marks on the window-sill?"" jerked Smith.
+He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping before
+the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.
+Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments, only
+to return again to the bedroom.
+""Petrie,"" he said, ""we are losing valuable time.  West must be aroused.""
+Inspector Weymouth stared.
+Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had
+gone.  ""Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?"" he said.
+""Doubtless,"" I replied, ""he could be revived if one but knew what drug
+he had taken.""
+My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon a
+little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books on a
+shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.
+""See what we have here, Petrie!"" he directed, handing the phial to me.
+""It bears no label.""
+I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue to the
+powder.
+""Some preparation of chloral hydrate,"" I pronounced.
+""A sleeping draught?"" suggested Smith eagerly.
+""We might try,"" I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my
+notebook.  I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call
+up the nearest chemist and procure the antidote.
+During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious
+inventor, a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.
+""ANDAMAN--SECOND,"" he muttered.  ""Shall we find the key to the riddle
+here, I wonder?""
+Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
+telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
+was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.  I
+administered the powerful restorative, and although, as later
+transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition, the
+antidote operated successfully.
+Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
+with haggard eyes.
+""The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!"" he muttered.
+He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled, and
+almost fell.
+""It is all right,"" I said, supporting him.  ""I'm a doctor.  You have
+been unwell.""
+""Have the police come?"" he burst out.  ""The safe--try the safe!""
+""It's all right,"" said Inspector Weymouth.  ""The safe is locked--unless
+someone else knows the combination, there's nothing to worry about.""
+""No one else knows it,"" said West, and staggered unsteadily to the
+safe.  Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw
+with a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his
+thoughts and opened the safe.
+He bent down, looking in.
+In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
+on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.
+""God!"" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--""the plans are gone!""
+CHAPTER XIX
+I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.
+""This is absolutely incredible!"" he said.  ""There's only one door to
+your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside.""
+""Yes,"" groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.  ""I bolted it
+myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in.""
+""No human being could climb up or down to your windows.  The plans of
+the aero-torpedo were inside a safe.""
+""I put them there myself,"" said West, ""on returning from the War
+Office, and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and
+bolted the door.  I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it
+was still locked you saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world
+knows the combination.""
+""But the plans have gone,"" said Weymouth.  ""It's magic!  How was it
+done?  What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang
+us up?""
+Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.  He
+turned abruptly to the aviator.
+""Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please,"" he said tersely; ""and
+be as brief as you possibly can.""
+""I came in, as I said,"" explained West, ""about eleven o'clock and
+having made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this
+morning, I locked the plans in the safe and turned in.""
+""There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?"" snapped Smith.
+""There was not,"" replied West.  ""I looked.  I invariably do.  Almost
+immediately, I went to sleep.""
+""How many chloral tabloids did you take?"" I interrupted.
+Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.
+""You're cute, Doctor,"" he said.  ""I took two.  It's a bad habit, but I
+can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me by a firm in
+Philadelphia.""
+""How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams, and
+when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--shall never know,
+I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void a face came to
+me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.
+""I was in that curious condition wherein one knows that one is dreaming
+and seeks to awaken--to escape.  But a nightmare-like oppression held
+me.  So I must lie and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over
+me, for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized scar
+running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth, and drawing up
+the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.  I could look into the
+malignant, jaundiced eyes; I could hear the dim whispering of the
+distorted mouth--whispering that seemed to counsel something--something
+evil.  That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.  Then the
+wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede until it became
+as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--almost like a glutinous,
+liquid thing.
+""Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming
+ended and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad
+last night, but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood
+throbbing through my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I
+started laughing.  The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill
+whistling sound that pierced me with physical pain and seemed to wake
+the echoes of the whole block.  I thought myself I was going mad, and I
+tried to command my will--to break the power of the chloral--for I
+concluded that I had accidentally taken an overdose.
+""Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I stood
+holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a doll's cot, in
+the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!  That window yonder was
+such a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just detect a
+Chinaman--the owner of the evil yellow face--creeping through it.  He
+was followed by another, who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they
+came towards me (and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour
+to cross this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
+seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
+""I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.  Mr. Smith,
+whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw last
+night--or did I see it?  God knows!  The pointed chin, the great dome
+of a forehead, and the eyes--heavens above, the huge green eyes!""
+He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
+Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
+expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
+""The pumping of my blood,"" continued West, ""seemed to be bursting my
+body; the room kept expanding and contracting.  One time the ceiling
+would be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamen--sometimes I
+thought there were two of them, sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the
+next instant it shot up like the roof of a cathedral.
+""'Can I be awake,' I whispered, 'or am I dreaming?'
+""My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lost
+in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
+""'You are dreaming--yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green eyes who
+was addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to occupy an
+immeasurable time in the utterance.  'But at will I can render the
+subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singular
+words, gentlemen.
+""And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.  I
+made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me of something
+vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.  The whole nightmare
+room grew green, and I felt that I was being absorbed into its
+greenness.
+""I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium--if it was
+delirium--I thought the same.  Now comes the climax of my
+experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.  I SAW some WORDS
+issuing from my own mouth!""
+Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.
+""This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know,"" he said,
+""but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.  I
+know to what the experience was due.""
+Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
+was come to me, too.
+""How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply tell you I
+saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--given something away.""
+""You gave away the secret of the lock combination!"" rapped Smith.
+""Eh!"" grunted Weymouth.
+But West went on hoarsely:
+""Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.  It was
+'Bayard Taylor.'""
+At that I interrupted West.
+""I understand!"" I cried.  ""I understand!  Another name has just
+occurred to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau.""
+""You have solved the mystery,"" said Smith.  ""It was natural Mr. West
+should have thought of the American traveler, Bayard Taylor, though.
+Moreau's book is purely scientific.  He has probably never read it.""
+""I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me,"" continued West,
+""striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic
+things through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty
+again.  I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag
+my feet along.  It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I
+remember calling up Scotland Yard, and I remember no more.""
+There was a short, tense interval.
+In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector
+Weymouth considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his
+back, stared out of the window.
+""ANDAMAN--SECOND"" he said suddenly.  ""Weymouth, when is the first train
+to Tilbury?""
+""Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street,"" replied the Scotland Yard man
+promptly.
+""Too late!"" rapped my friend.  ""Jump in a taxi and pick up two good men
+to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter a special to Tilbury
+to leave in twenty-five minutes.  Order another cab to wait outside for
+me.""
+Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.  The
+Inspector departed hastily.
+I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
+""Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West,"" he said, ""of what does your
+experience remind you?  The errors of perception regarding time; the
+idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion that the room alternately
+increased and diminished in size; your fit of laughter, and the
+recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.  Since evidently you are
+familiar with that author's work--'The Land of the Saracen,' is it
+not?--these symptoms of the attack should be familiar, I think.""
+Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
+""Bayard Taylor's book,"" he said dully.  ""Yes! . . . I know of what my
+brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
+hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!""
+Smith nodded grimly.
+""Cannabis indica,"" I said--""Indian hemp.  That is what you were drugged
+with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
+intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
+I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains.""
+Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West, looking
+into his dulled eyes.
+""Someone visited your chambers last night,"" he said slowly, ""and for
+your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish, or perhaps
+not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist.""
+Norris West started.
+""Someone substituted--"" he began.
+""Exactly,"" said Smith, looking at him keenly; ""someone who was here
+yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?""
+West hesitated.  ""I had a visitor in the afternoon,"" he said, seemingly
+speaking the words unwillingly, ""but--""
+""A lady?"" jerked Smith.  ""I suggest that it was a lady.""
+West nodded.
+""You're quite right,"" he admitted.  ""I don't know how you arrived at
+the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--a
+foreign lady.""
+""Karamaneh!"" snapped Smith.
+""I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--knowing
+this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from a
+mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.  She said
+he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait here
+whilst I went and sent him about his business.""
+He laughed shortly.
+""I am over-old,"" he said, ""to be guyed by a woman.  You spoke just now
+of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is that the crook I'm indebted to for the
+loss of my plans?  I've had attempts made by agents of two European
+governments, but a Chinaman is a novelty.""
+""This Chinaman,"" Smith assured him, ""is the greatest novelty of his
+age.  You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?""
+""Mr. West's statement,"" I said, ""ran closely parallel with portions of
+Moreau's book on 'Hashish Hallucinations.' Only Fu-Manchu, I think,
+would have thought of employing Indian hemp.  I doubt, though, if it
+was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate, it acted as an opiate--""
+""And drugged Mr. West,"" interrupted Smith, ""sufficiently to enable
+Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved.""
+""Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject for the
+Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
+hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu must
+have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.  We have
+evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination.""
+""God knows we have!"" said West.  ""But who is this Fu-Manchu, and
+how--how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?""
+Smith pulled out his watch.  ""That,"" he said rapidly, ""I cannot delay
+to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.  Come along,
+Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.  There is just a bare
+chance.""
+CHAPTER XX
+IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
+with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through the
+streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.  I
+suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
+Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
+Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is, converted
+temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any medical man
+who had heard his statement and noted the distressing after-effects
+which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.  Knowing something
+of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that he might have
+extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer force of
+will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.  But I
+could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked chambers
+on the third story of a building.
+""Smith,"" I said, ""those bird tracks on the window-sill--they furnish
+the key to a mystery which is puzzling me.""
+""They do,"" said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.  ""Consult
+your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your memories of
+his pets.""
+I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
+surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
+things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
+whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.  But
+no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust of West's
+window-sill.
+""You puzzle me, Smith,"" I confessed.  ""There is much in this
+extraordinary case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account
+for the marks.""
+""Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?"" asked Smith.
+""The monkey!"" I cried.
+""They were the footprints of a small ape,"" my friend continued.  ""For a
+moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them to be the tracks
+of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints of apes before now, and
+a marmoset, though an American variety, I believe, is not unlike some
+of the apes of Burma.""
+""I am still in the dark,"" I said.
+""It is pure hypothesis,"" continued Smith, ""but here is the theory--in
+lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset--and it is
+contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any creature for mere
+amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.
+""You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
+the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
+For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was a
+simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.  He
+climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.  By means
+of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar, by means of the rope
+one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.  One of the Doctor's servants
+ascended--probably to ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
+That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.  Then
+followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West
+was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.  The court would
+be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly
+after the ascent the ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered
+again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu
+had secured the plans.  The reclosing of the safe and the removing of
+the hashish tabloids, leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a
+drug slave--for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have
+construed West's story--is particularly characteristic.  His own
+tabloids were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is a
+refinement of art which points to a past master.""
+""Karamaneh was the decoy again?"" I said shortly.
+""Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
+substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious
+car--infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in that
+place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.  She did her
+work well.
+""Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a
+hundred pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she
+handed them.  I would give a thousand now!""
+""ANDAMAN--SECOND,"" I said.  ""What did she mean?""
+""Then it has not dawned upon you?"" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
+turned into the station.  ""The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
+Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.  Our
+man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
+and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes.""
+Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
+through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested with
+extraordinary powers from the highest authorities, by Inspector
+Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared all the way.
+Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came
+home to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the
+station-master, and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D.
+men with him--took our seats in the special.
+Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations, where a glimpse
+might be had of wondering officials upon the platforms, for a special
+train was a novelty on the line.  All ordinary traffic arrangements
+were held up until we had passed through, and we reached Tilbury in
+time which I doubt not constituted a record.
+There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage to the
+Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.  It was novel,
+and infinitely exciting.
+""Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?"" said the captain interrogatively,
+when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and
+back to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
+""The same, Captain,"" said my friend briskly.  ""I shall not detain you a
+moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports east of Suez to
+apprehend one of your second-class passengers, should he leave the
+ship.  He is in possession of plans which practically belong to the
+British Government!""
+""Why not arrest him now?"" asked the seaman bluntly.
+""Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers' baggage will
+be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that, if all else
+fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards to watch any
+passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate with the two
+Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.  I look to you to
+recover these plans, Captain.""
+""I will do my best,"" the captain assured him.
+Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were
+watching the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very
+singular one.  Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.
+Then occurred the extraordinary incident which to this day remains
+inexplicable, for, clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice
+said:
+""Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!""
+I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.  My eyes
+passed from face to face of the group about us.  None was familiar.  No
+one apparently had moved away.
+But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
+As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference between that
+happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must appeal to you who
+merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers to convey the sense of the
+uncanny which the episode created.  Yet, even as I think of it, I feel
+again, though in lesser degree, the chill which seemed to creep through
+my veins that day.
+From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked, by
+the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--near whom
+you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--I am aware
+that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy examinations of
+the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.  This
+incident at the docks is but one such point.
+Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in the
+cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
+possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.  Can
+it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
+indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
+but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow
+science.  West's experience proved so much.
+I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did
+so--opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge
+of the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my
+errors.  Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is
+lost forever.  There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its
+survival, in part; and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a
+scientific sequel to this record of our dealings with the Chinese
+doctor.
+CHAPTER XXI
+TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
+to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded the
+matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
+with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
+Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
+of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
+robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
+were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past master
+of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis; searched
+for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct to the task,
+but eluding all--triumphant, contemptuous.
+One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.  Yet
+it was a big and important link.
+""Petrie,"" he said to me one morning, ""listen to this:
+""'. . . In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of
+a junk passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
+A minute later there was a cry of ""Man overboard!""
+""'Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
+A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks in
+these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.
+""'Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards, second class,
+booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.  The man was some
+sort of Oriental, and we had had him under close observation. . . .'""
+""That's the end of their report,"" exclaimed Smith.
+He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman at the
+moment of her departure from Tilbury.
+He carefully lighted his pipe.
+""IS it a victory for China, Petrie?"" he said softly.
+""Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the
+day be not in my time--we shall never know,"" I replied.
+Smith began striding up and down the room.
+""Whose name,"" he jerked abruptly, ""stands now at the head of our danger
+list?""
+He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men
+intervening between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and
+the triumph of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
+I glanced at our notes.  ""Lord Southery,"" I replied.
+Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
+""Look,"" he said shortly.  ""He's dead.""
+I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at the long
+obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.  He had but recently
+returned from the East, and now, after a short illness, had died from
+some affection of the heart.  There had been no intimation that his
+illness was of a serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his
+flock--the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
+had not suspected that the end was so near.
+""Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?"" I asked.
+My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long finger
+upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
+""SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE.""
+""You see,"" said Smith, ""Southery died during the night, but Sir Frank
+Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later, unhesitatingly pronounced death
+to be due to syncope, and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious.""
+I looked at him thoughtfully.
+""Sir Frank is a great physician,"" I said slowly; ""but we must remember
+he would be looking for nothing suspicious.""
+""We must remember,"" rapped Smith, ""that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu is
+responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye of an expert there
+would be nothing suspicious to see.  Fu-Manchu leaves no clews.""
+""Are you going around?"" I asked.
+Smith shrugged his shoulders.
+""I think not,"" he replied.  ""Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu has
+taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work so well
+that no trace remains of his presence in the matter.""
+Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
+littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
+which went out every few minutes.
+""It's no good, Petrie,"" he burst out suddenly; ""it cannot be a
+coincidence.  We must go around and see him.""
+An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
+its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face of
+Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.  The
+mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction of
+the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
+the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring two
+great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.  But
+now it would plan no more.
+""He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,"" explained the
+family physician; ""but I had not anticipated a fatal termination so
+soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning, and found Lord
+Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.  I did all that was
+possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.  But shortly before his
+arrival the patient expired.""
+""I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery for
+angina pectoris?"" I said.
+""Yes,"" was the reply, ""for some months.""
+""You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent with a
+death from that cause?""
+""Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?  Sir Frank
+Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely no room for doubt?""
+""No,"" said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
+""We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir.""
+The physician seemed puzzled.
+""But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the
+police?"" asked the physician.
+""Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the
+police,"" answered Smith.  ""But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard
+our recent questions as confidential.""
+As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the
+unseen visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers,
+Smith paused, detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
+""You were Lord Southery's valet?""
+The man bowed.
+""Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?""
+""I was, sir.""
+""Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?""
+""Nothing, sir.""
+""No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?""
+The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the
+street.
+""Perhaps this business is making me imaginative,"" he said; ""but there
+seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--something peculiar to
+houses whose doors bear the invisible death-mark of Fu-Manchu.""
+""You are right, Smith!"" I cried.  ""I hesitated to mention the matter,
+but I, too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the
+Doctor's presence.  Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory
+evidence, I am as sure that he has brought about Lord Southery's death
+as if I had seen him strike the blow.""
+It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless, in our
+ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's supernormal genius--that we
+lived throughout the ensuing days.  My friend began to look like a man
+consumed by a burning fever.  Yet, we could not act.
+In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I stood idly
+turning over some of the works exposed for sale outside a second-hand
+bookseller's in New Oxford Street.  One dealing with the secret
+societies of China struck me as being likely to prove instructive, and
+I was about to call the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand
+clutch my arm.
+I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful eyes
+of Karamaneh!  She--whom I had seen in so many guises--was dressed in a
+perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much of her wonderful hair
+concealed beneath a fashionable hat.
+She glanced about her apprehensively.
+""Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you,"" she said, her
+musical voice thrilling with excitement.
+I never was quite master of myself in her presence.  He must have been
+a man of ice who could have been, I think, for her beauty had all the
+bouquet of rarity; she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a
+woman.  Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
+have risked much to save her from it.
+As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:
+""I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
+Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so.""
+I could scarcely believe that I heard right.
+""Your brother--"" I began.
+She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.
+""You are a doctor,"" she said.  ""I want you to come and see him now.""
+""What!  Is he in London?""
+""He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.""
+""And you would have me--""
+""Accompany me there, yes.""
+Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against trusting
+my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.  Yet I did
+so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling eastward in a
+closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I turned to her
+I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression in which there
+was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there was something
+else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.  The cabman she
+had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road, the
+neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
+adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about the
+squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
+Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
+burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.  In
+the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world of the
+West into the dubious underworld of the East.
+I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared the
+abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me, and when the
+cab was discharged, and together we walked down a narrow turning
+leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully, hesitated, and even
+seemed upon the point of turning back.  But, overcoming her fear or
+repugnance, she led on, through a maze of alleyways and courts, wherein
+I hopelessly lost my bearings, so that it came home to me how wholly I
+was in the hands of this girl whose history was so full of shadows,
+whose real character was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm
+truly might mask the cunning of a serpent.
+I spoke to her.
+""S-SH!"" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.
+The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
+building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
+stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through a
+gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.  The
+muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.  I heard a key
+grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow of an open door,
+entered, and closed it behind her.
+For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors of the court
+without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume which now I had come to
+associate with her.  Absolute darkness was about us, and by this
+perfume alone I knew that she was near to me, until her hand touched
+mine, and I was led along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted
+stair.  A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an
+exquisitely furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded
+lamp which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean of
+silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow richness
+was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
+Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood listening
+intently for a moment.
+The silence was unbroken.
+Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two tiny
+bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded in
+distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.  It was
+Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  ""This way,"" whispered Karamaneh.
+Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more unwise
+enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration of prudence
+could now be of avail.
+The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction of a
+faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend as a balcony
+across one end of a spacious apartment.  Together we stood high up
+there in the shadows, and looked down upon such a scene as I never
+could have imagined to exist within many a mile of that district.
+The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into which
+first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed splashes
+of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains from the
+ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.  One wall was almost
+entirely occupied by glass cases containing chemical apparatus, tubes,
+retorts and other less orthodox indications of Dr. Fu-Manchu's
+pursuits, whilst close against another lay the most extraordinary
+object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--a low couch, upon which
+was extended the motionless form of a boy.  In the light of a lamp
+which hung directly above him, his olive face showed an almost
+startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--save that the girl's
+coloring was more delicate.  He had black, curly hair, which stood out
+prominently against the white covering upon which he lay, his hands
+crossed upon his breast.
+Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.  The
+wonders of the ""Arabian Nights"" were wonders no longer, for here, in
+East-End London, was a true magician's palace, lacking not its
+beautiful slave, lacking not its enchanted prince!
+""It is Aziz, my brother,"" said Karamaneh.
+We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.  Karamaneh
+knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair and whispering to him
+lovingly.  I, too, bent over him; and I shall never forget the anxiety
+in the girl's eyes as she watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief
+examination.
+Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
+shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands, and
+spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined must
+be her native language.
+Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me, read the truth
+in my eyes, and rose from her knees, stood rigidly upright, and
+clutched me tremblingly.
+""He is not dead--he is NOT dead!"" she whispered, and shook me as a
+child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.  ""Oh, tell
+me he is not--""
+""I cannot,"" I replied gently, ""for indeed he is.""
+""No!"" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
+half distraught.  ""You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.  You do
+not understand--""
+She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome face of
+the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.  But sorrow for the
+girl predominated in my mind.
+Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
+occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.
+""Quick!""  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  ""Up!  He has returned!""
+She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.  The
+shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound of our tread, or
+certainly we must have been detected by the man who entered the room we
+had just quitted.
+It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+Yellow-robed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
+it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
+the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.
+Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.
+""Watch!"" she whispered.  ""Watch!""
+Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I had
+pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case, took out a
+long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it, into a graduated glass,
+he poured some drops of an amber liquid wholly unfamiliar to me.  I
+watched him with all my eyes, and noted how high the liquid rose in the
+measure.  He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
+made an injection.
+Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible, and with
+an awe which any other physician who had examined Aziz must have felt,
+I admitted him a miracle-worker. For as I watched, all but breathless,
+the dead came to life!  The glow of health crept upon the olive
+cheek--the boy moved--he raised his hands above his head--he sat up,
+supported by the Chinese doctor!
+Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a
+scarred face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
+some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes, and
+a flask of red wine.
+As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
+awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
+gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.  My
+heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand over
+hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.
+""You see,"" said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, ""he is not dead!  But
+without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him when he holds
+the life of Aziz in his hand?""
+""You must get me that flask, or some of its contents,"" I directed.
+""But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?""
+""I cannot tell you,"" she replied.  ""I do not know.  It is something in
+the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.  But
+see.""  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial half
+filled with the amber liquid.
+""Good!"" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  ""When will be the best
+time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?""
+""I will let you know,"" she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
+hurriedly from the room.  ""He is going away to-night to the north; but
+you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.  He may
+call me at any moment.""
+So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
+to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of
+Karamaneh, I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant
+perfumes of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.
+CHAPTER XXII
+""WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay,"" said Smith.
+""This time we are sure of our ally--""
+""But we must keep our promise to her,"" I interrupted.
+""You can look after that, Petrie,"" my friend said.  ""I will devote the
+whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!"" he added grimly.
+Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between his
+teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.  The
+bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness of his
+gray eyes.
+""What have I all along maintained?"" he jerked, looking back at me
+across his shoulder--""that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest
+weapons in the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be
+turned against him.  That day has dawned.""
+""We must await word from her.""
+""Quite so.""
+He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:
+""Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?""
+""Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes.""
+Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl, and
+dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.
+""I cannot rest, Petrie,"" he said.  ""I am itching to get to work.  Yet,
+a false move, and--"" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring from the
+window.
+""I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me,"" I explained.
+Smith made no reply.
+""If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
+of death,"" I continued, ""my fame would long survive my ashes.""
+My friend did not turn.  But:
+""She said it was something he put in the wine?"" he jerked.
+""In the wine, yes.""
+Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu
+held in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her
+brother, suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
+the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
+If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living
+men, had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering,
+the name of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the
+history of healing.
+Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed
+me.
+""Look up the next train to L--!"" he rapped.
+""To L--?  What--?""
+""There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste.""
+In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his eyes was
+the light which told of an urgent need for action--a portentous truth
+suddenly grasped.
+""One in half-an-hour--the last.""
+""We must catch it.""
+No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
+for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown and
+smoking without intermission.
+Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi upon
+the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--all in
+that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
+movements in times of important action.
+He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
+of his ear.
+""I know you will forgive me, old man,"" he said, ""but there is a little
+problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.  Did you bring the
+things I mentioned?""
+""Yes.""
+Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
+Smith said:  ""Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
+constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?""
+""Undoubtedly,"" I replied.
+""Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?""
+""Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years.""
+""Three years, is it?""
+""Roughly.""
+""Ah!""
+We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor compartment to
+ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully to inspect the
+occupants of all the others, from the engine to the guard's van.  He
+was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned me to keep out of sight in
+the corner of the compartment.  In fact, his behavior had me bursting
+with curiosity.  The train having started:
+""Don't imagine, Petrie,"" said Smith ""that I am trying to lead you
+blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.  I am
+simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.  The idea upon which
+I am acting does not seem to have struck you.  I wish it had.  The fact
+would argue in favor of its being sound.""
+""At present I am hopelessly mystified.""
+""Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.  But just study the
+situation, and see if you can arrive at the reason for this sudden
+journey.  I shall be distinctly encouraged if you succeed.""
+But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was unwilling to
+enlighten me, I pressed him no more.  The train stopped at Rugby, where
+he was engaged with the stationmaster in making some mysterious
+arrangements.  At L--, however, their object became plain, for a
+high-power car was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the
+greater number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
+off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.
+Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the
+line of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.
+""Stradwick Hall,"" said Smith.  ""The home of Lord Southery.  We are
+first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train.""
+Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.
+CHAPTER XXIII
+""YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!""
+The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
+(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery) puffed at
+his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless pacing had led
+him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote but virile figure,
+and looked back to where I stood by the open hearth with the solicitor.
+""I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson,"" he said, and advanced upon the
+latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  ""Save for the heir, who is abroad on
+foreign service, you say there is no kin of Lord Southery to consider.
+The word rests with you.  If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal,
+there is none whose susceptibilities will suffer--""
+""My own, sir!""
+""If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become a murderer,
+Mr. Henderson.""
+The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered over
+him menacingly.
+""Lord Southery was a lonely man,"" continued my friend.  ""If I could
+have placed my proposition before one of his blood, I do not doubt what
+my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?  Why do you experience this
+feeling of horror?""
+Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally ruddy
+face was pale.
+""It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary
+powers--""
+Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch from
+his pocket and glancing at it.
+""I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you a written
+order, sir.""
+""The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
+in China, in Burma--""
+""Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
+granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance such a thing
+if he doubted the necessity?""
+Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.
+""There are guests in the house--mourners who attended the ceremony
+to-day. They--""
+""Will never know, if we are in error,"" interrupted Smith.  ""Good God!
+why do you delay?""
+""You wish it to be kept secret?""
+""You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.  We require no
+other witnesses.  We are answerable only to our consciences.""
+The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.
+""I have never in my life been called upon to come to so momentous a
+decision in so short a time,"" he confessed.  But, aided by Smith's
+indomitable will, he made his decision.  As its result, we three,
+looking and feeling like conspirators, hurried across the park beneath
+a moon whose placidity was a rebuke to the turbulent passions which
+reared their strangle-growth in the garden of England.  Not a breath of
+wind stirred amid the leaves.  The calm of perfect night soothed
+everything to slumber.  Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt
+him), the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene; and I
+found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.  Even now the
+dread Chinaman must be near to us.
+As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland
+Smith.  His face twitched oddly.
+""Witness that I do this unwillingly,"" he said--""most unwillingly.""
+""Mine be the responsibility,"" was the reply.
+Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent up
+within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening--and I knew for
+whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left--and I knew
+whom he expected but dreaded to see.
+Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from the
+aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
+journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--or so
+it seemed.
+By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery had
+passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going; by that path
+several generations of Stradwicks had gone to their last resting-place.
+To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.  No branch,
+no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.  The keys
+which he carried rattled in his hand.
+""Light the lantern,"" he said unsteadily.
+Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into the
+shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.  He
+turned to the solicitor.
+""Be calm, Mr. Henderson,"" he said sternly.  ""It is your plain duty to
+your client.""
+""God be my witness that I doubt it,"" replied Henderson, and opened the
+door.
+We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.  It
+touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was not wholly
+physical.
+Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great
+engineer whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me
+for support.  Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny
+task, and rightly.
+With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my
+friend and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had
+undertaken labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as
+this.  It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn
+of every screw.
+At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
+the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
+when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
+releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--but
+not until his work was finished.
+That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing
+solely--professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
+of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant inquiry by the
+British Medical Association, I was about to attempt an experiment never
+before essayed by a physician of the white races.
+Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the
+B.M.A., or any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all
+but impossible.  But the knowledge that I was about to practice
+charlatanry, or what any one of my fellow-practitioners must have
+designated as such, was with me.  Yet so profound had my belief become
+in the extraordinary being whose existence was a danger to the world
+that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.  I was glad that
+it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--though blindly--into
+the FUTURE of medical science.
+So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
+would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.  The
+first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests of
+Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels, would serve
+the yellow group better than his death.  The second, I had seen the boy
+Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.
+From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me, I charged the
+needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.
+""If he is really dead!"" whispered Smith.  ""It seems incredible that he
+can have survived for three days without food.  Yet I have known a
+fakir to go for a week.""
+Mr. Henderson groaned.
+Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.
+A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
+Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.  It came in
+waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing of the awakened
+heart; which swept fuller and stronger; which filled and quickened the
+chilled body.
+As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of the dead one,
+Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up, looked about him with
+half-glazed eyes, and fell back.  ""My God!"" cried Smith.
+""It is all right,"" I said, and had time to note how my voice had
+assumed a professional tone.  ""A little brandy from my flask is all
+that is necessary now.""
+""You have two patients, Doctor,"" rapped my friend.
+Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.
+""Quiet,"" whispered Smith; ""HE is here.""
+He extinguished the light.
+I supported Lord Southery.  ""What has happened?"" he kept moaning.
+""Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?""
+I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling coat
+about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we had reclosed
+but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom literally we had
+rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.  To aid Henderson I
+could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.  I dared not
+think what was about to happen, nor what its effects might be upon Lord
+Southery in his exhausted condition.
+Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light, touching
+the last stone of the stairway.
+A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my
+friend, I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
+and I reached into my pocket for mine.
+At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.  It would
+require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.  Unless his
+suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door, his capture was imminent.
+Someone was descending the steps.
+In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord
+Southery, I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have
+rarely known.
+The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.
+Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
+but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.  In
+some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened from
+his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood looking
+up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.
+Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the
+light was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon
+the floor.
+I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the
+stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
+chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
+A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown
+man scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was
+hit; but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.
+""Mr. Henderson!"" I cried, ""relight the lantern and take charge of Lord
+Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.  I rely upon you.""
+Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.  Black
+against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.  As
+he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.
+Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle beneath
+the trees receding footsteps pattered.
+""Are you hurt, Smith?"" I cried anxiously.
+He got upon his feet.
+""He has a dacoit with him,"" he replied, and showed me the long curved
+knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
+""A near thing for me, Petrie.""
+I heard the whir of a restarted motor.
+""We have lost him,"" said Smith.
+""But we have saved Lord Southery,"" I said.  ""Fu-Manchu will credit us
+with a skill as great as his own.""
+""We must get to the car,"" Smith muttered, ""and try to overtake them.
+Ugh!  my left arm is useless.""
+""It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them,"" I argued,
+""for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed.""
+""I have a very good idea,"" snapped Smith.  ""Stradwick Hall is less than
+ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means of
+conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London.""
+""You think he meant to take him from here to London?""
+""Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house is
+probably on the Thames.""
+""A boat?""
+""A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.  Fu-Manchu
+may even have designed to ship him direct to China.""
+Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
+and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
+emerged from the vault into the moonlight.
+""This is a triumph for you, Smith,"" I said.
+The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost in the
+night's silence.
+""Only half a triumph,"" he replied.  ""But we still have another
+chance--the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?""
+Southery spoke in a weak voice.
+""Gentlemen,"" he said, ""it seems I am raised from the dead.""
+It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
+buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.
+""Yes,"" replied Smith slowly, ""and spared from the fate of Heaven alone
+knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks a Southery, but
+that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years ago I have reason to
+believe; so that, even without visiting the grave of your great
+Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about that time, I venture to
+predict that they have a Von Homber.  And the futurist group in China
+knows how to MAKE men work!""
+CHAPTER XXIV
+FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly on to
+other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen, to round my
+incidents; they were not of my choosing.  I may not pause to make you
+better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of
+mine.  Often enough, in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of
+Omar:
+We are no other than a moving show
+Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
+Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
+In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
+But ""the Master of the Show,"" in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
+I have been asked many times since the days with which these records
+deal: Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer
+must be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my
+reasoning, and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.
+What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of
+the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
+""Young China.""  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young
+China?  In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn,
+association with the whole of that movement; and assuming that the name
+were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no
+Republican.
+The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
+generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.  These
+youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction with older but no
+less ill-balanced provincial politicians, may be said to represent
+Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this we invariably look for, and
+invariably find, a Third Party.  In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one
+of the leaders of such a party.
+Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor hide during
+the time that he pursued his operations in London?  This is more
+susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland Smith supposed, as I
+did myself, that the opium den adjacent to the old Ratcliff Highway was
+the Chinaman's base of operations; later we came to believe that the
+mansion near Windsor was his hiding-place, and later still, the hulk
+lying off the downstream flats.  But I think I can state with
+confidence that the spot which he had chosen for his home was neither
+of these, but the East End riverside building which I was the first to
+enter.  Of this I am all but sure; for the reason that it not only was
+the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh, and of her brother, Aziz, but the
+home of something else--of something which I shall speak of later.
+The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid
+upon the place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a
+horrible case.  Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.
+By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located the whilom
+warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab and dreary, but which
+within was a place of wondrous luxury.  At the moment selected by our
+beautiful accomplice, Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives
+entirely surrounded it; a river police launch lay off the wharf which
+opened from it on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black
+night, than which a better could not have been chosen.
+""You will fulfill your promise to me?"" said Karamaneh, and looked up
+into my face.
+She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow of the
+hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.
+""What do you wish us to do?"" asked Nayland Smith.
+""You--and Dr. Petrie,"" she replied swiftly, ""must enter first, and
+bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--you
+are to make no attempt upon--""
+""Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?"" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh hesitated to
+pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.  ""But how can we be sure
+that there is no trap laid for us?""
+The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the
+integrity of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of
+the Chinaman's.
+""Aziz lies in the private room,"" she explained eagerly, her old accent
+more noticeable than usual.  ""There is only one of the Burmese men in
+the house, and he--he dare not enter without orders!""
+""But Fu-Manchu?""
+""We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner within ten
+minutes from now!  I have no time for words--you must believe!""  She
+stamped her foot impatiently.  ""And the dacoit?"" snapped Smith.
+""He also.""
+""I think perhaps I'd better come in, too,"" said Weymouth slowly.
+Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience, and unlocked
+the door in the high brick wall which divided the gloomy, evil-smelling
+court from the luxurious apartments of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+""Make no noise,"" she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
+the uncarpeted passage beyond.
+Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his second in
+command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed; a few paces
+farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through a small room,
+unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.  The transition was
+startling.
+Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous
+darkness--a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the
+apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds
+that is the hymn of the great industrial river.  About the scented
+confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the
+Lower Thames.
+From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from
+the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in
+and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had
+come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim
+enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the
+greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
+Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--the
+bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--penetrated
+to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light lay the deathlike
+figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled form bending over him.
+""At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"" whispered Smith.
+Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity to the sinister
+Chinaman must be fraught with danger.  We stood, not in the lion's den,
+but in the serpent's lair.
+From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this
+advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.  The millions might
+sleep in peace--the millions in whose cause we labored!--but we who
+knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had
+fastened upon England--a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
+secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life and left
+no clew behind.
+""Karamaneh!"" I called softly.
+The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft light fell
+upon the lovely face of the slave girl.  She who had been a pliant
+instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu now was to be the means whereby
+society should be rid of him.
+She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.
+My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through the
+gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light, and, Karamaneh
+beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.  It was Aziz, her brother;
+dead so far as Western lore had power to judge, but kept alive in that
+deathlike trance by the uncanny power of the Chinese doctor.
+""Be quick,"" she said; ""be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid.""
+From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe and a phial
+containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.  It was a drug not to
+be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.  Of its constitution I knew
+nothing.  Although I had had the phial in my possession for some days I
+had not dared to devote any of its precious contents to analytical
+purposes.  The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled
+success for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for the fiendish
+Chinaman.
+I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed, lay with his arms
+crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark of previous injections
+as, charging the syringe from the phial, I made what I hoped would be
+the last of such experiments upon him.  I would have given half of my
+small worldly possessions to have known the real nature of the drug
+which was now coursing through the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the
+grayed face with the olive tone of life; which, so far as my medical
+training bore me, was restoring the dead to life.
+But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
+the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to
+him.  The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl
+would be broken.
+My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
+with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
+amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.  The
+peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of
+her--which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
+Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.
+""You have nothing to fear,"" I whispered; ""see, he is reviving.  In a
+few moments all will be well with him.""
+The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
+wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
+The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
+my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to
+open.  The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed
+inconceivable that all about us was the discordant activity of the
+commercial East End.  Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming
+oppressive; it began positively to appall me.
+Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.
+""Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?"" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn
+appeared beside me.  ""I cannot understand the silence of the house--""
+""Look about,"" replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of
+Aziz.
+I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
+shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the
+tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of
+unfamiliar lore, the impedimenta of the occult student and man of
+science--the visible evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.
+Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.  Of the complicated appliances
+unknown to civilized laboratories, wherewith he pursued his strange
+experiments, of the tubes wherein he isolated the bacilli of
+unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound volumes for a glimpse at
+which (had they known of their contents) the great men of Harley Street
+would have given a fortune--no trace remained.  The silken cushions;
+the inlaid tables; all were gone.
+The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?  The silence
+assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred ministers of death
+all must have fled, too.
+""You have let him escape us!"" I said rapidly.  ""You promised to aid us
+to capture him--to send us a message--and you have delayed until--""
+""No,"" she said; ""no!"" and clutched at my arm again.  ""Oh!  is he not
+reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have made no mistake?""
+Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.  I
+again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my busy
+professional career.
+As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--which
+were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's eager arms
+tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.
+Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that
+softly spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to
+Nayland Smith.  I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.
+""My promise is fulfilled!"" I said.  ""You are free!  Now for Fu-Manchu!
+But first let us admit the police to this house; there is something
+uncanny in its stillness.""
+""No,"" she replied.  ""First let my brother be taken out and placed in
+safety.  Will you carry him?""
+She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was
+written awe and wonder.
+The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed
+through the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in
+the gloom.  Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to
+Karamaneh.
+""You are not playing with us?"" he said harshly.  ""We have done our
+part; it remains for you to do yours.""
+""Do not speak so loudly,"" the girl begged.  ""HE is near us--and, oh,
+God, I fear him so!""
+""Where is he?"" persisted my friend.
+Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.
+""You must not touch him until the police are here,"" she said--but from
+the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that, her brother
+safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.  Those glances sent my
+blood dancing; for Karamaneh was an Eastern jewel which any man of
+flesh and blood must have coveted had he known it to lie within his
+reach.  Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once, I
+had known the desire to explore.
+""Look--beyond that curtain""--her voice was barely audible--""but do not
+enter.  Even as he is, I fear him.""
+Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something
+extraordinary.  Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we
+were two, and help was so near, we were in the abode of the most
+cunning murderer who ever came out of the East.
+It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
+Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a
+door, to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim
+place beyond, all else save what it held was forgotten.
+We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
+Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining in a
+corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon a low
+table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--was Dr.
+Fu-Manchu!
+At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
+so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.  My
+hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids veiled the
+malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.  Then Smith
+silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.  A sickly
+perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation of the hushed
+silence, and the ease with which we had thus far executed our plan,
+came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid--lost in a brutish world of
+dreams.
+Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
+The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered the
+yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
+and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.  At last
+we had triumphed.
+I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
+some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was
+about to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium
+fumes, when a soft breath fanned my cheek.
+""Do not go in!"" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.
+Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back from
+the door.
+""There is danger there!"" she whispered.
+""Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way--and
+drag him out!  Do not enter that room!""
+The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage
+flame.  The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her
+now; but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down
+the stairs and joined us.
+""I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station,"" he said.  ""The
+divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive, Dr. Petrie.
+All is ready now.  The launch is just off the wharf and every side of
+the place under observation.  Where's our man?""
+He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised his eyebrows
+interrogatively.  The absence of sound--of any demonstration from the
+uncanny Chinaman whom he was there to arrest--puzzled him.
+Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.
+At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped to the
+draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at his goal and saved
+reflections for subsequent leisure.  I think, moreover, that the
+atmosphere of the place (stripped as it was it retained its heavy,
+voluptuous perfume) had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious
+to shake it off; to be up and doing.
+He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.  Smith and I
+perforce followed him.  Just within the door the three of us stood
+looking across at the limp thing which had spread terror throughout the
+Eastern and Western world.  Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired
+terror now, though the giant intellect was inert--stupefied.
+In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter a
+stifled scream.  But it came too late.
+As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions, the inlaid table
+with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls, the sprawling figure with
+the ghastly light playing upon its features--quivered, and shot upward!
+So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered, too
+late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's private
+apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.  A trap had been
+released beneath our feet.
+I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--of
+the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my life
+against a stifling something which had me by the throat.  I knew that I
+was being suffocated, but my hands met only the deathly emptiness.
+Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.  I was
+helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--could surmise
+nothing.  Then . . . all consciousness ended.
+CHAPTER XXV
+I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung,
+sackwise, across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but
+he supported my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly
+nausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me to
+consciousness.  My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply
+as a wet towel: I felt that this spark of tortured life which had
+flickered up in me must ere long finally become extinguished.
+A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration to
+the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China; and as I
+swung head downward I told myself that the huge, puffy things which
+strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool, unfamiliar to me
+and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China I now was in.
+The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting
+vegetation.  I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching
+any of the unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a
+succession of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated,
+unnatural shapes, lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.
+He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran
+back.  Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into the
+distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit a faint,
+phosphorescent light.
+""Petrie!"" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . .  ""Is that you,
+Petrie?""
+It was Nayland Smith!
+""Smith!"" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame
+me, so that I all but swooned.
+I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words which
+he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.  The
+Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.  For, as
+he picked his way through the bloated things which grew upon the floors
+of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying the inert body of
+Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare the strength of the
+little brown man with that of a Nile beetle, which can raise many times
+its own weight.  Then, behind him, appeared a second figure, which
+immediately claimed the whole of my errant attention.
+""Fu-Manchu!"" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
+It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we had
+thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--the fine
+quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
+He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well as to
+dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--whose experience
+of the noxious habit probably was greater than my own.  And, with the
+gallows dangling before him, he had waited--played the part of a
+lure--whilst a body of police actually surrounded the place!
+I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually
+used for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to
+protect him during the comatose period.
+Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
+whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through the cellars,
+following the brown man who carried Weymouth.  The faint rays of the
+lantern (it apparently contained a candle) revealed a veritable forest
+of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--hideously swollen--climbing
+from the floor up the slimy walls--climbing like horrid parasites to
+such part of the arched roof as was visible to me.
+Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily as though
+the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.
+The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never
+ceased, culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his
+servant, who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in
+under the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.  The
+lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited, my mind
+dully surveying memories of all the threats which this uncanny being
+had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.
+Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door; and
+to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
+The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the
+vista of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I
+lay.  Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
+with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
+The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
+perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and, in the
+clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized the entrance
+of the police into some barricaded part of the house--the coming of
+those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese doctor for the
+hangman!
+""I have decided,"" he said deliberately, ""that you are more worthy of my
+attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve the secret
+of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely stolen some)
+should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.  The extent of the
+plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and of the English Scotland
+Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.  Therefore, gentlemen, you
+live--for the present!""
+""And you'll swing,"" came Weymouth's hoarse voice, ""in the near future!
+You and all your yellow gang!""
+""I trust not,"" was the placid reply.  ""Most of my people are safe: some
+are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed by
+different means.  Ah!""
+That last word was the only one indicative of excitement which had yet
+escaped him.  A disk of light danced among the brilliant poison hues of
+the passages--but no sound reached us; by which I knew that the glass
+door must fit almost hermetically.  It was much cooler here than in the
+place through which we had passed, and the nausea began to leave me, my
+brain to grow more clear.  Had I known what was to follow I should have
+cursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed
+for oblivion--to be spared the sight of that which ensued.
+""It's Logan!"" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell that he was
+struggling to free himself of his bonds.  From his voice it was evident
+that he, too, was recovering from the effects of the narcotic which had
+been administered to us all.
+""Logan!"" he cried.  ""Logan!  This way--HELP!""
+But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed to
+carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.
+""The door fits well,"" came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.  ""It is fortunate
+for us all that it is so.  This is my observation window, Dr. Petrie,
+and you are about to enjoy an unique opportunity of studying fungology.
+I have already drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of
+the lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
+The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves was charged
+with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly enhanced the value of
+the puff-ball in this respect.  Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the
+most obstinate subject; but he succumbed in fifteen seconds.""
+""Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!""
+Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.  Indeed, the
+situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.  A group of men
+had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore an electric
+pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray fungi to
+others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.  The
+mocking, lecture-room voice continued:
+""Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
+its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order
+empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common
+house-fly--which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of
+white mold.  I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced
+a giant species.  Observe the interesting effect of the strong light
+upon my orange and blue amanita fungus!""
+Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
+suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure
+horror.  FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
+the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress through
+the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which Fu-Manchu and his
+servant had avoided touching any of the growths.  I knew, now, that Dr.
+Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist the world had ever known; was a
+poisoner to whom the Borgias were as children--and I knew that the
+detectives blindly were walking into a valley of death.
+Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.
+Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge
+toadstool-like things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white
+ray sought them out in the darkness which alone preserved their
+existence.  A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or
+powdery--arose in the cellar.
+I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
+of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:
+I must look.
+The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim, eerily illuminated
+gloom endured scarce a second.  A bright light sprang up--doubtless at
+the touch of the fiendish being who now resumed speech:
+""Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!""  Out there, beyond the
+glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--tearing their garments
+from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--were become MANIACS!
+""We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,"" continued the
+wicked voice.  ""The air of the second cellar being super-charged with
+oxygen, they immediately germinate.  Ah!  it is a triumph!  That
+process is the scientific triumph of my life!""
+Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof, frosting the
+writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.  Before my horrified gaze,
+THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread from the head to the feet of those it
+touched; it enveloped them as in glittering shrouds. . . .
+""They die like flies!"" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile
+excitement; and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that
+that magnificent, perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal
+maniac--though Smith would never accept the theory.
+""It is my fly-trap!"" shrieked the Chinaman.  ""And I am the god of
+destruction!""
+CHAPTER XXVI
+THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
+in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes which I
+had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.  Now I knew that I
+was afloat on the river.  I still was bound: furthermore, a cloth was
+wrapped tightly about my mouth, and I was secured to a ring in the deck.
+By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily
+water; by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the
+empurpled face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
+lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.  For I
+could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.
+We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural voice of
+Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm, and my heart leaped to
+hear the voice that answered him.  It was that of Karamaneh.  His
+triumph was complete.  Clearly his plans for departure were complete;
+his slaughter of the police in the underground passages had been a
+final reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
+would have been incapable had he not known his escape from the country
+to be assured.
+What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the
+girl who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those
+enemies?  He seemed to have formed the singular determination to
+smuggle me into China--but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth,
+and in the case of Nayland Smith?
+All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.  Astern died
+the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.  Ahead hung the
+foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway; but through it
+broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.
+The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.  The launch lay
+heaving slightly upon the swells.
+A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon us through
+the haze.
+A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--a voice
+which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently beside me; heard him
+mumbling incoherently; and I knew that he, too, had recognized the
+voice.
+It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch was
+within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!
+""'Hoy!  'Hoy!""
+I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
+We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from my
+spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light of the
+police launch glowed angrily through the mist.
+I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my companions were
+equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.  Had the police seen us
+or had they hailed at random?  The light drew nearer.
+""Launch, 'hoy!""
+They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--and our
+screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank of
+darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
+But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.
+""Full speed!"" came faintly through the darkness.  ""Port!  Port!""
+Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us we
+were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward; though of this
+I was unable to judge at the time.
+On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.  Once, a black,
+towering shape dropped down upon us.  Far above, lights blazed, bells
+rang, vague cries pierced the fog.  The launch pitched and rolled
+perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had
+concluded this episode.  It was such a journey as I had taken once
+before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril; but
+this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly in
+Fu-Manchu's power.
+A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face; and Inspector
+Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly slipped the bandage
+from his mouth.
+""I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars,"" he
+whispered.  ""My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife and
+freed my ankles--""
+Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped the
+bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.  Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.  He was
+dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself on the cushions
+near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.  Now, I could see her
+face--and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe.
+Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible in the
+dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.
+""Dr. Petrie,"" he said, ""you shall be my honored guest at my home in
+China.  You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I
+fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you to
+have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.  Where
+your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
+Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate.""
+He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him in pitiful,
+abject terror.
+""In my hands, Doctor,"" he continued, ""I hold a needle charged with a
+rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli and the fungi.  You
+have seemed to display an undue interest in the peach and pearl which
+render my Karamaneh so delightful, in the supple grace of her movements
+and the sparkle of her eyes.  You can never devote your whole mind to
+those studies which I have planned for you whilst such distractions
+exist.  A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
+the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--""
+Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
+Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the
+deck--and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture,
+and Smith rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down
+together.
+Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat; with his left
+he grasped the Chinaman's right.  It held the needle.
+Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far as
+it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--the
+half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
+the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
+The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--with
+so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone broke
+the eerie stillness.
+By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
+Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.  His
+clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand with
+its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.  He had
+been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.  His powers of
+physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.  His breath was
+whistling through his nostrils significantly, but Weymouth was palpably
+tiring.
+The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort, to which
+he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity of the needle, he
+raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--and pitched him sideways.
+The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped, a
+writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over, and my
+cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.  For, as
+Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--fell back--and,
+bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
+The mist swallowed them up.
+There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
+moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
+nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.  A
+chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman, forward,
+glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.  How long
+intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle and the
+time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot pretend to
+state.
+With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued, and I
+clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--which was
+the last I saw of him.
+Water began to wash aboard.
+Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords that bound
+me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist, and I began to
+accept as a horrible and imminent possibility, a death from drowning,
+within six feet of the bank.
+Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think his
+object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.  Where he
+failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.  A silent prayer
+of thankfulness came from my very soul when I saw her stir--when I saw
+her raise her hands to her head--and saw the big, horror-bright eyes
+gleam through the mist veil.
+CHAPTER XXVII
+WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her stern
+settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon which we found
+ourselves was situated we had no idea.  But at least it was terra firma
+and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+Smith stood looking out towards the river.
+""My God!"" he groaned.  ""My God!""
+He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
+And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
+below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars was
+eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.
+""Back there in the fog, sir,"" reported Inspector Ryman, who was in
+charge, and his voice was under poor command, ""there was an uncanny
+howling, and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for
+weeks--""
+Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and
+I knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant
+strength.
+Smith swallowed noisily.
+""Pray God the river has that yellow Satan,"" he said.  ""I would
+sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body on the end of a
+grappling-iron!""
+We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
+It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so
+nearly as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last
+gallant fight.  Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the
+night been clear as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise,
+it came to me that this stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us
+back in coward retreat.
+But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous the
+stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we had matter to
+relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.
+There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.  A
+brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
+they should be lodged at a hotel.
+""I shall arrange,"" Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
+""to have the place patrolled night and day.""
+""You cannot suppose--""
+""Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my
+own eyes I have seen him so!""
+Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her brother
+away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.  I will not dwell
+upon the final scene in the poison cellars lest I be accused of
+accumulating horror for horror's sake.  Members of the fire brigade,
+helmed against contagion, brought out the bodies of the victims wrapped
+in their living shrouds. . . .
+From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.
+""What am I?  Does my poor history matter--to anyone?"" was her answer to
+questions respecting herself.
+And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.
+The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
+numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far, will
+be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.  Probably only one
+now remained in England.  They had lived in a camp in the grounds of
+the house near Windsor (which, as we had learned at the time of its
+destruction, the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his
+highway.
+Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts of
+the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
+Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the
+hulk from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
+of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.
+Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had a
+private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.  She had
+never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it, and
+could give us no information respecting its character.  It had sailed
+for China.
+""You are sure,"" asked Smith keenly, ""that it has actually left?""
+""I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route.""
+""It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger
+boat?""
+""I cannot say what were his plans.""
+In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood, we
+passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us of our
+fellow-worker.
+Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
+visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
+Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.
+""Out there in the mist,"" he concluded wearily, ""it all seemed very
+unreal.""
+""I wish to God it had been!""
+""Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
+If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his
+credit, his life had been well spent.""
+James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.  Though but four
+and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint little cottage, with
+its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees which had so lined the
+village street before motor 'buses were, was a spot as peaceful and
+secluded as any in broad England.  But another shadow lay upon it
+to-day--chilling, fearful.  An incarnate evil had come out of the dim
+East and in its dying malevolence had touched this home.
+""There are two things I don't understand about it, sir,"" continued
+Weymouth.  ""What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the
+river police heard in the fog?  And where are the bodies?""
+Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.  Smith, whose
+restless spirit granted him little repose, paused in his aimless
+wanderings about the room and looked at her.
+In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England of the
+unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend was more lean and
+nervous-looking than I had ever known him.  His long residence in Burma
+had rendered him spare and had burned his naturally dark skin to a
+coppery hue; but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
+face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.  But I knew
+that he was as fit as ever.
+""This lady may be able to answer your first question,"" he said.  ""She
+and her brother were for some time in the household of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
+In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies, was a slave.""
+Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely veiled
+distrust.  ""You don't look as though you had come from China, miss,"" he
+said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.
+""I do not come from China,"" replied Karamaneh.  ""My father was a pure
+Bedawee.  But my history does not matter."" (At times there was
+something imperious in her manner; and to this her musical accent added
+force.) ""When your brave brother, Inspector Weymouth, and Dr.
+Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned
+needle in his hand.  The laughter meant that the needle had done its
+work.  Your brother had become mad!""
+Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  ""What was on the needle?""
+he asked huskily.
+""It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp
+adder,"" she answered.  ""It produces madness, but not always death.""
+""He would have had a poor chance,"" said Smith, ""even had he been in
+complete possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we
+must have been some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was
+impenetrable.""
+""But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies have
+been recovered?""
+""Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point are
+not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later.""
+There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that tragic
+happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated poor Mrs.
+Weymouth.
+""She hasn't been told half the truth,"" said her brother-in-law. ""She
+doesn't know about--the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this
+Dr. Fu-Manchu?"" He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.
+""John never told me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the
+papers.  What was he?  Who was he?""
+Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.
+""Dr. Fu-Manchu,"" replied the former, ""was the ultimate expression of
+Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many
+generations.  He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he
+willed, could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in
+some parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar
+conditions (one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an
+evil spirit of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born
+infant.  All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the
+genealogy of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help
+me in this.  But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a
+certain very old Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I
+have mentioned prevailed at his birth!""
+Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly, and quite
+mirthlessly.
+""Poor old Weymouth!"" he jerked.  ""I suppose my labors are finished; but
+I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in Mrs. Weymouth's
+condition?""
+""Very little,"" was the reply; ""she has lain in a semi-conscious state
+since the news came.  No one had any idea she would take it so.  At one
+time we were afraid her brain was going.  She seemed to have delusions.""
+Smith spun round upon Weymouth.
+""Of what nature?"" he asked rapidly.
+The other pulled nervously at his mustache.
+""My wife has been staying with her,"" he explained, ""since--it happened;
+and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at the
+same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door.""
+""What door?""
+""That door yonder--the street door.""
+All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.
+""John often came home at half-past two from the Yard,"" continued
+Weymouth; ""so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
+But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
+and she was wide awake at half-past two.""
+""Well?""
+Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.
+""She heard it, too!""
+The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room; but I will
+confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.  Karamaneh laid her
+hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion peculiarly her own.  Her
+hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.  For Karamaneh was not a
+child, but a rarely beautiful girl--a pearl of the East such as many a
+monarch has fought for.
+""What then?"" asked Smith.
+""She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!""
+My friend turned and stared hard at me.
+""A subjective hallucination, Petrie?""
+""In all probability,"" I replied.  ""You should arrange that your wife be
+relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.  It is too great a strain
+for an inexperienced nurse.""
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how little had
+we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother (who were victims
+and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's) not one of the formidable
+group had fallen alive into our hands.  Dreadful crimes had marked
+Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.  Not one-half of the truth (and
+nothing of the later developments) had been made public.  Nayland
+Smith's authority was sufficient to control the press.
+In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
+the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly
+evil--existed in our midst.
+Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great
+waterway.  There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames
+had claimed him, who so long had used the stream as a highway for the
+passage to and fro for his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men
+who had been the instruments of his evil will; gone was the giant
+intellect which had controlled the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh,
+whose beauty he had used as a lure, at last was free, and no more with
+her smile would tempt men to death--that her brother might live.
+Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with
+horror.  I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite
+differently.  No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.
+Many, having looked into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I
+found, must have forgiven her almost any crime.
+That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.  Her
+nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude not
+condonable in a European equally cultured.
+But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
+in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my
+short-sighted Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite;
+her beauty of a kind that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies
+of Eastern poets.  Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its
+appeal; her lips, even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is
+West and West is East.
+Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful
+self-possession of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected
+girl--in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
+At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself to
+Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful eyes
+were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.  Shall I endeavor
+to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?  It would be
+useless, since I know it to be impossible.  For in those dark eyes
+burned a fire I might not see; those silken lashes veiled a message I
+dared not read.
+Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
+I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance
+who, having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.
+We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
+of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy of
+unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety; and I took a
+gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely companion everywhere
+excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare a thing in nature is a
+really beautiful woman.
+One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water colors in
+Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested in the subjects of the
+drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.  As usual, she furnished matter
+for comment amongst the other visitors, as did the boy, Aziz, her
+brother, anew upon the world from his living grave in the house of Dr.
+Fu-Manchu.
+Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in
+Arabic.  I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and
+wild-eyed--the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.
+She turned to me.
+""Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!""
+""Where?""
+Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
+from the picture which he was examining.
+""In this room!"" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about
+her.  ""Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely
+afraid.  Oh, can it be that he is not dead!""
+She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
+velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors; and
+Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
+nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the
+white race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme
+intensity.
+Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been that
+of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape, with
+the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait, which I can
+only liken to that of an awkward cat?
+Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I
+saw Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer
+room.  Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.
+As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness coat
+and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair and a patriarchal
+beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly, leaning upon a stick.
+Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh, he made
+off across the room.
+Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?
+Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's
+iron grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the
+Thames.  Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last
+victim.  Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information
+furnished by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of
+the murder group.  But everything pointed to the fact that the group
+was disbanded and dispersed; that the lord of strange deaths who had
+ruled it was no more.
+Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess, was I. Every
+port was watched; and in suspected districts a kind of house-to-house
+patrol had been instituted.  Unknown to the great public, in those days
+a secret war waged--a war in which all the available forces of the
+authorities took the field against one man!  But that one man was the
+evil of the East incarnate.
+When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
+at the door.  He turned to me.
+""That is Professor Jenner Monde,"" he said.  ""The sergeant, here, knows
+him well.""
+The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
+although I had never before set eyes upon him.
+""The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir,"" stated the
+commissionaire.  ""I often used to see him.  But he's an eccentric old
+gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.  He's recently back
+from China, I think.""
+Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable
+hesitation.  I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that
+her cheeks were regaining their natural color.
+She smiled in pathetic apology.
+""If he was here he is gone,"" she said.  ""I am not afraid now.""
+Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we quitted the
+gallery.
+""Professor Jenner Monde,"" muttered my friend, ""has lived so long in
+China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him--never seen
+him, before; but I wonder--""
+""You wonder what, Smith?""
+""I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!""
+I stared at him in amazement.
+""If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all,"" I said,
+""we must remember that the boy's impression--and Karamaneh's--was that
+Fu-Manchu was present in person.""
+""I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
+sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
+organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence of a
+creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.  I shall make
+a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde.""
+But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made his
+proposed call upon the Professor.
+Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel (which was
+watched night and day by four men under Smith's orders), we returned to
+my quiet suburban rooms.
+""First,"" said Smith, ""let us see what we can find out respecting
+Professor Monde.""
+He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.  There
+followed some little delay before the requisite information was
+obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor was
+something of a recluse, having few acquaintances, and fewer friends.
+He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.  A charwoman
+did such cleaning as was considered necessary by the Professor, who
+employed no regular domestic.  When he was in London he might be seen
+fairly frequently at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was
+familiar to the officials.  When he was not in London--that is, during
+the greater part of each year--no one knew where he went.  He never
+left any address to which letters might be forwarded.
+""How long has he been in London now?"" asked Smith.
+So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland
+Yard) roughly a week.
+My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
+The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
+mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.  He
+was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts hanging from
+the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor with smoldering
+fragments.
+A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.
+""Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir.""
+""Hullo!"" rapped Smith.  ""What's this?""
+Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects singularly like
+his brother, in others as singularly unlike.  Now, in his black suit,
+he was a somber figure; and in the blue eyes I read a fear suppressed.
+""Mr. Smith,"" he began, ""there's something uncanny going on at Maple
+Cottage.""
+Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.
+""Sit down, Mr. Weymouth,"" he said.  ""I am not entirely surprised.  But
+you have my attention.  What has occurred?""
+Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured out
+a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.
+""That knocking,"" he explained.  ""It came again the night after you were
+there, and Mrs. Weymouth--my wife, I mean--felt that she couldn't spend
+another night there, alone.""
+""Did she look out of the window?"" I asked.
+""No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs in the
+sitting-room--and _I_ looked out!""
+He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on the edge of
+the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand, was watching him keenly.
+""I'll admit I didn't look out at once,"" Weymouth resumed.  ""There was
+something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking--knocking--in the
+dead of the night.  I thought""--his voice shook--""of poor Jack, lying
+somewhere amongst the slime of the river--and, oh, my God!  it came to
+me that it was Jack who was knocking--and I dare not think what
+he--what it--would look like!""
+He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we were all
+silent.
+""I know I funked,"" he continued huskily.  ""But when the wife came to
+the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  'There it is again.  What
+in heaven's name can it be'--I started to unbolt the door.  The
+knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.  I heard Mary--HIS
+widow--sobbing, upstairs; that was all.  I opened the door, a little
+bit at a time.""
+Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:
+""It was a bright night, and there was no one there--not a soul.  But
+somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard most
+awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then--I could have sworn
+I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that; and I shut the
+door again.""
+The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
+fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
+and drained it.
+Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace the room
+again.  His eyes were literally on fire.
+""Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house before
+to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?"" he asked abruptly.
+Weymouth looked up in surprise.
+""She seems to be in a very low state,"" he replied.  He glanced at me.
+""Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?""
+""I will come and see her,"" I said.  ""But what is your idea, Smith?""
+""I want to hear that knocking!"" he rapped.  ""But in what I may see fit
+to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman.""
+""Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,""
+I suggested.  ""That would meet the situation?""
+""Good!"" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.  ""I rely upon you
+to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth""--he turned to our
+visitor--""I shall be with you this evening not later than twelve
+o'clock.""
+Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him to wait whilst I
+prepared a draught for the patient.  When he was gone:
+""What do you think this knocking means, Smith?"" I asked.
+He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
+energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.
+""I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie,"" he replied--""nor what I
+fear.""
+CHAPTER XXIX
+DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple
+Cottage.  Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the
+character of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road
+along which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
+to a rickety fence.
+My friend peered through a gap in the latter.
+""There is quite an extensive estate here,"" he said, ""not yet cut up by
+the builder.  It is well wooded on one side, and there appears to be a
+pool lower down.""
+The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread--quite
+unmistakable--of an approaching policeman.  Smith continued to peer
+through the hole in the fence, until the officer drew up level with us.
+Then:
+""Does this piece of ground extend down to the village, constable?"" he
+inquired.
+Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
+thrust in his belt.
+""Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
+between here and the hill.""
+""It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?""
+""I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.  But after
+dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would ever be the wiser.""
+""Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?""
+""Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching loaves and
+bottles of milk from the doors, first thing, as they're delivered.
+There's been an extra lot of it lately.  My mate who relieves me has
+got special instructions to keep his eye open in the mornings!""  The
+man grinned.  ""It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught
+anybody!"" ""No,"" said Smith absently; ""perhaps not.  Your business must
+be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night.""
+""Good-night, sir,"" replied the constable, richer by half-a-crown--""and
+thank you.""
+Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
+of his ear.
+""I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all,"" he murmured.
+""Come on, Petrie.""
+Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple
+Cottage.  There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting
+Smith.  He touched his hat.
+""Have you found a suitable hiding-place?"" asked my companion rapidly.
+""Yes, sir,"" was the reply.  ""Kent--my mate--is there now.  You'll
+notice that he can't be seen from here.""
+""No,"" agreed Smith, peering all about him.  ""He can't. Where is he?""
+""Behind the broken wall,"" explained the man, pointing.  ""Through that
+ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door.""
+""Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to be
+intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
+You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
+Should he come--hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can.""
+We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's
+ringing came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.
+""First,"" said my friend briskly, ""you had better run up and see the
+patient.""
+Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his wife
+to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay, a wanly
+pathetic sight.
+""Did you administer the draught, as directed?"" I asked.
+Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman, with the
+same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked in her
+husband's blue ones.
+The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave
+to the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm
+night, and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light
+from the lamp on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his
+brother; and for a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able
+to trust my reason.  Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the
+illusion was lost.
+""Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?"" he asked.
+""I think not,"" I replied.
+Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
+foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
+with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.
+At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar (which I
+never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.  I think Smith used
+more matches than any other smoker I have ever met, and he invariably
+carried three boxes in various pockets of his garments.
+The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair, I
+lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared with a
+bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.  I settled
+down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.
+Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh which
+whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
+match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.  Yet I
+could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon which
+I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.  It was
+as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
+This was the sentence:
+""Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
+like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
+magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel
+cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant
+intellect. . .""
+Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that
+night which now seemed so remotely distant--the night upon which I had
+learned of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that
+secret quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.
+As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar of
+the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.
+""Two,"" said James Weymouth.
+I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that
+I had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.
+I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick
+room.  All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the
+patient still slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing
+about the room in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him
+in the approach of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze
+dropped entirely, and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could
+not have supposed possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the
+great metropolis.  Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He
+sat at the window and looked out into the black shadows under the
+cedars.  Smith ceased his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.
+He was listening!  I doubt not we were all listening.
+Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the
+direction of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite
+disturbance, brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
+Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.  In the darkness
+I heard his teeth snap sharply together.
+The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.
+I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or
+bearing what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were
+incomprehensible to me, nor had I pressed him for any explanation of
+their nature, knowing him to be in that high-strung and somewhat
+irritable mood which claimed him at times of uncertainty--when he
+doubted the wisdom of his actions, the accuracy of his surmises.  He
+gave no sign.
+Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze stole
+again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must be in a new
+quarter since I had not heard the clock before.  In so lonely a spot it
+was difficult to believe that the bell was that of St. Paul's. Yet such
+was the fact.
+And hard upon the ringing followed another sound--a sound we all had
+expected, had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think,
+retained complete mastery of himself.
+Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it
+came--an imperative knocking on the door!
+""My God!"" groaned Weymouth--but he did not move from his position at
+the window.
+""Stand by, Petrie!"" said Smith.
+He strode to the door--and threw it widely open.
+I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back--retreated
+with clenched hands from before THAT which stood on the threshold.
+It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring
+eyes.  With its hands it clutched at its hair--at its chin; plucked at
+its mouth.  No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly
+visitant, but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming
+teeth--and the wildly glaring eyes.
+It began to laugh--peal after peal--hideous and shrill.
+Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.  I was palsied by
+the horror of the sound.
+Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he
+carried.  He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in
+the doorway.
+""Oh, God!"" cried Weymouth.  ""It's John!""--and again and again: ""Oh,
+God!  Oh, God!""
+Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I could
+not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.  I am ashamed
+to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.  James Weymouth
+raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him that awful thing in the
+door.  He was babbling--prayers, I think, but wholly incoherent.
+""Hold him, Petrie!""
+Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent
+action, he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a
+crisis over, he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who
+slept above.)
+He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with the one who
+had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh and blood--a man who
+shrieked and fought like a savage animal, foamed at the mouth and
+gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy; knew him for a madman--knew him for
+the victim of Fu-Manchu--not dead, but living--for Inspector
+Weymouth--a maniac!
+In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.  There
+was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been watching
+outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them; and the
+five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped the fact that a
+man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst) clung to the
+infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.
+""The syringe, Petrie!"" gasped Smith.  ""Quick!  You must manage to make
+an injection!""
+I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.  A
+hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me at Smith's
+request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could find time to admire the
+wonderful foresight of my friend, who had divined what would
+befall--isolated the strange, pitiful truth from the chaotic
+circumstances which saw us at Maple Cottage that night.
+Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.  At one time I
+despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor, demented creature.
+But at last it was done; and the gaunt, blood-stained savage whom we
+had known as Detective-Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in
+his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius
+of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
+and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.
+Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
+tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be the messenger
+from Scotland Yard.
+""Well?"" he rapped.
+""He is arrested, sir,"" the detective reported.  ""They have kept him at
+his chambers as you ordered.""
+""Has she slept through it?"" said Smith to me.  (I had just returned
+from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.
+""Is HE safe for an hour or two?""--indicating the figure on the couch.
+""For eight or ten,"" I replied grimly.
+""Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete.""
+CHAPTER XXX
+LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived a
+wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land which
+lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
+Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
+had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to
+steal, as we learned when his lair was discovered.
+He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen
+him, in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the
+object of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped
+death in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
+but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each
+morning (a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old
+custom) will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of
+alienation.
+I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.
+In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
+through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
+Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission, knew
+that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
+placed in him by the highest authorities.
+We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student, a traveler and a
+crank--by a plain-clothes officer.  Amid picturesque and disordered
+fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a
+towering statue of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
+and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.  But his
+expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses which he wore.
+Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.
+""We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"" reported the
+man who had opened the door.  ""He has made no statement.  I hope there
+isn't a mistake.""
+""I hope not,"" rapped Smith.
+He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
+Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig--dashed
+the smoked glasses upon the floor.
+A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
+themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.
+IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!
+One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed to throb.
+Then:
+""What have you done with Professor Monde?"" demanded Smith.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
+smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled as
+a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled to say
+that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.
+""He has been detained in China,"" he replied, in smooth, sibilant
+tones--""by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known personality and
+ungregarious habits have served me well, here!""
+Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at
+his ear and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering
+detectives.
+""What are we to do, sir?"" one of them asked.
+""Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you.""
+The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.
+""Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?"" rapped Smith abruptly.  ""I cannot
+save you from the hangman, nor""--his fists clenched convulsively--""would
+I if I could; but--""
+Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.
+""Say no more, Mr. Smith,"" he interrupted; ""you misunderstand me.  I do
+not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction and what I
+have done of necessity are separated--are seas apart.  The brave
+Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle, in self-defense;
+but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.  I respect such a man.
+There is an antidote to the poison of the needle.""
+""Name it,"" said Smith.
+Fu-Manchu smiled again.
+""Useless,"" he replied.  ""I alone can prepare it.  My secrets shall die
+with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth, but no one else
+shall be in the house but he and I.""
+""It will be surrounded by police,"" interrupted Smith grimly.
+""As you please,"" said Fu-Manchu. ""Make your arrangements.  In that
+ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.  Arrange
+for me to visit him where and when you will--""
+""I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick,"" jerked Smith.
+Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.  His
+manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
+He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his
+piercing gaze upon Nayland Smith.
+""The God of Cathay hear me,"" he said, with a deep, guttural note in his
+voice--""I swear--""
+The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the
+end of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic--terrible--inexplicable.
+Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird being had conceived
+some kind of admiration or respect for the man to whom he had wrought
+so terrible an injury.  He was capable of such sentiments, for he
+entertained some similar one in regard to myself.
+A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant,
+and in the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre
+happenings.  Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed
+there (Smith having secured the key from the astonished agent). I
+suppose so strange a specialist never visited a patient
+before--certainly not under such conditions.
+For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring of
+police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which, his
+work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!
+Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the
+enemy of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!
+No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come; no
+concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master; but
+within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those miracles of
+science which in other circumstances had made the fame of Dr. Fu-Manchu
+to live forever.
+Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head as a man who
+has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--but sane--sane!--walked
+out into the porch!
+He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome wildness
+of insanity.
+""Mr. Smith!"" he cried--and staggered down the path--""Dr. Petrie!
+What--""
+There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window of the
+deserted cottage flames burst forth!
+""QUICK!"" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--""into the house!""
+He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood swaying there
+like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.  Behind me came the
+police.
+The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat, borne
+upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.  We burst a
+window.  The room within was a furnace!
+""My God!"" cried someone.  ""This is supernatural!""
+""Listen!"" cried another.  ""Listen!""
+The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day or night, out
+of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.  But upon all descended
+a pall of silence.
+From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice
+raised, not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically--and
+was still.
+The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.
+""The alarm!"" said Smith hoarsely.  ""Call up the brigade!""
+I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a
+trust--the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
+command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as
+I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write
+Finis to the end of my narrative.
+It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
+have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred
+phases.  One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic
+and Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
+pretend to state.
+The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.
+I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my
+work; for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader
+burdened is shared by the writer.
+With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor Jenner
+Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage; I have made the
+pace hot in order to impart to these last pages of my account something
+of the breathless scurry which characterized those happenings.
+My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.  No
+hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
+Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
+mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
+the place in flames.
+And then?
+To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity which
+pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes which held NO
+TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!
+It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of Fu-Manchu's
+having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?  Was there no loophole of
+escape?
+I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce have
+quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had, in some
+incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency, produced those
+abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.  Did he voluntarily ignite his own
+funeral pyre?
+As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
+It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
+illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this
+day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.
+When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where
+Weymouth found it calls for no explanation:
+""To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--
+""Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.  In much
+that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I have done I would undo;
+some little I have undone.  Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of
+a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my
+ashes.  I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.
+""FU-MANCHU.""
+Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man who penned
+that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter of a madman bent
+upon self-destruction by strange means, or the gibe of a
+preternaturally clever scientist and the most elusive being ever born
+of the land of mystery--China.
+For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
+A day may come--though I pray it do not--when I shall be able to throw
+new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
+can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
+therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.
+But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story which I can
+contemplate with a different countenance.  How, then, shall I conclude
+this very unsatisfactory account?
+Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed
+Karamaneh, on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?
+No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:
+""_I_ sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
+journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
+Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!""",The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu,Sax Rohmer,200,['Fu Manchu']
+"[Illustration]
+Trent’s Last Case
+THE WOMAN IN BLACK
+By E.C. Bentley
+To
+GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON.
+My dear Gilbert,
+I dedicate this story to you. First: because the only really noble
+motive I had in writing it was the hope that you would enjoy it.
+Second: because I owe you a book in return for “The Man Who Was
+Thursday.” Third: because I said I would when I unfolded the plan of it
+to you, surrounded by Frenchmen, two years ago. Fourth: because I
+remember the past.
+I have been thinking again to-day of those astonishing times when
+neither of us ever looked at a newspaper; when we were purely happy in
+the boundless consumption of paper, pencils, tea, and our elders’
+patience; when we embraced the most severe literature, and ourselves
+produced such light reading as was necessary; when (in the words of
+Canada’s poet) we studied the works of nature, also those little frogs;
+when, in short, we were extremely young. For the sake of that age I
+offer you this book.
+Yours always,
+E. C. BENTLEY
+Contents
+I. Bad News
+II. Knocking the Town Endways
+III. Breakfast
+IV. Handcuffs in the Air
+V. Poking About
+VI. Mr. Bunner on the Case
+VII. The Lady in Black
+VIII. The Inquest
+IX. A Hot Scent
+X. The Wife of Dives
+XI. Hitherto Unpublished
+XII. Evil Days
+XIII. Eruption
+XIV. Writing a Letter
+XV. Double Cunning
+XVI. The Last Straw
+[Illustration]
+Chapter I.
+Bad News
+Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we
+know judge wisely?
+When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered
+by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single
+tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity
+of such wealth as this dead man had piled up—without making one loyal
+friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to
+the least honour. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those
+living in the great vortices of business as if the earth too shuddered
+under a blow.
+In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no
+figure that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world.
+He had a niche apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct
+and augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in
+millions for their labour, had existed before; but in the case of
+Manderson there had been this singularity, that a pale halo of
+piratical romance, a thing especially dear to the hearts of his
+countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head through the years
+when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability,
+the stamper-out of manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding
+chieftains that infest the borders of Wall Street.
+The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those
+chieftains on the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with
+accretion through his father, who during a long life had quietly
+continued to lend money and never had margined a stock. Manderson, who
+had at no time known what it was to be without large sums to his hand,
+should have been altogether of that newer American plutocracy which is
+steadied by the tradition and habit of great wealth. But it was not so.
+While his nurture and education had taught him European ideas of a rich
+man’s proper external circumstance; while they had rooted in him an
+instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which does not
+shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
+him nevertheless much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his
+forbear. During that first period of his business career which had been
+called his early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of
+genius, his hand against every man’s—an infant prodigy—who brought to
+the enthralling pursuit of speculation a brain better endowed than any
+opposed to it. At St Helena it was laid down that war is _une belle
+occupation;_ and so the young Manderson had found the multitudinous and
+complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New York.
+Then came his change. At his father’s death, when Manderson was thirty
+years old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god he
+served seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic
+adaptability of his nation he turned to steady labour in his father’s
+banking business, closing his ears to the sound of the battles of the
+Street. In a few years he came to control all the activity of the great
+firm whose unimpeached conservatism, safety, and financial weight
+lifted it like a cliff above the angry sea of the markets. All mistrust
+founded on the performances of his youth had vanished. He was quite
+plainly a different man. How the change came about none could with
+authority say, but there was a story of certain last words spoken by
+his father, whom alone he had respected and perhaps loved.
+He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was
+current in the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of
+Manderson called up a vision of all that was broad-based and firm in
+the vast wealth of the United States. He planned great combinations of
+capital, drew together and centralized industries of continental scope,
+financed with unerring judgement the large designs of state or of
+private enterprise. Many a time when he “took hold” to smash a strike,
+or to federate the ownership of some great field of labour, he sent
+ruin upon a multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or steelworkers or
+cattlemen defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more lawless and
+ruthless than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate
+business ends. Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but
+the financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a
+hand to protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of
+the country. Forcible, cold, and unerring, in all he did he ministered
+to the national lust for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him
+the Colossus.
+But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
+unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants
+and certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little
+circle knew that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability
+in the markets, had his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when
+the Street had trembled at his name. It was, said one of them, as if
+Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the
+spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly out,
+the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his
+hatband. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous
+raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of
+the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never
+carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within
+him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of
+“Spanish Ladies”, perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow
+himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had
+gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets a coup worth a
+million to the depredator might have been made. “Seems to me,” he would
+say almost wistfully, “the Street is getting to be a mighty dull place
+since I quit.” By slow degrees this amiable weakness of the Colossus
+became known to the business world, which exulted greatly in the
+knowledge.
+At the news of his death panic went through the markets like a
+hurricane; for it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed
+like towers in an earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous
+inferno of pale despair. All over the United States, wherever
+speculation had its devotees, went a waft of ruin, a plague of suicide.
+In Europe also not a few took with their own hands lives that had
+become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom most of them
+had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out of the
+Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
+Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the
+Cathedral top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower.
+Men stabbed and shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed
+it as the air, because in a lonely corner of England the life had
+departed from one cold heart vowed to the service of greed.
+The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came
+when Wall Street was in a condition of suppressed “scare”—suppressed,
+because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be
+actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the
+effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his
+plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen
+at a time when the market had been “boosted” beyond its real strength.
+In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the
+corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or three railway
+statements which had been expected to be much better than they were.
+But at whatever point in the vast area of speculation the shudder of
+the threatened break had been felt, “the Manderson crowd” had stepped
+in and held the market up. All through the week the speculator’s mind,
+as shallow as it is quick-witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in
+this the hand of the giant stretched out in protection from afar.
+Manderson, said the newspapers in chorus, was in hourly communication
+with his lieutenants in the Street. One journal was able to give in
+round figures the sum spent on cabling between New York and Marlstone
+in the past twenty-four hours; it told how a small staff of expert
+operators had been sent down by the Post Office authorities to
+Marlstone to deal with the flood of messages. Another revealed that
+Manderson, on the first news of the Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon
+his holiday and return home by the _Lusitania;_ but that he soon had
+the situation so well in hand that he had determined to remain where he
+was.
+All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the
+“finance editors”, consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd
+business men of the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better
+help their plans than this illusion of hero-worship—knew also that no
+word had come from Manderson in answer to their messages, and that
+Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron fame, was the true organizer of
+victory. So they fought down apprehension through four feverish days,
+and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the ground beneath the feet
+of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with Etna-mutterings of
+disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was firm, and
+slowly advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn out
+but thankfully at peace.
+In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the
+sixty acres of the financial district. It came into being as the
+lightning comes—a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be
+suspected that it was first whispered over the telephone—together with
+an urgent selling order by some employee in the cable service. A sharp
+spasm convulsed the convalescent share-list. In five minutes the dull
+noise of the kerbstone market in Broad Street had leapt to a high note
+of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself
+could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed hatless in and
+out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
+trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous “short”
+interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news
+came of a sudden and ruinous collapse of “Yankees” in London at the
+close of the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four
+hours’ trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson
+as the saviour and warden of the markets had recoiled upon its authors
+with annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone,
+listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had
+lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and
+falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding
+of Manderson’s body, with the inevitable rumour that it was suicide,
+was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached
+Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B.
+Jeffrey and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its
+breath.
+All this sprang out of nothing.
+Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had
+not ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave
+power to a myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the
+herds were unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various
+servitudes to which they were born, and chafed not more than usual in
+their bonds. Bellona tossed and murmured as ever, yet still slept her
+uneasy sleep. To all mankind save a million or two of half-crazed
+gamblers, blind to all reality, the death of Manderson meant nothing;
+the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before he died strong
+hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of commerce
+and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his
+countrymen had made a strange discovery—that the existence of the
+potent engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson
+had not been a condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew
+itself out in two days, the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts
+withdrew out of sight; the market “recovered a normal tone”.
+While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic
+scandal in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents.
+Next morning the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a
+notable politician was shot down in cold blood by his wife’s brother in
+the streets of New Orleans. Within a week of its rising, “the Manderson
+story”, to the trained sense of editors throughout the Union, was
+“cold”. The tide of American visitors pouring through Europe made
+eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man who had died in
+poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat. Like the
+poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was
+buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of
+Manderson’s people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery
+under the Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever will be, to stand
+in reverence by the rich man’s grave beside the little church of
+Marlstone.
+Chapter II.
+Knocking the Town Endways
+In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the _Record,_
+the telephone on Sir James Molloy’s table buzzed. Sir James made a
+motion with his pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and
+came over to the instrument.
+“Who is that?” he said. “Who?... I can’t hear you.... Oh, it’s Mr.
+Bunner, is it?... Yes, but... I know, but he’s fearfully busy this
+afternoon. Can’t you... Oh, really? Well, in that case—just hold on,
+will you?”
+He placed the receiver before Sir James. “It’s Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
+Manderson’s right-hand man,” he said concisely. “He insists on speaking
+to you personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking
+from the house down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak
+clearly.”
+Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
+receiver. “Well?” he said in his strong voice, and listened. “Yes,” he
+said. The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of
+amazement and horror. “Good God!” murmured Sir James. Clutching the
+instrument, he slowly rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At
+intervals he repeated “Yes.” Presently, as he listened, he glanced at
+the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr. Silver over the top of the
+transmitter. “Go and hunt up Figgis and young Williams. Hurry.” Mr.
+Silver darted from the room.
+The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty,
+swart and black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well
+known in the world, which he understood very thoroughly, and played
+upon with the half-cynical competence of his race. Yet was he without a
+touch of the charlatan: he made no mysteries, and no pretences of
+knowledge, and he saw instantly through these in others. In his
+handsome, well-bred, well-dressed appearance there was something a
+little sinister when anger or intense occupation put its imprint about
+his eyes and brow; but when his generous nature was under no restraint
+he was the most cordial of men. He was managing director of the company
+which owned that most powerful morning paper, the _Record,_ and also
+that most indispensable evening paper, the _Sun,_ which had its offices
+on the other side of the street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of
+the _Record,_ to which he had in the course of years attached the most
+variously capable personnel in the country. It was a maxim of his that
+where you could not get gifts, you must do the best you could with
+solid merit; and he employed a great deal of both. He was respected by
+his staff as few are respected in a profession not favourable to the
+growth of the sentiment of reverence.
+“You’re sure that’s all?” asked Sir James, after a few minutes of
+earnest listening and questioning. “And how long has this been
+known?... Yes, of course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it’s
+all over the place down there by now.... Well, we’ll have a try....
+Look here, Bunner, I’m infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you
+a good turn. You know I mean what I say. Come and see me the first day
+you get to town.... All right, that’s understood. Now I must act on
+your news. Goodbye.”
+Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the
+rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it
+down with a forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed
+by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
+“I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,” said Sir James, banishing
+all signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. “When you
+have them, put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special
+edition of the _Sun_.” The hard-featured man nodded and glanced at the
+clock, which pointed to a few minutes past three; he pulled out a
+notebook and drew a chair up to the big writing-table. “Silver,” Sir
+James went on, “go and tell Jones to wire our local correspondent very
+urgently, to drop everything and get down to Marlstone at once. He is
+not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an unnecessary word
+about this news until the _Sun_ is on the streets with it—you all
+understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
+himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town
+endways. Just tell him that he must take all measures and precautions
+for a scoop. Say that Figgis will be over in five minutes with the
+facts, and that he had better let him write up the story in his private
+room. As you go, ask Miss Morgan to see me here at once, and tell the
+telephone people to see if they can get Mr. Trent on the wire for me.
+After seeing Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by.” The alert-eyed
+young man vanished like a spirit.
+Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over
+the paper. “Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered,” he began quickly and
+clearly, pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis
+scratched down a line of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had
+been told that the day was fine—the pose of his craft. “He and his wife
+and two secretaries have been for the past fortnight at the house
+called White Gables, at Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. He bought it
+four years ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since spent a part of each
+summer there. Last night he went to bed about half-past eleven, just as
+usual. No one knows when he got up and left the house. He was not
+missed until this morning. About ten o’clock his body was found by a
+gardener. It was lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the
+head, through the left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The
+body was not robbed, but there were marks on the wrists which pointed
+to a struggle having taken place. Dr Stock, of Marlstone, was at once
+sent for, and will conduct the post-mortem examination. The police from
+Bishopsbridge, who were soon on the spot, are reticent, but it is
+believed that they are quite without a clue to the identity of the
+murderer. There you are, Figgis. Mr. Anthony is expecting you. Now I
+must telephone him and arrange things.”
+Mr. Figgis looked up. “One of the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,”
+he suggested, “has been put in charge of the case. It’s a safe
+statement.”
+“If you like,” said Sir James.
+“And Mrs. Manderson? Was she there?”
+“Yes. What about her?”
+“Prostrated by the shock,” hinted the reporter, “and sees nobody. Human
+interest.”
+“I wouldn’t put that in, Mr. Figgis,” said a quiet voice. It belonged
+to Miss Morgan, a pale, graceful woman, who had silently made her
+appearance while the dictation was going on. “I have seen Mrs.
+Manderson,” she proceeded, turning to Sir James. “She looks quite
+healthy and intelligent. Has her husband been murdered? I don’t think
+the shock would prostrate her. She is more likely to be doing all she
+can to help the police.”
+“Something in your own style, then, Miss Morgan,” he said with a
+momentary smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb.
+“Cut it out, Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect you know what I
+want.”
+“Our Manderson biography happens to be well up to date,” replied Miss
+Morgan, drooping her dark eyelashes as she considered the position. “I
+was looking over it only a few months ago. It is practically ready for
+tomorrow’s paper. I should think the _Sun_ had better use the sketch of
+his life they had about two years ago, when he went to Berlin and
+settled the potash difficulty. I remember it was a very good sketch,
+and they won’t be able to carry much more than that. As for our paper,
+of course we have a great quantity of cuttings, mostly rubbish. The
+sub-editors shall have them as soon as they come in. Then we have two
+very good portraits that are our own property; the best is a drawing
+Mr. Trent made when they were both on the same ship somewhere. It is
+better than any of the photographs; but you say the public prefers a
+bad photograph to a good drawing. I will send them down to you at once,
+and you can choose. As far as I can see, the Record is well ahead of
+the situation, except that you will not be able to get a special man
+down there in time to be of any use for tomorrow’s paper.”
+Sir James sighed deeply. “What are we good for, anyhow?” he enquired
+dejectedly of Mr. Silver, who had returned to his desk. “She even knows
+Bradshaw by heart.”
+Miss Morgan adjusted her cuffs with an air of patience. “Is there
+anything else?” she asked, as the telephone bell rang.
+“Yes, one thing,” replied Sir James, as he took up the receiver. “I
+want you to make a bad mistake some time, Miss Morgan—an everlasting
+bloomer—just to put us in countenance.” She permitted herself the
+fraction of what would have been a charming smile as she went out.
+“Anthony?” asked Sir James, and was at once deep in consultation with
+the editor on the other side of the road. He seldom entered the _Sun_
+building in person; the atmosphere of an evening paper, he would say,
+was all very well if you liked that kind of thing. Mr. Anthony, the
+Murat of Fleet Street, who delighted in riding the whirlwind and
+fighting a tumultuous battle against time, would say the same of a
+morning paper.
+It was some five minutes later that a uniformed boy came in to say that
+Mr. Trent was on the wire. Sir James abruptly closed his talk with Mr.
+Anthony.
+“They can put him through at once,” he said to the boy.
+“Hullo!” he cried into the telephone after a few moments.
+A voice in the instrument replied, “Hullo be blowed! What do you want?”
+“This is Molloy,” said Sir James.
+“I know it is,” the voice said. “This is Trent. He is in the middle of
+painting a picture, and he has been interrupted at a critical moment.
+Well, I hope it’s something important, that’s all!”
+“Trent,” said Sir James impressively, “it is important. I want you to
+do some work for us.”
+“Some play, you mean,” replied the voice. “Believe me, I don’t want a
+holiday. The working fit is very strong. I am doing some really decent
+things. Why can’t you leave a man alone?”
+“Something very serious has happened.”
+“What?”
+“Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered—shot through the brain—and they
+don’t know who has done it. They found the body this morning. It
+happened at his place near Bishopsbridge.” Sir James proceeded to tell
+his hearer, briefly and clearly, the facts that he had communicated to
+Mr. Figgis. “What do you think of it?” he ended. A considering grunt
+was the only answer. “Come now,” urged Sir James.
+“Tempter!”
+“You will go down?”
+There was a brief pause.
+“Are you there?” said Sir James.
+“Look here, Molloy,” the voice broke out querulously, “the thing may be
+a case for me, or it may not. We can’t possibly tell. It may be a
+mystery; it may be as simple as bread and cheese. The body not being
+robbed looks interesting, but he may have been outed by some wretched
+tramp whom he found sleeping in the grounds and tried to kick out. It’s
+the sort of thing he would do. Such a murderer might easily have sense
+enough to know that to leave the money and valuables was the safest
+thing. I tell you frankly, I wouldn’t have a hand in hanging a poor
+devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a measure
+of social protest.”
+Sir James smiled at the telephone—a smile of success. “Come, my boy,
+you’re getting feeble. Admit you want to go and have a look at the
+case. You know you do. If it’s anything you don’t want to handle,
+you’re free to drop it. By the by, where are you?”
+“I am blown along a wandering wind,” replied the voice irresolutely,
+“and hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.”
+“Can you get here within an hour?” persisted Sir James.
+“I suppose I can,” the voice grumbled. “How much time have I?”
+“Good man! Well, there’s time enough—that’s just the worst of it. I’ve
+got to depend on our local correspondent for tonight. The only good
+train of the day went half an hour ago. The next is a slow one, leaving
+Paddington at midnight. You could have the Buster, if you like”—Sir
+James referred to a very fast motor car of his—“but you wouldn’t get
+down in time to do anything tonight.”
+“And I’d miss my sleep. No, thanks. The train for me. I am quite fond
+of railway travelling, you know; I have a gift for it. I am the stoker
+and the stoked. I am the song the porter sings.”
+“What’s that you say?”
+“It doesn’t matter,” said the voice sadly. “I say,” it continued, “will
+your people look out a hotel near the scene of action, and telegraph
+for a room?”
+“At once,” said Sir James. “Come here as soon as you can.”
+He replaced the receiver. As he turned to his papers again a shrill
+outcry burst forth in the street below. He walked to the open window. A
+band of excited boys was rushing down the steps of the _Sun_ building
+and up the narrow thoroughfare toward Fleet Street. Each carried a
+bundle of newspapers and a large broadsheet with the simple legend:
+MURDER OF SIGSBEE MANDERSON
+Sir James smiled and rattled the money in his pockets cheerfully. “It
+makes a good bill,” he observed to Mr. Silver, who stood at his elbow.
+Such was Manderson’s epitaph.
+Chapter III.
+Breakfast
+At about eight o’clock in the morning of the following day Mr.
+Nathaniel Burton Cupples stood on the veranda of the hotel at
+Marlstone. He was thinking about breakfast. In his case the
+colloquialism must be taken literally: he really was thinking about
+breakfast, as he thought about every conscious act of his life when
+time allowed deliberation. He reflected that on the preceding day the
+excitement and activity following upon the discovery of the dead man
+had disorganized his appetite, and led to his taking considerably less
+nourishment than usual. This morning he was very hungry, having already
+been up and about for an hour; and he decided to allow himself a third
+piece of toast and an additional egg; the rest as usual. The remaining
+deficit must be made up at luncheon, but that could be gone into later.
+So much being determined, Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment
+of the view for a few minutes before ordering his meal. With a
+connoisseur’s eye he explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a
+great pierced rock rose from a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness
+of the vast tilted levels of pasture and tillage and woodland that
+sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the distant moor. Mr. Cupples
+delighted in landscape.
+He was a man of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old,
+by constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his
+age. A sparse and straggling beard and moustache did not conceal a thin
+but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and
+narrow jaw gave him very much of a clerical air, and this impression
+was helped by his commonplace dark clothes and soft black hat. The
+whole effect of him, indeed, was priestly. He was a man of unusually
+conscientious, industrious, and orderly mind, with little imagination.
+His father’s household had been used to recruit its domestic
+establishment by means of advertisements in which it was truthfully
+described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had
+escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible
+kindness of heart, and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed
+nothing to humour. In an earlier day and with a clerical training he
+might have risen to the scarlet hat. He was, in fact, a highly regarded
+member of the London Positivist Society, a retired banker, a widower
+without children. His austere but not unhappy life was spent largely
+among books and in museums; his profound and patiently accumulated
+knowledge of a number of curiously disconnected subjects which had
+stirred his interest at different times had given him a place in the
+quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of
+research; at their amiable, unconvivial dinner parties he was most
+himself. His favourite author was Montaigne.
+Just as Mr. Cupples was finishing his meal at a little table on the
+veranda, a big motor car turned into the drive before the hotel. “Who
+is this?” he enquired of the waiter. “Id is der manager,” said the
+young man listlessly. “He have been to meed a gendleman by der train.”
+The car drew up and the porter hurried from the entrance. Mr. Cupples
+uttered an exclamation of pleasure as a long, loosely built man, much
+younger than himself, stepped from the car and mounted the veranda,
+flinging his hat on a chair. His high-boned, quixotic face wore a
+pleasant smile; his rough tweed clothes, his hair and short moustache
+were tolerably untidy.
+“Cupples, by all that’s miraculous!” cried the man, pouncing upon Mr.
+Cupples before he could rise, and seizing his outstretched hand in a
+hard grip. “My luck is serving me today,” the newcomer went on
+spasmodically. “This is the second slice within an hour. How are you,
+my best of friends? And why are you here? Why sit’st thou by that
+ruined breakfast? Dost thou its former pride recall, or ponder how it
+passed away? I _am_ glad to see you!”
+“I was half expecting you, Trent,” Mr. Cupples replied, his face
+wreathed in smiles. “You are looking splendid, my dear fellow. I will
+tell you all about it. But you cannot have had your own breakfast yet.
+Will you have it at my table here?”
+“Rather!” said the man. “An enormous great breakfast, too—with refined
+conversation and tears of recognition never dry. Will you get young
+Siegfried to lay a place for me while I go and wash? I shan’t be three
+minutes.” He disappeared into the hotel, and Mr. Cupples, after a
+moment’s thought, went to the telephone in the porter’s office.
+He returned to find his friend already seated, pouring out tea, and
+showing an unaffected interest in the choice of food. “I expect this to
+be a hard day for me,” he said, with the curious jerky utterance which
+seemed to be his habit. “I shan’t eat again till the evening, very
+likely. You guess why I’m here, don’t you?”
+“Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Cupples. “You have come down to write about the
+murder.”
+“That is rather a colourless way of stating it,” the man called Trent
+replied, as he dissected a sole. “I should prefer to put it that I have
+come down in the character of avenger of blood, to hunt down the
+guilty, and vindicate the honour of society. That is my line of
+business. Families waited on at their private residences. I say,
+Cupples, I have made a good beginning already. Wait a bit, and I’ll
+tell you.” There was a silence, during which the newcomer ate swiftly
+and abstractedly, while Mr. Cupples looked on happily.
+“Your manager here,” said the tall man at last, “is a fellow of
+remarkable judgement. He is an admirer of mine. He knows more about my
+best cases than I do myself. The _Record_ wired last night to say I was
+coming, and when I got out of the train at seven o’clock this morning,
+there he was waiting for me with a motor car the size of a haystack. He
+is beside himself with joy at having me here. It is fame.” He drank a
+cup of tea and continued: “Almost his first words were to ask me if I
+would like to see the body of the murdered man—if so, he thought he
+could manage it for me. He is as keen as a razor. The body lies in Dr
+Stock’s surgery, you know, down in the village, exactly as it was when
+found. It’s to be post-mortem’d this morning, by the way, so I was only
+just in time. Well, he ran me down here to the doctor’s, giving me full
+particulars about the case all the way. I was pretty well _au fait_ by
+the time we arrived. I suppose the manager of a place like this has
+some sort of a pull with the doctor. Anyhow, he made no difficulties,
+nor did the constable on duty, though he was careful to insist on my
+not giving him away in the paper.”
+“I saw the body before it was removed,” remarked Mr. Cupples. “I should
+not have said there was anything remarkable about it, except that the
+shot in the eye had scarcely disfigured the face at all, and caused
+scarcely any effusion of blood, apparently. The wrists were scratched
+and bruised. I expect that, with your trained faculties, you were able
+to remark other details of a suggestive nature.”
+“Other details, certainly; but I don’t know that they suggest anything.
+They are merely odd. Take the wrists, for instance. How was it you
+could see bruises and scratches on them? I dare say you saw something
+of Manderson down here before the murder.”
+“Certainly,” Mr. Cupples said.
+“Well, did you ever see his wrists?”
+Mr. Cupples reflected. “No. Now you raise the point, I am reminded that
+when I interviewed Manderson here he was wearing stiff cuffs, coming
+well down over his hands.”
+“He always did,” said Trent. “My friend the manager says so. I pointed
+out to him the fact you didn’t observe, that there were no cuffs
+visible, and that they had, indeed, been dragged up inside the
+coat-sleeves, as yours would be if you hurried into a coat without
+pulling your cuffs down. That was why you saw his wrists.”
+“Well, I call that suggestive,” observed Mr. Cupples mildly. “You might
+infer, perhaps, that when he got up he hurried over his dressing.”
+“Yes, but did he? The manager said just what you say. ‘He was always a
+bit of a swell in his dress,’ he told me, and he drew the inference
+that when Manderson got up in that mysterious way, before the house was
+stirring, and went out into the grounds, he was in a great hurry. ‘Look
+at his shoes,’ he said to me: ‘Mr. Manderson was always specially neat
+about his footwear. But those shoe-laces were tied in a hurry.’ I
+agreed. ‘And he left his false teeth in his room,’ said the manager.
+‘Doesn’t _that_ prove he was flustered and hurried?’ I allowed that it
+looked like it. But I said, ‘Look here: if he was so very much pressed,
+why did he part his hair so carefully? That parting is a work of art.
+Why did he put on so much? for he had on a complete outfit of
+underclothing, studs in his shirt, sock-suspenders, a watch and chain,
+money and keys and things in his pockets. That’s what I said to the
+manager. He couldn’t find an explanation. Can you?’
+Mr. Cupples considered. “Those facts might suggest that he was hurried
+only at the end of his dressing. Coat and shoes would come last.”
+“But not false teeth. You ask anybody who wears them. And besides, I’m
+told he hadn’t washed at all on getting up, which in a neat man looks
+like his being in a violent hurry from the beginning. And here’s
+another thing. One of his waistcoat pockets was lined with wash-leather
+for the reception of his gold watch. But he had put his watch into the
+pocket on the other side. Anybody who has settled habits can see how
+odd that is. The fact is, there are signs of great agitation and haste,
+and there are signs of exactly the opposite. For the present I am not
+guessing. I must reconnoitre the ground first, if I can manage to get
+the right side of the people of the house.” Trent applied himself again
+to his breakfast.
+Mr. Cupples smiled at him benevolently. “That is precisely the point,”
+he said, “on which I can be of some assistance to you.” Trent glanced
+up in surprise. “I told you I half expected you. I will explain the
+situation. Mrs. Manderson, who is my niece—”
+“What!” Trent laid down his knife and fork with a clash. “Cupples, you
+are jesting with me.”
+“I am perfectly serious, Trent, really,” returned Mr. Cupples
+earnestly. “Her father, John Peter Domecq, was my wife’s brother. I
+never mentioned my niece or her marriage to you before, I suppose. To
+tell the truth, it has always been a painful subject to me, and I have
+avoided discussing it with anybody. To return to what I was about to
+say: last night, when I was over at the house—by the way, you can see
+it from here. You passed it in the car.” He indicated a red roof among
+poplars some three hundred yards away, the only building in sight that
+stood separate from the tiny village in the gap below them.
+“Certainly I did,” said Trent. “The manager told me all about it, among
+other things, as he drove me in from Bishopsbridge.”
+“Other people here have heard of you and your performances,” Mr.
+Cupples went on. “As I was saying, when I was over there last night,
+Mr. Bunner, who is one of Manderson’s two secretaries, expressed a hope
+that the _Record_ would send you down to deal with the case, as the
+police seemed quite at a loss. He mentioned one or two of your past
+successes, and Mabel—my niece—was interested when I told her
+afterwards. She is bearing up wonderfully well, Trent; she has
+remarkable fortitude of character. She said she remembered reading your
+articles about the Abinger case. She has a great horror of the
+newspaper side of this sad business, and she had entreated me to do
+anything I could to keep journalists away from the place—I’m sure you
+can understand her feeling, Trent; it isn’t really any reflection on
+that profession. But she said you appeared to have great powers as a
+detective, and she would not stand in the way of anything that might
+clear up the crime. Then I told her you were a personal friend of mine,
+and gave you a good character for tact and consideration of others’
+feelings; and it ended in her saying that, if you should come, she
+would like you to be helped in every way.”
+Trent leaned across the table and shook Mr. Cupples by the hand in
+silence. Mr. Cupples, much delighted with the way things were turning
+out, resumed:
+“I spoke to my niece on the telephone only just now, and she is glad
+you are here. She asks me to say that you may make any enquiries you
+like, and she puts the house and grounds at your disposal. She had
+rather not see you herself; she is keeping to her own sitting-room. She
+has already been interviewed by a detective officer who is there, and
+she feels unequal to any more. She adds that she does not believe she
+could say anything that would be of the smallest use. The two
+secretaries and Martin, the butler (who is a most intelligent man),
+could tell you all you want to know, she thinks.”
+Trent finished his breakfast with a thoughtful brow. He filled a pipe
+slowly, and seated himself on the rail of the veranda. “Cupples,” he
+said quietly, “is there anything about this business that you know and
+would rather not tell me?”
+Mr. Cupples gave a slight start, and turned an astonished gaze on the
+questioner. “What do you mean?” he said.
+“I mean about the Mandersons. Look here! Shall I tell you a thing that
+strikes me about this affair at the very beginning? Here’s a man
+suddenly and violently killed, and nobody’s heart seems to be broken
+about it, to say the least. The manager of this hotel spoke to me about
+him as coolly as if he’d never set eyes on him, though I understand
+they’ve been neighbours every summer for some years. Then you talk
+about the thing in the coldest of blood. And Mrs. Manderson—well, you
+won’t mind my saying that I have heard of women being more cut up about
+their husbands being murdered than she seems to be. Is there something
+in this, Cupples, or is it my fancy? Was there something queer about
+Manderson? I travelled on the same boat with him once, but never spoke
+to him. I only know his public character, which was repulsive enough.
+You see, this may have a bearing on the case; that’s the only reason
+why I ask.”
+Mr. Cupples took time for thought. He fingered his sparse beard and
+looked out over the sea. At last he turned to Trent. “I see no reason,”
+he said, “why I shouldn’t tell you as between ourselves, my dear
+fellow. I need not say that this must not be referred to, however
+distantly. The truth is that nobody really liked Manderson; and I think
+those who were nearest to him liked him least.”
+“Why?” the other interjected.
+“Most people found a difficulty in explaining why. In trying to account
+to myself for my own sensations, I could only put it that one felt in
+the man a complete absence of the sympathetic faculty. There was
+nothing outwardly repellent about him. He was not ill-mannered, or
+vicious, or dull—indeed, he could be remarkably interesting. But I
+received the impression that there could be no human creature whom he
+would not sacrifice in the pursuit of his schemes, in his task of
+imposing himself and his will upon the world. Perhaps that was
+fanciful, but I think not altogether so. However, the point is that
+Mabel, I am sorry to say, was very unhappy. I am nearly twice your age,
+my dear boy, though you always so kindly try to make me feel as if we
+were contemporaries—I am getting to be an old man, and a great many
+people have been good enough to confide their matrimonial troubles to
+me; but I never knew another case like my niece’s and her husband’s. I
+have known her since she was a baby, Trent, and I know—you understand,
+I think, that I do not employ that word lightly—I _know_ that she is as
+amiable and honourable a woman, to say nothing of her other good gifts,
+as any man could wish. But Manderson, for some time past, had made her
+miserable.”
+“What did he do?” asked Trent, as Mr. Cupples paused.
+“When I put that question to Mabel, her words were that he seemed to
+nurse a perpetual grievance. He maintained a distance between them, and
+he would say nothing. I don’t know how it began or what was behind it;
+and all she would tell me on that point was that he had no cause in the
+world for his attitude. I think she knew what was in his mind, whatever
+it was; but she is full of pride. This seems to have gone on for
+months. At last, a week ago, she wrote to me. I am the only near
+relative she has. Her mother died when she was a child; and after John
+Peter died I was something like a father to her until she married—that
+was five years ago. She asked me to come and help her, and I came at
+once. That is why I am here now.”
+Mr. Cupples paused and drank some tea. Trent smoked and stared out at
+the hot June landscape.
+“I would not go to White Gables,” Mr. Cupples resumed. “You know my
+views, I think, upon the economic constitution of society, and the
+proper relationship of the capitalist to the employee, and you know, no
+doubt, what use that person made of his vast industrial power upon
+several very notorious occasions. I refer especially to the trouble in
+the Pennsylvania coal-fields, three years ago. I regarded him, apart
+from an all personal dislike, in the light of a criminal and a disgrace
+to society. I came to this hotel, and I saw my niece here. She told me
+what I have more briefly told you. She said that the worry and the
+humiliation of it, and the strain of trying to keep up appearances
+before the world, were telling upon her, and she asked for my advice. I
+said I thought she should face him and demand an explanation of his way
+of treating her. But she would not do that. She had always taken the
+line of affecting not to notice the change in his demeanour, and
+nothing, I knew, would persuade her to admit to him that she was
+injured, once pride had led her into that course. Life is quite full,
+my dear Trent,” said Mr. Cupples with a sigh, “of these obstinate
+silences and cultivated misunderstandings.”
+“Did she love him?” Trent enquired abruptly. Mr. Cupples did not reply
+at once. “Had she any love left for him?” Trent amended.
+Mr. Cupples played with his teaspoon. “I am bound to say,” he answered
+slowly, “that I think not. But you must not misunderstand the woman,
+Trent. No power on earth would have persuaded her to admit that to any
+one—even to herself, perhaps—so long as she considered herself bound to
+him. And I gather that, apart from this mysterious sulking of late, he
+had always been considerate and generous.”
+“You were saying that she refused to have it out with him.”
+“She did,” replied Mr. Cupples. “And I knew by experience that it was
+quite useless to attempt to move a Domecq where the sense of dignity
+was involved. So I thought it over carefully, and next day I watched my
+opportunity and met Manderson as he passed by this hotel. I asked him
+to favour me with a few minutes’ conversation, and he stepped inside
+the gate down there. We had held no communication of any kind since my
+niece’s marriage, but he remembered me, of course. I put the matter to
+him at once and quite definitely. I told him what Mabel had confided to
+me. I said that I would neither approve nor condemn her action in
+bringing me into the business, but that she was suffering, and I
+considered it my right to ask how he could justify himself in placing
+her in such a position.”
+“And how did he take that?” said Trent, smiling secretly at the
+landscape. The picture of this mildest of men calling the formidable
+Manderson to account pleased him.
+“Not very well,” Mr. Cupples replied sadly. “In fact, far from well. I
+can tell you almost exactly what he said—it wasn’t much. He said, ‘See
+here, Cupples, you don’t want to butt in. My wife can look after
+herself. I’ve found that out, along with other things.’ He was
+perfectly quiet—you know he was said never to lose control of
+himself—though there was a light in his eyes that would have frightened
+a man who was in the wrong, I dare say. But I had been thoroughly
+roused by his last remark, and the tone of it, which I cannot
+reproduce. You see,” said Mr. Cupples simply, “I love my niece. She is
+the only child that there has been in our—in my house. Moreover, my
+wife brought her up as a girl, and any reflection on Mabel I could not
+help feeling, in the heat of the moment, as an indirect reflection upon
+one who is gone.”
+“You turned upon him,” suggested Trent in a low tone. “You asked him to
+explain his words.”
+“That is precisely what I did,” said Mr. Cupples. “For a moment he only
+stared at me, and I could see a vein on his forehead swelling—an
+unpleasant sight. Then he said quite quietly, ‘This thing has gone far
+enough, I guess,’ and turned to go.”
+“Did he mean your interview?” Trent asked thoughtfully.
+“From the words alone you would think so,” Mr. Cupples answered. “But
+the way in which he uttered them gave me a strange and very
+apprehensive feeling. I received the impression that the man had formed
+some sinister resolve. But I regret to say I had lost the power of
+dispassionate thought. I fell into a great rage”—Mr. Cupples’s tone was
+mildly apologetic—“and said a number of foolish things. I reminded him
+that the law allowed a measure of freedom to wives who received
+intolerable treatment. I made some utterly irrelevant references to his
+public record, and expressed the view that such men as he were unfit to
+live. I said these things, and others as ill-considered, under the
+eyes, and very possibly within earshot, of half a dozen persons sitting
+on this veranda. I noticed them, in spite of my agitation, looking at
+me as I walked up to the hotel again after relieving my mind for it
+undoubtedly did relieve it,” sighed Mr. Cupples, lying back in his
+chair.
+“And Manderson? Did he say no more?”
+“Not a word. He listened to me with his eyes on my face, as quiet as
+before. When I stopped he smiled very slightly, and at once turned away
+and strolled through the gate, making for White Gables.”
+“And this happened—?”
+“On the Sunday morning.”
+“Then I suppose you never saw him alive again?”
+“No,” said Mr. Cupples. “Or rather yes—once. It was later in the day,
+on the golf-course. But I did not speak to him. And next morning he was
+found dead.”
+The two regarded each other in silence for a few moments. A party of
+guests who had been bathing came up the steps and seated themselves,
+with much chattering, at a table near them. The waiter approached. Mr.
+Cupples rose, and, taking Trent’s arm, led him to a long tennis-lawn at
+the side of the hotel.
+“I have a reason for telling you all this,” began Mr. Cupples as they
+paced slowly up and down.
+“Trust you for that,” rejoined Trent, carefully filling his pipe again.
+He lit it, smoked a little, and then said, “I’ll try and guess what
+your reason is, if you like.”
+Mr. Cupples’s face of solemnity relaxed into a slight smile. He said
+nothing.
+“You thought it possible,” said Trent meditatively—“may I say you
+thought it practically certain?—that I should find out for myself that
+there had been something deeper than a mere conjugal tiff between the
+Mandersons. You thought that my unwholesome imagination would begin at
+once to play with the idea of Mrs. Manderson having something to do
+with the crime. Rather than that I should lose myself in barren
+speculations about this, you decided to tell me exactly how matters
+stood, and incidentally to impress upon me, who know how excellent your
+judgement is, your opinion of your niece. Is that about right?”
+“It is perfectly right. Listen to me, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Cupples
+earnestly, laying his hand on the other’s arm. “I am going to be very
+frank. I am extremely glad that Manderson is dead. I believe him to
+have done nothing but harm in the world as an economic factor. I know
+that he was making a desert of the life of one who was like my own
+child to me. But I am under an intolerable dread of Mabel being
+involved in suspicion with regard to the murder. It is horrible to me
+to think of her delicacy and goodness being in contact, if only for a
+time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not fitted for it. It
+would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in these days
+could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of
+imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women
+today which would carry them through anything, perhaps.
+“I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of
+feminine life prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that.
+She is as unlike that as she is unlike the simpering misses that used
+to surround me as a child. She has plenty of brains; she is full of
+character; her mind and her tastes are cultivated; but it is all mixed
+up”—Mr. Cupples waved his hands in a vague gesture—“with ideals of
+refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I fear she is not a
+child of the age. You never knew my wife, Trent. Mabel is my wife’s
+child.”
+The younger man bowed his head. They paced the length of the lawn
+before he asked gently, “Why did she marry him?”
+“I don’t know,” said Mr. Cupples briefly.
+“Admired him, I suppose,” suggested Trent.
+Mr. Cupples shrugged his shoulders. “I have been told that a woman will
+usually be more or less attracted by the most successful man in her
+circle. Of course we cannot realize how a wilful, dominating
+personality like his would influence a girl whose affections were not
+bestowed elsewhere; especially if he laid himself out to win her. It is
+probably an overwhelming thing to be courted by a man whose name is
+known all over the world. She had heard of him, of course, as a
+financial great power, and she had no idea—she had lived mostly among
+people of artistic or literary propensities—how much soulless
+inhumanity that might involve. For all I know, she has no adequate idea
+of it to this day. When I first heard of the affair the mischief was
+done, and I knew better than to interpose my unsought opinions. She was
+of age, and there was absolutely nothing against him from the
+conventional point of view. Then I dare say his immense wealth would
+cast a spell over almost any woman. Mabel had some hundreds a year of
+her own; just enough, perhaps, to let her realize what millions really
+meant. But all this is conjecture. She certainly had not wanted to
+marry some scores of young fellows who to my knowledge had asked her;
+and though I don’t believe, and never did believe, that she really
+loved this man of forty-five, she certainly did want to marry him. But
+if you ask me why, I can only say I don’t know.”
+Trent nodded, and after a few more paces looked at his watch. “You’ve
+interested me so much,” he said, “that I had quite forgotten my main
+business. I mustn’t waste my morning. I am going down the road to White
+Gables at once, and I dare say I shall be poking about there until
+midday. If you can meet me then, Cupples, I should like to talk over
+anything I find out with you, unless something detains me.”
+“I am going for a walk this morning,” Mr. Cupples replied. “I meant to
+have luncheon at a little inn near the golf-course, The Three Tuns. You
+had better join me there. It’s further along the road, about a quarter
+of a mile beyond White Gables. You can just see the roof between those
+two trees. The food they give one there is very plain, but good.”
+“So long as they have a cask of beer,” said Trent, “they are all right.
+We will have bread and cheese, and oh, may Heaven our simple lives
+prevent from luxury’s contagion, weak and vile! Till then, goodbye.” He
+strode off to recover his hat from the veranda, waved it to Mr.
+Cupples, and was gone.
+The old gentleman, seating himself in a deck-chair on the lawn, clasped
+his hands behind his head and gazed up into the speckless blue sky. “He
+is a dear fellow,” he murmured. “The best of fellows. And a terribly
+acute fellow. Dear me! How curious it all is!”
+Chapter IV.
+Handcuffs in the Air
+A painter and the son of a painter, Philip Trent had while yet in his
+twenties achieved some reputation within the world of English art.
+Moreover, his pictures sold. An original, forcible talent and a habit
+of leisurely but continuous working, broken by fits of strong creative
+enthusiasm, were at the bottom of it. His father’s name had helped; a
+patrimony large enough to relieve him of the perilous imputation of
+being a struggling man had certainly not hindered. But his best aid to
+success had been an unconscious power of getting himself liked. Good
+spirits and a lively, humorous fancy will always be popular. Trent
+joined to these a genuine interest in others that gained him something
+deeper than popularity. His judgement of persons was penetrating, but
+its process was internal; no one felt on good behaviour with a man who
+seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for
+floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face
+seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound
+knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose,
+dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed the
+age of laughter and adventure.
+His rise to a celebrity a hundred times greater than his proper work
+had won for him came of a momentary impulse. One day he had taken up a
+newspaper to find it chiefly concerned with a crime of a sort curiously
+rare in our country—a murder done in a railway train. The circumstances
+were puzzling; two persons were under arrest upon suspicion. Trent, to
+whom an interest in such affairs was a new sensation, heard the thing
+discussed among his friends, and set himself in a purposeless mood to
+read up the accounts given in several journals. He became intrigued;
+his imagination began to work, in a manner strange to him, upon facts;
+an excitement took hold of him such as he had only known before in his
+bursts of art-inspiration or of personal adventure. At the end of the
+day he wrote and dispatched a long letter to the editor of the
+_Record_, which he chose only because it had contained the fullest and
+most intelligent version of the facts.
+In this letter he did very much what Poe had done in the case of the
+murder of Mary Rogers. With nothing but the newspapers to guide him, he
+drew attention to the significance of certain apparently negligible
+facts, and ranged the evidence in such a manner as to throw grave
+suspicion upon a man who had presented himself as a witness. Sir James
+Molloy had printed this letter in leaded type. The same evening he was
+able to announce in the Sun the arrest and full confession of the
+incriminated man.
+Sir James, who knew all the worlds of London, had lost no time in
+making Trent’s acquaintance. The two men got on well, for Trent
+possessed some secret of native tact which had the effect of almost
+abolishing differences of age between himself and others. The great
+rotary presses in the basement of the _Record_ building had filled him
+with a new enthusiasm. He had painted there, and Sir James had bought
+at sight, what he called a machinery-scape in the manner of Heinrich
+Kley.
+Then a few months later came the affair known as the Ilkley mystery.
+Sir James had invited Trent to an emollient dinner, and thereafter
+offered him what seemed to the young man a fantastically large sum for
+his temporary services as special representative of the _Record_ at
+Ilkley.
+“You could do it,” the editor had urged. “You can write good stuff, and
+you know how to talk to people, and I can teach you all the
+technicalities of a reporter’s job in half an hour. And you have a head
+for a mystery; you have imagination and cool judgement along with it.
+Think how it would feel if you pulled it off!”
+Trent had admitted that it would be rather a lark. He had smoked,
+frowned, and at last convinced himself that the only thing that held
+him back was fear of an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had
+become a fixed moral habit with him, and he had accepted Sir James’s
+offer.
+He had pulled it off. For the second time he had given the authorities
+a start and a beating, and his name was on all tongues. He withdrew and
+painted pictures. He felt no leaning towards journalism, and Sir James,
+who knew a good deal about art, honourably refrained—as other editors
+did not—from tempting him with a good salary. But in the course of a
+few years he had applied to him perhaps thirty times for his services
+in the unravelling of similar problems at home and abroad. Sometimes
+Trent, busy with work that held him, had refused; sometimes he had been
+forestalled in the discovery of the truth. But the result of his
+irregular connection with the _Record_ had been to make his name one of
+the best known in England. It was characteristic of him that his name
+was almost the only detail of his personality known to the public. He
+had imposed absolute silence about himself upon the Molloy papers; and
+the others were not going to advertise one of Sir James’s men.
+The Manderson case, he told himself as he walked rapidly up the sloping
+road to White Gables, might turn out to be terribly simple. Cupples was
+a wise old boy, but it was probably impossible for him to have an
+impartial opinion about his niece. But it was true that the manager of
+the hotel, who had spoken of her beauty in terms that aroused his
+attention, had spoken even more emphatically of her goodness. Not an
+artist in words, the manager had yet conveyed a very definite idea to
+Trent’s mind. “There isn’t a child about here that don’t brighten up at
+the sound of her voice,” he had said, “nor yet a grown-up, for the
+matter of that. Everybody used to look forward to her coming over in
+the summer. I don’t mean that she’s one of those women that are all
+kind heart and nothing else. There’s backbone with it, if you know what
+I mean—pluck— any amount of go. There’s nobody in Marlstone that isn’t
+sorry for the lady in her trouble—not but what some of us may think
+she’s lucky at the last of it.” Trent wanted very much to meet Mrs.
+Manderson.
+He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of
+the two-storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables
+from which it had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car
+that morning. A modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place
+was beautifully kept, with that air of opulent peace that clothes even
+the smallest houses of the well-to-do in an English countryside. Before
+it, beyond the road, the rich meadow-land ran down to the edge of the
+cliffs; behind it a woody landscape stretched away across a broad vale
+to the moors. That such a place could be the scene of a crime of
+violence seemed fantastic; it lay so quiet and well ordered, so
+eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there beyond the
+house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot,
+white road, stood the gardener’s toolshed, by which the body had been
+found, lying tumbled against the wooden wall, Trent walked past the
+gate of the drive and along the road until he was opposite this shed.
+Some forty yards further along the road turned sharply away from the
+house, to run between thick plantations; and just before the turn the
+grounds of the house ended, with a small white gate at the angle of the
+boundary hedge. He approached the gate, which was plainly for the use
+of gardeners and the service of the establishment. It swung easily on
+its hinges, and he passed slowly up a path that led towards the back of
+the house, between the outer hedge and a tall wall of rhododendrons.
+Through a gap in this wall a track led him to the little neatly built
+erection of wood, which stood among trees that faced a corner of the
+front. The body had lain on the side away from the house; a servant, he
+thought, looking out of the nearer windows in the earlier hours of the
+day before, might have glanced unseeing at the hut, as she wondered
+what it could be like to be as rich as the master.
+He examined the place carefully and ransacked the hut within, but he
+could note no more than the trodden appearance of the uncut grass where
+the body had lain. Crouching low, with keen eyes and feeling fingers,
+he searched the ground minutely over a wide area; but the search was
+fruitless.
+It was interrupted by the sound—the first he had heard from the
+house—of the closing of the front door. Trent unbent his long legs and
+stepped to the edge of the drive. A man was walking quickly away from
+the house in the direction of the great gate.
+At the noise of a footstep on the gravel, the man wheeled with nervous
+swiftness and looked earnestly at Trent. The sudden sight of his face
+was almost terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man’s
+face. There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all
+their tale of strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each
+other, Trent noted with admiration the man’s breadth of shoulder and
+lithe, strong figure. In his carriage, inelastic as weariness had made
+it; in his handsome, regular features; in his short, smooth, yellow
+hair; and in his voice as he addressed Trent, the influence of a
+special sort of training was confessed. “Oxford was your playground, I
+think, my young friend,” said Trent to himself.
+“If you are Mr. Trent,” said the young man pleasantly, “you are
+expected. Mr. Cupples telephoned from the hotel. My name is Marlowe.”
+“You were secretary to Mr. Manderson, I believe,” said Trent. He was
+much inclined to like young Mr. Marlowe. Though he seemed so near a
+physical breakdown, he gave out none the less that air of clean living
+and inward health that is the peculiar glory of his social type at his
+years. But there was something in the tired eyes that was a challenge
+to Trent’s penetration; an habitual expression, as he took it to be, of
+meditating and weighing things not present to their sight. It was a
+look too intelligent, too steady and purposeful, to be called dreamy.
+Trent thought he had seen such a look before somewhere. He went on to
+say: “It is a terrible business for all of you. I fear it has upset you
+completely, Mr. Marlowe.”
+“A little limp, that’s all,” replied the young man wearily. “I was
+driving the car all Sunday night and most of yesterday, and I didn’t
+sleep last night after hearing the news—who would? But I have an
+appointment now, Mr. Trent, down at the doctor’s—arranging about the
+inquest. I expect it’ll be tomorrow. If you will go up to the house and
+ask for Mr. Bunner, you’ll find him expecting you; he will tell you all
+about things and show you round. He’s the other secretary; an American,
+and the best of fellows; he’ll look after you. There’s a detective
+here, by the way—Inspector Murch, from Scotland Yard. He came
+yesterday.”
+“Murch!” Trent exclaimed. “But he and I are old friends. How under the
+sun did he get here so soon?”
+“I have no idea,” Mr. Marlowe answered. “But he was here last evening,
+before I got back from Southampton, interviewing everybody, and he’s
+been about here since eight this morning. He’s in the library
+now—that’s where the open French window is that you see at the end of
+the house there. Perhaps you would like to step down there and talk
+about things.”
+“I think I will,” said Trent. Marlowe nodded and went on his way. The
+thick turf of the lawn round which the drive took its circular sweep
+made Trent’s footsteps as noiseless as a cat’s. In a few moments he was
+looking in through the open leaves of the window at the southward end
+of the house, considering with a smile a very broad back and a bent
+head covered with short grizzled hair. The man within was stooping over
+a number of papers laid out on the table.
+“’Twas ever thus,” said Trent in a melancholy tone, at the first sound
+of which the man within turned round with startling swiftness. “From
+childhood’s hour I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay. I did think I was
+ahead of Scotland Yard this time, and now here is the hugest officer in
+the entire Metropolitan force already occupying the position.”
+The detective smiled grimly and came to the window. “I was expecting
+you, Mr. Trent,” he said. “This is the sort of case that you like.”
+“Since my tastes were being considered,” Trent replied, stepping into
+the room, “I wish they had followed up the idea by keeping my hated
+rival out of the business. You have got a long start, too—I know all
+about it.” His eyes began to wander round the room. “How did you manage
+it? You are a quick mover, I know; the dun deer’s hide on fleeter foot
+was never tied; but I don’t see how you got here in time to be at work
+yesterday evening. Has Scotland Yard secretly started an aviation
+corps? Or is it in league with the infernal powers? In either case the
+Home Secretary should be called upon to make a statement.”
+“It’s simpler than that,” said Mr. Murch with professional stolidity.
+“I happened to be on leave with the missus at Havley, which is only
+twelve miles or so along the coast. As soon as our people there heard
+of the murder they told me. I wired to the Chief, and was put in charge
+of the case at once. I bicycled over yesterday evening, and have been
+at it since then.”
+“Arising out of that reply,” said Trent inattentively, “how is Mrs.
+Inspector Murch?”
+“Never better, thank you,” answered the inspector, “and frequently
+speaks of you and the games you used to have with our kids. But you’ll
+excuse me saying, Mr. Trent, that you needn’t trouble to talk your
+nonsense to me while you’re using your eyes. I know your ways by now. I
+understand you’ve fallen on your feet as usual, and have the lady’s
+permission to go over the place and make enquiries.”
+“Such is the fact,” said Trent. “I am going to cut you out again,
+inspector. I owe you one for beating me over the Abinger case, you old
+fox. But if you really mean that you’re not inclined for the social
+amenities just now, let us leave compliments and talk business.” He
+stepped to the table, glanced through the papers arranged there in
+order, and then turned to the open roll-top desk. He looked into the
+drawers swiftly. “I see this has been cleared out. Well now, inspector,
+I suppose we play the game as before.”
+Trent had found himself on a number of occasions in the past thrown
+into the company of Inspector Murch, who stood high in the councils of
+the Criminal Investigation Department. He was a quiet, tactful, and
+very shrewd officer, a man of great courage, with a vivid history in
+connection with the more dangerous class of criminals. His humanity was
+as broad as his frame, which was large even for a policeman. Trent and
+he, through some obscure working of sympathy, had appreciated one
+another from the beginning, and had formed one of those curious
+friendships with which it was the younger man’s delight to adorn his
+experience. The inspector would talk more freely to him than to any
+one, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities
+of every case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessarily
+rules and limits. It was understood between them that Trent made no
+journalistic use of any point that could only have come to him from an
+official source. Each of them, moreover, for the honour and prestige of
+the institution he represented, openly reserved the right to withhold
+from the other any discovery or inspiration that might come to him
+which he considered vital to the solution of the difficulty. Trent had
+insisted on carefully formulating these principles of what he called
+detective sportsmanship. Mr. Murch, who loved a contest, and who only
+stood to gain by his association with the keen intelligence of the
+other, entered very heartily into “the game”. In these strivings for
+the credit of the press and of the police, victory sometimes attended
+the experience and method of the officer, sometimes the quicker brain
+and livelier imagination of Trent, his gift of instinctively
+recognizing the significant through all disguises.
+The inspector then replied to Trent’s last words with cordial
+agreement. Leaning on either side of the French window, with the deep
+peace and hazy splendor of the summer landscape before them, they
+reviewed the case.
+Trent had taken out a thin notebook, and as they talked he began to
+make, with light, secure touches, a rough sketch plan of the room. It
+was a thing he did habitually on such occasions, and often quite idly,
+but now and then the habit had served him to good purpose.
+This was a large, light apartment at the corner of the house, with
+generous window-space in two walls. A broad table stood in the middle.
+As one entered by the window the roll-top desk stood just to the left
+of it against the wall. The inner door was in the wall to the left, at
+the farther end of the room; and was faced by a broad window divided
+into openings of the casement type. A beautifully carved old
+corner-cupboard rose high against the wall beyond the door, and another
+cupboard filled a recess beside the fireplace. Some coloured prints of
+Harunobu, with which Trent promised himself a better acquaintance, hung
+on what little wall-space was unoccupied by books. These had a very
+uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never
+taken from their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English
+novelists, essayists, historians, and poets stood ranged like an army
+struck dead in its ranks. There were a few chairs made, like the
+cupboard and table, of old carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel
+office-chair before the desk. The room looked costly but very bare.
+Almost the only portable objects were a great porcelain bowl of a
+wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar boxes on the
+mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the top of the desk.
+“Seen the body?” enquired the inspector.
+Trent nodded. “And the place where it lay,” he said.
+“First impressions of this case rather puzzle me,” said the inspector.
+“From what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and
+murder by some tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in
+these parts. But as soon as I began my enquiries I came on some curious
+points, which by this time I dare say you’ve noted for yourself. The
+man is shot in his own grounds, quite near the house, to begin with.
+Yet there’s not the slightest trace of any attempt at burglary. And the
+body wasn’t robbed. In fact, it would be as plain a case of suicide as
+you could wish to see, if it wasn’t for certain facts. Here’s another
+thing: for a month or so past, they tell me, Manderson had been in a
+queer state of mind. I expect you know already that he and his wife had
+some trouble between them. The servants had noticed a change in his
+manner to her for a long time, and for the past week he had scarcely
+spoken to her. They say he was a changed man, moody and silent—whether
+on account of that or something else. The lady’s maid says he looked as
+if something was going to arrive. It’s always easy to remember that
+people looked like that, after something has happened to them. Still,
+that’s what they say. There you are again, then: suicide! Now, why
+wasn’t it suicide, Mr. Trent?”
+“The facts so far as I know them are really all against it,” Trent
+replied, sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees.
+“First, of course, no weapon is to be found. I’ve searched, and you’ve
+searched, and there’s no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone’s
+throw of where the body lay. Second, the marks on the wrists, fresh
+scratches and bruises, which we can only assume to have been done in a
+struggle with somebody. Third, who ever heard of anybody shooting
+himself in the eye? Then I heard from the manager of the hotel here
+another fact, which strikes me as the most curious detail in this
+affair. Manderson had dressed himself fully before going out there, but
+he forgot his false teeth. Now how could a suicide who dressed himself
+to make a decent appearance as a corpse forget his teeth?”
+“That last argument hadn’t struck me,” admitted Mr. Murch. “There’s
+something in it. But on the strength of the other points, which had
+occurred to me, I am not considering suicide. I have been looking about
+for ideas in this house, this morning. I expect you were thinking of
+doing the same.”
+“That is so. It is a case for ideas, it seems to me. Come, Murch, let
+us make an effort; let us bend our spirits to a temper of general
+suspicion. Let us suspect everybody in the house, to begin with.
+Listen: I will tell you whom I suspect. I suspect Mrs. Manderson, of
+course. I also suspect both the secretaries—I hear there are two, and I
+hardly know which of them I regard as more thoroughly open to
+suspicion. I suspect the butler and the lady’s maid. I suspect the
+other domestics, and especially do I suspect the boot-boy. By the way,
+what domestics are there? I have more than enough suspicion to go
+round, whatever the size of the establishment; but as a matter of
+curiosity I should like to know.”
+“All very well to laugh,” replied the inspector, “but at the first
+stage of affairs it’s the only safe principle, and you know that as
+well as I do, Mr. Trent. However, I’ve seen enough of the people here,
+last night and today, to put a few of them out of my mind for the
+present at least. You will form your own conclusions. As for the
+establishment, there’s the butler and lady’s maid, cook, and three
+other maids, one a young girl. One chauffeur, who’s away with a broken
+wrist. No boy.”
+“What about the gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and
+sinister figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background,
+Murch. Play the game. Out with him—or I report you to the Rules
+Committee.”
+“The garden is attended to by a man in the village, who comes twice a
+week. I’ve talked to him. He was here last on Friday.”
+“Then I suspect him all the more,” said Trent. “And now as to the house
+itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little
+in this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time,
+and in his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we’re in this
+room, let’s start here. You seem to be at the same stage of the
+inquiry. Perhaps you’ve done the bedrooms already?”
+The inspector nodded. “I’ve been over Manderson’s and his wife’s.
+Nothing to be got there, I think. His room is very simple and bare, no
+signs of any sort—that _I_ could see. Seems to have insisted on the
+simple life, does Manderson. Never employed a valet. The room’s almost
+like a cell, except for the clothes and shoes. You’ll find it all
+exactly as I found it; and they tell me that’s exactly as Manderson
+left it, at we don’t know what o’clock yesterday morning. Opens into
+Mrs. Manderson’s bedroom—not much of the cell about that, I can tell
+you. I should say the lady was as fond of pretty things as most. But
+she cleared out of it on the morning of the discovery—told the maid she
+could never sleep in a room opening into her murdered husband’s room.
+Very natural feeling in a woman, Mr. Trent. She’s camping out, so to
+say, in one of the spare bedrooms now.”
+“Come, my friend,” Trent was saying to himself, as he made a few notes
+in his little book. “Have you got your eye on Mrs. Manderson? Or
+haven’t you? I know that colourless tone of the inspectorial voice. I
+wish I had seen her. Either you’ve got something against her and you
+don’t want me to get hold of it; or else you’ve made up your mind she’s
+innocent, but have no objection to my wasting my time over her. Well,
+it’s all in the game; which begins to look extremely interesting as we
+go on.” To Mr. Murch he said aloud: “Well, I’ll draw the bedroom later
+on. What about this?”
+“They call it the library,” said the inspector. “Manderson used to do
+his writing and that in here; passed most of the time he spent indoors
+here. Since he and his wife ceased to hit it off together, he had taken
+to spending his evenings alone, and when at this house he always spent
+’em in here. He was last seen alive, as far as the servants are
+concerned, in this room.”
+Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table.
+“Business letters and documents, mostly,” said Mr. Murch. “Reports,
+prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, nothing in
+them that I can see. The American secretary—Bunner his name is, and a
+queerer card I never saw turned—he’s been through this desk with me
+this morning. He had got it into his head that Manderson had been
+receiving threatening letters, and that the murder was the outcome of
+that. But there’s no trace of any such thing; and we looked at every
+blessed paper. The only unusual things we found were some packets of
+banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of little bags of
+unset diamonds. I asked Mr. Bunner to put them in a safer place. It
+appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a
+speculation—it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed
+to amuse him.”
+“What about these secretaries?” Trent enquired. “I met one called
+Marlowe just now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes,
+unquestionably English. The other, it seems, is an American. What did
+Manderson want with an English secretary?”
+“Mr. Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his
+right-hand business man, one of his office staff, who never left him.
+Mr. Marlowe had nothing to do with Manderson’s business as a financier,
+knew nothing of it. His job was to look after Manderson’s horses and
+motors and yacht and sporting arrangements and that—make himself
+generally useful, as you might say. He had the spending of a lot of
+money, I should think. The other was confined entirely to the office
+affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for his being
+English, it was just a fad of Manderson’s to have an English secretary.
+He’d had several before Mr. Marlowe.”
+“He showed his taste,” observed Trent. “It might be more than
+interesting, don’t you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a
+modern plutocrat with a large P. Only they say that Manderson’s were
+exclusively of an innocent kind. Certainly Marlowe gives me the
+impression that he would be weak in the part of Petronius. But to
+return to the matter in hand.” He looked at his notes. “You said just
+now that he was last seen alive here, ‘so far as the servants were
+concerned’. That meant—?”
+“He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the
+manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story
+last night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is
+meat and drink to the servants of the house.”
+Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over
+the sun-flooded slopes. “Would it bore you to hear what he has to say
+again?” he asked at length. For reply, Mr. Murch rang the bell. A
+spare, clean-shaven, middle-aged man, having the servant’s manner in
+its most distinguished form, answered it.
+“This is Mr. Trent, who is authorized by Mrs. Manderson to go over the
+house and make enquiries,” explained the detective. “He would like to
+hear your story.” Martin bowed distantly. He recognized Trent for a
+gentleman. Time would show whether he was what Martin called a
+gentleman in every sense of the word.
+“I observed you approaching the house, sir,” said Martin with impassive
+courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. “My instructions
+are to assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall
+the circumstances of Sunday night?”
+“Please,” said Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin’s style was making
+clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all
+vivacity of expression from his face.
+“I last saw Mr. Manderson—”
+“No, not that yet,” Trent checked him quietly. “Tell me all you saw of
+him that evening—after dinner, say. Try to recollect every little
+detail.”
+“After dinner, sir?—yes. I remember that after dinner Mr. Manderson and
+Mr. Marlowe walked up and down the path through the orchard, talking.
+If you ask me for details, it struck me they were talking about
+something important, because I heard Mr. Manderson say something when
+they came in through the back entrance. He said, as near as I can
+remember, ‘If Harris is there, every minute is of importance. You want
+to start right away. And not a word to a soul.’ Mr. Marlowe answered,
+‘Very well. I will just change out of these clothes and then I am
+ready’—or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as they passed the
+window of my pantry. Then Mr. Marlowe went up to his bedroom, and Mr.
+Manderson entered the library and rang for me. He handed me some
+letters for the postman in the morning and directed me to sit up, as
+Mr. Marlowe had persuaded him to go for a drive in the car by
+moonlight.”
+“That was curious,” remarked Trent.
+“I thought so, sir. But I recollected what I had heard about ‘not a
+word to a soul’, and I concluded that this about a moonlight drive was
+intended to mislead.”
+“What time was this?”
+“It would be about ten, sir, I should say. After speaking to me, Mr.
+Manderson waited until Mr. Marlowe had come down and brought round the
+car. He then went into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Manderson was.”
+“Did that strike you as curious?”
+Martin looked down his nose. “If you ask me the question, sir,” he said
+with reserve, “I had not known him enter that room since we came here
+this year. He preferred to sit in the library in the evenings. That
+evening he only remained with Mrs. Manderson for a few minutes. Then he
+and Mr. Marlowe started immediately.”
+“You saw them start?”
+“Yes, sir. They took the direction of Bishopsbridge.”
+“And you saw Mr. Manderson again later?”
+“After an hour or thereabouts, sir, in the library. That would have
+been about a quarter past eleven, I should say; I had noticed eleven
+striking from the church. I may say I am peculiarly quick of hearing,
+sir.”
+“Mr. Manderson had rung the bell for you, I suppose. Yes? And what
+passed when you answered it?”
+“Mr. Manderson had put out the decanter of whisky and a syphon and
+glass, sir, from the cupboard where he kept them—”
+Trent held up his hand. “While we are on that point, Martin, I want to
+ask you plainly, did Mr. Manderson drink very much? You understand this
+is not impertinent curiosity on my part. I want you to tell me, because
+it may possibly help in the clearing up of this case.”
+“Perfectly, sir,” replied Martin gravely. “I have no hesitation in
+telling you what I have already told the inspector. Mr. Manderson was,
+considering his position in life, a remarkably abstemious man. In my
+four years of service with him I never knew anything of an alcoholic
+nature pass his lips, except a glass or two of wine at dinner, very
+rarely a little at luncheon, and from time to time a whisky and soda
+before going to bed. He never seemed to form a habit of it. Often I
+used to find his glass in the morning with only a little soda water in
+it; sometimes he would have been having whisky with it, but never much.
+He never was particular about his drinks; ordinary soda was what he
+preferred, though I had ventured to suggest some of the natural
+minerals, having personally acquired a taste for them in my previous
+service. He used to keep them in the cupboard here, because he had a
+great dislike of being waited on more than was necessary. It was an
+understood thing that I never came near him after dinner unless sent
+for. And when he sent for anything, he liked it brought quick, and to
+be left alone again at once. He hated to be asked if he required
+anything more. Amazingly simple in his tastes, sir, Mr. Manderson was.”
+“Very well; and he rang for you that night about a quarter past eleven.
+Now can you remember exactly what he said?”
+“I think I can tell you with some approach to accuracy, sir. It was not
+much. First he asked me if Mr. Bunner had gone to bed, and I replied
+that he had been gone up some time. He then said that he wanted some
+one to sit up until 12.30, in case an important message should come by
+telephone, and that Mr. Marlowe having gone to Southampton for him in
+the motor, he wished me to do this, and that I was to take down the
+message if it came, and not disturb him. He also ordered a fresh syphon
+of soda water. I believe that was all, sir.”
+“You noticed nothing unusual about him, I suppose?”
+“No, sir, nothing unusual. When I answered the ring, he was seated at
+the desk listening at the telephone, waiting for a number, as I
+supposed. He gave his orders and went on listening at the same time.
+“When I returned with the syphon he was engaged in conversation over
+the wire.”
+“Do you remember anything of what he was saying?”
+“Very little, sir; it was something about somebody being at some
+hotel—of no interest to me. I was only in the room just time enough to
+place the syphon on the table and withdraw. As I closed the door he was
+saying, ‘You’re sure he isn’t in the hotel?’ or words to that effect.”
+“And that was the last you saw and heard of him alive?”
+“No, sir. A little later, at half-past eleven, when I had settled down
+in my pantry with the door ajar, and a book to pass the time, I heard
+Mr. Manderson go upstairs to bed. I immediately went to close the
+library window, and slipped the lock of the front door. I did not hear
+anything more.”
+Trent considered. “I suppose you didn’t doze at all,” he said
+tentatively, “while you were sitting up waiting for the telephone
+message?”
+“Oh no, sir. I am always very wakeful about that time. I’m a bad
+sleeper, especially in the neighbourhood of the sea, and I generally
+read in bed until somewhere about midnight.”
+“And did any message come?”
+“No, sir.”
+“No. And I suppose you sleep with your window open, these warm nights?”
+“It is never closed at night, sir.”
+Trent added a last note; then he looked thoughtfully through those he
+had taken. He rose and paced up and down the room for some moments with
+a downcast eye. At length he paused opposite Martin.
+“It all seems perfectly ordinary and simple,” he said. “I just want to
+get a few details clear. You went to shut the windows in the library
+before going to bed. Which windows?”
+“The French window, sir. It had been open all day. The windows opposite
+the door were seldom opened.”
+“And what about the curtains? I am wondering whether any one outside
+the house could have seen into the room.”
+“Easily, sir, I should say, if he had got into the grounds on that
+side. The curtains were never drawn in the hot weather. Mr. Manderson
+would often sit right in the doorway at nights, smoking and looking out
+into the darkness. But nobody could have seen him who had any business
+to be there.”
+“I see. And now tell me this. Your hearing is very acute, you say, and
+you heard Mr. Manderson enter the house when he came in after dinner
+from the garden. Did you hear him re-enter it after returning from the
+motor drive?”
+Martin paused. “Now you mention it, sir, I remember that I did not. His
+ringing the bell in this room was the first I knew of his being back. I
+should have heard him come in, if he had come in by the front. I should
+have heard the door go. But he must have come in by the window.” The
+man reflected for a moment, then added, “As a general rule, Mr.
+Manderson would come in by the front, hang up his hat and coat in the
+hall, and pass down the hall into the study. It seems likely to me that
+he was in a great hurry to use the telephone, and so went straight
+across the lawn to the window. He was like that, sir, when there was
+anything important to be done. He had his hat on, now I remember, and
+had thrown his greatcoat over the end of the table. He gave his order
+very sharp, too, as he always did when busy. A very precipitate man
+indeed was Mr. Manderson; a hustler, as they say.”
+“Ah! he appeared to be busy. But didn’t you say just now that you
+noticed nothing unusual about him?”
+A melancholy smile flitted momentarily over Martin’s face. “That
+observation shows that you did not know Mr. Manderson, sir, if you will
+pardon my saying so. His being like that was nothing unusual; quite the
+contrary. It took me long enough to get used to it. Either he would be
+sitting quite still and smoking a cigar, thinking or reading, or else
+he would be writing, dictating, and sending off wires all at the same
+time, till it almost made one dizzy to see it, sometimes for an hour or
+more at a stretch. As for being in a hurry over a telephone message, I
+may say it wasn’t in him to be anything else.”
+Trent turned to the inspector, who met his eye with a look of answering
+intelligence. Not sorry to show his understanding of the line of
+inquiry opened by Trent, Mr. Murch for the first time put a question.
+“Then you left him telephoning by the open window, with the lights on,
+and the drinks on the table; is that it?” “That is so, Mr. Murch.” The
+delicacy of the change in Martin’s manner when called upon to answer
+the detective momentarily distracted Trent’s appreciative mind. But the
+big man’s next question brought it back to the problem at once.
+“About those drinks. You say Mr. Manderson often took no whisky before
+going to bed. Did he have any that night?”
+“I could not say. The room was put to rights in the morning by one of
+the maids, and the glass washed, I presume, as usual. I know that the
+decanter was nearly full that evening. I had refilled it a few days
+before, and I glanced at it when I brought the fresh syphon, just out
+of habit, to make sure there was a decent-looking amount.”
+The inspector went to the tall corner-cupboard and opened it. He took
+out a decanter of cut glass and set it on the table before Martin. “Was
+it fuller than that?” he asked quietly. “That’s how I found it this
+morning.” The decanter was more than half empty.
+For the first time Martin’s self-possession wavered. He took up the
+decanter quickly, tilted it before his eyes, and then stared amazedly
+at the others. He said slowly: “There’s not much short of half a bottle
+gone out of this since I last set eyes on it—and that was that Sunday
+night.”
+“Nobody in the house, I suppose?” suggested Trent discreetly.
+“Out of the question!” replied Martin briefly; then he added, “I beg
+pardon, sir, but this is a most extraordinary thing to me. Such a thing
+never happened in all my experience of Mr. Manderson. As for the
+women-servants, they never touch anything, I can answer for it; and as
+for me, when I want a drink I can help myself without going to the
+decanters.” He took up the decanter again and aimlessly renewed his
+observation of the contents, while the inspector eyed him with a look
+of serene satisfaction, as a master contemplates his handiwork.
+Trent turned to a fresh page of his notebook, and tapped it
+thoughtfully with his pencil. Then he looked up and said, “I suppose
+Mr. Manderson had dressed for dinner that night?”
+“Certainly, sir. He had on a suit with a dress-jacket, what he used to
+refer to as a Tuxedo, which he usually wore when dining at home.”
+“And he was dressed like that when you saw him last?”
+“All but the jacket, sir. When he spent the evening in the library, as
+usually happened, he would change it for an old shooting-jacket after
+dinner, a light-coloured tweed, a little too loud in pattern for
+English tastes, perhaps. He had it on when I saw him last. It used to
+hang in this cupboard here”—Martin opened the door of it as he
+spoke—“along with Mr. Manderson’s fishing-rods and such things, so that
+he could slip it on after dinner without going upstairs.”
+“Leaving the dinner-jacket in the cupboard?”
+“Yes, sir. The housemaid used to take it upstairs in the morning.”
+“In the morning,” Trent repeated slowly. “And now that we are speaking
+of the morning, will you tell me exactly what you know about that? I
+understand that Mr. Manderson was not missed until the body was found
+about ten o’clock.”
+“That is so, sir. Mr. Manderson would never be called, or have anything
+brought to him in the morning. He occupied a separate bedroom. Usually
+he would get up about eight and go round to the bathroom, and he would
+come down some time before nine. But often he would sleep till nine or
+ten o’clock. Mrs. Manderson was always called at seven. The maid would
+take in tea to her. Yesterday morning Mrs. Manderson took breakfast
+about eight in her sitting-room as usual, and every one supposed that
+Mr. Manderson was still in bed and asleep, when Evans came rushing up
+to the house with the shocking intelligence.”
+“I see,” said Trent. “And now another thing. You say you slipped the
+lock of the front door before going to bed. Was that all the locking-up
+you did?”
+“To the front door, sir, yes; I slipped the lock. No more is considered
+necessary in these parts. But I had locked both the doors at the back,
+and seen to the fastenings of all the windows on the ground floor. In
+the morning everything was as I had left it.”
+“As you had left it. Now here is another point—the last, I think. Were
+the clothes in which the body was found the clothes that Mr. Manderson
+would naturally have worn that day?”
+Martin rubbed his chin. “You remind me how surprised I was when I first
+set eyes on the body, sir. At first I couldn’t make out what was
+unusual about the clothes, and then I saw what it was. The collar was a
+shape of collar Mr. Manderson never wore except with evening dress.
+Then I found that he had put on all the same things that he had worn
+the night before—large fronted shirt and all—except just the coat and
+waistcoat and trousers, and the brown shoes, and blue tie. As for the
+suit, it was one of half a dozen he might have worn. But for him to
+have simply put on all the rest just because they were there, instead
+of getting out the kind of shirt and things he always wore by day;
+well, sir, it was unprecedented. It shows, like some other things, what
+a hurry he must have been in when getting up.”
+“Of course,” said Trent. “Well, I think that’s all I wanted to know.
+You have put everything with admirable clearness, Martin. If we want to
+ask any more questions later on, I suppose you will be somewhere
+about.”
+“I shall be at your disposal, sir.” Martin bowed, and went out quietly.
+Trent flung himself into the armchair and exhaled a long breath.
+“Martin is a great creature,” he said. “He is far, far better than a
+play. There is none like him, none, nor will be when our summers have
+deceased. Straight, too; not an atom of harm in dear old Martin. Do you
+know, Murch, you are wrong in suspecting that man.”
+“I never said a word about suspecting him.” The inspector was taken
+aback. “You know, Mr. Trent, he would never have told his story like
+that if he thought I suspected him.”
+“I dare say he doesn’t think so. He is a wonderful creature, a great
+artist; but, in spite of that, he is not at all a sensitive type. It
+has never occurred to his mind that you, Murch, could suspect him,
+Martin, the complete, the accomplished. But I know it. You must
+understand, inspector, that I have made a special study of the
+psychology of officers of the law. It is a grossly neglected branch of
+knowledge. They are far more interesting than criminals, and not nearly
+so easy. All the time I was questioning him I saw handcuffs in your
+eye. Your lips were mutely framing the syllables of those tremendous
+words: ‘It is my duty to tell you that anything you now say will be
+taken down and used in evidence against you.’ Your manner would have
+deceived most men, but it could not deceive me.”
+Mr. Murch laughed heartily. Trent’s nonsense never made any sort of
+impression on his mind, but he took it as a mark of esteem, which
+indeed it was; so it never failed to please him. “Well, Mr. Trent,” he
+said, “you’re perfectly right. There’s no point in denying it, I have
+got my eye on him. Not that there’s anything definite; but you know as
+well as I do how often servants are mixed up in affairs of this kind,
+and this man is such a very quiet customer. You remember the case of
+Lord William Russell’s valet, who went in as usual, in the morning, to
+draw up the blinds in his master’s bedroom, as quiet and starchy as you
+please, a few hours after he had murdered him in his bed. I’ve talked
+to all the women of the house, and I don’t believe there’s a morsel of
+harm in one of them. But Martin’s not so easy set aside. I don’t like
+his manner; I believe he’s hiding something. If so, I shall find it
+out.”
+“Cease!” said Trent. “Drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter
+prophecy. Let us get back to facts. Have you, as a matter of evidence,
+anything at all to bring against Martin’s story as he has told it to
+us?”
+“Nothing whatever at present. As for his suggestion that Manderson came
+in by way of the window after leaving Marlowe and the car, that’s right
+enough, I should say. I questioned the servant who swept the room next
+morning, and she tells me there were gravelly marks near the window, on
+this plain drugget that goes round the carpet. And there’s a footprint
+in this soft new gravel just outside.” The inspector took a folding
+rule from his pocket and with it pointed out the traces. “One of the
+patent shoes Manderson was wearing that night exactly fits that print;
+you’ll find them,” he added, “on the top shelf in the bedroom, near the
+window end, the only patents in the row. The girl who polished them in
+the morning picked them out for me.”
+Trent bent down and studied the faint marks keenly. “Good!” he said.
+“You have covered a lot of ground, Murch, I must say. That was
+excellent about the whisky; you made your point finely. I felt inclined
+to shout ‘Encore!’ It’s a thing that I shall have to think over.”
+“I thought you might have fitted it in already,” said Mr. Murch. “Come,
+Mr. Trent, we’re only at the beginning of our enquiries, but what do
+you say to this for a preliminary theory? There’s a plan of burglary,
+say a couple of men in it and Martin squared. They know where the plate
+is, and all about the handy little bits of stuff in the drawing-room
+and elsewhere. They watch the house; see Manderson off to bed; Martin
+comes to shut the window, and leaves it ajar, accidentally on purpose.
+They wait till Martin goes to bed at twelve-thirty; then they just walk
+into the library, and begin to sample the whisky first thing. Now
+suppose Manderson isn’t asleep, and suppose they make a noise opening
+the window, or however it might be. He hears it; thinks of burglars;
+gets up very quietly to see if anything’s wrong; creeps down on them,
+perhaps, just as they’re getting ready for work. They cut and run; he
+chases them down to the shed, and collars one; there’s a fight; one of
+them loses his temper and his head, and makes a swinging job of it.
+Now, Mr. Trent, pick that to pieces.”
+“Very well,” said Trent; “just to oblige you, Murch, especially as I
+know you don’t believe a word of it. First: no traces of any kind left
+by your burglar or burglars, and the window found fastened in the
+morning, according to Martin. Not much force in that, I allow. Next:
+nobody in the house hears anything of this stampede through the
+library, nor hears any shout from Manderson either inside the house or
+outside. Next: Manderson goes down without a word to anybody, though
+Bunner and Martin are both at hand. Next: did you ever hear, in your
+long experience, of a householder getting up in the night to pounce on
+burglars, who dressed himself fully, with underclothing, shirt; collar
+and tie, trousers, waistcoat and coat, socks and hard leather shoes;
+and who gave the finishing touches to a somewhat dandified toilet by
+doing his hair, and putting on his watch and chain? Personally, I call
+that over-dressing the part. The only decorative detail he seems to
+have forgotten is his teeth.”
+The inspector leaned forward thinking, his large hands clasped before
+him. “No,” he said at last. “Of course there’s no help in that theory.
+I rather expect we have some way to go before we find out why a man
+gets up before the servants are awake, dresses himself awry, and is
+murdered within sight of his house early enough to be “cold and stiff
+by ten in the morning.”
+Trent shook his head. “We can’t build anything on that last
+consideration. I’ve gone into the subject with people who know. I
+shouldn’t wonder,” he added, “if the traditional notions about loss of
+temperature and rigour after death had occasionally brought an innocent
+man to the gallows, or near it. Dr. Stock has them all, I feel sure;
+most general practitioners of the older generation have. That Dr. Stock
+will make an ass of himself at the inquest, is almost as certain as
+that tomorrow’s sun will rise. I’ve seen him. He will say the body must
+have been dead about so long, because of the degree of coldness and
+_rigor mortis_. I can see him nosing it all out in some textbook that
+was out of date when he was a student. Listen, Murch, and I will tell
+you some facts which will be a great hindrance to you in your
+professional career. There are many things that may hasten or retard
+the cooling of the body. This one was lying in the long dewy grass on
+the shady side of the shed. As for rigidity, if Manderson died in a
+struggle, or labouring under sudden emotion, his corpse might stiffen
+practically instantaneously; there are dozens of cases noted,
+particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On the
+other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten
+hours after death. You can’t hang anybody on _rigor mortis_ nowadays,
+inspector, much as you may resent the limitation. No, what we _can_ say
+is this. If he had been shot after the hour at which the world begins
+to get up and go about its business, it would have been heard, and very
+likely seen too. In fact, we must reason, to begin with, at any rate,
+on the assumption that he wasn’t shot at a time when people might be
+awake; it isn’t done in these parts. Put that time at 6.30 a.m.
+Manderson went up to bed at 11 p.m., and Martin sat up till 12.30.
+Assuming that he went to sleep at once on turning in, that leaves us
+something like six hours for the crime to be committed in; and that is
+a long time. But whenever it took place, I wish you would suggest a
+reason why Manderson, who was a fairly late riser, was up and dressed
+at or before 6.30; and why neither Martin, who sleeps lightly, nor
+Bunner, nor his wife heard him moving about, or letting himself out of
+the house. He must have been careful. He must have crept about like a
+cat. Do you feel as I do, Murch, about all this; that it is very, very
+strange and baffling?”
+“That’s how it looks,” agreed the inspector.
+“And now,” said Trent, rising to his feet, “I’ll leave you to your
+meditations, and take a look at the bedrooms. Perhaps the explanation
+of all this will suddenly burst upon you while I am poking about up
+there. But,” concluded Trent in a voice of sudden exasperation, turning
+round in the doorway, “if you can tell me at any time, how under the
+sun a man who put on all those clothes could forget to put in his
+teeth, you may kick me from here to the nearest lunatic asylum, and
+hand me over as an incipient dement.”
+Chapter V.
+Poking About
+There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is
+within us, busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness
+some hint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is
+to feel at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to
+go well with him?—not the feverish confidence of men in danger of a
+blow from fate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an
+unsought conviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that
+success is at hand in some great or fine thing. The general suddenly
+knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on the green
+suddenly knows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted
+the stairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty
+of achievement. A host of guesses and inferences swarmed apparently
+unsorted through his mind; a few secret observations that he had made,
+and which he felt must have significance, still stood unrelated to any
+plausible theory of the crime; yet as he went up he seemed to know
+indubitably that light was going to appear.
+The bedrooms lay on either side of a broad carpeted passage, lighted by
+a tall end window. It went the length of the house until it ran at
+right angles into a narrower passage, out of which the servants’ rooms
+opened. Martin’s room was the exception: it opened out of a small
+landing half-way to the upper floor. As Trent passed it he glanced
+within. A little square room, clean and commonplace. In going up the
+rest of the stairway he stepped with elaborate precaution against
+noise, hugging the wall closely and placing each foot with care; but a
+series of very audible creaks marked his passage.
+He knew that Manderson’s room was the first on the right hand when the
+bedroom floor was reached, and he went to it at once. He tried the
+latch and the lock, which worked normally, and examined the wards of
+the key. Then he turned to the room.
+It was a small apartment, strangely bare. The plutocrat’s toilet
+appointments were of the simplest. All remained just as it had been on
+the morning of the ghastly discovery in the grounds. The sheets and
+blankets of the unmade bed lay tumbled over a narrow wooden bedstead,
+and the sun shone brightly through the window upon them. It gleamed,
+too, upon the gold parts of the delicate work of dentistry that lay in
+water in a shallow bowl of glass placed on a small, plain table by the
+bedside. On this also stood a wrought-iron candlestick. Some clothing
+lay untidily over one of the two rush-bottomed chairs. Various objects
+on the top of a chest of drawers, which had been used as a
+dressing-table, lay in such disorder as a hurried man might make. Trent
+looked them over with a questing eye. He noted also that the occupant
+of the room had neither washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned
+over the dental plate in the bowl, and frowned again at its
+incomprehensible presence.
+The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams,
+were producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called up a
+picture of a haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by the
+first light of dawn, glancing constantly at the inner door behind which
+his wife slept, his eyes full of some terror.
+Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities, opened two
+tall cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They contained
+clothing, a large choice of which had evidently been one of the very
+few conditions of comfort for the man who had slept there.
+In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself the
+advantage of wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed and
+carefully kept, was ranged on two long low shelves against the wall. No
+boots were among them. Trent, himself an amateur of good shoe-leather,
+now turned to these, and glanced over the collection with an
+appreciative eye. It was to be seen that Manderson had been inclined to
+pride himself on a rather small and well-formed foot. The shoes were of
+a distinctive shape, narrow and round-toed, beautifully made; all were
+evidently from the same last.
+Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leather
+shoes on the upper shelf.
+These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described the
+position to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his
+death. They were a well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that
+they had been very recently polished. Something about the uppers of
+these shoes had seized his attention. He bent lower and frowned over
+them, comparing what he saw with the appearance of the neighbouring
+shoes. Then he took them up and examined the line of junction of the
+uppers with the soles.
+As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and with
+great precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present,
+would have recognized.
+Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntary
+trick which tells those who know them that they are suppressing
+excitement. The inspector had noted that when Trent had picked up a
+strong scent he whistled faintly a certain melodious passage; though
+the inspector could not have told you that it was in fact the opening
+movement of Mendelssohn’s _Lied ohne Worter_ in A Major.
+He turned the shoes over, made some measurements with a marked tape,
+and looked minutely at the bottoms. On each, in the angle between the
+heel and the instep, he detected a faint trace of red gravel.
+Trent placed the shoes on the floor, and walked with his hands behind
+him to the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed with
+eyes that saw nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically the
+Englishman’s expletive of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned to
+the shelves again, and swiftly but carefully examined every one of the
+shoes there.
+This done, he took up the garments from the chair, looked them over
+closely and replaced them. He turned to the wardrobe cupboards again,
+and hunted through them carefully. The litter on the dressing-table now
+engaged his attention for the second time. Then he sat down on the
+empty chair, took his head in his hands, and remained in that attitude,
+staring at the carpet, for some minutes. He rose at last and opened the
+inner door leading to Mrs. Manderson’s room.
+It was evident at a glance that the big room had been hurriedly put
+down from its place as the lady’s bower. All the array of objects that
+belong to a woman’s dressing-table had been removed; on bed and chairs
+and smaller tables there were no garments or hats, bags or boxes; no
+trace remained of the obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils,
+handkerchiefs and ribbons, to break the captivity of the drawer. The
+room was like an unoccupied guest-chamber. Yet in every detail of
+furniture and decoration it spoke of an unconventional but exacting
+taste. Trent, as his expert eye noted the various perfection of colour
+and form amid which the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought
+her loneliest thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an
+artistic nature. His interest in this unknown personality grew
+stronger; and his brows came down heavily as he thought of the burdens
+laid upon it, and of the deed of which the history was now shaping
+itself with more and more of substance before his busy mind.
+He went first to the tall French window in the middle of the wall that
+faced the door, and opening it, stepped out upon a small balcony with
+an iron railing. He looked down on a broad stretch of lawn that began
+immediately beneath him, separated from the house-wall only by a narrow
+flower-bed, and stretched away, with an abrupt dip at the farther end,
+toward the orchard. The other window opened with a sash above the
+garden-entrance of the library. In the farther inside corner of the
+room was a second door giving upon the passage; the door by which the
+maid was wont to come in, and her mistress to go out, in the morning.
+Trent, seated on the bed, quickly sketched in his notebook a plan of
+the room and its neighbour. The bed stood in the angle between the
+communicating-door and the sash-window, its head against the wall
+dividing the room from Manderson’s. Trent stared at the pillows; then
+he lay down with deliberation on the bed and looked through the open
+door into the adjoining room.
+This observation taken, he rose again and proceeded to note on his plan
+that on either side of the bed was a small table with a cover. Upon
+that furthest from the door was a graceful electric-lamp standard of
+copper connected by a free wire with the wall. Trent looked at it
+thoughtfully, then at the switches connected with the other lights in
+the room. They were, as usual, on the wall just within the door, and
+some way out of his reach as he sat on the bed. He rose, and satisfied
+himself that the lights were all in order. Then he turned on his heel,
+walked quickly into Manderson’s room, and rang the bell.
+“I want your help again, Martin,” he said, as the butler presented
+himself, upright and impassive, in the doorway. “I want you to prevail
+upon Mrs. Manderson’s maid to grant me an interview.”
+“Certainly, sir,” said Martin.
+“What sort of a woman is she? Has she her wits about her?”
+“She’s French, sir,” replied Martin succinctly; adding after a pause:
+“She has not been with us long, sir, but I have formed the impression
+that the young woman knows as much of the world as is good for
+her—since you ask me.”
+“You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?” said
+Trent. “Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.”
+“I will send her up immediately, sir.” The butler withdrew, and Trent
+wandered round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner than
+he had expected, a small neat figure in black appeared quietly before
+him.
+The lady’s maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favourable notice
+of Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been
+hoping desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was
+as great below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing,
+she felt the need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her
+scenes were at a discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr.
+Murch, he had chilled her into self-control with his official manner.
+Trent, her glimpse of him had told her, had not the air of a policeman,
+and at a distance he had appeared _sympathique_.
+As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that any
+approach to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good
+impression at the beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour,
+then, that she said, “Monsieur desire to speak with me.” She added
+helpfully, “I am called Célestine.”
+“Naturally,” said Trent with businesslike calm. “Now what I want you to
+tell me, Célestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistress
+yesterday morning at seven o’clock, was the door between the two
+bedrooms—this door here—open?”
+Célestine became intensely animated in an instant. “Oh yes!” she said,
+using her favourite English idiom. “The door was open as always,
+monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain.
+Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in
+there—ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other
+room, all explains itself.” She tripped across to the door, and urged
+Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a hand on his arm. “See!
+I enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the bed. Before I
+come quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand—open
+always—so! But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of
+Monsieur Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach
+from down there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order.
+Yesterday it was as ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame
+sleep like an angel—she see nothing. I shut the door. I place the
+_plateau_—I open the curtains—I prepare the toilette—I retire—voilà!”
+Célestine paused for breath and spread her hands abroad.
+Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening
+gravity, nodded his head. “I see exactly how it was now,” he said.
+“Thank you, Célestine. So Mr. Manderson was supposed to be still in his
+room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having
+breakfast in her boudoir?”
+“Oui, monsieur.”
+“Nobody missed him, in fact,” remarked Trent. “Well, Célestine, I am
+very much obliged to you.” He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
+“It is nothing, monsieur,” said Célestine, as she crossed the small
+room. “I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur
+Manderson. But I not regret him too much,” she added with sudden and
+amazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outer
+door. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the colour rose in
+her small dark face. English departed from her. “Je ne le regrette pas
+du tout, du tout!” she cried with a flood of words. “Madame—ah! je me
+jetterais au feu pour madame—une femme si charmante, si adorable! Mais
+un homme comme monsieur—maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!—de ma
+vie! J’en avais par-dessus la tête, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce
+insupportable, tout de même, qu’il existe des types comme ça? Je vous
+jure que—”
+“Finissez ce chahut, Célestine!” Trent broke in sharply. Célestine’s
+tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. “En
+voilà une scène! C’est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ça,
+mademoiselle. Du reste, c’est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have
+some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that
+kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don’t wave your fists
+about so much; you might hit something. You seem,” he went on more
+pleasantly, as Célestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, “to
+be even more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the
+way. I could almost suspect, Célestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take
+as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.”
+“A peine s’il m’avait regardé!” Célestine answered simply.
+“Ça, c’est un comble!” observed Trent. “You are a nice young woman for
+a small tea-party, I don’t think. A star upon your birthday burned,
+whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven,
+Célestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a
+beauty!”
+Célestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise
+restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at
+Trent over her shoulder, the lady’s maid opened the door and swiftly
+disappeared.
+Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two
+forcible descriptive terms in Célestine’s language, and turned to his
+problem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and
+placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself
+on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat
+with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he
+whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room.
+A subdued twittering came from the trees through the open window. From
+time to time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about
+the sill. But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now
+with his thoughts, never moved.
+So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his
+feet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out
+upon the landing.
+Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened
+that which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means
+austerely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in one
+corner, a pile of books in another. The housemaid’s hand had failed to
+give a look of order to the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on the
+dressing-table and on the mantelshelf—pipes, penknives, pencils, keys,
+golf-balls, old letters, photographs, small boxes, tins, and bottles.
+Two fine etchings and some water-colour sketches hung on the walls;
+leaning against the end of the wardrobe, unhung, were a few framed
+engravings. A row of shoes and boots was ranged beneath the window.
+Trent crossed the room and studied them intently; then he measured some
+of them with his tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat on the
+side of the bed, and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.
+The photographs on the mantelshelf attracted him presently. He rose and
+examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two
+others were views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print
+of three youths—one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the
+haggard blue eyes—clothed in tatterdemalion soldier’s gear of the
+sixteenth century. Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady,
+slightly resembling Marlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette
+from an open box on the mantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the
+photographs. Next he turned his attention to a flat leathern case that
+lay by the cigarette-box.
+It opened easily. A small and light revolver, of beautiful workmanship,
+was disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock
+were engraved the initials “J. M.”
+A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and
+peered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the
+open door of the room. “I was wondering—” he began; then stopped as he
+saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly.
+“Whose is the revolver, Mr. Trent?” he asked in a conversational tone.
+“Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr. Marlowe,”
+replied Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. “I
+found this lying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little
+pistol to me, and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say,
+since the last time it was used. But I know little about firearms.”
+“Well, I know a good deal,” rejoined the inspector quietly, taking the
+revolver from Trent’s outstretched hand. “It’s a bit of a speciality
+with me, is firearms, as I think you know, Mr. Trent. But it don’t
+require an expert to tell one thing.” He replaced the revolver in its
+case on the mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid it
+on the spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object from his
+waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a little
+leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it
+some bright new scratches.
+“Is that _the_ one?” Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector’s
+hand.
+“That’s him,” replied Mr. Murch. “Lodged in the bone at the back of the
+skull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the
+local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches
+you see were made by the doctor’s instruments. These other marks were
+made by the rifling of the barrel—a barrel like this one.” He tapped
+the revolver. “Same make, same calibre. There is no other that marks
+the bullet just like this.”
+With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector
+looked into each other’s eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to
+speak. “This mystery is all wrong,” he observed. “It is insanity. The
+symptoms of mania are very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not
+in any doubt, I believe, about Manderson having dispatched Marlowe in
+the car to Southampton, or about Marlowe having gone, returning late
+last night, many hours after the murder was committed.”
+“There _is_ no doubt whatever about all that,” said Mr. Murch, with a
+slight emphasis on the verb.
+“And now,” pursued Trent, “we are invited by this polished and
+insinuating firearm to believe the following line of propositions: that
+Marlowe never went to Southampton; that he returned to the house in the
+night; that he somehow, without waking Mrs. Manderson or anybody else,
+got Manderson to get up, dress himself, and go out into the grounds;
+that he then and there shot the said Manderson with his incriminating
+pistol; that he carefully cleaned the said pistol, returned to the
+house and, again without disturbing any one, replaced it in its case in
+a favourable position to be found by the officers of the law; that he
+then withdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding—_with_ a large
+motor car; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole
+affair, at—what time was it?”
+“A little after 9 p.m.” The inspector still stared moodily at Trent.
+“As you say, Mr. Trent, that is the first theory suggested by this
+find, and it seems wild enough—at least it would do if it didn’t fall
+to pieces at the very start. When the murder was done Marlowe must have
+been fifty to a hundred miles away. He _did_ go to Southampton.”
+“How do you know?”
+“I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived in
+Southampton about 6.30 on the Monday morning.”
+“Come off” exclaimed Trent bitterly. “What do I care about his story?
+What do you care about his story? I want to know how you _know_ he went
+to Southampton.”
+Mr. Murch chuckled. “I thought I should take a rise out of you, Mr.
+Trent,” he said. “Well, there’s no harm in telling you. After I arrived
+yesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story from
+Mrs. Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to the
+telegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson had
+told his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and
+sent Marlowe to Southampton to get some important information from some
+one who was crossing by the next day’s boat. It seemed right enough,
+but, you see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn’t
+under my hand, so to speak. He didn’t return in the car until later in
+the evening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I wired to
+Southampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got this
+reply.” He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:
+Person answering description in motor answering description arrived
+Bedford Hotel here 6.30 this morning gave name Marlowe left car hotel
+garage told attendant car belonged Manderson had bath and breakfast
+went out heard of later at docks inquiring for passenger name Harris on
+Havre boat inquired repeatedly until boat left at noon next heard of at
+hotel where he lunched about 1.15 left soon afterwards in car company’s
+agents inform berth was booked name Harris last week but Harris did not
+travel by boat Burke Inspector.
+“Simple and satisfactory,” observed Mr. Murch as Trent, after twice
+reading the message, returned it to him. “His own story corroborated in
+every particular. He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour or
+so on the chance of Harris turning up late, then strolled back,
+lunched, and decided to return at once. He sent a wire to
+Manderson—‘Harris not turned up missed boat returning Marlowe,’ which
+was duly delivered here in the afternoon, and placed among the dead
+man’s letters. He motored back at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired.
+When he heard of Manderson’s death from Martin, he nearly fainted. What
+with that and the being without sleep for so long, he was rather a
+wreck when I came to interview him last night; but he was perfectly
+coherent.”
+Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a few
+moments. “It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol and
+cartridges about so carelessly,” he remarked at length, as he put it
+back in the case. “It was throwing temptation in somebody’s way, don’t
+you think?”
+Mr. Murch shook his head. “There isn’t really much to lay hold of about
+the revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolver
+is common enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Half
+the people who buy a revolver today for self-defence or mischief
+provide themselves with that make, of that calibre. It is very
+reliable, and easily carried in the hip-pocket. There must be thousands
+of them in the possession of crooks and honest men. For instance,”
+continued the inspector with an air of unconcern, “Manderson himself
+had one, the double of this. I found it in one of the top drawers of
+the desk downstairs, and it’s in my overcoat pocket now.”
+“Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself.”
+“I was,” said the inspector; “but as you’ve found one revolver, you may
+as well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us any
+good. The people in the house—”
+Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as the
+half-closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stood
+in the doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to the
+faces of Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound to
+herald this entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet.
+He wore rubber-soled tennis shoes.
+“You must be Mr. Bunner,” said Trent.
+Chapter VI.
+Mr. Bunner on the Case
+“Calvin C. Bunner, at your service,” amended the newcomer, with a touch
+of punctilio, as he removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He was
+used to finding Englishmen slow and ceremonious with strangers, and
+Trent’s quick remark plainly disconcerted him a little. “You are Mr.
+Trent, I expect,” he went on. “Mrs. Manderson was telling me a while
+ago. Captain, good-morning.” Mr. Murch acknowledged the outlandish
+greeting with a nod. “I was coming up to my room, and I heard a strange
+voice in here, so I thought I would take a look in.” Mr. Bunner laughed
+easily. “You thought I might have been eavesdropping, perhaps,” he
+said. “No, sir; I heard a word or two about a pistol—this one, I
+guess—and that’s all.”
+Mr. Bunner was a thin, rather short young man with a shaven, pale,
+bony, almost girlish face, and large, dark, intelligent eyes. His
+waving dark hair was parted in the middle. His lips, usually occupied
+with a cigar, in its absence were always half open with a curious
+expression as of permanent eagerness. By smoking or chewing a cigar
+this expression was banished, and Mr. Bunner then looked the
+consummately cool and sagacious Yankee that he was.
+Born in Connecticut, he had gone into a broker’s office on leaving
+college, and had attracted the notice of Manderson, whose business with
+his firm he had often handled. The Colossus had watched him for some
+time, and at length offered him the post of private secretary. Mr.
+Bunner was a pattern business man, trustworthy, long-headed,
+methodical, and accurate. Manderson could have found many men with
+those virtues; but he engaged Mr Bunner because he was also swift and
+secret, and had besides a singular natural instinct in regard to the
+movements of the stock market.
+Trent and the American measured one another coolly with their eyes.
+Both appeared satisfied with what they saw. “I was having it explained
+to me,” said Trent pleasantly, “that my discovery of a pistol that
+might have shot Manderson does not amount to very much. I am told it is
+a favourite weapon among your people, and has become quite popular over
+here.”
+Mr. Bunner stretched out a bony hand and took the pistol from its case.
+“Yes, sir,” he said, handling it with an air of familiarity; “the
+captain is right. This is what we call out home a Little Arthur, and I
+dare say there are duplicates of it in a hundred thousand hip-pockets
+this minute. I consider it too light in the hand myself,” Mr. Bunner
+went on, mechanically feeling under the tail of his jacket, and
+producing an ugly looking weapon. “Feel of that, now, Mr. Trent—it’s
+loaded, by the way. Now this Little Arthur—Marlowe bought it just
+before we came over this year to please the old man. Manderson said it
+was ridiculous for a man to be without a pistol in the twentieth
+century. So he went out and bought what they offered him, I guess—never
+consulted me. Not but what it’s a good gun,” Mr. Bunner conceded,
+squinting along the sights. “Marlowe was poor with it at first, but
+I’ve coached him some in the last month or so, and he’s practised until
+he is pretty good. But he never could get the habit of carrying it
+around. Why, it’s as natural to me as wearing my pants. I have carried
+one for some years now, because there was always likely to be somebody
+laying for Manderson. And now,” Mr. Bunner concluded sadly, “they got
+him when I wasn’t around. Well, gentlemen, you must excuse me. I am
+going into Bishopsbridge. There is a lot to do these days, and I have
+to send off a bunch of cables big enough to choke a cow.”
+“I must be off too,” said Trent. “I have an appointment at the ‘Three
+Tuns’ inn.”
+“Let me give you a lift in the automobile,” said Mr. Bunner cordially.
+“I go right by that joint. Say, cap., are you coming my way too? No?
+Then come along, Mr. Trent, and help me get out the car. The chauffeur
+is out of action, and we have to do ’most everything ourselves except
+clean the dirt off her.”
+Still tirelessly talking in his measured drawl, Mr. Bunner led Trent
+downstairs and through the house to the garage at the back. It stood at
+a little distance from the house, and made a cool retreat from the
+blaze of the midday sun.
+Mr. Bunner seemed to be in no hurry to get out the car. He offered
+Trent a cigar, which was accepted, and for the first time lit his own.
+Then he seated himself on the footboard of the car, his thin hands
+clasped between his knees, and looked keenly at the other.
+“See here, Mr. Trent,” he said, after a few moments. “There are some
+things I can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record.
+You are a smart man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don’t know if
+I have that detective sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I
+would answer any questions he had the gumption to ask me—I have done
+so, in fact—but I don’t feel encouraged to give him any notions of mine
+without his asking. See?”
+Trent nodded. “That is a feeling many people have in the presence of
+our police,” he said. “It’s the official manner, I suppose. But let me
+tell you, Murch is anything but what you think. He is one of the
+shrewdest officers in Europe. He is not very quick with his mind, but
+he is very sure. And his experience is immense. My forte is
+imagination, but I assure you in police work experience outweighs it by
+a great deal.”
+“Outweigh nothing!” replied Mr. Bunner crisply. “This is no ordinary
+case, Mr. Trent. I will tell you one reason why. I believe the old man
+knew there was something coming to him. Another thing: I believe it was
+something he thought he couldn’t dodge.”
+Trent pulled a crate opposite to Mr. Bunner’s place on the footboard
+and seated himself. “This sounds like business,” he said. “Tell me your
+ideas.”
+“I say what I do because of the change in the old man’s manner this
+last few weeks. I dare say you have heard, Mr. Trent, that he was a man
+who always kept himself well in hand. That was so. I have always
+considered him the coolest and hardest head in business. That man’s
+calm was just deadly—I never saw anything to beat it. And I knew
+Manderson as nobody else did. I was with him in the work he really
+lived for. I guess I knew him a heap better than his wife did, poor
+woman. I knew him better than Marlowe could—he never saw Manderson in
+his office when there was a big thing on. I knew him better than any of
+his friends.”
+“Had he any friends?” interjected Trent.
+Mr. Bunner glanced at him sharply. “Somebody has been putting you next,
+I see that,” he remarked. “No: properly speaking, I should say not. He
+had many acquaintances among the big men, people he saw, most every
+day; they would even go yachting or hunting together. But I don’t
+believe there ever was a man that Manderson opened a corner of his
+heart to. But what I was going to say was this. Some months ago the old
+man began to get like I never knew him before—gloomy and sullen, just
+as if he was everlastingly brooding over something bad, something that
+he couldn’t fix. This went on without any break; it was the same down
+town as it was up home, he acted just as if there was something lying
+heavy on his mind. But it wasn’t until a few weeks back that his
+self-restraint began to go; and let me tell you this, Mr. Trent”—the
+American laid his bony claw on the other’s knee—“I’m the only man that
+knows it. With every one else he would be just morose and dull; but
+when he was alone with me in his office, or anywhere where we would be
+working together, if the least little thing went wrong, by George! he
+would fly off the handle to beat the Dutch. In this library here I have
+seen him open a letter with something that didn’t just suit him in it,
+and he would rip around and carry on like an Indian, saying he wished
+he had the man that wrote it here, he wouldn’t do a thing to him, and
+so on, till it was just pitiful. I never saw such a change. And here’s
+another thing. For a week before he died Manderson neglected his work,
+for the first time in my experience. He wouldn’t answer a letter or a
+cable, though things looked like going all to pieces over there. I
+supposed that this anxiety of his, whatever it was, had got on to his
+nerves till they were worn out. Once I advised him to see a doctor, and
+he told me to go to hell. But nobody saw this side of him but me. If he
+was having one of these rages in the library here, for example, and
+Mrs. Manderson would come into the room, he would be all calm and cold
+again in an instant.”
+“And you put this down to some secret anxiety, a fear that somebody had
+designs on his life?” asked Trent.
+The American nodded.
+“I suppose,” Trent resumed, “you had considered the idea of there being
+something wrong with his mind—a break-down from overstrain, say. That
+is the first thought that your account suggests to me. Besides, it is
+what is always happening to your big business men in America, isn’t it?
+That is the impression one gets from the newspapers.”
+“Don’t let them slip you any of that bunk,” said Mr. Bunner earnestly.
+“It’s only the ones who have got rich too quick, and can’t make good,
+who go crazy. Think of all our really big men—the men anywhere near
+Manderson’s size: did you ever hear of any one of them losing his
+senses? They don’t do it—believe _me_. I know they say every man has
+his loco point,” Mr. Bunner added reflectively, “but that doesn’t mean
+genuine, sure-enough craziness; it just means some personal
+eccentricity in a man ... like hating cats ... or my own weakness of
+not being able to touch any kind of fish-food.”
+“Well, what was Manderson’s?”
+“He was full of them—the old man. There was his objection to all the
+unnecessary fuss and luxury that wealthy people don’t kick at much, as
+a general rule. He didn’t have any use for expensive trifles and
+ornaments. He wouldn’t have anybody do little things for him; he hated
+to have servants tag around after him unless he wanted them. And
+although Manderson was as careful about his clothes as any man I ever
+knew, and his shoes—well, sir, the amount of money he spent on shoes
+was sinful—in spite of that, I tell you, he never had a valet. He never
+liked to have anybody touch him. All his life nobody ever shaved him.”
+“I’ve heard something of that,” Trent remarked. “Why was it, do you
+think?”
+“Well,” Mr. Bunner answered slowly, “it was the Manderson habit of
+mind, I guess; a sort of temper of general suspicion and jealousy.
+“They say his father and grandfather were just the same.... Like a dog
+with a bone, you know, acting as if all the rest of creation was laying
+for a chance to steal it. He didn’t really _think_ the barber would
+start in to saw his head off; he just felt there was a possibility that
+he _might_, and he was taking no risks. Then again in business he was
+always convinced that somebody else was after his bone—which was true
+enough a good deal of the time; but not all the time. The consequence
+of that was that the old man was the most cautious and secret worker in
+the world of finance; and that had a lot to do with his success,
+too.... But that doesn’t amount to being a lunatic, Mr. Trent; not by a
+long way. You ask me if Manderson was losing his mind before he died. I
+say I believe he was just worn out with worrying over something, and
+was losing his nerve.”
+Trent smoked thoughtfully. He wondered how much Mr. Bunner knew of the
+domestic difficulty in his chief’s household, and decided to put out a
+feeler. “I understood that he had trouble with his wife.”
+“Sure,” replied Mr. Bunner. “But do you suppose a thing like that was
+going to upset Sig Manderson that way? No, sir! He was a sight too big
+a man to be all broken up by any worry of that kind.”
+Trent looked half-incredulously into the eyes of the young man. But
+behind all their shrewdness and intensity he saw a massive innocence.
+Mr. Bunner really believed a serious breach between husband and wife to
+be a minor source of trouble for a big man.
+“What _was_ the trouble between them, anyhow?” Trent inquired.
+“You can search me,” Mr. Bunner replied briefly. He puffed at his
+cigar. “Marlowe and I have often talked about it, and we could never
+make out a solution. I had a notion at first,” said Mr. Bunner in a
+lower voice, leaning forward, “that the old man was disappointed and
+vexed because he had expected a child; but Marlowe told me that the
+disappointment on that score was the other way around, likely as not.
+His idea was all right, I guess; he gathered it from something said by
+Mrs. Manderson’s French maid.”
+Trent looked up at him quickly. “Célestine!” he said; and his thought
+was, “So that was what she was getting at!”
+Mr. Bunner misunderstood his glance. “Don’t you think I’m giving a man
+away, Mr. Trent,” he said. “Marlowe isn’t that kind. Célestine just
+took a fancy to him because he talks French like a native, and she
+would always be holding him up for a gossip. French servants are quite
+unlike English that way. And servant or no servant,” added Mr. Bunner
+with emphasis, “I don’t see how a woman could mention such a subject to
+a man. But the French beat me.” He shook his head slowly.
+“But to come back to what you were telling me just now,” Trent said.
+“You believe that Manderson was going in terror of his life for some
+time. Who should threaten it? I am quite in the dark.”
+“Terror—I don’t know,” replied Mr. Bunner meditatively. “Anxiety, if
+you like. Or suspense—that’s rather my idea of it. The old man was hard
+to terrify, anyway; and more than that, he wasn’t taking any
+precautions—he was actually avoiding them. It looked more like he was
+asking for a quick finish—supposing there’s any truth in my idea. Why,
+he would sit in that library window, nights, looking out into the dark,
+with his white shirt just a target for anybody’s gun. As for who should
+threaten his life well, sir,” said Mr. Bunner with a faint smile, “it’s
+certain you have not lived in the States. To take the Pennsylvania coal
+hold-up alone, there were thirty thousand men, with women and children
+to keep, who would have jumped at the chance of drilling a hole through
+the man who fixed it so that they must starve or give in to his terms.
+Thirty thousand of the toughest aliens in the country, Mr. Trent.
+There’s a type of desperado you find in that kind of push who has been
+known to lay for a man for years, and kill him when he had forgotten
+what he did. They have been known to dynamite a man in Idaho who had
+done them dirt in New Jersey ten years before. Do you suppose the
+Atlantic is going to stop them?... It takes some sand, I tell you, to
+be a big business man in our country. No, sir: the old man knew—had
+always known—that there was a whole crowd of dangerous men scattered up
+and down the States who had it in for him. My belief is that he had
+somehow got to know that some of them were definitely after him at
+last. What licks me altogether is why he should have just laid himself
+open to them the way he did—why he never tried to dodge, but walked
+right down into the garden yesterday morning to be shot at.”
+Mr. Bunner ceased to speak, and for a little while both men sat with
+wrinkled brows, faint blue vapours rising from their cigars. Then Trent
+rose. “Your theory is quite fresh to me,” he said. “It’s perfectly
+rational, and it’s only a question of whether it fits all the facts. I
+mustn’t give away what I’m doing for my newspaper, Mr. Bunner, but I
+will say this: I have already satisfied myself that this was a
+premeditated crime, and an extraordinarily cunning one at that. I’m
+deeply obliged to you. We must talk it over again.” He looked at his
+watch. “I have been expected for some time by my friend. Shall we make
+a move?”
+“Two o’clock,” said Mr. Bunner, consulting his own, as he got up from
+the foot-board. “Ten a.m. in little old New York. You don’t know Wall
+Street, Mr. Trent. Let’s you and I hope we never see anything nearer
+hell than what’s loose in the Street this minute.”
+Chapter VII.
+The Lady in Black
+The sea broke raging upon the foot of the cliff under a good breeze;
+the sun flooded the land with life from a dappled blue sky. In this
+perfection of English weather Trent, who had slept ill, went down
+before eight o’clock to a pool among the rocks, the direction of which
+had been given him, and dived deep into clear water. Between vast grey
+boulders he swam out to the tossing open, forced himself some little
+way against a coast-wise current, and then returned to his refuge
+battered and refreshed. Ten minutes later he was scaling the cliff
+again, and his mind, cleared for the moment of a heavy disgust for the
+affair he had in hand, was turning over his plans for the morning.
+It was the day of the inquest, the day after his arrival in the place.
+He had carried matters not much further after parting with the American
+on the road to Bishopsbridge. In the afternoon he had walked from the
+inn into the town, accompanied by Mr. Cupples, and had there made
+certain purchases at a chemist’s shop, conferred privately for some
+time with a photographer, sent off a reply-paid telegram, and made an
+enquiry at the telephone exchange. He had said but little about the
+case to Mr. Cupples, who seemed incurious on his side, and nothing at
+all about the results of his investigation or the steps he was about to
+take. After their return from Bishopsbridge, Trent had written a long
+dispatch for the _Record_ and sent it to be telegraphed by the proud
+hands of the paper’s local representative. He had afterwards dined with
+Mr. Cupples, and had spent the rest of the evening in meditative
+solitude on the veranda.
+This morning as he scaled the cliff he told himself that he had never
+taken up a case he liked so little, or which absorbed him so much. The
+more he contemplated it in the golden sunshine of this new day, the
+more evil and the more challenging it appeared. All that he suspected
+and all that he almost knew had occupied his questing brain for hours
+to the exclusion of sleep; and in this glorious light and air, though
+washed in body and spirit by the fierce purity of the sea, he only saw
+the more clearly the darkness of the guilt in which he believed, and
+was more bitterly repelled by the motive at which he guessed. But now
+at least his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt quickened.
+He would neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In the
+course of the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to
+do in the morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much
+serious hope, he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot
+into the sky, as it were, the day before.
+The path back to the hotel wound for some way along the top of the
+cliff, and on nearing a spot he had marked from the sea level, where
+the face had fallen away long ago, he approached the edge and looked
+down, hoping to follow with his eyes the most delicately beautiful of
+all the movements of water—the wash of a light sea over broken rock.
+But no rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a
+rough platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass
+and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where
+the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about
+her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant
+liner, her face full of some dream.
+This woman seemed to Trent, whose training had taught him to live in
+his eyes, to make the most beautiful picture he had ever seen. Her face
+of southern pallor, touched by the kiss of the wind with colour on the
+cheek, presented to him a profile of delicate regularity in which there
+was nothing hard; nevertheless the black brows bending down toward the
+point where they almost met gave her in repose a look of something like
+severity, strangely redeemed by the open curves of the mouth. Trent
+said to himself that the absurdity or otherwise of a lover writing
+sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow depended after all on the quality of
+the eyebrow. Her nose was of the straight and fine sort, exquisitely
+escaping the perdition of too much length, which makes a conscientious
+mind ashamed that it cannot help, on occasion, admiring the tip-tilted.
+Her hat lay pinned to the grass beside her, and the lively breeze
+played with her thick dark hair, blowing backward the two broad
+bandeaux that should have covered much of her forehead, and agitating a
+hundred tiny curls from the mass gathered at her nape. Everything about
+this lady was black, from her shoes of suede to the hat that she had
+discarded; lustreless black covered her to her bare throat. All she
+wore was fine and well put on. Dreamy and delicate of spirit as her
+looks declared her, it was very plain that she was long-practised as
+only a woman grown can be in dressing well, the oldest of the arts, and
+had her touch of primal joy in the excellence of the body that was so
+admirably curved now in the attitude of embraced knees. With the
+suggestion of French taste in her clothes, she made a very modern
+figure seated there, until one looked at her face and saw the glow and
+triumph of all vigorous beings that ever faced sun and wind and sea
+together in the prime of the year. One saw, too, a womanhood so unmixed
+and vigorous, so unconsciously sure of itself, as scarcely to be
+English, still less American.
+Trent, who had halted only for a moment in the surprise of seeing the
+woman in black, had passed by on the cliff above her, perceiving and
+feeling as he went the things set down. At all times his keen vision
+and active brain took in and tasted details with an easy swiftness that
+was marvellous to men of slower chemistry; the need to stare, he held,
+was evidence of blindness. Now the feeling of beauty was awakened and
+exultant, and doubled the power of his sense. In these instants a
+picture was printed on his memory that would never pass away.
+As he went by unheard on the turf the woman, still alone with her
+thoughts, suddenly moved. She unclasped her long hands from about her
+knees, stretched her limbs and body with feline grace, then slowly
+raised her head and extended her arms with open, curving fingers, as if
+to gather to her all the glory and overwhelming sanity of the morning.
+This was a gesture not to be mistaken: it was a gesture of freedom, the
+movement of a soul’s resolution to be, to possess, to go forward,
+perhaps to enjoy.
+So he saw her for an instant as he passed, and he did not turn. He knew
+suddenly who the woman must be, and it was as if a curtain of gloom
+were drawn between him and the splendour of the day.
+During breakfast at the hotel Mr. Cupples found Trent little inclined
+to talk. He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr.
+Cupples, on the other hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The
+prospect of the inquest seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent
+with a disquisition upon the history of that most ancient and once busy
+tribunal, the coroner’s court, and remarked upon the enviable freedom
+of its procedure from the shackles of rule and precedent. From this he
+passed to the case that was to come before it that morning.
+“Young Bunner mentioned to me last night,” he said, “when I went up
+there after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard to
+the crime. A very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is
+occasionally obscure, but in my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded
+knowledge of the world quite unusual in one of his apparent age.
+Indeed, his promotion by Manderson to the position of his principal
+lieutenant speaks for itself. He seems to have assumed with perfect
+confidence the control at this end of the wire, as he expresses it, of
+the complicated business situation caused by the death of his
+principal, and he has advised very wisely as to the steps I should take
+on Mabel’s behalf, and the best course for her to pursue until effect
+has been given to the provisions of the will. I was accordingly less
+disposed than I might otherwise have been to regard his suggestion of
+an industrial vendetta as far-fetched. When I questioned him he was
+able to describe a number of cases in which attacks of one sort or
+another—too often successful—had been made upon the lives of persons
+who had incurred the hostility of powerful labour organizations. This
+is a terrible time in which we live, my dear boy. There is none
+recorded in history, I think, in which the disproportion between the
+material and the moral constituents of society has been so great or so
+menacing to the permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement,
+is the prospect so dark as it is in the United States.”
+“I thought,” said Trent listlessly, “that Puritanism was about as
+strong there as the money-getting craze.”
+“Your remark,” answered Mr. Cupples, with as near an approach to humour
+as was possible to him, “is not in the nature of a testimonial to what
+you call Puritanism—a convenient rather than an accurate term; for I
+need not remind you that it was invented to describe an Anglican party
+which aimed at the purging of the services and ritual of their Church
+from certain elements repugnant to them. The sense of your observation,
+however, is none the less sound, and its truth is extremely well
+illustrated by the case of Manderson himself, who had, I believe, the
+virtues of purity, abstinence, and self-restraint in their strongest
+form. No, Trent, there are other and more worthy things among the moral
+constituents of which I spoke; and in our finite nature, the more we
+preoccupy ourselves with the bewildering complexity of external
+apparatus which science places in our hands, the less vigour have we
+left for the development of the holier purposes of humanity within us.
+Agricultural machinery has abolished the festival of the Harvest Home.
+Mechanical travel has abolished the inn, or all that was best in it. I
+need not multiply instances. The view I am expressing to you,” pursued
+Mr. Cupples, placidly buttering a piece of toast, “is regarded as
+fundamentally erroneous by many of those who think generally as I do
+about the deeper concerns of life, but I am nevertheless firmly
+persuaded of its truth.”
+“It needs epigrammatic expression,” said Trent, rising from the table.
+“If only it could be crystallized into some handy formula, like ‘No
+Popery’, or ‘Tax the Foreigner’, you would find multitudes to go to the
+stake for it. But you were planning to go to White Gables before the
+inquest, I think. You ought to be off if you are to get back to the
+court in time. I have something to attend to there myself, so we might
+walk up together. I will just go and get my camera.”
+“By all means,” Mr. Cupples answered; and they set off at once in the
+ever-growing warmth of the morning. The roof of White Gables, a surly
+patch of dull red against the dark trees, seemed to harmonize with
+Trent’s mood; he felt heavy, sinister, and troubled. If a blow must
+fall that might strike down that creature radiant of beauty and life
+whom he had seen that morning, he did not wish it to come from his
+hand. An exaggerated chivalry had lived in Trent since the first
+teachings of his mother; but at this moment the horror of bruising
+anything so lovely was almost as much the artist’s revulsion as the
+gentleman’s. On the other hand, was the hunt to end in nothing? The
+quality of the affair was such that the thought of forbearance was an
+agony. There never was such a case; and he alone, he was confident,
+held the truth of it under his hand. At least, he determined, that day
+should show whether what he believed was a delusion. He would trample
+his compunction underfoot until he was quite sure that there was any
+call for it. That same morning he would know.
+As they entered at the gate of the drive they saw Marlowe and the
+American standing in talk before the front door. In the shadow of the
+porch was the lady in black.
+She saw them, and came gravely forward over the lawn, moving as Trent
+had known that she would move, erect and balanced, stepping lightly.
+When she welcomed him on Mr. Cupples’s presentation her eyes of
+golden-flecked brown observed him kindly. In her pale composure, worn
+as the mask of distress, there was no trace of the emotion that had
+seemed a halo about her head on the ledge of the cliff. She spoke the
+appropriate commonplace in a low and even voice. After a few words to
+Mr. Cupples she turned her eyes on Trent again.
+“I hope you will succeed,” she said earnestly. “Do you think you will
+succeed?”
+He made his mind up as the words left her lips. He said, “I believe I
+shall do so, Mrs. Manderson. When I have the case sufficiently complete
+I shall ask you to let me see you and tell you about it. It may be
+necessary to consult you before the facts are published.”
+She looked puzzled, and distress showed for an instant in her eyes. “If
+it is necessary, of course you shall do so,” she said.
+On the brink of his next speech Trent hesitated. He remembered that the
+lady had not wished to repeat to him the story already given to the
+inspector—or to be questioned at all. He was not unconscious that he
+desired to hear her voice and watch her face a little longer, if it
+might be; but the matter he had to mention really troubled his mind, it
+was a queer thing that fitted nowhere into the pattern within whose
+corners he had by this time brought the other queer things in the case.
+It was very possible that she could explain it away in a breath; it was
+unlikely that any one else could. He summoned his resolution.
+“You have been so kind,” he said, “in allowing me access to the house
+and every opportunity of studying the case, that I am going to ask
+leave to put a question or two to yourself—nothing that you would
+rather not answer, I think. May I?”
+She glanced at him wearily. “It would be stupid of me to refuse. Ask
+your questions, Mr. Trent.”
+“It’s only this,” said Trent hurriedly. “We know that your husband
+lately drew an unusually large sum of ready money from his London
+bankers, and was keeping it here. It is here now, in fact. Have you any
+idea why he should have done that?”
+She opened her eyes in astonishment. “I cannot imagine,” she said. “I
+did not know he had done so. I am very much surprised to hear it.”
+“Why is it surprising?”
+“I thought my husband had very little money in the house. On Sunday
+night, just before he went out in the motor, he came into the
+drawing-room where I was sitting. He seemed to be irritated about
+something, and asked me at once if I had any notes or gold I could let
+him have until next day. I was surprised at that, because he was never
+without money; he made it a rule to carry a hundred pounds or so about
+him always in a note-case. I unlocked my escritoire, and gave him all I
+had by me. It was nearly thirty pounds.”
+“And he did not tell you why he wanted it?”
+“No. He put it in his pocket, and then said that Mr. Marlowe had
+persuaded him to go for a run in the motor by moonlight, and he thought
+it might help him to sleep. He had been sleeping badly, as perhaps you
+know. Then he went off with Mr. Marlowe. I thought it odd he should
+need money on Sunday night, but I soon forgot about it. I never
+remembered it again until now.”
+“It was curious, certainly,” said Trent, staring into the distance. Mr
+Cupples began to speak to his niece of the arrangements for the
+inquest, and Trent moved away to where Marlowe was pacing slowly upon
+the lawn. The young man seemed relieved to talk about the coming
+business of the day. Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he
+showed himself not without a quiet humour in describing the pomposities
+of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr Stock. Trent turned
+the conversation gradually toward the problem of the crime, and all
+Marlowe’s gravity returned.
+“Bunner has told me what he thinks,” he said when Trent referred to the
+American’s theory. “I don’t find myself convinced by it, because it
+doesn’t really explain some of the oddest facts. But I have lived long
+enough in the United States to know that such a stroke of revenge, done
+in a secret, melodramatic way, is not an unlikely thing. It is quite a
+characteristic feature of certain sections of the labour movement
+there. Americans have a taste and a talent for that sort of business.
+Do you know _Huckleberry Finn?_”
+“Do I know my own name?” exclaimed Trent.
+“Well, I think the most American thing in that great American epic is
+Tom Sawyer’s elaboration of an extremely difficult and romantic scheme,
+taking days to carry out, for securing the escape of the nigger Jim,
+which could have been managed quite easily in twenty minutes. You know
+how fond they are of lodges and brotherhoods. Every college club has
+its secret signs and handgrips. You’ve heard of the Know-Nothing
+movement in politics, I dare say, and the Ku Klux Klan. Then look at
+Brigham Young’s penny-dreadful tyranny in Utah, with real blood. The
+founders of the Mormon State were of the purest Yankee stock in
+America; and you know what they did. It’s all part of the same mental
+tendency. Americans make fun of it among themselves. For my part, I
+take it very seriously.”
+“It can have a very hideous side to it, certainly,” said Trent, “when
+you get it in connection with crime—or with vice—or even mere luxury.
+But I have a sort of sneaking respect for the determination to make
+life interesting and lively in spite of civilization. To return to the
+matter in hand, however; has it struck you as a possibility that
+Manderson’s mind was affected to some extent by this menace that Bunner
+believes in? For instance, it was rather an extraordinary thing to send
+you posting off like that in the middle of the night.”
+“About ten o’clock, to be exact,” replied Marlowe. “Though, mind you,
+if he’d actually roused me out of my bed at midnight I shouldn’t have
+been very much surprised. It all chimes in with what we’ve just been
+saying. Manderson had a strong streak of the national taste for
+dramatic proceedings. He was rather fond of his well-earned reputation
+for unexpected strokes and for going for his object with ruthless
+directness through every opposing consideration. He had decided
+suddenly that he wanted to have word from this man Harris—”
+“Who is Harris?” interjected Trent.
+“Nobody knows. Even Bunner never heard of him, and can’t imagine what
+the business in hand was. All I know is that when I went up to London
+last week to attend to various things I booked a deck-cabin, at
+Manderson’s request, for a Mr. George Harris on the boat that sailed on
+Monday. It seems that Manderson suddenly found he wanted news from
+Harris which presumably was of a character too secret for the
+telegraph; and there was no train that served; so I was sent off as you
+know.”
+Trent looked round to make sure that they were not overheard, then
+faced the other gravely, “There is one thing I may tell you,” he said
+quietly, “that I don’t think you know. Martin the butler caught a few
+words at the end of your conversation with Manderson in the orchard
+before you started with him in the car. He heard him say, ‘If Harris is
+there, every moment is of importance.’ Now, Mr. Marlowe, you know my
+business here. I am sent to make enquiries, and you mustn’t take
+offence. I want to ask you if, in the face of that sentence, you will
+repeat that you know nothing of what the business was.”
+Marlowe shook his head. “I know nothing, indeed. I’m not easily
+offended, and your question is quite fair. What passed during that
+conversation I have already told the detective. Manderson plainly said
+to me that he could not tell me what it was all about. He simply wanted
+me to find Harris, tell him that he desired to know how matters stood,
+and bring back a letter or message from him. Harris, I was further
+told, might not turn up. If he did, ‘every moment was of importance’.
+And now you know as much as I do.”
+“That talk took place _before_ he told his wife that you were taking
+him for a moonlight run. Why did he conceal your errand in that way, I
+wonder.”
+The young man made a gesture of helplessness. “Why? I can guess no
+better than you.”
+“Why,” muttered Trent as if to himself, gazing on the ground, “did he
+conceal it—from Mrs. Manderson?” He looked up at Marlowe.
+“And from Martin,” the other amended coolly. “He was told the same
+thing.”
+With a sudden movement of his head Trent seemed to dismiss the subject.
+He drew from his breast-pocket a letter-case, and thence extracted two
+small leaves of clean, fresh paper.
+“Just look at these two slips, Mr. Marlowe,” he said. “Did you ever see
+them before? Have you any idea where they come from?” he added as
+Marlowe took one in each hand and examined them curiously.
+“They seem to have been cut with a knife or scissors from a small diary
+for this year from the October pages,” Marlowe observed, looking them
+over on both sides. “I see no writing of any kind on them. Nobody here
+has any such diary so far as I know. What about them?”
+“There may be nothing in it,” Trent said dubiously. “Any one in the
+house, of course, might have such a diary without your having seen it.
+But I didn’t much expect you would be able to identify the leaves—in
+fact, I should have been surprised if you had.”
+He stopped speaking as Mrs. Manderson came towards them. “My uncle
+thinks we should be going now,” she said.
+“I think I will walk on with Mr. Bunner,” Mr. Cupples said as he joined
+them. “There are certain business matters that must be disposed of as
+soon as possible. Will you come on with these two gentlemen, Mabel? We
+will wait for you before we reach the place.”
+Trent turned to her. “Mrs. Manderson will excuse me, I hope,” he said.
+“I really came up this morning in order to look about me here for some
+indications I thought I might possibly find. I had not thought of
+attending the—the court just yet.”
+She looked at him with eyes of perfect candour. “Of course, Mr. Trent.
+Please do exactly as you wish. We are all relying upon you. If you will
+wait a few moments, Mr. Marlowe, I shall be ready.”
+She entered the house. Her uncle and the American had already strolled
+towards the gate.
+Trent looked into the eyes of his companion. “That is a wonderful
+woman,” he said in a lowered voice.
+“You say so without knowing her,” replied Marlowe in a similar tone.
+“She is more than that.”
+Trent said nothing to this. He stared out over the fields towards the
+sea. In the silence a noise of hobnailed haste rose on the still air. A
+little distance down the road a boy appeared trotting towards them from
+the direction of the hotel. In his hand was the orange envelope,
+unmistakable afar off, of a telegram. Trent watched him with an
+indifferent eye as he met and passed the two others. Then he turned to
+Marlowe. “A propos of nothing in particular,” he said, “were you at
+Oxford?”
+“Yes,” said the young man. “Why do you ask?”
+“I just wondered if I was right in my guess. It’s one of the things you
+can very often tell about a man, isn’t it?”
+“I suppose so,” Marlowe said. “Well, each of us is marked in one way or
+another, perhaps. I should have said you were an artist, if I hadn’t
+known it.”
+“Why? Does my hair want cutting?”
+“Oh, no! It’s only that you look at things and people as I’ve seen
+artists do, with an eye that moves steadily from detail to
+detail—rather looking them over than looking at them.”
+The boy came up panting. “Telegram for you, sir,” he said to Trent.
+“Just come, sir.”
+Trent tore open the envelope with an apology, and his eyes lighted up
+so visibly as he read the slip that Marlowe’s tired face softened in a
+smile.
+“It must be good news,” he murmured half to himself.
+Trent turned on him a glance in which nothing could be read. “Not
+exactly news,” he said. “It only tells me that another little guess of
+mine was a good one.”
+Chapter VIII.
+The Inquest
+The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a
+provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had
+resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man of
+jovial temper, with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of his
+work, and the news of Manderson’s mysterious death within his
+jurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in England. A
+respectable capacity for marshalling facts was fortified in him by a
+copiousness of impressive language that made juries as clay in his
+hands, and sometimes disguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules
+of evidence.
+The court was held in a long, unfurnished room lately built on to the
+hotel, and intended to serve as a ballroom or concert-hall. A regiment
+of reporters was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to
+be called on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table
+behind which the coroner sat, while the jury, in double row, with
+plastered hair and a spurious ease of manner, flanked him on the other
+side. An undistinguished public filled the rest of the space, and
+listened, in an awed silence, to the opening solemnities. The newspaper
+men, well used to these, muttered among themselves. Those of them who
+knew Trent by sight assured the rest that he was not in the court.
+The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witness
+called, from whom the coroner, after some enquiry into the health and
+circumstances of the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the last
+occasion on which she had seen her husband alive. Mrs. Manderson was
+taken through her evidence by the coroner with the sympathy which every
+man felt for that dark figure of grief. She lifted her thick veil
+before beginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken
+composure of the lady produced a singular impression. This was not an
+impression of hardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to
+be felt in her presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear
+that the force of a powerful character was at work to master the
+emotions of her situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her
+eyes with her handkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.
+Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual hour
+for retiring on Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-room
+attached to her own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which was
+usually kept open during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom were
+entered by other doors giving on the passage. Her husband had always
+had a preference for the greatest simplicity in his bedroom
+arrangements, and liked to sleep in a small room. She had not been
+awake when he came up, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened,
+when the light was switched on in her husband’s room. She had spoken to
+him. She had no clear recollection of what she had said, as she had
+been very drowsy at the time; but she had remembered that he had been
+out for a moonlight run in the car, and she believed she had asked
+whether he had had a good run, and what time it was. She had asked what
+the time was because she felt as if she had only been a very short time
+asleep, and she had expected her husband to be out very late. In answer
+to her question he had told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone
+on to say that he had changed his mind about going for a run.
+“Did he say why?” the coroner asked.
+“Yes,” replied the lady, “he did explain why. I remember very well what
+he said, because—” she stopped with a little appearance of confusion.
+“Because—” the coroner insisted gently.
+“Because my husband was not as a rule communicative about his business
+affairs,” answered the witness, raising her chin with a faint touch of
+defiance. “He did not—did not think they would interest me, and as a
+rule referred to them as little as possible. That was why I was rather
+surprised when he told me that he had sent Mr. Marlowe to Southampton
+to bring back some important information from a man who was leaving for
+Paris by the next day’s boat. He said that Mr. Marlowe could do it
+quite easily if he had no accident. He said that he had started in the
+car, and then walked back home a mile or so, and felt all the better
+for it.”
+“Did he say any more?”
+“Nothing, as well as I remember,” the witness said. “I was very sleepy,
+and I dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husband
+turning his light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive.”
+“And you heard nothing in the night?”
+“No: I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven
+o’clock. She closed the door leading to my husband’s room, as she
+always did, and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a
+great deal of sleep. He sometimes slept until quite late in the
+morning. I had breakfast in my sitting-room. It was about ten when I
+heard that my husband’s body had been found.” The witness dropped her
+head and silently waited for her dismissal.
+But it was not to be yet.
+“Mrs. Manderson.” The coroner’s voice was sympathetic, but it had a
+hint of firmness in it now. “The question I am going to put to you
+must, in these sad circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty
+to ask it. Is it the fact that your relations with your late husband
+had not been, for some time past, relations of mutual affection and
+confidence? Is it the fact that there was an estrangement between you?”
+The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the colour
+rising in her cheeks. “If that question is necessary,” she said with
+cold distinctness, “I will answer it so that there shall be no
+misunderstanding. During the last few months of my husband’s life his
+attitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow. He had
+changed towards me; he had become very reserved, and seemed
+mistrustful. I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to prefer to
+be alone. I can give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to
+work against it; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I
+thought. Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never
+told me. My own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in
+so many words; I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had
+always been, so far as he would allow me. I suppose I shall never know
+now what it was.” The witness, whose voice had trembled in spite of her
+self-control over the last few sentences, drew down her veil when she
+had said this, and stood erect and quiet.
+One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. “Then
+was there never anything of the nature of what they call Words between
+you and your husband, ma’am?”
+“Never.” The word was colourlessly spoken; but every one felt that a
+crass misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a
+person like Mrs. Manderson had been visited with some severity.
+Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might have
+been preying upon her husband’s mind recently?
+Mrs. Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that her
+ordeal was at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. The
+general attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now
+eagerly directed upon Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.
+It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway and edged his
+way into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was
+observing the well-balanced figure that came quickly toward him along
+an opening path in the crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he
+stood aside from the door with a slight bow, to hear Mrs. Manderson
+address him by name in a low voice. He followed her a pace or two into
+the hall.
+“I wanted to ask you,” she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken,
+“if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I could
+not see my uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint.... I
+shall be better in the air.... No, no; I cannot stay here—please, Mr.
+Trent!” she said, as he began to make an obvious suggestion. “I must go
+to the house.” Her hand tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for all
+her weakness, she could drag him from the place; then again she leaned
+heavily upon it, and with that support, and with bent head, she walked
+slowly from the hotel and along the oak-shaded path toward White
+Gables.
+Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a
+chorus of “Fool! fool!” All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and
+suspected of this affair, rushed through his brain in a rout; but the
+touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left his
+consciousness, filling him with an exaltation that enraged and
+bewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the mask
+of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he had
+attended her to the house and seen her sink upon a couch in the
+morning-room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly,
+with a look of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now,
+she said, and a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she
+had not taken him away from anything important. She was ashamed of
+herself; she thought she could go through with it, but she had not
+expected those last questions. “I am glad you did not hear me,” she
+said when he explained. “But of course you will read it all in the
+reports. It shook me so to have to speak of that,” she added simply;
+“and to keep from making an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And
+all those staring men by the door! Thank you again for helping me when
+I asked you.... I thought I might,” she ended queerly, with a little
+tired smile; and Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from
+the cool touch of her fingers.
+The testimony of the servants and of the finder of the body brought
+nothing new to the reporters’ net. That of the police was as colourless
+and cryptic as is usual at the inquest stage of affairs of the kind.
+Greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Bunner, his evidence afforded the
+sensation of the day, and threw far into the background the interesting
+revelation of domestic difficulty made by the dead man’s wife. He told
+the court in substance what he had already told Trent. The flying
+pencils did not miss a word of the young American’s story, and it
+appeared with scarcely the omission of a sentence in every journal of
+importance in Great Britain and the United States.
+Public opinion next day took no note of the faint suggestion of the
+possibility of suicide which the coroner, in his final address to the
+jury, had thought it right to make in connection with the lady’s
+evidence. The weight of evidence, as the official had indeed pointed
+out, was against such a theory. He had referred with emphasis to the
+fact that no weapon had been found near the body.
+“This question, of course, is all-important, gentlemen,” he had said to
+the jury. “It is, in fact, the main issue before you. You have seen the
+body for yourselves. You have just heard the medical evidence; but I
+think it would be well for me to read you my notes of it in so far as
+they bear on this point, in order to refresh your memories. Dr Stock
+told you—I am going to omit all technical medical language and repeat
+to you merely the plain English of his testimony—that in his opinion
+death had taken place six or eight hours previous to the finding of the
+body. He said that the cause of death was a bullet wound, the bullet
+having entered the left eye, which was destroyed, and made its way to
+the base of the brain, which was quite shattered. The external
+appearance of the wound, he said, did not support the hypothesis of its
+being self-inflicted, inasmuch as there were no signs of the firearm
+having been pressed against the eye, or even put very close to it; at
+the same time it was not physically impossible that the weapon should
+have been discharged by the deceased with his own hand, at some small
+distance from the eye. Dr Stock also told us that it was impossible to
+say with certainty, from the state of the body, whether any struggle
+had taken place at the time of death; that when seen by him, at which
+time he understood that it had not been moved since it was found, the
+body was lying in a collapsed position such as might very well result
+from the shot alone; but that the scratches and bruises upon the wrists
+and the lower part of the arms had been very recently inflicted, and
+were, in his opinion, marks of violence.
+“In connection with this same point, the remarkable evidence given by
+Mr Bunner cannot be regarded, I think, as without significance. It may
+have come as a surprise to some of you to hear that risks of the
+character described by this witness are, in his own country, commonly
+run by persons in the position of the deceased. On the other hand, it
+may have been within the knowledge of some of you that in the
+industrial world of America the discontent of labour often proceeds to
+lengths of which we in England happily know nothing. I have
+interrogated the witness somewhat fully upon this. At the same time,
+gentlemen, I am by no means suggesting that Mr. Bunner’s personal
+conjecture as to the cause of death can fitly be adopted by you. That
+is emphatically not the case. What his evidence does is to raise two
+questions for your consideration. First, can it be said that the
+deceased was to any extent in the position of a threatened man—of a man
+more exposed to the danger of murderous attack than an ordinary person?
+Second, does the recent alteration in his demeanour, as described by
+this witness, justify the belief that his last days were overshadowed
+by a great anxiety? These points may legitimately be considered by you
+in arriving at a conclusion upon the rest of the evidence.”
+Thereupon the coroner, having indicated thus clearly his opinion that
+Mr Bunner had hit the right nail on the head, desired the jury to
+consider their verdict.
+Chapter IX.
+A Hot Scent
+“Come in!” called Trent.
+Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early
+evening of the day on which the coroner’s jury, without leaving the
+box, had pronounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons
+unknown. Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study
+of what lay in a photographic dish of enamelled metal, which he moved
+slowly about in the light of the window. He looked very pale, and his
+movements were nervous.
+“Sit on the sofa,” he advised. “The chairs are a job lot bought at the
+sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a
+pretty good negative,” he went on, holding it up to the light with his
+head at the angle of discriminating judgement. “Washed enough now, I
+think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess.”
+Mr. Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of
+basins, dishes, racks, boxes, and bottles, picked up first one and then
+another of the objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.
+“That is called hypo-eliminator,” said Trent, as Mr. Cupples uncorked
+and smelt at one of the bottles. “Very useful when you’re in a hurry
+with a negative. I shouldn’t drink it, though, all the same. It
+eliminates sodium hypophosphite, but I shouldn’t wonder if it would
+eliminate human beings too.” He found a place for the last of the
+litter on the crowded mantel-shelf, and came to sit before Mr. Cupples
+on the table. “The great thing about a hotel sitting-room is that its
+beauty does not distract the mind from work. It is no place for the
+mayfly pleasures of a mind at ease. Have you ever been in this room
+before, Cupples? I have, hundreds of times. It has pursued me all over
+England for years. I should feel lost without it if, in some fantastic,
+far-off hotel, they were to give me some other sitting-room. Look at
+this table-cover; there is the ink I spilt on it when I had this room
+in Halifax. I burnt that hole in the carpet when I had it in Ipswich.
+But I see they have mended the glass over the picture of ‘Silent
+Sympathy’, which I threw a boot at in Banbury. I do all my best work
+here. This afternoon, for instance, since the inquest, I have finished
+several excellent negatives. There is a very good dark room
+downstairs.”
+“The inquest—that reminds me,” said Mr. Cupples, who knew that this
+sort of talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering
+what he could be about. “I came in to thank you, my dear fellow, for
+looking after Mabel this morning. I had no idea she was going to feel
+ill after leaving the box; she seemed quite unmoved, and, really, she
+is a woman of such extraordinary self-command, I thought I could leave
+her to her own devices and hear out the evidence, which I thought it
+important I should do. It was a very fortunate thing she found a friend
+to assist her, and she is most grateful. She is quite herself again
+now.”
+Trent, with his hands in his pockets and a slight frown on his brow,
+made no reply to this. “I tell you what,” he said after a short pause,
+“I was just getting to the really interesting part of the job when you
+came in. Come; would you like to see a little bit of high-class police
+work? It’s the very same kind of work that old Murch ought to be doing
+at this moment. Perhaps he is; but I hope to glory he isn’t.” He sprang
+off the table and disappeared into his bedroom. Presently he came out
+with a large drawing-board on which a number of heterogeneous objects
+was ranged.
+“First I must introduce you to these little things,” he said, setting
+them out on the table. “Here is a big ivory paper-knife; here are two
+leaves cut out of a diary—my own diary; here is a bottle containing
+dentifrice; here is a little case of polished walnut. Some of these
+things have to be put back where they belong in somebody’s bedroom at
+White Gables before night. That’s the sort of man I am—nothing stops
+me. I borrowed them this very morning when every one was down at the
+inquest, and I dare say some people would think it rather an odd
+proceeding if they knew. Now there remains one object on the board. Can
+you tell me, without touching it, what it is?”
+“Certainly I can,” said Mr. Cupples, peering at it with great interest.
+“It is an ordinary glass bowl. It looks like a finger-bowl. I see
+nothing odd about it,” he added after some moments of close scrutiny.
+“I can’t see much myself,” replied Trent, “and that is exactly where
+the fun comes in. Now take this little fat bottle, Cupples, and pull
+out the cork. Do you recognize that powder inside it? You have
+swallowed pounds of it in your time, I expect. They give it to babies.
+Grey powder is its ordinary name—mercury and chalk. It is great stuff.
+Now, while I hold the basin sideways over this sheet of paper, I want
+you to pour a little powder out of the bottle over this part of the
+bowl—just here.... Perfect! Sir Edward Henry himself could not have
+handled the powder better. You have done this before, Cupples, I can
+see. You are an old hand.”
+“I really am not,” said Mr. Cupples seriously, as Trent returned the
+fallen powder to the bottle. “I assure you it is all a complete mystery
+to me. What did I do then?”
+“I brush the powdered part of the bowl lightly with this camel-hair
+brush. Now look at it again. You saw nothing odd about it before. Do
+you see anything now?”
+Mr. Cupples peered again. “How curious!” he said. “Yes, there are two
+large grey finger-marks on the bowl. They were not there before.”
+“I am Hawkshaw the detective,” observed Trent. “Would it interest you
+to hear a short lecture on the subject of glass finger-bowls? When you
+take one up with your hand you leave traces upon it, usually
+practically invisible, which may remain for days or months. You leave
+the marks of your fingers. The human hand, even when quite clean, is
+never quite dry, and sometimes—in moments of great anxiety, for
+instance, Cupples—it is very moist. It leaves a mark on any cold smooth
+surface it may touch. That bowl was moved by somebody with a rather
+moist hand quite lately.” He sprinkled the powder again. “Here on the
+other side, you see, is the thumb-mark—very good impressions all of
+them.” He spoke without raising his voice, but Mr. Cupples could
+perceive that he was ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint
+grey marks. “This one should be the index finger. I need not tell a man
+of your knowledge of the world that the pattern of it is a
+single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically disposed. This, the
+print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a staple core and
+fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just the same
+two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail. Look!”—he
+held one of the negatives up to the light of the declining sun and
+demonstrated with a pencil point. “You can see they’re the same. You
+see the bifurcation of that ridge. There it is in the other. You see
+that little scar near the centre. There it is in the other. There are a
+score of ridge-characteristics on which an expert would swear in the
+witness-box that the marks on that bowl and the marks I have
+photographed on this negative were made by the same hand.”
+“And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean?” asked Mr
+Cupples, wide-eyed.
+“I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front window
+in Mrs. Manderson’s bedroom. As I could not bring the window with me, I
+photographed them, sticking a bit of black paper on the other side of
+the glass for the purpose. The bowl comes from Manderson’s room. It is
+the bowl in which his false teeth were placed at night. I could bring
+that away, so I did.”
+“But those cannot be Mabel’s finger-marks.”
+“I should think not!” said Trent with decision. “They are twice the
+size of any print Mrs. Manderson could make.”
+“Then they must be her husband’s.”
+“Perhaps they are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I
+believe we can.” Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent
+opened another small squat bottle containing a dense black powder.
+“Lamp-black,” he explained. “Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a
+second or two, and this little chap will show you the pattern of your
+fingers.” He carefully took up with a pair of tweezers one of the
+leaves cut from his diary, and held it out for the other to examine. No
+marks appeared on the leaf. He tilted some of the powder out upon one
+surface of the paper, then, turning it over, upon the other; then shook
+the leaf gently to rid it of the loose powder. He held it out to Mr.
+Cupples in silence. On one side of the paper appeared unmistakably,
+clearly printed in black, the same two finger-prints that he had
+already seen on the bowl and on the photographic plate. He took up the
+bowl and compared them. Trent turned the paper over, and on the other
+side was a bold black replica of the thumb-mark that was printed in
+grey on the glass in his hand.
+“Same man, you see,” Trent said with a short laugh. “I felt that it
+must be so, and now I know.” He walked to the window and looked out.
+“Now I know,” he repeated in a low voice, as if to himself. His tone
+was bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his
+motionless back for a few moments.
+“I am still completely in the dark,” he ventured presently. “I have
+often heard of this fingerprint business, and wondered how the police
+went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon
+my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson’s fingerprints are
+going—”
+“I am very sorry, Cupples,” Trent broke in upon his meditative speech
+with a swift return to the table. “When I began this investigation I
+meant to take you with me every step of the way. You mustn’t think I
+have any doubts about your discretion if I say now that I must hold my
+tongue about the whole thing, at least for a time. I will tell you
+this: I have come upon a fact that looks too much like having very
+painful consequences if it is discovered by any one else.” He looked at
+the other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the table with his
+hand. “It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I was
+hoping against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be
+wrong in the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way
+of finding out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it.”
+He smiled suddenly at Mr. Cupples’s face of consternation. “All
+right—I’m not going to be tragic any more, and I’ll tell you all about
+it when I can. Look here, I’m not half through my game with the
+powder-bottles yet.”
+He drew one of the defamed chairs to the table and sat down to test the
+broad ivory blade of the paper knife. Mr. Cupples, swallowing his
+amazement, bent forward in an attitude of deep interest and handed
+Trent the bottle of lamp-black.
+Chapter X.
+The Wife of Dives
+Mrs. Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gables
+gazing out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weather
+had broken as it seldom does in that part in June. White wreathings
+drifted up the fields from the sullen sea; the sky was an unbroken grey
+deadness shedding pin-point moisture that was now and then blown
+against the panes with a crepitation of despair. The lady looked out on
+the dim and chilling prospect with a woeful face. It was a bad day for
+a woman bereaved, alone, and without a purpose in life.
+There was a knock, and she called “Come in,” drawing herself up with an
+unconscious gesture that always came when she realized that the
+weariness of the world had been gaining upon her spirit. Mr. Trent had
+called, the maid said; he apologized for coming at such an early hour,
+but hoped that Mrs. Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent
+importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr. Trent. She walked to a mirror,
+looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at
+herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent
+was shown in.
+His appearance, she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look of the
+sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quick
+sensibilities felt something not propitious, took the place of his half
+smile of fixed good-humour.
+“May I come to the point at once?” he said, when she had given him her
+hand. “There is a train I ought to catch at Bishopsbridge at twelve
+o’clock, but I cannot go until I have settled this thing, which
+concerns you only, Mrs. Manderson. I have been working half the night
+and thinking the rest; and I know now what I ought to do.”
+“You look wretchedly tired,” she said kindly. “Won’t you sit down? This
+is a very restful chair. Of course it is about this terrible business
+and your work as correspondent. Please ask me anything you think I can
+properly tell you, Mr. Trent. I know that you won’t make it worse for
+me than you can help in doing your duty here. If you say you must see
+me about something, I know it must be because, as you say, you ought to
+do it.”
+“Mrs. Manderson,” said Trent, slowly measuring his words, “I won’t make
+it worse for you than I can help. But I am bound to make it bad for
+you—only between ourselves, I hope. As to whether you can properly tell
+me what I shall ask you, you will decide that; but I tell you this on
+my word of honour: I shall ask you only as much as will decide me
+whether to publish or to withhold certain grave things that I have
+found out about your husband’s death, things not suspected by any one
+else, nor, I think, likely to be so. What I have discovered—what I
+believe that I have practically proved—will be a great shock to you in
+any case. But it may be worse for you than that; and if you give me
+reason to think it would be so, then I shall suppress this manuscript,”
+he laid a long envelope on the small table beside him, “and nothing of
+what it has to tell shall ever be printed. It consists, I may tell you,
+of a short private note to my editor, followed by a long dispatch for
+publication in the _Record_. Now you may refuse to say anything to me.
+If you do refuse, my duty to my employers, as I see it, is to take this
+up to London with me today and leave it with my editor to be dealt with
+at his discretion. My view is, you understand, that I am not entitled
+to suppress it on the strength of a mere possibility that presents
+itself to my imagination. But if I gather from you—and I can gather it
+from no other person—that there is substance in that imaginary
+possibility I speak of, then I have only one thing to do as a gentleman
+and as one who”—he hesitated for a phrase—“wishes you well. I shall not
+publish that dispatch of mine. In some directions I decline to assist
+the police. Have you followed me so far?” he asked with a touch of
+anxiety in his careful coldness; for her face, but for its pallor, gave
+no sign as she regarded him, her hands clasped before her, and her
+shoulders drawn back in a pose of rigid calm. She looked precisely as
+she had looked at the inquest.
+“I understand quite well,” said Mrs. Manderson in a low voice. She drew
+a deep breath, and went on: “I don’t know what dreadful thing you have
+found out, or what the possibility that has occurred to you can be, but
+it was good, it was honourable of you to come to me about it. Now will
+you please tell me?”
+“I cannot do that,” Trent replied. “The secret is my newspaper’s if it
+is not yours. If I find it is yours, you shall have my manuscript to
+read and destroy. Believe me,” he broke out with something of his old
+warmth, “I detest such mystery-making from the bottom of my soul; but
+it is not I who have made this mystery. This is the most painful hour
+of my life, and you make it worse by not treating me like a hound. The
+first thing I ask you to tell me,” he reverted with an effort to his
+colourless tone, “is this: is it true, as you stated at the inquest,
+that you had no idea at all of the reason why your late husband had
+changed his attitude toward you, and become mistrustful and reserved,
+during the last few months of his life?”
+Mrs. Manderson’s dark brows lifted and her eyes flamed; she quickly
+rose from her chair. Trent got up at the same moment, and took his
+envelope from the table; his manner said that he perceived the
+interview to be at an end. But she held up a hand, and there was colour
+in her cheeks and quick breathing in her voice as she said: “Do you
+know what you ask, Mr Trent? You ask me if I perjured myself.”
+“I do,” he answered unmoved; and he added after a pause, “you knew
+already that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, Mrs.
+Manderson. The theory that no reputable person, being on oath, could
+withhold a part of the truth under any circumstances is a polite
+fiction.” He still stood as awaiting dismissal, but she was silent. She
+walked to the window, and he stood miserably watching the slight
+movement of her shoulders until it subsided. Then with face averted,
+looking out on the dismal weather, she spoke at last clearly.
+“Mr. Trent,” she said, “you inspire confidence in people, and I feel
+that things which I don’t want known or talked about are safe with you.
+And I know you must have a very serious reason for doing what you are
+doing, though I don’t know what it is. I suppose it would be assisting
+justice in some way if I told you the truth about what you asked just
+now. To understand that truth you ought to know about what went
+before—I mean about my marriage. After all, a good many people could
+tell you as well as I can that it was not... a very successful union. I
+was only twenty. I admired his force and courage and certainty; he was
+the only strong man I had ever known. But it did not take me long to
+find out that he cared for his business more than for me, and I think I
+found out even sooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding
+myself, promising myself impossible things and wilfully
+misunderstanding my own feelings, because I was dazzled by the idea of
+having more money to spend than an English girl ever dreams of. I have
+been despising myself for that for five years. My husband’s feeling for
+me... well, I cannot speak of that... what I want to say is that along
+with it there had always been a belief of his that I was the sort of
+woman to take a great place in society, and that I should throw myself
+into it with enjoyment, and become a sort of personage and do him great
+credit—that was his idea; and the idea remained with him after other
+delusions had gone. I was a part of his ambition. That was his really
+bitter disappointment, that I failed him as a social success. I think
+he was too shrewd not to have known in his heart that such a man as he
+was, twenty years older than I, with great business responsibilities
+that filled every hour of his life, and caring for nothing else—he must
+have felt that there was a risk of great unhappiness in marrying the
+sort of girl I was, brought up to music and books and unpractical
+ideas, always enjoying myself in my own way. But he had really reckoned
+on me as a wife who would do the honours of his position in the world;
+and I found I couldn’t.”
+Mrs. Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she
+had yet shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had
+begun to ring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must
+hitherto have been dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint
+of the past few days. Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced
+him as she went on, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes
+gleaming, her hands moving in slight emphatic gestures, as she
+surrendered herself to the impulse of giving speech to things long pent
+up.
+“The people,” she said. “Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must
+be for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative
+work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women
+with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe
+in and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor;
+can you think what it means to step out of that into another world
+where you _have_ to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at
+all—where money is the only thing that counts and the first thing in
+everybody’s thoughts—where the men who make the millions are so jaded
+by the work, that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves
+with when they have any leisure, and the men who don’t have to work are
+even duller than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women
+live for display and silly amusements and silly immoralities; do you
+know how awful that life is? Of course I know there are clever people,
+and people of taste in that set, but they’re swamped and spoiled, and
+it’s the same thing in the end; empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I’m
+exaggerating, and I did make friends and have some happy times; but
+that’s how I feel after it all. The seasons in New York and London—how
+I hated them! And our house-parties and cruises in the yacht and the
+rest—the same people, the same emptiness.
+“And you see, don’t you, that my husband couldn’t have an idea of all
+this. _His_ life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and
+when he was in society he had always his business plans and
+difficulties to occupy his mind. He hadn’t a suspicion of what I felt,
+and I never let him know; I couldn’t, it wouldn’t have been fair. I
+felt I must do _something_ to justify myself as his wife, sharing his
+position and fortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and
+try, to live up to his idea about my social qualities... I did try. I
+acted my best. And it became harder year by year... I never was what
+they call a popular hostess, how could I be? I was a failure; but I
+went on trying... I used to steal holidays now and then. I used to feel
+as if I was not doing my part of a bargain—it sounds horrid to put it
+like that, I know, but it _was_ so—when I took one of my old
+school-friends, who couldn’t afford to travel, away to Italy for a
+month or two, and we went about cheaply all by ourselves, and were
+quite happy; or when I went and made a long stay in London with some
+quiet people who had known me all my life, and we all lived just as in
+the old days, when we had to think twice about seats at the theatre,
+and told each other about cheap dressmakers. Those and a few other
+expeditions of the same sort were my best times after I was married,
+and they helped me to go through with it the rest of the time. But I
+felt my husband would have hated to know how much I enjoyed every hour
+of those returns to the old life.
+“And in the end, in spite of everything I could do, he came to know....
+He could see through anything, I think, once his attention was turned
+to it. He had always been able to see that I was not fulfilling his
+idea of me as a figure in the social world, and I suppose he thought it
+was my misfortune rather than my fault. But the moment he began to see,
+in spite of my pretending, that I wasn’t playing my part with any
+spirit, he knew the whole story; he divined how I loathed and was weary
+of the luxury and the brilliancy and the masses of money just because
+of the people who lived among them—who were made so by them, I
+suppose.... It happened last year. I don’t know just how or when. It
+may have been suggested to him by some woman—for _they_ all understood,
+of course. He said nothing to me, and I think he tried not to change in
+his manner to me at first; but such things hurt—and it was working in
+both of us. I knew that he knew. After a time we were just being polite
+and considerate to each other. Before he found me out we had been on a
+footing of—how can I express it to you?—of intelligent companionship, I
+might say. We talked without restraint of many things of the kind we
+could agree or disagree about without its going very deep... if you
+understand. And then that came to an end. I felt that the only possible
+basis of our living in each other’s company was going under my feet.
+And at last it was gone.
+“It had been like that,” she ended simply, “for months before he died.”
+She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing
+her body after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trent was
+hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed at the
+frankness of Mrs. Manderson’s story. He was amazed at the vigorous
+expressiveness in her telling of it. In this vivid being, carried away
+by an impulse to speak, talking with her whole personality, he had seen
+the real woman in a temper of activity, as he had already seen the real
+woman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded emotion. In both
+she was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of majesty that
+she had been to the world. With that amazement of his went something
+like terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled into an
+appearance scarcely mortal in his eyes. Incongruously there rushed into
+his mind, occupied as it was with the affair of the moment, a little
+knot of ideas... she was unique not because of her beauty but because
+of its being united with intensity of nature; in England all the very
+beautiful women were placid, all the fiery women seemed to have burnt
+up the best of their beauty; that was why no beautiful woman had ever
+cast this sort of spell on him before; when it was a question of wit in
+women he had preferred the brighter flame to the duller, without much
+regarding the lamp. “All this is very disputable,” said his reason; and
+instinct answered, “Yes, except that I am under a spell”; and a deeper
+instinct cried out, “Away with it!” He forced his mind back to her
+story, and found growing swiftly in him an irrepressible conviction. It
+was all very fine; but it would not do.
+“I feel as if I had led you into saying more than you meant to say, or
+than I wanted to learn,” he said slowly. “But there is one brutal
+question which is the whole point of my enquiry.” He braced his frame
+like one preparing for a plunge into cold waters. “Mrs. Manderson, will
+you assure me that your husband’s change toward you had nothing to do
+with John Marlowe?”
+And what he had dreaded came. “Oh!” she cried with a sound of anguish,
+her face thrown up and open hands stretched out as if for pity; and
+then the hands covered the burning face, and she flung herself aside
+among the cushions at her elbow, so that he saw nothing but her heavy
+crown of black hair, and her body moving with sobs that stabbed his
+heart, and a foot turned inward gracelessly in an abandonment of
+misery. Like a tall tower suddenly breaking apart she had fallen in
+ruins, helplessly weeping.
+Trent stood up, his face white and calm. With a senseless particularity
+he placed his envelope exactly in the centre of the little polished
+table. He walked to the door, closed it noiselessly as he went out, and
+in a few minutes was tramping through the rain out of sight of White
+Gables, going nowhere, seeing nothing, his soul shaken in the fierce
+effort to kill and trample the raving impulse that had seized him in
+the presence of her shame, that clamoured to him to drag himself before
+her feet, to pray for pardon, to pour out words—he knew not what words,
+but he knew that they had been straining at his lips—to wreck his
+self-respect for ever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose
+that had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust,
+by babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband
+not yet buried, to a woman who loved another man.
+Such was the magic of her tears, quickening in a moment the thing
+which, as his heart had known, he must not let come to life. For Philip
+Trent was a young man, younger in nature even than his years, and a way
+of life that kept his edge keen and his spirit volcanic had prepared
+him very ill for the meeting that comes once in the early manhood of
+most of us, usually—as in his case, he told himself harshly—to no
+purpose but the testing of virtue and the power of the will.
+Chapter XI.
+Hitherto Unpublished
+My Dear Molloy:—This is in case I don’t find you at your office. I have
+found out who killed Manderson, as this dispatch will show. This was my
+problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It definitely
+charges an unsuspected person with having a hand in the crime, and
+practically accuses him of being the murderer, so I don’t suppose you
+will publish it before his arrest, and I believe it is illegal to do so
+afterwards until he has been tried and found guilty. You may decide to
+publish it then; and you may find it possible to make some use or other
+before then of the facts I have given. That is your affair. Meanwhile,
+will you communicate with Scotland Yard, and let them see what I have
+written? I have done with the Manderson mystery, and I wish to God I
+had never touched it. Here follows my dispatch. P.T.
+Marlstone, _June_ 16_th_.
+I begin this, my third and probably my final dispatch to the _Record_
+upon the Manderson murder, with conflicting feelings. I have a strong
+sense of relief, because in my two previous dispatches I was obliged,
+in the interests of justice, to withhold facts ascertained by me which
+would, if published then, have put a certain person upon his guard and
+possibly have led to his escape; for he is a man of no common boldness
+and resource. These facts I shall now set forth. But I have, I confess,
+no liking for the story of treachery and perverted cleverness which I
+have to tell. It leaves an evil taste in the mouth, a savour of
+something revolting in the deeper puzzle of motive underlying the
+puzzle of the crime itself, which I believe I have solved.
+It will be remembered that in my first dispatch I described the
+situation as I found it on reaching this place early on Tuesday
+morning. I told how the body was found, and in what state; dwelt upon
+the complete mystery surrounding the crime, and mentioned one or two
+local theories about it; gave some account of the dead man’s domestic
+surroundings; and furnished a somewhat detailed description of his
+movements on the evening before his death. I gave, too, a little fact
+which may or may not have seemed irrelevant: that a quantity of whisky
+much larger than Manderson habitually drank at night had disappeared
+from his private decanter since the last time he was seen alive. On the
+following day, the day of the inquest, I wired little more than an
+abstract of the proceedings in the coroner’s court, of which a verbatim
+report was made at my request by other representatives of the _Record_.
+That day is not yet over as I write these lines; and I have now
+completed an investigation which has led me directly to the man who
+must be called upon to clear himself of the guilt of the death of
+Manderson.
+Apart from the central mystery of Manderson’s having arisen long before
+his usual hour to go out and meet his death, there were two minor
+points of oddity about this affair which, I suppose, must have occurred
+to thousands of those who have read the accounts in the newspapers:
+points apparent from the very beginning. The first of these was that,
+whereas the body was found at a spot not thirty yards from the house,
+all the people of the house declared that they had heard no cry or
+other noise in the night. Manderson had not been gagged; the marks on
+his wrists pointed to a struggle with his assailant; and there had been
+at least one pistol-shot. (I say at least one, because it is the fact
+that in murders with firearms, especially if there has been a struggle,
+the criminal commonly misses his victim at least once.) This odd fact
+seemed all the more odd to me when I learned that Martin the butler was
+a bad sleeper, very keen of hearing, and that his bedroom, with the
+window open, faced almost directly toward the shed by which the body
+was found.
+The second odd little fact that was apparent from the outset was
+Manderson’s leaving his dental plate by the bedside. It appeared that
+he had risen and dressed himself fully, down to his necktie and watch
+and chain, and had gone out of doors without remembering to put in this
+plate, which he had carried in his mouth every day for years, and which
+contained all the visible teeth of the upper jaw. It had evidently not
+been a case of frantic hurry; and even if it had been, he would have
+been more likely to forget almost anything than this denture. Any one
+who wears such a removable plate will agree that the putting it in on
+rising is a matter of second nature. Speaking as well as eating, to say
+nothing of appearances, depend upon it.
+Neither of these queer details, however, seemed to lead to anything at
+the moment. They only awakened in me a suspicion of something lurking
+in the shadows, something that lent more mystery to the already
+mysterious question how and why and through whom Manderson met his end.
+With this much of preamble I come at once to the discovery which, in
+the first few hours of my investigation, set me upon the path which so
+much ingenuity had been directed to concealing.
+I have already described Manderson’s bedroom, the rigorous simplicity
+of its furnishing, contrasted so strangely with the multitude of
+clothes and shoes, and the manner of its communication with Mrs.
+Manderson’s room. On the upper of the two long shelves on which the
+shoes were ranged I found, where I had been told I should find them,
+the pair of patent leather shoes which Manderson had worn on the
+evening before his death. I had glanced over the row, not with any idea
+of their giving me a clue, but merely because it happens that I am a
+judge of shoes, and all these shoes were of the very best workmanship.
+But my attention was at once caught by a little peculiarity in this
+particular pair. They were the lightest kind of lace-up dress shoes,
+very thin in the sole, without toe-caps, and beautifully made, like all
+the rest. These shoes were old and well worn; but being carefully
+polished, and fitted, as all the shoes were, upon their trees, they
+looked neat enough. What caught my eye was a slight splitting of the
+leather in that part of the upper known as the vamp—a splitting at the
+point where the two laced parts of the shoe rise from the upper. It is
+at this point that the strain comes when a tight shoe of this sort is
+forced upon the foot, and it is usually guarded with a strong stitching
+across the bottom of the opening. In both the shoes I was examining
+this stitching had parted, and the leather below had given way. The
+splitting was a tiny affair in each case, not an eighth of an inch
+long, and the torn edges having come together again on the removal of
+the strain, there was nothing that a person who was not something of a
+connoisseur of shoe-leather would have noticed. Even less noticeable,
+and indeed not to be seen at all unless one were looking for it, was a
+slight straining of the stitches uniting the upper to the sole. At the
+toe and on the outer side of each shoe this stitching had been dragged
+until it was visible on a close inspection of the join.
+These indications, of course, could mean only one thing—the shoes had
+been worn by some one for whom they were too small.
+Now it was clear at a glance that Manderson was always thoroughly well
+shod, and careful, perhaps a little vain, of his small and narrow feet.
+Not one of the other shoes in the collection, as I soon ascertained,
+bore similar marks; they had not belonged to a man who squeezed himself
+into tight shoe-leather. Someone who was not Manderson had worn these
+shoes, and worn them recently; the edges of the tears were quite fresh.
+The possibility of some one having worn them since Manderson’s death
+was not worth considering; the body had only been found about
+twenty-six hours when I was examining the shoes; besides, why should
+any one wear them? The possibility of some one having borrowed
+Manderson’s shoes and spoiled them for him while he was alive seemed
+about as negligible. With others to choose from he would not have worn
+these. Besides, the only men in the place were the butler and the two
+secretaries. But I do not say that I gave those possibilities even as
+much consideration as they deserved, for my thoughts were running away
+with me, and I have always found it good policy, in cases of this sort,
+to let them have their heads. Ever since I had got out of the train at
+Marlstone early that morning I had been steeped in details of the
+Manderson affair; the thing had not once been out of my head. Suddenly
+the moment had come when the daemon wakes and begins to range.
+Let me put it less fancifully. After all, it is a detail of psychology
+familiar enough to all whose business or inclination brings them in
+contact with difficult affairs of any kind. Swiftly and spontaneously,
+when chance or effort puts one in possession of the key-fact in any
+system of baffling circumstances, one’s ideas seem to rush to group
+themselves anew in relation to that fact, so that they are suddenly
+rearranged almost before one has consciously grasped the significance
+of the key-fact itself. In the present instance, my brain had scarcely
+formulated within itself the thought, “Somebody who was not Manderson
+has been wearing these shoes,” when there flew into my mind a flock of
+ideas, all of the same character and all bearing upon this new notion.
+It was unheard-of for Manderson to drink much whisky at night. It was
+very unlike him to be untidily dressed, as the body was when found—the
+cuffs dragged up inside the sleeves, the shoes unevenly laced; very
+unlike him not to wash when he rose, and to put on last night’s evening
+shirt and collar and underclothing; very unlike him to have his watch
+in the waistcoat pocket that was not lined with leather for its
+reception. (In my first dispatch I mentioned all these points, but
+neither I nor any one else saw anything significant in them when
+examining the body.) It was very strange, in the existing domestic
+situation, that Manderson should be communicative to his wife about his
+doings, especially at the time of his going to bed, when he seldom
+spoke to her at all. It was extraordinary that Manderson should leave
+his bedroom without his false teeth.
+All these thoughts, as I say, came flocking into my mind together,
+drawn from various parts of my memory of the morning’s enquiries and
+observations. They had all presented themselves, in far less time than
+it takes to read them as set down here, as I was turning over the
+shoes, confirming my own certainty on the main point. And yet when I
+confronted the definite idea that had sprung up suddenly and
+unsupported before me—“_It was not Manderson who was in the house that
+night_”—it seemed a stark absurdity at the first formulating. It was
+certainly Manderson who had dined at the house and gone out with
+Marlowe in the car. People had seen him at close quarters. But was it
+he who returned at ten? That question too seemed absurd enough. But I
+could not set it aside. It seemed to me as if a faint light was
+beginning to creep over the whole expanse of my mind, as it does over
+land at dawn, and that presently the sun would be rising. I set myself
+to think over, one by one, the points that had just occurred to me, so
+as to make out, if possible, why any man masquerading as Manderson
+should have done these things that Manderson would not have done.
+I had not to cast about very long for the motive a man might have in
+forcing his feet into Manderson’s narrow shoes. The examination of
+footmarks is very well understood by the police. But not only was the
+man concerned to leave no footmarks of his own: he was concerned to
+leave Manderson’s, if any; his whole plan, if my guess was right, must
+have been directed to producing the belief that Manderson was in the
+place that night. Moreover, his plan did not turn upon leaving
+footmarks. He meant to leave the shoes themselves, and he did so. The
+maidservant had found them outside the bedroom door, as Manderson
+always left his shoes, and had polished them, replacing them on the
+shoe-shelves later in the morning, after the body had been found.
+When I came to consider in this new light the leaving of the false
+teeth, an explanation of what had seemed the maddest part of the affair
+broke upon me at once. A dental plate is not inseparable from its
+owner. If my guess was right, the unknown had brought the denture to
+the house with him, and left it in the bedroom, with the same object as
+he had in leaving the shoes: to make it impossible that any one should
+doubt that Manderson had been in the house and had gone to bed there.
+This, of course, led me to the inference that _Manderson was dead
+before the false Manderson came to the house_; and other things
+confirmed this.
+For instance, the clothing, to which I now turned in my review of the
+position. If my guess was right, the unknown in Manderson’s shoes had
+certainly had possession of Manderson’s trousers, waistcoat, and
+shooting jacket. They were there before my eyes in the bedroom; and
+Martin had seen the jacket—which nobody could have mistaken—upon the
+man who sat at the telephone in the library. It was now quite plain (if
+my guess was right) that this unmistakable garment was a cardinal
+feature of the unknown’s plan. He knew that Martin would take him for
+Manderson at the first glance.
+And there my thinking was interrupted by the realization of a thing
+that had escaped me before. So strong had been the influence of the
+unquestioned assumption that it was Manderson who was present that
+night, that neither I nor, as far as I know, any one else had noted the
+point. _Martin had not seen the man’s face, nor had Mrs. Manderson._
+Mrs. Manderson (judging by her evidence at the inquest, of which, as I
+have said, I had a full report made by the _Record_ stenographers in
+court) had not seen the man at all. She hardly could have done, as I
+shall show presently. She had merely spoken with him as she lay half
+asleep, resuming a conversation which she had had with her living
+husband about an hour before. Martin, I perceived, could only have seen
+the man’s back, as he sat crouching over the telephone; no doubt a
+characteristic pose was imitated there. And the man had worn his hat,
+Manderson’s broad-brimmed hat! There is too much character in the back
+of a head and neck. The unknown, in fact, supposing him to have been of
+about Manderson’s build, had had no need for any disguise, apart from
+the jacket and the hat and his powers of mimicry.
+I paused there to contemplate the coolness and ingenuity of the man.
+The thing, I now began to see, was so safe and easy, provided that his
+mimicry was good enough, and that his nerve held. Those two points
+assured, only some wholly unlikely accident could unmask him.
+To come back to my puzzling out of the matter as I sat in the dead
+man’s bedroom with the tell-tale shoes before me. The reason for the
+entrance by the window instead of by the front door will already have
+occurred to any one reading this. Entering by the door, the man would
+almost certainly have been heard by the sharp-eared Martin in his
+pantry just across the hall; he might have met him face to face.
+Then there was the problem of the whisky. I had not attached much
+importance to it; whisky will sometimes vanish in very queer ways in a
+household of eight or nine persons; but it had seemed strange that it
+should go in that way on that evening. Martin had been plainly quite
+dumbfounded by the fact. It seemed to me now that many a man—fresh, as
+this man in all likelihood was, from a bloody business, from the
+unclothing of a corpse, and with a desperate part still to play—would
+turn to that decanter as to a friend. No doubt he had a drink before
+sending for Martin; after making that trick with ease and success, he
+probably drank more.
+But he had known when to stop. The worst part of the enterprise was
+before him: the business—clearly of such vital importance to him, for
+whatever reason—of shutting himself in Manderson’s room and preparing a
+body of convincing evidence of its having been occupied by Manderson;
+and this with the risk—very slight, as no doubt he understood, but how
+unnerving!—of the woman on the other side of the half-open door awaking
+and somehow discovering him. True, if he kept out of her limited field
+of vision from the bed, she could only see him by getting up and going
+to the door. I found that to a person lying in her bed, which stood
+with its head to the wall a little beyond the door, nothing was visible
+through the doorway but one of the cupboards by Manderson’s bed-head.
+Moreover, since this man knew the ways of the household, he would think
+it most likely that Mrs. Manderson was asleep. Another point with him,
+I guessed, might have been the estrangement between the husband and
+wife, which they had tried to cloak by keeping up, among other things,
+their usual practice of sleeping in connected rooms, but which was well
+known to all who had anything to do with them. He would hope from this
+that if Mrs. Manderson heard him, she would take no notice of the
+supposed presence of her husband.
+So, pursuing my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom,
+and saw him setting about his work. And it was with a catch in my own
+breath that I thought of the hideous shock with which he must have
+heard the sound of all others he was dreading most: the drowsy voice
+from the adjoining room.
+What Mrs. Manderson actually said, she was unable to recollect at the
+inquest. She thinks she asked her supposed husband whether he had had a
+good run in the car. And now what does the unknown do? Here, I think,
+we come to a supremely significant point. Not only does he—standing
+rigid there, as I picture him, before the dressing-table, listening to
+the sound of his own leaping heart—not only does he answer the lady in
+the voice of Manderson; he volunteers an explanatory statement. He
+tells her that he has, on a sudden inspiration, sent Marlowe in the car
+to Southampton; that he has sent him to bring back some important
+information from a man leaving for Paris by the steamboat that morning.
+Why these details from a man who had long been uncommunicative to his
+wife, and that upon a point scarcely likely to interest her? Why these
+details _about Marlowe?_
+Having taken my story so far, I now put forward the following definite
+propositions: that between a time somewhere about ten, when the car
+started, and a time somewhere about eleven, Manderson was shot—probably
+at a considerable distance from the house, as no shot was heard; that
+the body was brought back, left by the shed, and stripped of its outer
+clothing; that at some time round about eleven o’clock a man who was
+not Manderson, wearing Manderson’s shoes, hat, and jacket, entered the
+library by the garden window; that he had with him Manderson’s black
+trousers, waistcoat, and motor-coat, the denture taken from Manderson’s
+mouth, and the weapon with which he had been murdered; that he
+concealed these, rang the bell for the butler, and sat down at the
+telephone with his hat on and his back to the door; that he was
+occupied with the telephone all the time Martin was in the room; that
+on going up to the bedroom floor he quietly entered Marlowe’s room and
+placed the revolver with which the crime had been committed—Marlowe’s
+revolver—in the case on the mantelpiece from which it had been taken;
+and that he then went to Manderson’s room, placed Manderson’s shoes
+outside the door, threw Manderson’s garments on a chair, placed the
+denture in the bowl by the bedside, and selected a suit of clothes, a
+pair of shoes, and a tie from those in the bedroom.
+Here I will pause in my statement of this man’s proceedings to go into
+a question for which the way is now sufficiently prepared:
+_Who was the false Manderson?_
+Reviewing what was known to me, or might almost with certainty be
+surmised, about that person, I set down the following five conclusions:
+(1.) He had been in close relations with the dead man. In his acting
+before Martin and his speaking to Mrs. Manderson he had made no
+mistake.
+(2.) He was of a build not unlike Manderson’s, especially as to height
+and breadth of shoulder, which mainly determine the character of the
+back of a seated figure when the head is concealed and the body loosely
+clothed. But his feet were larger, though not greatly larger, than
+Manderson’s.
+(3.) He had considerable aptitude for mimicry and acting—probably some
+experience too.
+(4.) He had a minute acquaintance with the ways of the Manderson
+household.
+(5.) He was under a vital necessity of creating the belief that
+Manderson was alive and in that house until some time after midnight on
+the Sunday night.
+So much I took as either certain or next door to it. It was as far as I
+could see. And it was far enough.
+I proceed to give, in an order corresponding with the numbered
+paragraphs above, such relevant facts as I was able to obtain about Mr.
+John Marlowe, from himself and other sources:
+(1.) He had been Mr. Manderson’s private secretary, upon a footing of
+great intimacy, for nearly four years.
+(2.) The two men were nearly of the same height, about five feet eleven
+inches; both were powerfully built and heavy in the shoulder. Marlowe,
+who was the younger by some twenty years, was rather slighter about the
+body, though Manderson was a man in good physical condition. Marlowe’s
+shoes (of which I examined several pairs) were roughly about one
+shoemaker’s size longer and broader than Manderson’s.
+(3.) In the afternoon of the first day of my investigation, after
+arriving at the results already detailed, I sent a telegram to a
+personal friend, a Fellow of a college at Oxford, whom I knew to be
+interested in theatrical matters, in these terms:
+_Please wire John Marlowe’s record in connection with acting at Oxford
+some time past decade very urgent and confidential._
+My friend replied in the following telegram, which reached me next
+morning (the morning of the inquest):
+_Marlowe was member O.U.D.S for three years and president 19— played
+Bardolph Cleon and Mercutio excelled in character acting and imitations
+in great demand at smokers was hero of some historic hoaxes._
+I had been led to send the telegram which brought this very helpful
+answer by seeing on the mantel-shelf in Marlowe’s bedroom a photograph
+of himself and two others in the costume of Falstaff’s three followers,
+with an inscription from _The Merry Wives_, and by noting that it bore
+the imprint of an Oxford firm of photographers.
+(4.) During his connection with Manderson, Marlowe had lived as one of
+the family. No other person, apart from the servants, had his
+opportunities for knowing the domestic life of the Mandersons in
+detail.
+(5.) I ascertained beyond doubt that Marlowe arrived at a hotel in
+Southampton on the Monday morning at 6.30, and there proceeded to carry
+out the commission which, according to his story, and according to the
+statement made to Mrs. Manderson in the bedroom by the false Manderson,
+had been entrusted to him by his employer. He had then returned in the
+car to Marlstone, where he had shown great amazement and horror at the
+news of the murder.
+These, I say, are the relevant facts about Marlowe. We must now examine
+fact number 5 (as set out above) in connection with conclusion number 5
+about the false Manderson.
+I would first draw attention to one important fact. _The only person
+who professed to have heard Manderson mention Southampton at all before
+he started in the car was Marlowe_. His story—confirmed to some extent
+by what the butler overheard—was that the journey was all arranged in a
+private talk before they set out, and he could not say, when I put the
+question to him, why Manderson should have concealed his intentions by
+giving out that he was going with Marlowe for a moonlight drive. This
+point, however, attracted no attention. Marlowe had an absolutely
+air-tight alibi in his presence at Southampton by 6.30; nobody thought
+of him in connection with a murder which must have been committed after
+12.30—the hour at which Martin the butler had gone to bed. But it was
+the Manderson who came back from the drive who went out of his way to
+mention Southampton openly to two persons. _He even went so far as to
+ring up a hotel at Southampton and ask questions which bore out
+Marlowe’s story of his errand._ This was the call he was busy with when
+Martin was in the library.
+Now let us consider the alibi. If Manderson was in the house that
+night, and if he did not leave it until some time after 12.30, Marlowe
+could not by any possibility have had a direct hand in the murder. It
+is a question of the distance between Marlstone and Southampton. If he
+had left Marlstone in the car at the hour when he is supposed to have
+done so—between 10 and 10.30—with a message from Manderson, the run
+would be quite an easy one to do in the time. But it would be
+physically impossible for the car—a 15 h.p. four-cylinder
+Northumberland, an average medium-power car—to get to Southampton by
+half-past six unless it left Marlstone by midnight at latest. Motorists
+who will examine the road-map and make the calculations required, as I
+did in Manderson’s library that day, will agree that on the facts as
+they appeared there was absolutely no case against Marlowe.
+But even if they were not as they appeared; if Manderson was dead by
+eleven o’clock, and if at about that time Marlowe impersonated him at
+White Gables; if Marlowe retired to Manderson’s bedroom—how can all
+this be reconciled with his appearance next morning at Southampton? _He
+had to get out of the house, unseen and unheard, and away in the car by
+midnight._ And Martin, the sharp-eared Martin, was sitting up until
+12.30 in his pantry, with the door open, listening for the telephone
+bell. Practically he was standing sentry over the foot of the
+staircase, the only staircase leading down from the bedroom floor.
+With this difficulty we arrive at the last and crucial phase of my
+investigation. Having the foregoing points clearly in mind, I spent the
+rest of the day before the inquest in talking to various persons and in
+going over my story, testing it link by link. I could only find the one
+weakness which seemed to be involved in Martin’s sitting up until
+12.30; and since his having been instructed to do so was certainly a
+part of the plan, meant to clinch the alibi for Marlowe, I knew there
+must be an explanation somewhere. If I could not find that explanation,
+my theory was valueless. I must be able to show that at the time Martin
+went up to bed the man who had shut himself in Manderson’s bedroom
+might have been many miles away on the road to Southampton.
+I had, however, a pretty good idea already—as perhaps the reader of
+these lines has by this time, if I have made myself clear—of how the
+escape of the false Manderson before midnight had been contrived. But I
+did not want what I was now about to do to be known. If I had chanced
+to be discovered at work, there would have been no concealing the
+direction of my suspicions. I resolved not to test them on this point
+until the next day, during the opening proceedings at the inquest. This
+was to be held, I knew, at the hotel, and I reckoned upon having White
+Gables to myself so far as the principal inmates were concerned.
+So in fact it happened. By the time the proceedings at the hotel had
+begun I was hard at work at White Gables. I had a camera with me. I
+made search, on principles well known to and commonly practised by the
+police, and often enough by myself, for certain indications. Without
+describing my search, I may say at once that I found and was able to
+photograph two fresh fingerprints, very large and distinct, on the
+polished front of the right-hand top drawer of the chest of drawers in
+Manderson’s bedroom; five more (among a number of smaller and less
+recent impressions made by other hands) on the glasses of the French
+window in Mrs. Manderson’s room, a window which always stood open at
+night with a curtain before it; and three more upon the glass bowl in
+which Manderson’s dental plate had been found lying.
+I took the bowl with me from White Gables. I took also a few articles
+which I selected from Marlowe’s bedroom, as bearing the most distinct
+of the innumerable fingerprints which are always to be found upon
+toilet articles in daily use. I already had in my possession, made upon
+leaves cut from my pocket diary, some excellent fingerprints of
+Marlowe’s which he had made in my presence without knowing it. I had
+shown him the leaves, asking if he recognized them; and the few seconds
+during which he had held them in his fingers had sufficed to leave
+impressions which I was afterwards able to bring out.
+By six o’clock in the evening, two hours after the jury had brought in
+their verdict against a person or persons unknown, I had completed my
+work, and was in a position to state that two of the five large prints
+made on the window-glasses, and the three on the bowl, were made by the
+left hand of Marlowe; that the remaining three on the window and the
+two on the drawer were made by his right hand.
+By eight o’clock I had made at the establishment of Mr. H. T. Copper,
+photographer, of Bishopsbridge, and with his assistance, a dozen
+enlarged prints of the finger-marks of Marlowe, clearly showing the
+identity of those which he unknowingly made in my presence and those
+left upon articles in his bedroom, with those found by me as I have
+described, and thus establishing the facts that Marlowe was recently in
+Manderson’s bedroom, where he had in the ordinary way no business, and
+in Mrs Manderson’s room, where he had still less. I hope it may be
+possible to reproduce these prints for publication with this dispatch.
+At nine o’clock I was back in my room at the hotel and sitting down to
+begin this manuscript. I had my story complete. I bring it to a close
+by advancing these further propositions: that on the night of the
+murder the impersonator of Manderson, being in Manderson’s bedroom,
+told Mrs Manderson, as he had already told Martin, that Marlowe was at
+that moment on his way to Southampton; that having made his
+dispositions in the room, he switched off the light, and lay in the bed
+in his clothes; that he waited until he was assured that Mrs. Manderson
+was asleep; that he then arose and stealthily crossed Mrs. Manderson’s
+bedroom in his stocking feet, having under his arm the bundle of
+clothing and shoes for the body; that he stepped behind the curtain,
+pushing the doors of the window a little further open with his hands,
+strode over the iron railing of the balcony, and let himself down until
+only a drop of a few feet separated him from the soft turf of the lawn.
+All this might very well have been accomplished within half an hour of
+his entering Manderson’s bedroom, which, according to Martin, he did at
+about half-past eleven.
+What followed your readers and the authorities may conjecture for
+themselves. The corpse was found next morning clothed—rather untidily.
+Marlowe in the car appeared at Southampton by half-past six.
+I bring this manuscript to an end in my sitting-room at the hotel at
+Marlstone. It is four o’clock in the morning. I leave for London by the
+noon train from Bishopsbridge, and immediately after arriving I shall
+place these pages in your hands. I ask you to communicate the substance
+of them to the Criminal Investigation Department.
+PHILIP TRENT.
+Chapter XII.
+Evil Days
+“I am returning the cheque you sent for what I did on the Manderson
+case,” Trent wrote to Sir James Molloy from Munich, whither he had gone
+immediately after handing in at the _Record_ office a brief dispatch
+bringing his work on the case to an unexciting close. “What I sent you
+wasn’t worth one-tenth of the amount; but I should have no scruple
+about pocketing it if I hadn’t taken a fancy—never mind why—not to
+touch any money at all for this business. I should like you, if there
+is no objection, to pay for the stuff at your ordinary space-rate, and
+hand the money to some charity which does not devote itself to bullying
+people, if you know of any such. I have come to this place to see some
+old friends and arrange my ideas, and the idea that comes out uppermost
+is that for a little while I want some employment with activity in it.
+I find I can’t paint at all: I couldn’t paint a fence. Will you try me
+as your Own Correspondent somewhere? If you can find me a good
+adventure I will send you good accounts. After that I could settle down
+and work.”
+Sir James sent him instructions by telegram to proceed at once to
+Kurland and Livonia, where Citizen Browning was abroad again, and town
+and countryside blazed in revolt. It was a roving commission, and for
+two months Trent followed his luck. It served him not less well than
+usual. He was the only correspondent who saw General Dragilew killed in
+the street at Volmar by a girl of eighteen. He saw burnings, lynchings,
+fusillades, hangings; each day his soul sickened afresh at the
+imbecilities born of misrule. Many nights he lay down in danger. Many
+days he went fasting. But there was never an evening or a morning when
+he did not see the face of the woman whom he hopelessly loved.
+He discovered in himself an unhappy pride at the lasting force of this
+infatuation. It interested him as a phenomenon; it amazed and
+enlightened him. Such a thing had not visited him before. It confirmed
+so much that he had found dubious in the recorded experience of men.
+It was not that, at thirty-two, he could pretend to ignorance of this
+world of emotion. About his knowledge let it be enough to say that what
+he had learned had come unpursued and unpurchased, and was without
+intolerable memories; broken to the realities of sex, he was still
+troubled by its inscrutable history. He went through life full of a
+strange respect for certain feminine weakness and a very simple terror
+of certain feminine strength. He had held to a rather lukewarm faith
+that something remained in him to be called forth, and that the voice
+that should call would be heard in its own time, if ever, and not
+through any seeking.
+But he had not thought of the possibility that, if this proved true
+some day, the truth might come in a sinister shape. The two things that
+had taken him utterly by surprise in the matter of his feeling towards
+Mabel Manderson were the insane suddenness of its uprising in full
+strength and its extravagant hopelessness. Before it came, he had been
+much disposed to laugh at the permanence of unrequited passion as a
+generous boyish delusion. He knew now that he had been wrong, and he
+was living bitterly in the knowledge.
+Before the eye of his fancy the woman always came just as she was when
+he had first had sight of her, with the gesture which he had surprised
+as he walked past unseen on the edge of the cliff; that great gesture
+of passionate joy in her new liberty which had told him more plainly
+than speech that her widowhood was a release from torment, and had
+confirmed with terrible force the suspicion, active in his mind before,
+that it was her passport to happiness with a man whom she loved. He
+could not with certainty name to himself the moment when he had first
+suspected that it might be so. The seed of the thought must have been
+sown, he believed, at his first meeting with Marlowe; his mind would
+have noted automatically that such evident strength and grace, with the
+sort of looks and manners that the tall young man possessed, might go
+far with any woman of unfixed affections. And the connection of this
+with what Mr. Cupples had told him of the Mandersons’ married life must
+have formed itself in the unconscious depths of his mind. Certainly it
+had presented itself as an already established thing when he began,
+after satisfying himself of the identity of the murderer, to cast about
+for the motive of the crime. Motive, motive! How desperately he had
+sought for another, turning his back upon that grim thought, that
+Marlowe—obsessed by passion like himself, and privy perhaps to
+maddening truths about the wife’s unhappiness—had taken a leaf, the
+guiltiest, from the book of Bothwell. But in all his investigations at
+the time, in all his broodings on the matter afterwards, he had been
+able to discover nothing that could prompt Marlowe to such a
+deed—nothing but that temptation, the whole strength of which he could
+not know, but which if it had existed must have pressed urgently upon a
+bold spirit in which scruple had been somehow paralysed. If he could
+trust his senses at all, the young man was neither insane nor by nature
+evil. But that could not clear him. Murder for a woman’s sake, he
+thought, was not a rare crime, Heaven knew! If the modern feebleness of
+impulse in the comfortable classes, and their respect for the modern
+apparatus of detection, had made it rare among them, it was yet far
+from impossible. It only needed a man of equal daring and intelligence,
+his soul drugged with the vapours of an intoxicating intrigue, to plan
+and perform such a deed.
+A thousand times, with a heart full of anguish, he had sought to reason
+away the dread that Mabel Manderson had known too much of what had been
+intended against her husband’s life. That she knew all the truth after
+the thing was done he could not doubt; her unforgettable collapse in
+his presence when the question about Marlowe was suddenly and bluntly
+put, had swept away his last hope that there was no love between the
+pair, and had seemed to him, moreover, to speak of dread of discovery.
+In any case, she knew the truth after reading what he had left with
+her; and it was certain that no public suspicion had been cast upon
+Marlowe since. She had destroyed his manuscript, then, and taken him at
+his word to keep the secret that threatened her lover’s life.
+But it was the monstrous thought that she might have known murder was
+brewing, and guiltily kept silence, that haunted Trent’s mind. She
+might have suspected, have guessed something; was it conceivable that
+she was aware of the whole plot, that she connived? He could never
+forget that his first suspicion of Marlowe’s motive in the crime had
+been roused by the fact that his escape was made through the lady’s
+room. At that time, when he had not yet seen her, he had been ready
+enough to entertain the idea of her equal guilt and her co-operation.
+He had figured to himself some passionate _hystérique_, merciless as a
+cat in her hate and her love, a zealous abettor, perhaps even the
+ruling spirit in the crime.
+Then he had seen her, had spoken with her, had helped her in her
+weakness; and such suspicions, since their first meeting, had seemed
+the vilest of infamy. He had seen her eyes and her mouth; he had
+breathed the woman’s atmosphere. Trent was one of those who fancy they
+can scent true wickedness in the air. In her presence he had felt an
+inward certainty of her ultimate goodness of heart; and it was nothing
+against this that she had abandoned herself a moment, that day on the
+cliff, to the sentiment of relief at the ending of her bondage, of her
+years of starved sympathy and unquickened motherhood. That she had
+turned to Marlowe in her destitution he believed; that she had any
+knowledge of his deadly purpose he did not believe.
+And yet, morning and evening the sickening doubts returned, and he
+recalled again that it was almost in her presence that Marlowe had made
+his preparations in the bedroom of the murdered man, that it was by the
+window of her own chamber that he had escaped from the house. Had he
+forgotten his cunning and taken the risk of telling her then? Or had
+he, as Trent thought more likely, still played his part with her then,
+and stolen off while she slept? He did not think she had known of the
+masquerade when she gave evidence at the inquest; it read like honest
+evidence. Or—the question would never be silenced, though he scorned
+it—had she lain expecting the footsteps in the room and the whisper
+that should tell her that it was done? Among the foul possibilities of
+human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and black deceit
+as well were hidden behind that good and straight and gentle seeming?
+These thoughts would scarcely leave him when he was alone.
+Trent served Sir James, well earning his pay for six months, and then
+returned to Paris where he went to work again with a better heart. His
+powers had returned to him, and he began to live more happily than he
+had expected among a tribe of strangely assorted friends, French,
+English, and American, artists, poets, journalists, policemen,
+hotel-keepers, soldiers, lawyers, business men, and others. His old
+faculty of sympathetic interest in his fellows won for him, just as in
+his student days, privileges seldom extended to the Briton. He enjoyed
+again the rare experience of being taken into the bosom of a
+Frenchman’s family. He was admitted to the momentous confidence of _les
+jeunes_, and found them as sure that they had surprised the secrets of
+art and life as the departed _jeunes_ of ten years before had been.
+The bosom of the Frenchman’s family was the same as those he had known
+in the past, even to the patterns of the wallpaper and movables. But
+the _jeunes_, he perceived with regret, were totally different from
+their forerunners. They were much more shallow and puerile, much less
+really clever. The secrets they wrested from the Universe were not such
+important and interesting secrets as had been wrested by the old
+_jeunes_. This he believed and deplored until one day he found himself
+seated at a restaurant next to a too well-fed man whom, in spite of the
+ravages of comfortable living, he recognized as one of the _jeunes_ of
+his own period. This one had been wont to describe himself and three or
+four others as the Hermits of the New Parnassus. He and his school had
+talked outside cafes and elsewhere more than solitaries do as a rule;
+but, then, rules were what they had vowed themselves to destroy. They
+proclaimed that verse, in particular, was free. The Hermit of the New
+Parnassus was now in the Ministry of the Interior, and already
+decorated: he expressed to Trent the opinion that what France needed
+most was a hand of iron. He was able to quote the exact price paid for
+certain betrayals of the country, of which Trent had not previously
+heard.
+Thus he was brought to make the old discovery that it was he who had
+changed, like his friend of the Administration, and that _les jeunes_
+were still the same. Yet he found it hard to say what precisely he had
+lost that so greatly mattered; unless indeed it were so simple a thing
+as his high spirits.
+One morning in June, as he descended the slope of the Rue des Martyrs,
+he saw approaching a figure that he remembered. He glanced quickly
+round, for the thought of meeting Mr. Bunner again was unacceptable.
+For some time he had recognized that his wound was healing under the
+spell of creative work; he thought less often of the woman he loved,
+and with less pain. He would not have the memory of those three days
+reopened.
+But the straight and narrow thoroughfare offered no refuge, and the
+American saw him almost at once.
+His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man.
+They sat long over a meal, and Mr. Bunner talked. Trent listened to
+him, now that he was in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then
+contributing a question or remark. Besides liking his companion, he
+enjoyed his conversation, with its unending verbal surprises, for its
+own sake.
+Bunner was, it appeared, resident in Paris as the chief Continental
+agent of the Manderson firm, and fully satisfied with his position and
+prospects. He discoursed on these for some twenty minutes. This subject
+at length exhausted, he went on to tell Trent, who confessed that he
+had been away from England for a year, that Marlowe had shortly after
+the death of Manderson entered his father’s business, which was now
+again in a flourishing state, and had already come to be practically in
+control of it. They had kept up their intimacy, and were even now
+planning a holiday for the summer. Mr. Bunner spoke with generous
+admiration of his friend’s talent for affairs. “Jack Marlowe has a
+natural big head,” he declared, “and if he had more experience, I
+wouldn’t want to have him up against me. He would put a crimp in me
+every time.”
+As the American’s talk flowed on, Trent listened with a slowly growing
+perplexity. It became more and more plain that something was very wrong
+in his theory of the situation; there was no mention of its central
+figure. Presently Mr. Bunner mentioned that Marlowe was engaged to be
+married to an Irish girl, whose charms he celebrated with native
+enthusiasm.
+Trent clasped his hands savagely together beneath the table. What could
+have happened? His ideas were sliding and shifting. At last he forced
+himself to put a direct question.
+Mr. Bunner was not very fully informed. He knew that Mrs. Manderson had
+left England immediately after the settlement of her husband’s affairs,
+and had lived for some time in Italy. She had returned not long ago to
+London, where she had decided not to live in the house in Mayfair, and
+had bought a smaller one in the Hampstead neighbourhood; also, he
+understood, one somewhere in the country. She was said to go but little
+into society. “And all the good hard dollars just waiting for some one
+to spraddle them around,” said Mr. Bunner, with a note of pathos in his
+voice. “Why, she has money to burn—money to feed to the birds—and
+nothing doing. The old man left her more than half his wad. And think
+of the figure she might make in the world. She is beautiful, and she is
+the best woman I ever met, too. But she couldn’t ever seem to get the
+habit of spending money the way it ought to be spent.”
+His words now became a soliloquy: Trent’s thoughts were occupying all
+his attention. He pleaded business soon, and the two men parted with
+cordiality.
+Half an hour later Trent was in his studio, swiftly and mechanically
+“cleaning up”. He wanted to know what had happened; somehow he must
+find out. He could never approach herself, he knew; he would never
+bring back to her the shame of that last encounter with him; it was
+scarcely likely that he would even set eyes on her. But he must get to
+know!... Cupples was in London, Marlowe was there.... And, anyhow, he
+was sick of Paris.
+Such thoughts came and went; and below them all strained the fibres of
+an unseen cord that dragged mercilessly at his heart, and that he
+cursed bitterly in the moments when he could not deny to himself that
+it was there. The folly, the useless, pitiable folly of it!
+In twenty-four hours his feeble roots in Paris had been torn out. He
+was looking over a leaden sea at the shining fortress-wall of the Dover
+cliffs.
+But though he had instinctively picked out the lines of a set purpose
+from among the welter of promptings in his mind, he found it delayed at
+the very outset.
+He had decided that he must first see Mr. Cupples, who would be in a
+position to tell him much more than the American knew. But Mr. Cupples
+was away on his travels, not expected to return for a month; and Trent
+had no reasonable excuse for hastening his return. Marlowe he would not
+confront until he had tried at least to reconnoitre the position. He
+constrained himself not to commit the crowning folly of seeking out
+Mrs. Manderson’s house in Hampstead; he could not enter it, and the
+thought of the possibility of being seen by her lurking in its
+neighbourhood brought the blood to his face.
+He stayed at an hotel, took a studio, and while he awaited Mr.
+Cupples’s return attempted vainly to lose himself in work.
+At the end of a week he had an idea that he acted upon with eager
+precipitancy. She had let fall some word at their last meeting, of a
+taste for music. Trent went that evening, and thenceforward regularly,
+to the opera. He might see her; and if, in spite of his caution, she
+caught sight of him, they could be blind to each other’s
+presence—anybody might happen to go to the opera.
+So he went alone each evening, passing as quickly as he might through
+the people in the vestibule; and each evening he came away knowing that
+she had not been in the house. It was a habit that yielded him a sort
+of satisfaction along with the guilty excitement of his search; for he
+too loved music, and nothing gave him so much peace while its magic
+endured.
+One night as he entered, hurrying through the brilliant crowd, he felt
+a touch on his arm. Flooded with an incredible certainty at the touch,
+he turned.
+It was she: so much more radiant in the absence of grief and anxiety,
+in the fact that she was smiling, and in the allurement of evening
+dress, that he could not speak. She, too, breathed a little quickly,
+and there was a light of daring in her eyes and cheeks as she greeted
+him.
+Her words were few. “I wouldn’t miss a note of _Tristan_,” she said,
+“nor must you. Come and see me in the interval.” She gave him the
+number of the box.
+Chapter XIII.
+Eruption
+The following two months were a period in Trent’s life that he has
+never since remembered without shuddering. He met Mrs. Manderson half a
+dozen times, and each time her cool friendliness, a nicely calculated
+mean between mere acquaintance and the first stage of intimacy, baffled
+and maddened him. At the opera he had found her, to his further
+amazement, with a certain Mrs. Wallace, a frisky matron whom he had
+known from childhood. Mrs. Manderson, it appeared, on her return from
+Italy, had somehow wandered into circles to which he belonged by
+nurture and disposition. It came, she said, of her having pitched her
+tent in their hunting-grounds; several of his friends were near
+neighbours. He had a dim but horrid recollection of having been on that
+occasion unlike himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with
+idiot loquacity of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding
+from time to time that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs.
+Wallace. The other lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the
+slight appearance of agitation with which she had stopped him in the
+vestibule. She had spoken pleasantly to him of her travels, of her
+settlement in London, and of people whom they both knew.
+During the last half of the opera, which he had stayed in the box to
+hear, he had been conscious of nothing, as he sat behind them, but the
+angle of her cheek and the mass of her hair, the lines of her shoulder
+and arm, her hand upon the cushion. The black hair had seemed at last a
+forest, immeasurable, pathless and enchanted, luring him to a fatal
+adventure.... At the end he had been pale and subdued, parting with
+them rather formally.
+The next time he saw her—it was at a country house where both were
+guests—and the subsequent times, he had had himself in hand. He had
+matched her manner and had acquitted himself, he thought, decently,
+considering—
+Considering that he lived in an agony of bewilderment and remorse and
+longing. He could make nothing, absolutely nothing, of her attitude.
+That she had read his manuscript and understood the suspicion indicated
+in his last question to her at White Gables was beyond the possibility
+of doubt. Then how could she treat him thus and frankly, as she treated
+all the world of men who had done no injury?
+For it had become clear to his intuitive sense, for all the absence of
+any shade of differentiation in her outward manner, that an injury had
+been done, and that she had felt it. Several times, on the rare and
+brief occasions when they had talked apart, he had warning from the
+same sense that she was approaching this subject; and each time he had
+turned the conversation with the ingenuity born of fear. Two
+resolutions he made. The first was that when he had completed a
+commissioned work which tied him to London he would go away and stay
+away. The strain was too great. He no longer burned to know the truth;
+he wanted nothing to confirm his fixed internal conviction by faith,
+that he had blundered, that he had misread the situation,
+misinterpreted her tears, written himself down a slanderous fool. He
+speculated no more on Marlowe’s motive in the killing of Manderson. Mr.
+Cupples returned to London, and Trent asked him nothing. He knew now
+that he had been right in those words—Trent remembered them for the
+emphasis with which they were spoken—“So long as she considered herself
+bound to him... no power on earth could have persuaded her.” He met
+Mrs. Manderson at dinner at her uncle’s large and tomb-like house in
+Bloomsbury, and there he conversed most of the evening with a professor
+of archaeology from Berlin.
+His other resolution was that he would not be with her alone.
+But when, a few days after, she wrote asking him to come and see her on
+the following afternoon, he made no attempt to excuse himself. This was
+a formal challenge.
+While she celebrated the rites of tea, and for some little time
+thereafter, she joined with such natural ease in his slightly fevered
+conversation on matters of the day that he began to hope she had
+changed what he could not doubt had been her resolve, to corner him and
+speak to him gravely. She was to all appearance careless now, smiling
+so that he recalled, not for the first time since that night at the
+opera, what was written long ago of a Princess of Brunswick: “Her mouth
+has ten thousand charms that touch the soul.” She made a tour of the
+beautiful room where she had received him, singling out this treasure
+or that from the spoils of a hundred bric-à-brac shops, laughing over
+her quests, discoveries, and bargainings. And when he asked if she
+would delight him again with a favourite piece of his which he had
+heard her play at another house, she consented at once.
+She played with a perfection of execution and feeling that moved him
+now as it had moved him before. “You are a musician born,” he said
+quietly when she had finished, and the last tremor of the music had
+passed away. “I knew that before I first heard you.”
+“I have played a great deal ever since I can remember. It has been a
+great comfort to me,” she said simply, and half-turned to him smiling.
+“When did you first detect music in me? Oh, of course: I was at the
+opera. But that wouldn’t prove much, would it?”
+“No,” he said abstractedly, his sense still busy with the music that
+had just ended. “I think I knew it the first time I saw you.” Then
+understanding of his own words came to him, and turned him rigid. For
+the first time the past had been invoked.
+There was a short silence. Mrs. Manderson looked at Trent, then hastily
+looked away. Colour began to rise in her cheeks, and she pursed her
+lips as if for whistling. Then with a defiant gesture of the shoulders
+which he remembered she rose suddenly from the piano and placed herself
+in a chair opposite to him.
+“That speech of yours will do as well as anything,” she began slowly,
+looking at the point of her shoe, “to bring us to what I wanted to say.
+I asked you here today on purpose, Mr. Trent, because I couldn’t bear
+it any longer. Ever since the day you left me at White Gables I have
+been saying to myself that it didn’t matter what you thought of me in
+that affair; that you were certainly not the kind of man to speak to
+others of what you believed about me, after what you had told me of
+your reasons for suppressing your manuscript. I asked myself how it
+could matter. But all the time, of course, I knew it did matter. It
+mattered horribly. Because what you thought was not true.” She raised
+her eyes and met his gaze calmly. Trent, with a completely
+expressionless face, returned her look.
+“Since I began to know you,” he said, “I have ceased to think it.”
+“Thank you,” said Mrs. Manderson; and blushed suddenly and deeply.
+Then, playing with a glove, she added, “But I want you to know what
+_was_ true.
+“I did not know if I should ever see you again,” she went on in a lower
+voice, “but I felt that if I did I must speak to you about this. I
+thought it would not be hard to do so, because you seemed to me an
+understanding person; and besides, a woman who has been married isn’t
+expected to have the same sort of difficulty as a young girl in
+speaking about such things when it is necessary. And then we did meet
+again, and I discovered that it was very difficult indeed. You made it
+difficult.”
+“How?” he asked quietly.
+“I don’t know,” said the lady. “But yes—I do know. It was just because
+you treated me exactly as if you had never thought or imagined anything
+of that sort about me. I had always supposed that if I saw you again
+you would turn on me that hard, horrible sort of look you had when you
+asked me that last question—do you remember?—at White Gables. Instead
+of that you were just like any other acquaintance. You were just”—she
+hesitated and spread out her hands—“nice. You know. After that first
+time at the opera when I spoke to you I went home positively wondering
+if you had really recognized me. I mean, I thought you might have
+recognized my face without remembering who it was.”
+A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said
+nothing.
+She smiled deprecatingly. “Well, I couldn’t remember if you had spoken
+my name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at the
+Iretons’, you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those
+few days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I began
+to feel that you wouldn’t let me, that you would slip away from the
+subject if I approached it. Wasn’t I right? Tell me, please.” He
+nodded. “But why?” He remained silent.
+“Well,” she said, “I will finish what I had to say, and then you will
+tell me, I hope, why you had to make it so hard. When I began to
+understand that you wouldn’t let me talk of the matter to you, it made
+me more determined than ever. I suppose you didn’t realize that I would
+insist on speaking even if you were quite discouraging. I dare say I
+couldn’t have done it if I had been guilty, as you thought. You walked
+into my parlour today, never thinking I should dare. Well, now you
+see.”
+Mrs. Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy. She had, as she was
+wont to say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardour of her
+purpose to annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so
+long she felt herself mistress of the situation.
+“I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made,” she
+continued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked
+at her enigmatically. “You will have to believe it, Mr. Trent; it is
+utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things and
+cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that nobody thinks twice
+about taking for facts. Please understand that I don’t blame you in the
+least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did. You knew
+that I was estranged from my husband, and you knew what that so often
+means. You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up an
+injured attitude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explain
+it away. I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myself at
+first, before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he was
+disappointed in me because I couldn’t take a brilliant lead in society.
+Well, that was true; he was so. But I could see you weren’t convinced.
+You had guessed what it took me much longer to see, because I knew how
+irrational it was. Yes; my husband was jealous of John Marlowe; you
+divined that.
+“Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; it
+was such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the
+humiliation and strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died
+with him. You practically asked me if my husband’s secretary was not my
+lover, Mr. Trent—I _have_ to say it, because I want you to understand
+why I broke down and made a scene. You took that for a confession; you
+thought I was guilty of that, and I think you even thought I might be a
+party to the crime, that I had consented.... That did hurt me; but
+perhaps you couldn’t have thought anything else—I don’t know.”
+Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head
+at the words. He did not raise it again as she continued. “But really
+it was simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory
+of all the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulled
+myself together again you had gone.”
+She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a
+drawer, and drew out a long, sealed envelope.
+“This is the manuscript you left with me,” she said. “I have read it
+through again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at
+your cleverness in things of this kind.” A faintly mischievous smile
+flashed upon her face, and was gone. “I thought it was splendid, Mr.
+Trent—I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested.
+And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank
+you for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph of
+yours rather than put a woman’s reputation in peril. If all had been as
+you supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up the
+case you put in their hands. Believe me, I understood just what you had
+done, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most crushed
+by your suspicion.”
+As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes were
+bright. Trent perceived nothing of this. His head was still bent. He
+did not seem to hear. She put the envelope into his hand as it lay
+open, palm upwards, on his knee. There was a touch of gentleness about
+the act which made him look up.
+“Can you—” he began slowly.
+She raised her hand as she stood before him. “No, Mr. Trent; let me
+finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me
+to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am
+still feeling the triumph of beginning it.” She sank down into the sofa
+from which she had first risen. “I am telling you a thing that nobody
+else knows. Everybody knew, I suppose, that something had come between
+us, though I did everything in my power to hide it. But I don’t think
+any one in the world ever guessed what my husband’s notion was. People
+who know me don’t think that sort of thing about me, I believe. And his
+fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will tell you what
+the situation was. Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he
+came to us. For all his cleverness—my husband said he had a keener
+brain than any man he knew—I looked upon him as practically a boy. You
+know I am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack
+of ambition that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me
+what I thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much
+about it I said, ‘His manners.’ He surprised me very much by looking
+black at that, and after a silence he said, ‘Yes, Marlowe is a
+gentleman; that’s so’, not looking at me.
+“Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, when I
+found that Mr. Marlowe had done what I always expected he would
+do—fallen desperately in love with an American girl. But to my disgust
+he had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all those
+whom we used to meet. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she
+did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well educated, very good at
+games—what they call a woman-athlete—and caring for nothing on earth
+but her own amusement. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I
+ever knew, and quite the cleverest. Every one knew it, and Mr. Marlowe
+must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all.
+I don’t know how she managed it, but I can imagine. She liked him, of
+course; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him. The
+whole affair was so idiotic, I got perfectly furious. One day I asked
+him to row me in a boat on the lake—all this happened at our house by
+Lake George. We had never been alone together for any length of time
+before. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think,
+and he took it admirably, but he didn’t believe me a bit. He had the
+impudence to tell me that I misunderstood Alice’s nature. When I hinted
+at his prospects—I knew he had scarcely anything of his own—he said
+that if she loved him he could make himself a position in the world. I
+dare say that was true, with his abilities and his friends—he is rather
+well connected, you know, as well as popular. But his enlightenment
+came very soon after that.
+“My husband helped me out of the boat when we got back. He joked with
+Mr Marlowe about something, I remember; for through all that followed
+he never once changed in his manner to him, and that was one reason why
+I took so long to realize what he thought about him and myself. But to
+me he was reserved and silent that evening—not angry. He was always
+perfectly cold and expressionless to me after he took this idea into
+his head. After dinner he only spoke to me once. Mr. Marlowe was
+telling him about some horse he had bought for the farm in Kentucky,
+and my husband looked at me and said, ‘Marlowe may be a gentleman, but
+he seldom quits loser in a horse-trade.’ I was surprised at that, but
+at that time—and even on the next occasion when he found us together—I
+didn’t understand what was in his mind. That next time was the morning
+when Mr Marlowe received a sweet little note from the girl asking for
+his congratulations on her engagement. It was in our New York house. He
+looked so wretched at breakfast that I thought he was ill, and
+afterwards I went to the room where he worked, and asked what was the
+matter. He didn’t say anything, but just handed me the note, and turned
+away to the window. I was very glad that was all over, but terribly
+sorry for him too, of course. I don’t remember what I said, but I
+remember putting my hand on his arm as he stood there staring out on
+the garden and just then my husband appeared at the open door with some
+papers. He just glanced at us, and then turned and walked quietly back
+to his study. I thought that he might have heard what I was saying to
+comfort Mr. Marlowe, and that it was rather nice of him to slip away.
+Mr. Marlowe neither saw nor heard him. My husband left the house that
+morning for the West while I was out. Even then I did not understand.
+He used often to go off suddenly like that, if some business project
+called him.
+“It was not until he returned a week later that I grasped the
+situation. He was looking white and strange, and as soon as he saw me
+he asked me where Mr. Marlowe was. Somehow the tone of his question
+told me everything in a flash.
+“I almost gasped; I was wild with indignation. You know, Mr. Trent, I
+don’t think I should have minded at all if any one had thought me
+capable of openly breaking with my husband and leaving him for somebody
+else. I dare say I might have done that. But that coarse suspicion... a
+man whom he trusted... and the notion of concealment. It made me see
+scarlet. Every shred of pride in me was strung up till I quivered, and
+I swore to myself on the spot that I would never show by any word or
+sign that I was conscious of his having such a thought about me. I
+would behave exactly as I always had behaved, I determined—and that I
+did, up to the very last. Though I knew that a wall had been made
+between us now that could never be broken down—even if he asked my
+pardon and obtained it—I never once showed that I noticed any change.
+“And so it went on. I never could go through such a time again. My
+husband showed silent and cold politeness to me always when we were
+alone—and that was only when it was unavoidable. He never once alluded
+to what was in his mind; but I felt it, and he knew that I felt it.
+Both of us were stubborn in our different attitudes. To Mr. Marlowe he
+was more friendly, if anything, than before—Heaven only knows why. I
+fancied he was planning some sort of revenge; but that was only a
+fancy. Certainly Mr. Marlowe never knew what was suspected of him. He
+and I remained good friends, though we never spoke of anything intimate
+after that disappointment of his; but I made a point of seeing no less
+of him than I had always done. Then we came to England and to White
+Gables, and after that followed—my husband’s dreadful end.”
+She threw out her right hand in a gesture of finality. “You know about
+the rest—so much more than any other man,” she added, and glanced up at
+him with a quaint expression.
+Trent wondered at that look, but the wonder was only a passing shadow
+on his thought. Inwardly his whole being was possessed by thankfulness.
+All the vivacity had returned to his face. Long before the lady had
+ended her story he had recognized the certainty of its truth, as from
+the first days of their renewed acquaintance he had doubted the story
+that his imagination had built up at White Gables, upon foundations
+that seemed so good to him.
+He said, “I don’t know how to begin the apologies I have to make. There
+are no words to tell you how ashamed and disgraced I feel when I
+realize what a crude, cock-sure blundering at a conclusion my suspicion
+was. Yes, I suspected—you! I had almost forgotten that I was ever such
+a fool. Almost—not quite. Sometimes when I have been alone I have
+remembered that folly, and poured contempt on it. I have tried to
+imagine what the facts were. I have tried to excuse myself.”
+She interrupted him quickly. “What nonsense! Do be sensible, Mr. Trent.
+You had only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to
+me with your solution of the mystery.” Again the quaint expression came
+and was gone. “If you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like
+you to pretend to a woman like me that I had innocence written all over
+me in large letters—so large that you couldn’t believe very strong
+evidence against me after seeing me twice.”
+“What do you mean by ‘a man like me’?” he demanded with a sort of
+fierceness. “Do you take me for a person without any normal instincts?
+I don’t say you impress people as a simple, transparent sort of
+character—what Mr. Calvin Bunner calls a case of open-work; I don’t say
+a stranger might not think you capable of wickedness, if there was good
+evidence for it: but I say that a man who, after seeing you and being
+in your atmosphere, could associate you with the particular kind of
+abomination I imagined, is a fool—the kind of fool who is afraid to
+trust his senses.... As for my making it hard for you to approach the
+subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I
+understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted
+at the notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show
+you by my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you
+would pardon me without any words. I can’t forgive myself, and I never
+shall. And yet if you could know—” He stopped short, and then added
+quietly, “Well, will you accept all that as an apology? The very
+scrubbiest sackcloth made, and the grittiest ashes on the heap.... I
+didn’t mean to get worked up,” he ended lamely.
+Mrs. Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it. He knew
+well by this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, the
+perfect expression of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse her
+merely for his delight in the sound of it.
+“But I love to see you worked up,” she said. “The bump with which you
+always come down as soon as you realize that you are up in the air at
+all is quite delightful. Oh, we’re actually both laughing. What a
+triumphant end to our explanations, after all my dread of the time when
+I should have it out with you. And now it’s all over, and you know; and
+we’ll never speak of it any more.”
+“I hope not,” Trent said in sincere relief. “If you’re resolved to be
+so kind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on
+your blasting me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs. Manderson, I had
+better go. Changing the subject after this would be like playing
+puss-in-the-corner after an earthquake.” He rose to his feet.
+“You are right,” she said. “But no! Wait. There is another thing—part
+of the same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while
+we are about it. Please sit down.” She took the envelope containing
+Trent’s manuscript dispatch from the table where he had laid it. “I
+want to speak about this.”
+His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. “So do I, if you
+do,” he said slowly. “I want very much to know one thing.”
+“Tell me.”
+“Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy,
+why did you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I
+had been wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying
+that you could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope
+round a man’s neck, whatever he might have done. I can quite understand
+that feeling. Was that what it was? Another possibility I thought of
+was that you knew of something that was by way of justifying or
+excusing Marlowe’s act. Or I thought you might have a simple horror,
+quite apart from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in
+connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases
+have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel
+there is defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold.”
+Mrs. Manderson tapped her lips with the envelope without quite
+concealing a smile. “You didn’t think of another possibility, I
+suppose, Mr. Trent,” she said.
+“No.” He looked puzzled.
+“I mean the possibility of your having been wrong about Mr. Marlowe as
+well as about me. No, no; you needn’t tell me that the chain of
+evidence is complete. I know it is. But evidence of what? Of Mr.
+Marlowe having impersonated my husband that night, and having escaped
+by way of my window, and built up an alibi. I have read your dispatch
+again and again, Mr. Trent, and I don’t see that those things can be
+doubted.”
+Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the
+brief pause that followed. Mrs. Manderson smoothed her skirt with a
+preoccupied air, as one collecting her ideas.
+“I did not make any use of the facts found out by you,” she slowly said
+at last, “because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatal
+to Mr. Marlowe.”
+“I agree with you,” Trent remarked in a colourless tone.
+“And,” pursued the lady, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness
+in her eyes, “as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose
+him to that risk.”
+There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an
+affectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself,
+somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite
+feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted to
+her—more than permitted—to set her loyal belief in the character of a
+friend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect.
+Nevertheless, it chafed him. He would have had her declaration of faith
+a little less positive in form. It was too irrational to say she
+“knew”. In fact (he put it to himself bluntly), it was quite unlike
+her. If to be unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a
+specially feminine trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was
+accustomed to wrap it up better than any woman he had known.
+“You suggest,” he said at length, “that Marlowe constructed an alibi
+for himself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted,
+to clear himself of a crime he did not commit. Did he tell you he was
+innocent?”
+She uttered a little laugh of impatience. “So you think he has been
+talking me round. No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do
+it. Ah! I see you think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are,
+Mr Trent! Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it
+was foolishness in you to have a certain suspicion of me after seeing
+me and being in my atmosphere, as you said.” Trent started in his
+chair. She glanced at him, and went on: “Now, I and my atmosphere are
+much obliged to you, but we must stand up for the rights of other
+atmospheres. I know a great deal more about Mr. Marlowe’s atmosphere
+than you know about mine even now. I saw him constantly for several
+years. I don’t pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is
+incapable of a crime of bloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is
+as unthinkable to me as the idea of your picking a poor woman’s pocket,
+Mr. Trent. I can imagine you killing a man, you know... if the man
+deserved it and had an equal chance of killing you. I could kill a
+person myself in some circumstances. But Mr. Marlowe was incapable of
+doing it, I don’t care what the provocation might be. He had a temper
+that nothing could shake, and he looked upon human nature with a sort
+of cold magnanimity that would find excuses for absolutely anything. It
+wasn’t a pose; you could see it was a part of him. He never put it
+forward, but it was there always. It was quite irritating at times....
+Now and then in America, I remember, I have heard people talking about
+lynching, for instance, when he was there. He would sit quite silent
+and expressionless, appearing not to listen; but you could feel disgust
+coming from him in waves. He really loathed and hated physical
+violence. He was a very strange man in some ways, Mr. Trent. He gave
+one a feeling that he might do unexpected things—do you know that
+feeling one has about some people? What part he really played in the
+events of that night I have never been able to guess. But nobody who
+knew anything about him could possibly believe in his deliberately
+taking a man’s life.” Again the movement of her head expressed
+finality, and she leaned back in the sofa, calmly regarding him.
+“Then,” said Trent, who had followed this with earnest attention, “we
+are forced back on two other possibilities, which I had not thought
+worth much consideration until this moment. Accepting what you say, he
+might still conceivably have killed in self-defence; or he might have
+done so by accident.”
+The lady nodded. “Of course I thought of those two explanations when I
+read your manuscript.”
+“And I suppose you felt, as I did myself, that in either of those cases
+the natural thing, and obviously the safest thing, for him to do was to
+make a public statement of the truth, instead of setting up a series of
+deceptions which would certainly stamp him as guilty in the eyes of the
+law, if anything went wrong with them.”
+“Yes,” she said wearily, “I thought over all that until my head ached.
+And I thought somebody else might have done it, and that he was somehow
+screening the guilty person. But that seemed wild. I could see no light
+in the mystery, and after a while I simply let it alone. All I was
+clear about was that Mr. Marlowe was not a murderer, and that if I told
+what you had found out, the judge and jury would probably think he was.
+I promised myself that I would speak to you about it if we should meet
+again; and now I’ve kept my promise.”
+Trent, his chin resting on his hand, was staring at the carpet. The
+excitement of the hunt for the truth was steadily rising in him. He had
+not in his own mind accepted Mrs. Manderson’s account of Marlowe’s
+character as unquestionable. But she had spoken forcibly; he could by
+no means set it aside, and his theory was much shaken.
+“There is only one thing for it,” he said, looking up. “I must see
+Marlowe. It worries me too much to have the thing left like this. I
+will get at the truth. Can you tell me,” he broke off, “how he behaved
+after the day I left White Gables?”
+“I never saw him after that,” said Mrs. Manderson simply. “For some
+days after you went away I was ill, and didn’t go out of my room. When
+I got down he had left and was in London, settling things with the
+lawyers. He did not come down to the funeral. Immediately after that I
+went abroad. After some weeks a letter from him reached me, saying he
+had concluded his business and given the solicitors all the assistance
+in his power. He thanked me very nicely for what he called all my
+kindness, and said goodbye. There was nothing in it about his plans for
+the future, and I thought it particularly strange that he said not a
+word about my husband’s death. I didn’t answer. Knowing what I knew, I
+couldn’t. In those days I shuddered whenever I thought of that
+masquerade in the night. I never wanted to see or hear of him again.”
+“Then you don’t know what has become of him?”
+“No, but I dare say Uncle Burton—Mr. Cupples, you know—could tell you.
+Some time ago he told me that he had met Mr. Marlowe in London, and had
+some talk with him. I changed the conversation.” She paused and smiled
+with a trace of mischief. “I rather wonder what you supposed had
+happened to Mr. Marlowe after you withdrew from the scene of the drama
+that you had put together so much to your satisfaction.”
+Trent flushed. “Do you really want to know?” he said.
+“I ask you,” she retorted quietly.
+“You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs. Manderson. Very well. I
+will tell you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned
+to London after my travels: that you had married Marlowe to live
+abroad.”
+She heard him with unmoved composure. “We certainly couldn’t have lived
+very comfortably in England on his money and mine,” she observed
+thoughtfully. “He had practically nothing then.”
+He stared at her—“gaped”, she told him some time afterwards. At the
+moment she laughed with a little embarrassment.
+“Dear me, Mr. Trent! Have I said anything dreadful? You surely must
+know.... I thought everybody understood by now.... I’m sure I’ve had to
+explain it often enough... if I marry again I lose everything that my
+husband left me.”
+The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his
+face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he
+gradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He
+looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of
+the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon.
+But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, “I had no
+idea of it.”
+“It is so,” she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger.
+“Really, Mr. Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing. I think I am
+glad of it. For one thing, it has secured me—at least since it became
+generally known—from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman in
+my position has to put up with as a rule.”
+“No doubt,” he said gravely. “And... the other kind?”
+She looked at him questioningly. “Ah!” she laughed. “The other kind
+trouble me even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to want to
+marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and
+tastes, and nothing but the little my father left me.”
+She shook her head, and something in the gesture shattered the last
+remnants of Trent’s self-possession.
+“Haven’t you, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, rising with a violent movement
+and advancing a step towards her. “Then I am going to show you that
+human passion is not always stifled by the smell of money. I am going
+to end the business—my business. I am going to tell you what I dare say
+scores of better men have wanted to tell you, but couldn’t summon up
+what I have summoned up—the infernal cheek to do it. They were afraid
+of making fools of themselves. I am not. You have accustomed me to the
+feeling this afternoon.” He laughed aloud in his rush of words, and
+spread out his hands. “Look at me! It is the sight of the century! It
+is one who says he loves you, and would ask you to give up very great
+wealth to stand at his side.”
+She was hiding her face in her hands. He heard her say brokenly,
+“Please... don’t speak in that way.”
+He answered: “It will make a great difference to me if you will allow
+me to say all I have to say before I leave you. Perhaps it is in bad
+taste, but I will risk that; I want to relieve my soul; it needs open
+confession. This is the truth. You have troubled me ever since the
+first time I saw you—and you did not know it—as you sat under the edge
+of the cliff at Marlstone, and held out your arms to the sea. It was
+only your beauty that filled my mind then. As I passed by you it seemed
+as if all the life in the place were crying out a song about you in the
+wind and the sunshine. And the song stayed in my ears; but even your
+beauty would be no more than an empty memory to me by now if that had
+been all. It was when I led you from the hotel there to your house,
+with your hand on my arm, that—what was it that happened? I only knew
+that your stronger magic had struck home, and that I never should
+forget that day, whatever the love of my life should be. Till that day
+I had admired as I should admire the loveliness of a still lake; but
+that day I felt the spell of the divinity of the lake. And next morning
+the waters were troubled, and she rose—the morning when I came to you
+with my questions, tired out with doubts that were as bitter as pain,
+and when I saw you without your pale, sweet mask of composure—when I
+saw you moved and glowing, with your eyes and your hands alive, and
+when you made me understand that for such a creature as you there had
+been emptiness and the mere waste of yourself for so long. Madness rose
+in me then, and my spirit was clamouring to say what I say at last now:
+that life would never seem a full thing again because you could not
+love me, that I was taken for ever in the nets of your black hair and
+by the incantation of your voice—”
+“Oh, stop!” she cried, suddenly throwing back her head, her face
+flaming and her hands clutching the cushions beside her. She spoke fast
+and disjointedly, her breath coming quick. “You shall not talk me into
+forgetting common sense. What does all this mean? Oh, I do not
+recognize you at all—you seem another man. We are not children; have
+you forgotten that? You speak like a boy in love for the first time. It
+is foolish, unreal—I know that if you do not. I will not hear it. What
+has happened to you?” She was half sobbing. “How can these
+sentimentalities come from a man like you? Where is your
+self-restraint?”
+“Gone!” exclaimed Trent, with an abrupt laugh. “It has got right away.
+I am going after it in a minute.” He looked gravely down into her eyes.
+“I don’t care so much now. I never could declare myself to you under
+the cloud of your great fortune. It was too heavy. There’s nothing
+creditable in that feeling, as I look at it; as a matter of simple fact
+it was a form of cowardice—fear of what you would think, and very
+likely say—fear of the world’s comment too, I suppose. But the cloud
+being rolled away, I have spoken, and I don’t care so much. I can face
+things with a quiet mind now that I have told you the truth in its own
+terms. You may call it sentimentality or any other nickname you like.
+It is quite true that it was not intended for a scientific statement.
+Since it annoys you, let it be extinguished. But please believe that it
+was serious to me if it was comedy to you. I have said that I love you,
+and honour you, and would hold you dearest of all the world. Now give
+me leave to go.”
+But she held out her hands to him.
+Chapter XIV.
+Writing a Letter
+“If you insist,” Trent said, “I suppose you will have your way. But I
+had much rather write it when I am not with you. However, if I must,
+bring me a tablet whiter than a star, or hand of hymning angel; I mean
+a sheet of note-paper not stamped with your address. Don’t
+underestimate the sacrifice I am making. I never felt less like
+correspondence in my life.”
+She rewarded him.
+“What shall I say?” he enquired, his pen hovering over the paper.
+“Shall I compare him to a summer’s day? What _shall_ I say?”
+“Say what you want to say,” she suggested helpfully.
+He shook his head. “What I want to say—what I have been wanting for the
+past twenty-four hours to say to every man, woman, and child I met—is
+‘Mabel and I are betrothed, and all is gas and gaiters.’ But that
+wouldn’t be a very good opening for a letter of strictly formal, not to
+say sinister, character. I have got as far as ‘Dear Mr. Marlowe.’ What
+comes next?”
+“I am sending you a manuscript,” she prompted, “which I thought you
+might like to see.”
+“Do you realize,” he said, “that in that sentence there are only two
+words of more than one syllable? This letter is meant to impress, not
+to put him at his ease. We must have long words.”
+“I don’t see why,” she answered. “I know it is usual, but why is it? I
+have had a great many letters from lawyers and business people, and
+they always begin, ‘with reference to our communication’, or some such
+mouthful, and go on like that all the way through. Yet when I see them
+they don’t talk like that. It seems ridiculous to me.”
+“It is not at all ridiculous to them.” Trent laid aside the pen with an
+appearance of relief and rose to his feet. “Let me explain. A people
+like our own, not very fond of using its mind, gets on in the ordinary
+way with a very small and simple vocabulary. Long words are abnormal,
+and like everything else that is abnormal, they are either very funny
+or tremendously solemn. Take the phrase ‘intelligent anticipation’, for
+instance. If such a phrase had been used in any other country in
+Europe, it would not have attracted the slightest attention. With us it
+has become a proverb; we all grin when we hear it in a speech or read
+it in a leading article; it is considered to be one of the best things
+ever said. Why? Just because it consists of two long words. The idea
+expressed is as commonplace as cold mutton. Then there’s
+‘terminological inexactitude’. How we all roared, and are still
+roaring, at that! And the whole of the joke is that the words are long.
+It’s just the same when we want to be very serious; we mark it by
+turning to long words. When a solicitor can begin a sentence with,
+‘pursuant to the instructions communicated to our representative,’ or
+some such gibberish, he feels that he is earning his
+six-and-eightpence. Don’t laugh! It is perfectly true. Now Continentals
+haven’t got that feeling. They are always bothering about ideas, and
+the result is that every shopkeeper or peasant has a vocabulary in
+daily use that is simply Greek to the vast majority of Britons. I
+remember some time ago I was dining with a friend of mine who is a
+Paris cabman. We had dinner at a dirty little restaurant opposite the
+central post office, a place where all the clients were cabmen or
+porters. Conversation was general, and it struck me that a London
+cabman would have felt a little out of his depth. Words like
+‘functionary’ and ‘unforgettable’ and ‘exterminate’ and ‘independence’
+hurtled across the table every instant. And these were just ordinary,
+vulgar, jolly, red-faced cabmen. Mind you,” he went on hurriedly, as
+the lady crossed the room and took up his pen, “I merely mention this
+to illustrate my point. I’m not saying that cab-men ought to be
+intellectuals. I don’t think so; I agree with Keats—happy is England,
+sweet her artless cabmen, enough their simple loveliness for me. But
+when you come to the people who make up the collective industrial
+brain-power of the country.... Why, do you know—”
+“Oh no, no, no!” cried Mrs. Manderson. “I don’t know anything at the
+moment, except that your talking must be stopped somehow, if we are to
+get any further with that letter to Mr. Marlowe. You shall not get out
+of it. Come!” She put the pen into his hand.
+Trent looked at it with distaste. “I warn you not to discourage my
+talking,” he said dejectedly. “Believe me, men who don’t talk are even
+worse to live with than men who do. O have a care of natures that are
+mute. I confess I’m shirking writing this thing. It is almost an
+indecency. It’s mixing two moods to write the sort of letter I mean to
+write, and at the same time to be sitting in the same room with you.”
+She led him to his abandoned chair before the escritoire and pushed him
+gently into it. “Well, but please try. I want to see what you write,
+and I want it to go to him at once. You see, I would be contented
+enough to leave things as they are; but you say you must get at the
+truth, and if you must, I want it to be as soon as possible. Do it
+now—you know you can if you will—and I’ll send it off the moment it’s
+ready. Don’t you ever feel that—the longing to get the worrying letter
+into the post and off your hands, so that you can’t recall it if you
+would, and it’s no use fussing any more about it?”
+“I will do as you wish,” he said, and turned to the paper, which he
+dated as from his hotel. Mrs. Manderson looked down at his bent head
+with a gentle light in her eyes, and made as if to place a smoothing
+hand upon his rather untidy crop of hair. But she did not touch it.
+Going in silence to the piano, she began to play very softly. It was
+ten minutes before Trent spoke.
+“If he chooses to reply that he will say nothing?”
+Mrs. Manderson looked over her shoulder. “Of course he dare not take
+that line. He will speak to prevent you from denouncing him.”
+“But I’m not going to do that anyhow. You wouldn’t allow it—you said
+so; besides, I won’t if you would. The thing’s too doubtful now.”
+“But,” she laughed, “poor Mr. Marlowe doesn’t know you won’t, does he?”
+Trent sighed. “What extraordinary things codes of honour are!” he
+remarked abstractedly. “I know that there are things I should do, and
+never think twice about, which would make you feel disgraced if you did
+them—such as giving any one who grossly insulted me a black eye, or
+swearing violently when I barked my shin in a dark room. And now you
+are calmly recommending me to bluff Marlowe by means of a tacit threat
+which I don’t mean; a thing which hell’s most abandoned fiend did
+never, in the drunkenness of guilt—well, anyhow, I won’t do it.” He
+resumed his writing, and the lady, with an indulgent smile, returned to
+playing very softly.
+In a few minutes more, Trent said: “At last I am his faithfully. Do you
+want to see it?” She ran across the twilight room, and turned on a
+reading lamp beside the escritoire. Then, leaning on his shoulder, she
+read what follows:
+DEAR MR. MARLOWE,—_You will perhaps remember that we met, under unhappy
+circumstances, in June of last year at Marlstone._
+_On that occasion it was my duty, as representing a newspaper, to
+make an independent investigation of the circumstances of the death
+of the late Sigsbee Manderson. I did so, and I arrived at certain
+conclusions. You may learn from the enclosed manuscript, which was
+originally written as a dispatch for my newspaper, what those
+conclusions were. For reasons which it is not necessary to state I
+decided at the last moment not to make them public, or to
+communicate them to you, and they are known to only two persons
+beside myself._
+At this point Mrs. Manderson raised her eyes quickly from the letter.
+Her dark brows were drawn together. “Two persons?” she said with a note
+of enquiry.
+“Your uncle is the other. I sought him out last night and told him the
+whole story. Have you anything against it? I always felt uneasy at
+keeping it from him as I did, because I had led him to expect I should
+tell him all I discovered, and my silence looked like mystery-making.
+Now it is to be cleared up finally, and there is no question of
+shielding you, I wanted him to know everything. He is a very shrewd
+adviser, too, in a way of his own; and I should like to have him with
+me when I see Marlowe. I have a feeling that two heads will be better
+than one on my side of the interview.”
+She sighed. “Yes, of course, uncle ought to know the truth. I hope
+there is nobody else at all.” She pressed his hand. “I so much want all
+that horror buried—buried deep. I am very happy now, dear, but I shall
+be happier still when you have satisfied that curious mind of yours and
+found out everything, and stamped down the earth upon it all.” She
+continued her reading.
+_Quite recently, however [the letter went on], facts have come to my
+knowledge which have led me to change my decision. I do not mean that I
+shall publish what I discovered, but that I have determined to approach
+you and ask you for a private statement. If you have anything to say
+which would place the matter in another light, I can imagine no reason
+why you should withhold it._
+_I expect, then, to hear from you when and where I may call upon
+you; unless you prefer the interview to take place at my hotel. In
+either case I desire that Mr. Cupples whom you will remember, and
+who has read the enclosed document, should be present
+also.—Faithfully yours,_
+_Philip Trent._
+“What a very stiff letter!” she said. “Now I am sure you couldn’t have
+made it any stiffer in your own rooms.”
+Trent slipped the letter and enclosure into a long envelope. “Yes,” he
+said, “I think it will make him sit up suddenly. Now this thing mustn’t
+run any risk of going wrong. It would be best to send a special
+messenger with orders to deliver it into his own hands. If he’s away it
+oughtn’t to be left.”
+She nodded. “I can arrange that. Wait here for a little.”
+When Mrs. Manderson returned, he was hunting through the music cabinet.
+She sank on the carpet beside him in a wave of dark brown skirts. “Tell
+me something, Philip,” she said.
+“If it is among the few things that I know.”
+“When you saw uncle last night, did you tell him about—about us?”
+“I did not,” he answered. “I remembered you had said nothing about
+telling any one. It is for you—isn’t it?—to decide whether we take the
+world into our confidence at once or later on.”
+“Then will you tell him?” She looked down at her clasped hands. “I wish
+you to tell him. Perhaps if you think you will guess why.... There!
+that is settled.” She lifted her eyes again to his, and for a time
+there was silence between them.
+He leaned back at length in the deep chair. “What a world!” he said.
+“Mabel, will you play something on the piano that expresses mere joy,
+the genuine article, nothing feverish or like thorns under a pot, but
+joy that has decided in favour of the universe? It’s a mood that can’t
+last altogether, so we had better get all we can out of it.”
+She went to the instrument and struck a few chords while she thought.
+Then she began to work with all her soul at the theme in the last
+movement of the Ninth Symphony which is like the sound of the opening
+of the gates of Paradise.
+Chapter XV.
+Double Cunning
+An old oaken desk with a deep body stood by the window in a room that
+overlooked St. James’s Park from a height. The room was large,
+furnished and decorated by some one who had brought taste to the work;
+but the hand of the bachelor lay heavy upon it. John Marlowe unlocked
+the desk and drew a long, stout envelope from the back of the well.
+“I understand,” he said to Mr. Cupples, “that you have read this.”
+“I read it for the first time two days ago,” replied Mr. Cupples, who,
+seated on a sofa, was peering about the room with a benignant face. “We
+have discussed it fully.”
+Marlowe turned to Trent. “There is your manuscript,” he said, laying
+the envelope on the table. “I have gone over it three times. I do not
+believe there is another man who could have got at as much of the truth
+as you have set down there.”
+Trent ignored the compliment. He sat by the table gazing stonily at the
+fire, his long legs twisted beneath his chair. “You mean, of course, he
+said, drawing the envelope towards him, “that there is more of the
+truth to be disclosed now. We are ready to hear you as soon as you
+like. I expect it will be a long story, and the longer the better, so
+far as I am concerned; I want to understand thoroughly. What we should
+both like, I think, is some preliminary account of Manderson and your
+relations with him. It seemed to me from the first that the character
+of the dead man must be somehow an element in the business.”
+“You were right, Marlowe answered grimly. He crossed the room and
+seated himself on a corner of the tall cushion-topped fender. “I will
+begin as you suggest.”
+“I ought to tell you beforehand,” said Trent, looking him in the eyes,
+“that although I am here to listen to you, I have not as yet any reason
+to doubt the conclusions I have stated here.” He tapped the envelope.
+“It is a defence that you will be putting forward—you understand that?”
+“Perfectly.” Marlowe was cool and in complete possession of himself, a
+man different indeed from the worn-out, nervous being Trent remembered
+at Marlstone a year and a half ago. His tall, lithe figure was held
+with the perfection of muscular tone. His brow was candid, his blue
+eyes were clear, though they still had, as he paused collecting his
+ideas, the look that had troubled Trent at their first meeting. Only
+the lines of his mouth showed that he knew himself in a position of
+difficulty, and meant to face it.
+“Sigsbee Manderson was not a man of normal mind,” Marlowe began in his
+quiet voice. “Most of the very rich men I met with in America had
+become so by virtue of abnormal greed, or abnormal industry, or
+abnormal personal force, or abnormal luck. None of them had remarkable
+intellects. Manderson delighted too in heaping up wealth; he worked
+incessantly at it; he was a man of dominant will; he had quite his
+share of luck; but what made him singular was his brainpower. In his
+own country they would perhaps tell you that it was his ruthlessness in
+pursuit of his aims that was his most striking characteristic; but
+there are hundreds of them who would have carried out his plans with
+just as little consideration for others if they could have formed the
+plans.
+“I’m not saying Americans aren’t clever; they are ten times cleverer
+than we are, as a nation; but I never met another who showed such a
+degree of sagacity and foresight, such gifts of memory and mental
+tenacity, such sheer force of intelligence, as there was behind
+everything Manderson did in his money-making career. They called him
+the ‘Napoleon of Wall Street’ often enough in the papers; but few
+people knew so well as I did how much truth there was in the phrase. He
+seemed never to forget a fact that might be of use to him, in the first
+place; and he did systematically with the business facts that concerned
+him what Napoleon did, as I have read, with military facts. He studied
+them in special digests which were prepared for him at short intervals,
+and which he always had at hand, so that he could take up his report on
+coal or wheat or railways, or whatever it might be, in any unoccupied
+moment. Then he could make a bolder and cleverer plan than any man of
+them all. People got to know that Manderson would never do the obvious
+thing, but they got no further; the thing he did do was almost always a
+surprise, and much of his success flowed from that. The Street got
+rattled, as they used to put it, when it was known that the old man was
+out with his gun, and often his opponents seemed to surrender as easily
+as Colonel Crockett’s coon in the story. The scheme I am going to
+describe to you would have occupied most men long enough. Manderson
+could have plotted the thing, down to the last detail, while he shaved
+himself.
+“I used to think that his strain of Indian blood, remote as it was,
+might have something to do with the cunning and ruthlessness of the
+man. Strangely enough, its existence was unknown to any one but himself
+and me. It was when he asked me to apply my taste for genealogical work
+to his own obscure family history that I made the discovery that he had
+in him a share of the blood of the Iroquois chief Montour and his
+French wife, a terrible woman who ruled the savage politics of the
+tribes of the Wilderness two hundred years ago. The Mandersons were
+active in the fur trade on the Pennsylvanian border in those days, and
+more than one of them married Indian women. Other Indian blood than
+Montour’s may have descended to Manderson, for all I can say, through
+previous and subsequent unions; some of the wives’ antecedents were
+quite untraceable, and there were so many generations of pioneering
+before the whole country was brought under civilization. My researches
+left me with the idea that there is a very great deal of the aboriginal
+blood present in the genealogical make-up of the people of America, and
+that it is very widely spread. The newer families have constantly
+intermarried with the older, and so many of them had a strain of the
+native in them—and were often rather proud of it, too, in those days.
+But Manderson had the idea about the disgracefulness of mixed blood,
+which grew much stronger, I fancy, with the rise of the negro question
+after the war. He was thunderstruck at what I told him, and was anxious
+to conceal it from every soul. Of course I never gave it away while he
+lived, and I don’t think he supposed I would; but I have thought since
+that his mind took a turn against me from that time onward. It happened
+about a year before his death.”
+“Had Manderson,” asked Mr. Cupples, so unexpectedly that the others
+started, “any definable religious attitude?”
+Marlowe considered a moment. “None that ever I heard of,” he said.
+“Worship and prayer were quite unknown to him, so far as I could see,
+and I never heard him mention religion. I should doubt if he had any
+real sense of God at all, or if he was capable of knowing God through
+the emotions. But I understood that as a child he had had a religious
+upbringing with a strong moral side to it. His private life was, in the
+usual limited sense, blameless. He was almost ascetic in his habits,
+except as to smoking. I lived with him four years without ever knowing
+him to tell a direct verbal falsehood, constantly as he used to
+practise deceit in other forms. Can you understand the soul of a man
+who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of
+hoodwinking people, who would use every trick of the markets to
+mislead, and who was at the same time scrupulous never to utter a
+direct lie on the most insignificant matter? Manderson was like that,
+and he was not the only one. I suppose you might compare the state of
+mind to that of a soldier who is personally a truthful man, but who
+will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy. The rules of the game allow
+it; and the same may be said of business as many business men regard
+it. Only with them it is always wartime.”
+“It is a sad world,” observed Mr. Cupples.
+“As you say,” Marlowe agreed. “Now I was saying that one could always
+take Manderson’s word if he gave it in a definite form. The first time
+I ever heard him utter a downright lie was on the night he died; and
+hearing it, I believe, saved me from being hanged as his murderer.”
+Marlowe stared at the light above his head and Trent moved impatiently
+in his chair. “Before we come to that,” he said, “will you tell us
+exactly on what footing you were with Manderson during the years you
+were with him?”
+“We were on very good terms from beginning to end,” answered Marlowe.
+“Nothing like friendship—he was not a man for making friends—but the
+best of terms as between a trusted employee and his chief. I went to
+him as private secretary just after getting my degree at Oxford. I was
+to have gone into my father’s business, where I am now, but my father
+suggested that I should see the world for a year or two. So I took this
+secretaryship, which seemed to promise a good deal of varied
+experience, and I had let the year or two run on to four years before
+the end came. The offer came to me through the last thing in the world
+I should have put forward as a qualification for a salaried post, and
+that was chess.”
+At the word Trent struck his hands together with a muttered
+exclamation. The others looked at him in surprise.
+“Chess!” repeated Trent. “Do you know,” he said, rising and approaching
+Marlowe, “what was the first thing I noted about you at our first
+meeting? It was your eye, Mr. Marlowe. I couldn’t place it then, but I
+know now where I had seen your eyes before. They were in the head of no
+less a man than the great Nikolay Korchagin, with whom I once sat in
+the same railway carriage for two days. I thought I should never forget
+the chess eye after that, but I could not put a name to it when I saw
+it in you. I beg your pardon,” he ended suddenly, resuming his
+marmoreal attitude in his chair.
+“I have played the game from my childhood, and with good players,” said
+Marlowe simply. “It is an hereditary gift, if you can call it a gift.
+At the University I was nearly as good as anybody there, and I gave
+most of my brains to that and the O.U.D.S. and playing about generally.
+At Oxford, as I dare say you know, inducements to amuse oneself at the
+expense of one’s education are endless, and encouraged by the
+authorities. Well, one day toward the end of my last term, Dr. Munro of
+Queen’s, whom I had never defeated, sent for me. He told me that I
+played a fairish game of chess. I said it was very good of him to say
+so. Then he said, ‘They tell me you hunt, too.’ I said, ‘Now and then.’
+He asked, ‘Is there anything else you can do?’ ‘No,’ I said, not much
+liking the tone of the conversation—the old man generally succeeded in
+putting people’s backs up. He grunted fiercely, and then told me that
+enquiries were being made on behalf of a wealthy American man of
+business who wanted an English secretary. Manderson was the name, he
+said. He seemed never to have heard it before, which was quite
+possible, as he never opened a newspaper and had not slept a night
+outside the college for thirty years. If I could rub up my spelling—as
+the old gentleman put it—I might have a good chance for the post, as
+chess and riding and an Oxford education were the only indispensable
+points.
+“Well, I became Manderson’s secretary. For a long time I liked the
+position greatly. When one is attached to an active American plutocrat
+in the prime of life one need not have many dull moments. Besides, it
+made me independent. My father had some serious business reverses about
+that time, and I was glad to be able to do without an allowance from
+him. At the end of the first year Manderson doubled my salary. ‘It’s
+big money,’ he said, ‘but I guess I don’t lose.’ You see, by that time
+I was doing a great deal more than accompany him on horseback in the
+morning and play chess in the evening, which was mainly what he had
+required. I was attending to his houses, his farm in Ohio, his shooting
+in Maine, his horses, his cars, and his yacht. I had become a walking
+railway-guide and an expert cigar-buyer. I was always learning
+something.
+“Well, now you understand what my position was in regard to Manderson
+during the last two or three years of my connection with him. It was a
+happy life for me on the whole. I was busy, my work was varied and
+interesting; I had time to amuse myself too, and money to spend. At one
+time I made a fool of myself about a girl, and that was not a happy
+time; but it taught me to understand the great goodness of Mrs.
+Manderson.” Marlowe inclined his head to Mr. Cupples as he said this.
+“She may choose to tell you about it. As for her husband, he had never
+varied in his attitude towards me, in spite of the change that came
+over him in the last months of his life, as you know. He treated me
+well and generously in his unsympathetic way, and I never had a feeling
+that he was less than satisfied with his bargain—that was the sort of
+footing we lived upon. And it was that continuance of his attitude
+right up to the end that made the revelation so shocking when I was
+suddenly shown, on the night on which he met his end, the depth of
+crazy hatred of myself that was in Manderson’s soul.”
+The eyes of Trent and Mr. Cupples met for an instant.
+“You never suspected that he hated you before that time?” asked Trent;
+and Mr. Cupples asked at the same moment, “To what did you attribute
+it?”
+“I never guessed until that night,” answered Marlowe, “that he had the
+smallest ill-feeling toward me. How long it had existed I do not know.
+I cannot imagine why it was there. I was forced to think, when I
+considered the thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a
+case of a madman’s delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against
+him, as they so often do. Some such insane conviction must have been at
+the root of it. But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic’s fancy? Can
+you imagine the state of mind in which a man dooms himself to death
+with the object of delivering some one he hates to the hangman?”
+Mr. Cupples moved sharply in his chair. “You say Manderson was
+responsible for his own death?” he asked.
+Trent glanced at him with an eye of impatience, and resumed his intent
+watch upon the face of Marlowe. In the relief of speech it was now less
+pale and drawn.
+“I do say so,” Marlowe answered concisely, and looked his questioner in
+the face. Mr. Cupples nodded.
+“Before we proceed to the elucidation of your statement,” observed the
+old gentleman, in a tone of one discussing a point of abstract science,
+“it may be remarked that the state of mind which you attribute to
+Manderson—”
+“Suppose we have the story first,” Trent interrupted, gently laying a
+hand on Mr. Cupples’s arm. “You were telling us,” he went on, turning
+to Marlowe, “how things stood between you and Manderson. Now will you
+tell us the facts of what happened that night?”
+Marlowe flushed at the barely perceptible emphasis which Trent laid
+upon the word “facts”. He drew himself up.
+“Bunner and myself dined with Mr. and Mrs. Manderson that Sunday
+evening,” he began, speaking carefully. “It was just like other dinners
+at which the four of us had been together. Manderson was taciturn and
+gloomy, as we had latterly been accustomed to see him. We others kept a
+conversation going. We rose from the table, I suppose, about nine. Mrs.
+Manderson went to the drawing-room, and Bunner went up to the hotel to
+see an acquaintance. Manderson asked me to come into the orchard behind
+the house, saying he wished to have a talk. We paced up and down the
+pathway there, out of earshot from the house, and Manderson, as he
+smoked his cigar, spoke to me in his cool, deliberate way. He had never
+seemed more sane, or more well-disposed to me. He said he wanted me to
+do him an important service. There was a big thing on. It was a secret
+affair. Bunner knew nothing of it, and the less I knew the better. He
+wanted me to do exactly as he directed, and not bother my head about
+reasons.
+“This, I may say, was quite characteristic of Manderson’s method of
+going to work. If at times he required a man to be a mere tool in his
+hand, he would tell him so. He had used me in the same kind of way a
+dozen times. I assured him he could rely on me, and said I was ready.
+‘Right now?’ he asked. I said of course I was.
+“He nodded, and said—I tell you his words as well as I can recollect
+them—attend to this. ‘There is a man in England now who is in this
+thing with me. He was to have left tomorrow for Paris by the noon boat
+from Southampton to Havre. His name is George Harris—at least that’s
+the name he is going by. Do you remember that name?’ ‘Yes,’ I said,
+‘when I went up to London a week ago you asked me to book a cabin in
+that name on the boat that goes tomorrow. I gave you the ticket.’ ‘Here
+it is,’ he said, producing it from his pocket.
+“‘Now,’ Manderson said to me, poking his cigar-butt at me with each
+sentence in a way he used to have, ‘George Harris cannot leave England
+tomorrow. I find I shall want him where he is. And I want Bunner where
+he is. But somebody has got to go by that boat and take certain papers
+to Paris. Or else my plan is going to fall to pieces. Will you go?’ I
+said, ‘Certainly. I am here to obey orders.’
+“He bit his cigar, and said, ‘That’s all right; but these are not just
+ordinary orders. Not the kind of thing one can ask of a man in the
+ordinary way of his duty to an employer. The point is this. The deal I
+am busy with is one in which neither myself nor any one known to be
+connected with me must appear as yet. That is vital. But these people I
+am up against know your face as well as they know mine. If my secretary
+is known in certain quarters to have crossed to Paris at this time and
+to have interviewed certain people—and that would be known as soon as
+it happened—then the game is up.’ He threw away his cigar-end and
+looked at me questioningly.
+“I didn’t like it much, but I liked failing Manderson at a pinch still
+less. I spoke lightly. I said I supposed I should have to conceal my
+identity, and I would do my best. I told him I used to be pretty good
+at make-up.
+“He nodded in approval. He said, ‘That’s good. I judged you would not
+let me down.’ Then he gave me my instructions. ‘You take the car right
+now,’ he said, ‘and start for Southampton—there’s no train that will
+fit in. You’ll be driving all night. Barring accidents, you ought to
+get there by six in the morning. But whenever you arrive, drive
+straight to the Bedford Hotel and ask for George Harris. If he’s there,
+tell him you are to go over instead of him, and ask him to telephone me
+here. It is very important he should know that at the earliest moment
+possible. But if he isn’t there, that means he has got the instructions
+I wired today, and hasn’t gone to Southampton. In that case you don’t
+want to trouble about him any more, but just wait for the boat. You can
+leave the car at a garage under a fancy name—mine must not be given.
+See about changing your appearance—I don’t care how, so you do it well.
+Travel by the boat as George Harris. Let on to be anything you like,
+but be careful, and don’t talk much to anybody. When you arrive, take a
+room at the Hotel St Petersbourg. You will receive a note or message
+there, addressed to George Harris, telling you where to take the wallet
+I shall give you. The wallet is locked, and you want to take good care
+of it. Have you got that all clear?’
+“I repeated the instructions. I asked if I should return from Paris
+after handing over the wallet. ‘As soon as you like,’ he said. ‘And
+mind this—whatever happens, don’t communicate with me at any stage of
+the journey. If you don’t get the message in Paris at once, just wait
+until you do—days, if necessary. But not a line of any sort to me.
+Understand? Now get ready as quick as you can. I’ll go with you in the
+car a little way. Hurry.’
+“That is, as far as I can remember, the exact substance of what
+Manderson said to me that night. I went to my room, changed into day
+clothes, and hastily threw a few necessaries into a kit-bag. My mind
+was in a whirl, not so much at the nature of the business as at the
+suddenness of it. I think I remember telling you the last time we
+met”—he turned to Trent—“that Manderson shared the national fondness
+for doings things in a story-book style. Other things being equal, he
+delighted in a bit of mystification and melodrama, and I told myself
+that this was Manderson all over. I hurried downstairs with my bag and
+rejoined him in the library. He handed me a stout leather letter-case,
+about eight inches by six, fastened with a strap with a lock on it. I
+could just squeeze it into my side-pocket. Then I went to get the car
+from the garage behind the house.
+“As I was bringing it round to the front a disconcerting thought struck
+me. I remembered that I had only a few shillings in my pocket.
+“For some time past I had been keeping myself very short of cash, and
+for this reason—which I tell you because it is a vital point, as you
+shall see in a minute. I was living temporarily on borrowed money. I
+had always been careless about money while I was with Manderson, and
+being a gregarious animal I had made many friends, some of them
+belonging to a New York set that had little to do but get rid of the
+large incomes given them by their parents. Still, I was very well paid,
+and I was too busy even to attempt to go very far with them in that
+amusing occupation. I was still well on the right side of the ledger
+until I began, merely out of curiosity, to play at speculation. It’s a
+very old story—particularly in Wall Street. I thought it was easy; I
+was lucky at first; I would always be prudent—and so on. Then came the
+day when I went out of my depth. In one week I was separated from my
+toll, as Bunner expressed it when I told him; and I owed money too. I
+had had my lesson. Now in this pass I went to Manderson and told him
+what I had done and how I stood. He heard me with a very grim smile,
+and then, with the nearest approach to sympathy I had ever found in
+him, he advanced me a sum on account of my salary that would clear me.
+‘Don’t play the markets any more,’ was all he said.
+“Now on that Sunday night Manderson knew that I was practically without
+any money in the world. He knew that Bunner knew it too. He may have
+known that I had even borrowed a little more from Bunner for
+pocket-money until my next cheque was due, which, owing to my
+anticipation of my salary, would not have been a large one. Bear this
+knowledge of Manderson’s in mind.
+“As soon as I had brought the car round I went into the library and
+stated the difficulty to Manderson.
+“What followed gave me, slight as it was, my first impression of
+something odd being afoot. As soon as I mentioned the word ‘expenses’
+his hand went mechanically to his left hip-pocket, where he always kept
+a little case containing notes to the value of about a hundred pounds
+in our money. This was such a rooted habit in him that I was astonished
+to see him check the movement suddenly. Then, to my greater amazement,
+he swore under his breath. I had never heard him do this before; but
+Bunner had told me that of late he had often shown irritation in this
+way when they were alone. ‘Has he mislaid his note-case?’ was the
+question that flashed through my mind. But it seemed to me that it
+could not affect his plan at all, and I will tell you why. The week
+before, when I had gone up to London to carry out various commissions,
+including the booking of a berth for Mr. George Harris, I had drawn a
+thousand pounds for Manderson from his bankers, and all, at his
+request, in notes of small amounts. I did not know what this unusually
+large sum in cash was for, but I did know that the packets of notes
+were in his locked desk in the library, or had been earlier in the day,
+when I had seen him fingering them as he sat at the desk.
+“But instead of turning to the desk, Manderson stood looking at me.
+There was fury in his face, and it was a strange sight to see him
+gradually master it until his eyes grew cold again. ‘Wait in the car,’
+he said slowly. ‘I will get some money.’ We both went out, and as I was
+getting into my overcoat in the hall I saw him enter the drawing-room,
+which, you remember, was on the other side of the entrance hall.
+“I stepped out on to the lawn before the house and smoked a cigarette,
+pacing up and down. I was asking myself again and again where that
+thousand pounds was; whether it was in the drawing-room, and if so,
+why. Presently, as I passed one of the drawing-room windows, I noticed
+Mrs Manderson’s shadow on the thin silk curtain. She was standing at
+her escritoire. The window was open, and as I passed I heard her say,
+‘I have not quite thirty pounds here. Will that be enough?’ I did not
+hear the answer, but next moment Manderson’s shadow was mingled with
+hers, and I heard the chink of money. Then, as he stood by the window,
+and as I was moving away, these words of his came to my ears—and these
+at least I can repeat exactly, for astonishment stamped them on my
+memory—‘I’m going out now. Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a
+moonlight run in the car. He is very urgent about it. He says it will
+help me to sleep, and I guess he is right.’
+I have told you that in the course of four years I had never once heard
+Manderson utter a direct lie about anything, great or small. I believed
+that I understood the man’s queer, skin-deep morality, and I could have
+sworn that if he was firmly pressed with a question that could not be
+evaded he would either refuse to answer or tell the truth. But what had
+I just heard? No answer to any question. A voluntary statement, precise
+in terms, that was utterly false. The unimaginable had happened. It was
+almost as if some one I knew well, in a moment of closest sympathy, had
+suddenly struck me in the face. The blood rushed to my head, and I
+stood still on the grass. I stood there until I heard his step at the
+front door, and then I pulled myself together and stepped quickly to
+the car. He handed me a banker’s paper bag with gold and notes in it.
+‘There’s more than you’ll want there,’ he said, and I pocketed it
+mechanically.
+“For a minute or so I stood discussing with Manderson—it was by one of
+those _tours de force_ of which one’s mind is capable under great
+excitement—points about the route of the long drive before me. I had
+made the run several times by day, and I believe I spoke quite calmly
+and naturally about it. But while I spoke my mind was seething in a
+flood of suddenly born suspicion and fear. I did not know what I
+feared. I simply felt fear, somehow—I did not know how—connected with
+Manderson. My soul once opened to it, fear rushed in like an assaulting
+army. I felt—I knew—that something was altogether wrong and sinister,
+and I felt myself to be the object of it. Yet Manderson was surely no
+enemy of mine. Then my thoughts reached out wildly for an answer to the
+question why he had told that lie. And all the time the blood hammered
+in my ears, ‘Where is that money?’ Reason struggled hard to set up the
+suggestion that the two things were not necessarily connected. The
+instinct of a man in danger would not listen to it. As we started, and
+the car took the curve into the road, it was merely the unconscious
+part of me that steered and controlled it, and that made occasional
+empty remarks as we slid along in the moonlight. Within me was a
+confusion and vague alarm that was far worse than any definite terror I
+ever felt.
+“About a mile from the house, you remember, one passed on one’s left a
+gate, on the other side of which was the golf-course. There Manderson
+said he would get down, and I stopped the car. ‘You’ve got it all
+clear?’ he asked. With a sort of wrench I forced myself to remember and
+repeat the directions given me. ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, then.
+Stay with that wallet.’ Those were the last words I heard him speak, as
+the car moved gently away from him.”
+Marlowe rose from his chair and pressed his hands to his eyes. He was
+flushed with the excitement of his own narrative, and there was in his
+look a horror of recollection that held both the listeners silent. He
+shook himself with a movement like a dog’s, and then, his hands behind
+him, stood erect before the fire as he continued his tale.
+“I expect you both know what the back-reflector of a motor car is.”
+Trent nodded quickly, his face alive with anticipation; but Mr.
+Cupples, who cherished a mild but obstinate prejudice against motor
+cars, readily confessed to ignorance.
+“It is a small round or more often rectangular mirror,” Marlowe
+explained, “rigged out from the right side of the screen in front of
+the driver, and adjusted in such a way that he can see, without turning
+round, if anything is coming up behind to pass him. It is quite an
+ordinary appliance, and there was one on this car. As the car moved on,
+and Manderson ceased speaking behind me, I saw in that mirror a thing
+that I wish I could forget.”
+Marlowe was silent for a moment, staring at the wall before him.
+“Manderson’s face,” he said in a low tone. “He was standing in the
+road, looking after me, only a few yards behind, and the moonlight was
+full on his face. The mirror happened to catch it for an instant.
+“Physical habit is a wonderful thing. I did not shift hand or foot on
+the controlling mechanism of the car. Indeed, I dare say it steadied me
+against the shock to have myself braced to the business of driving. You
+have read in books, no doubt, of hell looking out of a man’s eyes, but
+perhaps you don’t know what a good metaphor that is. If I had not known
+Manderson was there, I should not have recognized the face. It was that
+of a madman, distorted, hideous in the imbecility of hate, the teeth
+bared in a simian grin of ferocity and triumph; the eyes.... In the
+little mirror I had this glimpse of the face alone. I saw nothing of
+whatever gesture there may have been as that writhing white mask glared
+after me. And I saw it only for a flash. The car went on, gathering
+speed, and as it went, my brain, suddenly purged of the vapours of
+doubt and perplexity, was as busy as the throbbing engine before my
+feet. I knew.
+“You say something in that manuscript of yours, Mr. Trent, about the
+swift automatic way in which one’s ideas arrange themselves about some
+new illuminating thought. It is quite true. The awful intensity of
+ill-will that had flamed after me from those straining eyeballs poured
+over my mind like a searchlight. I was thinking quite clearly now, and
+almost coldly, for I knew what—at least I knew whom—I had to fear, and
+instinct warned me that it was not a time to give room to the emotions
+that were fighting to possess me. The man hated me insanely. That
+incredible fact I suddenly knew. But the face had told me, it would
+have told anybody, more than that. It was a face of hatred gratified,
+it proclaimed some damnable triumph. It had gloated over me driving
+away to my fate. This too was plain to me. And to what fate?
+“I stopped the car. It had gone about two hundred and fifty yards, and
+a sharp bend of the road hid the spot where I had set Manderson down. I
+lay back in the seat and thought it out. Something was to happen to me.
+In Paris? Probably—why else should I be sent there, with money and a
+ticket? But why Paris? That puzzled me, for I had no melodramatic ideas
+about Paris. I put the point aside for a moment. I turned to the other
+things that had roused my attention that evening. The lie about my
+‘persuading him to go for a moonlight run’. What was the intention of
+that? Manderson, I said to myself, will be returning without me while I
+am on my way to Southampton. What will he tell them about me? How
+account for his returning alone, and without the car? As I asked myself
+that sinister question there rushed into my mind the last of my
+difficulties: ‘Where are the thousand pounds?’ And in the same instant
+came the answer: ‘The thousand pounds are in my pocket.’
+“I got up and stepped from the car. My knees trembled and I felt very
+sick. I saw the plot now, as I thought. The whole of the story about
+the papers and the necessity of their being taken to Paris was a blind.
+With Manderson’s money about me, of which he would declare I had robbed
+him, I was, to all appearance, attempting to escape from England, with
+every precaution that guilt could suggest. He would communicate with
+the police at once, and would know how to put them on my track. I
+should be arrested in Paris, if I got so far, living under a false
+name, after having left the car under a false name, disguised myself,
+and travelled in a cabin which I had booked in advance, also under a
+false name. It would be plainly the crime of a man without money, and
+for some reason desperately in want of it. As for my account of the
+affair, it would be too preposterous.
+“As this ghastly array of incriminating circumstances rose up before
+me, I dragged the stout letter-case from my pocket. In the intensity of
+the moment, I never entertained the faintest doubt that I was right,
+and that the money was there. It would easily hold the packets of
+notes. But as I felt it and weighed it in my hands it seemed to me
+there must be more than this. It was too bulky. What more was to be
+laid to my charge? After all, a thousand pounds was not much to tempt a
+man like myself to run the risk of penal servitude. In this new
+agitation, scarcely knowing what I did, I caught the surrounding strap
+in my fingers just above the fastening and tore the staple out of the
+lock. Those locks, you know, are pretty flimsy as a rule.”
+Here Marlowe paused and walked to the oaken desk before the window.
+Opening a drawer full of miscellaneous objects, he took out a box of
+odd keys, and selected a small one distinguished by a piece of pink
+tape.
+He handed it to Trent. “I keep that by me as a sort of morbid memento.
+It is the key to the lock I smashed. I might have saved myself the
+trouble, if I had known that this key was at that moment in the
+left-hand side-pocket of my overcoat. Manderson must have slipped it
+in, either while the coat was hanging in the hall or while he sat at my
+side in the car. I might not have found the tiny thing there for weeks:
+as a matter of fact I did find it two days after Manderson was dead,
+but a police search would have found it in five minutes. And then I—I
+with the case and its contents in my pocket, my false name and my sham
+spectacles and the rest of it—I should have had no explanation to offer
+but the highly convincing one that I didn’t know the key was there.”
+Trent dangled the key by its tape idly. Then: “How do you know this is
+the key of that case?” he asked quickly.
+“I tried it. As soon as I found it I went up and fitted it to the lock.
+I knew where I had left the thing. So do you, I think, Mr. Trent. Don’t
+you?” There was a faint shade of mockery in Marlowe’s voice.
+“_Touché_,” Trent said, with a dry smile. “I found a large empty
+letter-case with a burst lock lying with other odds and ends on the
+dressing-table in Manderson’s room. Your statement is that you put it
+there. I could make nothing of it.” He closed his lips.
+“There was no reason for hiding it,” said Marlowe. “But to get back to
+my story. I burst the lock of the strap. I opened the case before one
+of the lamps of the car. The first thing I found in it I ought to have
+expected, of course, but I hadn’t.” He paused and glanced at Trent.
+“It was—” began Trent mechanically, and then stopped himself. “Try not
+to bring me in any more, if you don’t mind,” he said, meeting the
+other’s eye. “I have complimented you already in that document on your
+cleverness. You need not prove it by making the judge help you out with
+your evidence.”
+“All right,” agreed Marlowe. “I couldn’t resist just that much. If
+_you_ had been in my place you would have known before I did that
+Manderson’s little pocket-case was there. As soon as I saw it, of
+course, I remembered his not having had it about him when I asked for
+money, and his surprising anger. He had made a false step. He had
+already fastened his note-case up with the rest of what was to figure
+as my plunder, and placed it in my hands. I opened it. It contained a
+few notes as usual, I didn’t count them.
+“Tucked into the flaps of the big case in packets were the other notes,
+just as I had brought them from London. And with them were two small
+wash-leather bags, the look of which I knew well. My heart jumped
+sickeningly again, for this, too, was utterly unexpected. In those bags
+Manderson kept the diamonds in which he had been investing for some
+time past. I didn’t open them; I could feel the tiny stones shifting
+under the pressure of my fingers. How many thousands of pounds’ worth
+there were there I have no idea. We had regarded Manderson’s
+diamond-buying as merely a speculative fad. I believe now that it was
+the earliest movement in the scheme for my ruin. For any one like
+myself to be represented as having robbed him, there ought to be a
+strong inducement shown. That had been provided with a vengeance.
+“Now, I thought, I have the whole thing plain, and I must act. I saw
+instantly what I must do. I had left Manderson about a mile from the
+house. It would take him twenty minutes, fifteen if he walked fast, to
+get back to the house, where he would, of course, immediately tell his
+story of robbery, and probably telephone at once to the police in
+Bishopsbridge. I had left him only five or six minutes ago; for all
+that I have just told you was as quick thinking as I ever did. It would
+be easy to overtake him in the car before he neared the house. There
+would be an awkward interview. I set my teeth as I thought of it, and
+all my fears vanished as I began to savour the gratification of telling
+him my opinion of him. There are probably few people who ever
+positively looked forward to an awkward interview with Manderson; but I
+was mad with rage. My honour and my liberty had been plotted against
+with detestable treachery. I did not consider what would follow the
+interview. That would arrange itself.
+“I had started and turned the car, I was already going fast toward
+White Gables, when I heard the sound of a shot in front of me, to the
+right.
+“Instantly I stopped the car. My first wild thought was that Manderson
+was shooting at me. Then I realized that the noise had not been close
+at hand. I could see nobody on the road, though the moonlight flooded
+it. I had left Manderson at a spot just round the corner that was now
+about a hundred yards ahead of me. After half a minute or so, I started
+again, and turned the corner at a slow pace. Then I stopped again with
+a jar, and for a moment I sat perfectly still.
+“Manderson lay dead a few steps from me on the turf within the gate,
+clearly visible to me in the moonlight.”
+Marlowe made another pause, and Trent, with a puckered brow, enquired,
+“On the golf-course?”
+“Obviously,” remarked Mr. Cupples. “The eighth green is just there.” He
+had grown more and more interested as Marlowe went on, and was now
+playing feverishly with his thin beard.
+“On the green, quite close to the flag,” said Marlowe. “He lay on his
+back, his arms were stretched abroad, his jacket and heavy overcoat
+were open; the light shone hideously on his white face and his
+shirt-front; it glistened on his bared teeth and one of the eyes. The
+other... you saw it. The man was certainly dead. As I sat there
+stunned, unable for the moment to think at all, I could even see a thin
+dark line of blood running down from the shattered socket to the ear.
+Close by lay his soft black hat, and at his feet a pistol.
+“I suppose it was only a few seconds that I sat helplessly staring at
+the body. Then I rose and moved to it with dragging feet; for now the
+truth had come to me at last, and I realized the fullness of my
+appalling danger. It was not only my liberty or my honour that the
+maniac had undermined. It was death that he had planned for me; death
+with the degradation of the scaffold. To strike me down with certainty,
+he had not hesitated to end his life; a life which was, no doubt,
+already threatened by a melancholic impulse to self-destruction; and
+the last agony of the suicide had been turned, perhaps, to a devilish
+joy by the thought that he dragged down my life with his. For as far as
+I could see at the moment my situation was utterly hopeless. If it had
+been desperate on the assumption that Manderson meant to denounce me as
+a thief, what was it now that his corpse denounced me as a murderer?
+“I picked up the revolver and saw, almost without emotion, that it was
+my own. Manderson had taken it from my room, I suppose, while I was
+getting out the car. At the same moment I remembered that it was by
+Manderson’s suggestion that I had had it engraved with my initials, to
+distinguish it from a precisely similar weapon which he had of his own.
+“I bent over the body and satisfied myself that there was no life left
+in it. I must tell you here that I did not notice, then or afterwards,
+the scratches and marks on the wrists, which were taken as evidence of
+a struggle with an assailant. But I have no doubt that Manderson
+deliberately injured himself in this way before firing the shot; it was
+a part of his plan.
+“Though I never perceived that detail, however, it was evident enough
+as I looked at the body that Manderson had not forgotten, in his last
+act on earth, to tie me tighter by putting out of court the question of
+suicide. He had clearly been at pains to hold the pistol at arm’s
+length, and there was not a trace of smoke or of burning on the face.
+The wound was absolutely clean, and was already ceasing to bleed
+outwardly. I rose and paced the green, reckoning up the points in the
+crushing case against me.
+“I was the last to be seen with Manderson. I had persuaded him—so he
+had lied to his wife and, as I afterwards knew, to the butler—to go
+with me for the drive from which he never returned. My pistol had
+killed him. It was true that by discovering his plot I had saved myself
+from heaping up further incriminating facts—flight, concealment, the
+possession of the treasure. But what need of them, after all? As I
+stood, what hope was there? What could I do?”
+Marlowe came to the table and leaned forward with his hands upon it. “I
+want,” he said very earnestly, “to try to make you understand what was
+in my mind when I decided to do what I did. I hope you won’t be bored,
+because I must do it. You may both have thought I acted like a fool.
+But after all the police never suspected me. I walked that green for a
+quarter of an hour, I suppose, thinking the thing out like a game of
+chess. I had to think ahead and think coolly; for my safety depended on
+upsetting the plans of one of the longest-headed men who ever lived.
+And remember that, for all I knew, there were details of the scheme
+still hidden from me, waiting to crush me.
+“Two plain courses presented themselves at once. Either of them, I
+thought, would certainly prove fatal. I could, in the first place, do
+the completely straightforward thing: take back the dead man, tell my
+story, hand over the notes and diamonds, and trust to the saving power
+of truth and innocence. I could have laughed as I thought of it. I saw
+myself bringing home the corpse and giving an account of myself,
+boggling with sheer shame over the absurdity of my wholly unsupported
+tale, as I brought a charge of mad hatred and fiendish treachery
+against a man who had never, as far as I knew, had a word to say
+against me. At every turn the cunning of Manderson had forestalled me.
+His careful concealment of such a hatred was a characteristic feature
+of the stratagem; only a man of his iron self-restraint could have done
+it. You can see for yourselves how every fact in my statement would
+appear, in the shadow of Manderson’s death, a clumsy lie. I tried to
+imagine myself telling such a story to the counsel for my defence. I
+could see the face with which he would listen to it; I could read in
+the lines of it his thought, that to put forward such an impudent
+farrago would mean merely the disappearance of any chance there might
+be of a commutation of the capital sentence.
+“True, I had not fled. I had brought back the body; I had handed over
+the property. But how did that help me? It would only suggest that I
+had yielded to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve
+left to clutch at the fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps,
+that I had not set out to kill but only to threaten, and that when I
+found that I had done murder the heart went out of me. Turn it which
+way I would, I could see no hope of escape by this plan of action.
+“The second of the obvious things that I might do was to take the hint
+offered by the situation, and to fly at once. That too must prove
+fatal. There was the body. I had no time to hide it in such a way that
+it would not be found at the first systematic search. But whatever I
+should do with the body, Manderson’s not returning to the house would
+cause uneasiness in two or three hours at most. Martin would suspect an
+accident to the car, and would telephone to the police. At daybreak the
+roads would be scoured and enquiries telegraphed in every direction.
+The police would act on the possibility of there being foul play. They
+would spread their nets with energy in such a big business as the
+disappearance of Manderson. Ports and railway termini would be watched.
+Within twenty-four hours the body would be found, and the whole country
+would be on the alert for me—all Europe, scarcely less; I did not
+believe there was a spot in Christendom where the man accused of
+Manderson’s murder could pass unchallenged, with every newspaper crying
+the fact of his death into the ears of all the world. Every stranger
+would be suspect; every man, woman, and child would be a detective. The
+car, wherever I should abandon it, would put people on my track. If I
+had to choose between two utterly hopeless courses, I decided, I would
+take that of telling the preposterous truth.
+“But now I cast about desperately for some tale that would seem more
+plausible than the truth. Could I save my neck by a lie? One after
+another came into my mind; I need not trouble to remember them now.
+Each had its own futilities and perils; but every one split upon the
+fact—or what would be taken for fact—that I had induced Manderson to go
+out with me, and the fact that he had never returned alive. Notion
+after notion I swiftly rejected as I paced there by the dead man, and
+doom seemed to settle down upon me more heavily as the moments passed.
+Then a strange thought came to me.
+“Several times I had repeated to myself half-consciously, as a sort of
+refrain, the words in which I had heard Manderson tell his wife that I
+had induced him to go out. ‘Marlowe has persuaded me to go for a
+moonlight run in the car. He is very urgent about it.’ All at once it
+struck me that, without meaning to do so, I was saying this in
+Manderson’s voice.
+“As you found out for yourself, Mr. Trent, I have a natural gift of
+mimicry. I had imitated Manderson’s voice many times so successfully as
+to deceive even Bunner, who had been much more in his company than his
+own wife. It was, you remember”—Marlowe turned to Mr. Cupples—“a
+strong, metallic voice, of great carrying power, so unusual as to make
+it a very fascinating voice to imitate, and at the same time very easy.
+I said the words carefully to myself again, like this—” he uttered
+them, and Mr. Cupples opened his eyes in amazement—“and then I struck
+my hand upon the low wall beside me. ‘Manderson never returned alive?’
+I said aloud. ‘But Manderson _shall_ return alive!’”
+“In thirty seconds the bare outline of the plan was complete in my
+mind. I did not wait to think over details. Every instant was precious
+now. I lifted the body and laid it on the floor of the car, covered
+with a rug. I took the hat and the revolver. Not one trace remained on
+the green, I believe, of that night’s work. As I drove back to White
+Gables my design took shape before me with a rapidity and ease that
+filled me with a wild excitement. I should escape yet! It was all so
+easy if I kept my pluck. Putting aside the unusual and unlikely, I
+should not fail. I wanted to shout, to scream!
+“Nearing the house I slackened speed, and carefully reconnoitred the
+road. Nothing was moving. I turned the car into the open field on the
+other side of the road, about twenty paces short of the little door at
+the extreme corner of the grounds. I brought it to rest behind a stack.
+When, with Manderson’s hat on my head and the pistol in my pocket, I
+had staggered with the body across the moonlit road and through that
+door, I left much of my apprehension behind me. With swift action and
+an unbroken nerve I thought I ought to succeed.”
+With a long sigh Marlowe threw himself into one of the deep chairs at
+the fireside and passed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. Each
+of his hearers, too, drew a deep breath, but not audibly.
+“Everything else you know,” he said. He took a cigarette from a box
+beside him and lighted it. Trent watched the very slight quiver of the
+hand that held the match, and privately noted that his own was at the
+moment not so steady.
+“The shoes that betrayed me to you,” pursued Marlowe after a short
+silence, “were painful all the time I wore them, but I never dreamed
+that they had given anywhere. I knew that no footstep of mine must
+appear by any accident in the soft ground about the hut where I laid
+the body, or between the hut and the house, so I took the shoes off and
+crammed my feet into them as soon as I was inside the little door. I
+left my own shoes, with my own jacket and overcoat, near the body,
+ready to be resumed later. I made a clear footmark on the soft gravel
+outside the French window, and several on the drugget round the carpet.
+The stripping off of the outer clothing of the body, and the dressing
+of it afterwards in the brown suit and shoes, and putting the things
+into the pockets, was a horrible business; and getting the teeth out of
+the mouth was worse. The head—but you don’t want to hear about it. I
+didn’t feel it much at the time. I was wriggling my own head out of a
+noose, you see. I wish I had thought of pulling down the cuffs, and had
+tied the shoes more neatly. And putting the watch in the wrong pocket
+was a bad mistake. It had all to be done so hurriedly.
+“You were wrong, by the way, about the whisky. After one stiffish drink
+I had no more; but I filled up a flask that was in the cupboard, and
+pocketed it. I had a night of peculiar anxiety and effort in front of
+me and I didn’t know how I should stand it. I had to take some once or
+twice during the drive. Speaking of that, you give rather a generous
+allowance of time in your document for doing that run by night. You say
+that to get to Southampton by half-past six in that car, under the
+conditions, a man must, even if he drove like a demon, have left
+Marlstone by twelve at latest. I had not got the body dressed in the
+other suit, with tie and watch-chain and so forth, until nearly ten
+minutes past; and then I had to get to the car and start it going. But
+then I don’t suppose any other man would have taken the risks I did in
+that car at night, without a headlight. It turns me cold to think of it
+now.
+“There’s nothing much to say about what I did in the house. I spent the
+time after Martin had left me in carefully thinking over the remaining
+steps in my plan, while I unloaded and thoroughly cleaned the revolver
+using my handkerchief and a penholder from the desk. I also placed the
+packets of notes, the note-case, and the diamonds in the roll-top desk,
+which I opened and relocked with Manderson’s key. When I went upstairs
+it was a trying moment, for though I was safe from the eyes of Martin,
+as he sat in his pantry, there was a faint possibility of somebody
+being about on the bedroom floor. I had sometimes found the French maid
+wandering about there when the other servants were in bed. Bunner, I
+knew, was a deep sleeper. Mrs. Manderson, I had gathered from things I
+had heard her say, was usually asleep by eleven; I had thought it
+possible that her gift of sleep had helped her to retain all her beauty
+and vitality in spite of a marriage which we all knew was an unhappy
+one. Still it was uneasy work mounting the stairs, and holding myself
+ready to retreat to the library again at the least sound from above.
+But nothing happened.
+“The first thing I did on reaching the corridor was to enter my room
+and put the revolver and cartridges back in the case. Then I turned off
+the light and went quietly into Manderson’s room.
+“What I had to do there you know. I had to take off the shoes and put
+them outside the door, leave Manderson’s jacket, waistcoat, trousers,
+and black tie, after taking everything out of the pockets, select a
+suit and tie and shoes for the body, and place the dental plate in the
+bowl, which I moved from the washing-stand to the bedside, leaving
+those ruinous finger-marks as I did so. The marks on the drawer must
+have been made when I shut it after taking out the tie. Then I had to
+lie down in the bed and tumble it. You know all about it—all except my
+state of mind, which you couldn’t imagine and I couldn’t describe.
+“The worst came when I had hardly begun my operations: the moment when
+Mrs Manderson spoke from the room where I supposed her asleep. I was
+prepared for it happening; it was a possibility; but I nearly lost my
+nerve all the same. However....
+“By the way, I may tell you this: in the extremely unlikely contingency
+of Mrs. Manderson remaining awake, and so putting out of the question
+my escape by way of her window, I had planned simply to remain where I
+was a few hours, and then, not speaking to her, to leave the house
+quickly and quietly by the ordinary way. Martin would have been in bed
+by that time. I might have been heard to leave, but not seen. I should
+have done just as I had planned with the body, and then made the best
+time I could in the car to Southampton. The difference would have been
+that I couldn’t have furnished an unquestionable alibi by turning up at
+the hotel at 6.30. I should have made the best of it by driving
+straight to the docks, and making my ostentatious enquiries there. I
+could in any case have got there long before the boat left at noon. I
+couldn’t see that anybody could suspect me of the supposed murder in
+any case; but if any one had, and if I hadn’t arrived until ten
+o’clock, say, I shouldn’t have been able to answer, ‘It is impossible
+for me to have got to Southampton so soon after shooting him.’ I should
+simply have had to say I was delayed by a breakdown after leaving
+Manderson at half-past ten, and challenged any one to produce any fact
+connecting me with the crime. They couldn’t have done it. The pistol,
+left openly in my room, might have been used by anybody, even if it
+could be proved that that particular pistol was used. Nobody could
+reasonably connect me with the shooting so long as it was believed that
+it was Manderson who had returned to the house. The suspicion could
+not, I was confident, enter any one’s mind. All the same, I wanted to
+introduce the element of absolute physical impossibility; I knew I
+should feel ten times as safe with that. So when I knew from the sound
+of her breathing that Mrs. Manderson was asleep again, I walked quickly
+across her room in my stocking feet, and was on the grass with my
+bundle in ten seconds. I don’t think I made the least noise. The
+curtain before the window was of soft, thick stuff and didn’t rustle,
+and when I pushed the glass doors further open there was not a sound.”
+“Tell me,” said Trent, as the other stopped to light a new cigarette,
+“why you took the risk of going through Mrs. Manderson’s room to escape
+from the house. I could see when I looked into the thing on the spot
+why it had to be on that side of the house; there was a danger of being
+seen by Martin, or by some servant at a bedroom window, if you got out
+by a window on one of the other sides. But there were three unoccupied
+rooms on that side; two spare bedrooms and Mrs. Manderson’s
+sitting-room. I should have thought it would have been safer, after you
+had done what was necessary to your plan in Manderson’s room, to leave
+it quietly and escape through one of those three rooms.... The fact
+that you went through her window, you know,” he added coldly, “would
+have suggested, if it became known, various suspicions in regard to the
+lady herself. I think you understand me.”
+Marlowe turned upon him with a glowing face. “And I think you will
+understand me, Mr. Trent,” he said in a voice that shook a little,
+“when I say that if such a possibility had occurred to me then, I would
+have taken any risk rather than make my escape by that way.... Oh
+well!” he went on more coolly, “I suppose that to any one who didn’t
+know her, the idea of her being privy to her husband’s murder might not
+seem so indescribably fatuous. Forgive the expression.” He looked
+attentively at the burning end of his cigarette, studiously unconscious
+of the red flag that flew in Trent’s eyes for an instant at his words
+and the tone of them.
+That emotion, however, was conquered at once. “Your remark is perfectly
+just,” Trent said with answering coolness. “I can quite believe, too,
+that at the time you didn’t think of the possibility I mentioned. But
+surely, apart from that, it would have been safer to do as I said; go
+by the window of an unoccupied room.”
+“Do you think so?” said Marlowe. “All I can say is, I hadn’t the nerve
+to do it. I tell you, when I entered Manderson’s room I shut the door
+of it on more than half my terrors. I had the problem confined before
+me in a closed space, with only one danger in it, and that a known
+danger: the danger of Mrs. Manderson. The thing was almost done; I had
+only to wait until she was certainly asleep after her few moments of
+waking up, for which, as I told you, I was prepared as a possibility.
+Barring accidents, the way was clear. But now suppose that I, carrying
+Manderson’s clothes and shoes, had opened that door again and gone in
+my shirt-sleeves and socks to enter one of the empty rooms. The
+moonlight was flooding the corridor through the end window. Even if my
+face was concealed, nobody could mistake my standing figure for
+Manderson’s. Martin might be going about the house in his silent way.
+Bunner might come out of his bedroom. One of the servants who were
+supposed to be in bed might come round the corner from the other
+passage—I had found Célestine prowling about quite as late as it was
+then. None of these things was very likely; but they were all too
+likely for me. They were uncertainties. Shut off from the household in
+Manderson’s room I knew exactly what I had to face. As I lay in my
+clothes in Manderson’s bed and listened for the almost inaudible
+breathing through the open door, I felt far more ease of mind, terrible
+as my anxiety was, than I had felt since I saw the dead body on the
+turf. I even congratulated myself that I had had the chance, through
+Mrs Manderson’s speaking to me, of tightening one of the screws in my
+scheme by repeating the statement about my having been sent to
+Southampton.”
+Marlowe looked at Trent, who nodded as who should say that his point
+was met.
+“As for Southampton,” pursued Marlowe, “you know what I did when I got
+there, I have no doubt. I had decided to take Manderson’s story about
+the mysterious Harris and act it out on my own lines. It was a
+carefully prepared lie, better than anything I could improvise. I even
+went so far as to get through a trunk call to the hotel at Southampton
+from the library before starting, and ask if Harris was there. As I
+expected, he wasn’t.”
+“Was that why you telephoned?” Trent enquired quickly.
+“The reason for telephoning was to get myself into an attitude in which
+Martin couldn’t see my face or anything but the jacket and hat, yet
+which was a natural and familiar attitude. But while I was about it, it
+was obviously better to make a genuine call. If I had simply pretended
+to be telephoning, the people at the exchange could have told at once
+that there hadn’t been a call from White Gables that night.”
+“One of the first things I did was to make that enquiry,” said Trent.
+“That telephone call, and the wire you sent from Southampton to the
+dead man to say Harris hadn’t turned up, and you were returning—I
+particularly appreciated both those.”
+A constrained smile lighted Marlowe’s face for a moment. “I don’t know
+that there’s anything more to tell. I returned to Marlstone, and faced
+your friend the detective with such nerve as I had left. The worst was
+when I heard you had been put on the case—no, that wasn’t the worst.
+The worst was when I saw you walk out of the shrubbery the next day,
+coming away from the shed where I had laid the body. For one ghastly
+moment I thought you were going to give me in charge on the spot. Now
+I’ve told you everything, you don’t look so terrible.”
+He closed his eyes, and there was a short silence. Then Trent got
+suddenly to his feet.
+“Cross-examination?” enquired Marlowe, looking at him gravely.
+“Not at all,” said Trent, stretching his long limbs. “Only stiffness of
+the legs. I don’t want to ask any questions. I believe what you have
+told us. I don’t believe it simply because I always liked your face, or
+because it saves awkwardness, which are the most usual reasons for
+believing a person, but because my vanity will have it that no man
+could lie to me steadily for an hour without my perceiving it. Your
+story is an extraordinary one; but Manderson was an extraordinary man,
+and so are you. You acted like a lunatic in doing what you did; but I
+quite agree with you that if you had acted like a sane man you wouldn’t
+have had the hundredth part of a dog’s chance with a judge and jury.
+One thing is beyond dispute on any reading of the affair: you are a man
+of courage.”
+The colour rushed into Marlowe’s face, and he hesitated for words.
+Before he could speak Mr. Cupples arose with a dry cough.
+“For my part,” he said, “I never supposed you guilty for a moment.”
+Marlowe turned to him in grateful amazement, Trent with an incredulous
+stare. “But,” pursued Mr. Cupples, holding up his hand, “there is one
+question which I should like to put.”
+Marlowe bowed, saying nothing.
+“Suppose,” said Mr. Cupples, “that some one else had been suspected of
+the crime and put upon trial. What would you have done?”
+“I think my duty was clear. I should have gone with my story to the
+lawyers for the defence, and put myself in their hands.”
+Trent laughed aloud. Now that the thing was over, his spirits were
+rapidly becoming ungovernable. “I can see their faces!” he said. “As a
+matter of fact, though, nobody else was ever in danger. There wasn’t a
+shred of evidence against any one. I looked up Murch at the Yard this
+morning, and he told me he had come round to Bunner’s view, that it was
+a case of revenge on the part of some American black-hand gang. So
+there’s the end of the Manderson case. Holy, suffering Moses! _What_ an
+ass a man can make of himself when he thinks he’s being preternaturally
+clever!” He seized the bulky envelope from the table and stuffed it
+into the heart of the fire. “There’s for you, old friend! For want of
+you the world’s course will not fail. But look here! It’s getting
+late—nearly seven, and Cupples and I have an appointment at half-past.
+We must go. Mr. Marlowe, goodbye.” He looked into the other’s eyes. “I
+am a man who has worked hard to put a rope round your neck. Considering
+the circumstances, I don’t know whether you will blame me. Will you
+shake hands?”
+Chapter XVI.
+The Last Straw
+“What was that you said about our having an appointment at half-past
+seven?” asked Mr. Cupples as the two came out of the great gateway of
+the pile of flats. “Have we such an appointment?”
+“Certainly we have,” replied Trent. “You are dining with me. Only one
+thing can properly celebrate this occasion, and that is a dinner for
+which I pay. No, no! I asked you first. I have got right down to the
+bottom of a case that must be unique—a case that has troubled even my
+mind for over a year—and if that isn’t a good reason for standing a
+dinner, I don’t know what is. Cupples, we will not go to my club. This
+is to be a festival, and to be seen in a London club in a state of
+pleasurable emotion is more than enough to shatter any man’s career.
+Besides that, the dinner there is always the same, or, at least, they
+always make it taste the same, I know not how. The eternal dinner at my
+club hath bored millions of members like me, and shall bore; but
+tonight let the feast be spread in vain, so far as we are concerned. We
+will not go where the satraps throng the hall. We will go to
+Sheppard’s.”
+“Who is Sheppard?” asked Mr. Cupples mildly, as they proceeded up
+Victoria Street. His companion went with an unnatural lightness, and a
+policeman, observing his face, smiled indulgently at a look of
+happiness which he could only attribute to alcohol.
+“Who is Sheppard?” echoed Trent with bitter emphasis. “That question,
+if you will pardon me for saying so, Cupples, is thoroughly
+characteristic of the spirit of aimless enquiry prevailing in this
+restless day. I suggest our dining at Sheppard’s, and instantly you
+fold your arms and demand, in a frenzy of intellectual pride, to know
+who Sheppard is before you will cross the threshold of Sheppard’s. I am
+not going to pander to the vices of the modern mind. Sheppard’s is a
+place where one can dine. I do not know Sheppard. It never occurred to
+me that Sheppard existed. Probably he is a myth of totemistic origin.
+All I know is that you can get a bit of saddle of mutton at Sheppard’s
+that has made many an American visitor curse the day that Christopher
+Columbus was born.... Taxi!”
+A cab rolled smoothly to the kerb, and the driver received his
+instructions with a majestic nod.
+“Another reason I have for suggesting Sheppard’s,” continued Trent,
+feverishly lighting a cigarette, “is that I am going to be married to
+the most wonderful woman in the world. I trust the connection of ideas
+is clear.”
+“You are going to marry Mabel!” cried Mr. Cupples. “My dear friend,
+what good news this is! Shake hands, Trent; this is glorious! I
+congratulate you both from the bottom of my heart. And may I say—I
+don’t want to interrupt your flow of high spirits, which is very
+natural indeed, and I remember being just the same in similar
+circumstances long ago—but may I say how earnestly I have hoped for
+this? Mabel has seen so much unhappiness, yet she is surely a woman
+formed in the great purpose of humanity to be the best influence in the
+life of a good man. But I did not know her mind as regarded yourself.
+_Your_ mind I have known for some time,” Mr. Cupples went on, with a
+twinkle in his eye that would have done credit to the worldliest of
+creatures. “I saw it at once when you were both dining at my house, and
+you sat listening to Professor Peppmuller and looking at her. Some of
+us older fellows have our wits about us still, my dear boy.”
+“Mabel says she knew it before that,” replied Trent, with a slightly
+crestfallen air. “And I thought I was acting the part of a person who
+was not mad about her to the life. Well, I never was any good at
+dissembling. I shouldn’t wonder if even old Peppmuller noticed
+something through his double convex lenses. But however crazy I may
+have been as an undeclared suitor,” he went on with a return to
+vivacity, “I am going to be much worse now. As for your
+congratulations, thank you a thousand times, because I know you mean
+them. You are the sort of uncomfortable brute who would pull a face
+three feet long if you thought we were making a mistake. By the way, I
+can’t help being an ass tonight; I’m obliged to go on blithering. You
+must try to bear it. Perhaps it would be easier if I sang you a
+song—one of your old favourites. What was that song you used always to
+be singing? Like this, wasn’t it?” He accompanied the following stave
+with a dexterous clog-step on the floor of the cab:
+“There was an old nigger, and he had a wooden leg.
+He had no tobacco, no tobacco could he beg.
+Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox,
+And he always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box.
+Now for the chorus!
+Yes, he always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box.
+But you’re not singing. I thought you would be making the welkin ring.”
+“I never sang that song in my life,” protested Mr. Cupples. “I never
+heard it before.”
+“Are you sure?” enquired Trent doubtfully. “Well, I suppose I must take
+your word for it. It is a beautiful song, anyhow: not the whole
+warbling grove in concert heard can beat it. Somehow it seems to
+express my feelings at the present moment as nothing else could; it
+rises unbidden to the lips. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
+speaketh, as the Bishop of Bath and Wells said when listening to a
+speech of Mr. Balfour’s.”
+“When was that?” asked Mr. Cupples.
+“On the occasion,” replied Trent, “of the introduction of the
+Compulsory Notification of Diseases of Poultry Bill, which ill-fated
+measure you of course remember. Hullo!” he broke off, as the cab rushed
+down a side street and swung round a corner into a broad and populous
+thoroughfare, “we’re there already”. The cab drew up.
+“Here we are,” said Trent, as he paid the man, and led Mr. Cupples into
+a long, panelled room set with many tables and filled with a hum of
+talk. “This is the house of fulfilment of craving, this is the bower
+with the roses around it. I see there are three bookmakers eating pork
+at my favourite table. We will have that one in the opposite corner.”
+He conferred earnestly with a waiter, while Mr. Cupples, in a pleasant
+meditation, warmed himself before the great fire. “The wine here,”
+Trent resumed, as they seated themselves, “is almost certainly made out
+of grapes. What shall we drink?”
+Mr. Cupples came out of his reverie. “I think,” he said, “I will have
+milk and soda water.”
+“Speak lower!” urged Trent. “The head-waiter has a weak heart, and
+might hear you. Milk and soda water! Cupples, you may think you have a
+strong constitution, and I don’t say you have not, but I warn you that
+this habit of mixing drinks has been the death of many a robuster man
+than you. Be wise in time. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine, leave
+soda to the Turkish hordes. Here comes our food.” He gave another order
+to the waiter, who ranged the dishes before them and darted away. Trent
+was, it seemed, a respected customer. “I have sent,” he said, “for wine
+that I know, and I hope you will try it. If you have taken a vow, then
+in the name of all the teetotal saints drink water, which stands at
+your elbow, but don’t seek a cheap notoriety by demanding milk and
+soda.”
+“I have never taken any pledge,” said Mr. Cupples, examining his mutton
+with a favourable eye. “I simply don’t care about wine. I bought a
+bottle once and drank it to see what it was like, and it made me ill.
+But very likely it was bad wine. I will taste some of yours, as it is
+your dinner, and I do assure you, my dear Trent, I should like to do
+something unusual to show how strongly I feel on the present occasion.
+I have not been so delighted for many years. To think,” he reflected
+aloud as the waiter filled his glass, “of the Manderson mystery
+disposed of, the innocent exculpated, and your own and Mabel’s
+happiness crowned—all coming upon me together! I drink to you, my dear
+friend.” And Mr. Cupples took a very small sip of the wine.
+“You have a great nature,” said Trent, much moved. “Your outward
+semblance doth belie your soul’s immensity. I should have expected as
+soon to see an elephant conducting at the opera as you drinking my
+health. Dear Cupples! May his beak retain ever that delicate
+rose-stain!—No, curse it all!” he broke out, surprising a shade of
+discomfort that flitted over his companion’s face as he tasted the wine
+again. “I have no business to meddle with your tastes. I apologize. You
+shall have what you want, even if it causes the head-waiter to perish
+in his pride.”
+When Mr. Cupples had been supplied with his monastic drink, and the
+waiter had retired, Trent looked across the table with significance.
+“In this babble of many conversations,” he said, “we can speak as
+freely as if we were on a bare hillside. The waiter is whispering soft
+nothings into the ear of the young woman at the pay-desk. We are alone.
+What do you think of that interview of this afternoon?” He began to
+dine with an appetite.
+Without pausing in the task of cutting his mutton into very small
+pieces Mr. Cupples replied: “The most curious feature of it, in my
+judgement, was the irony of the situation. We both held the clue to
+that mad hatred of Manderson’s which Marlowe found so mysterious. We
+knew of his jealous obsession; which knowledge we withheld, as was very
+proper, if only in consideration of Mabel’s feelings. Marlowe will
+never know of what he was suspected by that person. Strange! Nearly all
+of us, I venture to think, move unconsciously among a network of
+opinions, often quite erroneous, which other people entertain about us.
+I remember, for instance, discovering quite by accident some years ago
+that a number of people of my acquaintance believed me to have been
+secretly received into the Church of Rome. This absurd fiction was
+based upon the fact, which in the eyes of many appeared conclusive,
+that I had expressed myself in talk as favouring the plan of a weekly
+abstinence from meat. Manderson’s belief in regard to his secretary
+probably rested upon a much slighter ground. It was Mr Bunner, I think
+you said, who told you of his rooted and apparently hereditary temper
+of suspicious jealousy.... With regard to Marlowe’s story, it appeared
+to me entirely straightforward, and not, in its essential features,
+especially remarkable, once we have admitted, as we surely must, that
+in the case of Manderson we have to deal with a more or less disordered
+mind.”
+Trent laughed loudly. “I confess,” he said, “that the affair struck me
+as a little unusual.
+“Only in the development of the details,” argued Mr. Cupples. “What is
+there abnormal in the essential facts? A madman conceives a crazy
+suspicion; he hatches a cunning plot against his fancied injurer; it
+involves his own destruction. Put thus, what is there that any man with
+the least knowledge of the ways of lunatics would call remarkable? Turn
+now to Marlowe’s proceedings. He finds himself in a perilous position
+from which, though he is innocent, telling the truth will not save him.
+Is that an unheard-of situation? He escapes by means of a bold and
+ingenious piece of deception. That seems to me a thing that might
+happen every day, and probably does so.” He attacked his now
+unrecognizable mutton.
+“I should like to know,” said Trent, after an alimentary pause in the
+conversation, “whether there is anything that ever happened on the face
+of the earth that you could not represent as quite ordinary and
+commonplace by such a line of argument as that.”
+A gentle smile illuminated Mr. Cupples’s face. “You must not suspect me
+of empty paradox,” he said. “My meaning will become clearer, perhaps,
+if I mention some things which do appear to me essentially remarkable.
+Let me see .... Well, I would call the life history of the liver-fluke,
+which we owe to the researches of Poulton, an essentially remarkable
+thing.”
+“I am unable to argue the point,” replied Trent. “Fair science may have
+smiled upon the liver-fluke’s humble birth, but I never even heard it
+mentioned.”
+“It is not, perhaps, an appetizing subject,” said Mr. Cupples
+thoughtfully, “and I will not pursue it. All I mean is, my dear Trent,
+that there are really remarkable things going on all round us if we
+will only see them; and we do our perceptions no credit in regarding as
+remarkable only those affairs which are surrounded with an accumulation
+of sensational detail.”
+Trent applauded heartily with his knife-handle on the table, as Mr.
+Cupples ceased and refreshed himself with milk and soda water. “I have
+not heard you go on like this for years,” he said. “I believe you must
+be almost as much above yourself as I am. It is a bad case of the
+unrest which men miscall delight. But much as I enjoy it, I am not
+going to sit still and hear the Manderson affair dismissed as
+commonplace. You may say what you like, but the idea of impersonating
+Manderson in those circumstances was an extraordinarily ingenious
+idea.”
+“Ingenious—certainly!” replied Mr. Cupples. “Extraordinarily so—no! In
+those circumstances (your own words) it was really not strange that it
+should occur to a clever man. It lay almost on the surface of the
+situation. Marlowe was famous for his imitation of Manderson’s voice;
+he had a talent for acting; he had a chess-player’s mind; he knew the
+ways of the establishment intimately. I grant you that the idea was
+brilliantly carried out; but everything favoured it. As for the
+essential idea, I do not place it, as regards ingenuity, in the same
+class with, for example, the idea of utilizing the force of recoil in a
+discharged firearm to actuate the mechanism of ejecting and reloading.
+I do, however, admit, as I did at the outset, that in respect of
+details the case had unusual features. It developed a high degree of
+complexity.”
+“Did it really strike you in that way?” enquired Trent with desperate
+sarcasm.
+“The affair became complicated,” went on Mr. Cupples unmoved, “because
+after Marlowe’s suspicions were awakened, a second subtle mind came in
+to interfere with the plans of the first. That sort of duel often
+happens in business and politics, but less frequently, I imagine, in
+the world of crime.”
+“I should say never,” Trent replied; “and the reason is, that even the
+cleverest criminals seldom run to strategic subtlety. When they do,
+they don’t get caught, since clever policemen have if possible less
+strategic subtlety than the ordinary clever criminal. But that rather
+deep quality seems very rarely to go with the criminal make-up. Look at
+Crippen. He was a very clever criminal as they go. He solved the
+central problem of every clandestine murder, the disposal of the body,
+with extreme neatness. But how far did he see through the game? The
+criminal and the policeman are often swift and bold tacticians, but
+neither of them is good for more than a quite simple plan. After all,
+it’s a rare faculty in any walk of life.”
+“One disturbing reflection was left on my mind,” said Mr. Cupples, who
+seemed to have had enough of abstractions for the moment, “by what we
+learned today. If Marlowe had suspected nothing and walked into the
+trap, he would almost certainly have been hanged. Now how often may not
+a plan to throw the guilt of murder on an innocent person have been
+practised successfully? There are, I imagine, numbers of cases in which
+the accused, being found guilty on circumstantial evidence, have died
+protesting their innocence. I shall never approve again of a
+death-sentence imposed in a case decided upon such evidence.”
+“I never have done so, for my part,” said Trent. “To hang in such cases
+seems to me flying in the face of the perfectly obvious and sound
+principle expressed in the saying that ‘you never can tell’. I agree
+with the American jurist who lays it down that we should not hang a
+yellow dog for stealing jam on circumstantial evidence, not even if he
+has jam all over his nose. As for attempts being made by malevolent
+persons to fix crimes upon innocent men, of course it is constantly
+happening. It’s a marked feature, for instance, of all systems of rule
+by coercion, whether in Ireland or Russia or India or Korea; if the
+police cannot get hold of a man they think dangerous by fair means,
+they do it by foul. But there’s one case in the State Trials that is
+peculiarly to the point, because not only was it a case of fastening a
+murder on innocent people, but the plotter did in effect what Manderson
+did; he gave up his own life in order to secure the death of his
+victims. Probably you have heard of the Campden Case.”
+Mr. Cupples confessed his ignorance and took another potato.
+“John Masefield has written a very remarkable play about it,” said
+Trent, “and if it ever comes on again in London, you should go and see
+it, if you like having the fan-tods. I have often seen women weeping in
+an undemonstrative manner at some slab of oleo-margarine sentiment in
+the theatre. By George! what everlasting smelling-bottle hysterics they
+ought to have if they saw that play decently acted! Well, the facts
+were that John Perry accused his mother and brother of murdering a man,
+and swore he had helped them to do it. He told a story full of
+elaborate detail, and had an answer to everything, except the curious
+fact that the body couldn’t be found; but the judge, who was probably
+drunk at the time—this was in Restoration days—made nothing of that.
+The mother and brother denied the accusation. All three prisoners were
+found guilty and hanged, purely on John’s evidence. Two years after,
+the man whom they were hanged for murdering came back to Campden. He
+had been kidnapped by pirates and taken to sea. His disappearance had
+given John his idea. The point about John is, that his including
+himself in the accusation, which amounted to suicide, was the thing in
+his evidence which convinced everybody of its truth. It was so obvious
+that no man would do himself to death to get somebody else hanged. Now
+that is exactly the answer which the prosecution would have made if
+Marlowe had told the truth. Not one juryman in a million would have
+believed in the Manderson plot.”
+Mr. Cupples mused upon this a few moments. “I have not your
+acquaintance with that branch of history,” he said at length; “in fact,
+I have none at all. But certain recollections of my own childhood
+return to me in connection with this affair. We know from the things
+Mabel told you what may be termed the spiritual truth underlying this
+matter; the insane depth of jealous hatred which Manderson concealed.
+We can understand that he was capable of such a scheme. But as a rule
+it is in the task of penetrating to the spiritual truth that the
+administration of justice breaks down. Sometimes that truth is
+deliberately concealed, as in Manderson’s case. Sometimes, I think, it
+is concealed because simple people are actually unable to express it,
+and nobody else divines it. When I was a lad in Edinburgh the whole
+country went mad about the Sandyford Place murder.”
+Trent nodded. “Mrs. M’Lachlan’s case. She was innocent right enough.”
+“My parents thought so,” said Mr. Cupples. “I thought so myself when I
+became old enough to read and understand that excessively sordid story.
+But the mystery of the affair was so dark, and the task of getting at
+the truth behind the lies told by everybody concerned proved so
+hopeless, that others were just as fully convinced of the innocence of
+old James Fleming. All Scotland took sides on the question. It was the
+subject of debates in Parliament. The press divided into two camps, and
+raged with a fury I have never seen equalled. Yet it is obvious, is it
+not? for I see you have read of the case—that if the spiritual truth
+about that old man could have been known there would have been very
+little room for doubt in the matter. If what some surmised about his
+disposition was true, he was quite capable of murdering Jessie
+M’Pherson and then casting the blame on the poor feeble-minded creature
+who came so near to suffering the last penalty of the law.”
+“Even a commonplace old dotard like Fleming can be an unfathomable
+mystery to all the rest of the human race,” said Trent, “and most of
+all in a court of justice. The law certainly does not shine when it
+comes to a case requiring much delicacy of perception. It goes wrong
+easily enough over the Flemings of this world. As for the people with
+temperaments who get mixed up in legal proceedings, they must feel as
+if they were in a forest of apes, whether they win or lose. Well, I
+dare say it’s good for their sort to have their noses rubbed in reality
+now and again. But what would twelve red-faced realities in a jury-box
+have done to Marlowe? His story would, as he says, have been a great
+deal worse than no defence at all. It’s not as if there were a single
+piece of evidence in support of his tale. Can’t you imagine how the
+prosecution would tear it to rags? Can’t you see the judge simply
+taking it in his stride when it came to the summing up? And the
+jury—you’ve served on juries, I expect—in their room, snorting with
+indignation over the feebleness of the lie, telling each other it was
+the clearest case they ever heard of, and that they’d have thought
+better of him if he hadn’t lost his nerve at the crisis, and had
+cleared off with the swag as he intended. Imagine yourself on that
+jury, not knowing Marlowe, and trembling with indignation at the record
+unrolled before you—cupidity, murder, robbery, sudden cowardice,
+shameless, impenitent, desperate lying! Why, you and I believed him to
+be guilty until—”
+“I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon!” interjected Mr. Cupples, laying
+down his knife and fork. “I was most careful, when we talked it all
+over the other night, to say nothing indicating such a belief. _I_ was
+always certain that he was innocent.”
+“You said something of the sort at Marlowe’s just now. I wondered what
+on earth you could mean. Certain that he was innocent! How can you be
+certain? You are generally more careful about terms than that,
+Cupples.”
+“I said ‘certain’,” Mr. Cupples repeated firmly.
+Trent shrugged his shoulders. “If you really were, after reading my
+manuscript and discussing the whole thing as we did,” he rejoined,
+“then I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in
+the operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad
+Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism
+too, unless I misunderstand that system. Why, man—”
+“Let me say a word,” Mr. Cupples interposed again, folding his hands
+above his plate. “I assure you I am far from abandoning reason. I am
+certain he is innocent, and I always was certain of it, because of
+something that I know, and knew from the very beginning. You asked me
+just now to imagine myself on the jury at Marlowe’s trial. That would
+be an unprofitable exercise of the mental powers, because I know that I
+should be present in another capacity. I should be in the witness-box,
+giving evidence for the defence. You said just now, ‘If there were a
+single piece of evidence in support of his tale.’ There is, and it is
+my evidence. And,” he added quietly, “it is conclusive.” He took up his
+knife and fork and went contentedly on with his dinner.
+The pallor of sudden excitement had turned Trent to marble while Mr
+Cupples led laboriously up to this statement. At the last word the
+blood rushed to his face again, and he struck the table with an
+unnatural laugh. “It can’t be!” he exploded. “It’s something you
+fancied, something you dreamed after one of those debauches of soda and
+milk. You can’t really mean that all the time I was working on the case
+down there you knew Marlowe was innocent.”
+Mr. Cupples, busy with his last mouthful, nodded brightly. He made an
+end of eating, wiped his sparse moustache, and then leaned forward over
+the table. “It’s very simple,” he said. “I shot Manderson myself.”
+“I am afraid I startled you,” Trent heard the voice of Mr. Cupples say.
+He forced himself out of his stupefaction like a diver striking upward
+for the surface, and with a rigid movement raised his glass. But half
+of the wine splashed upon the cloth, and he put it carefully down again
+untasted. He drew a deep breath, which was exhaled in a laugh wholly
+without merriment. “Go on,” he said.
+“It was not murder,” began Mr. Cupples, slowly measuring off inches
+with a fork on the edge of the table. “I will tell you the whole story.
+On that Sunday night I was taking my before-bedtime constitutional,
+having set out from the hotel about a quarter past ten. I went along
+the field path that runs behind White Gables, cutting off the great
+curve of the road, and came out on the road nearly opposite that gate
+that is just by the eighth hole on the golf-course. Then I turned in
+there, meaning to walk along the turf to the edge of the cliff, and go
+back that way. I had only gone a few steps when I heard the car coming,
+and then I heard it stop near the gate. I saw Manderson at once. Do you
+remember my telling you I had seen him once alive after our quarrel in
+front of the hotel? Well, this was the time. You asked me if I had, and
+I did not care to tell a falsehood.”
+A slight groan came from Trent. He drank a little wine, and said
+stonily, “Go on, please.”
+“It was, as you know,” pursued Mr. Cupples, “a moonlight night, but I
+was in shadow under the trees by the stone wall, and anyhow they could
+not suppose there was any one near them. I heard all that passed just
+as Marlowe has narrated it to us, and I saw the car go off towards
+Bishopsbridge. I did not see Manderson’s face as it went, because his
+back was to me, but he shook the back of his left hand at the car with
+extraordinary violence, greatly to my amazement. Then I waited for him
+to go back to White Gables, as I did not want to meet him again. But he
+did not go. He opened the gate through which I had just passed, and he
+stood there on the turf of the green, quite still. His head was bent,
+his arms hung at his sides, and he looked somehow—rigid. For a few
+moments he remained in this tense attitude, then all of a sudden his
+right arm moved swiftly, and his hand was at the pocket of his
+overcoat. I saw his face raised in the moonlight, the teeth bared, and
+the eyes glittering, and all at once I knew that the man was not sane.
+Almost as quickly as that flashed across my mind, something else
+flashed in the moonlight. He held the pistol before him, pointing at
+his breast.
+“Now I may say here I shall always be doubtful whether Manderson really
+meant to kill himself then. Marlowe naturally thinks so, knowing
+nothing of my intervention. But I think it quite likely he only meant
+to wound himself, and to charge Marlowe with attempted murder and
+robbery.
+“At that moment, however, I assumed it was suicide. Before I knew what
+I was doing I had leapt out of the shadows and seized his arm. He shook
+me off with a furious snarling noise, giving me a terrific blow in the
+chest, and presenting the revolver at my head. But I seized his wrists
+before he could fire, and clung with all my strength—you remember how
+bruised and scratched they were. I knew I was fighting for my own life
+now, for murder was in his eyes. We struggled like two beasts, without
+an articulate word, I holding his pistol-hand down and keeping a grip
+on the other. I never dreamed that I had the strength for such an
+encounter. Then, with a perfectly instinctive movement—I never knew I
+meant to do it—I flung away his free hand and clutched like lightning
+at the weapon, tearing it from his fingers. By a miracle it did not go
+off. I darted back a few steps, he sprang at my throat like a wild cat,
+and I fired blindly in his face. He would have been about a yard away,
+I suppose. His knees gave way instantly, and he fell in a heap on the
+turf.
+“I flung the pistol down and bent over him. The heart’s action ceased
+under my hand. I knelt there staring, struck motionless; and I don’t
+know how long it was before I heard the noise of the car returning.
+“Trent, all the time that Marlowe paced that green, with the moonlight
+on his white and working face, I was within a few yards of him,
+crouching in the shadow of the furze by the ninth tee. I dared not show
+myself. I was thinking. My public quarrel with Manderson the same
+morning was, I suspected, the talk of the hotel. I assure you that
+every horrible possibility of the situation for me had rushed across my
+mind the moment I saw Manderson fall. I became cunning. I knew what I
+must do. I must get back to the hotel as fast as I could, get in
+somehow unperceived, and play a part to save myself. I must never tell
+a word to any one. Of course I was assuming that Marlowe would tell
+every one how he had found the body. I knew he would suppose it was
+suicide; I thought every one would suppose so.
+“When Marlowe began at last to lift the body, I stole away down the
+wall and got out into the road by the clubhouse, where he could not see
+me. I felt perfectly cool and collected. I crossed the road, climbed
+the fence, and ran across the meadow to pick up the field path I had
+come by that runs to the hotel behind White Gables. I got back to the
+hotel very much out of breath.”
+“Out of breath,” repeated Trent mechanically, still staring at his
+companion as if hypnotized.
+“I had had a sharp run,” Mr. Cupples reminded him. “Well, approaching
+the hotel from the back I could see into the writing-room through the
+open window. There was nobody in there, so I climbed over the sill,
+walked to the bell and rang it, and then sat down to write a letter I
+had meant to write the next day. I saw by the clock that it was a
+little past eleven. When the waiter answered the bell I asked for a
+glass of milk and a postage stamp. Soon afterwards I went up to bed.
+But I could not sleep.”
+Mr. Cupples, having nothing more to say, ceased speaking. He looked in
+mild surprise at Trent, who now sat silent, supporting his bent head in
+his hands.
+“He could not sleep,” murmured Trent at last in a hollow tone. “A
+frequent result of over-exertion during the day. Nothing to be alarmed
+about.” He was silent again, then looked up with a pale face. “Cupples,
+I am cured. I will never touch a crime-mystery again. The Manderson
+affair shall be Philip Trent’s last case. His high-blown pride at
+length breaks under him.” Trent’s smile suddenly returned. “I could
+have borne everything but that last revelation of the impotence of
+human reason. Cupples, I have absolutely nothing left to say, except
+this: you have beaten me. I drink your health in a spirit of
+self-abasement. And _you_ shall pay for the dinner.”
+THE END.",Trent's Last Case,E. C. Bentley,290,['Sigsbee Manderson']
+"THE SECRET ADVERSARY
+By Agatha Christie
+TO ALL THOSE WHO LEAD
+MONOTONOUS LIVES
+IN THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY EXPERIENCE
+AT SECOND HAND
+THE DELIGHTS AND DANGERS OF
+ADVENTURE
+CONTENTS
+PROLOGUE
+CHAPTER I.   THE YOUNG ADVENTURERS, LTD.
+CHAPTER II.   MR. WHITTINGTON’S OFFER
+CHAPTER III.   A SET BACK
+CHAPTER IV.   WHO IS JANE FINN?
+CHAPTER V.   MR. JULIUS P. HERSHEIMMER
+CHAPTER VI.   A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
+CHAPTER VII.   THE HOUSE IN SOHO
+CHAPTER VIII.   THE ADVENTURES OF TOMMY
+CHAPTER IX.   TUPPENCE ENTERS DOMESTIC SERVICE
+CHAPTER X.   ENTER SIR JAMES PEEL EDGERTON
+CHAPTER XI.   JULIUS TELLS A STORY
+CHAPTER XII.   A FRIEND IN NEED
+CHAPTER XIII.   THE VIGIL
+CHAPTER XIV.   A CONSULTATION
+CHAPTER XV.   TUPPENCE RECEIVES A PROPOSAL
+CHAPTER XVI.   FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOMMY
+CHAPTER XVII.   ANNETTE
+CHAPTER XVIII.   THE TELEGRAM
+CHAPTER XIX.   JANE FINN
+CHAPTER XX.   TOO LATE
+CHAPTER XXI.   TOMMY MAKES A DISCOVERY
+CHAPTER XXII.   IN DOWNING STREET
+CHAPTER XXIII.   A RACE AGAINST TIME
+CHAPTER XXIV.   JULIUS TAKES A HAND
+CHAPTER XXV.   JANE’S STORY
+CHAPTER XXVI.   MR. BROWN
+CHAPTER XXVII.   A SUPPER PARTY AT THE _SAVOY_
+CHAPTER XXVIII.     AND AFTER
+PROLOGUE
+IT was 2 p.m. on the afternoon of May 7, 1915. The _Lusitania_ had been
+struck by two torpedoes in succession and was sinking rapidly, while
+the boats were being launched with all possible speed. The women and
+children were being lined up awaiting their turn. Some still clung
+desperately to husbands and fathers; others clutched their children
+closely to their breasts. One girl stood alone, slightly apart from
+the rest. She was quite young, not more than eighteen. She did not seem
+afraid, and her grave, steadfast eyes looked straight ahead.
+“I beg your pardon.”
+A man’s voice beside her made her start and turn. She had noticed the
+speaker more than once amongst the first-class passengers. There had
+been a hint of mystery about him which had appealed to her imagination.
+He spoke to no one. If anyone spoke to him he was quick to rebuff the
+overture. Also he had a nervous way of looking over his shoulder with a
+swift, suspicious glance.
+She noticed now that he was greatly agitated. There were beads of
+perspiration on his brow. He was evidently in a state of overmastering
+fear. And yet he did not strike her as the kind of man who would be
+afraid to meet death!
+“Yes?” Her grave eyes met his inquiringly.
+He stood looking at her with a kind of desperate irresolution.
+“It must be!” he muttered to himself. “Yes--it is the only way.” Then
+aloud he said abruptly: “You are an American?”
+“Yes.”
+“A patriotic one?”
+The girl flushed.
+“I guess you’ve no right to ask such a thing! Of course I am!”
+“Don’t be offended. You wouldn’t be if you knew how much there was at
+stake. But I’ve got to trust some one--and it must be a woman.”
+“Why?”
+“Because of ‘women and children first.’” He looked round and lowered his
+voice. “I’m carrying papers--vitally important papers. They may make all
+the difference to the Allies in the war. You understand? These papers
+have _got_ to be saved! They’ve more chance with you than with me. Will
+you take them?”
+The girl held out her hand.
+“Wait--I must warn you. There may be a risk--if I’ve been followed. I
+don’t think I have, but one never knows. If so, there will be danger.
+Have you the nerve to go through with it?”
+The girl smiled.
+“I’ll go through with it all right. And I’m real proud to be chosen!
+What am I to do with them afterwards?”
+“Watch the newspapers! I’ll advertise in the personal column of the
+_Times_, beginning ‘Shipmate.’ At the end of three days if there’s
+nothing--well, you’ll know I’m down and out. Then take the packet to
+the American Embassy, and deliver it into the Ambassador’s own hands. Is
+that clear?”
+“Quite clear.”
+“Then be ready--I’m going to say good-bye.” He took her hand in his.
+“Good-bye. Good luck to you,” he said in a louder tone.
+Her hand closed on the oilskin packet that had lain in his palm.
+The _Lusitania_ settled with a more decided list to starboard. In answer
+to a quick command, the girl went forward to take her place in the boat.
+CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG ADVENTURERS, LTD.
+“TOMMY, old thing!”
+“Tuppence, old bean!”
+The two young people greeted each other affectionately, and momentarily
+blocked the Dover Street Tube exit in doing so. The adjective “old”
+was misleading. Their united ages would certainly not have totalled
+forty-five.
+“Not seen you for simply centuries,” continued the young man. “Where are
+you off to? Come and chew a bun with me. We’re getting a bit unpopular
+here--blocking the gangway as it were. Let’s get out of it.”
+The girl assenting, they started walking down Dover Street towards
+Piccadilly.
+“Now then,” said Tommy, “where shall we go?”
+The very faint anxiety which underlay his tone did not escape the astute
+ears of Miss Prudence Cowley, known to her intimate friends for some
+mysterious reason as “Tuppence.” She pounced at once.
+“Tommy, you’re stony!”
+“Not a bit of it,” declared Tommy unconvincingly. “Rolling in cash.”
+“You always were a shocking liar,” said Tuppence severely, “though you
+did once persuade Sister Greenbank that the doctor had ordered you beer
+as a tonic, but forgotten to write it on the chart. Do you remember?”
+Tommy chuckled.
+“I should think I did! Wasn’t the old cat in a rage when she found
+out? Not that she was a bad sort really, old Mother Greenbank! Good old
+hospital--demobbed like everything else, I suppose?”
+Tuppence sighed.
+“Yes. You too?”
+Tommy nodded.
+“Two months ago.”
+“Gratuity?” hinted Tuppence.
+“Spent.”
+“Oh, Tommy!”
+“No, old thing, not in riotous dissipation. No such luck! The cost of
+living--ordinary plain, or garden living nowadays is, I assure you, if
+you do not know----”
+“My dear child,” interrupted Tuppence, “there is nothing I do _not_ know
+about the cost of living. Here we are at Lyons’, and we will each of us
+pay for our own. That’s it!” And Tuppence led the way upstairs.
+The place was full, and they wandered about looking for a table,
+catching odds and ends of conversation as they did so.
+“And--do you know, she sat down and _cried_ when I told her she couldn’t
+have the flat after all.” “It was simply a _bargain_, my dear! Just like
+the one Mabel Lewis brought from Paris----”
+“Funny scraps one does overhear,” murmured Tommy. “I passed two Johnnies
+in the street to-day talking about some one called Jane Finn. Did you
+ever hear such a name?”
+But at that moment two elderly ladies rose and collected parcels, and
+Tuppence deftly ensconced herself in one of the vacant seats.
+Tommy ordered tea and buns. Tuppence ordered tea and buttered toast.
+“And mind the tea comes in separate teapots,” she added severely.
+Tommy sat down opposite her. His bared head revealed a shock
+of exquisitely slicked-back red hair. His face was pleasantly
+ugly--nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a
+sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end of
+its tether.
+They were an essentially modern-looking couple as they sat there.
+Tuppence had no claim to beauty, but there was character and charm in
+the elfin lines of her little face, with its determined chin and large,
+wide-apart grey eyes that looked mistily out from under straight, black
+brows. She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair,
+and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of
+uncommonly dainty ankles. Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at
+smartness.
+The tea came at last, and Tuppence, rousing herself from a fit of
+meditation, poured it out.
+“Now then,” said Tommy, taking a large bite of bun, “let’s get
+up-to-date. Remember, I haven’t seen you since that time in hospital in
+1916.”
+“Very well.” Tuppence helped herself liberally to buttered toast.
+“Abridged biography of Miss Prudence Cowley, fifth daughter of
+Archdeacon Cowley of Little Missendell, Suffolk. Miss Cowley left the
+delights (and drudgeries) of her home life early in the war and came up
+to London, where she entered an officers’ hospital. First month: Washed
+up six hundred and forty-eight plates every day. Second month: Promoted
+to drying aforesaid plates. Third month: Promoted to peeling potatoes.
+Fourth month: Promoted to cutting bread and butter. Fifth month:
+Promoted one floor up to duties of wardmaid with mop and pail. Sixth
+month: Promoted to waiting at table. Seventh month: Pleasing appearance
+and nice manners so striking that am promoted to waiting on the Sisters!
+Eighth month: Slight check in career. Sister Bond ate Sister Westhaven’s
+egg! Grand row! Wardmaid clearly to blame! Inattention in such important
+matters cannot be too highly censured. Mop and pail again! How are the
+mighty fallen! Ninth month: Promoted to sweeping out wards, where I
+found a friend of my childhood in Lieutenant Thomas Beresford (bow,
+Tommy!), whom I had not seen for five long years. The meeting was
+affecting! Tenth month: Reproved by matron for visiting the pictures in
+company with one of the patients, namely: the aforementioned Lieutenant
+Thomas Beresford. Eleventh and twelfth months: Parlourmaid duties
+resumed with entire success. At the end of the year left hospital in a
+blaze of glory. After that, the talented Miss Cowley drove successively
+a trade delivery van, a motor-lorry and a general! The last was the
+pleasantest. He was quite a young general!”
+“What blighter was that?” inquired Tommy. “Perfectly sickening the way
+those brass hats drove from the War Office to the _Savoy_, and from the
+_Savoy_ to the War Office!”
+“I’ve forgotten his name now,” confessed Tuppence. “To resume, that was
+in a way the apex of my career. I next entered a Government office. We
+had several very enjoyable tea parties. I had intended to become a
+land girl, a postwoman, and a bus conductress by way of rounding off
+my career--but the Armistice intervened! I clung to the office with the
+true limpet touch for many long months, but, alas, I was combed out at
+last. Since then I’ve been looking for a job. Now then--your turn.”
+“There’s not so much promotion in mine,” said Tommy regretfully, “and a
+great deal less variety. I went out to France again, as you know. Then
+they sent me to Mesopotamia, and I got wounded for the second time,
+and went into hospital out there. Then I got stuck in Egypt till the
+Armistice happened, kicked my heels there some time longer, and, as I
+told you, finally got demobbed. And, for ten long, weary months I’ve
+been job hunting! There aren’t any jobs! And, if there were, they
+wouldn’t give ‘em to me. What good am I? What do I know about business?
+Nothing.”
+Tuppence nodded gloomily.
+“What about the colonies?” she suggested.
+Tommy shook his head.
+“I shouldn’t like the colonies--and I’m perfectly certain they wouldn’t
+like me!”
+“Rich relations?”
+Again Tommy shook his head.
+“Oh, Tommy, not even a great-aunt?”
+“I’ve got an old uncle who’s more or less rolling, but he’s no good.”
+“Why not?”
+“Wanted to adopt me once. I refused.”
+“I think I remember hearing about it,” said Tuppence slowly. “You
+refused because of your mother----”
+Tommy flushed.
+“Yes, it would have been a bit rough on the mater. As you know, I was
+all she had. Old boy hated her--wanted to get me away from her. Just a
+bit of spite.”
+“Your mother’s dead, isn’t she?” said Tuppence gently.
+Tommy nodded.
+Tuppence’s large grey eyes looked misty.
+“You’re a good sort, Tommy. I always knew it.”
+“Rot!” said Tommy hastily. “Well, that’s my position. I’m just about
+desperate.”
+“So am I! I’ve hung out as long as I could. I’ve touted round. I’ve
+answered advertisements. I’ve tried every mortal blessed thing. I’ve
+screwed and saved and pinched! But it’s no good. I shall have to go
+home!”
+“Don’t you want to?”
+“Of course I don’t want to! What’s the good of being sentimental?
+Father’s a dear--I’m awfully fond of him--but you’ve no idea how I worry
+him! He has that delightful early Victorian view that short skirts and
+smoking are immoral. You can imagine what a thorn in the flesh I am to
+him! He just heaved a sigh of relief when the war took me off. You see,
+there are seven of us at home. It’s awful! All housework and mothers’
+meetings! I have always been the changeling. I don’t want to go back,
+but--oh, Tommy, what else is there to do?”
+Tommy shook his head sadly. There was a silence, and then Tuppence burst
+out:
+“Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I
+dare say it’s mercenary of me, but there it is!”
+“Same here,” agreed Tommy with feeling.
+“I’ve thought over every imaginable way of getting it too,” continued
+Tuppence. “There are only three! To be left it, to marry it, or to make
+it. First is ruled out. I haven’t got any rich elderly relatives. Any
+relatives I have are in homes for decayed gentlewomen! I always help old
+ladies over crossings, and pick up parcels for old gentlemen, in case
+they should turn out to be eccentric millionaires. But not one of them
+has ever asked me my name--and quite a lot never said ‘Thank you.’”
+There was a pause.
+“Of course,” resumed Tuppence, “marriage is my best chance. I made up my
+mind to marry money when I was quite young. Any thinking girl would!
+I’m not sentimental, you know.” She paused. “Come now, you can’t say I’m
+sentimental,” she added sharply.
+“Certainly not,” agreed Tommy hastily. “No one would ever think of
+sentiment in connection with you.”
+“That’s not very polite,” replied Tuppence. “But I dare say you mean it
+all right. Well, there it is! I’m ready and willing--but I never meet
+any rich men! All the boys I know are about as hard up as I am.”
+“What about the general?” inquired Tommy.
+“I fancy he keeps a bicycle shop in time of peace,” explained Tuppence.
+“No, there it is! Now _you_ could marry a rich girl.”
+“I’m like you. I don’t know any.”
+“That doesn’t matter. You can always get to know one. Now, if I see a
+man in a fur coat come out of the _Ritz_ I can’t rush up to him and say:
+‘Look here, you’re rich. I’d like to know you.’”
+“Do you suggest that I should do that to a similarly garbed female?”
+“Don’t be silly. You tread on her foot, or pick up her handkerchief, or
+something like that. If she thinks you want to know her she’s flattered,
+and will manage it for you somehow.”
+“You overrate my manly charms,” murmured Tommy.
+“On the other hand,” proceeded Tuppence, “my millionaire would probably
+run for his life! No--marriage is fraught with difficulties. Remains--to
+_make_ money!”
+“We’ve tried that, and failed,” Tommy reminded her.
+“We’ve tried all the orthodox ways, yes. But suppose we try the
+unorthodox. Tommy, let’s be adventurers!”
+“Certainly,” replied Tommy cheerfully. “How do we begin?”
+“That’s the difficulty. If we could make ourselves known, people might
+hire us to commit crimes for them.”
+“Delightful,” commented Tommy. “Especially coming from a clergyman’s
+daughter!”
+“The moral guilt,” Tuppence pointed out, “would be theirs--not mine. You
+must admit that there’s a difference between stealing a diamond necklace
+for yourself and being hired to steal it.”
+“There wouldn’t be the least difference if you were caught!”
+“Perhaps not. But I shouldn’t be caught. I’m so clever.”
+“Modesty always was your besetting sin,” remarked Tommy.
+“Don’t rag. Look here, Tommy, shall we really? Shall we form a business
+partnership?”
+“Form a company for the stealing of diamond necklaces?”
+“That was only an illustration. Let’s have a--what do you call it in
+book-keeping?”
+“Don’t know. Never did any.”
+“I have--but I always got mixed up, and used to put credit entries on
+the debit side, and vice versa--so they fired me out. Oh, I know--a
+joint venture! It struck me as such a romantic phrase to come across in
+the middle of musty old figures. It’s got an Elizabethan flavour about
+it--makes one think of galleons and doubloons. A joint venture!”
+“Trading under the name of the Young Adventurers, Ltd.? Is that your
+idea, Tuppence?”
+“It’s all very well to laugh, but I feel there might be something in
+it.”
+“How do you propose to get in touch with your would-be employers?”
+“Advertisement,” replied Tuppence promptly. “Have you got a bit of paper
+and a pencil? Men usually seem to have. Just like we have hairpins and
+powder-puffs.”
+Tommy handed over a rather shabby green notebook, and Tuppence began
+writing busily.
+��Shall we begin: ‘Young officer, twice wounded in the war----’”
+“Certainly not.”
+“Oh, very well, my dear boy. But I can assure you that that sort of
+thing might touch the heart of an elderly spinster, and she might adopt
+you, and then there would be no need for you to be a young adventurer at
+all.”
+“I don’t want to be adopted.”
+“I forgot you had a prejudice against it. I was only ragging you!
+The papers are full up to the brim with that type of thing. Now
+listen--how’s this? ‘Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do
+anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good.’ (We might as well make
+that clear from the start.) Then we might add: ‘No reasonable offer
+refused’--like flats and furniture.”
+“I should think any offer we get in answer to that would be a pretty
+_un_reasonable one!”
+“Tommy! You’re a genius! That’s ever so much more chic. ‘No unreasonable
+offer refused--if pay is good.’ How’s that?”
+“I shouldn’t mention pay again. It looks rather eager.”
+“It couldn’t look as eager as I feel! But perhaps you are right. Now
+I’ll read it straight through. ‘Two young adventurers for hire. Willing
+to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer
+refused.’ How would that strike you if you read it?”
+“It would strike me as either being a hoax, or else written by a
+lunatic.”
+“It’s not half so insane as a thing I read this morning beginning
+‘Petunia’ and signed ‘Best Boy.’” She tore out the leaf and handed it
+to Tommy. “There you are. _Times_, I think. Reply to Box so-and-so.
+I expect it will be about five shillings. Here’s half a crown for my
+share.”
+Tommy was holding the paper thoughtfully. His faced burned a deeper red.
+“Shall we really try it?” he said at last. “Shall we, Tuppence? Just for
+the fun of the thing?”
+“Tommy, you’re a sport! I knew you would be! Let’s drink to success.”
+She poured some cold dregs of tea into the two cups.
+“Here’s to our joint venture, and may it prosper!”
+“The Young Adventurers, Ltd.!” responded Tommy.
+They put down the cups and laughed rather uncertainly. Tuppence rose.
+“I must return to my palatial suite at the hostel.”
+“Perhaps it is time I strolled round to the _Ritz_,” agreed Tommy with a
+grin. “Where shall we meet? And when?”
+“Twelve o’clock to-morrow. Piccadilly Tube station. Will that suit you?”
+“My time is my own,” replied Mr. Beresford magnificently.
+“So long, then.”
+“Good-bye, old thing.”
+The two young people went off in opposite directions. Tuppence’s hostel
+was situated in what was charitably called Southern Belgravia. For
+reasons of economy she did not take a bus.
+She was half-way across St. James’s Park, when a man’s voice behind her
+made her start.
+“Excuse me,” it said. “But may I speak to you for a moment?”
+CHAPTER II. MR. WHITTINGTON’S OFFER
+TUPPENCE turned sharply, but the words hovering on the tip of her tongue
+remained unspoken, for the man’s appearance and manner did not bear out
+her first and most natural assumption. She hesitated. As if he read her
+thoughts, the man said quickly:
+“I can assure you I mean no disrespect.”
+Tuppence believed him. Although she disliked and distrusted him
+instinctively, she was inclined to acquit him of the particular motive
+which she had at first attributed to him. She looked him up and down. He
+was a big man, clean shaven, with a heavy jowl. His eyes were small and
+cunning, and shifted their glance under her direct gaze.
+“Well, what is it?” she asked.
+The man smiled.
+“I happened to overhear part of your conversation with the young
+gentleman in Lyons’.”
+“Well--what of it?”
+“Nothing--except that I think I may be of some use to you.”
+Another inference forced itself into Tuppence’s mind:
+“You followed me here?”
+“I took that liberty.”
+“And in what way do you think you could be of use to me?”
+The man took a card from his pocket and handed it to her with a bow.
+Tuppence took it and scrutinized it carefully. It bore the inscription,
+“Mr. Edward Whittington.” Below the name were the words “Esthonia
+Glassware Co.,” and the address of a city office. Mr. Whittington spoke
+again:
+“If you will call upon me to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock, I will
+lay the details of my proposition before you.”
+“At eleven o’clock?” said Tuppence doubtfully.
+“At eleven o’clock.”
+Tuppence made up her mind.
+“Very well. I’ll be there.”
+“Thank you. Good evening.”
+He raised his hat with a flourish, and walked away. Tuppence remained
+for some minutes gazing after him. Then she gave a curious movement of
+her shoulders, rather as a terrier shakes himself.
+“The adventures have begun,” she murmured to herself. “What does he want
+me to do, I wonder? There’s something about you, Mr. Whittington, that I
+don’t like at all. But, on the other hand, I’m not the least bit afraid
+of you. And as I’ve said before, and shall doubtless say again, little
+Tuppence can look after herself, thank you!”
+And with a short, sharp nod of her head she walked briskly onward. As a
+result of further meditations, however, she turned aside from the direct
+route and entered a post office. There she pondered for some moments,
+a telegraph form in her hand. The thought of a possible five shillings
+spent unnecessarily spurred her to action, and she decided to risk the
+waste of ninepence.
+Disdaining the spiky pen and thick, black treacle which a beneficent
+Government had provided, Tuppence drew out Tommy’s pencil which she had
+retained and wrote rapidly: “Don’t put in advertisement. Will explain
+to-morrow.” She addressed it to Tommy at his club, from which in one
+short month he would have to resign, unless a kindly fortune permitted
+him to renew his subscription.
+“It may catch him,” she murmured. “Anyway, it’s worth trying.”
+After handing it over the counter she set out briskly for home, stopping
+at a baker’s to buy three penny-worth of new buns.
+Later, in her tiny cubicle at the top of the house she munched buns and
+reflected on the future. What was the Esthonia Glassware Co., and what
+earthly need could it have for her services? A pleasurable thrill of
+excitement made Tuppence tingle. At any rate, the country vicarage had
+retreated into the background again. The morrow held possibilities.
+It was a long time before Tuppence went to sleep that night, and, when
+at length she did, she dreamed that Mr. Whittington had set her to
+washing up a pile of Esthonia Glassware, which bore an unaccountable
+resemblance to hospital plates!
+It wanted some five minutes to eleven when Tuppence reached the block
+of buildings in which the offices of the Esthonia Glassware Co. were
+situated. To arrive before the time would look over-eager. So Tuppence
+decided to walk to the end of the street and back again. She did so. On
+the stroke of eleven she plunged into the recesses of the building.
+The Esthonia Glassware Co. was on the top floor. There was a lift, but
+Tuppence chose to walk up.
+Slightly out of breath, she came to a halt outside the ground glass door
+with the legend painted across it “Esthonia Glassware Co.”
+Tuppence knocked. In response to a voice from within, she turned the
+handle and walked into a small rather dirty outer office.
+A middle-aged clerk got down from a high stool at a desk near the window
+and came towards her inquiringly.
+“I have an appointment with Mr. Whittington,” said Tuppence.
+“Will you come this way, please.” He crossed to a partition door with
+“Private” on it, knocked, then opened the door and stood aside to let
+her pass in.
+Mr. Whittington was seated behind a large desk covered with papers.
+Tuppence felt her previous judgment confirmed. There was something wrong
+about Mr. Whittington. The combination of his sleek prosperity and his
+shifty eye was not attractive.
+He looked up and nodded.
+“So you’ve turned up all right? That’s good. Sit down, will you?”
+Tuppence sat down on the chair facing him. She looked particularly small
+and demure this morning. She sat there meekly with downcast eyes whilst
+Mr. Whittington sorted and rustled amongst his papers. Finally he pushed
+them away, and leaned over the desk.
+“Now, my dear young lady, let us come to business.” His large face
+broadened into a smile. “You want work? Well, I have work to offer
+you. What should you say now to £100 down, and all expenses paid?” Mr.
+Whittington leaned back in his chair, and thrust his thumbs into the
+arm-holes of his waistcoat.
+Tuppence eyed him warily.
+“And the nature of the work?” she demanded.
+“Nominal--purely nominal. A pleasant trip, that is all.”
+“Where to?”
+Mr. Whittington smiled again.
+“Paris.”
+“Oh!” said Tuppence thoughtfully. To herself she said: “Of course,
+if father heard that he would have a fit! But somehow I don’t see Mr.
+Whittington in the role of the gay deceiver.”
+“Yes,” continued Whittington. “What could be more delightful? To put the
+clock back a few years--a very few, I am sure--and re-enter one of those
+charming _pensionnats de jeunes filles_ with which Paris abounds----”
+Tuppence interrupted him.
+“A _pensionnat?_”
+“Exactly. Madame Colombier’s in the Avenue de Neuilly.”
+Tuppence knew the name well. Nothing could have been more select. She
+had had several American friends there. She was more than ever puzzled.
+“You want me to go to Madame Colombier’s? For how long?”
+“That depends. Possibly three months.”
+“And that is all? There are no other conditions?”
+“None whatever. You would, of course, go in the character of my ward,
+and you would hold no communication with your friends. I should have
+to request absolute secrecy for the time being. By the way, you are
+English, are you not?”
+“Yes.”
+“Yet you speak with a slight American accent?”
+“My great pal in hospital was a little American girl. I dare say I
+picked it up from her. I can soon get out of it again.”
+“On the contrary, it might be simpler for you to pass as an American.
+Details about your past life in England might be more difficult to
+sustain. Yes, I think that would be decidedly better. Then----”
+“One moment, Mr. Whittington! You seem to be taking my consent for
+granted.”
+Whittington looked surprised.
+“Surely you are not thinking of refusing? I can assure you that Madame
+Colombier’s is a most high-class and orthodox establishment. And the
+terms are most liberal.”
+“Exactly,” said Tuppence. “That’s just it. The terms are almost too
+liberal, Mr. Whittington. I cannot see any way in which I can be worth
+that amount of money to you.”
+“No?” said Whittington softly. “Well, I will tell you. I could doubtless
+obtain some one else for very much less. What I am willing to pay for
+is a young lady with sufficient intelligence and presence of mind to
+sustain her part well, and also one who will have sufficient discretion
+not to ask too many questions.”
+Tuppence smiled a little. She felt that Whittington had scored.
+“There’s another thing. So far there has been no mention of Mr.
+Beresford. Where does he come in?”
+“Mr. Beresford?”
+“My partner,” said Tuppence with dignity. “You saw us together
+yesterday.”
+“Ah, yes. But I’m afraid we shan’t require his services.”
+“Then it’s off!” Tuppence rose. “It’s both or neither. Sorry--but that’s
+how it is. Good morning, Mr. Whittington.”
+“Wait a minute. Let us see if something can’t be managed. Sit down
+again, Miss----” He paused interrogatively.
+Tuppence’s conscience gave her a passing twinge as she remembered the
+archdeacon. She seized hurriedly on the first name that came into her
+head.
+“Jane Finn,” she said hastily; and then paused open-mouthed at the
+effect of those two simple words.
+All the geniality had faded out of Whittington’s face. It was purple
+with rage, and the veins stood out on the forehead. And behind it all
+there lurked a sort of incredulous dismay. He leaned forward and hissed
+savagely:
+“So that’s your little game, is it?”
+Tuppence, though utterly taken aback, nevertheless kept her head. She
+had not the faintest comprehension of his meaning, but she was naturally
+quick-witted, and felt it imperative to “keep her end up” as she phrased
+it.
+Whittington went on:
+“Been playing with me, have you, all the time, like a cat and mouse?
+Knew all the time what I wanted you for, but kept up the comedy. Is that
+it, eh?” He was cooling down. The red colour was ebbing out of his face.
+He eyed her keenly. “Who’s been blabbing? Rita?”
+Tuppence shook her head. She was doubtful as to how long she could
+sustain this illusion, but she realized the importance of not dragging
+an unknown Rita into it.
+“No,” she replied with perfect truth. “Rita knows nothing about me.”
+His eyes still bored into her like gimlets.
+“How much do you know?” he shot out.
+“Very little indeed,” answered Tuppence, and was pleased to note that
+Whittington’s uneasiness was augmented instead of allayed. To have
+boasted that she knew a lot might have raised doubts in his mind.
+“Anyway,” snarled Whittington, “you knew enough to come in here and
+plump out that name.”
+“It might be my own name,” Tuppence pointed out.
+“It’s likely, isn’t it, then there would be two girls with a name like
+that?”
+“Or I might just have hit upon it by chance,” continued Tuppence,
+intoxicated with the success of truthfulness.
+Mr. Whittington brought his fist down upon the desk with a bang.
+“Quit fooling! How much do you know? And how much do you want?”
+The last five words took Tuppence’s fancy mightily, especially after a
+meagre breakfast and a supper of buns the night before. Her present part
+was of the adventuress rather than the adventurous order, but she did
+not deny its possibilities. She sat up and smiled with the air of one
+who has the situation thoroughly well in hand.
+“My dear Mr. Whittington,” she said, “let us by all means lay our cards
+upon the table. And pray do not be so angry. You heard me say yesterday
+that I proposed to live by my wits. It seems to me that I have now
+proved I have some wits to live by! I admit I have knowledge of a
+certain name, but perhaps my knowledge ends there.”
+“Yes--and perhaps it doesn’t,” snarled Whittington.
+“You insist on misjudging me,” said Tuppence, and sighed gently.
+“As I said once before,” said Whittington angrily, “quit fooling, and
+come to the point. You can’t play the innocent with me. You know a great
+deal more than you’re willing to admit.”
+Tuppence paused a moment to admire her own ingenuity, and then said
+softly:
+“I shouldn’t like to contradict you, Mr. Whittington.”
+“So we come to the usual question--how much?”
+Tuppence was in a dilemma. So far she had fooled Whittington with
+complete success, but to mention a palpably impossible sum might awaken
+his suspicions. An idea flashed across her brain.
+“Suppose we say a little something down, and a fuller discussion of the
+matter later?”
+Whittington gave her an ugly glance.
+“Blackmail, eh?”
+Tuppence smiled sweetly.
+“Oh no! Shall we say payment of services in advance?”
+Whittington grunted.
+“You see,” explained Tuppence still sweetly, “I’m so very fond of
+money!”
+“You’re about the limit, that’s what you are,” growled Whittington, with
+a sort of unwilling admiration. “You took me in all right. Thought you
+were quite a meek little kid with just enough brains for my purpose.”
+“Life,” moralized Tuppence, “is full of surprises.”
+“All the same,” continued Whittington, “some one’s been talking. You say
+it isn’t Rita. Was it----? Oh, come in.”
+The clerk followed his discreet knock into the room, and laid a paper at
+his master’s elbow.
+“Telephone message just come for you, sir.”
+Whittington snatched it up and read it. A frown gathered on his brow.
+“That’ll do, Brown. You can go.”
+The clerk withdrew, closing the door behind him. Whittington turned to
+Tuppence.
+“Come to-morrow at the same time. I’m busy now. Here’s fifty to go on
+with.”
+He rapidly sorted out some notes, and pushed them across the table to
+Tuppence, then stood up, obviously impatient for her to go.
+The girl counted the notes in a businesslike manner, secured them in her
+handbag, and rose.
+“Good morning, Mr. Whittington,” she said politely. “At least, au
+revoir, I should say.”
+“Exactly. Au revoir!” Whittington looked almost genial again, a
+reversion that aroused in Tuppence a faint misgiving. “Au revoir, my
+clever and charming young lady.”
+Tuppence sped lightly down the stairs. A wild elation possessed her. A
+neighbouring clock showed the time to be five minutes to twelve.
+“Let’s give Tommy a surprise!” murmured Tuppence, and hailed a taxi.
+The cab drew up outside the tube station. Tommy was just within the
+entrance. His eyes opened to their fullest extent as he hurried forward
+to assist Tuppence to alight. She smiled at him affectionately, and
+remarked in a slightly affected voice:
+“Pay the thing, will you, old bean? I’ve got nothing smaller than a
+five-pound note!”
+CHAPTER III. A SET BACK
+THE moment was not quite so triumphant as it ought to have been. To
+begin with, the resources of Tommy’s pockets were somewhat limited. In
+the end the fare was managed, the lady recollecting a plebeian twopence,
+and the driver, still holding the varied assortment of coins in his
+hand, was prevailed upon to move on, which he did after one last hoarse
+demand as to what the gentleman thought he was giving him?
+“I think you’ve given him too much, Tommy,” said Tuppence innocently. “I
+fancy he wants to give some of it back.”
+It was possibly this remark which induced the driver to move away.
+“Well,” said Mr. Beresford, at length able to relieve his feelings,
+“what the--dickens, did you want to take a taxi for?”
+“I was afraid I might be late and keep you waiting,” said Tuppence
+gently.
+“Afraid--you--might--be--late! Oh, Lord, I give it up!” said Mr.
+Beresford.
+“And really and truly,” continued Tuppence, opening her eyes very wide,
+“I haven’t got anything smaller than a five-pound note.”
+“You did that part of it very well, old bean, but all the same the
+fellow wasn’t taken in--not for a moment!”
+“No,” said Tuppence thoughtfully, “he didn’t believe it. That’s the
+curious part about speaking the truth. No one does believe it. I found
+that out this morning. Now let’s go to lunch. How about the _Savoy?_”
+Tommy grinned.
+“How about the _Ritz?_”
+“On second thoughts, I prefer the _Piccadilly_. It’s nearer. We shan’t
+have to take another taxi. Come along.”
+“Is this a new brand of humour? Or is your brain really unhinged?”
+inquired Tommy.
+“Your last supposition is the correct one. I have come into money, and
+the shock has been too much for me! For that particular form of mental
+trouble an eminent physician recommends unlimited _Hors d’œuvre_,
+Lobster _à l’américane_, Chicken Newberg, and Pêche Melba! Let’s go
+and get them!”
+“Tuppence, old girl, what has really come over you?”
+“Oh, unbelieving one!” Tuppence wrenched open her bag. “Look here, and
+here, and here!”
+“Great Jehosaphat! My dear girl, don’t wave Fishers aloft like that!”
+“They’re not Fishers. They’re five times better than Fishers, and this
+one’s ten times better!”
+Tommy groaned.
+“I must have been drinking unawares! Am I dreaming, Tuppence, or do I
+really behold a large quantity of five-pound notes being waved about in
+a dangerous fashion?”
+“Even so, O King! _Now_, will you come and have lunch?”
+“I’ll come anywhere. But what have you been doing? Holding up a bank?”
+“All in good time. What an awful place Piccadilly Circus is. There’s a
+huge bus bearing down on us. It would be too terrible if they killed the
+five-pound notes!”
+“Grill room?” inquired Tommy, as they reached the opposite pavement in
+safety.
+“The other’s more expensive,” demurred Tuppence.
+“That’s mere wicked wanton extravagance. Come on below.”
+“Are you sure I can get all the things I want there?”
+“That extremely unwholesome menu you were outlining just now? Of course
+you can--or as much as is good for you, anyway.”
+“And now tell me,” said Tommy, unable to restrain his pent-up curiosity
+any longer, as they sat in state surrounded by the many _hors d’œuvre_
+of Tuppence’s dreams.
+Miss Cowley told him.
+“And the curious part of it is,” she ended, “that I really did invent
+the name of Jane Finn! I didn’t want to give my own because of poor
+father--in case I should get mixed up in anything shady.”
+“Perhaps that’s so,” said Tommy slowly. “But you didn’t invent it.”
+“What?”
+“No. _I_ told it to you. Don’t you remember, I said yesterday I’d
+overheard two people talking about a female called Jane Finn? That’s
+what brought the name into your mind so pat.”
+“So you did. I remember now. How extraordinary----” Tuppence tailed off
+into silence. Suddenly she aroused herself. “Tommy!”
+“Yes?”
+“What were they like, the two men you passed?”
+Tommy frowned in an effort at remembrance.
+“One was a big fat sort of chap. Clean shaven, I think--and dark.”
+“That’s him,” cried Tuppence, in an ungrammatical squeal. “That’s
+Whittington! What was the other man like?”
+“I can’t remember. I didn’t notice him particularly. It was really the
+outlandish name that caught my attention.”
+“And people say that coincidences don’t happen!” Tuppence tackled her
+Pêche Melba happily.
+But Tommy had become serious.
+“Look here, Tuppence, old girl, what is this going to lead to?”
+“More money,” replied his companion.
+“I know that. You’ve only got one idea in your head. What I mean is,
+what about the next step? How are you going to keep the game up?”
+“Oh!” Tuppence laid down her spoon. “You’re right, Tommy, it is a bit of
+a poser.”
+“After all, you know, you can’t bluff him forever. You’re sure to slip
+up sooner or later. And, anyway, I’m not at all sure that it isn’t
+actionable--blackmail, you know.”
+“Nonsense. Blackmail is saying you’ll tell unless you are given
+money. Now, there’s nothing I could tell, because I don’t really know
+anything.”
+“Hm,” said Tommy doubtfully. “Well, anyway, what _are_ we going to do?
+Whittington was in a hurry to get rid of you this morning, but next time
+he’ll want to know something more before he parts with his money. He’ll
+want to know how much _you_ know, and where you got your information
+from, and a lot of other things that you can’t cope with. What are you
+going to do about it?”
+Tuppence frowned severely.
+“We must think. Order some Turkish coffee, Tommy. Stimulating to the
+brain. Oh, dear, what a lot I have eaten!”
+“You have made rather a hog of yourself! So have I for that matter, but
+I flatter myself that my choice of dishes was more judicious than yours.
+Two coffees.” (This was to the waiter.) “One Turkish, one French.”
+Tuppence sipped her coffee with a deeply reflective air, and snubbed
+Tommy when he spoke to her.
+“Be quiet. I’m thinking.”
+“Shades of Pelmanism!” said Tommy, and relapsed into silence.
+“There!” said Tuppence at last. “I’ve got a plan. Obviously what we’ve
+got to do is to find out more about it all.”
+Tommy applauded.
+“Don’t jeer. We can only find out through Whittington. We must discover
+where he lives, what he does--sleuth him, in fact! Now I can’t do it,
+because he knows me, but he only saw you for a minute or two in Lyons’.
+He’s not likely to recognize you. After all, one young man is much like
+another.”
+“I repudiate that remark utterly. I’m sure my pleasing features and
+distinguished appearance would single me out from any crowd.”
+“My plan is this,” Tuppence went on calmly, “I’ll go alone to-morrow.
+I’ll put him off again like I did to-day. It doesn’t matter if I don’t
+get any more money at once. Fifty pounds ought to last us a few days.”
+“Or even longer!”
+“You’ll hang about outside. When I come out I shan’t speak to you in
+case he’s watching. But I’ll take up my stand somewhere near, and when
+he comes out of the building I’ll drop a handkerchief or something, and
+off you go!”
+“Off I go where?”
+“Follow him, of course, silly! What do you think of the idea?”
+“Sort of thing one reads about in books. I somehow feel that in real
+life one will feel a bit of an ass standing in the street for hours with
+nothing to do. People will wonder what I’m up to.”
+“Not in the city. Every one’s in such a hurry. Probably no one will even
+notice you at all.”
+“That’s the second time you’ve made that sort of remark. Never mind, I
+forgive you. Anyway, it will be rather a lark. What are you doing this
+afternoon?”
+“Well,” said Tuppence meditatively. “I _had_ thought of hats! Or perhaps
+silk stockings! Or perhaps----”
+“Hold hard,” admonished Tommy. “There’s a limit to fifty pounds! But
+let’s do dinner and a show to-night at all events.”
+“Rather.”
+The day passed pleasantly. The evening even more so. Two of the
+five-pound notes were now irretrievably dead.
+They met by arrangement the following morning and proceeded citywards.
+Tommy remained on the opposite side of the road while Tuppence plunged
+into the building.
+Tommy strolled slowly down to the end of the street, then back again.
+Just as he came abreast of the building, Tuppence darted across the
+road.
+“Tommy!”
+“Yes. What’s up?”
+“The place is shut. I can’t make anyone hear.”
+“That’s odd.”
+“Isn’t it? Come up with me, and let’s try again.”
+Tommy followed her. As they passed the third floor landing a young clerk
+came out of an office. He hesitated a moment, then addressed himself to
+Tuppence.
+“Were you wanting the Esthonia Glassware?”
+“Yes, please.”
+“It’s closed down. Since yesterday afternoon. Company being wound up,
+they say. Not that I’ve ever heard of it myself. But anyway the office
+is to let.”
+“Th--thank you,” faltered Tuppence. “I suppose you don’t know Mr.
+Whittington’s address?”
+“Afraid I don’t. They left rather suddenly.”
+“Thank you very much,” said Tommy. “Come on, Tuppence.”
+They descended to the street again where they gazed at one another
+blankly.
+“That’s torn it,” said Tommy at length.
+“And I never suspected it,” wailed Tuppence.
+“Cheer up, old thing, it can’t be helped.”
+“Can’t it, though!” Tuppence’s little chin shot out defiantly. “Do you
+think this is the end? If so, you’re wrong. It’s just the beginning!”
+“The beginning of what?”
+“Of our adventure! Tommy, don’t you see, if they are scared enough to
+run away like this, it shows that there must be a lot in this Jane Finn
+business! Well, we’ll get to the bottom of it. We’ll run them down!
+We’ll be sleuths in earnest!”
+“Yes, but there’s no one left to sleuth.”
+“No, that’s why we’ll have to start all over again. Lend me that bit of
+pencil. Thanks. Wait a minute--don’t interrupt. There!” Tuppence handed
+back the pencil, and surveyed the piece of paper on which she had
+written with a satisfied eye:
+“What’s that?”
+“Advertisement.”
+“You’re not going to put that thing in after all?”
+“No, it’s a different one.” She handed him the slip of paper.
+Tommy read the words on it aloud:
+“WANTED, any information respecting Jane Finn. Apply Y. A.”
+CHAPTER IV. WHO IS JANE FINN?
+THE next day passed slowly. It was necessary to curtail expenditure.
+Carefully husbanded, forty pounds will last a long time. Luckily the
+weather was fine, and “walking is cheap,” dictated Tuppence. An outlying
+picture house provided them with recreation for the evening.
+The day of disillusionment had been a Wednesday. On Thursday the
+advertisement had duly appeared. On Friday letters might be expected to
+arrive at Tommy’s rooms.
+He had been bound by an honourable promise not to open any such letters
+if they did arrive, but to repair to the National Gallery, where his
+colleague would meet him at ten o’clock.
+Tuppence was first at the rendezvous. She ensconced herself on a red
+velvet seat, and gazed at the Turners with unseeing eyes until she saw
+the familiar figure enter the room.
+“Well?”
+“Well,” returned Mr. Beresford provokingly. “Which is your favourite
+picture?”
+“Don’t be a wretch. Aren’t there _any_ answers?”
+Tommy shook his head with a deep and somewhat overacted melancholy.
+“I didn’t want to disappoint you, old thing, by telling you right off.
+It’s too bad. Good money wasted.” He sighed. “Still, there it is. The
+advertisement has appeared, and--there are only two answers!”
+“Tommy, you devil!” almost screamed Tuppence. “Give them to me. How
+could you be so mean!”
+“Your language, Tuppence, your language! They’re very particular at the
+National Gallery. Government show, you know. And do remember, as I have
+pointed out to you before, that as a clergyman’s daughter----”
+“I ought to be on the stage!” finished Tuppence with a snap.
+“That is not what I intended to say. But if you are sure that you have
+enjoyed to the full the reaction of joy after despair with which I have
+kindly provided you free of charge, let us get down to our mail, as the
+saying goes.”
+Tuppence snatched the two precious envelopes from him unceremoniously,
+and scrutinized them carefully.
+“Thick paper, this one. It looks rich. We’ll keep it to the last and
+open the other first.”
+“Right you are. One, two, three, go!”
+Tuppence’s little thumb ripped open the envelope, and she extracted the
+contents.
+“DEAR SIR,
+“Referring to your advertisement in this morning’s paper, I may be able
+to be of some use to you. Perhaps you could call and see me at the above
+address at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning.
+“Yours truly,
+“A. CARTER.”
+“27 Carshalton Gardens,” said Tuppence, referring to the address.
+“That’s Gloucester Road way. Plenty of time to get there if we tube.”
+“The following,” said Tommy, “is the plan of campaign. It is my turn to
+assume the offensive. Ushered into the presence of Mr. Carter, he and I
+wish each other good morning as is customary. He then says: ‘Please take
+a seat, Mr.--er?’ To which I reply promptly and significantly: ‘Edward
+Whittington!’ whereupon Mr. Carter turns purple in the face and gasps
+out: ‘How much?’ Pocketing the usual fee of fifty pounds, I rejoin you
+in the road outside, and we proceed to the next address and repeat the
+performance.”
+“Don’t be absurd, Tommy. Now for the other letter. Oh, this is from the
+_Ritz!_”
+“A hundred pounds instead of fifty!”
+“I’ll read it:
+“DEAR SIR,
+“Re your advertisement, I should be glad if you would call round
+somewhere about lunch-time.
+“Yours truly,
+“JULIUS P. HERSHEIMMER.”
+“Ha!” said Tommy. “Do I smell a Boche? Or only an American millionaire
+of unfortunate ancestry? At all events we’ll call at lunch-time. It’s a
+good time--frequently leads to free food for two.”
+Tuppence nodded assent.
+“Now for Carter. We’ll have to hurry.”
+Carshalton Terrace proved to be an unimpeachable row of what Tuppence
+called “ladylike looking houses.” They rang the bell at No. 27, and a
+neat maid answered the door. She looked so respectable that Tuppence’s
+heart sank. Upon Tommy’s request for Mr. Carter, she showed them into
+a small study on the ground floor where she left them. Hardly a minute
+elapsed, however, before the door opened, and a tall man with a lean
+hawklike face and a tired manner entered the room.
+“Mr. Y. A.?” he said, and smiled. His smile was distinctly attractive.
+“Do sit down, both of you.”
+They obeyed. He himself took a chair opposite to Tuppence and smiled at
+her encouragingly. There was something in the quality of his smile that
+made the girl’s usual readiness desert her.
+As he did not seem inclined to open the conversation, Tuppence was
+forced to begin.
+“We wanted to know--that is, would you be so kind as to tell us anything
+you know about Jane Finn?”
+“Jane Finn? Ah!” Mr. Carter appeared to reflect. “Well, the question is,
+what do _you_ know about her?”
+Tuppence drew herself up.
+“I don’t see that that’s got anything to do with it.”
+“No? But it has, you know, really it has.” He smiled again in his tired
+way, and continued reflectively. “So that brings us down to it again.
+What do _you_ know about Jane Finn?
+“Come now,” he continued, as Tuppence remained silent. “You must know
+_something_ to have advertised as you did?” He leaned forward a little,
+his weary voice held a hint of persuasiveness. “Suppose you tell me....”
+There was something very magnetic about Mr. Carter’s personality.
+Tuppence seemed to shake herself free of it with an effort, as she said:
+“We couldn’t do that, could we, Tommy?”
+But to her surprise, her companion did not back her up. His eyes were
+fixed on Mr. Carter, and his tone when he spoke held an unusual note of
+deference.
+“I dare say the little we know won’t be any good to you, sir. But such
+as it is, you’re welcome to it.”
+“Tommy!” cried out Tuppence in surprise.
+Mr. Carter slewed round in his chair. His eyes asked a question.
+Tommy nodded.
+“Yes, sir, I recognized you at once. Saw you in France when I was with
+the Intelligence. As soon as you came into the room, I knew----”
+Mr. Carter held up his hand.
+“No names, please. I’m known as Mr. Carter here. It’s my cousin’s house,
+by the way. She’s willing to lend it to me sometimes when it’s a case of
+working on strictly unofficial lines. Well, now”--he looked from one to
+the other--“who’s going to tell me the story?”
+“Fire ahead, Tuppence,” directed Tommy. “It’s your yarn.”
+“Yes, little lady, out with it.”
+And obediently Tuppence did out with it, telling the whole story from
+the forming of the Young Adventurers, Ltd., downwards.
+Mr. Carter listened in silence with a resumption of his tired manner.
+Now and then he passed his hand across his lips as though to hide a
+smile. When she had finished he nodded gravely.
+“Not much. But suggestive. Quite suggestive. If you’ll excuse my saying
+so, you’re a curious young couple. I don’t know--you might succeed where
+others have failed ... I believe in luck, you know--always have....”
+He paused a moment, and then went on.
+“Well, how about it? You’re out for adventure. How would you like
+to work for me? All quite unofficial, you know. Expenses paid, and a
+moderate screw?”
+Tuppence gazed at him, her lips parted, her eyes growing wider and
+wider.
+“What should we have to do?” she breathed.
+Mr. Carter smiled.
+“Just go on with what you’re doing now. _Find Jane Finn_.”
+“Yes, but--who _is_ Jane Finn?”
+Mr. Carter nodded gravely.
+“Yes, you’re entitled to know that, I think.”
+He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, brought the tips of his
+fingers together, and began in a low monotone:
+“Secret diplomacy (which, by the way, is nearly always bad policy!) does
+not concern you. It will be sufficient to say that in the early days of
+1915 a certain document came into being. It was the draft of a secret
+agreement--treaty--call it what you like. It was drawn up ready for
+signature by the various representatives, and drawn up in America--at
+that time a neutral country. It was dispatched to England by a special
+messenger selected for that purpose, a young fellow called Danvers. It
+was hoped that the whole affair had been kept so secret that nothing
+would have leaked out. That kind of hope is usually disappointed.
+Somebody always talks!
+“Danvers sailed for England on the _Lusitania_. He carried the precious
+papers in an oilskin packet which he wore next his skin. It was on that
+particular voyage that the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed and sunk. Danvers
+was among the list of those missing. Eventually his body was washed
+ashore, and identified beyond any possible doubt. But the oilskin packet
+was missing!
+“The question was, had it been taken from him, or had he himself
+passed it on into another’s keeping? There were a few incidents that
+strengthened the possibility of the latter theory. After the torpedo
+struck the ship, in the few moments during the launching of the boats,
+Danvers was seen speaking to a young American girl. No one actually
+saw him pass anything to her, but he might have done so. It seems to me
+quite likely that he entrusted the papers to this girl, believing that
+she, as a woman, had a greater chance of bringing them safely to shore.
+“But if so, where was the girl, and what had she done with the papers?
+By later advice from America it seemed likely that Danvers had been
+closely shadowed on the way over. Was this girl in league with his
+enemies? Or had she, in her turn, been shadowed and either tricked or
+forced into handing over the precious packet?
+“We set to work to trace her out. It proved unexpectedly difficult.
+Her name was Jane Finn, and it duly appeared among the list of the
+survivors, but the girl herself seemed to have vanished completely.
+Inquiries into her antecedents did little to help us. She was an orphan,
+and had been what we should call over here a pupil teacher in a small
+school out West. Her passport had been made out for Paris, where she
+was going to join the staff of a hospital. She had offered her services
+voluntarily, and after some correspondence they had been accepted.
+Having seen her name in the list of the saved from the _Lusitania_, the
+staff of the hospital were naturally very surprised at her not arriving
+to take up her billet, and at not hearing from her in any way.
+“Well, every effort was made to trace the young lady--but all in vain.
+We tracked her across Ireland, but nothing could be heard of her after
+she set foot in England. No use was made of the draft treaty--as might
+very easily have been done--and we therefore came to the conclusion that
+Danvers had, after all, destroyed it. The war entered on another phase,
+the diplomatic aspect changed accordingly, and the treaty was never
+redrafted. Rumours as to its existence were emphatically denied. The
+disappearance of Jane Finn was forgotten and the whole affair was lost
+in oblivion.”
+Mr. Carter paused, and Tuppence broke in impatiently:
+“But why has it all cropped up again? The war’s over.”
+A hint of alertness came into Mr. Carter’s manner.
+“Because it seems that the papers were not destroyed after all, and that
+they might be resurrected to-day with a new and deadly significance.”
+Tuppence stared. Mr. Carter nodded.
+“Yes, five years ago, that draft treaty was a weapon in our hands;
+to-day it is a weapon against us. It was a gigantic blunder. If its
+terms were made public, it would mean disaster.... It might possibly
+bring about another war--not with Germany this time! That is an extreme
+possibility, and I do not believe in its likelihood myself, but that
+document undoubtedly implicates a number of our statesmen whom we cannot
+afford to have discredited in any way at the present moment. As a party
+cry for Labour it would be irresistible, and a Labour Government at this
+juncture would, in my opinion, be a grave disability for British trade,
+but that is a mere nothing to the _real_ danger.”
+He paused, and then said quietly:
+“You may perhaps have heard or read that there is Bolshevist influence
+at work behind the present Labour unrest?”
+Tuppence nodded.
+“That is the truth. Bolshevist gold is pouring into this country for the
+specific purpose of procuring a Revolution. And there is a certain man,
+a man whose real name is unknown to us, who is working in the dark for
+his own ends. The Bolshevists are behind the Labour unrest--but this
+man is _behind the Bolshevists_. Who is he? We do not know. He is always
+spoken of by the unassuming title of ‘Mr. Brown.’ But one thing is
+certain, he is the master criminal of this age. He controls a marvellous
+organization. Most of the Peace propaganda during the war was originated
+and financed by him. His spies are everywhere.”
+“A naturalized German?” asked Tommy.
+“On the contrary, I have every reason to believe he is an Englishman. He
+was pro-German, as he would have been pro-Boer. What he seeks to attain
+we do not know--probably supreme power for himself, of a kind unique in
+history. We have no clue as to his real personality. It is reported that
+even his own followers are ignorant of it. Where we have come across his
+tracks, he has always played a secondary part. Somebody else assumes
+the chief rôle. But afterwards we always find that there has been some
+nonentity, a servant or a clerk, who has remained in the background
+unnoticed, and that the elusive Mr. Brown has escaped us once more.”
+“Oh!” Tuppence jumped. “I wonder----”
+“Yes?”
+“I remember in Mr. Whittington’s office. The clerk--he called him Brown.
+You don’t think----”
+Carter nodded thoughtfully.
+“Very likely. A curious point is that the name is usually mentioned. An
+idiosyncrasy of genius. Can you describe him at all?”
+“I really didn’t notice. He was quite ordinary--just like anyone else.”
+Mr. Carter sighed in his tired manner.
+“That is the invariable description of Mr. Brown! Brought a telephone
+message to the man Whittington, did he? Notice a telephone in the outer
+office?”
+Tuppence thought.
+“No, I don’t think I did.”
+“Exactly. That ‘message’ was Mr. Brown’s way of giving an order to his
+subordinate. He overheard the whole conversation of course. Was it after
+that that Whittington handed you over the money, and told you to come
+the following day?”
+Tuppence nodded.
+“Yes, undoubtedly the hand of Mr. Brown!” Mr. Carter paused. “Well,
+there it is, you see what you are pitting yourselves against? Possibly
+the finest criminal brain of the age. I don’t quite like it, you know.
+You’re such young things, both of you. I shouldn’t like anything to
+happen to you.”
+“It won’t,” Tuppence assured him positively.
+“I’ll look after her, sir,” said Tommy.
+“And _I_‘ll look after _you_,” retorted Tuppence, resenting the manly
+assertion.
+“Well, then, look after each other,” said Mr. Carter, smiling. “Now
+let’s get back to business. There’s something mysterious about this
+draft treaty that we haven’t fathomed yet. We’ve been threatened with
+it--in plain and unmistakable terms. The Revolutionary element as good
+as declare that it’s in their hands, and that they intend to produce it
+at a given moment. On the other hand, they are clearly at fault about
+many of its provisions. The Government consider it as mere bluff
+on their part, and, rightly or wrongly, have stuck to the policy of
+absolute denial. I’m not so sure. There have been hints, indiscreet
+allusions, that seem to indicate that the menace is a real one. The
+position is much as though they had got hold of an incriminating
+document, but couldn’t read it because it was in cipher--but we know
+that the draft treaty wasn’t in cipher--couldn’t be in the nature of
+things--so that won’t wash. But there’s _something_. Of course, Jane
+Finn may be dead for all we know--but I don’t think so. The curious
+thing is that _they’re trying to get information about the girl from
+us_.”
+“What?”
+“Yes. One or two little things have cropped up. And your story, little
+lady, confirms my idea. They know we’re looking for Jane Finn. Well,
+they’ll produce a Jane Finn of their own--say at a _pensionnat_ in
+Paris.” Tuppence gasped, and Mr. Carter smiled. “No one knows in the
+least what she looks like, so that’s all right. She’s primed with a
+trumped-up tale, and her real business is to get as much information as
+possible out of us. See the idea?”
+“Then you think”--Tuppence paused to grasp the supposition fully--“that
+it _was_ as Jane Finn that they wanted me to go to Paris?”
+Mr. Carter smiled more wearily than ever.
+“I believe in coincidences, you know,” he said.
+CHAPTER V. MR. JULIUS P. HERSHEIMMER
+“WELL,” said Tuppence, recovering herself, “it really seems as though it
+were meant to be.”
+Carter nodded.
+“I know what you mean. I’m superstitious myself. Luck, and all that sort
+of thing. Fate seems to have chosen you out to be mixed up in this.”
+Tommy indulged in a chuckle.
+“My word! I don’t wonder Whittington got the wind up when Tuppence
+plumped out that name! I should have myself. But look here, sir, we’re
+taking up an awful lot of your time. Have you any tips to give us before
+we clear out?”
+“I think not. My experts, working in stereotyped ways, have failed.
+You will bring imagination and an open mind to the task. Don’t be
+discouraged if that too does not succeed. For one thing there is a
+likelihood of the pace being forced.”
+Tuppence frowned uncomprehendingly.
+“When you had that interview with Whittington, they had time before
+them. I have information that the big _coup_ was planned for early in
+the new year. But the Government is contemplating legislative action
+which will deal effectually with the strike menace. They’ll get wind of
+it soon, if they haven’t already, and it’s possible that that may bring
+things to a head. I hope it will myself. The less time they have to
+mature their plans the better. I’m just warning you that you haven’t
+much time before you, and that you needn’t be cast down if you fail.
+It’s not an easy proposition anyway. That’s all.”
+Tuppence rose.
+“I think we ought to be businesslike. What exactly can we count upon you
+for, Mr. Carter?” Mr. Carter’s lips twitched slightly, but he replied
+succinctly: “Funds within reason, detailed information on any point,
+and _no official recognition_. I mean that if you get yourselves into
+trouble with the police, I can’t officially help you out of it. You’re
+on your own.”
+Tuppence nodded sagely.
+“I quite understand that. I’ll write out a list of the things I want to
+know when I’ve had time to think. Now--about money----”
+“Yes, Miss Tuppence. Do you want to say how much?”
+“Not exactly. We’ve got plenty to go with for the present, but when we
+want more----”
+“It will be waiting for you.”
+“Yes, but--I’m sure I don’t want to be rude about the Government if
+you’ve got anything to do with it, but you know one really has the devil
+of a time getting anything out of it! And if we have to fill up a blue
+form and send it in, and then, after three months, they send us a green
+one, and so on--well, that won’t be much use, will it?”
+Mr. Carter laughed outright.
+“Don’t worry, Miss Tuppence. You will send a personal demand to me here,
+and the money, in notes, shall be sent by return of post. As to salary,
+shall we say at the rate of three hundred a year? And an equal sum for
+Mr. Beresford, of course.”
+Tuppence beamed upon him.
+“How lovely. You are kind. I do love money! I’ll keep beautiful accounts
+of our expenses all debit and credit, and the balance on the right side,
+and red line drawn sideways with the totals the same at the bottom. I
+really know how to do it when I think.”
+“I’m sure you do. Well, good-bye, and good luck to you both.”
+He shook hands with them, and in another minute they were descending the
+steps of 27 Carshalton Terrace with their heads in a whirl.
+“Tommy! Tell me at once, who is ‘Mr. Carter’?”
+Tommy murmured a name in her ear.
+“Oh!” said Tuppence, impressed.
+“And I can tell you, old bean, he’s IT!”
+“Oh!” said Tuppence again. Then she added reflectively,
+“I like him, don’t you? He looks so awfully tired and bored, and yet you
+feel that underneath he’s just like steel, all keen and flashing. Oh!”
+She gave a skip. “Pinch me, Tommy, do pinch me. I can’t believe it’s
+real!”
+Mr. Beresford obliged.
+“Ow! That’s enough! Yes, we’re not dreaming. We’ve got a job!”
+“And what a job! The joint venture has really begun.”
+“It’s more respectable than I thought it would be,” said Tuppence
+thoughtfully.
+“Luckily I haven’t got your craving for crime! What time is it? Let’s
+have lunch--oh!”
+The same thought sprang to the minds of each. Tommy voiced it first.
+“Julius P. Hersheimmer!”
+“We never told Mr. Carter about hearing from him.”
+“Well, there wasn’t much to tell--not till we’ve seen him. Come on, we’d
+better take a taxi.”
+“Now who’s being extravagant?”
+“All expenses paid, remember. Hop in.”
+“At any rate, we shall make a better effect arriving this way,” said
+Tuppence, leaning back luxuriously. “I’m sure blackmailers never arrive
+in buses!”
+“We’ve ceased being blackmailers,” Tommy pointed out.
+“I’m not sure I have,” said Tuppence darkly.
+On inquiring for Mr. Hersheimmer, they were at once taken up to his
+suite. An impatient voice cried “Come in” in answer to the page-boy’s
+knock, and the lad stood aside to let them pass in.
+Mr. Julius P. Hersheimmer was a great deal younger than either Tommy or
+Tuppence had pictured him. The girl put him down as thirty-five. He
+was of middle height, and squarely built to match his jaw. His face was
+pugnacious but pleasant. No one could have mistaken him for anything but
+an American, though he spoke with very little accent.
+“Get my note? Sit down and tell me right away all you know about my
+cousin.”
+“Your cousin?”
+“Sure thing. Jane Finn.”
+“Is she your cousin?”
+“My father and her mother were brother and sister,” explained Mr.
+Hersheimmer meticulously.
+“Oh!” cried Tuppence. “Then you know where she is?”
+“No!” Mr. Hersheimmer brought down his fist with a bang on the table.
+“I’m darned if I do! Don’t you?”
+“We advertised to receive information, not to give it,” said Tuppence
+severely.
+“I guess I know that. I can read. But I thought maybe it was her back
+history you were after, and that you’d know where she was now?”
+“Well, we wouldn’t mind hearing her back history,” said Tuppence
+guardedly.
+But Mr. Hersheimmer seemed to grow suddenly suspicious.
+“See here,” he declared. “This isn’t Sicily! No demanding ransom or
+threatening to crop her ears if I refuse. These are the British Isles,
+so quit the funny business, or I’ll just sing out for that beautiful big
+British policeman I see out there in Piccadilly.”
+Tommy hastened to explain.
+“We haven’t kidnapped your cousin. On the contrary, we’re trying to find
+her. We’re employed to do so.”
+Mr. Hersheimmer leant back in his chair.
+“Put me wise,” he said succinctly.
+Tommy fell in with this demand in so far as he gave him a guarded
+version of the disappearance of Jane Finn, and of the possibility of her
+having been mixed up unawares in “some political show.” He alluded to
+Tuppence and himself as “private inquiry agents” commissioned to find
+her, and added that they would therefore be glad of any details Mr.
+Hersheimmer could give them.
+That gentleman nodded approval.
+“I guess that’s all right. I was just a mite hasty. But London gets my
+goat! I only know little old New York. Just trot out your questions and
+I’ll answer.”
+For the moment this paralysed the Young Adventurers, but Tuppence,
+recovering herself, plunged boldly into the breach with a reminiscence
+culled from detective fiction.
+“When did you last see the dece--your cousin, I mean?”
+“Never seen her,” responded Mr. Hersheimmer.
+“What?” demanded Tommy, astonished.
+Hersheimmer turned to him.
+“No, sir. As I said before, my father and her mother were brother and
+sister, just as you might be”--Tommy did not correct this view of their
+relationship--“but they didn’t always get on together. And when my aunt
+made up her mind to marry Amos Finn, who was a poor school teacher out
+West, my father was just mad! Said if he made his pile, as he seemed
+in a fair way to do, she’d never see a cent of it. Well, the upshot was
+that Aunt Jane went out West and we never heard from her again.
+“The old man _did_ pile it up. He went into oil, and he went into steel,
+and he played a bit with railroads, and I can tell you he made Wall
+Street sit up!” He paused. “Then he died--last fall--and I got the
+dollars. Well, would you believe it, my conscience got busy! Kept
+knocking me up and saying: What about your Aunt Jane, way out West? It
+worried me some. You see, I figured it out that Amos Finn would never
+make good. He wasn’t the sort. End of it was, I hired a man to hunt her
+down. Result, she was dead, and Amos Finn was dead, but they’d left a
+daughter--Jane--who’d been torpedoed in the _Lusitania_ on her way to
+Paris. She was saved all right, but they didn’t seem able to hear of her
+over this side. I guessed they weren’t hustling any, so I thought I’d
+come along over, and speed things up. I phoned Scotland Yard and the
+Admiralty first thing. The Admiralty rather choked me off, but Scotland
+Yard were very civil--said they would make inquiries, even sent a man
+round this morning to get her photograph. I’m off to Paris to-morrow,
+just to see what the Prefecture is doing. I guess if I go to and fro
+hustling them, they ought to get busy!”
+The energy of Mr. Hersheimmer was tremendous. They bowed before it.
+“But say now,” he ended, “you’re not after her for anything? Contempt of
+court, or something British? A proud-spirited young American girl might
+find your rules and regulations in war time rather irksome, and get up
+against it. If that’s the case, and there’s such a thing as graft in
+this country, I’ll buy her off.”
+Tuppence reassured him.
+“That’s good. Then we can work together. What about some lunch? Shall we
+have it up here, or go down to the restaurant?”
+Tuppence expressed a preference for the latter, and Julius bowed to her
+decision.
+Oysters had just given place to Sole Colbert when a card was brought to
+Hersheimmer.
+“Inspector Japp, C.I.D. Scotland Yard again. Another man this time. What
+does he expect I can tell him that I didn’t tell the first chap? I hope
+they haven’t lost that photograph. That Western photographer’s place was
+burned down and all his negatives destroyed--this is the only copy in
+existence. I got it from the principal of the college there.”
+An unformulated dread swept over Tuppence.
+“You--you don’t know the name of the man who came this morning?”
+“Yes, I do. No, I don’t. Half a second. It was on his card. Oh, I know!
+Inspector Brown. Quiet, unassuming sort of chap.”
+CHAPTER VI. A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
+A veil might with profit be drawn over the events of the next half-hour.
+Suffice it to say that no such person as “Inspector Brown” was known to
+Scotland Yard. The photograph of Jane Finn, which would have been of
+the utmost value to the police in tracing her, was lost beyond recovery.
+Once again “Mr. Brown” had triumphed.
+The immediate result of this set-back was to effect a _rapprochement_
+between Julius Hersheimmer and the Young Adventurers. All barriers went
+down with a crash, and Tommy and Tuppence felt they had known the young
+American all their lives. They abandoned the discreet reticence of
+“private inquiry agents,” and revealed to him the whole history of
+the joint venture, whereat the young man declared himself “tickled to
+death.”
+He turned to Tuppence at the close of the narration.
+“I’ve always had a kind of idea that English girls were just a mite
+moss-grown. Old-fashioned and sweet, you know, but scared to move round
+without a footman or a maiden aunt. I guess I’m a bit behind the times!”
+The upshot of these confidential relations was that Tommy and Tuppence
+took up their abode forthwith at the _Ritz_, in order, as Tuppence put
+it, to keep in touch with Jane Finn’s only living relation. “And put
+like that,” she added confidentially to Tommy, “nobody could boggle at
+the expense!”
+Nobody did, which was the great thing.
+“And now,” said the young lady on the morning after their installation,
+“to work!”
+Mr. Beresford put down the _Daily Mail_, which he was reading, and
+applauded with somewhat unnecessary vigour. He was politely requested by
+his colleague not to be an ass.
+“Dash it all, Tommy, we’ve got to _do_ something for our money.”
+Tommy sighed.
+“Yes, I fear even the dear old Government will not support us at the
+_Ritz_ in idleness for ever.”
+“Therefore, as I said before, we must _do_ something.”
+“Well,” said Tommy, picking up the _Daily Mail_ again, “_do_ it. I
+shan’t stop you.”
+“You see,” continued Tuppence. “I’ve been thinking----”
+She was interrupted by a fresh bout of applause.
+“It’s all very well for you to sit there being funny, Tommy. It would do
+you no harm to do a little brain work too.”
+“My union, Tuppence, my union! It does not permit me to work before 11
+a.m.”
+“Tommy, do you want something thrown at you? It is absolutely essential
+that we should without delay map out a plan of campaign.”
+“Hear, hear!”
+“Well, let’s do it.”
+Tommy laid his paper finally aside. “There’s something of the simplicity
+of the truly great mind about you, Tuppence. Fire ahead. I’m listening.”
+“To begin with,” said Tuppence, “what have we to go upon?”
+“Absolutely nothing,” said Tommy cheerily.
+“Wrong!” Tuppence wagged an energetic finger. “We have two distinct
+clues.”
+“What are they?”
+“First clue, we know one of the gang.”
+“Whittington?”
+“Yes. I’d recognize him anywhere.”
+“Hum,” said Tommy doubtfully, “I don’t call that much of a clue. You
+don’t know where to look for him, and it’s about a thousand to one
+against your running against him by accident.”
+“I’m not so sure about that,” replied Tuppence thoughtfully. “I’ve often
+noticed that once coincidences start happening they go on happening in
+the most extraordinary way. I dare say it’s some natural law that we
+haven’t found out. Still, as you say, we can’t rely on that. But there
+_are_ places in London where simply every one is bound to turn up sooner
+or later. Piccadilly Circus, for instance. One of my ideas was to take
+up my stand there every day with a tray of flags.”
+“What about meals?” inquired the practical Tommy.
+“How like a man! What does mere food matter?”
+“That’s all very well. You’ve just had a thundering good breakfast. No
+one’s got a better appetite than you have, Tuppence, and by tea-time
+you’d be eating the flags, pins and all. But, honestly, I don’t think
+much of the idea. Whittington mayn’t be in London at all.”
+“That’s true. Anyway, I think clue No. 2 is more promising.”
+“Let’s hear it.”
+“It’s nothing much. Only a Christian name--Rita. Whittington mentioned
+it that day.”
+“Are you proposing a third advertisement: Wanted, female crook,
+answering to the name of Rita?”
+“I am not. I propose to reason in a logical manner. That man, Danvers,
+was shadowed on the way over, wasn’t he? And it’s more likely to have
+been a woman than a man----”
+“I don’t see that at all.”
+“I am absolutely certain that it would be a woman, and a good-looking
+one,” replied Tuppence calmly.
+“On these technical points I bow to your decision,” murmured Mr.
+Beresford.
+“Now, obviously this woman, whoever she was, was saved.”
+“How do you make that out?”
+“If she wasn’t, how would they have known Jane Finn had got the papers?”
+“Correct. Proceed, O Sherlock!”
+“Now there’s just a chance, I admit it’s only a chance, that this woman
+may have been ‘Rita.’”
+“And if so?”
+“If so, we’ve got to hunt through the survivors of the _Lusitania_ till
+we find her.”
+“Then the first thing is to get a list of the survivors.”
+“I’ve got it. I wrote a long list of things I wanted to know, and sent
+it to Mr. Carter. I got his reply this morning, and among other things
+it encloses the official statement of those saved from the _Lusitania_.
+How’s that for clever little Tuppence?”
+“Full marks for industry, zero for modesty. But the great point is, is
+there a ‘Rita’ on the list?”
+“That’s just what I don’t know,” confessed Tuppence.
+“Don’t know?”
+“Yes. Look here.” Together they bent over the list. “You see, very few
+Christian names are given. They’re nearly all Mrs. or Miss.”
+Tommy nodded.
+“That complicates matters,” he murmured thoughtfully.
+Tuppence gave her characteristic “terrier” shake.
+“Well, we’ve just got to get down to it, that’s all. We’ll start with
+the London area. Just note down the addresses of any of the females who
+live in London or roundabout, while I put on my hat.”
+Five minutes later the young couple emerged into Piccadilly, and a few
+seconds later a taxi was bearing them to The Laurels, Glendower Road,
+N.7, the residence of Mrs. Edgar Keith, whose name figured first in a
+list of seven reposing in Tommy’s pocket-book.
+The Laurels was a dilapidated house, standing back from the road with
+a few grimy bushes to support the fiction of a front garden. Tommy paid
+off the taxi, and accompanied Tuppence to the front door bell. As she
+was about to ring it, he arrested her hand.
+“What are you going to say?”
+“What am I going to say? Why, I shall say--Oh dear, I don’t know. It’s
+very awkward.”
+“I thought as much,” said Tommy with satisfaction. “How like a woman! No
+foresight! Now just stand aside, and see how easily the mere male
+deals with the situation.” He pressed the bell. Tuppence withdrew to a
+suitable spot.
+A slatternly looking servant, with an extremely dirty face and a pair of
+eyes that did not match, answered the door.
+Tommy had produced a notebook and pencil.
+“Good morning,” he said briskly and cheerfully. “From the Hampstead
+Borough Council. The new Voting Register. Mrs. Edgar Keith lives here,
+does she not?”
+“Yaas,” said the servant.
+“Christian name?” asked Tommy, his pencil poised.
+“Missus’s? Eleanor Jane.”
+“Eleanor,” spelt Tommy. “Any sons or daughters over twenty-one?”
+“Naow.”
+“Thank you.” Tommy closed the notebook with a brisk snap. “Good
+morning.”
+The servant volunteered her first remark:
+“I thought perhaps as you’d come about the gas,” she observed
+cryptically, and shut the door.
+Tommy rejoined his accomplice.
+“You see, Tuppence,” he observed. “Child’s play to the masculine mind.”
+“I don’t mind admitting that for once you’ve scored handsomely. I should
+never have thought of that.”
+“Good wheeze, wasn’t it? And we can repeat it _ad lib_.”
+Lunch-time found the young couple attacking a steak and chips in an
+obscure hostelry with avidity. They had collected a Gladys Mary and a
+Marjorie, been baffled by one change of address, and had been forced to
+listen to a long lecture on universal suffrage from a vivacious American
+lady whose Christian name had proved to be Sadie.
+“Ah!” said Tommy, imbibing a long draught of beer, “I feel better.
+Where’s the next draw?”
+The notebook lay on the table between them. Tuppence picked it up.
+“Mrs. Vandemeyer,” she read, “20 South Audley Mansions. Miss Wheeler, 43
+Clapington Road, Battersea. She’s a lady’s maid, as far as I remember,
+so probably won’t be there, and, anyway, she’s not likely.”
+“Then the Mayfair lady is clearly indicated as the first port of call.”
+“Tommy, I’m getting discouraged.”
+“Buck up, old bean. We always knew it was an outside chance. And,
+anyway, we’re only starting. If we draw a blank in London, there’s a
+fine tour of England, Ireland and Scotland before us.”
+“True,” said Tuppence, her flagging spirits reviving. “And all expenses
+paid! But, oh, Tommy, I do like things to happen quickly. So far,
+adventure has succeeded adventure, but this morning has been dull as
+dull.”
+“You must stifle this longing for vulgar sensation, Tuppence. Remember
+that if Mr. Brown is all he is reported to be, it’s a wonder that he has
+not ere now done us to death. That’s a good sentence, quite a literary
+flavour about it.”
+“You’re really more conceited than I am--with less excuse! Ahem! But it
+certainly is queer that Mr. Brown has not yet wreaked vengeance upon us.
+(You see, I can do it too.) We pass on our way unscathed.”
+“Perhaps he doesn’t think us worth bothering about,” suggested the young
+man simply.
+Tuppence received the remark with great disfavour.
+“How horrid you are, Tommy. Just as though we didn’t count.”
+“Sorry, Tuppence. What I meant was that we work like moles in the dark,
+and that he has no suspicion of our nefarious schemes. Ha ha!”
+“Ha ha!” echoed Tuppence approvingly, as she rose.
+South Audley Mansions was an imposing-looking block of flats just off
+Park Lane. No. 20 was on the second floor.
+Tommy had by this time the glibness born of practice. He rattled off
+the formula to the elderly woman, looking more like a housekeeper than a
+servant, who opened the door to him.
+“Christian name?”
+“Margaret.”
+Tommy spelt it, but the other interrupted him.
+“No, _g u e_.”
+“Oh, Marguerite; French way, I see.” He paused, then plunged boldly. “We
+had her down as Rita Vandemeyer, but I suppose that’s incorrect?”
+“She’s mostly called that, sir, but Marguerite’s her name.”
+“Thank you. That’s all. Good morning.”
+Hardly able to contain his excitement, Tommy hurried down the stairs.
+Tuppence was waiting at the angle of the turn.
+“You heard?”
+“Yes. Oh, _Tommy!_”
+Tommy squeezed her arm sympathetically.
+“I know, old thing. I feel the same.”
+“It’s--it’s so lovely to think of things--and then for them really to
+happen!” cried Tuppence enthusiastically.
+Her hand was still in Tommy’s. They had reached the entrance hall. There
+were footsteps on the stairs above them, and voices.
+Suddenly, to Tommy’s complete surprise, Tuppence dragged him into the
+little space by the side of the lift where the shadow was deepest.
+“What the----”
+“Hush!”
+Two men came down the stairs and passed out through the entrance.
+Tuppence’s hand closed tighter on Tommy’s arm.
+“Quick--follow them. I daren’t. He might recognize me. I don’t know who
+the other man is, but the bigger of the two was Whittington.”
+CHAPTER VII. THE HOUSE IN SOHO
+WHITTINGTON and his companion were walking at a good pace. Tommy started
+in pursuit at once, and was in time to see them turn the corner of the
+street. His vigorous strides soon enabled him to gain upon them, and by
+the time he, in his turn, reached the corner the distance between them
+was sensibly lessened. The small Mayfair streets were comparatively
+deserted, and he judged it wise to content himself with keeping them in
+sight.
+The sport was a new one to him. Though familiar with the technicalities
+from a course of novel reading, he had never before attempted to
+“follow” anyone, and it appeared to him at once that, in actual
+practice, the proceeding was fraught with difficulties. Supposing, for
+instance, that they should suddenly hail a taxi? In books, you simply
+leapt into another, promised the driver a sovereign--or its modern
+equivalent--and there you were. In actual fact, Tommy foresaw that it
+was extremely likely there would be no second taxi. Therefore he
+would have to run. What happened in actual fact to a young man who ran
+incessantly and persistently through the London streets? In a main road
+he might hope to create the illusion that he was merely running for a
+bus. But in these obscure aristocratic byways he could not but feel that
+an officious policeman might stop him to explain matters.
+At this juncture in his thoughts a taxi with flag erect turned the
+corner of the street ahead. Tommy held his breath. Would they hail it?
+He drew a sigh of relief as they allowed it to pass unchallenged. Their
+course was a zigzag one designed to bring them as quickly as possible
+to Oxford Street. When at length they turned into it, proceeding in an
+easterly direction, Tommy slightly increased his pace. Little by little
+he gained upon them. On the crowded pavement there was little chance of
+his attracting their notice, and he was anxious if possible to catch
+a word or two of their conversation. In this he was completely
+foiled; they spoke low and the din of the traffic drowned their voices
+effectually.
+Just before the Bond Street Tube station they crossed the road, Tommy,
+unperceived, faithfully at their heels, and entered the big Lyons’.
+There they went up to the first floor, and sat at a small table in the
+window. It was late, and the place was thinning out. Tommy took a seat
+at the table next to them, sitting directly behind Whittington in case
+of recognition. On the other hand, he had a full view of the second man
+and studied him attentively. He was fair, with a weak, unpleasant face,
+and Tommy put him down as being either a Russian or a Pole. He was
+probably about fifty years of age, his shoulders cringed a little as he
+talked, and his eyes, small and crafty, shifted unceasingly.
+Having already lunched heartily, Tommy contented himself with ordering
+a Welsh rarebit and a cup of coffee. Whittington ordered a substantial
+lunch for himself and his companion; then, as the waitress withdrew, he
+moved his chair a little closer to the table and began to talk earnestly
+in a low voice. The other man joined in. Listen as he would, Tommy could
+only catch a word here and there; but the gist of it seemed to be some
+directions or orders which the big man was impressing on his companion,
+and with which the latter seemed from time to time to disagree.
+Whittington addressed the other as Boris.
+Tommy caught the word “Ireland” several times, also “propaganda,” but
+of Jane Finn there was no mention. Suddenly, in a lull in the clatter of
+the room, he got one phrase entire. Whittington was speaking. “Ah, but
+you don’t know Flossie. She’s a marvel. An archbishop would swear she
+was his own mother. She gets the voice right every time, and that’s
+really the principal thing.”
+Tommy did not hear Boris’s reply, but in response to it Whittington said
+something that sounded like: “Of course--only in an emergency....”
+Then he lost the thread again. But presently the phrases became distinct
+again whether because the other two had insensibly raised their voices,
+or because Tommy’s ears were getting more attuned, he could not tell.
+But two words certainly had a most stimulating effect upon the listener.
+They were uttered by Boris and they were: “Mr. Brown.”
+Whittington seemed to remonstrate with him, but he merely laughed.
+“Why not, my friend? It is a name most respectable--most common. Did
+he not choose it for that reason? Ah, I should like to meet him--Mr.
+Brown.”
+There was a steely ring in Whittington’s voice as he replied:
+“Who knows? You may have met him already.”
+“Bah!” retorted the other. “That is children’s talk--a fable for the
+police. Do you know what I say to myself sometimes? That he is a fable
+invented by the Inner Ring, a bogy to frighten us with. It might be so.”
+“And it might not.”
+“I wonder ... or is it indeed true that he is with us and amongst us,
+unknown to all but a chosen few? If so, he keeps his secret well. And
+the idea is a good one, yes. We never know. We look at each other--
+_one of us is Mr. Brown_--which? He commands--but also he serves. Among
+us--in the midst of us. And no one knows which he is....”
+With an effort the Russian shook off the vagary of his fancy. He looked
+at his watch.
+“Yes,” said Whittington. “We might as well go.”
+He called the waitress and asked for his bill. Tommy did likewise, and a
+few moments later was following the two men down the stairs.
+Outside, Whittington hailed a taxi, and directed the driver to go to
+Waterloo.
+Taxis were plentiful here, and before Whittington’s had driven off
+another was drawing up to the curb in obedience to Tommy’s peremptory
+hand.
+“Follow that other taxi,” directed the young man. “Don’t lose it.”
+The elderly chauffeur showed no interest. He merely grunted and jerked
+down his flag. The drive was uneventful. Tommy’s taxi came to rest at
+the departure platform just after Whittington’s. Tommy was behind him at
+the booking-office. He took a first-class single ticket to Bournemouth,
+Tommy did the same. As he emerged, Boris remarked, glancing up at the
+clock: “You are early. You have nearly half an hour.”
+Boris’s words had aroused a new train of thought in Tommy’s mind.
+Clearly Whittington was making the journey alone, while the other
+remained in London. Therefore he was left with a choice as to which he
+would follow. Obviously, he could not follow both of them unless----
+Like Boris, he glanced up at the clock, and then to the announcement
+board of the trains. The Bournemouth train left at 3.30. It was now ten
+past. Whittington and Boris were walking up and down by the bookstall.
+He gave one doubtful look at them, then hurried into an adjacent
+telephone box. He dared not waste time in trying to get hold of
+Tuppence. In all probability she was still in the neighbourhood of South
+Audley Mansions. But there remained another ally. He rang up the _Ritz_
+and asked for Julius Hersheimmer. There was a click and a buzz. Oh, if
+only the young American was in his room! There was another click, and
+then “Hello” in unmistakable accents came over the wire.
+“That you, Hersheimmer? Beresford speaking. I’m at Waterloo. I’ve
+followed Whittington and another man here. No time to explain.
+Whittington’s off to Bournemouth by the 3.30. Can you get there by
+then?”
+The reply was reassuring.
+“Sure. I’ll hustle.”
+The telephone rang off. Tommy put back the receiver with a sigh of
+relief. His opinion of Julius’s power of hustling was high. He felt
+instinctively that the American would arrive in time.
+Whittington and Boris were still where he had left them. If Boris
+remained to see his friend off, all was well. Then Tommy fingered his
+pocket thoughtfully. In spite of the carte blanche assured to him, he
+had not yet acquired the habit of going about with any considerable sum
+of money on him. The taking of the first-class ticket to Bournemouth
+had left him with only a few shillings in his pocket. It was to be hoped
+that Julius would arrive better provided.
+In the meantime, the minutes were creeping by: 3.15, 3.20, 3.25, 3.27.
+Supposing Julius did not get there in time. 3.29.... Doors were banging.
+Tommy felt cold waves of despair pass over him. Then a hand fell on his
+shoulder.
+“Here I am, son. Your British traffic beats description! Put me wise to
+the crooks right away.”
+“That’s Whittington--there, getting in now, that big dark man. The other
+is the foreign chap he’s talking to.”
+“I’m on to them. Which of the two is my bird?”
+Tommy had thought out this question.
+“Got any money with you?”
+Julius shook his head, and Tommy’s face fell.
+“I guess I haven’t more than three or four hundred dollars with me at
+the moment,” explained the American.
+Tommy gave a faint whoop of relief.
+“Oh, Lord, you millionaires! You don’t talk the same language! Climb
+aboard the lugger. Here’s your ticket. Whittington’s your man.”
+“Me for Whittington!” said Julius darkly. The train was just starting
+as he swung himself aboard. “So long, Tommy.” The train slid out of the
+station.
+Tommy drew a deep breath. The man Boris was coming along the platform
+towards him. Tommy allowed him to pass and then took up the chase once
+more.
+From Waterloo Boris took the tube as far as Piccadilly Circus. Then he
+walked up Shaftesbury Avenue, finally turning off into the maze of mean
+streets round Soho. Tommy followed him at a judicious distance.
+They reached at length a small dilapidated square. The houses there had
+a sinister air in the midst of their dirt and decay. Boris looked round,
+and Tommy drew back into the shelter of a friendly porch. The place was
+almost deserted. It was a cul-de-sac, and consequently no traffic passed
+that way. The stealthy way the other had looked round stimulated Tommy’s
+imagination. From the shelter of the doorway he watched him go up the
+steps of a particularly evil-looking house and rap sharply, with a
+peculiar rhythm, on the door. It was opened promptly, he said a word or
+two to the doorkeeper, then passed inside. The door was shut to again.
+It was at this juncture that Tommy lost his head. What he ought to have
+done, what any sane man would have done, was to remain patiently where
+he was and wait for his man to come out again. What he did do was
+entirely foreign to the sober common sense which was, as a rule, his
+leading characteristic. Something, as he expressed it, seemed to snap in
+his brain. Without a moment’s pause for reflection he, too, went up the
+steps, and reproduced as far as he was able the peculiar knock.
+The door swung open with the same promptness as before. A
+villainous-faced man with close-cropped hair stood in the doorway.
+“Well?” he grunted.
+It was at that moment that the full realization of his folly began to
+come home to Tommy. But he dared not hesitate. He seized at the first
+words that came into his mind.
+“Mr. Brown?” he said.
+To his surprise the man stood aside.
+“Upstairs,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, “second door
+on your left.”
+CHAPTER VIII. THE ADVENTURES OF TOMMY
+TAKEN aback though he was by the man’s words, Tommy did not hesitate.
+If audacity had successfully carried him so far, it was to be hoped
+it would carry him yet farther. He quietly passed into the house and
+mounted the ramshackle staircase. Everything in the house was filthy
+beyond words. The grimy paper, of a pattern now indistinguishable,
+hung in loose festoons from the wall. In every angle was a grey mass of
+cobweb.
+Tommy proceeded leisurely. By the time he reached the bend of the
+staircase, he had heard the man below disappear into a back room.
+Clearly no suspicion attached to him as yet. To come to the house and
+ask for “Mr. Brown” appeared indeed to be a reasonable and natural
+proceeding.
+At the top of the stairs Tommy halted to consider his next move. In
+front of him ran a narrow passage, with doors opening on either side of
+it. From the one nearest him on the left came a low murmur of voices.
+It was this room which he had been directed to enter. But what held
+his glance fascinated was a small recess immediately on his right,
+half concealed by a torn velvet curtain. It was directly opposite the
+left-handed door and, owing to its angle, it also commanded a good view
+of the upper part of the staircase. As a hiding-place for one or, at a
+pinch, two men, it was ideal, being about two feet deep and three feet
+wide. It attracted Tommy mightily. He thought things over in his usual
+slow and steady way, deciding that the mention of “Mr. Brown” was not a
+request for an individual, but in all probability a password used by
+the gang. His lucky use of it had gained him admission. So far he had
+aroused no suspicion. But he must decide quickly on his next step.
+Suppose he were boldly to enter the room on the left of the passage.
+Would the mere fact of his having been admitted to the house be
+sufficient? Perhaps a further password would be required, or, at any
+rate, some proof of identity. The doorkeeper clearly did not know all
+the members of the gang by sight, but it might be different upstairs.
+On the whole it seemed to him that luck had served him very well so far,
+but that there was such a thing as trusting it too far. To enter
+that room was a colossal risk. He could not hope to sustain his part
+indefinitely; sooner or later he was almost bound to betray himself, and
+then he would have thrown away a vital chance in mere foolhardiness.
+A repetition of the signal knock sounded on the door below, and Tommy,
+his mind made up, slipped quickly into the recess, and cautiously drew
+the curtain farther across so that it shielded him completely from
+sight. There were several rents and slits in the ancient material which
+afforded him a good view. He would watch events, and any time he chose
+could, after all, join the assembly, modelling his behaviour on that of
+the new arrival.
+The man who came up the staircase with a furtive, soft-footed tread was
+quite unknown to Tommy. He was obviously of the very dregs of society.
+The low beetling brows, and the criminal jaw, the bestiality of the
+whole countenance were new to the young man, though he was a type that
+Scotland Yard would have recognized at a glance.
+The man passed the recess, breathing heavily as he went. He stopped at
+the door opposite, and gave a repetition of the signal knock. A voice
+inside called out something, and the man opened the door and passed in,
+affording Tommy a momentary glimpse of the room inside. He thought there
+must be about four or five people seated round a long table that took up
+most of the space, but his attention was caught and held by a tall man
+with close-cropped hair and a short, pointed, naval-looking beard,
+who sat at the head of the table with papers in front of him. As the
+new-comer entered he glanced up, and with a correct, but curiously
+precise enunciation, which attracted Tommy’s notice, he asked:
+“Your number, comrade?”
+“Fourteen, gov’nor,” replied the other hoarsely.
+“Correct.”
+The door shut again.
+“If that isn’t a Hun, I’m a Dutchman!” said Tommy to himself. “And
+running the show darned systematically too--as they always do. Lucky I
+didn’t roll in. I’d have given the wrong number, and there would have
+been the deuce to pay. No, this is the place for me. Hullo, here’s
+another knock.”
+This visitor proved to be of an entirely different type to the last.
+Tommy recognized in him an Irish Sinn Feiner. Certainly Mr. Brown’s
+organization was a far-reaching concern. The common criminal, the
+well-bred Irish gentleman, the pale Russian, and the efficient German
+master of the ceremonies! Truly a strange and sinister gathering! Who
+was this man who held in his finger these curiously variegated links of
+an unknown chain?
+In this case, the procedure was exactly the same. The signal knock, the
+demand for a number, and the reply “Correct.”
+Two knocks followed in quick succession on the door below. The first man
+was quite unknown to Tommy, who put him down as a city clerk. A quiet,
+intelligent-looking man, rather shabbily dressed. The second was of the
+working classes, and his face was vaguely familiar to the young man.
+Three minutes later came another, a man of commanding appearance,
+exquisitely dressed, and evidently well born. His face, again, was not
+unknown to the watcher, though he could not for the moment put a name to
+it.
+After his arrival there was a long wait. In fact Tommy concluded that
+the gathering was now complete, and was just cautiously creeping out
+from his hiding-place, when another knock sent him scuttling back to
+cover.
+This last-comer came up the stairs so quietly that he was almost abreast
+of Tommy before the young man had realized his presence.
+He was a small man, very pale, with a gentle almost womanish air. The
+angle of the cheek-bones hinted at his Slavonic ancestry, otherwise
+there was nothing to indicate his nationality. As he passed the recess,
+he turned his head slowly. The strange light eyes seemed to burn through
+the curtain; Tommy could hardly believe that the man did not know he was
+there and in spite of himself he shivered. He was no more fanciful than
+the majority of young Englishmen, but he could not rid himself of the
+impression that some unusually potent force emanated from the man. The
+creature reminded him of a venomous snake.
+A moment later his impression was proved correct. The new-comer knocked
+on the door as all had done, but his reception was very different. The
+bearded man rose to his feet, and all the others followed suit. The
+German came forward and shook hands. His heels clicked together.
+“We are honoured,” he said. “We are greatly honoured. I much feared that
+it would be impossible.”
+The other answered in a low voice that had a kind of hiss in it:
+“There were difficulties. It will not be possible again, I fear. But one
+meeting is essential--to define my policy. I can do nothing without--Mr.
+Brown. He is here?”
+The change in the German’s voice was audible as he replied with slight
+hesitation:
+“We have received a message. It is impossible for him to be present
+in person.” He stopped, giving a curious impression of having left the
+sentence unfinished.
+A very slow smile overspread the face of the other. He looked round at a
+circle of uneasy faces.
+“Ah! I understand. I have read of his methods. He works in the dark and
+trusts no one. But, all the same, it is possible that he is among us
+now....” He looked round him again, and again that expression of fear
+swept over the group. Each man seemed eyeing his neighbour doubtfully.
+The Russian tapped his cheek.
+“So be it. Let us proceed.”
+The German seemed to pull himself together. He indicated the place he
+had been occupying at the head of the table. The Russian demurred, but
+the other insisted.
+“It is the only possible place,” he said, “for--Number One. Perhaps
+Number Fourteen will shut the door?”
+In another moment Tommy was once more confronting bare wooden panels,
+and the voices within had sunk once more to a mere undistinguishable
+murmur. Tommy became restive. The conversation he had overheard had
+stimulated his curiosity. He felt that, by hook or by crook, he must
+hear more.
+There was no sound from below, and it did not seem likely that the
+doorkeeper would come upstairs. After listening intently for a minute or
+two, he put his head round the curtain. The passage was deserted. Tommy
+bent down and removed his shoes, then, leaving them behind the curtain,
+he walked gingerly out on his stockinged feet, and kneeling down by
+the closed door he laid his ear cautiously to the crack. To his intense
+annoyance he could distinguish little more; just a chance word here and
+there if a voice was raised, which merely served to whet his curiosity
+still farther.
+He eyed the handle of the door tentatively. Could he turn it by degrees
+so gently and imperceptibly that those in the room would notice nothing?
+He decided that with great care it could be done. Very slowly, a
+fraction of an inch at a time, he moved it round, holding his breath in
+his excessive care. A little more--a little more still--would it never
+be finished? Ah! at last it would turn no farther.
+He stayed so for a minute or two, then drew a deep breath, and pressed
+it ever so slightly inward. The door did not budge. Tommy was annoyed.
+If he had to use too much force, it would almost certainly creak.
+He waited until the voices rose a little, then he tried again. Still
+nothing happened. He increased the pressure. Had the beastly thing
+stuck? Finally, in desperation, he pushed with all his might. But the
+door remained firm, and at last the truth dawned upon him. It was locked
+or bolted on the inside.
+For a moment or two Tommy’s indignation got the better of him.
+“Well, I’m damned!” he said. “What a dirty trick!”
+As his indignation cooled, he prepared to face the situation. Clearly
+the first thing to be done was to restore the handle to its original
+position. If he let it go suddenly, the men inside would be almost
+certain to notice it, so, with the same infinite pains, he reversed his
+former tactics. All went well, and with a sigh of relief the young man
+rose to his feet. There was a certain bulldog tenacity about Tommy that
+made him slow to admit defeat. Checkmated for the moment, he was far
+from abandoning the conflict. He still intended to hear what was going
+on in the locked room. As one plan had failed, he must hunt about for
+another.
+He looked round him. A little farther along the passage on the left was
+a second door. He slipped silently along to it. He listened for a moment
+or two, then tried the handle. It yielded, and he slipped inside.
+The room, which was untenanted, was furnished as a bedroom. Like
+everything else in the house, the furniture was falling to pieces, and
+the dirt was, if anything, more abundant.
+But what interested Tommy was the thing he had hoped to find, a
+communicating door between the two rooms, up on the left by the window.
+Carefully closing the door into the passage behind him, he stepped
+across to the other and examined it closely. The bolt was shot across
+it. It was very rusty, and had clearly not been used for some time. By
+gently wriggling it to and fro, Tommy managed to draw it back without
+making too much noise. Then he repeated his former manœuvres with the
+handle--this time with complete success. The door swung open--a crack,
+a mere fraction, but enough for Tommy to hear what went on. There was a
+velvet _portière_ on the inside of this door which prevented him from
+seeing, but he was able to recognize the voices with a reasonable amount
+of accuracy.
+The Sinn Feiner was speaking. His rich Irish voice was unmistakable:
+“That’s all very well. But more money is essential. No money--no
+results!”
+Another voice which Tommy rather thought was that of Boris replied:
+“Will you guarantee that there _are_ results?”
+“In a month from now--sooner or later as you wish--I will guarantee you
+such a reign of terror in Ireland as shall shake the British Empire to
+its foundations.”
+There was a pause, and then came the soft, sibilant accents of Number
+One:
+“Good! You shall have the money. Boris, you will see to that.”
+Boris asked a question:
+“Via the Irish Americans, and Mr. Potter as usual?”
+“I guess that’ll be all right!” said a new voice, with a transatlantic
+intonation, “though I’d like to point out, here and now, that things
+are getting a mite difficult. There’s not the sympathy there was, and
+a growing disposition to let the Irish settle their own affairs without
+interference from America.”
+Tommy felt that Boris had shrugged his shoulders as he answered:
+“Does that matter, since the money only nominally comes from the
+States?”
+“The chief difficulty is the landing of the ammunition,” said the Sinn
+Feiner. “The money is conveyed in easily enough--thanks to our colleague
+here.”
+Another voice, which Tommy fancied was that of the tall,
+commanding-looking man whose face had seemed familiar to him, said:
+“Think of the feelings of Belfast if they could hear you!”
+“That is settled, then,” said the sibilant tones. “Now, in the matter
+of the loan to an English newspaper, you have arranged the details
+satisfactorily, Boris?”
+“I think so.”
+“That is good. An official denial from Moscow will be forthcoming if
+necessary.”
+There was a pause, and then the clear voice of the German broke the
+silence:
+“I am directed by--Mr. Brown, to place the summaries of the reports
+from the different unions before you. That of the miners is most
+satisfactory. We must hold back the railways. There may be trouble with
+the A.S.E.”
+For a long time there was a silence, broken only by the rustle of papers
+and an occasional word of explanation from the German. Then Tommy heard
+the light tap-tap of fingers, drumming on the table.
+“And--the date, my friend?” said Number One.
+“The 29th.”
+The Russian seemed to consider:
+“That is rather soon.”
+“I know. But it was settled by the principal Labour leaders, and we
+cannot seem to interfere too much. They must believe it to be entirely
+their own show.”
+The Russian laughed softly, as though amused.
+“Yes, yes,” he said. “That is true. They must have no inkling that we
+are using them for our own ends. They are honest men--and that is their
+value to us. It is curious--but you cannot make a revolution without
+honest men. The instinct of the populace is infallible.” He paused, and
+then repeated, as though the phrase pleased him: “Every revolution has
+had its honest men. They are soon disposed of afterwards.”
+There was a sinister note in his voice.
+The German resumed:
+“Clymes must go. He is too far-seeing. Number Fourteen will see to
+that.”
+There was a hoarse murmur.
+“That’s all right, gov’nor.” And then after a moment or two: “Suppose
+I’m nabbed.”
+“You will have the best legal talent to defend you,” replied the
+German quietly. “But in any case you will wear gloves fitted with the
+finger-prints of a notorious housebreaker. You have little to fear.”
+“Oh, I ain’t afraid, gov’nor. All for the good of the cause. The streets
+is going to run with blood, so they say.” He spoke with a grim relish.
+“Dreams of it, sometimes, I does. And diamonds and pearls rolling about
+in the gutter for anyone to pick up!”
+Tommy heard a chair shifted. Then Number One spoke:
+“Then all is arranged. We are assured of success?”
+“I--think so.” But the German spoke with less than his usual confidence.
+Number One’s voice held suddenly a dangerous quality:
+“What has gone wrong?”
+“Nothing; but----”
+“But what?”
+“The Labour leaders. Without them, as you say, we can do nothing. If
+they do not declare a general strike on the 29th----”
+“Why should they not?”
+“As you’ve said, they’re honest. And, in spite of everything we’ve
+done to discredit the Government in their eyes, I’m not sure that they
+haven’t got a sneaking faith and belief in it.”
+“But----”
+“I know. They abuse it unceasingly. But, on the whole, public opinion
+swings to the side of the Government. They will not go against it.”
+Again the Russian’s fingers drummed on the table.
+“To the point, my friend. I was given to understand that there was a
+certain document in existence which assured success.”
+“That is so. If that document were placed before the leaders, the result
+would be immediate. They would publish it broadcast throughout England,
+and declare for the revolution without a moment’s hesitation. The
+Government would be broken finally and completely.”
+“Then what more do you want?”
+“The document itself,” said the German bluntly.
+“Ah! It is not in your possession? But you know where it is?”
+“No.”
+“Does anyone know where it is?”
+“One person--perhaps. And we are not sure of that even.”
+“Who is this person?”
+“A girl.”
+Tommy held his breath.
+“A girl?” The Russian’s voice rose contemptuously. “And you have not
+made her speak? In Russia we have ways of making a girl talk.”
+“This case is different,” said the German sullenly.
+“How--different?” He paused a moment, then went on: “Where is the girl
+now?”
+“The girl?”
+“Yes.”
+“She is----”
+But Tommy heard no more. A crashing blow descended on his head, and all
+was darkness.
+CHAPTER IX. TUPPENCE ENTERS DOMESTIC SERVICE
+WHEN Tommy set forth on the trail of the two men, it took all Tuppence’s
+self-command to refrain from accompanying him. However, she contained
+herself as best she might, consoled by the reflection that her reasoning
+had been justified by events. The two men had undoubtedly come from the
+second floor flat, and that one slender thread of the name “Rita” had
+set the Young Adventurers once more upon the track of the abductors of
+Jane Finn.
+The question was what to do next? Tuppence hated letting the grass grow
+under her feet. Tommy was amply employed, and debarred from joining him
+in the chase, the girl felt at a loose end. She retraced her steps
+to the entrance hall of the mansions. It was now tenanted by a small
+lift-boy, who was polishing brass fittings, and whistling the latest air
+with a good deal of vigour and a reasonable amount of accuracy.
+He glanced round at Tuppence’s entry. There was a certain amount of the
+gamin element in the girl, at all events she invariably got on well
+with small boys. A sympathetic bond seemed instantly to be formed. She
+reflected that an ally in the enemy’s camp, so to speak, was not to be
+despised.
+“Well, William,” she remarked cheerfully, in the best approved
+hospital-early-morning style, “getting a good shine up?”
+The boy grinned responsively.
+“Albert, miss,” he corrected.
+“Albert be it,” said Tuppence. She glanced mysteriously round the hall.
+The effect was purposely a broad one in case Albert should miss it. She
+leaned towards the boy and dropped her voice: “I want a word with you,
+Albert.”
+Albert ceased operations on the fittings and opened his mouth slightly.
+“Look! Do you know what this is?” With a dramatic gesture she flung back
+the left side of her coat and exposed a small enamelled badge. It was
+extremely unlikely that Albert would have any knowledge of it--indeed,
+it would have been fatal for Tuppence’s plans, since the badge in
+question was the device of a local training corps originated by the
+archdeacon in the early days of the war. Its presence in Tuppence’s coat
+was due to the fact that she had used it for pinning in some flowers a
+day or two before. But Tuppence had sharp eyes, and had noted the corner
+of a threepenny detective novel protruding from Albert’s pocket, and the
+immediate enlargement of his eyes told her that her tactics were good,
+and that the fish would rise to the bait.
+“American Detective Force!” she hissed.
+Albert fell for it.
+“Lord!” he murmured ecstatically.
+Tuppence nodded at him with the air of one who has established a
+thorough understanding.
+“Know who I’m after?” she inquired genially.
+Albert, still round-eyed, demanded breathlessly:
+“One of the flats?”
+Tuppence nodded and jerked a thumb up the stairs.
+“No. 20. Calls herself Vandemeyer. Vandemeyer! Ha! ha!”
+Albert’s hand stole to his pocket.
+“A crook?” he queried eagerly.
+“A crook? I should say so. Ready Rita they call her in the States.”
+“Ready Rita,” repeated Albert deliriously. “Oh, ain’t it just like the
+pictures!”
+It was. Tuppence was a great frequenter of the cinema.
+“Annie always said as how she was a bad lot,” continued the boy.
+“Who’s Annie?” inquired Tuppence idly.
+“‘Ouse-parlourmaid. She’s leaving to-day. Many’s the time Annie’s said
+to me: ‘Mark my words, Albert, I wouldn’t wonder if the police was to
+come after her one of these days.’ Just like that. But she’s a stunner
+to look at, ain’t she?”
+“She’s some peach,” allowed Tuppence carelessly. “Finds it useful in her
+lay-out, you bet. Has she been wearing any of the emeralds, by the way?”
+“Emeralds? Them’s the green stones, isn’t they?”
+Tuppence nodded.
+“That’s what we’re after her for. You know old man Rysdale?”
+Albert shook his head.
+“Peter B. Rysdale, the oil king?”
+“It seems sort of familiar to me.”
+“The sparklers belonged to him. Finest collection of emeralds in the
+world. Worth a million dollars!”
+“Lumme!” came ecstatically from Albert. “It sounds more like the
+pictures every minute.”
+Tuppence smiled, gratified at the success of her efforts.
+“We haven’t exactly proved it yet. But we’re after her. And”--she
+produced a long-drawn-out wink--“I guess she won’t get away with the
+goods this time.”
+Albert uttered another ejaculation indicative of delight.
+“Mind you, sonny, not a word of this,” said Tuppence suddenly. “I guess
+I oughtn’t to have put you wise, but in the States we know a real smart
+lad when we see one.”
+“I’ll not breathe a word,” protested Albert eagerly. “Ain’t there
+anything I could do? A bit of shadowing, maybe, or such like?”
+Tuppence affected to consider, then shook her head.
+“Not at the moment, but I’ll bear you in mind, son. What’s this about
+the girl you say is leaving?”
+“Annie? Regular turn up, they ‘ad. As Annie said, servants is some one
+nowadays, and to be treated accordingly, and, what with her passing the
+word round, she won’t find it so easy to get another.”
+“Won’t she?” said Tuppence thoughtfully. “I wonder----”
+An idea was dawning in her brain. She thought a minute or two, then
+tapped Albert on the shoulder.
+“See here, son, my brain’s got busy. How would it be if you mentioned
+that you’d got a young cousin, or a friend of yours had, that might suit
+the place. You get me?”
+“I’m there,” said Albert instantly. “You leave it to me, miss, and I’ll
+fix the whole thing up in two ticks.”
+“Some lad!” commented Tuppence, with a nod of approval. “You might say
+that the young woman could come in right away. You let me know, and if
+it’s O.K. I’ll be round to-morrow at eleven o’clock.”
+“Where am I to let you know to?”
+“_Ritz_,” replied Tuppence laconically. “Name of Cowley.”
+Albert eyed her enviously.
+“It must be a good job, this tec business.”
+“It sure is,” drawled Tuppence, “especially when old man Rysdale backs
+the bill. But don’t fret, son. If this goes well, you shall come in on
+the ground floor.”
+With which promise she took leave of her new ally, and walked briskly
+away from South Audley Mansions, well pleased with her morning’s work.
+But there was no time to be lost. She went straight back to the _Ritz_
+and wrote a few brief words to Mr. Carter. Having dispatched this, and
+Tommy not having yet returned--which did not surprise her--she started
+off on a shopping expedition which, with an interval for tea and
+assorted creamy cakes, occupied her until well after six o’clock, and
+she returned to the hotel jaded, but satisfied with her purchases.
+Starting with a cheap clothing store, and passing through one or two
+second-hand establishments, she had finished the day at a well-known
+hairdresser’s. Now, in the seclusion of her bedroom, she unwrapped
+that final purchase. Five minutes later she smiled contentedly at her
+reflection in the glass. With an actress’s pencil she had slightly
+altered the line of her eyebrows, and that, taken in conjunction with
+the new luxuriant growth of fair hair above, so changed her appearance
+that she felt confident that even if she came face to face with
+Whittington he would not recognize her. She would wear elevators in her
+shoes, and the cap and apron would be an even more valuable disguise.
+From hospital experience she knew only too well that a nurse out of
+uniform is frequently unrecognized by her patients.
+“Yes,” said Tuppence aloud, nodding at the pert reflection in the glass,
+“you’ll do.” She then resumed her normal appearance.
+Dinner was a solitary meal. Tuppence was rather surprised at Tommy’s
+non-return. Julius, too, was absent--but that to the girl’s mind was
+more easily explained. His “hustling” activities were not confined
+to London, and his abrupt appearances and disappearances were fully
+accepted by the Young Adventurers as part of the day’s work. It
+was quite on the cards that Julius P. Hersheimmer had left for
+Constantinople at a moment’s notice if he fancied that a clue to his
+cousin’s disappearance was to be found there. The energetic young
+man had succeeded in making the lives of several Scotland Yard men
+unbearable to them, and the telephone girls at the Admiralty had learned
+to know and dread the familiar “Hullo!” He had spent three hours in
+Paris hustling the Prefecture, and had returned from there imbued with
+the idea, possibly inspired by a weary French official, that the true
+clue to the mystery was to be found in Ireland.
+“I dare say he’s dashed off there now,” thought Tuppence. “All very
+well, but this is very dull for _me!_ Here I am bursting with news, and
+absolutely no one to tell it to! Tommy might have wired, or something. I
+wonder where he is. Anyway, he can’t have ‘lost the trail’ as they say.
+That reminds me----” And Miss Cowley broke off in her meditations, and
+summoned a small boy.
+Ten minutes later the lady was ensconced comfortably on her bed,
+smoking cigarettes and deep in the perusal of _Garnaby Williams, the Boy
+Detective_, which, with other threepenny works of lurid fiction, she had
+sent out to purchase. She felt, and rightly, that before the strain
+of attempting further intercourse with Albert, it would be as well to
+fortify herself with a good supply of local colour.
+The morning brought a note from Mr. Carter:
+“DEAR MISS TUPPENCE,
+“You have made a splendid start, and I congratulate you. I feel, though,
+that I should like to point out to you once more the risks you are
+running, especially if you pursue the course you indicate. Those people
+are absolutely desperate and incapable of either mercy or pity. I feel
+that you probably underestimate the danger, and therefore warn you
+again that I can promise you no protection. You have given us valuable
+information, and if you choose to withdraw now no one could blame you.
+At any rate, think the matter over well before you decide.
+“If, in spite of my warnings, you make up your mind to go through with
+it, you will find everything arranged. You have lived for two years with
+Miss Dufferin, The Parsonage, Llanelly, and Mrs. Vandemeyer can apply to
+her for a reference.
+“May I be permitted a word or two of advice? Stick as near to the truth
+as possible--it minimizes the danger of ‘slips.’ I suggest that you
+should represent yourself to be what you are, a former V.A.D., who has
+chosen domestic service as a profession. There are many such at the
+present time. That explains away any incongruities of voice or manner
+which otherwise might awaken suspicion.
+“Whichever way you decide, good luck to you.
+“Your sincere friend,
+“MR. CARTER.”
+Tuppence’s spirits rose mercurially. Mr. Carter’s warnings passed
+unheeded. The young lady had far too much confidence in herself to pay
+any heed to them.
+With some reluctance she abandoned the interesting part she had sketched
+out for herself. Although she had no doubts of her own powers to sustain
+a role indefinitely, she had too much common sense not to recognize the
+force of Mr. Carter’s arguments.
+There was still no word or message from Tommy, but the morning post
+brought a somewhat dirty postcard with the words: “It’s O.K.” scrawled
+upon it.
+At ten-thirty Tuppence surveyed with pride a slightly battered tin trunk
+containing her new possessions. It was artistically corded. It was with
+a slight blush that she rang the bell and ordered it to be placed in a
+taxi. She drove to Paddington, and left the box in the cloak room.
+She then repaired with a handbag to the fastnesses of the ladies’
+waiting-room. Ten minutes later a metamorphosed Tuppence walked demurely
+out of the station and entered a bus.
+It was a few minutes past eleven when Tuppence again entered the hall
+of South Audley Mansions. Albert was on the look-out, attending to his
+duties in a somewhat desultory fashion. He did not immediately recognize
+Tuppence. When he did, his admiration was unbounded.
+“Blest if I’d have known you! That rig-out’s top-hole.”
+“Glad you like it, Albert,” replied Tuppence modestly. “By the way, am I
+your cousin, or am I not?”
+“Your voice too,” cried the delighted boy. “It’s as English as anything!
+No, I said as a friend of mine knew a young gal. Annie wasn’t best
+pleased. She’s stopped on till to-day--to oblige, _she_ said, but really
+it’s so as to put you against the place.”
+“Nice girl,” said Tuppence.
+Albert suspected no irony.
+“She’s style about her, and keeps her silver a treat--but, my word,
+ain’t she got a temper. Are you going up now, miss? Step inside the
+lift. No. 20 did you say?” And he winked.
+Tuppence quelled him with a stern glance, and stepped inside.
+As she rang the bell of No. 20 she was conscious of Albert’s eyes slowly
+descending beneath the level of the floor.
+A smart young woman opened the door.
+“I’ve come about the place,” said Tuppence.
+“It’s a rotten place,” said the young woman without hesitation. “Regular
+old cat--always interfering. Accused me of tampering with her letters.
+Me! The flap was half undone anyway. There’s never anything in the
+waste-paper basket--she burns everything. She’s a wrong ‘un, that’s what
+she is. Swell clothes, but no class. Cook knows something about her--but
+she won’t tell--scared to death of her. And suspicious! She’s on to you
+in a minute if you as much as speak to a fellow. I can tell you----”
+But what more Annie could tell, Tuppence was never destined to learn,
+for at that moment a clear voice with a peculiarly steely ring to it
+called:
+“Annie!”
+The smart young woman jumped as if she had been shot.
+“Yes, ma’am.”
+“Who are you talking to?”
+“It’s a young woman about the situation, ma’am.”
+“Show her in then. At once.”
+“Yes, ma’am.”
+Tuppence was ushered into a room on the right of the long passage. A
+woman was standing by the fireplace. She was no longer in her first
+youth, and the beauty she undeniably possessed was hardened and
+coarsened. In her youth she must have been dazzling. Her pale gold hair,
+owing a slight assistance to art, was coiled low on her neck, her eyes,
+of a piercing electric blue, seemed to possess a faculty of boring into
+the very soul of the person she was looking at. Her exquisite figure was
+enhanced by a wonderful gown of indigo charmeuse. And yet, despite her
+swaying grace, and the almost ethereal beauty of her face, you felt
+instinctively the presence of something hard and menacing, a kind of
+metallic strength that found expression in the tones of her voice and in
+that gimlet-like quality of her eyes.
+For the first time Tuppence felt afraid. She had not feared Whittington,
+but this woman was different. As if fascinated, she watched the long
+cruel line of the red curving mouth, and again she felt that sensation
+of panic pass over her. Her usual self-confidence deserted her. Vaguely
+she felt that deceiving this woman would be very different to deceiving
+Whittington. Mr. Carter’s warning recurred to her mind. Here, indeed,
+she might expect no mercy.
+Fighting down that instinct of panic which urged her to turn tail and
+run without further delay, Tuppence returned the lady’s gaze firmly and
+respectfully.
+As though that first scrutiny had been satisfactory, Mrs. Vandemeyer
+motioned to a chair.
+“You can sit down. How did you hear I wanted a house-parlourmaid?”
+“Through a friend who knows the lift boy here. He thought the place
+might suit me.”
+Again that basilisk glance seemed to pierce her through.
+“You speak like an educated girl?”
+Glibly enough, Tuppence ran through her imaginary career on the lines
+suggested by Mr. Carter. It seemed to her, as she did so, that the
+tension of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s attitude relaxed.
+“I see,” she remarked at length. “Is there anyone I can write to for a
+reference?”
+“I lived last with a Miss Dufferin, The Parsonage, Llanelly. I was with
+her two years.”
+“And then you thought you would get more money by coming to London,
+I suppose? Well, it doesn’t matter to me. I will give you
+£50--£60--whatever you want. You can come in at once?”
+“Yes, ma’am. To-day, if you like. My box is at Paddington.”
+“Go and fetch it in a taxi, then. It’s an easy place. I am out a good
+deal. By the way, what’s your name?”
+“Prudence Cooper, ma’am.”
+“Very well, Prudence. Go away and fetch your box. I shall be out to
+lunch. The cook will show you where everything is.”
+“Thank you, ma’am.”
+Tuppence withdrew. The smart Annie was not in evidence. In the hall
+below a magnificent hall porter had relegated Albert to the background.
+Tuppence did not even glance at him as she passed meekly out.
+The adventure had begun, but she felt less elated than she had done
+earlier in the morning. It crossed her mind that if the unknown Jane
+Finn had fallen into the hands of Mrs. Vandemeyer, it was likely to have
+gone hard with her.
+CHAPTER X. ENTER SIR JAMES PEEL EDGERTON
+TUPPENCE betrayed no awkwardness in her new duties. The daughters of the
+archdeacon were well grounded in household tasks. They were also experts
+in training a “raw girl,” the inevitable result being that the raw girl,
+once trained, departed elsewhere where her newly acquired knowledge
+commanded a more substantial remuneration than the archdeacon’s meagre
+purse allowed.
+Tuppence had therefore very little fear of proving inefficient. Mrs.
+Vandemeyer’s cook puzzled her. She evidently went in deadly terror of
+her mistress. The girl thought it probable that the other woman had some
+hold over her. For the rest, she cooked like a _chef_, as Tuppence had
+an opportunity of judging that evening. Mrs. Vandemeyer was expecting a
+guest to dinner, and Tuppence accordingly laid the beautifully polished
+table for two. She was a little exercised in her own mind as to this
+visitor. It was highly possible that it might prove to be Whittington.
+Although she felt fairly confident that he would not recognize her, yet
+she would have been better pleased had the guest proved to be a total
+stranger. However, there was nothing for it but to hope for the best.
+At a few minutes past eight the front door bell rang, and Tuppence went
+to answer it with some inward trepidation. She was relieved to see that
+the visitor was the second of the two men whom Tommy had taken upon
+himself to follow.
+He gave his name as Count Stepanov. Tuppence announced him, and Mrs.
+Vandemeyer rose from her seat on a low divan with a quick murmur of
+pleasure.
+“It is delightful to see you, Boris Ivanovitch,” she said.
+“And you, madame!” He bowed low over her hand.
+Tuppence returned to the kitchen.
+“Count Stepanov, or some such,” she remarked, and affecting a frank and
+unvarnished curiosity: “Who’s he?”
+“A Russian gentleman, I believe.”
+“Come here much?”
+“Once in a while. What d’you want to know for?”
+“Fancied he might be sweet on the missus, that’s all,” explained the
+girl, adding with an appearance of sulkiness: “How you do take one up!”
+“I’m not quite easy in my mind about the _soufflé_,” explained the
+other.
+“You know something,” thought Tuppence to herself, but aloud she only
+said: “Going to dish up now? Right-o.”
+Whilst waiting at table, Tuppence listened closely to all that was said.
+She remembered that this was one of the men Tommy was shadowing when she
+had last seen him. Already, although she would hardly admit it, she was
+becoming uneasy about her partner. Where was he? Why had no word of any
+kind come from him? She had arranged before leaving the _Ritz_ to have
+all letters or messages sent on at once by special messenger to a small
+stationer’s shop near at hand where Albert was to call in frequently.
+True, it was only yesterday morning that she had parted from Tommy, and
+she told herself that any anxiety on his behalf would be absurd. Still,
+it was strange that he had sent no word of any kind.
+But, listen as she might, the conversation presented no clue. Boris and
+Mrs. Vandemeyer talked on purely indifferent subjects: plays they had
+seen, new dances, and the latest society gossip. After dinner they
+repaired to the small boudoir where Mrs. Vandemeyer, stretched on the
+divan, looked more wickedly beautiful than ever. Tuppence brought in the
+coffee and liqueurs and unwillingly retired. As she did so, she heard
+Boris say:
+“New, isn’t she?”
+“She came in to-day. The other was a fiend. This girl seems all right.
+She waits well.”
+Tuppence lingered a moment longer by the door which she had carefully
+neglected to close, and heard him say:
+“Quite safe, I suppose?”
+“Really, Boris, you are absurdly suspicious. I believe she’s the cousin
+of the hall porter, or something of the kind. And nobody even dreams
+that I have any connection with our--mutual friend, Mr. Brown.”
+“For heaven’s sake, be careful, Rita. That door isn’t shut.”
+“Well, shut it then,” laughed the woman.
+Tuppence removed herself speedily.
+She dared not absent herself longer from the back premises, but she
+cleared away and washed up with a breathless speed acquired in hospital.
+Then she slipped quietly back to the boudoir door. The cook, more
+leisurely, was still busy in the kitchen and, if she missed the other,
+would only suppose her to be turning down the beds.
+Alas! The conversation inside was being carried on in too low a tone
+to permit of her hearing anything of it. She dared not reopen the
+door, however gently. Mrs. Vandemeyer was sitting almost facing it, and
+Tuppence respected her mistress’s lynx-eyed powers of observation.
+Nevertheless, she felt she would give a good deal to overhear what was
+going on. Possibly, if anything unforeseen had happened, she might get
+news of Tommy. For some moments she reflected desperately, then her
+face brightened. She went quickly along the passage to Mrs. Vandemeyer’s
+bedroom, which had long French windows leading on to a balcony that ran
+the length of the flat. Slipping quickly through the window, Tuppence
+crept noiselessly along till she reached the boudoir window. As she
+had thought it stood a little ajar, and the voices within were plainly
+audible.
+Tuppence listened attentively, but there was no mention of anything
+that could be twisted to apply to Tommy. Mrs. Vandemeyer and the Russian
+seemed to be at variance over some matter, and finally the latter
+exclaimed bitterly:
+“With your persistent recklessness, you will end by ruining us!”
+“Bah!” laughed the woman. “Notoriety of the right kind is the best way
+of disarming suspicion. You will realize that one of these days--perhaps
+sooner than you think!”
+“In the meantime, you are going about everywhere with Peel Edgerton.
+Not only is he, perhaps, the most celebrated K.C. in England, but his
+special hobby is criminology! It is madness!”
+“I know that his eloquence has saved untold men from the gallows,” said
+Mrs. Vandemeyer calmly. “What of it? I may need his assistance in that
+line myself some day. If so, how fortunate to have such a friend at
+court--or perhaps it would be more to the point to say _in_ court.”
+Boris got up and began striding up and down. He was very excited.
+“You are a clever woman, Rita; but you are also a fool! Be guided by me,
+and give up Peel Edgerton.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer shook her head gently.
+“I think not.”
+“You refuse?” There was an ugly ring in the Russian’s voice.
+“I do.”
+“Then, by Heaven,” snarled the Russian, “we will see----”
+But Mrs. Vandemeyer also rose to her feet, her eyes flashing.
+“You forget, Boris,” she said. “I am accountable to no one. I take my
+orders only from--Mr. Brown.”
+The other threw up his hands in despair.
+“You are impossible,” he muttered. “Impossible! Already it may be too
+late. They say Peel Edgerton can _smell_ a criminal! How do we know what
+is at the bottom of his sudden interest in you? Perhaps even now his
+suspicions are aroused. He guesses----”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer eyed him scornfully.
+“Reassure yourself, my dear Boris. He suspects nothing. With less than
+your usual chivalry, you seem to forget that I am commonly accounted a
+beautiful woman. I assure you that is all that interests Peel Edgerton.”
+Boris shook his head doubtfully.
+“He has studied crime as no other man in this kingdom has studied it. Do
+you fancy that you can deceive him?”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer’s eyes narrowed.
+“If he is all that you say--it would amuse me to try!”
+“Good heavens, Rita----”
+“Besides,” added Mrs. Vandemeyer, “he is extremely rich. I am not one
+who despises money. The ‘sinews of war,’ you know, Boris!”
+“Money--money! That is always the danger with you, Rita. I believe you
+would sell your soul for money. I believe----” He paused, then in a
+low, sinister voice he said slowly: “Sometimes I believe that you would
+sell-- _us!_”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
+“The price, at any rate, would have to be enormous,” she said lightly.
+“It would be beyond the power of anyone but a millionaire to pay.”
+“Ah!” snarled the Russian. “You see, I was right!”
+“My dear Boris, can you not take a joke?”
+“Was it a joke?”
+“Of course.”
+“Then all I can say is that your ideas of humour are peculiar, my dear
+Rita.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer smiled.
+“Let us not quarrel, Boris. Touch the bell. We will have some drinks.”
+Tuppence beat a hasty retreat. She paused a moment to survey herself in
+Mrs. Vandemeyer’s long glass, and be sure that nothing was amiss with
+her appearance. Then she answered the bell demurely.
+The conversation that she had overheard, although interesting in that
+it proved beyond doubt the complicity of both Rita and Boris, threw very
+little light on the present preoccupations. The name of Jane Finn had
+not even been mentioned.
+The following morning a few brief words with Albert informed her that
+nothing was waiting for her at the stationer’s. It seemed incredible
+that Tommy, if all was well with him, should not send any word to her.
+A cold hand seemed to close round her heart.... Supposing.... She choked
+her fears down bravely. It was no good worrying. But she leapt at a
+chance offered her by Mrs. Vandemeyer.
+“What day do you usually go out, Prudence?”
+“Friday’s my usual day, ma’am.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer lifted her eyebrows.
+“And to-day is Friday! But I suppose you hardly wish to go out to-day,
+as you only came yesterday.”
+“I was thinking of asking you if I might, ma’am.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer looked at her a minute longer, and then smiled.
+“I wish Count Stepanov could hear you. He made a suggestion about
+you last night.” Her smile broadened, catlike. “Your request is
+very--typical. I am satisfied. You do not understand all this--but
+you can go out to-day. It makes no difference to me, as I shall not be
+dining at home.”
+“Thank you, ma’am.”
+Tuppence felt a sensation of relief once she was out of the other’s
+presence. Once again she admitted to herself that she was afraid,
+horribly afraid, of the beautiful woman with the cruel eyes.
+In the midst of a final desultory polishing of her silver, Tuppence was
+disturbed by the ringing of the front door bell, and went to answer it.
+This time the visitor was neither Whittington nor Boris, but a man of
+striking appearance.
+Just a shade over average height, he nevertheless conveyed the
+impression of a big man. His face, clean-shaven and exquisitely mobile,
+was stamped with an expression of power and force far beyond the
+ordinary. Magnetism seemed to radiate from him.
+Tuppence was undecided for the moment whether to put him down as an
+actor or a lawyer, but her doubts were soon solved as he gave her his
+name: Sir James Peel Edgerton.
+She looked at him with renewed interest. This, then, was the famous K.C.
+whose name was familiar all over England. She had heard it said that he
+might one day be Prime Minister. He was known to have refused office in
+the interests of his profession, preferring to remain a simple Member
+for a Scotch constituency.
+Tuppence went back to her pantry thoughtfully. The great man had
+impressed her. She understood Boris’s agitation. Peel Edgerton would not
+be an easy man to deceive.
+In about a quarter of an hour the bell rang, and Tuppence repaired to
+the hall to show the visitor out. He had given her a piercing glance
+before. Now, as she handed him his hat and stick, she was conscious of
+his eyes raking her through. As she opened the door and stood aside to
+let him pass out, he stopped in the doorway.
+“Not been doing this long, eh?”
+Tuppence raised her eyes, astonished. She read in his glance kindliness,
+and something else more difficult to fathom.
+He nodded as though she had answered.
+“V.A.D. and hard up, I suppose?”
+“Did Mrs. Vandemeyer tell you that?” asked Tuppence suspiciously.
+“No, child. The look of you told me. Good place here?”
+“Very good, thank you, sir.”
+“Ah, but there are plenty of good places nowadays. And a change does no
+harm sometimes.”
+“Do you mean----?” began Tuppence.
+But Sir James was already on the topmost stair. He looked back with his
+kindly, shrewd glance.
+“Just a hint,” he said. “That’s all.”
+Tuppence went back to the pantry more thoughtful than ever.
+CHAPTER XI. JULIUS TELLS A STORY
+DRESSED appropriately, Tuppence duly sallied forth for her “afternoon
+out.” Albert was in temporary abeyance, but Tuppence went herself to the
+stationer’s to make quite sure that nothing had come for her. Satisfied
+on this point, she made her way to the _Ritz_. On inquiry she learnt
+that Tommy had not yet returned. It was the answer she had expected, but
+it was another nail in the coffin of her hopes. She resolved to appeal
+to Mr. Carter, telling him when and where Tommy had started on his
+quest, and asking him to do something to trace him. The prospect of
+his aid revived her mercurial spirits, and she next inquired for Julius
+Hersheimmer. The reply she got was to the effect that he had returned
+about half an hour ago, but had gone out immediately.
+Tuppence’s spirits revived still more. It would be something to see
+Julius. Perhaps he could devise some plan for finding out what
+had become of Tommy. She wrote her note to Mr. Carter in Julius’s
+sitting-room, and was just addressing the envelope when the door burst
+open.
+“What the hell----” began Julius, but checked himself abruptly. “I beg
+your pardon, Miss Tuppence. Those fools down at the office would have it
+that Beresford wasn’t here any longer--hadn’t been here since Wednesday.
+Is that so?”
+Tuppence nodded.
+“You don’t know where he is?” she asked faintly.
+“I? How should I know? I haven’t had one darned word from him, though I
+wired him yesterday morning.”
+“I expect your wire’s at the office unopened.”
+“But where is he?”
+“I don’t know. I hoped you might.”
+“I tell you I haven’t had one darned word from him since we parted at
+the depot on Wednesday.”
+“What depot?”
+“Waterloo. Your London and South Western road.”
+“Waterloo?” frowned Tuppence.
+“Why, yes. Didn’t he tell you?”
+“I haven’t seen him either,” replied Tuppence impatiently. “Go on about
+Waterloo. What were you doing there?”
+“He gave me a call. Over the phone. Told me to get a move on, and
+hustle. Said he was trailing two crooks.”
+“Oh!” said Tuppence, her eyes opening. “I see. Go on.”
+“I hurried along right away. Beresford was there. He pointed out the
+crooks. The big one was mine, the guy you bluffed. Tommy shoved a ticket
+into my hand and told me to get aboard the cars. He was going to sleuth
+the other crook.” Julius paused. “I thought for sure you’d know all
+this.”
+“Julius,” said Tuppence firmly, “stop walking up and down. It makes me
+giddy. Sit down in that armchair, and tell me the whole story with as
+few fancy turns of speech as possible.”
+Mr. Hersheimmer obeyed.
+“Sure,” he said. “Where shall I begin?”
+“Where you left off. At Waterloo.”
+“Well,” began Julius, “I got into one of your dear old-fashioned
+first-class British compartments. The train was just off. First thing I
+knew a guard came along and informed me mighty politely that I wasn’t
+in a smoking-carriage. I handed him out half a dollar, and that settled
+that. I did a bit of prospecting along the corridor to the next coach.
+Whittington was there right enough. When I saw the skunk, with his big
+sleek fat face, and thought of poor little Jane in his clutches, I felt
+real mad that I hadn’t got a gun with me. I’d have tickled him up some.
+“We got to Bournemouth all right. Whittington took a cab and gave the
+name of an hotel. I did likewise, and we drove up within three minutes
+of each other. He hired a room, and I hired one too. So far it was all
+plain sailing. He hadn’t the remotest notion that anyone was on to him.
+Well, he just sat around in the hotel lounge, reading the papers and so
+on, till it was time for dinner. He didn’t hurry any over that either.
+“I began to think that there was nothing doing, that he’d just come on
+the trip for his health, but I remembered that he hadn’t changed for
+dinner, though it was by way of being a slap-up hotel, so it seemed
+likely enough that he’d be going out on his real business afterwards.
+“Sure enough, about nine o’clock, so he did. Took a car across the
+town--mighty pretty place by the way, I guess I’ll take Jane there for
+a spell when I find her--and then paid it off and struck out along those
+pine-woods on the top of the cliff. I was there too, you understand.
+We walked, maybe, for half an hour. There’s a lot of villas all the way
+along, but by degrees they seemed to get more and more thinned out, and
+in the end we got to one that seemed the last of the bunch. Big house it
+was, with a lot of piny grounds around it.
+“It was a pretty black night, and the carriage drive up to the house was
+dark as pitch. I could hear him ahead, though I couldn’t see him. I
+had to walk carefully in case he might get on to it that he was being
+followed. I turned a curve and I was just in time to see him ring the
+bell and get admitted to the house. I just stopped where I was. It was
+beginning to rain, and I was soon pretty near soaked through. Also, it
+was almighty cold.
+“Whittington didn’t come out again, and by and by I got kind of restive,
+and began to mouch around. All the ground floor windows were shuttered
+tight, but upstairs, on the first floor (it was a two-storied house) I
+noticed a window with a light burning and the curtains not drawn.
+“Now, just opposite to that window, there was a tree growing. It was
+about thirty foot away from the house, maybe, and I sort of got it into
+my head that, if I climbed up that tree, I’d very likely be able to see
+into that room. Of course, I knew there was no reason why Whittington
+should be in that room rather than in any other--less reason, in fact,
+for the betting would be on his being in one of the reception-rooms
+downstairs. But I guess I’d got the hump from standing so long in the
+rain, and anything seemed better than going on doing nothing. So I
+started up.
+“It wasn’t so easy, by a long chalk! The rain had made the boughs mighty
+slippery, and it was all I could do to keep a foothold, but bit by bit I
+managed it, until at last there I was level with the window.
+“But then I was disappointed. I was too far to the left. I could only
+see sideways into the room. A bit of curtain, and a yard of wallpaper
+was all I could command. Well, that wasn’t any manner of good to me, but
+just as I was going to give it up, and climb down ignominiously, some
+one inside moved and threw his shadow on my little bit of wall--and, by
+gum, it was Whittington!
+“After that, my blood was up. I’d just _got_ to get a look into that
+room. It was up to me to figure out how. I noticed that there was a long
+branch running out from the tree in the right direction. If I could only
+swarm about half-way along it, the proposition would be solved. But it
+was mighty uncertain whether it would bear my weight. I decided I’d
+just got to risk that, and I started. Very cautiously, inch by inch, I
+crawled along. The bough creaked and swayed in a nasty fashion, and it
+didn’t do to think of the drop below, but at last I got safely to where
+I wanted to be.
+“The room was medium-sized, furnished in a kind of bare hygienic way.
+There was a table with a lamp on it in the middle of the room, and
+sitting at that table, facing towards me, was Whittington right enough.
+He was talking to a woman dressed as a hospital nurse. She was sitting
+with her back to me, so I couldn’t see her face. Although the blinds
+were up, the window itself was shut, so I couldn’t catch a word of what
+they said. Whittington seemed to be doing all the talking, and the nurse
+just listened. Now and then she nodded, and sometimes she’d shake
+her head, as though she were answering questions. He seemed very
+emphatic--once or twice he beat with his fist on the table. The rain had
+stopped now, and the sky was clearing in that sudden way it does.
+“Presently, he seemed to get to the end of what he was saying. He got
+up, and so did she. He looked towards the window and asked something--I
+guess it was whether it was raining. Anyway, she came right across and
+looked out. Just then the moon came out from behind the clouds. I
+was scared the woman would catch sight of me, for I was full in the
+moonlight. I tried to move back a bit. The jerk I gave was too much for
+that rotten old branch. With an almighty crash, down it came, and Julius
+P. Hersheimmer with it!”
+“Oh, Julius,” breathed Tuppence, “how exciting! Go on.”
+“Well, luckily for me, I pitched down into a good soft bed of earth--but
+it put me out of action for the time, sure enough. The next thing I
+knew, I was lying in bed with a hospital nurse (not Whittington’s one)
+on one side of me, and a little black-bearded man with gold glasses,
+and medical man written all over him, on the other. He rubbed his hands
+together, and raised his eyebrows as I stared at him. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘So
+our young friend is coming round again. Capital. Capital.’
+“I did the usual stunt. Said: ‘What’s happened?’ And ‘Where am I?’ But
+I knew the answer to the last well enough. There’s no moss growing on
+my brain. ‘I think that’ll do for the present, sister,’ said the little
+man, and the nurse left the room in a sort of brisk well-trained way.
+But I caught her handing me out a look of deep curiosity as she passed
+through the door.
+“That look of hers gave me an idea. ‘Now then, doc,’ I said, and tried
+to sit up in bed, but my right foot gave me a nasty twinge as I did so.
+‘A slight sprain,’ explained the doctor. ‘Nothing serious. You’ll be
+about again in a couple of days.’”
+“I noticed you walked lame,” interpolated Tuppence.
+Julius nodded, and continued:
+“‘How did it happen?’ I asked again. He replied dryly. ‘You fell, with
+a considerable portion of one of my trees, into one of my newly planted
+flower-beds.’
+“I liked the man. He seemed to have a sense of humour. I felt sure that
+he, at least, was plumb straight. ‘Sure, doc,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about
+the tree, and I guess the new bulbs will be on me. But perhaps you’d
+like to know what I was doing in your garden?’ ‘I think the facts do
+call for an explanation,’ he replied. ‘Well, to begin with, I wasn’t
+after the spoons.’
+“He smiled. ‘My first theory. But I soon altered my mind. By the way,
+you are an American, are you not?’ I told him my name. ‘And you?’ ‘I am
+Dr. Hall, and this, as you doubtless know, is my private nursing home.’
+“I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to put him wise. I was just thankful
+for the information. I liked the man, and I felt he was straight, but
+I wasn’t going to give him the whole story. For one thing he probably
+wouldn’t have believed it.
+“I made up my mind in a flash. ‘Why, doctor,’ I said, ‘I guess I feel
+an almighty fool, but I owe it to you to let you know that it wasn’t
+the Bill Sikes business I was up to.’ Then I went on and mumbled out
+something about a girl. I trotted out the stern guardian business, and a
+nervous breakdown, and finally explained that I had fancied I recognized
+her among the patients at the home, hence my nocturnal adventures. I
+guess it was just the kind of story he was expecting. ‘Quite a romance,’
+he said genially, when I’d finished. ‘Now, doc,’ I went on, ‘will you
+be frank with me? Have you here now, or have you had here at any time,
+a young girl called Jane Finn?’ He repeated the name thoughtfully. ‘Jane
+Finn?’ he said. ‘No.’
+“I was chagrined, and I guess I showed it. ‘You are sure?’ ‘Quite sure,
+Mr. Hersheimmer. It is an uncommon name, and I should not have been
+likely to forget it.’
+“Well, that was flat. It laid me out for a space. I’d kind of hoped
+my search was at an end. ‘That’s that,’ I said at last. ‘Now, there’s
+another matter. When I was hugging that darned branch I thought I
+recognized an old friend of mine talking to one of your nurses.’ I
+purposely didn’t mention any name because, of course, Whittington might
+be calling himself something quite different down here, but the doctor
+answered at once. ‘Mr. Whittington, perhaps?’ ‘That’s the fellow,’ I
+replied. ‘What’s he doing down here? Don’t tell me _his_ nerves are out
+of order?’
+“Dr. Hall laughed. ‘No. He came down to see one of my nurses, Nurse
+Edith, who is a niece of his.’ ‘Why, fancy that!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is he
+still here?’ ‘No, he went back to town almost immediately.’ ‘What a
+pity!’ I ejaculated. ‘But perhaps I could speak to his niece--Nurse
+Edith, did you say her name was?’
+“But the doctor shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that, too, is impossible.
+Nurse Edith left with a patient to-night also.’ ‘I seem to be real
+unlucky,’ I remarked. ‘Have you Mr. Whittington’s address in town?
+I guess I’d like to look him up when I get back.’ ‘I don’t know his
+address. I can write to Nurse Edith for it if you like.’ I thanked him.
+‘Don’t say who it is wants it. I’d like to give him a little surprise.’
+“That was about all I could do for the moment. Of course, if the girl
+was really Whittington’s niece, she might be too cute to fall into the
+trap, but it was worth trying. Next thing I did was to write out a wire
+to Beresford saying where I was, and that I was laid up with a sprained
+foot, and telling him to come down if he wasn’t busy. I had to be
+guarded in what I said. However, I didn’t hear from him, and my foot
+soon got all right. It was only ricked, not really sprained, so to-day I
+said good-bye to the little doctor chap, asked him to send me word if
+he heard from Nurse Edith, and came right away back to town. Say, Miss
+Tuppence, you’re looking mighty pale!”
+“It’s Tommy,” said Tuppence. “What can have happened to him?”
+“Buck up, I guess he’s all right really. Why shouldn’t he be? See here,
+it was a foreign-looking guy he went off after. Maybe they’ve gone
+abroad--to Poland, or something like that?”
+Tuppence shook her head.
+“He couldn’t without passports and things. Besides I’ve seen that man,
+Boris Something, since. He dined with Mrs. Vandemeyer last night.”
+“Mrs. Who?”
+“I forgot. Of course you don’t know all that.”
+“I’m listening,” said Julius, and gave vent to his favourite expression.
+“Put me wise.”
+Tuppence thereupon related the events of the last two days. Julius’s
+astonishment and admiration were unbounded.
+“Bully for you! Fancy you a menial. It just tickles me to death!” Then
+he added seriously: “But say now, I don’t like it, Miss Tuppence, I sure
+don’t. You’re just as plucky as they make ‘em, but I wish you’d keep
+right out of this. These crooks we’re up against would as soon croak a
+girl as a man any day.”
+“Do you think I’m afraid?” said Tuppence indignantly, valiantly
+repressing memories of the steely glitter in Mrs. Vandemeyer’s eyes.
+“I said before you were darned plucky. But that doesn’t alter facts.”
+“Oh, bother _me!_” said Tuppence impatiently. “Let’s think about what
+can have happened to Tommy. I’ve written to Mr. Carter about it,” she
+added, and told him the gist of her letter.
+Julius nodded gravely.
+“I guess that’s good as far as it goes. But it’s for us to get busy and
+do something.”
+“What can we do?” asked Tuppence, her spirits rising.
+“I guess we’d better get on the track of Boris. You say he’s been to
+your place. Is he likely to come again?”
+“He might. I really don’t know.”
+“I see. Well, I guess I’d better buy a car, a slap-up one, dress as a
+chauffeur and hang about outside. Then if Boris comes, you could make
+some kind of signal, and I’d trail him. How’s that?”
+“Splendid, but he mightn’t come for weeks.”
+“We’ll have to chance that. I’m glad you like the plan.” He rose.
+“Where are you going?”
+“To buy the car, of course,” replied Julius, surprised. “What make do
+you like? I guess you’ll do some riding in it before we’ve finished.”
+“Oh,” said Tuppence faintly, “I _like_ Rolls-Royces, but----”
+“Sure,” agreed Julius. “What you say goes. I’ll get one.”
+“But you can’t at once,” cried Tuppence. “People wait ages sometimes.”
+“Little Julius doesn’t,” affirmed Mr. Hersheimmer. “Don’t you worry any.
+I’ll be round in the car in half an hour.”
+Tuppence got up.
+“You’re awfully good, Julius. But I can’t help feeling that it’s rather
+a forlorn hope. I’m really pinning my faith to Mr. Carter.”
+“Then I shouldn’t.”
+“Why?”
+“Just an idea of mine.”
+���Oh; but he must do something. There’s no one else. By the way, I forgot
+to tell you of a queer thing that happened this morning.”
+And she narrated her encounter with Sir James Peel Edgerton. Julius was
+interested.
+“What did the guy mean, do you think?” he asked.
+“I don’t quite know,” said Tuppence meditatively. “But I think that, in
+an ambiguous, legal, without prejudishish lawyer’s way, he was trying to
+warn me.”
+“Why should he?”
+“I don’t know,” confessed Tuppence. “But he looked kind, and
+simply awfully clever. I wouldn’t mind going to him and telling him
+everything.”
+Somewhat to her surprise, Julius negatived the idea sharply.
+“See here,” he said, “we don’t want any lawyers mixed up in this. That
+guy couldn’t help us any.”
+“Well, I believe he could,” reiterated Tuppence obstinately.
+“Don’t you think it. So long. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
+Thirty-five minutes had elapsed when Julius returned. He took Tuppence
+by the arm, and walked her to the window.
+“There she is.”
+“Oh!” said Tuppence with a note of reverence in her voice, as she gazed
+down at the enormous car.
+“She’s some pace-maker, I can tell you,” said Julius complacently.
+“How did you get it?” gasped Tuppence.
+“She was just being sent home to some bigwig.”
+“Well?”
+“I went round to his house,” said Julius. “I said that I reckoned a car
+like that was worth every penny of twenty thousand dollars. Then I told
+him that it was worth just about fifty thousand dollars to me if he’d
+get out.”
+“Well?” said Tuppence, intoxicated.
+“Well,” returned Julius, “he got out, that’s all.”
+CHAPTER XII. A FRIEND IN NEED
+FRIDAY and Saturday passed uneventfully. Tuppence had received a brief
+answer to her appeal from Mr. Carter. In it he pointed out that the
+Young Adventurers had undertaken the work at their own risk, and had
+been fully warned of the dangers. If anything had happened to Tommy he
+regretted it deeply, but he could do nothing.
+This was cold comfort. Somehow, without Tommy, all the savour went out
+of the adventure, and, for the first time, Tuppence felt doubtful of
+success. While they had been together she had never questioned it for
+a minute. Although she was accustomed to take the lead, and to pride
+herself on her quick-wittedness, in reality she had relied upon Tommy
+more than she realized at the time. There was something so eminently
+sober and clear-headed about him, his common sense and soundness of
+vision were so unvarying, that without him Tuppence felt much like a
+rudderless ship. It was curious that Julius, who was undoubtedly much
+cleverer than Tommy, did not give her the same feeling of support. She
+had accused Tommy of being a pessimist, and it is certain that he
+always saw the disadvantages and difficulties which she herself was
+optimistically given to overlooking, but nevertheless she had really
+relied a good deal on his judgment. He might be slow, but he was very
+sure.
+It seemed to the girl that, for the first time, she realized the
+sinister character of the mission they had undertaken so lightheartedly.
+It had begun like a page of romance. Now, shorn of its glamour, it
+seemed to be turning to grim reality. Tommy--that was all that mattered.
+Many times in the day Tuppence blinked the tears out of her eyes
+resolutely. “Little fool,” she would apostrophize herself, “don’t
+snivel. Of course you’re fond of him. You’ve known him all your life.
+But there’s no need to be sentimental about it.”
+In the meantime, nothing more was seen of Boris. He did not come to the
+flat, and Julius and the car waited in vain. Tuppence gave herself over
+to new meditations. Whilst admitting the truth of Julius’s objections,
+she had nevertheless not entirely relinquished the idea of appealing to
+Sir James Peel Edgerton. Indeed, she had gone so far as to look up his
+address in the _Red Book_. Had he meant to warn her that day? If so,
+why? Surely she was at least entitled to demand an explanation. He had
+looked at her so kindly. Perhaps he might tell them something concerning
+Mrs. Vandemeyer which might lead to a clue to Tommy’s whereabouts.
+Anyway, Tuppence decided, with her usual shake of the shoulders, it was
+worth trying, and try it she would. Sunday was her afternoon out. She
+would meet Julius, persuade him to her point of view, and they would
+beard the lion in his den.
+When the day arrived Julius needed a considerable amount of persuading,
+but Tuppence held firm. “It can do no harm,” was what she always came
+back to. In the end Julius gave in, and they proceeded in the car to
+Carlton House Terrace.
+The door was opened by an irreproachable butler. Tuppence felt a little
+nervous. After all, perhaps it _was_ colossal cheek on her part. She
+had decided not to ask if Sir James was “at home,” but to adopt a more
+personal attitude.
+“Will you ask Sir James if I can see him for a few minutes? I have an
+important message for him.”
+The butler retired, returning a moment or two later.
+“Sir James will see you. Will you step this way?”
+He ushered them into a room at the back of the house, furnished as a
+library. The collection of books was a magnificent one, and Tuppence
+noticed that all one wall was devoted to works on crime and criminology.
+There were several deep-padded leather arm-chairs, and an old-fashioned
+open hearth. In the window was a big roll-top desk strewn with papers at
+which the master of the house was sitting.
+He rose as they entered.
+“You have a message for me? Ah”--he recognized Tuppence with a
+smile--“it’s you, is it? Brought a message from Mrs. Vandemeyer, I
+suppose?”
+“Not exactly,” said Tuppence. “In fact, I’m afraid I only said that to
+be quite sure of getting in. Oh, by the way, this is Mr. Hersheimmer,
+Sir James Peel Edgerton.”
+“Pleased to meet you,” said the American, shooting out a hand.
+“Won’t you both sit down?” asked Sir James. He drew forward two chairs.
+“Sir James,” said Tuppence, plunging boldly, “I dare say you will think
+it is most awful cheek of me coming here like this. Because, of course,
+it’s nothing whatever to do with you, and then you’re a very important
+person, and of course Tommy and I are very unimportant.” She paused for
+breath.
+“Tommy?” queried Sir James, looking across at the American.
+“No, that’s Julius,” explained Tuppence. “I’m rather nervous, and that
+makes me tell it badly. What I really want to know is what you meant by
+what you said to me the other day? Did you mean to warn me against Mrs.
+Vandemeyer? You did, didn’t you?”
+“My dear young lady, as far as I recollect I only mentioned that there
+were equally good situations to be obtained elsewhere.”
+“Yes, I know. But it was a hint, wasn’t it?”
+“Well, perhaps it was,” admitted Sir James gravely.
+“Well, I want to know more. I want to know just _why_ you gave me a
+hint.”
+Sir James smiled at her earnestness.
+“Suppose the lady brings a libel action against me for defamation of
+character?”
+“Of course,” said Tuppence. “I know lawyers are always dreadfully
+careful. But can’t we say ‘without prejudice’ first, and then say just
+what we want to.”
+“Well,” said Sir James, still smiling, “without prejudice, then, if I
+had a young sister forced to earn her living, I should not like to see
+her in Mrs. Vandemeyer’s service. I felt it incumbent on me just to give
+you a hint. It is no place for a young and inexperienced girl. That is
+all I can tell you.”
+“I see,” said Tuppence thoughtfully. “Thank you very much. But I’m not
+_really_ inexperienced, you know. I knew perfectly that she was a bad
+lot when I went there--as a matter of fact that’s _why_ I went----” She
+broke off, seeing some bewilderment on the lawyer’s face, and went on:
+“I think perhaps I’d better tell you the whole story, Sir James. I’ve a
+sort of feeling that you’d know in a minute if I didn’t tell the truth,
+and so you might as well know all about it from the beginning. What do
+you think, Julius?”
+“As you’re bent on it, I’d go right ahead with the facts,” replied the
+American, who had so far sat in silence.
+“Yes, tell me all about it,” said Sir James. “I want to know who Tommy
+is.”
+Thus encouraged Tuppence plunged into her tale, and the lawyer listened
+with close attention.
+“Very interesting,” he said, when she finished. “A great deal of what
+you tell me, child, is already known to me. I’ve had certain theories
+of my own about this Jane Finn. You’ve done extraordinarily well so
+far, but it’s rather too bad of--what do you know him as?--Mr. Carter to
+pitchfork you two young things into an affair of this kind. By the
+way, where did Mr. Hersheimmer come in originally? You didn’t make that
+clear?”
+Julius answered for himself.
+“I’m Jane’s first cousin,” he explained, returning the lawyer’s keen
+gaze.
+“Ah!”
+“Oh, Sir James,” broke out Tuppence, “what do you think has become of
+Tommy?”
+“H’m.” The lawyer rose, and paced slowly up and down. “When you arrived,
+young lady, I was just packing up my traps. Going to Scotland by the
+night train for a few days’ fishing. But there are different kinds of
+fishing. I’ve a good mind to stay, and see if we can’t get on the track
+of that young chap.”
+“Oh!” Tuppence clasped her hands ecstatically.
+“All the same, as I said before, it’s too bad of--of Carter to set you
+two babies on a job like this. Now, don’t get offended, Miss--er----”
+“Cowley. Prudence Cowley. But my friends call me Tuppence.”
+“Well, Miss Tuppence, then, as I’m certainly going to be a friend. Don’t
+be offended because I think you’re young. Youth is a failing only too
+easily outgrown. Now, about this young Tommy of yours----”
+“Yes.” Tuppence clasped her hands.
+“Frankly, things look bad for him. He’s been butting in somewhere where
+he wasn’t wanted. Not a doubt of it. But don’t give up hope.”
+“And you really will help us? There, Julius! He didn’t want me to come,”
+she added by way of explanation.
+“H’m,” said the lawyer, favouring Julius with another keen glance. “And
+why was that?”
+“I reckoned it would be no good worrying you with a petty little
+business like this.”
+“I see.” He paused a moment. “This petty little business, as you call
+it, bears directly on a very big business, bigger perhaps than either
+you or Miss Tuppence know. If this boy is alive, he may have very
+valuable information to give us. Therefore, we must find him.”
+“Yes, but how?” cried Tuppence. “I’ve tried to think of everything.”
+Sir James smiled.
+“And yet there’s one person quite near at hand who in all probability
+knows where he is, or at all events where he is likely to be.”
+“Who is that?” asked Tuppence, puzzled.
+“Mrs. Vandemeyer.”
+“Yes, but she’d never tell us.”
+“Ah, that is where I come in. I think it quite likely that I shall be
+able to make Mrs. Vandemeyer tell me what I want to know.”
+“How?” demanded Tuppence, opening her eyes very wide.
+“Oh, just by asking her questions,” replied Sir James easily. “That’s
+the way we do it, you know.”
+He tapped with his finger on the table, and Tuppence felt again the
+intense power that radiated from the man.
+“And if she won’t tell?” asked Julius suddenly.
+“I think she will. I have one or two powerful levers. Still, in that
+unlikely event, there is always the possibility of bribery.”
+“Sure. And that’s where I come in!” cried Julius, bringing his fist down
+on the table with a bang. “You can count on me, if necessary, for one
+million dollars. Yes, sir, one million dollars!”
+Sir James sat down and subjected Julius to a long scrutiny.
+“Mr. Hersheimmer,” he said at last, “that is a very large sum.”
+“I guess it’ll have to be. These aren’t the kind of folk to offer
+sixpence to.”
+“At the present rate of exchange it amounts to considerably over two
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
+“That’s so. Maybe you think I’m talking through my hat, but I can
+deliver the goods all right, with enough over to spare for your fee.”
+Sir James flushed slightly.
+“There is no question of a fee, Mr. Hersheimmer. I am not a private
+detective.”
+“Sorry. I guess I was just a mite hasty, but I’ve been feeling bad about
+this money question. I wanted to offer a big reward for news of Jane
+some days ago, but your crusted institution of Scotland Yard advised me
+against it. Said it was undesirable.”
+“They were probably right,” said Sir James dryly.
+“But it’s all O.K. about Julius,” put in Tuppence. “He’s not pulling
+your leg. He’s got simply pots of money.”
+“The old man piled it up in style,” explained Julius. “Now, let’s get
+down to it. What’s your idea?”
+Sir James considered for a moment or two.
+“There is no time to be lost. The sooner we strike the better.” He
+turned to Tuppence. “Is Mrs. Vandemeyer dining out to-night, do you
+know?”
+“Yes, I think so, but she will not be out late. Otherwise, she would
+have taken the latchkey.”
+“Good. I will call upon her about ten o’clock. What time are you
+supposed to return?”
+“About nine-thirty or ten, but I could go back earlier.”
+“You must not do that on any account. It might arouse suspicion if you
+did not stay out till the usual time. Be back by nine-thirty. I will
+arrive at ten. Mr. Hersheimmer will wait below in a taxi perhaps.”
+“He’s got a new Rolls-Royce car,” said Tuppence with vicarious pride.
+“Even better. If I succeed in obtaining the address from her, we can
+go there at once, taking Mrs. Vandemeyer with us if necessary. You
+understand?”
+“Yes.” Tuppence rose to her feet with a skip of delight. “Oh, I feel so
+much better!”
+“Don’t build on it too much, Miss Tuppence. Go easy.”
+Julius turned to the lawyer.
+“Say, then. I’ll call for you in the car round about nine-thirty. Is
+that right?”
+“Perhaps that will be the best plan. It would be unnecessary to have two
+cars waiting about. Now, Miss Tuppence, my advice to you is to go and
+have a good dinner, a _really_ good one, mind. And don’t think ahead
+more than you can help.”
+He shook hands with them both, and a moment later they were outside.
+“Isn’t he a duck?” inquired Tuppence ecstatically, as she skipped down
+the steps. “Oh, Julius, isn’t he just a duck?”
+“Well, I allow he seems to be the goods all right. And I was wrong about
+its being useless to go to him. Say, shall we go right away back to the
+_Ritz?_”
+“I must walk a bit, I think. I feel so excited. Drop me in the park,
+will you? Unless you’d like to come too?”
+“I want to get some petrol,” he explained. “And send off a cable or
+two.”
+“All right. I’ll meet you at the _Ritz_ at seven. We’ll have to dine
+upstairs. I can’t show myself in these glad rags.”
+“Sure. I’ll get Felix help me choose the menu. He’s some head waiter,
+that. So long.”
+Tuppence walked briskly along towards the Serpentine, first glancing at
+her watch. It was nearly six o’clock. She remembered that she had had no
+tea, but felt too excited to be conscious of hunger. She walked as
+far as Kensington Gardens and then slowly retraced her steps, feeling
+infinitely better for the fresh air and exercise. It was not so easy to
+follow Sir James’s advice, and put the possible events of the evening
+out of her head. As she drew nearer and nearer to Hyde Park corner, the
+temptation to return to South Audley Mansions was almost irresistible.
+At any rate, she decided, it would do no harm just to go and _look_
+at the building. Perhaps, then, she could resign herself to waiting
+patiently for ten o’clock.
+South Audley Mansions looked exactly the same as usual. What Tuppence
+had expected she hardly knew, but the sight of its red brick stolidity
+slightly assuaged the growing and entirely unreasonable uneasiness
+that possessed her. She was just turning away when she heard a piercing
+whistle, and the faithful Albert came running from the building to join
+her.
+Tuppence frowned. It was no part of the programme to have attention
+called to her presence in the neighbourhood, but Albert was purple with
+suppressed excitement.
+“I say, miss, she’s a-going!”
+“Who’s going?” demanded Tuppence sharply.
+“The crook. Ready Rita. Mrs. Vandemeyer. She’s a-packing up, and she’s
+just sent down word for me to get her a taxi.”
+“What?” Tuppence clutched his arm.
+“It’s the truth, miss. I thought maybe as you didn’t know about it.”
+“Albert,” cried Tuppence, “you’re a brick. If it hadn’t been for you
+we’d have lost her.”
+Albert flushed with pleasure at this tribute.
+“There’s no time to lose,” said Tuppence, crossing the road. “I’ve got
+to stop her. At all costs I must keep her here until----” She broke off.
+“Albert, there’s a telephone here, isn’t there?”
+The boy shook his head.
+“The flats mostly have their own, miss. But there’s a box just round the
+corner.”
+“Go to it then, at once, and ring up the _Ritz Hotel_. Ask for Mr.
+Hersheimmer, and when you get him tell him to get Sir James and come on
+at once, as Mrs. Vandemeyer is trying to hook it. If you can’t get him,
+ring up Sir James Peel Edgerton, you’ll find his number in the book, and
+tell him what’s happening. You won’t forget the names, will you?”
+Albert repeated them glibly. “You trust to me, miss, it’ll be all right.
+But what about you? Aren’t you afraid to trust yourself with her?”
+“No, no, that’s all right. _But go and telephone_. Be quick.”
+Drawing a long breath, Tuppence entered the Mansions and ran up to the
+door of No. 20. How she was to detain Mrs. Vandemeyer until the two men
+arrived, she did not know, but somehow or other it had to be done, and
+she must accomplish the task single-handed. What had occasioned this
+precipitate departure? Did Mrs. Vandemeyer suspect her?
+Speculations were idle. Tuppence pressed the bell firmly. She might
+learn something from the cook.
+Nothing happened and, after waiting some minutes, Tuppence pressed the
+bell again, keeping her finger on the button for some little while.
+At last she heard footsteps inside, and a moment later Mrs. Vandemeyer
+herself opened the door. She lifted her eyebrows at the sight of the
+girl.
+“You?”
+“I had a touch of toothache, ma’am,” said Tuppence glibly. “So thought
+it better to come home and have a quiet evening.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer said nothing, but she drew back and let Tuppence pass
+into the hall.
+“How unfortunate for you,” she said coldly. “You had better go to bed.”
+“Oh, I shall be all right in the kitchen, ma’am. Cook will----”
+“Cook is out,” said Mrs. Vandemeyer, in a rather disagreeable tone. “I
+sent her out. So you see you had better go to bed.”
+Suddenly Tuppence felt afraid. There was a ring in Mrs. Vandemeyer’s
+voice that she did not like at all. Also, the other woman was slowly
+edging her up the passage. Tuppence turned at bay.
+“I don’t want----”
+Then, in a flash, a rim of cold steel touched her temple, and Mrs.
+Vandemeyer’s voice rose cold and menacing:
+“You damned little fool! Do you think I don’t know? No, don’t answer. If
+you struggle or cry out, I’ll shoot you like a dog.”
+The rim of steel pressed a little harder against the girl’s temple.
+“Now then, march,” went on Mrs. Vandemeyer. “This way--into my room. In
+a minute, when I’ve done with you, you’ll go to bed as I told you to.
+And you’ll sleep--oh yes, my little spy, you’ll sleep all right!”
+There was a sort of hideous geniality in the last words which Tuppence
+did not at all like. For the moment there was nothing to be done, and
+she walked obediently into Mrs. Vandemeyer’s bedroom. The pistol never
+left her forehead. The room was in a state of wild disorder, clothes
+were flung about right and left, a suit-case and a hat box, half-packed,
+stood in the middle of the floor.
+Tuppence pulled herself together with an effort. Her voice shook a
+little, but she spoke out bravely.
+“Come now,” she said. “This is nonsense. You can’t shoot me. Why, every
+one in the building would hear the report.”
+“I’d risk that,” said Mrs. Vandemeyer cheerfully. “But, as long as you
+don’t sing out for help, you’re all right--and I don’t think you will.
+You’re a clever girl. You deceived _me_ all right. I hadn’t a suspicion
+of you! So I’ve no doubt that you understand perfectly well that this
+is where I’m on top and you’re underneath. Now then--sit on the bed. Put
+your hands above your head, and if you value your life don’t move them.”
+Tuppence obeyed passively. Her good sense told her that there was
+nothing else to do but accept the situation. If she shrieked for help
+there was very little chance of anyone hearing her, whereas there was
+probably quite a good chance of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s shooting her. In the
+meantime, every minute of delay gained was valuable.
+Mrs. Vandemeyer laid down the revolver on the edge of the washstand
+within reach of her hand, and, still eyeing Tuppence like a lynx in case
+the girl should attempt to move, she took a little stoppered bottle from
+its place on the marble and poured some of its contents into a glass
+which she filled up with water.
+“What’s that?” asked Tuppence sharply.
+“Something to make you sleep soundly.”
+Tuppence paled a little.
+“Are you going to poison me?” she asked in a whisper.
+“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Vandemeyer, smiling agreeably.
+“Then I shan’t drink it,” said Tuppence firmly. “I’d much rather be
+shot. At any rate that would make a row, and some one might hear it. But
+I won’t be killed off quietly like a lamb.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer stamped her foot.
+“Don’t be a little fool! Do you really think I want a hue and cry for
+murder out after me? If you’ve any sense at all, you’ll realize that
+poisoning you wouldn’t suit my book at all. It’s a sleeping draught,
+that’s all. You’ll wake up to-morrow morning none the worse. I simply
+don’t want the bother of tying you up and gagging you. That’s the
+alternative--and you won’t like it, I can tell you! I can be very rough
+if I choose. So drink this down like a good girl, and you’ll be none the
+worse for it.”
+In her heart of hearts Tuppence believed her. The arguments she had
+adduced rang true. It was a simple and effective method of getting her
+out of the way for the time being. Nevertheless, the girl did not take
+kindly to the idea of being tamely put to sleep without as much as one
+bid for freedom. She felt that once Mrs. Vandemeyer gave them the slip,
+the last hope of finding Tommy would be gone.
+Tuppence was quick in her mental processes. All these reflections
+passed through her mind in a flash, and she saw where a chance, a very
+problematical chance, lay, and she determined to risk all in one supreme
+effort.
+Accordingly, she lurched suddenly off the bed and fell on her knees
+before Mrs. Vandemeyer, clutching her skirts frantically.
+“I don’t believe it,” she moaned. “It’s poison--I know it’s poison.
+Oh, don’t make me drink it”--her voice rose to a shriek--“don’t make me
+drink it!”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer, glass in hand, looked down with a curling lip at this
+sudden collapse.
+“Get up, you little idiot! Don’t go on drivelling there. How you ever
+had the nerve to play your part as you did I can’t think.” She stamped
+her foot. “Get up, I say.”
+But Tuppence continued to cling and sob, interjecting her sobs with
+incoherent appeals for mercy. Every minute gained was to the good.
+Moreover, as she grovelled, she moved imperceptibly nearer to her
+objective.
+Mrs. Vandemeyer gave a sharp impatient exclamation, and jerked the girl
+to her knees.
+“Drink it at once!” Imperiously she pressed the glass to the girl’s
+lips.
+Tuppence gave one last despairing moan.
+“You swear it won’t hurt me?” she temporized.
+“Of course it won’t hurt you. Don’t be a fool.”
+“Will you swear it?”
+“Yes, yes,” said the other impatiently. “I swear it.”
+Tuppence raised a trembling left hand to the glass.
+“Very well.” Her mouth opened meekly.
+Mrs. Vandemeyer gave a sigh of relief, off her guard for the moment.
+Then, quick as a flash, Tuppence jerked the glass upward as hard as she
+could. The fluid in it splashed into Mrs. Vandemeyer’s face, and during
+her momentary gasp, Tuppence’s right hand shot out and grasped the
+revolver where it lay on the edge of the washstand. The next moment
+she had sprung back a pace, and the revolver pointed straight at Mrs.
+Vandemeyer’s heart, with no unsteadiness in the hand that held it.
+In the moment of victory, Tuppence betrayed a somewhat unsportsmanlike
+triumph.
+“Now who’s on top and who’s underneath?” she crowed.
+The other’s face was convulsed with rage. For a minute Tuppence thought
+she was going to spring upon her, which would have placed the girl in an
+unpleasant dilemma, since she meant to draw the line at actually letting
+off the revolver. However, with an effort Mrs. Vandemeyer controlled
+herself, and at last a slow evil smile crept over her face.
+“Not a fool, then, after all! You did that well, girl. But you shall pay
+for it--oh, yes, you shall pay for it! I have a long memory!”
+“I’m surprised you should have been gulled so easily,” said Tuppence
+scornfully. “Did you really think I was the kind of girl to roll about
+on the floor and whine for mercy?”
+“You may do--some day!” said the other significantly.
+The cold malignity of her manner sent an unpleasant chill down
+Tuppence’s spine, but she was not going to give in to it.
+“Supposing we sit down,” she said pleasantly. “Our present attitude is
+a little melodramatic. No--not on the bed. Draw a chair up to the table,
+that’s right. Now I’ll sit opposite you with the revolver in front of
+me--just in case of accidents. Splendid. Now, let’s talk.”
+“What about?” said Mrs. Vandemeyer sullenly.
+Tuppence eyed her thoughtfully for a minute. She was remembering several
+things. Boris’s words, “I believe you would sell-- _us!_” and her
+answer, “The price would have to be enormous,” given lightly, it was
+true, yet might not there be a substratum of truth in it? Long ago,
+had not Whittington asked: “Who’s been blabbing? Rita?” Would Rita
+Vandemeyer prove to be the weak spot in the armour of Mr. Brown?
+Keeping her eyes fixed steadily on the other’s face, Tuppence replied
+quietly:
+“Money----”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer started. Clearly, the reply was unexpected.
+“What do you mean?”
+“I’ll tell you. You said just now that you had a long memory. A long
+memory isn’t half as useful as a long purse! I dare say it relieves your
+feelings a good deal to plan out all sorts of dreadful things to do to
+me, but is that _practical?_ Revenge is very unsatisfactory. Every one
+always says so. But money”--Tuppence warmed to her pet creed--“well,
+there’s nothing unsatisfactory about money, is there?”
+“Do you think,” said Mrs. Vandemeyer scornfully, “that I am the kind of
+woman to sell my friends?”
+“Yes,” said Tuppence promptly. “If the price was big enough.”
+“A paltry hundred pounds or so!”
+“No,” said Tuppence. “I should suggest--a hundred thousand!”
+Her economical spirit did not permit her to mention the whole million
+dollars suggested by Julius.
+A flush crept over Mrs. Vandemeyer’s face.
+“What did you say?” she asked, her fingers playing nervously with a
+brooch on her breast. In that moment Tuppence knew that the fish was
+hooked, and for the first time she felt a horror of her own money-loving
+spirit. It gave her a dreadful sense of kinship to the woman fronting
+her.
+“A hundred thousand pounds,” repeated Tuppence.
+The light died out of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s eyes. She leaned back in her
+chair.
+“Bah!” she said. “You haven’t got it.”
+“No,” admitted Tuppence, “I haven’t--but I know some one who has.”
+“Who?”
+“A friend of mine.”
+“Must be a millionaire,” remarked Mrs. Vandemeyer unbelievingly.
+“As a matter of fact he is. He’s an American. He’ll pay you that
+without a murmur. You can take it from me that it’s a perfectly genuine
+proposition.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer sat up again.
+“I’m inclined to believe you,” she said slowly.
+There was silence between them for some time, then Mrs. Vandemeyer
+looked up.
+“What does he want to know, this friend of yours?”
+Tuppence went through a momentary struggle, but it was Julius’s money,
+and his interests must come first.
+“He wants to know where Jane Finn is,” she said boldly.
+Mrs. Vandemeyer showed no surprise.
+“I’m not sure where she is at the present moment,” she replied.
+“But you could find out?”
+“Oh, yes,” returned Mrs. Vandemeyer carelessly. “There would be no
+difficulty about that.”
+“Then”--Tuppence’s voice shook a little--“there’s a boy, a friend of
+mine. I’m afraid something’s happened to him, through your pal Boris.”
+“What’s his name?”
+“Tommy Beresford.”
+“Never heard of him. But I’ll ask Boris. He’ll tell me anything he
+knows.”
+“Thank you.” Tuppence felt a terrific rise in her spirits. It impelled
+her to more audacious efforts. “There’s one thing more.”
+“Well?”
+Tuppence leaned forward and lowered her voice.
+_“Who is Mr. Brown?”_
+Her quick eyes saw the sudden paling of the beautiful face. With an
+effort Mrs. Vandemeyer pulled herself together and tried to resume her
+former manner. But the attempt was a mere parody.
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+“You can’t have learnt much about us if you don’t know that _nobody
+knows who Mr. Brown is_....”
+“You do,” said Tuppence quietly.
+Again the colour deserted the other’s face.
+“What makes you think that?”
+“I don’t know,” said the girl truthfully. “But I’m sure.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer stared in front of her for a long time.
+“Yes,” she said hoarsely, at last, “_I_ know. I was beautiful, you
+see--very beautiful----”
+“You are still,” said Tuppence with admiration.
+Mrs. Vandemeyer shook her head. There was a strange gleam in her
+electric-blue eyes.
+“Not beautiful enough,” she said in a soft dangerous voice.
+“Not--beautiful--enough! And sometimes, lately, I’ve been afraid....
+It’s dangerous to know too much!” She leaned forward across the table.
+“Swear that my name shan’t be brought into it--that no one shall ever
+know.”
+“I swear it. And, once’s he caught, you’ll be out of danger.”
+A terrified look swept across Mrs. Vandemeyer’s face.
+“Shall I? Shall I ever be?” She clutched Tuppence’s arm. “You’re sure
+about the money?”
+“Quite sure.”
+“When shall I have it? There must be no delay.”
+“This friend of mine will be here presently. He may have to send cables,
+or something like that. But there won’t be any delay--he’s a terrific
+hustler.”
+A resolute look settled on Mrs. Vandemeyer’s face.
+“I’ll do it. It’s a great sum of money, and besides”--she gave a curious
+smile--“it is not--wise to throw over a woman like me!”
+For a moment or two, she remained smiling, and lightly tapping her
+fingers on the table. Suddenly she started, and her face blanched.
+“What was that?”
+“I heard nothing.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer gazed round her fearfully.
+“If there should be some one listening----”
+“Nonsense. Who could there be?”
+“Even the walls might have ears,” whispered the other. “I tell you I’m
+frightened. You don’t know him!”
+“Think of the hundred thousand pounds,” said Tuppence soothingly.
+Mrs. Vandemeyer passed her tongue over her dried lips.
+“You don’t know him,” she reiterated hoarsely. “He’s--ah!”
+With a shriek of terror she sprang to her feet. Her outstretched hand
+pointed over Tuppence’s head. Then she swayed to the ground in a dead
+faint.
+Tuppence looked round to see what had startled her.
+In the doorway were Sir James Peel Edgerton and Julius Hersheimmer.
+CHAPTER XIII. THE VIGIL
+SIR James brushed past Julius and hurriedly bent over the fallen woman.
+“Heart,” he said sharply. “Seeing us so suddenly must have given her a
+shock. Brandy--and quickly, or she’ll slip through our fingers.”
+Julius hurried to the washstand.
+“Not there,” said Tuppence over her shoulder. “In the tantalus in the
+dining-room. Second door down the passage.”
+Between them Sir James and Tuppence lifted Mrs. Vandemeyer and carried
+her to the bed. There they dashed water on her face, but with no result.
+The lawyer fingered her pulse.
+“Touch and go,” he muttered. “I wish that young fellow would hurry up
+with the brandy.”
+At that moment Julius re-entered the room, carrying a glass half full of
+the spirit which he handed to Sir James. While Tuppence lifted her head
+the lawyer tried to force a little of the spirit between her closed
+lips. Finally the woman opened her eyes feebly. Tuppence held the glass
+to her lips.
+“Drink this.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer complied. The brandy brought the colour back to her
+white cheeks, and revived her in a marvellous fashion. She tried to sit
+up--then fell back with a groan, her hand to her side.
+“It’s my heart,” she whispered. “I mustn’t talk.”
+She lay back with closed eyes.
+Sir James kept his finger on her wrist a minute longer, then withdrew it
+with a nod.
+“She’ll do now.”
+All three moved away, and stood together talking in low voices. One
+and all were conscious of a certain feeling of anticlimax. Clearly any
+scheme for cross-questioning the lady was out of the question for the
+moment. For the time being they were baffled, and could do nothing.
+Tuppence related how Mrs. Vandemeyer had declared herself willing
+to disclose the identity of Mr. Brown, and how she had consented to
+discover and reveal to them the whereabouts of Jane Finn. Julius was
+congratulatory.
+“That’s all right, Miss Tuppence. Splendid! I guess that hundred
+thousand pounds will look just as good in the morning to the lady as it
+did over night. There’s nothing to worry over. She won’t speak without
+the cash anyway, you bet!”
+There was certainly a good deal of common sense in this, and Tuppence
+felt a little comforted.
+“What you say is true,” said Sir James meditatively. “I must confess,
+however, that I cannot help wishing we had not interrupted at the minute
+we did. Still, it cannot be helped, it is only a matter of waiting until
+the morning.”
+He looked across at the inert figure on the bed. Mrs. Vandemeyer lay
+perfectly passive with closed eyes. He shook his head.
+“Well,” said Tuppence, with an attempt at cheerfulness, “we must wait
+until the morning, that’s all. But I don’t think we ought to leave the
+flat.”
+“What about leaving that bright boy of yours on guard?”
+“Albert? And suppose she came round again and hooked it. Albert couldn’t
+stop her.”
+“I guess she won’t want to make tracks away from the dollars.”
+“She might. She seemed very frightened of ‘Mr. Brown.’”
+“What? Real plumb scared of him?”
+“Yes. She looked round and said even walls had ears.”
+“Maybe she meant a dictaphone,” said Julius with interest.
+“Miss Tuppence is right,” said Sir James quietly. “We must not leave the
+flat--if only for Mrs. Vandemeyer’s sake.”
+Julius stared at him.
+“You think he’d get after her? Between now and to-morrow morning. How
+could he know, even?”
+“You forget your own suggestion of a dictaphone,” said Sir James dryly.
+“We have a very formidable adversary. I believe, if we exercise all due
+care, that there is a very good chance of his being delivered into our
+hands. But we must neglect no precaution. We have an important witness,
+but she must be safeguarded. I would suggest that Miss Tuppence should
+go to bed, and that you and I, Mr. Hersheimmer, should share the vigil.”
+Tuppence was about to protest, but happening to glance at the bed she
+saw Mrs. Vandemeyer, her eyes half-open, with such an expression of
+mingled fear and malevolence on her face that it quite froze the words
+on her lips.
+For a moment she wondered whether the faint and the heart attack had
+been a gigantic sham, but remembering the deadly pallor she could hardly
+credit the supposition. As she looked the expression disappeared as by
+magic, and Mrs. Vandemeyer lay inert and motionless as before. For a
+moment the girl fancied she must have dreamt it. But she determined
+nevertheless to be on the alert.
+“Well,” said Julius, “I guess we’d better make a move out of here any
+way.”
+The others fell in with his suggestion. Sir James again felt Mrs.
+Vandemeyer’s pulse.
+“Perfectly satisfactory,” he said in a low voice to Tuppence. “She’ll be
+absolutely all right after a night’s rest.”
+The girl hesitated a moment by the bed. The intensity of the expression
+she had surprised had impressed her powerfully. Mrs. Vandemeyer lifted
+her lids. She seemed to be struggling to speak. Tuppence bent over her.
+“Don’t--leave----” she seemed unable to proceed, murmuring something
+that sounded like “sleepy.” Then she tried again.
+Tuppence bent lower still. It was only a breath.
+“Mr.--Brown----” The voice stopped.
+But the half-closed eyes seemed still to send an agonized message.
+Moved by a sudden impulse, the girl said quickly:
+“I shan’t leave the flat. I shall sit up all night.”
+A flash of relief showed before the lids descended once more. Apparently
+Mrs. Vandemeyer slept. But her words had awakened a new uneasiness in
+Tuppence. What had she meant by that low murmur: “Mr. Brown?” Tuppence
+caught herself nervously looking over her shoulder. The big wardrobe
+loomed up in a sinister fashion before her eyes. Plenty of room for a
+man to hide in that.... Half-ashamed of herself, Tuppence pulled it open
+and looked inside. No one--of course! She stooped down and looked under
+the bed. There was no other possible hiding-place.
+Tuppence gave her familiar shake of the shoulders. It was absurd, this
+giving way to nerves! Slowly she went out of the room. Julius and Sir
+James were talking in a low voice. Sir James turned to her.
+“Lock the door on the outside, please, Miss Tuppence, and take out the
+key. There must be no chance of anyone entering that room.”
+The gravity of his manner impressed them, and Tuppence felt less ashamed
+of her attack of “nerves.”
+“Say,” remarked Julius suddenly, “there’s Tuppence’s bright boy. I guess
+I’d better go down and ease his young mind. That’s some lad, Tuppence.”
+“How did you get in, by the way?” asked Tuppence suddenly. “I forgot to
+ask.”
+“Well, Albert got me on the phone all right. I ran round for Sir James
+here, and we came right on. The boy was on the look out for us, and was
+just a mite worried about what might have happened to you. He’d been
+listening outside the door of the flat, but couldn’t hear anything.
+Anyhow he suggested sending us up in the coal lift instead of ringing
+the bell. And sure enough we landed in the scullery and came right along
+to find you. Albert’s still below, and must be just hopping mad by this
+time.” With which Julius departed abruptly.
+“Now then, Miss Tuppence,” said Sir James, “you know this place better
+than I do. Where do you suggest we should take up our quarters?”
+Tuppence considered for a moment or two.
+“I think Mrs. Vandemeyer’s boudoir would be the most comfortable,” she
+said at last, and led the way there.
+Sir James looked round approvingly.
+“This will do very well, and now, my dear young lady, do go to bed and
+get some sleep.”
+Tuppence shook her head resolutely.
+“I couldn’t, thank you, Sir James. I should dream of Mr. Brown all
+night!”
+“But you’ll be so tired, child.”
+“No, I shan’t. I’d rather stay up--really.”
+The lawyer gave in.
+Julius reappeared some minutes later, having reassured Albert and
+rewarded him lavishly for his services. Having in his turn failed to
+persuade Tuppence to go to bed, he said decisively:
+“At any rate, you’ve got to have something to eat right away. Where’s
+the larder?”
+Tuppence directed him, and he returned in a few minutes with a cold pie
+and three plates.
+After a hearty meal, the girl felt inclined to pooh-pooh her fancies of
+half an hour before. The power of the money bribe could not fail.
+“And now, Miss Tuppence,” said Sir James, “we want to hear your
+adventures.”
+“That’s so,” agreed Julius.
+Tuppence narrated her adventures with some complacence. Julius
+occasionally interjected an admiring “Bully.” Sir James said nothing
+until she had finished, when his quiet “well done, Miss Tuppence,” made
+her flush with pleasure.
+“There’s one thing I don’t get clearly,” said Julius. “What put her up
+to clearing out?”
+“I don’t know,” confessed Tuppence.
+Sir James stroked his chin thoughtfully.
+“The room was in great disorder. That looks as though her flight was
+unpremeditated. Almost as though she got a sudden warning to go from
+some one.”
+“Mr. Brown, I suppose,” said Julius scoffingly.
+The lawyer looked at him deliberately for a minute or two.
+“Why not?” he said. “Remember, you yourself have once been worsted by
+him.”
+Julius flushed with vexation.
+“I feel just mad when I think of how I handed out Jane’s photograph to
+him like a lamb. Gee, if I ever lay hands on it again, I’ll freeze on to
+it like--like hell!”
+“That contingency is likely to be a remote one,” said the other dryly.
+“I guess you’re right,” said Julius frankly. “And, in any case, it’s the
+original I’m out after. Where do you think she can be, Sir James?”
+The lawyer shook his head.
+“Impossible to say. But I’ve a very good idea where she _has_ been.”
+“You have? Where?”
+Sir James smiled.
+“At the scene of your nocturnal adventures, the Bournemouth nursing
+home.”
+“There? Impossible. I asked.”
+“No, my dear sir, you asked if anyone of the name of Jane Finn had been
+there. Now, if the girl had been placed there it would almost certainly
+be under an assumed name.”
+“Bully for you,” cried Julius. “I never thought of that!”
+“It was fairly obvious,” said the other.
+“Perhaps the doctor’s in it too,” suggested Tuppence.
+Julius shook his head.
+“I don’t think so. I took to him at once. No, I’m pretty sure Dr. Hall’s
+all right.”
+“Hall, did you say?” asked Sir James. “That is curious--really very
+curious.”
+“Why?” demanded Tuppence.
+“Because I happened to meet him this morning. I’ve known him slightly on
+and off for some years, and this morning I ran across him in the street.
+Staying at the _Métropole_, he told me.” He turned to Julius. “Didn’t
+he tell you he was coming up to town?”
+Julius shook his head.
+“Curious,” mused Sir James. “You did not mention his name this
+afternoon, or I would have suggested your going to him for further
+information with my card as introduction.”
+“I guess I’m a mutt,” said Julius with unusual humility. “I ought to
+have thought of the false name stunt.”
+“How could you think of anything after falling out of that tree?” cried
+Tuppence. “I’m sure anyone else would have been killed right off.”
+“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, anyway,” said Julius. “We’ve got
+Mrs. Vandemeyer on a string, and that’s all we need.”
+“Yes,” said Tuppence, but there was a lack of assurance in her voice.
+A silence settled down over the party. Little by little the magic of
+the night began to gain a hold on them. There were sudden creaks of the
+furniture, imperceptible rustlings in the curtains. Suddenly Tuppence
+sprang up with a cry.
+“I can’t help it. I know Mr. Brown’s somewhere in the flat! I can _feel_
+him.”
+“Sure, Tuppence, how could he be? This door’s open into the hall. No
+one could have come in by the front door without our seeing and hearing
+him.”
+“I can’t help it. I _feel_ he’s here!”
+She looked appealingly at Sir James, who replied gravely:
+“With due deference to your feelings, Miss Tuppence (and mine as well
+for that matter), I do not see how it is humanly possible for anyone to
+be in the flat without our knowledge.”
+The girl was a little comforted by his words.
+“Sitting up at night is always rather jumpy,” she confessed.
+“Yes,” said Sir James. “We are in the condition of people holding a
+séance. Perhaps if a medium were present we might get some marvellous
+results.”
+“Do you believe in spiritualism?” asked Tuppence, opening her eyes wide.
+The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
+“There is some truth in it, without a doubt. But most of the testimony
+would not pass muster in the witness-box.”
+The hours drew on. With the first faint glimmerings of dawn, Sir James
+drew aside the curtains. They beheld, what few Londoners see, the slow
+rising of the sun over the sleeping city. Somehow, with the coming
+of the light, the dreads and fancies of the past night seemed absurd.
+Tuppence’s spirits revived to the normal.
+“Hooray!” she said. “It’s going to be a gorgeous day. And we shall find
+Tommy. And Jane Finn. And everything will be lovely. I shall ask Mr.
+Carter if I can’t be made a Dame!”
+At seven o’clock Tuppence volunteered to go and make some tea. She
+returned with a tray, containing the teapot and four cups.
+“Who’s the other cup for?” inquired Julius.
+“The prisoner, of course. I suppose we might call her that?”
+“Taking her tea seems a kind of anticlimax to last night,” said Julius
+thoughtfully.
+“Yes, it does,” admitted Tuppence. “But, anyway, here goes. Perhaps
+you’d both come, too, in case she springs on me, or anything. You see,
+we don’t know what mood she’ll wake up in.”
+Sir James and Julius accompanied her to the door.
+“Where’s the key? Oh, of course, I’ve got it myself.”
+She put it in the lock, and turned it, then paused.
+“Supposing, after all, she’s escaped?” she murmured in a whisper.
+“Plumb impossible,” replied Julius reassuringly.
+But Sir James said nothing.
+Tuppence drew a long breath and entered. She heaved a sigh of relief as
+she saw that Mrs. Vandemeyer was lying on the bed.
+“Good morning,” she remarked cheerfully. “I’ve brought you some tea.”
+Mrs. Vandemeyer did not reply. Tuppence put down the cup on the table
+by the bed and went across to draw up the blinds. When she turned, Mrs.
+Vandemeyer still lay without a movement. With a sudden fear clutching
+at her heart, Tuppence ran to the bed. The hand she lifted was cold as
+ice.... Mrs. Vandemeyer would never speak now....
+Her cry brought the others. A very few minutes sufficed. Mrs. Vandemeyer
+was dead--must have been dead some hours. She had evidently died in her
+sleep.
+“If that isn’t the cruellest luck,” cried Julius in despair.
+The lawyer was calmer, but there was a curious gleam in his eyes.
+“If it is luck,” he replied.
+“You don’t think--but, say, that’s plumb impossible--no one could have
+got in.”
+“No,” admitted the lawyer. “I don’t see how they could. And yet--she is
+on the point of betraying Mr. Brown, and--she dies. Is it only chance?”
+“But how----”
+“Yes, _how!_ That is what we must find out.” He stood there silently,
+gently stroking his chin. “We must find out,” he said quietly, and
+Tuppence felt that if she was Mr. Brown she would not like the tone of
+those simple words.
+Julius’s glance went to the window.
+“The window’s open,” he remarked. “Do you think----”
+Tuppence shook her head.
+“The balcony only goes along as far as the boudoir. We were there.”
+“He might have slipped out----” suggested Julius.
+But Sir James interrupted him.
+“Mr. Brown’s methods are not so crude. In the meantime we must send for
+a doctor, but before we do so, is there anything in this room that might
+be of value to us?”
+Hastily, the three searched. A charred mass in the grate indicated
+that Mrs. Vandemeyer had been burning papers on the eve of her flight.
+Nothing of importance remained, though they searched the other rooms as
+well.
+“There’s that,” said Tuppence suddenly, pointing to a small,
+old-fashioned safe let into the wall. “It’s for jewellery, I believe,
+but there might be something else in it.”
+The key was in the lock, and Julius swung open the door, and searched
+inside. He was some time over the task.
+“Well,” said Tuppence impatiently.
+There was a pause before Julius answered, then he withdrew his head and
+shut to the door.
+“Nothing,” he said.
+In five minutes a brisk young doctor arrived, hastily summoned. He was
+deferential to Sir James, whom he recognized.
+“Heart failure, or possibly an overdose of some sleeping-draught.” He
+sniffed. “Rather an odour of chloral in the air.”
+Tuppence remembered the glass she had upset. A new thought drove her to
+the washstand. She found the little bottle from which Mrs. Vandemeyer
+had poured a few drops.
+It had been three parts full. Now-- _it was empty_.
+CHAPTER XIV. A CONSULTATION
+NOTHING was more surprising and bewildering to Tuppence than the ease
+and simplicity with which everything was arranged, owing to Sir James’s
+skilful handling. The doctor accepted quite readily the theory that Mrs.
+Vandemeyer had accidentally taken an overdose of chloral. He doubted
+whether an inquest would be necessary. If so, he would let Sir James
+know. He understood that Mrs. Vandemeyer was on the eve of departure for
+abroad, and that the servants had already left? Sir James and his young
+friends had been paying a call upon her, when she was suddenly stricken
+down and they had spent the night in the flat, not liking to leave
+her alone. Did they know of any relatives? They did not, but Sir James
+referred him to Mrs. Vandemeyer’s solicitor.
+Shortly afterwards a nurse arrived to take charge, and the other left
+the ill-omened building.
+“And what now?” asked Julius, with a gesture of despair. “I guess we’re
+down and out for good.”
+Sir James stroked his chin thoughtfully.
+“No,” he said quietly. “There is still the chance that Dr. Hall may be
+able to tell us something.”
+“Gee! I’d forgotten him.”
+“The chance is slight, but it must not be neglected. I think I told you
+that he is staying at the _Métropole_. I should suggest that we call
+upon him there as soon as possible. Shall we say after a bath and
+breakfast?”
+It was arranged that Tuppence and Julius should return to the _Ritz_,
+and call for Sir James in the car. This programme was faithfully carried
+out, and a little after eleven they drew up before the _Métropole_.
+They asked for Dr. Hall, and a page-boy went in search of him. In a few
+minutes the little doctor came hurrying towards them.
+“Can you spare us a few minutes, Dr. Hall?” said Sir James pleasantly.
+“Let me introduce you to Miss Cowley. Mr. Hersheimmer, I think, you
+already know.”
+A quizzical gleam came into the doctor’s eye as he shook hands with
+Julius.
+“Ah, yes, my young friend of the tree episode! Ankle all right, eh?”
+“I guess it’s cured owing to your skilful treatment, doc.”
+“And the heart trouble? Ha ha!”
+“Still searching,” said Julius briefly.
+“To come to the point, can we have a word with you in private?” asked
+Sir James.
+“Certainly. I think there is a room here where we shall be quite
+undisturbed.”
+He led the way, and the others followed him. They sat down, and the
+doctor looked inquiringly at Sir James.
+“Dr. Hall, I am very anxious to find a certain young lady for the
+purpose of obtaining a statement from her. I have reason to believe
+that she has been at one time or another in your establishment at
+Bournemouth. I hope I am transgressing no professional etiquette in
+questioning you on the subject?”
+“I suppose it is a matter of testimony?”
+Sir James hesitated a moment, then he replied:
+“Yes.”
+“I shall be pleased to give you any information in my power. What is
+the young lady’s name? Mr. Hersheimmer asked me, I remember----” He half
+turned to Julius.
+“The name,” said Sir James bluntly, “is really immaterial. She would be
+almost certainly sent to you under an assumed one. But I should like to
+know if you are acquainted with a Mrs. Vandemeyer?”
+“Mrs. Vandemeyer, of 20 South Audley Mansions? I know her slightly.”
+“You are not aware of what has happened?”
+“What do you mean?”
+“You do not know that Mrs. Vandemeyer is dead?”
+“Dear, dear, I had no idea of it! When did it happen?”
+“She took an overdose of chloral last night.”
+“Purposely?”
+“Accidentally, it is believed. I should not like to say myself. Anyway,
+she was found dead this morning.”
+“Very sad. A singularly handsome woman. I presume she was a friend of
+yours, since you are acquainted with all these details.”
+“I am acquainted with the details because--well, it was I who found her
+dead.”
+“Indeed,” said the doctor, starting.
+“Yes,” said Sir James, and stroked his chin reflectively.
+“This is very sad news, but you will excuse me if I say that I do not
+see how it bears on the subject of your inquiry?”
+“It bears on it in this way, is it not a fact that Mrs. Vandemeyer
+committed a young relative of hers to your charge?”
+Julius leaned forward eagerly.
+“That is the case,” said the doctor quietly.
+“Under the name of----?”
+“Janet Vandemeyer. I understood her to be a niece of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s.”
+“And she came to you?”
+“As far as I can remember in June or July of 1915.”
+“Was she a mental case?”
+“She is perfectly sane, if that is what you mean. I understood from Mrs.
+Vandemeyer that the girl had been with her on the _Lusitania_ when
+that ill-fated ship was sunk, and had suffered a severe shock in
+consequence.”
+“We’re on the right track, I think?” Sir James looked round.
+“As I said before, I’m a mutt!” returned Julius.
+The doctor looked at them all curiously.
+“You spoke of wanting a statement from her,” he said. “Supposing she is
+not able to give one?”
+“What? You have just said that she is perfectly sane.”
+“So she is. Nevertheless, if you want a statement from her concerning
+any events prior to May 7, 1915, she will not be able to give it to
+you.”
+They looked at the little man, stupefied. He nodded cheerfully.
+“It’s a pity,” he said. “A great pity, especially as I gather, Sir
+James, that the matter is important. But there it is, she can tell you
+nothing.”
+“But why, man? Darn it all, why?”
+The little man shifted his benevolent glance to the excited young
+American.
+“Because Janet Vandemeyer is suffering from a complete loss of memory.”
+_“What?”_
+“Quite so. An interesting case, a _very_ interesting case. Not so
+uncommon, really, as you would think. There are several very well known
+parallels. It’s the first case of the kind that I’ve had under my own
+personal observation, and I must admit that I’ve found it of absorbing
+interest.” There was something rather ghoulish in the little man’s
+satisfaction.
+“And she remembers nothing,” said Sir James slowly.
+“Nothing prior to May 7, 1915. After that date her memory is as good as
+yours or mine.”
+“Then the first thing she remembers?”
+“Is landing with the survivors. Everything before that is a blank. She
+did not know her own name, or where she had come from, or where she was.
+She couldn’t even speak her own tongue.”
+“But surely all this is most unusual?” put in Julius.
+“No, my dear sir. Quite normal under the circumstances. Severe shock to
+the nervous system. Loss of memory proceeds nearly always on the same
+lines. I suggested a specialist, of course. There’s a very good man in
+Paris--makes a study of these cases--but Mrs. Vandemeyer opposed the
+idea of publicity that might result from such a course.”
+“I can imagine she would,” said Sir James grimly.
+“I fell in with her views. There is a certain notoriety given to these
+cases. And the girl was very young--nineteen, I believe. It seemed
+a pity that her infirmity should be talked about--might damage her
+prospects. Besides, there is no special treatment to pursue in such
+cases. It is really a matter of waiting.”
+“Waiting?”
+“Yes, sooner or later, the memory will return--as suddenly as it
+went. But in all probability the girl will have entirely forgotten the
+intervening period, and will take up life where she left off--at the
+sinking of the _Lusitania_.”
+“And when do you expect this to happen?”
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
+“Ah, that I cannot say. Sometimes it is a matter of months, sometimes
+it has been known to be as long as twenty years! Sometimes another shock
+does the trick. One restores what the other took away.”
+“Another shock, eh?” said Julius thoughtfully.
+“Exactly. There was a case in Colorado----” The little man’s voice
+trailed on, voluble, mildly enthusiastic.
+Julius did not seem to be listening. He had relapsed into his own
+thoughts and was frowning. Suddenly he came out of his brown study,
+and hit the table such a resounding bang with his fist that every one
+jumped, the doctor most of all.
+“I’ve got it! I guess, doc, I’d like your medical opinion on the plan
+I’m about to outline. Say Jane was to cross the herring pond again, and
+the same thing was to happen. The submarine, the sinking ship, every one
+to take to the boats--and so on. Wouldn’t that do the trick? Wouldn’t it
+give a mighty big bump to her subconscious self, or whatever the jargon
+is, and start it functioning again right away?”
+“A very interesting speculation, Mr. Hersheimmer. In my own opinion, it
+would be successful. It is unfortunate that there is no chance of the
+conditions repeating themselves as you suggest.”
+“Not by nature, perhaps, doc. But I’m talking about art.”
+“Art?”
+“Why, yes. What’s the difficulty? Hire a liner----”
+“A liner!” murmured Dr. Hall faintly.
+“Hire some passengers, hire a submarine--that’s the only difficulty, I
+guess. Governments are apt to be a bit hide-bound over their engines of
+war. They won’t sell to the first-comer. Still, I guess that can be got
+over. Ever heard of the word ‘graft,’ sir? Well, graft gets there every
+time! I reckon that we shan’t really need to fire a torpedo. If every
+one hustles round and screams loud enough that the ship is sinking, it
+ought to be enough for an innocent young girl like Jane. By the time
+she’s got a life-belt on her, and is being hustled into a boat, with
+a well-drilled lot of artistes doing the hysterical stunt on deck,
+why--she ought to be right back where she was in May, 1915. How’s that
+for the bare outline?”
+Dr. Hall looked at Julius. Everything that he was for the moment
+incapable of saying was eloquent in that look.
+“No,” said Julius, in answer to it, “I’m not crazy. The thing’s
+perfectly possible. It’s done every day in the States for the movies.
+Haven’t you seen trains in collision on the screen? What’s the
+difference between buying up a train and buying up a liner? Get the
+properties and you can go right ahead!”
+Dr. Hall found his voice.
+“But the expense, my dear sir.” His voice rose. “The expense! It will be
+_colossal!_”
+“Money doesn’t worry me any,” explained Julius simply.
+Dr. Hall turned an appealing face to Sir James, who smiled slightly.
+“Mr. Hersheimmer is very well off--very well off indeed.”
+The doctor’s glance came back to Julius with a new and subtle quality in
+it. This was no longer an eccentric young fellow with a habit of falling
+off trees. The doctor’s eyes held the deference accorded to a really
+rich man.
+“Very remarkable plan. Very remarkable,” he murmured. “The movies--of
+course! Your American word for the kinema. Very interesting. I fear we
+are perhaps a little behind the times over here in our methods. And you
+really mean to carry out this remarkable plan of yours.”
+“You bet your bottom dollar I do.”
+The doctor believed him--which was a tribute to his nationality. If an
+Englishman had suggested such a thing, he would have had grave doubts as
+to his sanity.
+“I cannot guarantee a cure,” he pointed out. “Perhaps I ought to make
+that quite clear.”
+“Sure, that’s all right,” said Julius. “You just trot out Jane, and
+leave the rest to me.”
+“Jane?”
+“Miss Janet Vandemeyer, then. Can we get on the long distance to your
+place right away, and ask them to send her up; or shall I run down and
+fetch her in my car?”
+The doctor stared.
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Hersheimmer. I thought you understood.”
+“Understood what?”
+“That Miss Vandemeyer is no longer under my care.”
+CHAPTER XV. TUPPENCE RECEIVES A PROPOSAL
+JULIUS sprang up.
+“What?”
+“I thought you were aware of that.”
+“When did she leave?”
+“Let me see. To-day is Monday, is it not? It must have been last
+Wednesday--why, surely--yes, it was the same evening that you--er--fell
+out of my tree.”
+“That evening? Before, or after?”
+“Let me see--oh yes, afterwards. A very urgent message arrived from Mrs.
+Vandemeyer. The young lady and the nurse who was in charge of her left
+by the night train.”
+Julius sank back again into his chair.
+“Nurse Edith--left with a patient--I remember,” he muttered. “My God, to
+have been so near!”
+Dr. Hall looked bewildered.
+“I don’t understand. Is the young lady not with her aunt, after all?”
+Tuppence shook her head. She was about to speak when a warning glance
+from Sir James made her hold her tongue. The lawyer rose.
+“I’m much obliged to you, Hall. We’re very grateful for all you’ve
+told us. I’m afraid we’re now in the position of having to track Miss
+Vandemeyer anew. What about the nurse who accompanied her; I suppose you
+don’t know where she is?”
+The doctor shook his head.
+“We’ve not heard from her, as it happens. I understood she was to remain
+with Miss Vandemeyer for a while. But what can have happened? Surely the
+girl has not been kidnapped.”
+“That remains to be seen,” said Sir James gravely.
+The other hesitated.
+“You do not think I ought to go to the police?”
+“No, no. In all probability the young lady is with other relations.”
+The doctor was not completely satisfied, but he saw that Sir James was
+determined to say no more, and realized that to try and extract
+more information from the famous K.C. would be mere waste of labour.
+Accordingly, he wished them goodbye, and they left the hotel. For a few
+minutes they stood by the car talking.
+“How maddening,” cried Tuppence. “To think that Julius must have been
+actually under the same roof with her for a few hours.”
+“I was a darned idiot,” muttered Julius gloomily.
+“You couldn’t know,” Tuppence consoled him. “Could he?” She appealed to
+Sir James.
+“I should advise you not to worry,” said the latter kindly. “No use
+crying over spilt milk, you know.”
+“The great thing is what to do next,” added Tuppence the practical.
+Sir James shrugged his shoulders.
+“You might advertise for the nurse who accompanied the girl. That is
+the only course I can suggest, and I must confess I do not hope for much
+result. Otherwise there is nothing to be done.”
+“Nothing?” said Tuppence blankly. “And--Tommy?”
+“We must hope for the best,” said Sir James. “Oh yes, we must go on
+hoping.”
+But over her downcast head his eyes met Julius’s, and almost
+imperceptibly he shook his head. Julius understood. The lawyer
+considered the case hopeless. The young American’s face grew grave. Sir
+James took Tuppence’s hand.
+“You must let me know if anything further comes to light. Letters will
+always be forwarded.”
+Tuppence stared at him blankly.
+“You are going away?”
+“I told you. Don’t you remember? To Scotland.”
+“Yes, but I thought----” The girl hesitated.
+Sir James shrugged his shoulders.
+“My dear young lady, I can do nothing more, I fear. Our clues have all
+ended in thin air. You can take my word for it that there is nothing
+more to be done. If anything should arise, I shall be glad to advise you
+in any way I can.”
+His words gave Tuppence an extraordinarily desolate feeling.
+“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Anyway, thank you very much for
+trying to help us. Good-bye.”
+Julius was bending over the car. A momentary pity came into Sir James’s
+keen eyes, as he gazed into the girl’s downcast face.
+“Don’t be too disconsolate, Miss Tuppence,” he said in a low voice.
+“Remember, holiday-time isn’t always all playtime. One sometimes manages
+to put in some work as well.”
+Something in his tone made Tuppence glance up sharply. He shook his head
+with a smile.
+“No, I shan’t say any more. Great mistake to say too much. Remember
+that. Never tell all you know--not even to the person you know best.
+Understand? Good-bye.”
+He strode away. Tuppence stared after him. She was beginning to
+understand Sir James’s methods. Once before he had thrown her a hint
+in the same careless fashion. Was this a hint? What exactly lay
+behind those last brief words? Did he mean that, after all, he had not
+abandoned the case; that, secretly, he would be working on it still
+while----
+Her meditations were interrupted by Julius, who adjured her to “get
+right in.”
+“You’re looking kind of thoughtful,” he remarked as they started off.
+“Did the old guy say anything more?”
+Tuppence opened her mouth impulsively, and then shut it again. Sir
+James’s words sounded in her ears: “Never tell all you know--not even
+to the person you know best.” And like a flash there came into her mind
+another memory. Julius before the safe in the flat, her own question and
+the pause before his reply, “Nothing.” Was there really nothing? Or
+had he found something he wished to keep to himself? If he could make a
+reservation, so could she.
+“Nothing particular,” she replied.
+She felt rather than saw Julius throw a sideways glance at her.
+“Say, shall we go for a spin in the park?”
+“If you like.”
+For a while they ran on under the trees in silence. It was a beautiful
+day. The keen rush through the air brought a new exhilaration to
+Tuppence.
+“Say, Miss Tuppence, do you think I’m ever going to find Jane?”
+Julius spoke in a discouraged voice. The mood was so alien to him that
+Tuppence turned and stared at him in surprise. He nodded.
+“That’s so. I’m getting down and out over the business. Sir James to-day
+hadn’t got any hope at all, I could see that. I don’t like him--we don’t
+gee together somehow--but he’s pretty cute, and I guess he wouldn’t quit
+if there was any chance of success--now, would he?”
+Tuppence felt rather uncomfortable, but clinging to her belief that
+Julius also had withheld something from her, she remained firm.
+“He suggested advertising for the nurse,” she reminded him.
+“Yes, with a ‘forlorn hope’ flavour to his voice! No--I’m about fed up.
+I’ve half a mind to go back to the States right away.”
+“Oh no!” cried Tuppence. “We’ve got to find Tommy.”
+“I sure forgot Beresford,” said Julius contritely. “That’s so. We must
+find him. But after--well, I’ve been day-dreaming ever since I started
+on this trip--and these dreams are rotten poor business. I’m quit of
+them. Say, Miss Tuppence, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
+“Yes?”
+“You and Beresford. What about it?”
+“I don’t understand you,” replied Tuppence with dignity, adding rather
+inconsequently: “And, anyway, you’re wrong!”
+“Not got a sort of kindly feeling for one another?”
+“Certainly not,” said Tuppence with warmth. “Tommy and I are
+friends--nothing more.”
+“I guess every pair of lovers has said that sometime or another,”
+observed Julius.
+“Nonsense!” snapped Tuppence. “Do I look the sort of girl that’s always
+falling in love with every man she meets?”
+“You do not. You look the sort of girl that’s mighty often getting
+fallen in love with!”
+“Oh!” said Tuppence, rather taken aback. “That’s a compliment, I
+suppose?”
+“Sure. Now let’s get down to this. Supposing we never find Beresford
+and--and----”
+“All right--say it! I can face facts. Supposing he’s--dead! Well?”
+“And all this business fiddles out. What are you going to do?”
+“I don’t know,” said Tuppence forlornly.
+“You’ll be darned lonesome, you poor kid.”
+“I shall be all right,” snapped Tuppence with her usual resentment of
+any kind of pity.
+“What about marriage?” inquired Julius. “Got any views on the subject?”
+“I intend to marry, of course,” replied Tuppence. “That is, if”--she
+paused, knew a momentary longing to draw back, and then stuck to her
+guns bravely--“I can find some one rich enough to make it worth my
+while. That’s frank, isn’t it? I dare say you despise me for it.”
+“I never despise business instinct,” said Julius. “What particular
+figure have you in mind?”
+“Figure?” asked Tuppence, puzzled. “Do you mean tall or short?”
+“No. Sum--income.”
+“Oh, I--I haven’t quite worked that out.”
+“What about me?”
+_“You?”_
+“Sure thing.”
+“Oh, I couldn’t!”
+“Why not?”
+“I tell you I couldn’t.”
+“Again, why not?”
+“It would seem so unfair.”
+“I don’t see anything unfair about it. I call your bluff, that’s all. I
+admire you immensely, Miss Tuppence, more than any girl I’ve ever met.
+You’re so darned plucky. I’d just love to give you a real, rattling good
+time. Say the word, and we’ll run round right away to some high-class
+jeweller, and fix up the ring business.”
+“I can’t,” gasped Tuppence.
+“Because of Beresford?”
+“No, no, _no!_”
+“Well then?”
+Tuppence merely continued to shake her head violently.
+“You can’t reasonably expect more dollars than I’ve got.”
+“Oh, it isn’t that,” gasped Tuppence with an almost hysterical laugh.
+“But thanking you very much, and all that, I think I’d better say no.”
+“I’d be obliged if you’d do me the favour to think it over until
+to-morrow.”
+“It’s no use.”
+“Still, I guess we’ll leave it like that.”
+“Very well,” said Tuppence meekly.
+Neither of them spoke again until they reached the _Ritz_.
+Tuppence went upstairs to her room. She felt morally battered to the
+ground after her conflict with Julius’s vigorous personality. Sitting
+down in front of the glass, she stared at her own reflection for some
+minutes.
+“Fool,” murmured Tuppence at length, making a grimace. “Little fool.
+Everything you want--everything you’ve ever hoped for, and you go and
+bleat out ‘no’ like an idiotic little sheep. It’s your one chance. Why
+don’t you take it? Grab it? Snatch at it? What more do you want?”
+As if in answer to her own question, her eyes fell on a small snapshot
+of Tommy that stood on her dressing-table in a shabby frame. For a
+moment she struggled for self-control, and then abandoning all presence,
+she held it to her lips and burst into a fit of sobbing.
+“Oh, Tommy, Tommy,” she cried, “I do love you so--and I may never see
+you again....”
+At the end of five minutes Tuppence sat up, blew her nose, and pushed
+back her hair.
+“That’s that,” she observed sternly. “Let’s look facts in the face. I
+seem to have fallen in love--with an idiot of a boy who probably doesn’t
+care two straws about me.” Here she paused. “Anyway,” she resumed, as
+though arguing with an unseen opponent, “I don’t _know_ that he does.
+He’d never have dared to say so. I’ve always jumped on sentiment--and
+here I am being more sentimental than anybody. What idiots girls are!
+I’ve always thought so. I suppose I shall sleep with his photograph
+under my pillow, and dream about him all night. It’s dreadful to feel
+you’ve been false to your principles.”
+Tuppence shook her head sadly, as she reviewed her backsliding.
+“I don’t know what to say to Julius, I’m sure. Oh, what a fool I feel!
+I’ll have to say _something_--he’s so American and thorough, he’ll
+insist upon having a reason. I wonder if he did find anything in that
+safe----”
+Tuppence’s meditations went off on another tack. She reviewed the events
+of last night carefully and persistently. Somehow, they seemed bound up
+with Sir James’s enigmatical words....
+Suddenly she gave a great start--the colour faded out of her face. Her
+eyes, fascinated, gazed in front of her, the pupils dilated.
+“Impossible,” she murmured. “Impossible! I must be going mad even to
+think of such a thing....”
+Monstrous--yet it explained everything....
+After a moment’s reflection she sat down and wrote a note, weighing each
+word as she did so. Finally she nodded her head as though satisfied, and
+slipped it into an envelope which she addressed to Julius. She went
+down the passage to his sitting-room and knocked at the door. As she had
+expected, the room was empty. She left the note on the table.
+A small page-boy was waiting outside her own door when she returned to
+it.
+“Telegram for you, miss.”
+Tuppence took it from the salver, and tore it open carelessly. Then she
+gave a cry. The telegram was from Tommy!
+CHAPTER XVI. FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOMMY
+FROM a darkness punctuated with throbbing stabs of fire, Tommy dragged
+his senses slowly back to life. When he at last opened his eyes, he was
+conscious of nothing but an excruciating pain through his temples. He
+was vaguely aware of unfamiliar surroundings. Where was he? What had
+happened? He blinked feebly. This was not his bedroom at the _Ritz_. And
+what the devil was the matter with his head?
+“Damn!” said Tommy, and tried to sit up. He had remembered. He was in
+that sinister house in Soho. He uttered a groan and fell back. Through
+his almost-closed lids he reconnoitred carefully.
+“He is coming to,” remarked a voice very near Tommy’s ear. He recognized
+it at once for that of the bearded and efficient German, and lay
+artistically inert. He felt that it would be a pity to come round too
+soon; and until the pain in his head became a little less acute, he felt
+quite incapable of collecting his wits. Painfully he tried to puzzle out
+what had happened. Obviously somebody must have crept up behind him as
+he listened and struck him down with a blow on the head. They knew
+him now for a spy, and would in all probability give him short shrift.
+Undoubtedly he was in a tight place. Nobody knew where he was, therefore
+he need expect no outside assistance, and must depend solely on his own
+wits.
+“Well, here goes,” murmured Tommy to himself, and repeated his former
+remark.
+“Damn!” he observed, and this time succeeded in sitting up.
+In a minute the German stepped forward and placed a glass to his lips,
+with the brief command “Drink.” Tommy obeyed. The potency of the draught
+made him choke, but it cleared his brain in a marvellous manner.
+He was lying on a couch in the room in which the meeting had been held.
+On one side of him was the German, on the other the villainous-faced
+doorkeeper who had let him in. The others were grouped together at a
+little distance away. But Tommy missed one face. The man known as Number
+One was no longer of the company.
+“Feel better?” asked the German, as he removed the empty glass.
+“Yes, thanks,” returned Tommy cheerfully.
+“Ah, my young friend, it is lucky for you your skull is so thick. The
+good Conrad struck hard.” He indicated the evil-faced doorkeeper by a
+nod. The man grinned.
+Tommy twisted his head round with an effort.
+“Oh,” he said, “so you’re Conrad, are you? It strikes me the thickness
+of my skull was lucky for you too. When I look at you I feel it’s almost
+a pity I’ve enabled you to cheat the hangman.”
+The man snarled, and the bearded man said quietly:
+“He would have run no risk of that.”
+“Just as you like,” replied Tommy. “I know it’s the fashion to run down
+the police. I rather believe in them myself.”
+His manner was nonchalant to the last degree. Tommy Beresford was one
+of those young Englishmen not distinguished by any special intellectual
+ability, but who are emphatically at their best in what is known as a
+“tight place.” Their natural diffidence and caution fall from them like
+a glove. Tommy realized perfectly that in his own wits lay the only
+chance of escape, and behind his casual manner he was racking his brains
+furiously.
+The cold accents of the German took up the conversation:
+“Have you anything to say before you are put to death as a spy?”
+“Simply lots of things,” replied Tommy with the same urbanity as before.
+“Do you deny that you were listening at that door?”
+“I do not. I must really apologize--but your conversation was so
+interesting that it overcame my scruples.”
+“How did you get in?”
+“Dear old Conrad here.” Tommy smiled deprecatingly at him. “I hesitate
+to suggest pensioning off a faithful servant, but you really ought to
+have a better watchdog.”
+Conrad snarled impotently, and said sullenly, as the man with the beard
+swung round upon him:
+“He gave the word. How was I to know?”
+“Yes,” Tommy chimed in. “How was he to know? Don’t blame the poor
+fellow. His hasty action has given me the pleasure of seeing you all
+face to face.”
+He fancied that his words caused some discomposure among the group, but
+the watchful German stilled it with a wave of his hand.
+“Dead men tell no tales,” he said evenly.
+“Ah,” said Tommy, “but I’m not dead yet!”
+“You soon will be, my young friend,” said the German.
+An assenting murmur came from the others.
+Tommy’s heart beat faster, but his casual pleasantness did not waver.
+“I think not,” he said firmly. “I should have a great objection to
+dying.”
+He had got them puzzled, he saw that by the look on his captor’s face.
+“Can you give us any reason why we should not put you to death?” asked
+the German.
+“Several,” replied Tommy. “Look here, you’ve been asking me a lot of
+questions. Let me ask you one for a change. Why didn’t you kill me off
+at once before I regained consciousness?”
+The German hesitated, and Tommy seized his advantage.
+“Because you didn’t know how much I knew--and where I obtained that
+knowledge. If you kill me now, you never will know.”
+But here the emotions of Boris became too much for him. He stepped
+forward waving his arms.
+“You hell-hound of a spy,” he screamed. “We will give you short shrift.
+Kill him! Kill him!”
+There was a roar of applause.
+“You hear?” said the German, his eyes on Tommy. “What have you to say to
+that?”
+“Say?” Tommy shrugged his shoulders. “Pack of fools. Let them ask
+themselves a few questions. How did I get into this place? Remember what
+dear old Conrad said-- _with your own password_, wasn’t it? How did I
+get hold of that? You don’t suppose I came up those steps haphazard and
+said the first thing that came into my head?”
+Tommy was pleased with the concluding words of this speech. His only
+regret was that Tuppence was not present to appreciate its full flavour.
+“That is true,” said the working man suddenly. “Comrades, we have been
+betrayed!”
+An ugly murmur arose. Tommy smiled at them encouragingly.
+“That’s better. How can you hope to make a success of any job if you
+don’t use your brains?”
+“You will tell us who has betrayed us,” said the German. “But that shall
+not save you--oh, no! You shall tell us all that you know. Boris, here,
+knows pretty ways of making people speak!”
+“Bah!” said Tommy scornfully, fighting down a singularly unpleasant
+feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You will neither torture me nor kill
+me.”
+“And why not?” asked Boris.
+“Because you’d kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,” replied Tommy
+quietly.
+There was a momentary pause. It seemed as though Tommy’s persistent
+assurance was at last conquering. They were no longer completely sure of
+themselves. The man in the shabby clothes stared at Tommy searchingly.
+“He’s bluffing you, Boris,” he said quietly.
+Tommy hated him. Had the man seen through him?
+The German, with an effort, turned roughly to Tommy.
+“What do you mean?”
+“What do you think I mean?” parried Tommy, searching desperately in his
+own mind.
+Suddenly Boris stepped forward, and shook his fist in Tommy’s face.
+“Speak, you swine of an Englishman--speak!”
+“Don’t get so excited, my good fellow,” said Tommy calmly. “That’s the
+worst of you foreigners. You can’t keep calm. Now, I ask you, do I look
+as though I thought there were the least chance of your killing me?”
+He looked confidently round, and was glad they could not hear the
+persistent beating of his heart which gave the lie to his words.
+“No,” admitted Boris at last sullenly, “you do not.”
+“Thank God, he’s not a mind reader,” thought Tommy. Aloud he pursued his
+advantage:
+“And why am I so confident? Because I know something that puts me in a
+position to propose a bargain.”
+“A bargain?” The bearded man took him up sharply.
+“Yes--a bargain. My life and liberty against----” He paused.
+“Against what?”
+The group pressed forward. You could have heard a pin drop.
+Slowly Tommy spoke.
+“The papers that Danvers brought over from America in the _Lusitania_.”
+The effect of his words was electrical. Every one was on his feet.
+The German waved them back. He leaned over Tommy, his face purple with
+excitement.
+“_Himmel!_ You have got them, then?”
+With magnificent calm Tommy shook his head.
+“You know where they are?” persisted the German.
+Again Tommy shook his head. “Not in the least.”
+“Then--then----” angry and baffled, the words failed him.
+Tommy looked round. He saw anger and bewilderment on every face, but his
+calm assurance had done its work--no one doubted but that something lay
+behind his words.
+“I don’t know where the papers are--but I believe that I can find them.
+I have a theory----”
+“Pah!”
+Tommy raised his hand, and silenced the clamours of disgust.
+“I call it a theory--but I’m pretty sure of my facts--facts that are
+known to no one but myself. In any case what do you lose? If I can
+produce the papers--you give me my life and liberty in exchange. Is it a
+bargain?”
+“And if we refuse?” said the German quietly.
+Tommy lay back on the couch.
+“The 29th,” he said thoughtfully, “is less than a fortnight ahead----”
+For a moment the German hesitated. Then he made a sign to Conrad.
+“Take him into the other room.”
+For five minutes, Tommy sat on the bed in the dingy room next door. His
+heart was beating violently. He had risked all on this throw. How would
+they decide? And all the while that this agonized questioning went on
+within him, he talked flippantly to Conrad, enraging the cross-grained
+doorkeeper to the point of homicidal mania.
+At last the door opened, and the German called imperiously to Conrad to
+return.
+“Let’s hope the judge hasn’t put his black cap on,” remarked Tommy
+frivolously. “That’s right, Conrad, march me in. The prisoner is at the
+bar, gentlemen.”
+The German was seated once more behind the table. He motioned to Tommy
+to sit down opposite to him.
+“We accept,” he said harshly, “on terms. The papers must be delivered to
+us before you go free.”
+“Idiot!” said Tommy amiably. “How do you think I can look for them if
+you keep me tied by the leg here?”
+“What do you expect, then?”
+“I must have liberty to go about the business in my own way.”
+The German laughed.
+“Do you think we are little children to let you walk out of here leaving
+us a pretty story full of promises?”
+“No,” said Tommy thoughtfully. “Though infinitely simpler for me, I
+did not really think you would agree to that plan. Very well, we must
+arrange a compromise. How would it be if you attached little Conrad here
+to my person. He’s a faithful fellow, and very ready with the fist.”
+“We prefer,” said the German coldly, “that you should remain here.
+One of our number will carry out your instructions minutely. If the
+operations are complicated, he will return to you with a report and you
+can instruct him further.”
+“You’re tying my hands,” complained Tommy. “It’s a very delicate affair,
+and the other fellow will muff it up as likely as not, and then where
+shall I be? I don’t believe one of you has got an ounce of tact.”
+The German rapped the table.
+“Those are our terms. Otherwise, death!”
+Tommy leaned back wearily.
+“I like your style. Curt, but attractive. So be it, then. But one thing
+is essential, I must see the girl.”
+“What girl?”
+“Jane Finn, of course.”
+The other looked at him curiously for some minutes, then he said slowly,
+and as though choosing his words with care:
+“Do you not know that she can tell you nothing?”
+Tommy’s heart beat a little faster. Would he succeed in coming face to
+face with the girl he was seeking?
+“I shall not ask her to tell me anything,” he said quietly. “Not in so
+many words, that is.”
+“Then why see her?”
+Tommy paused.
+“To watch her face when I ask her one question,” he replied at last.
+Again there was a look in the German’s eyes that Tommy did not quite
+understand.
+“She will not be able to answer your question.”
+“That does not matter. I shall have seen her face when I ask it.”
+“And you think that will tell you anything?” He gave a short
+disagreeable laugh. More than ever, Tommy felt that there was a
+factor somewhere that he did not understand. The German looked at
+him searchingly. “I wonder whether, after all, you know as much as we
+think?” he said softly.
+Tommy felt his ascendancy less sure than a moment before. His hold had
+slipped a little. But he was puzzled. What had he said wrong? He spoke
+out on the impulse of the moment.
+“There may be things that you know which I do not. I have not pretended
+to be aware of all the details of your show. But equally I’ve got
+something up my sleeve that _you_ don’t know about. And that’s where I
+mean to score. Danvers was a damned clever fellow----” He broke off as
+if he had said too much.
+But the German’s face had lightened a little.
+“Danvers,” he murmured. “I see----” He paused a minute, then waved to
+Conrad. “Take him away. Upstairs--you know.”
+“Wait a minute,” said Tommy. “What about the girl?”
+“That may perhaps be arranged.”
+“It must be.”
+“We will see about it. Only one person can decide that.”
+“Who?” asked Tommy. But he knew the answer.
+“Mr. Brown----”
+“Shall I see him?”
+“Perhaps.”
+“Come,” said Conrad harshly.
+Tommy rose obediently. Outside the door his gaoler motioned to him to
+mount the stairs. He himself followed close behind. On the floor above
+Conrad opened a door and Tommy passed into a small room. Conrad lit a
+hissing gas burner and went out. Tommy heard the sound of the key being
+turned in the lock.
+He set to work to examine his prison. It was a smaller room than the
+one downstairs, and there was something peculiarly airless about the
+atmosphere of it. Then he realized that there was no window. He walked
+round it. The walls were filthily dirty, as everywhere else. Four
+pictures hung crookedly on the wall representing scenes from Faust.
+Marguerite with her box of jewels, the church scene, Siebel and his
+flowers, and Faust and Mephistopheles. The latter brought Tommy’s mind
+back to Mr. Brown again. In this sealed and closed chamber, with its
+close-fitting heavy door, he felt cut off from the world, and the
+sinister power of the arch-criminal seemed more real. Shout as he would,
+no one could ever hear him. The place was a living tomb....
+With an effort Tommy pulled himself together. He sank on to the bed
+and gave himself up to reflection. His head ached badly; also, he was
+hungry. The silence of the place was dispiriting.
+“Anyway,” said Tommy, trying to cheer himself, “I shall see the
+chief--the mysterious Mr. Brown and with a bit of luck in bluffing I
+shall see the mysterious Jane Finn also. After that----”
+After that Tommy was forced to admit the prospect looked dreary.
+CHAPTER XVII. ANNETTE
+THE troubles of the future, however, soon faded before the troubles of
+the present. And of these, the most immediate and pressing was that of
+hunger. Tommy had a healthy and vigorous appetite. The steak and
+chips partaken of for lunch seemed now to belong to another decade. He
+regretfully recognized the fact that he would not make a success of a
+hunger strike.
+He prowled aimlessly about his prison. Once or twice he discarded
+dignity, and pounded on the door. But nobody answered the summons.
+“Hang it all!” said Tommy indignantly. “They can’t mean to starve me
+to death.” A new-born fear passed through his mind that this might,
+perhaps, be one of those “pretty ways” of making a prisoner speak, which
+had been attributed to Boris. But on reflection he dismissed the idea.
+“It’s that sour-faced brute Conrad,” he decided. “That’s a fellow I
+shall enjoy getting even with one of these days. This is just a bit of
+spite on his part. I’m certain of it.”
+Further meditations induced in him the feeling that it would be
+extremely pleasant to bring something down with a whack on Conrad’s
+egg-shaped head. Tommy stroked his own head tenderly, and gave himself
+up to the pleasures of imagination. Finally a bright idea flashed
+across his brain. Why not convert imagination into reality? Conrad
+was undoubtedly the tenant of the house. The others, with the possible
+exception of the bearded German, merely used it as a rendezvous.
+Therefore, why not wait in ambush for Conrad behind the door, and when
+he entered bring down a chair, or one of the decrepit pictures, smartly
+on to his head. One would, of course, be careful not to hit too hard.
+And then--and then, simply walk out! If he met anyone on the way down,
+well---- Tommy brightened at the thought of an encounter with his fists.
+Such an affair was infinitely more in his line than the verbal encounter
+of this afternoon. Intoxicated by his plan, Tommy gently unhooked the
+picture of the Devil and Faust, and settled himself in position. His
+hopes were high. The plan seemed to him simple but excellent.
+Time went on, but Conrad did not appear. Night and day were the same
+in this prison room, but Tommy’s wrist-watch, which enjoyed a certain
+degree of accuracy, informed him that it was nine o’clock in the
+evening. Tommy reflected gloomily that if supper did not arrive soon
+it would be a question of waiting for breakfast. At ten o’clock hope
+deserted him, and he flung himself on the bed to seek consolation in
+sleep. In five minutes his woes were forgotten.
+The sound of the key turning in the lock awoke him from his slumbers.
+Not belonging to the type of hero who is famous for awaking in full
+possession of his faculties, Tommy merely blinked at the ceiling and
+wondered vaguely where he was. Then he remembered, and looked at his
+watch. It was eight o’clock.
+“It’s either early morning tea or breakfast,” deduced the young man,
+“and pray God it’s the latter!”
+The door swung open. Too late, Tommy remembered his scheme of
+obliterating the unprepossessing Conrad. A moment later he was glad that
+he had, for it was not Conrad who entered, but a girl. She carried a
+tray which she set down on the table.
+In the feeble light of the gas burner Tommy blinked at her. He decided
+at once that she was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.
+Her hair was a full rich brown, with sudden glints of gold in it as
+though there were imprisoned sunbeams struggling in its depths. There
+was a wild-rose quality about her face. Her eyes, set wide apart, were
+hazel, a golden hazel that again recalled a memory of sunbeams.
+A delirious thought shot through Tommy’s mind.
+“Are you Jane Finn?” he asked breathlessly.
+The girl shook her head wonderingly.
+“My name is Annette, monsieur.”
+She spoke in a soft, broken English.
+“Oh!” said Tommy, rather taken aback. _“Française?”_ he hazarded.
+“Oui, monsieur. Monsieur parle français?”
+“Not for any length of time,” said Tommy. “What’s that? Breakfast?”
+The girl nodded. Tommy dropped off the bed and came and inspected the
+contents of the tray. It consisted of a loaf, some margarine, and a jug
+of coffee.
+“The living is not equal to the _Ritz_,” he observed with a sigh. “But
+for what we are at last about to receive the Lord has made me truly
+thankful. Amen.”
+He drew up a chair, and the girl turned away to the door.
+“Wait a sec,” cried Tommy. “There are lots of things I want to ask you,
+Annette. What are you doing in this house? Don’t tell me you’re Conrad’s
+niece, or daughter, or anything, because I can’t believe it.”
+“I do the _service_, monsieur. I am not related to anybody.”
+“I see,” said Tommy. “You know what I asked you just now. Have you ever
+heard that name?”
+“I have heard people speak of Jane Finn, I think.”
+“You don’t know where she is?”
+Annette shook her head.
+“She’s not in this house, for instance?”
+“Oh no, monsieur. I must go now--they will be waiting for me.”
+She hurried out. The key turned in the lock.
+“I wonder who ‘they’ are,” mused Tommy, as he continued to make inroads
+on the loaf. “With a bit of luck, that girl might help me to get out of
+here. She doesn’t look like one of the gang.”
+At one o’clock Annette reappeared with another tray, but this time
+Conrad accompanied her.
+“Good morning,” said Tommy amiably. “You have _not_ used Pear’s soap, I
+see.”
+Conrad growled threateningly.
+“No light repartee, have you, old bean? There, there, we can’t always
+have brains as well as beauty. What have we for lunch? Stew? How did I
+know? Elementary, my dear Watson--the smell of onions is unmistakable.”
+“Talk away,” grunted the man. “It’s little enough time you’ll have to
+talk in, maybe.”
+The remark was unpleasant in its suggestion, but Tommy ignored it. He
+sat down at the table.
+“Retire, varlet,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “Prate not to thy
+betters.”
+That evening Tommy sat on the bed, and cogitated deeply. Would Conrad
+again accompany the girl? If he did not, should he risk trying to make
+an ally of her? He decided that he must leave no stone unturned. His
+position was desperate.
+At eight o’clock the familiar sound of the key turning made him spring
+to his feet. The girl was alone.
+“Shut the door,” he commanded. “I want to speak to you.” She obeyed.
+“Look here, Annette, I want you to help me get out of this.” She shook
+her head.
+“Impossible. There are three of them on the floor below.”
+“Oh!” Tommy was secretly grateful for the information. “But you would
+help me if you could?”
+“No, monsieur.”
+“Why not?”
+The girl hesitated.
+“I think--they are my own people. You have spied upon them. They are
+quite right to keep you here.”
+“They’re a bad lot, Annette. If you’ll help me, I’ll take you away from
+the lot of them. And you’d probably get a good whack of money.”
+But the girl merely shook her head.
+“I dare not, monsieur; I am afraid of them.”
+She turned away.
+“Wouldn’t you do anything to help another girl?” cried Tommy. “She’s
+about your age too. Won’t you save her from their clutches?”
+“You mean Jane Finn?”
+“Yes.”
+“It is her you came here to look for? Yes?”
+“That’s it.”
+The girl looked at him, then passed her hand across her forehead.
+“Jane Finn. Always I hear that name. It is familiar.”
+Tommy came forward eagerly.
+“You must know _something_ about her?”
+But the girl turned away abruptly.
+“I know nothing--only the name.” She walked towards the door. Suddenly
+she uttered a cry. Tommy stared. She had caught sight of the picture
+he had laid against the wall the night before. For a moment he caught a
+look of terror in her eyes. As inexplicably it changed to relief. Then
+abruptly she went out of the room. Tommy could make nothing of it. Did
+she fancy that he had meant to attack her with it? Surely not. He rehung
+the picture on the wall thoughtfully.
+Three more days went by in dreary inaction. Tommy felt the strain
+telling on his nerves. He saw no one but Conrad and Annette, and the
+girl had become dumb. She spoke only in monosyllables. A kind of dark
+suspicion smouldered in her eyes. Tommy felt that if this solitary
+confinement went on much longer he would go mad. He gathered from Conrad
+that they were waiting for orders from “Mr. Brown.” Perhaps, thought
+Tommy, he was abroad or away, and they were obliged to wait for his
+return.
+But the evening of the third day brought a rude awakening.
+It was barely seven o’clock when he heard the tramp of footsteps outside
+in the passage. In another minute the door was flung open. Conrad
+entered. With him was the evil-looking Number 14. Tommy’s heart sank at
+the sight of them.
+“Evenin’, gov’nor,” said the man with a leer. “Got those ropes, mate?”
+The silent Conrad produced a length of fine cord. The next minute Number
+14’s hands, horribly dexterous, were winding the cord round his limbs,
+while Conrad held him down.
+“What the devil----?” began Tommy.
+But the slow, speechless grin of the silent Conrad froze the words on
+his lips.
+Number 14 proceeded deftly with his task. In another minute Tommy was a
+mere helpless bundle. Then at last Conrad spoke:
+“Thought you’d bluffed us, did you? With what you knew, and what you
+didn’t know. Bargained with us! And all the time it was bluff! Bluff!
+You know less than a kitten. But your number’s up now all right, you
+b---- swine.”
+Tommy lay silent. There was nothing to say. He had failed. Somehow
+or other the omnipotent Mr. Brown had seen through his pretensions.
+Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
+“A very good speech, Conrad,” he said approvingly. “But wherefore the
+bonds and fetters? Why not let this kind gentleman here cut my throat
+without delay?”
+“Garn,” said Number 14 unexpectedly. “Think we’re as green as to do you
+in here, and have the police nosing round? Not ‘alf! We’ve ordered the
+carriage for your lordship to-morrow mornin’, but in the meantime we’re
+not taking any chances, see!”
+“Nothing,” said Tommy, “could be plainer than your words--unless it was
+your face.”
+“Stow it,” said Number 14.
+“With pleasure,” replied Tommy. “You’re making a sad mistake--but yours
+will be the loss.”
+“You don’t kid us that way again,” said Number 14. “Talking as though
+you were still at the blooming _Ritz_, aren’t you?”
+Tommy made no reply. He was engaged in wondering how Mr. Brown had
+discovered his identity. He decided that Tuppence, in the throes of
+anxiety, had gone to the police, and that his disappearance having been
+made public the gang had not been slow to put two and two together.
+The two men departed and the door slammed. Tommy was left to his
+meditations. They were not pleasant ones. Already his limbs felt cramped
+and stiff. He was utterly helpless, and he could see no hope anywhere.
+About an hour had passed when he heard the key softly turned, and the
+door opened. It was Annette. Tommy’s heart beat a little faster. He had
+forgotten the girl. Was it possible that she had come to his help?
+Suddenly he heard Conrad’s voice:
+“Come out of it, Annette. He doesn’t want any supper to-night.”
+“Oui, oui, je sais bien. But I must take the other tray. We need the
+things on it.”
+“Well, hurry up,” growled Conrad.
+Without looking at Tommy the girl went over to the table, and picked up
+the tray. She raised a hand and turned out the light.
+“Curse you”--Conrad had come to the door--“why did you do that?”
+“I always turn it out. You should have told me. Shall I relight it,
+Monsieur Conrad?”
+“No, come on out of it.”
+“Le beau petit monsieur,” cried Annette, pausing by the bed in the
+darkness. “You have tied him up well, _hein?_ He is like a trussed
+chicken!” The frank amusement in her tone jarred on the boy; but at
+that moment, to his amazement, he felt her hand running lightly over
+his bonds, and something small and cold was pressed into the palm of his
+hand.
+“Come on, Annette.”
+“Mais me voilà.”
+The door shut. Tommy heard Conrad say:
+“Lock it and give me the key.”
+The footsteps died away. Tommy lay petrified with amazement. The object
+Annette had thrust into his hand was a small penknife, the blade open.
+From the way she had studiously avoided looking at him, and her action
+with the light, he came to the conclusion that the room was overlooked.
+There must be a peep-hole somewhere in the walls. Remembering how
+guarded she had always been in her manner, he saw that he had probably
+been under observation all the time. Had he said anything to give
+himself away? Hardly. He had revealed a wish to escape and a desire
+to find Jane Finn, but nothing that could have given a clue to his
+own identity. True, his question to Annette had proved that he was
+personally unacquainted with Jane Finn, but he had never pretended
+otherwise. The question now was, did Annette really know more? Were her
+denials intended primarily for the listeners? On that point he could
+come to no conclusion.
+But there was a more vital question that drove out all others. Could he,
+bound as he was, manage to cut his bonds? He essayed cautiously to
+rub the open blade up and down on the cord that bound his two wrists
+together. It was an awkward business, and drew a smothered “Ow” of pain
+from him as the knife cut into his wrist. But slowly and doggedly he
+went on sawing to and fro. He cut the flesh badly, but at last he felt
+the cord slacken. With his hands free, the rest was easy. Five minutes
+later he stood upright with some difficulty, owing to the cramp in his
+limbs. His first care was to bind up his bleeding wrist. Then he sat on
+the edge of the bed to think. Conrad had taken the key of the door, so
+he could expect little more assistance from Annette. The only outlet
+from the room was the door, consequently he would perforce have to wait
+until the two men returned to fetch him. But when they did.... Tommy
+smiled! Moving with infinite caution in the dark room, he found and
+unhooked the famous picture. He felt an economical pleasure that his
+first plan would not be wasted. There was now nothing to do but to wait.
+He waited.
+The night passed slowly. Tommy lived through an eternity of hours, but
+at last he heard footsteps. He stood upright, drew a deep breath, and
+clutched the picture firmly.
+The door opened. A faint light streamed in from outside. Conrad went
+straight towards the gas to light it. Tommy deeply regretted that it was
+he who had entered first. It would have been pleasant to get even with
+Conrad. Number 14 followed. As he stepped across the threshold, Tommy
+brought the picture down with terrific force on his head. Number 14 went
+down amidst a stupendous crash of broken glass. In a minute Tommy had
+slipped out and pulled to the door. The key was in the lock. He turned
+it and withdrew it just as Conrad hurled himself against the door from
+the inside with a volley of curses.
+For a moment Tommy hesitated. There was the sound of some one stirring
+on the floor below. Then the German’s voice came up the stairs.
+“Gott im Himmel! Conrad, what is it?”
+Tommy felt a small hand thrust into his. Beside him stood Annette. She
+pointed up a rickety ladder that apparently led to some attics.
+“Quick--up here!” She dragged him after her up the ladder. In another
+moment they were standing in a dusty garret littered with lumber. Tommy
+looked round.
+“This won’t do. It’s a regular trap. There’s no way out.”
+“Hush! Wait.” The girl put her finger to her lips. She crept to the top
+of the ladder and listened.
+The banging and beating on the door was terrific. The German and another
+were trying to force the door in. Annette explained in a whisper:
+“They will think you are still inside. They cannot hear what Conrad
+says. The door is too thick.”
+“I thought you could hear what went on in the room?”
+“There is a peep-hole into the next room. It was clever of you to guess.
+But they will not think of that--they are only anxious to get in.”
+“Yes--but look here----”
+“Leave it to me.” She bent down. To his amazement, Tommy saw that she
+was fastening the end of a long piece of string to the handle of a big
+cracked jug. She arranged it carefully, then turned to Tommy.
+“Have you the key of the door?”
+“Yes.”
+“Give it to me.”
+He handed it to her.
+“I am going down. Do you think you can go halfway, and then swing
+yourself down _behind_ the ladder, so that they will not see you?”
+Tommy nodded.
+“There’s a big cupboard in the shadow of the landing. Stand behind it.
+Take the end of this string in your hand. When I’ve let the others out--
+_pull! _”
+Before he had time to ask her anything more, she had flitted lightly
+down the ladder and was in the midst of the group with a loud cry:
+“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”
+The German turned on her with an oath.
+“Get out of this. Go to your room!”
+Very cautiously Tommy swung himself down the back of the ladder. So
+long as they did not turn round ... all was well. He crouched behind the
+cupboard. They were still between him and the stairs.
+“Ah!” Annette appeared to stumble over something. She stooped. “Mon
+Dieu, voilà la clef!”
+The German snatched it from her. He unlocked the door. Conrad stumbled
+out, swearing.
+“Where is he? Have you got him?”
+“We have seen no one,” said the German sharply. His face paled. “Who do
+you mean?”
+Conrad gave vent to another oath.
+“He’s got away.”
+“Impossible. He would have passed us.”
+At that moment, with an ecstatic smile Tommy pulled the string. A crash
+of crockery came from the attic above. In a trice the men were pushing
+each other up the rickety ladder and had disappeared into the darkness
+above.
+Quick as a flash Tommy leapt from his hiding-place and dashed down the
+stairs, pulling the girl with him. There was no one in the hall. He
+fumbled over the bolts and chain. At last they yielded, the door swung
+open. He turned. Annette had disappeared.
+Tommy stood spell-bound. Had she run upstairs again? What madness
+possessed her! He fumed with impatience, but he stood his ground. He
+would not go without her.
+And suddenly there was an outcry overhead, an exclamation from the
+German, and then Annette’s voice, clear and high:
+“Ma foi, he has escaped! And quickly! Who would have thought it?”
+Tommy still stood rooted to the ground. Was that a command to him to go?
+He fancied it was.
+And then, louder still, the words floated down to him:
+“This is a terrible house. I want to go back to Marguerite. To
+Marguerite. _To Marguerite!_”
+Tommy had run back to the stairs. She wanted him to go and leave her.
+But why? At all costs he must try and get her away with him. Then his
+heart sank. Conrad was leaping down the stairs, uttering a savage cry at
+the sight of him. After him came the others.
+Tommy stopped Conrad’s rush with a straight blow with his fist. It
+caught the other on the point of the jaw and he fell like a log. The
+second man tripped over his body and fell. From higher up the staircase
+there was a flash, and a bullet grazed Tommy’s ear. He realized that
+it would be good for his health to get out of this house as soon as
+possible. As regards Annette he could do nothing. He had got even with
+Conrad, which was one satisfaction. The blow had been a good one.
+He leapt for the door, slamming it behind him. The square was deserted.
+In front of the house was a baker’s van. Evidently he was to have been
+taken out of London in that, and his body found many miles from the
+house in Soho. The driver jumped to the pavement and tried to bar
+Tommy’s way. Again Tommy’s fist shot out, and the driver sprawled on the
+pavement.
+Tommy took to his heels and ran--none too soon. The front door opened
+and a hail of bullets followed him. Fortunately none of them hit him. He
+turned the corner of the square.
+“There’s one thing,” he thought to himself, “they can’t go on shooting.
+They’ll have the police after them if they do. I wonder they dared to
+there.”
+He heard the footsteps of his pursuers behind him, and redoubled his own
+pace. Once he got out of these by-ways he would be safe. There would be
+a policeman about somewhere--not that he really wanted to invoke the aid
+of the police if he could possibly do without it. It meant explanations,
+and general awkwardness. In another moment he had reason to bless his
+luck. He stumbled over a prostrate figure, which started up with a yell
+of alarm and dashed off down the street. Tommy drew back into a doorway.
+In a minute he had the pleasure of seeing his two pursuers, of whom the
+German was one, industriously tracking down the red herring!
+Tommy sat down quietly on the doorstep and allowed a few moments to
+elapse while he recovered his breath. Then he strolled gently in the
+opposite direction. He glanced at his watch. It was a little after
+half-past five. It was rapidly growing light. At the next corner he
+passed a policeman. The policeman cast a suspicious eye on him. Tommy
+felt slightly offended. Then, passing his hand over his face, he
+laughed. He had not shaved or washed for three days! What a guy he must
+look.
+He betook himself without more ado to a Turkish Bath establishment which
+he knew to be open all night. He emerged into the busy daylight feeling
+himself once more, and able to make plans.
+First of all, he must have a square meal. He had eaten nothing since
+midday yesterday. He turned into an A.B.C. shop and ordered eggs and
+bacon and coffee. Whilst he ate, he read a morning paper propped up
+in front of him. Suddenly he stiffened. There was a long article on
+Kramenin, who was described as the “man behind Bolshevism” in Russia,
+and who had just arrived in London--some thought as an unofficial envoy.
+His career was sketched lightly, and it was firmly asserted that he,
+and not the figurehead leaders, had been the author of the Russian
+Revolution.
+In the centre of the page was his portrait.
+“So that’s who Number 1 is,” said Tommy with his mouth full of eggs and
+bacon. “Not a doubt about it, I must push on.”
+He paid for his breakfast, and betook himself to Whitehall. There he
+sent up his name, and the message that it was urgent. A few minutes
+later he was in the presence of the man who did not here go by the name
+of “Mr. Carter.” There was a frown on his face.
+“Look here, you’ve no business to come asking for me in this way. I
+thought that was distinctly understood?”
+“It was, sir. But I judged it important to lose no time.”
+And as briefly and succinctly as possible he detailed the experiences of
+the last few days.
+Half-way through, Mr. Carter interrupted him to give a few cryptic
+orders through the telephone. All traces of displeasure had now left his
+face. He nodded energetically when Tommy had finished.
+“Quite right. Every moment’s of value. Fear we shall be too late anyway.
+They wouldn’t wait. Would clear out at once. Still, they may have left
+something behind them that will be a clue. You say you’ve recognized
+Number 1 to be Kramenin? That’s important. We want something against him
+badly to prevent the Cabinet falling on his neck too freely. What about
+the others? You say two faces were familiar to you? One’s a Labour man,
+you think? Just look through these photos, and see if you can spot him.”
+A minute later, Tommy held one up. Mr. Carter exhibited some surprise.
+“Ah, Westway! Shouldn’t have thought it. Poses as being moderate. As for
+the other fellow, I think I can give a good guess.” He handed another
+photograph to Tommy, and smiled at the other’s exclamation. “I’m right,
+then. Who is he? Irishman. Prominent Unionist M.P. All a blind, of
+course. We’ve suspected it--but couldn’t get any proof. Yes, you’ve done
+very well, young man. The 29th, you say, is the date. That gives us very
+little time--very little time indeed.”
+“But----” Tommy hesitated.
+Mr. Carter read his thoughts.
+“We can deal with the General Strike menace, I think. It’s a
+toss-up--but we’ve got a sporting chance! But if that draft treaty turns
+up--we’re done. England will be plunged in anarchy. Ah, what’s that?
+The car? Come on, Beresford, we’ll go and have a look at this house of
+yours.”
+Two constables were on duty in front of the house in Soho. An inspector
+reported to Mr. Carter in a low voice. The latter turned to Tommy.
+“The birds have flown--as we thought. We might as well go over it.”
+Going over the deserted house seemed to Tommy to partake of the
+character of a dream. Everything was just as it had been. The prison
+room with the crooked pictures, the broken jug in the attic, the meeting
+room with its long table. But nowhere was there a trace of papers.
+Everything of that kind had either been destroyed or taken away. And
+there was no sign of Annette.
+“What you tell me about the girl puzzled me,” said Mr. Carter. “You
+believe that she deliberately went back?”
+“It would seem so, sir. She ran upstairs while I was getting the door
+open.”
+“H’m, she must belong to the gang, then; but, being a woman, didn’t feel
+like standing by to see a personable young man killed. But evidently
+she’s in with them, or she wouldn’t have gone back.”
+“I can’t believe she’s really one of them, sir. She--seemed so
+different----”
+“Good-looking, I suppose?” said Mr. Carter with a smile that made Tommy
+flush to the roots of his hair. He admitted Annette’s beauty rather
+shamefacedly.
+“By the way,” observed Mr. Carter, “have you shown yourself to Miss
+Tuppence yet? She’s been bombarding me with letters about you.”
+“Tuppence? I was afraid she might get a bit rattled. Did she go to the
+police?”
+Mr. Carter shook his head.
+“Then I wonder how they twigged me.”
+Mr. Carter looked inquiringly at him, and Tommy explained. The other
+nodded thoughtfully.
+“True, that’s rather a curious point. Unless the mention of the _Ritz_
+was an accidental remark?”
+“It might have been, sir. But they must have found out about me suddenly
+in some way.”
+“Well,” said Mr. Carter, looking round him, “there’s nothing more to be
+done here. What about some lunch with me?”
+“Thanks awfully, sir. But I think I’d better get back and rout out
+Tuppence.”
+“Of course. Give her my kind regards and tell her not to believe you’re
+killed too readily next time.”
+Tommy grinned.
+“I take a lot of killing, sir.”
+“So I perceive,” said Mr. Carter dryly. “Well, good-bye. Remember you’re
+a marked man now, and take reasonable care of yourself.”
+“Thank you, sir.”
+Hailing a taxi briskly Tommy stepped in, and was swiftly borne to the
+_Ritz_, dwelling the while on the pleasurable anticipation of startling
+Tuppence.
+“Wonder what she’s been up to. Dogging ‘Rita’ most likely. By the way,
+I suppose that’s who Annette meant by Marguerite. I didn’t get it at the
+time.” The thought saddened him a little, for it seemed to prove that
+Mrs. Vandemeyer and the girl were on intimate terms.
+The taxi drew up at the _Ritz_. Tommy burst into its sacred portals
+eagerly, but his enthusiasm received a check. He was informed that Miss
+Cowley had gone out a quarter of an hour ago.
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE TELEGRAM
+BAFFLED for the moment, Tommy strolled into the restaurant, and ordered
+a meal of surpassing excellence. His four days’ imprisonment had taught
+him anew to value good food.
+He was in the middle of conveying a particularly choice morsel of Sole
+à la Jeanette to his mouth, when he caught sight of Julius entering
+the room. Tommy waved a menu cheerfully, and succeeded in attracting the
+other’s attention. At the sight of Tommy, Julius’s eyes seemed as though
+they would pop out of his head. He strode across, and pump-handled
+Tommy’s hand with what seemed to the latter quite unnecessary vigour.
+“Holy snakes!” he ejaculated. “Is it really you?”
+“Of course it is. Why shouldn’t it be?”
+“Why shouldn’t it be? Say, man, don’t you know you’ve been given up
+for dead? I guess we’d have had a solemn requiem for you in another few
+days.”
+“Who thought I was dead?” demanded Tommy.
+“Tuppence.”
+“She remembered the proverb about the good dying young, I suppose. There
+must be a certain amount of original sin in me to have survived. Where
+is Tuppence, by the way?”
+“Isn’t she here?”
+“No, the fellows at the office said she’d just gone out.”
+“Gone shopping, I guess. I dropped her here in the car about an hour
+ago. But, say, can’t you shed that British calm of yours, and get down
+to it? What on God’s earth have you been doing all this time?”
+“If you’re feeding here,” replied Tommy, “order now. It’s going to be a
+long story.”
+Julius drew up a chair to the opposite side of the table, summoned a
+hovering waiter, and dictated his wishes. Then he turned to Tommy.
+“Fire ahead. I guess you’ve had some few adventures.”
+“One or two,” replied Tommy modestly, and plunged into his recital.
+Julius listened spellbound. Half the dishes that were placed before him
+he forgot to eat. At the end he heaved a long sigh.
+“Bully for you. Reads like a dime novel!”
+“And now for the home front,” said Tommy, stretching out his hand for a
+peach.
+“We-el,” drawled Julius, “I don’t mind admitting we’ve had some
+adventures too.”
+He, in his turn, assumed the rôle of narrator. Beginning with his
+unsuccessful reconnoitring at Bournemouth, he passed on to his return
+to London, the buying of the car, the growing anxieties of Tuppence,
+the call upon Sir James, and the sensational occurrences of the previous
+night.
+“But who killed her?” asked Tommy. “I don’t quite understand.”
+“The doctor kidded himself she took it herself,” replied Julius dryly.
+“And Sir James? What did he think?”
+“Being a legal luminary, he is likewise a human oyster,” replied Julius.
+“I should say he ‘reserved judgment.’” He went on to detail the events
+of the morning.
+“Lost her memory, eh?” said Tommy with interest. “By Jove, that explains
+why they looked at me so queerly when I spoke of questioning her. Bit of
+a slip on my part, that! But it wasn’t the sort of thing a fellow would
+be likely to guess.”
+“They didn’t give you any sort of hint as to where Jane was?”
+Tommy shook his head regretfully.
+“Not a word. I’m a bit of an ass, as you know. I ought to have got more
+out of them somehow.”
+“I guess you’re lucky to be here at all. That bluff of yours was the
+goods all right. How you ever came to think of it all so pat beats me to
+a frazzle!”
+“I was in such a funk I had to think of something,” said Tommy simply.
+There was a moment’s pause, and then Tommy reverted to Mrs. Vandemeyer’s
+death.
+“There’s no doubt it was chloral?”
+“I believe not. At least they call it heart failure induced by an
+overdose, or some such claptrap. It’s all right. We don’t want to
+be worried with an inquest. But I guess Tuppence and I and even the
+highbrow Sir James have all got the same idea.”
+“Mr. Brown?” hazarded Tommy.
+“Sure thing.”
+Tommy nodded.
+“All the same,” he said thoughtfully, “Mr. Brown hasn’t got wings. I
+don’t see how he got in and out.”
+“How about some high-class thought transference stunt? Some magnetic
+influence that irresistibly impelled Mrs. Vandemeyer to commit suicide?”
+Tommy looked at him with respect.
+“Good, Julius. Distinctly good. Especially the phraseology. But it
+leaves me cold. I yearn for a real Mr. Brown of flesh and blood. I think
+the gifted young detectives must get to work, study the entrances and
+exits, and tap the bumps on their foreheads until the solution of the
+mystery dawns on them. Let’s go round to the scene of the crime. I wish
+we could get hold of Tuppence. The _Ritz_ would enjoy the spectacle of
+the glad reunion.”
+Inquiry at the office revealed the fact that Tuppence had not yet
+returned.
+“All the same, I guess I’ll have a look round upstairs,” said Julius.
+“She might be in my sitting-room.” He disappeared.
+Suddenly a diminutive boy spoke at Tommy’s elbow:
+“The young lady--she’s gone away by train, I think, sir,” he murmured
+shyly.
+“What?” Tommy wheeled round upon him.
+The small boy became pinker than before.
+“The taxi, sir. I heard her tell the driver Charing Cross and to look
+sharp.”
+Tommy stared at him, his eyes opening wide in surprise. Emboldened, the
+small boy proceeded. “So I thought, having asked for an A.B.C. and a
+Bradshaw.”
+Tommy interrupted him:
+“When did she ask for an A.B.C. and a Bradshaw?”
+“When I took her the telegram, sir.”
+“A telegram?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“When was that?”
+“About half-past twelve, sir.”
+“Tell me exactly what happened.”
+The small boy drew a long breath.
+“I took up a telegram to No. 891--the lady was there. She opened it
+and gave a gasp, and then she said, very jolly like: ‘Bring me up a
+Bradshaw, and an A.B.C., and look sharp, Henry.’ My name isn’t Henry,
+but----”
+“Never mind your name,” said Tommy impatiently. “Go on.”
+“Yes, sir. I brought them, and she told me to wait, and looked up
+something. And then she looks up at the clock, and ‘Hurry up,’ she says.
+‘Tell them to get me a taxi,’ and she begins a-shoving on of her hat in
+front of the glass, and she was down in two ticks, almost as quick as I
+was, and I seed her going down the steps and into the taxi, and I heard
+her call out what I told you.”
+The small boy stopped and replenished his lungs. Tommy continued to
+stare at him. At that moment Julius rejoined him. He held an open letter
+in his hand.
+“I say, Hersheimmer”--Tommy turned to him--“Tuppence has gone off
+sleuthing on her own.”
+“Shucks!”
+“Yes, she has. She went off in a taxi to Charing Cross in the deuce of a
+hurry after getting a telegram.” His eye fell on the letter in Julius’s
+hand. “Oh; she left a note for you. That’s all right. Where’s she off
+to?”
+Almost unconsciously, he held out his hand for the letter, but
+Julius folded it up and placed it in his pocket. He seemed a trifle
+embarrassed.
+“I guess this is nothing to do with it. It’s about something
+else--something I asked her that she was to let me know about.”
+“Oh!” Tommy looked puzzled, and seemed waiting for more.
+“See here,” said Julius suddenly, “I’d better put you wise. I asked Miss
+Tuppence to marry me this morning.”
+“Oh!” said Tommy mechanically. He felt dazed. Julius’s words were
+totally unexpected. For the moment they benumbed his brain.
+“I’d like to tell you,” continued Julius, “that before I suggested
+anything of the kind to Miss Tuppence, I made it clear that I didn’t
+want to butt in in any way between her and you----”
+Tommy roused himself.
+“That’s all right,” he said quickly. “Tuppence and I have been pals for
+years. Nothing more.” He lit a cigarette with a hand that shook ever
+so little. “That’s quite all right. Tuppence always said that she was
+looking out for----”
+He stopped abruptly, his face crimsoning, but Julius was in no way
+discomposed.
+“Oh, I guess it’ll be the dollars that’ll do the trick. Miss Tuppence
+put me wise to that right away. There’s no humbug about her. We ought to
+gee along together very well.”
+Tommy looked at him curiously for a minute, as though he were about
+to speak, then changed his mind and said nothing. Tuppence and Julius!
+Well, why not? Had she not lamented the fact that she knew no rich men?
+Had she not openly avowed her intention of marrying for money if she
+ever had the chance? Her meeting with the young American millionaire
+had given her the chance--and it was unlikely she would be slow to avail
+herself of it. She was out for money. She had always said so. Why blame
+her because she had been true to her creed?
+Nevertheless, Tommy did blame her. He was filled with a passionate and
+utterly illogical resentment. It was all very well to _say_ things
+like that--but a _real_ girl would never marry for money. Tuppence was
+utterly cold-blooded and selfish, and he would be delighted if he never
+saw her again! And it was a rotten world!
+Julius’s voice broke in on these meditations.
+“Yes, we ought to gee along together very well. I’ve heard that a girl
+always refuses you once--a sort of convention.”
+Tommy caught his arm.
+“Refuses? Did you say _refuses?_”
+“Sure thing. Didn’t I tell you that? She just rapped out a ‘no’ without
+any kind of reason to it. The eternal feminine, the Huns call it, I’ve
+heard. But she’ll come round right enough. Likely enough, I hustled her
+some----”
+But Tommy interrupted regardless of decorum.
+“What did she say in that note?” he demanded fiercely.
+The obliging Julius handed it to him.
+“There’s no earthly clue in it as to where she’s gone,” he assured
+Tommy. “But you might as well see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
+The note, in Tuppence’s well-known schoolboy writing, ran as follows:
+“DEAR JULIUS,
+“It’s always better to have things in black and white. I don’t feel I
+can be bothered to think of marriage until Tommy is found. Let’s leave
+it till then.
+“Yours affectionately,
+“TUPPENCE.”
+Tommy handed it back, his eyes shining. His feelings had undergone a
+sharp reaction. He now felt that Tuppence was all that was noble and
+disinterested. Had she not refused Julius without hesitation? True, the
+note betokened signs of weakening, but he could excuse that. It read
+almost like a bribe to Julius to spur him on in his efforts to find
+Tommy, but he supposed she had not really meant it that way. Darling
+Tuppence, there was not a girl in the world to touch her! When he saw
+her----His thoughts were brought up with a sudden jerk.
+“As you say,” he remarked, pulling himself together, “there’s not a hint
+here as to what she’s up to. Hi--Henry!”
+The small boy came obediently. Tommy produced five shillings.
+“One thing more. Do you remember what the young lady did with the
+telegram?”
+Henry gasped and spoke.
+“She crumpled it up into a ball and threw it into the grate, and made a
+sort of noise like ‘Whoop!’ sir.”
+“Very graphic, Henry,” said Tommy. “Here’s your five shillings. Come on,
+Julius. We must find that telegram.”
+They hurried upstairs. Tuppence had left the key in her door. The room
+was as she had left it. In the fireplace was a crumpled ball of orange
+and white. Tommy disentangled it and smoothed out the telegram.
+“Come at once, Moat House, Ebury, Yorkshire, great developments--TOMMY.”
+They looked at each other in stupefaction. Julius spoke first:
+“You didn’t send it?”
+“Of course not. What does it mean?”
+“I guess it means the worst,” said Julius quietly. “They’ve got her.”
+_“What?”_
+“Sure thing! They signed your name, and she fell into the trap like a
+lamb.”
+“My God! What shall we do?”
+“Get busy, and go after her! Right now! There’s no time to waste. It’s
+almighty luck that she didn’t take the wire with her. If she had we’d
+probably never have traced her. But we’ve got to hustle. Where’s that
+Bradshaw?”
+The energy of Julius was infectious. Left to himself, Tommy would
+probably have sat down to think things out for a good half-hour before
+he decided on a plan of action. But with Julius Hersheimmer about,
+hustling was inevitable.
+After a few muttered imprecations he handed the Bradshaw to Tommy as
+being more conversant with its mysteries. Tommy abandoned it in favour
+of an A.B.C.
+“Here we are. Ebury, Yorks. From King’s Cross. Or St. Pancras. (Boy must
+have made a mistake. It was King’s Cross, not _Charing_ Cross.) 12.50,
+that’s the train she went by. 2.10, that’s gone. 3.20 is the next--and a
+damned slow train too.”
+“What about the car?”
+Tommy shook his head.
+“Send it up if you like, but we’d better stick to the train. The great
+thing is to keep calm.”
+Julius groaned.
+“That’s so. But it gets my goat to think of that innocent young girl in
+danger!”
+Tommy nodded abstractedly. He was thinking. In a moment or two, he said:
+“I say, Julius, what do they want her for, anyway?”
+“Eh? I don’t get you?”
+“What I mean is that I don’t think it’s their game to do her any harm,”
+explained Tommy, puckering his brow with the strain of his mental
+processes. “She’s a hostage, that’s what she is. She’s in no immediate
+danger, because if we tumble on to anything, she’d be damned useful to
+them. As long as they’ve got her, they’ve got the whip hand of us. See?”
+“Sure thing,” said Julius thoughtfully. “That’s so.”
+“Besides,” added Tommy, as an afterthought, “I’ve great faith in
+Tuppence.”
+The journey was wearisome, with many stops, and crowded carriages. They
+had to change twice, once at Doncaster, once at a small junction. Ebury
+was a deserted station with a solitary porter, to whom Tommy addressed
+himself:
+“Can you tell me the way to the Moat House?”
+“The Moat House? It’s a tidy step from here. The big house near the sea,
+you mean?”
+Tommy assented brazenly. After listening to the porter’s meticulous
+but perplexing directions, they prepared to leave the station. It was
+beginning to rain, and they turned up the collars of their coats as they
+trudged through the slush of the road. Suddenly Tommy halted.
+“Wait a moment.” He ran back to the station and tackled the porter anew.
+“Look here, do you remember a young lady who arrived by an earlier
+train, the 12.50 from London? She’d probably ask you the way to the Moat
+House.”
+He described Tuppence as well as he could, but the porter shook his
+head. Several people had arrived by the train in question. He could not
+call to mind one young lady in particular. But he was quite certain that
+no one had asked him the way to the Moat House.
+Tommy rejoined Julius, and explained. Depression was settling on him
+like a leaden weight. He felt convinced that their quest was going to
+be unsuccessful. The enemy had over three hours’ start. Three hours was
+more than enough for Mr. Brown. He would not ignore the possibility of
+the telegram having been found.
+The way seemed endless. Once they took the wrong turning and went nearly
+half a mile out of their direction. It was past seven o’clock when a
+small boy told them that “t’ Moat House” was just past the next corner.
+A rusty iron gate swinging dismally on its hinges! An overgrown drive
+thick with leaves. There was something about the place that struck a
+chill to both their hearts. They went up the deserted drive. The leaves
+deadened their footsteps. The daylight was almost gone. It was like
+walking in a world of ghosts. Overhead the branches flapped and creaked
+with a mournful note. Occasionally a sodden leaf drifted silently down,
+startling them with its cold touch on their cheek.
+A turn of the drive brought them in sight of the house. That, too,
+seemed empty and deserted. The shutters were closed, the steps up to
+the door overgrown with moss. Was it indeed to this desolate spot
+that Tuppence had been decoyed? It seemed hard to believe that a human
+footstep had passed this way for months.
+Julius jerked the rusty bell handle. A jangling peal rang discordantly,
+echoing through the emptiness within. No one came. They rang again and
+again--but there was no sign of life. Then they walked completely round
+the house. Everywhere silence, and shuttered windows. If they could
+believe the evidence of their eyes the place was empty.
+“Nothing doing,” said Julius.
+They retraced their steps slowly to the gate.
+“There must be a village handy,” continued the young American. “We’d
+better make inquiries there. They’ll know something about the place, and
+whether there’s been anyone there lately.”
+“Yes, that’s not a bad idea.”
+Proceeding up the road, they soon came to a little hamlet. On the
+outskirts of it, they met a workman swinging his bag of tools, and Tommy
+stopped him with a question.
+“The Moat House? It’s empty. Been empty for years. Mrs. Sweeny’s got the
+key if you want to go over it--next to the post office.”
+Tommy thanked him. They soon found the post office, which was also a
+sweet and general fancy shop, and knocked at the door of the cottage
+next to it. A clean, wholesome-looking woman opened it. She readily
+produced the key of the Moat House.
+“Though I doubt if it’s the kind of place to suit you, sir. In a
+terrible state of repair. Ceilings leaking and all. ‘Twould need a lot
+of money spent on it.”
+“Thanks,” said Tommy cheerily. “I dare say it’ll be a washout, but
+houses are scarce nowadays.”
+“That they are,” declared the woman heartily. “My daughter and
+son-in-law have been looking for a decent cottage for I don’t know how
+long. It’s all the war. Upset things terribly, it has. But excuse me,
+sir, it’ll be too dark for you to see much of the house. Hadn’t you
+better wait until to-morrow?”
+“That’s all right. We’ll have a look around this evening, anyway. We’d
+have been here before only we lost our way. What’s the best place to
+stay at for the night round here?”
+Mrs. Sweeny looked doubtful.
+“There’s the _Yorkshire Arms_, but it’s not much of a place for
+gentlemen like you.”
+“Oh, it will do very well. Thanks. By the way, you’ve not had a young
+lady here asking for this key to-day?”
+The woman shook her head.
+“No one’s been over the place for a long time.”
+“Thanks very much.”
+They retraced their steps to the Moat House. As the front door swung
+back on its hinges, protesting loudly, Julius struck a match and
+examined the floor carefully. Then he shook his head.
+“I’d swear no one’s passed this way. Look at the dust. Thick. Not a sign
+of a footmark.”
+They wandered round the deserted house. Everywhere the same tale. Thick
+layers of dust apparently undisturbed.
+“This gets me,” said Julius. “I don’t believe Tuppence was ever in this
+house.”
+“She must have been.”
+Julius shook his head without replying.
+“We’ll go over it again to-morrow,” said Tommy. “Perhaps we’ll see more
+in the daylight.”
+On the morrow they took up the search once more, and were reluctantly
+forced to the conclusion that the house had not been invaded for some
+considerable time. They might have left the village altogether but for
+a fortunate discovery of Tommy’s. As they were retracing their steps to
+the gate, he gave a sudden cry, and stooping, picked something up from
+among the leaves, and held it out to Julius. It was a small gold brooch.
+“That’s Tuppence’s!”
+“Are you sure?”
+“Absolutely. I’ve often seen her wear it.”
+Julius drew a deep breath.
+“I guess that settles it. She came as far as here, anyway. We’ll make
+that pub our head-quarters, and raise hell round here until we find her.
+Somebody _must_ have seen her.”
+Forthwith the campaign began. Tommy and Julius worked separately and
+together, but the result was the same. Nobody answering to Tuppence’s
+description had been seen in the vicinity. They were baffled--but not
+discouraged. Finally they altered their tactics. Tuppence had certainly
+not remained long in the neighbourhood of the Moat House. That pointed
+to her having been overcome and carried away in a car. They renewed
+inquiries. Had anyone seen a car standing somewhere near the Moat House
+that day? Again they met with no success.
+Julius wired to town for his own car, and they scoured the neighbourhood
+daily with unflagging zeal. A grey limousine on which they had set high
+hopes was traced to Harrogate, and turned out to be the property of a
+highly respectable maiden lady!
+Each day saw them set out on a new quest. Julius was like a hound on
+the leash. He followed up the slenderest clue. Every car that had passed
+through the village on the fateful day was tracked down. He forced his
+way into country properties and submitted the owners of the motors to
+a searching cross-examination. His apologies were as thorough as his
+methods, and seldom failed in disarming the indignation of his victims;
+but, as day succeeded day, they were no nearer to discovering Tuppence’s
+whereabouts. So well had the abduction been planned that the girl seemed
+literally to have vanished into thin air.
+And another preoccupation was weighing on Tommy’s mind.
+“Do you know how long we’ve been here?” he asked one morning as they
+sat facing each other at breakfast. “A week! We’re no nearer to finding
+Tuppence, _and next Sunday is the_ 29_th!_”
+“Shucks!” said Julius thoughtfully. “I’d almost forgotten about the
+29th. I’ve been thinking of nothing but Tuppence.”
+“So have I. At least, I hadn’t forgotten about the 29th, but it didn’t
+seem to matter a damn in comparison to finding Tuppence. But to-day’s
+the 23rd, and time’s getting short. If we’re ever going to get hold of
+her at all, we must do it before the 29th--her life won’t be worth an
+hour’s purchase afterwards. The hostage game will be played out by then.
+I’m beginning to feel that we’ve made a big mistake in the way we’ve set
+about this. We’ve wasted time and we’re no forrader.”
+“I’m with you there. We’ve been a couple of mutts, who’ve bitten off a
+bigger bit than they can chew. I’m going to quit fooling right away!”
+“What do you mean?”
+“I’ll tell you. I’m going to do what we ought to have done a week ago.
+I’m going right back to London to put the case in the hands of your
+British police. We fancied ourselves as sleuths. Sleuths! It was a piece
+of damn-fool foolishness! I’m through! I’ve had enough of it. Scotland
+Yard for me!”
+“You’re right,” said Tommy slowly. “I wish to God we’d gone there right
+away.”
+“Better late than never. We’ve been like a couple of babes playing ‘Here
+we go round the Mulberry Bush.’ Now I’m going right along to Scotland
+Yard to ask them to take me by the hand and show me the way I should go.
+I guess the professional always scores over the amateur in the end. Are
+you coming along with me?”
+Tommy shook his head.
+“What’s the good? One of us is enough. I might as well stay here and
+nose round a bit longer. Something _might_ turn up. One never knows.”
+“Sure thing. Well, so long. I’ll be back in a couple of shakes with a
+few inspectors along. I shall tell them to pick out their brightest and
+best.”
+But the course of events was not to follow the plan Julius had laid
+down. Later in the day Tommy received a wire:
+“Join me Manchester Midland Hotel. Important news--JULIUS.”
+At 7.30 that night Tommy alighted from a slow cross-country train.
+Julius was on the platform.
+“Thought you’d come by this train if you weren’t out when my wire
+arrived.”
+Tommy grasped him by the arm.
+“What is it? Is Tuppence found?”
+Julius shook his head.
+“No. But I found this waiting in London. Just arrived.”
+He handed the telegraph form to the other. Tommy’s eyes opened as he
+read:
+“Jane Finn found. Come Manchester Midland Hotel immediately--PEEL
+EDGERTON.”
+Julius took the form back and folded it up.
+“Queer,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought that lawyer chap had quit!”
+CHAPTER XIX. JANE FINN
+“MY train got in half an hour ago,” explained Julius, as he led the way
+out of the station. “I reckoned you’d come by this before I left London,
+and wired accordingly to Sir James. He’s booked rooms for us, and will
+be round to dine at eight.”
+“What made you think he’d ceased to take any interest in the case?”
+asked Tommy curiously.
+“What he said,” replied Julius dryly. “The old bird’s as close as an
+oyster! Like all the darned lot of them, he wasn’t going to commit
+himself till he was sure he could deliver the goods.”
+“I wonder,” said Tommy thoughtfully.
+Julius turned on him.
+“You wonder what?”
+“Whether that was his real reason.”
+“Sure. You bet your life it was.”
+Tommy shook his head unconvinced.
+Sir James arrived punctually at eight o’clock, and Julius introduced
+Tommy. Sir James shook hands with him warmly.
+“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Beresford. I have heard
+so much about you from Miss Tuppence”--he smiled involuntarily--“that it
+really seems as though I already know you quite well.”
+“Thank you, sir,” said Tommy with his cheerful grin. He scanned the
+great lawyer eagerly. Like Tuppence, he felt the magnetism of the
+other’s personality. He was reminded of Mr. Carter. The two men, totally
+unlike so far as physical resemblance went, produced a similar effect.
+Beneath the weary manner of the one and the professional reserve of the
+other, lay the same quality of mind, keen-edged like a rapier.
+In the meantime he was conscious of Sir James’s close scrutiny. When the
+lawyer dropped his eyes the young man had the feeling that the other had
+read him through and through like an open book. He could not but wonder
+what the final judgment was, but there was little chance of learning
+that. Sir James took in everything, but gave out only what he chose. A
+proof of that occurred almost at once.
+Immediately the first greetings were over Julius broke out into a flood
+of eager questions. How had Sir James managed to track the girl? Why had
+he not let them know that he was still working on the case? And so on.
+Sir James stroked his chin and smiled. At last he said:
+“Just so, just so. Well, she’s found. And that’s the great thing, isn’t
+it? Eh! Come now, that’s the great thing?”
+“Sure it is. But just how did you strike her trail? Miss Tuppence and I
+thought you’d quit for good and all.”
+“Ah!” The lawyer shot a lightning glance at him, then resumed operations
+on his chin. “You thought that, did you? Did you really? H’m, dear me.”
+“But I guess I can take it we were wrong,” pursued Julius.
+“Well, I don’t know that I should go so far as to say that. But it’s
+certainly fortunate for all parties that we’ve managed to find the young
+lady.”
+“But where is she?” demanded Julius, his thoughts flying off on another
+tack. “I thought you’d be sure to bring her along?”
+“That would hardly be possible,” said Sir James gravely.
+“Why?”
+“Because the young lady was knocked down in a street accident, and has
+sustained slight injuries to the head. She was taken to the infirmary,
+and on recovering consciousness gave her name as Jane Finn. When--ah!--I
+heard that, I arranged for her to be removed to the house of a
+doctor--a friend of mine, and wired at once for you. She relapsed into
+unconsciousness and has not spoken since.”
+“She’s not seriously hurt?”
+“Oh, a bruise and a cut or two; really, from a medical point of view,
+absurdly slight injuries to have produced such a condition. Her state is
+probably to be attributed to the mental shock consequent on recovering
+her memory.”
+“It’s come back?” cried Julius excitedly.
+Sir James tapped the table rather impatiently.
+“Undoubtedly, Mr. Hersheimmer, since she was able to give her real name.
+I thought you had appreciated that point.”
+“And you just happened to be on the spot,” said Tommy. “Seems quite like
+a fairy tale.”
+But Sir James was far too wary to be drawn.
+“Coincidences are curious things,” he said dryly.
+Nevertheless Tommy was now certain of what he had before only suspected.
+Sir James’s presence in Manchester was not accidental. Far from
+abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own
+successfully run the missing girl to earth. The only thing that puzzled
+Tommy was the reason for all this secrecy. He concluded that it was a
+foible of the legal mind.
+Julius was speaking.
+“After dinner,” he announced, “I shall go right away and see Jane.”
+“That will be impossible, I fear,” said Sir James. “It is very unlikely
+they would allow her to see visitors at this time of night. I should
+suggest to-morrow morning about ten o’clock.”
+Julius flushed. There was something in Sir James which always stirred
+him to antagonism. It was a conflict of two masterful personalities.
+“All the same, I reckon I’ll go round there to-night and see if I can’t
+ginger them up to break through their silly rules.”
+“It will be quite useless, Mr. Hersheimmer.”
+The words came out like the crack of a pistol, and Tommy looked up with
+a start. Julius was nervous and excited. The hand with which he raised
+his glass to his lips shook slightly, but his eyes held Sir James’s
+defiantly. For a moment the hostility between the two seemed likely to
+burst into flame, but in the end Julius lowered his eyes, defeated.
+“For the moment, I reckon you’re the boss.”
+“Thank you,” said the other. “We will say ten o’clock then?” With
+consummate ease of manner he turned to Tommy. “I must confess, Mr.
+Beresford, that it was something of a surprise to me to see you here
+this evening. The last I heard of you was that your friends were in
+grave anxiety on your behalf. Nothing had been heard of you for
+some days, and Miss Tuppence was inclined to think you had got into
+difficulties.”
+“I had, sir!” Tommy grinned reminiscently. “I was never in a tighter
+place in my life.”
+Helped out by questions from Sir James, he gave an abbreviated account
+of his adventures. The lawyer looked at him with renewed interest as he
+brought the tale to a close.
+“You got yourself out of a tight place very well,” he said gravely. “I
+congratulate you. You displayed a great deal of ingenuity and carried
+your part through well.”
+Tommy blushed, his face assuming a prawnlike hue at the praise.
+“I couldn’t have got away but for the girl, sir.”
+“No.” Sir James smiled a little. “It was lucky for you she happened
+to--er--take a fancy to you.” Tommy appeared about to protest, but Sir
+James went on. “There’s no doubt about her being one of the gang, I
+suppose?”
+“I’m afraid not, sir. I thought perhaps they were keeping her there by
+force, but the way she acted didn’t fit in with that. You see, she went
+back to them when she could have got away.”
+Sir James nodded thoughtfully.
+“What did she say? Something about wanting to be taken to Marguerite?”
+“Yes, sir. I suppose she meant Mrs. Vandemeyer.”
+“She always signed herself Rita Vandemeyer. All her friends spoke of
+her as Rita. Still, I suppose the girl must have been in the habit of
+calling her by her full name. And, at the moment she was crying out to
+her, Mrs. Vandemeyer was either dead or dying! Curious! There are one
+or two points that strike me as being obscure--their sudden change
+of attitude towards yourself, for instance. By the way, the house was
+raided, of course?”
+“Yes, sir, but they’d all cleared out.”
+“Naturally,” said Sir James dryly.
+“And not a clue left behind.”
+“I wonder----” The lawyer tapped the table thoughtfully.
+Something in his voice made Tommy look up. Would this man’s eyes have
+seen something where theirs had been blind? He spoke impulsively:
+“I wish you’d been there, sir, to go over the house!”
+“I wish I had,” said Sir James quietly. He sat for a moment in silence.
+Then he looked up. “And since then? What have you been doing?”
+For a moment, Tommy stared at him. Then it dawned on him that of course
+the lawyer did not know.
+“I forgot that you didn’t know about Tuppence,” he said slowly. The
+sickening anxiety, forgotten for a while in the excitement of knowing
+Jane Finn was found at last, swept over him again.
+The lawyer laid down his knife and fork sharply.
+“Has anything happened to Miss Tuppence?” His voice was keen-edged.
+“She’s disappeared,” said Julius.
+“When?”
+“A week ago.”
+“How?”
+Sir James’s questions fairly shot out. Between them Tommy and Julius
+gave the history of the last week and their futile search.
+Sir James went at once to the root of the matter.
+“A wire signed with your name? They knew enough of you both for that.
+They weren’t sure of how much you had learnt in that house. Their
+kidnapping of Miss Tuppence is the counter-move to your escape. If
+necessary they could seal your lips with a threat of what might happen
+to her.”
+Tommy nodded.
+“That’s just what I thought, sir.”
+Sir James looked at him keenly. “You had worked that out, had you? Not
+bad--not at all bad. The curious thing is that they certainly did not
+know anything about you when they first held you prisoner. You are sure
+that you did not in any way disclose your identity?”
+Tommy shook his head.
+“That’s so,” said Julius with a nod. “Therefore I reckon some one put
+them wise--and not earlier than Sunday afternoon.”
+“Yes, but who?”
+“That almighty omniscient Mr. Brown, of course!”
+There was a faint note of derision in the American’s voice which made
+Sir James look up sharply.
+“You don’t believe in Mr. Brown, Mr. Hersheimmer?”
+“No, sir, I do not,” returned the young American with emphasis. “Not
+as such, that is to say. I reckon it out that he’s a figurehead--just a
+bogy name to frighten the children with. The real head of this business
+is that Russian chap Kramenin. I guess he’s quite capable of running
+revolutions in three countries at once if he chose! The man Whittington
+is probably the head of the English branch.”
+“I disagree with you,” said Sir James shortly. “Mr. Brown exists.” He
+turned to Tommy. “Did you happen to notice where that wire was handed
+in?”
+“No, sir, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
+“H’m. Got it with you?”
+“It’s upstairs, sir, in my kit.”
+“I’d like to have a look at it sometime. No hurry. You’ve wasted a
+week”--Tommy hung his head--“a day or so more is immaterial. We’ll deal
+with Miss Jane Finn first. Afterwards, we’ll set to work to rescue Miss
+Tuppence from bondage. I don’t think she’s in any immediate danger. That
+is, so long as they don’t know that we’ve got Jane Finn, and that
+her memory has returned. We must keep that dark at all costs. You
+understand?”
+The other two assented, and, after making arrangements for meeting on
+the morrow, the great lawyer took his leave.
+At ten o’clock, the two young men were at the appointed spot. Sir
+James had joined them on the doorstep. He alone appeared unexcited. He
+introduced them to the doctor.
+“Mr. Hersheimmer--Mr. Beresford--Dr. Roylance. How’s the patient?”
+“Going on well. Evidently no idea of the flight of time. Asked this
+morning how many had been saved from the _Lusitania_. Was it in the
+papers yet? That, of course, was only what was to be expected. She seems
+to have something on her mind, though.”
+“I think we can relieve her anxiety. May we go up?”
+“Certainly.”
+Tommy’s heart beat sensibly faster as they followed the doctor upstairs.
+Jane Finn at last! The long-sought, the mysterious, the elusive Jane
+Finn! How wildly improbable success had seemed! And here in this house,
+her memory almost miraculously restored, lay the girl who held the
+future of England in her hands. A half groan broke from Tommy’s lips.
+If only Tuppence could have been at his side to share in the triumphant
+conclusion of their joint venture! Then he put the thought of Tuppence
+resolutely aside. His confidence in Sir James was growing. There was
+a man who would unerringly ferret out Tuppence’s whereabouts. In the
+meantime Jane Finn! And suddenly a dread clutched at his heart. It
+seemed too easy.... Suppose they should find her dead ... stricken down
+by the hand of Mr. Brown?
+In another minute he was laughing at these melodramatic fancies. The
+doctor held open the door of a room and they passed in. On the white
+bed, bandages round her head, lay the girl. Somehow the whole scene
+seemed unreal. It was so exactly what one expected that it gave the
+effect of being beautifully staged.
+The girl looked from one to the other of them with large wondering eyes.
+Sir James spoke first.
+“Miss Finn,” he said, “this is your cousin, Mr. Julius P. Hersheimmer.”
+A faint flush flitted over the girl’s face, as Julius stepped forward
+and took her hand.
+“How do, Cousin Jane?” he said lightly.
+But Tommy caught the tremor in his voice.
+“Are you really Uncle Hiram’s son?” she asked wonderingly.
+Her voice, with the slight warmth of the Western accent, had an almost
+thrilling quality. It seemed vaguely familiar to Tommy, but he thrust
+the impression aside as impossible.
+“Sure thing.”
+“We used to read about Uncle Hiram in the papers,” continued the girl,
+in her low soft tones. “But I never thought I’d meet you one day. Mother
+figured it out that Uncle Hiram would never get over being mad with
+her.”
+“The old man was like that,” admitted Julius. “But I guess the new
+generation’s sort of different. Got no use for the family feud business.
+First thing I thought about, soon as the war was over, was to come along
+and hunt you up.”
+A shadow passed over the girl’s face.
+“They’ve been telling me things--dreadful things--that my memory went,
+and that there are years I shall never know about--years lost out of my
+life.”
+“You didn’t realize that yourself?”
+The girl’s eyes opened wide.
+“Why, no. It seems to me as though it were no time since we were being
+hustled into those boats. I can see it all now.” She closed her eyes
+with a shudder.
+Julius looked across at Sir James, who nodded.
+“Don’t worry any. It isn’t worth it. Now, see here, Jane, there’s
+something we want to know about. There was a man aboard that boat with
+some mighty important papers on him, and the big guns in this country
+have got a notion that he passed on the goods to you. Is that so?”
+The girl hesitated, her glance shifting to the other two. Julius
+understood.
+“Mr. Beresford is commissioned by the British Government to get those
+papers back. Sir James Peel Edgerton is an English Member of Parliament,
+and might be a big gun in the Cabinet if he liked. It’s owing to him
+that we’ve ferreted you out at last. So you can go right ahead and tell
+us the whole story. Did Danvers give you the papers?”
+“Yes. He said they’d have a better chance with me, because they would
+save the women and children first.”
+“Just as we thought,” said Sir James.
+“He said they were very important--that they might make all the
+difference to the Allies. But, if it’s all so long ago, and the war’s
+over, what does it matter now?”
+“I guess history repeats itself, Jane. First there was a great hue
+and cry over those papers, then it all died down, and now the whole
+caboodle’s started all over again--for rather different reasons. Then
+you can hand them over to us right away?”
+“But I can’t.”
+“What?”
+“I haven’t got them.”
+“You--haven’t--got them?” Julius punctuated the words with little
+pauses.
+“No--I hid them.”
+“You _hid_ them?”
+“Yes. I got uneasy. People seemed to be watching me. It scared
+me--badly.” She put her hand to her head. “It’s almost the last thing I
+remember before waking up in the hospital....”
+“Go on,” said Sir James, in his quiet penetrating tones. “What do you
+remember?”
+She turned to him obediently.
+“It was at Holyhead. I came that way--I don’t remember why....”
+“That doesn’t matter. Go on.”
+“In the confusion on the quay I slipped away. Nobody saw me. I took a
+car. Told the man to drive me out of the town. I watched when we got on
+the open road. No other car was following us. I saw a path at the side
+of the road. I told the man to wait.”
+She paused, then went on. “The path led to the cliff, and down to the
+sea between big yellow gorse bushes--they were like golden flames. I
+looked round. There wasn’t a soul in sight. But just level with my head
+there was a hole in the rock. It was quite small--I could only just get
+my hand in, but it went a long way back. I took the oilskin packet from
+round my neck and shoved it right in as far as I could. Then I tore off
+a bit of gorse--My! but it did prick--and plugged the hole with it so
+that you’d never guess there was a crevice of any kind there. Then I
+marked the place carefully in my own mind, so that I’d find it again.
+There was a queer boulder in the path just there--for all the world
+like a dog sitting up begging. Then I went back to the road. The car was
+waiting, and I drove back. I just caught the train. I was a bit ashamed
+of myself for fancying things maybe, but, by and by, I saw the man
+opposite me wink at a woman who was sitting next to me, and I felt
+scared again, and was glad the papers were safe. I went out in the
+corridor to get a little air. I thought I’d slip into another carriage.
+But the woman called me back, said I’d dropped something, and when I
+stooped to look, something seemed to hit me--here.” She placed her hand
+to the back of her head. “I don’t remember anything more until I woke up
+in the hospital.”
+There was a pause.
+“Thank you, Miss Finn.” It was Sir James who spoke. “I hope we have not
+tired you?”
+“Oh, that’s all right. My head aches a little, but otherwise I feel
+fine.”
+Julius stepped forward and took her hand again.
+“So long, Cousin Jane. I’m going to get busy after those papers, but
+I’ll be back in two shakes of a dog’s tail, and I’ll tote you up to
+London and give you the time of your young life before we go back to the
+States! I mean it--so hurry up and get well.”
+CHAPTER XX. TOO LATE
+IN the street they held an informal council of war. Sir James had drawn
+a watch from his pocket. “The boat train to Holyhead stops at Chester at
+12.14. If you start at once I think you can catch the connection.”
+Tommy looked up, puzzled.
+“Is there any need to hurry, sir? To-day is only the 24th.”
+“I guess it’s always well to get up early in the morning,” said Julius,
+before the lawyer had time to reply. “We’ll make tracks for the depot
+right away.”
+A little frown had settled on Sir James’s brow.
+“I wish I could come with you. I am due to speak at a meeting at two
+o’clock. It is unfortunate.”
+The reluctance in his tone was very evident. It was clear, on the other
+hand, that Julius was easily disposed to put up with the loss of the
+other’s company.
+“I guess there’s nothing complicated about this deal,” he remarked.
+“Just a game of hide-and-seek, that’s all.”
+“I hope so,” said Sir James.
+“Sure thing. What else could it be?”
+“You are still young, Mr. Hersheimmer. At my age you will probably have
+learnt one lesson. ‘Never underestimate your adversary.’”
+The gravity of his tone impressed Tommy, but had little effect upon
+Julius.
+“You think Mr. Brown might come along and take a hand? If he does, I’m
+ready for him.” He slapped his pocket. “I carry a gun. Little Willie
+here travels round with me everywhere.” He produced a murderous-looking
+automatic, and tapped it affectionately before returning it to its
+home. “But he won’t be needed this trip. There’s nobody to put Mr. Brown
+wise.”
+The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
+“There was nobody to put Mr. Brown wise to the fact that Mrs. Vandemeyer
+meant to betray him. Nevertheless, _Mrs. Vandemeyer died without
+speaking_.”
+Julius was silenced for once, and Sir James added on a lighter note:
+“I only want to put you on your guard. Good-bye, and good luck. Take
+no unnecessary risks once the papers are in your hands. If there is any
+reason to believe that you have been shadowed, destroy them at once.
+Good luck to you. The game is in your hands now.” He shook hands with
+them both.
+Ten minutes later the two young men were seated in a first-class
+carriage _en route_ for Chester.
+For a long time neither of them spoke. When at length Julius broke the
+silence, it was with a totally unexpected remark.
+“Say,” he observed thoughtfully, “did you ever make a darned fool of
+yourself over a girl’s face?”
+Tommy, after a moment’s astonishment, searched his mind.
+“Can’t say I have,” he replied at last. “Not that I can recollect,
+anyhow. Why?”
+“Because for the last two months I’ve been making a sentimental idiot of
+myself over Jane! First moment I clapped eyes on her photograph my heart
+did all the usual stunts you read about in novels. I guess I’m ashamed
+to admit it, but I came over here determined to find her and fix it all
+up, and take her back as Mrs. Julius P. Hersheimmer!”
+“Oh!” said Tommy, amazed.
+Julius uncrossed his legs brusquely and continued:
+“Just shows what an almighty fool a man can make of himself! One look at
+the girl in the flesh, and I was cured!”
+Feeling more tongue-tied than ever, Tommy ejaculated “Oh!” again.
+“No disparagement to Jane, mind you,” continued the other. “She’s a real
+nice girl, and some fellow will fall in love with her right away.”
+“I thought her a very good-looking girl,” said Tommy, finding his
+tongue.
+“Sure she is. But she’s not like her photo one bit. At least I suppose
+she is in a way--must be--because I recognized her right off. If I’d
+seen her in a crowd I’d have said ‘There’s a girl whose face I know’
+right away without any hesitation. But there was something about that
+photo”--Julius shook his head, and heaved a sigh--“I guess romance is a
+mighty queer thing!”
+“It must be,” said Tommy coldly, “if you can come over here in love with
+one girl, and propose to another within a fortnight.”
+Julius had the grace to look discomposed.
+“Well, you see, I’d got a sort of tired feeling that I’d never find
+Jane--and that it was all plumb foolishness anyway. And then--oh, well,
+the French, for instance, are much more sensible in the way they look at
+things. They keep romance and marriage apart----”
+Tommy flushed.
+“Well, I’m damned! If that’s----”
+Julius hastened to interrupt.
+“Say now, don’t be hasty. I don’t mean what you mean. I take it
+Americans have a higher opinion of morality than you have even. What I
+meant was that the French set about marriage in a businesslike way--find
+two people who are suited to one another, look after the money affairs,
+and see the whole thing practically, and in a businesslike spirit.”
+“If you ask me,” said Tommy, “we’re all too damned businesslike
+nowadays. We’re always saying, ‘Will it pay?’ The men are bad enough,
+and the girls are worse!”
+“Cool down, son. Don’t get so heated.”
+“I feel heated,” said Tommy.
+Julius looked at him and judged it wise to say no more.
+However, Tommy had plenty of time to cool down before they reached
+Holyhead, and the cheerful grin had returned to his countenance as they
+alighted at their destination.
+After consultation, and with the aid of a road map, they were fairly
+well agreed as to direction, so were able to hire a taxi without more
+ado and drive out on the road leading to Treaddur Bay. They instructed
+the man to go slowly, and watched narrowly so as not to miss the path.
+They came to it not long after leaving the town, and Tommy stopped the
+car promptly, asked in a casual tone whether the path led down to the
+sea, and hearing it did paid off the man in handsome style.
+A moment later the taxi was slowly chugging back to Holyhead. Tommy and
+Julius watched it out of sight, and then turned to the narrow path.
+“It’s the right one, I suppose?” asked Tommy doubtfully. “There must be
+simply heaps along here.”
+“Sure it is. Look at the gorse. Remember what Jane said?”
+Tommy looked at the swelling hedges of golden blossom which bordered the
+path on either side, and was convinced.
+They went down in single file, Julius leading. Twice Tommy turned his
+head uneasily. Julius looked back.
+“What is it?”
+“I don’t know. I’ve got the wind up somehow. Keep fancying there’s some
+one following us.”
+“Can’t be,” said Julius positively. “We’d see him.”
+Tommy had to admit that this was true. Nevertheless, his sense of
+uneasiness deepened. In spite of himself he believed in the omniscience
+of the enemy.
+“I rather wish that fellow would come along,” said Julius. He patted his
+pocket. “Little William here is just aching for exercise!”
+“Do you always carry it--him--with you?” inquired Tommy with burning
+curiosity.
+“Most always. I guess you never know what might turn up.”
+Tommy kept a respectful silence. He was impressed by little William. It
+seemed to remove the menace of Mr. Brown farther away.
+The path was now running along the side of the cliff, parallel to the
+sea. Suddenly Julius came to such an abrupt halt that Tommy cannoned
+into him.
+“What’s up?” he inquired.
+“Look there. If that doesn’t beat the band!”
+Tommy looked. Standing out half obstructing the path was a huge boulder
+which certainly bore a fanciful resemblance to a “begging” terrier.
+“Well,” said Tommy, refusing to share Julius’s emotion, “it’s what we
+expected to see, isn’t it?”
+Julius looked at him sadly and shook his head.
+“British phlegm! Sure we expected it--but it kind of rattles me, all the
+same, to see it sitting there just where we expected to find it!”
+Tommy, whose calm was, perhaps, more assumed than natural, moved his
+feet impatiently.
+“Push on. What about the hole?”
+They scanned the cliff-side narrowly. Tommy heard himself saying
+idiotically:
+“The gorse won’t be there after all these years.”
+And Julius replied solemnly:
+“I guess you’re right.”
+Tommy suddenly pointed with a shaking hand.
+“What about that crevice there?”
+Julius replied in an awestricken voice:
+“That’s it--for sure.”
+They looked at each other.
+“When I was in France,” said Tommy reminiscently, “whenever my batman
+failed to call me, he always said that he had come over queer. I never
+believed it. But whether he felt it or not, there _is_ such a sensation.
+I’ve got it now! Badly!”
+He looked at the rock with a kind of agonized passion.
+“Damn it!” he cried. “It’s impossible! Five years! Think of it!
+Bird’s-nesting boys, picnic parties, thousands of people passing! It
+can’t be there! It’s a hundred to one against its being there! It’s
+against all reason!”
+Indeed, he felt it to be impossible--more, perhaps, because he could not
+believe in his own success where so many others had failed. The thing
+was too easy, therefore it could not be. The hole would be empty.
+Julius looked at him with a widening smile.
+“I guess you’re rattled now all right,” he drawled with some enjoyment.
+“Well, here goes!” He thrust his hand into the crevice, and made a
+slight grimace. “It’s a tight fit. Jane’s hand must be a few sizes
+smaller than mine. I don’t feel anything--no--say, what’s this? Gee
+whiz!” And with a flourish he waved aloft a small discoloured packet.
+“It’s the goods all right. Sewn up in oilskin. Hold it while I get my
+penknife.”
+The unbelievable had happened. Tommy held the precious packet tenderly
+between his hands. They had succeeded!
+“It’s queer,” he murmured idly, “you’d think the stitches would have
+rotted. They look just as good as new.”
+They cut them carefully and ripped away the oilskin. Inside was a small
+folded sheet of paper. With trembling fingers they unfolded it. The
+sheet was blank! They stared at each other, puzzled.
+“A dummy?” hazarded Julius. “Was Danvers just a decoy?”
+Tommy shook his head. That solution did not satisfy him. Suddenly his
+face cleared.
+“I’ve got it! _Sympathetic ink!_”
+“You think so?”
+“Worth trying anyhow. Heat usually does the trick. Get some sticks.
+We’ll make a fire.”
+In a few minutes the little fire of twigs and leaves was blazing
+merrily. Tommy held the sheet of paper near the glow. The paper curled a
+little with the heat. Nothing more.
+Suddenly Julius grasped his arm, and pointed to where characters were
+appearing in a faint brown colour.
+“Gee whiz! You’ve got it! Say, that idea of yours was great. It never
+occurred to me.”
+Tommy held the paper in position some minutes longer until he judged the
+heat had done its work. Then he withdrew it. A moment later he uttered a
+cry.
+Across the sheet in neat brown printing ran the words: WITH THE
+COMPLIMENTS OF MR. BROWN.
+CHAPTER XXI. TOMMY MAKES A DISCOVERY
+FOR a moment or two they stood staring at each other stupidly, dazed
+with the shock. Somehow, inexplicably, Mr. Brown had forestalled them.
+Tommy accepted defeat quietly. Not so Julius.
+“How in tarnation did he get ahead of us? That’s what beats me!” he
+ended up.
+Tommy shook his head, and said dully:
+“It accounts for the stitches being new. We might have guessed....”
+“Never mind the darned stitches. How did he get ahead of us? We hustled
+all we knew. It’s downright impossible for anyone to get here quicker
+than we did. And, anyway, how did he know? Do you reckon there was a
+dictaphone in Jane’s room? I guess there must have been.”
+But Tommy’s common sense pointed out objections.
+“No one could have known beforehand that she was going to be in that
+house--much less that particular room.”
+“That’s so,” admitted Julius. “Then one of the nurses was a crook and
+listened at the door. How’s that?”
+“I don’t see that it matters anyway,” said Tommy wearily. “He may have
+found out some months ago, and removed the papers, then----No, by Jove,
+that won’t wash! They’d have been published at once.”
+“Sure thing they would! No, some one’s got ahead of us to-day by an hour
+or so. But how they did it gets my goat.”
+“I wish that chap Peel Edgerton had been with us,” said Tommy
+thoughtfully.
+“Why?” Julius stared. “The mischief was done when we came.”
+“Yes----” Tommy hesitated. He could not explain his own feeling--the
+illogical idea that the K.C.’s presence would somehow have averted the
+catastrophe. He reverted to his former point of view. “It’s no good
+arguing about how it was done. The game’s up. We’ve failed. There’s only
+one thing for me to do.”
+“What’s that?”
+“Get back to London as soon as possible. Mr. Carter must be warned. It’s
+only a matter of hours now before the blow falls. But, at any rate, he
+ought to know the worst.”
+The duty was an unpleasant one, but Tommy had no intention of shirking
+it. He must report his failure to Mr. Carter. After that his work was
+done. He took the midnight mail to London. Julius elected to stay the
+night at Holyhead.
+Half an hour after arrival, haggard and pale, Tommy stood before his
+chief.
+“I’ve come to report, sir. I’ve failed--failed badly.”
+Mr. Carter eyed him sharply.
+“You mean that the treaty----”
+“Is in the hands of Mr. Brown, sir.”
+“Ah!” said Mr. Carter quietly. The expression on his face did not
+change, but Tommy caught the flicker of despair in his eyes. It
+convinced him as nothing else had done that the outlook was hopeless.
+“Well,” said Mr. Carter after a minute or two, “we mustn’t sag at the
+knees, I suppose. I’m glad to know definitely. We must do what we can.”
+Through Tommy’s mind flashed the assurance: “It’s hopeless, and he knows
+it’s hopeless!”
+The other looked up at him.
+“Don’t take it to heart, lad,” he said kindly. “You did your best. You
+were up against one of the biggest brains of the century. And you came
+very near success. Remember that.”
+“Thank you, sir. It’s awfully decent of you.”
+“I blame myself. I have been blaming myself ever since I heard this
+other news.”
+Something in his tone attracted Tommy’s attention. A new fear gripped at
+his heart.
+“Is there--something more, sir?”
+“I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Carter gravely. He stretched out his hand to a
+sheet on the table.
+“Tuppence----?” faltered Tommy.
+“Read for yourself.”
+The typewritten words danced before his eyes. The description of a green
+toque, a coat with a handkerchief in the pocket marked P.L.C. He looked
+an agonized question at Mr. Carter. The latter replied to it:
+“Washed up on the Yorkshire coast--near Ebury. I’m afraid--it looks very
+much like foul play.”
+“My God!” gasped Tommy. “_Tuppence!_ Those devils--I’ll never rest till
+I’ve got even with them! I’ll hunt them down! I’ll----”
+The pity on Mr. Carter’s face stopped him.
+“I know what you feel like, my poor boy. But it’s no good. You’ll waste
+your strength uselessly. It may sound harsh, but my advice to you is:
+Cut your losses. Time’s merciful. You’ll forget.”
+“Forget Tuppence? Never!”
+Mr. Carter shook his head.
+“So you think now. Well, it won’t bear thinking of--that brave little
+girl! I’m sorry about the whole business--confoundedly sorry.”
+Tommy came to himself with a start.
+“I’m taking up your time, sir,” he said with an effort. “There’s no need
+for you to blame yourself. I dare say we were a couple of young fools to
+take on such a job. You warned us all right. But I wish to God I’d been
+the one to get it in the neck. Good-bye, sir.”
+Back at the _Ritz_, Tommy packed up his few belongings mechanically,
+his thoughts far away. He was still bewildered by the introduction of
+tragedy into his cheerful commonplace existence. What fun they had
+had together, he and Tuppence! And now--oh, he couldn’t believe it--it
+couldn’t be true! _Tuppence--dead!_ Little Tuppence, brimming over with
+life! It was a dream, a horrible dream. Nothing more.
+They brought him a note, a few kind words of sympathy from Peel
+Edgerton, who had read the news in the paper. (There had been a large
+headline: EX-V.A.D. FEARED DROWNED.) The letter ended with the offer
+of a post on a ranch in the Argentine, where Sir James had considerable
+interests.
+“Kind old beggar,” muttered Tommy, as he flung it aside.
+The door opened, and Julius burst in with his usual violence. He held an
+open newspaper in his hand.
+“Say, what’s all this? They seem to have got some fool idea about
+Tuppence.”
+“It’s true,” said Tommy quietly.
+“You mean they’ve done her in?”
+Tommy nodded.
+“I suppose when they got the treaty she--wasn’t any good to them any
+longer, and they were afraid to let her go.”
+“Well, I’m darned!” said Julius. “Little Tuppence. She sure was the
+pluckiest little girl----”
+But suddenly something seemed to crack in Tommy’s brain. He rose to his
+feet.
+“Oh, get out! You don’t really care, damn you! You asked her to marry
+you in your rotten cold-blooded way, but I _loved_ her. I’d have given
+the soul out of my body to save her from harm. I’d have stood by without
+a word and let her marry you, because you could have given her the sort
+of time she ought to have had, and I was only a poor devil without a
+penny to bless himself with. But it wouldn’t have been because I didn’t
+care!”
+“See here,” began Julius temperately.
+“Oh, go to the devil! I can’t stand your coming here and talking about
+‘little Tuppence.’ Go and look after your cousin. Tuppence is my girl!
+I’ve always loved her, from the time we played together as kids. We
+grew up and it was just the same. I shall never forget when I was in
+hospital, and she came in in that ridiculous cap and apron! It was like
+a miracle to see the girl I loved turn up in a nurse’s kit----”
+But Julius interrupted him.
+“A nurse’s kit! Gee whiz! I must be going to Colney Hatch! I could swear
+I’ve seen Jane in a nurse’s cap too. And that’s plumb impossible! No,
+by gum, I’ve got it! It was her I saw talking to Whittington at that
+nursing home in Bournemouth. She wasn’t a patient there! She was a
+nurse!”
+“I dare say,” said Tommy angrily, “she’s probably been in with them from
+the start. I shouldn’t wonder if she stole those papers from Danvers to
+begin with.”
+“I’m darned if she did!” shouted Julius. “She’s my cousin, and as
+patriotic a girl as ever stepped.”
+“I don’t care a damn what she is, but get out of here!” retorted Tommy
+also at the top of his voice.
+The young men were on the point of coming to blows. But suddenly, with
+an almost magical abruptness, Julius’s anger abated.
+“All right, son,” he said quietly, “I’m going. I don’t blame you any for
+what you’ve been saying. It’s mighty lucky you did say it. I’ve been
+the most almighty blithering darned idiot that it’s possible to imagine.
+Calm down”--Tommy had made an impatient gesture--“I’m going right away
+now--going to the London and North Western Railway depot, if you want to
+know.”
+“I don’t care a damn where you’re going,” growled Tommy.
+As the door closed behind Julius, he returned to his suit-case.
+“That’s the lot,” he murmured, and rang the bell.
+“Take my luggage down.”
+“Yes, sir. Going away, sir?”
+“I’m going to the devil,” said Tommy, regardless of the menial’s
+feelings.
+That functionary, however, merely replied respectfully:
+“Yes, sir. Shall I call a taxi?”
+Tommy nodded.
+Where was he going? He hadn’t the faintest idea. Beyond a fixed
+determination to get even with Mr. Brown he had no plans. He re-read Sir
+James’s letter, and shook his head. Tuppence must be avenged. Still, it
+was kind of the old fellow.
+“Better answer it, I suppose.” He went across to the writing-table.
+With the usual perversity of bedroom stationery, there were innumerable
+envelopes and no paper. He rang. No one came. Tommy fumed at the
+delay. Then he remembered that there was a good supply in Julius’s
+sitting-room. The American had announced his immediate departure, there
+would be no fear of running up against him. Besides, he wouldn’t mind if
+he did. He was beginning to be rather ashamed of the things he had said.
+Old Julius had taken them jolly well. He’d apologize if he found him
+there.
+But the room was deserted. Tommy walked across to the writing-table,
+and opened the middle drawer. A photograph, carelessly thrust in face
+upwards, caught his eye. For a moment he stood rooted to the ground.
+Then he took it out, shut the drawer, walked slowly over to an
+arm-chair, and sat down still staring at the photograph in his hand.
+What on earth was a photograph of the French girl Annette doing in
+Julius Hersheimmer’s writing-table?
+CHAPTER XXII. IN DOWNING STREET
+THE Prime Minister tapped the desk in front of him with nervous fingers.
+His face was worn and harassed. He took up his conversation with Mr.
+Carter at the point it had broken off. “I don’t understand,” he said.
+“Do you really mean that things are not so desperate after all?”
+“So this lad seems to think.”
+“Let’s have a look at his letter again.”
+Mr. Carter handed it over. It was written in a sprawling boyish hand.
+“DEAR MR. CARTER,
+“Something’s turned up that has given me a jar. Of course I may be
+simply making an awful ass of myself, but I don’t think so. If my
+conclusions are right, that girl at Manchester was just a plant. The
+whole thing was prearranged, sham packet and all, with the object of
+making us think the game was up--therefore I fancy that we must have
+been pretty hot on the scent.
+“I think I know who the real Jane Finn is, and I’ve even got an idea
+where the papers are. That last’s only a guess, of course, but I’ve a
+sort of feeling it’ll turn out right. Anyhow, I enclose it in a sealed
+envelope for what it’s worth. I’m going to ask you not to open it until
+the very last moment, midnight on the 28th, in fact. You’ll understand
+why in a minute. You see, I’ve figured it out that those things of
+Tuppence’s are a plant too, and she’s no more drowned than I am. The way
+I reason is this: as a last chance they’ll let Jane Finn escape in
+the hope that she’s been shamming this memory stunt, and that once she
+thinks she’s free she’ll go right away to the cache. Of course it’s
+an awful risk for them to take, because she knows all about them--but
+they’re pretty desperate to get hold of that treaty. _But if they know
+that the papers have been recovered by us_, neither of those two girls’
+lives will be worth an hour’s purchase. I must try and get hold of
+Tuppence before Jane escapes.
+“I want a repeat of that telegram that was sent to Tuppence at the
+_Ritz_. Sir James Peel Edgerton said you would be able to manage that
+for me. He’s frightfully clever.
+“One last thing--please have that house in Soho watched day and night.
+“Yours, etc.,
+“THOMAS BERESFORD.”
+The Prime Minister looked up.
+“The enclosure?”
+Mr. Carter smiled dryly.
+“In the vaults of the Bank. I am taking no chances.”
+“You don’t think”--the Prime Minister hesitated a minute--“that it would
+be better to open it now? Surely we ought to secure the document, that
+is, provided the young man’s guess turns out to be correct, at once. We
+can keep the fact of having done so quite secret.”
+“Can we? I’m not so sure. There are spies all round us. Once it’s known
+I wouldn’t give that”--he snapped his fingers--“for the life of those
+two girls. No, the boy trusted me, and I shan’t let him down.”
+“Well, well, we must leave it at that, then. What’s he like, this lad?”
+“Outwardly, he’s an ordinary clean-limbed, rather block-headed young
+Englishman. Slow in his mental processes. On the other hand, it’s quite
+impossible to lead him astray through his imagination. He hasn’t got
+any--so he’s difficult to deceive. He worries things out slowly, and
+once he’s got hold of anything he doesn’t let go. The little lady’s
+quite different. More intuition and less common sense. They make a
+pretty pair working together. Pace and stamina.”
+“He seems confident,” mused the Prime Minister.
+“Yes, and that’s what gives me hope. He’s the kind of diffident youth
+who would have to be _very_ sure before he ventured an opinion at all.”
+A half smile came to the other’s lips.
+“And it is this--boy who will defeat the master criminal of our time?”
+“This--boy, as you say! But I sometimes fancy I see a shadow behind.”
+“You mean?”
+“Peel Edgerton.”
+“Peel Edgerton?” said the Prime Minister in astonishment.
+“Yes. I see his hand in _this_.” He struck the open letter. “He’s
+there--working in the dark, silently, unobtrusively. I’ve always felt
+that if anyone was to run Mr. Brown to earth, Peel Edgerton would be the
+man. I tell you he’s on the case now, but doesn’t want it known. By the
+way, I got rather an odd request from him the other day.”
+“Yes?”
+“He sent me a cutting from some American paper. It referred to a man’s
+body found near the docks in New York about three weeks ago. He asked me
+to collect any information on the subject I could.”
+“Well?”
+Carter shrugged his shoulders.
+“I couldn’t get much. Young fellow about thirty-five--poorly
+dressed--face very badly disfigured. He was never identified.”
+“And you fancy that the two matters are connected in some way?”
+“Somehow I do. I may be wrong, of course.”
+There was a pause, then Mr. Carter continued:
+“I asked him to come round here. Not that we’ll get anything out of him
+he doesn’t want to tell. His legal instincts are too strong. But there’s
+no doubt he can throw light on one or two obscure points in young
+Beresford’s letter. Ah, here he is!”
+The two men rose to greet the new-comer. A half whimsical thought
+flashed across the Premier’s mind. “My successor, perhaps!”
+“We’ve had a letter from young Beresford,” said Mr. Carter, coming to
+the point at once. “You’ve seen him, I suppose?”
+“You suppose wrong,” said the lawyer.
+“Oh!” Mr. Carter was a little nonplussed.
+Sir James smiled, and stroked his chin.
+“He rang me up,” he volunteered.
+“Would you have any objection to telling us exactly what passed between
+you?”
+“Not at all. He thanked me for a certain letter which I had written to
+him--as a matter of fact, I had offered him a job. Then he reminded
+me of something I had said to him at Manchester respecting that bogus
+telegram which lured Miss Cowley away. I asked him if anything untoward
+had occurred. He said it had--that in a drawer in Mr. Hersheimmer’s room
+he had discovered a photograph.” The lawyer paused, then continued: “I
+asked him if the photograph bore the name and address of a Californian
+photographer. He replied: ‘You’re on to it, sir. It had.’ Then he went
+on to tell me something I _didn’t_ know. The original of that photograph
+was the French girl, Annette, who saved his life.”
+“What?”
+“Exactly. I asked the young man with some curiosity what he had done
+with the photograph. He replied that he had put it back where he found
+it.” The lawyer paused again. “That was good, you know--distinctly
+good. He can use his brains, that young fellow. I congratulated him. The
+discovery was a providential one. Of course, from the moment that the
+girl in Manchester was proved to be a plant everything was altered.
+Young Beresford saw that for himself without my having to tell it
+him. But he felt he couldn’t trust his judgment on the subject of
+Miss Cowley. Did I think she was alive? I told him, duly weighing the
+evidence, that there was a very decided chance in favour of it. That
+brought us back to the telegram.”
+“Yes?”
+“I advised him to apply to you for a copy of the original wire. It
+had occurred to me as probable that, after Miss Cowley flung it on the
+floor, certain words might have been erased and altered with the express
+intention of setting searchers on a false trail.”
+Carter nodded. He took a sheet from his pocket, and read aloud:
+“Come at once, Astley Priors, Gatehouse, Kent. Great
+developments--TOMMY.”
+“Very simple,” said Sir James, “and very ingenious. Just a few words
+to alter, and the thing was done. And the one important clue they
+overlooked.”
+“What was that?”
+“The page-boy’s statement that Miss Cowley drove to Charing Cross. They
+were so sure of themselves that they took it for granted he had made a
+mistake.”
+“Then young Beresford is now?”
+“At Gatehouse, Kent, unless I am much mistaken.”
+Mr. Carter looked at him curiously.
+“I rather wonder you’re not there too, Peel Edgerton?”
+“Ah, I’m busy on a case.”
+“I thought you were on your holiday?”
+“Oh, I’ve not been briefed. Perhaps it would be more correct to say I’m
+preparing a case. Any more facts about that American chap for me?”
+“I’m afraid not. Is it important to find out who he was?”
+“Oh, I know who he was,” said Sir James easily. “I can’t prove it
+yet--but I know.”
+The other two asked no questions. They had an instinct that it would be
+mere waste of breath.
+“But what I don’t understand,” said the Prime-Minister suddenly, “is how
+that photograph came to be in Mr. Hersheimmer’s drawer?”
+“Perhaps it never left it,” suggested the lawyer gently.
+“But the bogus inspector? Inspector Brown?”
+“Ah!” said Sir James thoughtfully. He rose to his feet. “I mustn’t keep
+you. Go on with the affairs of the nation. I must get back to--my case.”
+Two days later Julius Hersheimmer returned from Manchester. A note from
+Tommy lay on his table:
+“DEAR HERSHEIMMER,
+“Sorry I lost my temper. In case I don’t see you again, good-bye. I’ve
+been offered a job in the Argentine, and might as well take it.
+“Yours,
+“TOMMY BERESFORD.”
+A peculiar smile lingered for a moment on Julius’s face. He threw the
+letter into the waste-paper basket.
+“The darned fool!” he murmured.
+CHAPTER XXIII. A RACE AGAINST TIME
+AFTER ringing up Sir James, Tommy’s next procedure was to make a call
+at South Audley Mansions. He found Albert discharging his professional
+duties, and introduced himself without more ado as a friend of
+Tuppence’s. Albert unbent immediately.
+“Things has been very quiet here lately,” he said wistfully. “Hope the
+young lady’s keeping well, sir?”
+“That’s just the point, Albert. She’s disappeared.”
+“You don’t mean as the crooks have got her?”
+“They have.”
+“In the Underworld?”
+“No, dash it all, in this world!”
+“It’s a h’expression, sir,” explained Albert. “At the pictures the
+crooks always have a restoorant in the Underworld. But do you think as
+they’ve done her in, sir?”
+“I hope not. By the way, have you by any chance an aunt, a cousin,
+a grandmother, or any other suitable female relation who might be
+represented as being likely to kick the bucket?”
+A delighted grin spread slowly over Albert’s countenance.
+“I’m on, sir. My poor aunt what lives in the country has been mortal bad
+for a long time, and she’s asking for me with her dying breath.”
+Tommy nodded approval.
+“Can you report this in the proper quarter and meet me at Charing Cross
+in an hour’s time?”
+“I’ll be there, sir. You can count on me.”
+As Tommy had judged, the faithful Albert proved an invaluable ally. The
+two took up their quarters at the inn in Gatehouse. To Albert fell the
+task of collecting information. There was no difficulty about it.
+Astley Priors was the property of a Dr. Adams. The doctor no longer
+practiced, had retired, the landlord believed, but he took a few private
+patients--here the good fellow tapped his forehead knowingly--“balmy
+ones! You understand!” The doctor was a popular figure in the village,
+subscribed freely to all the local sports--“a very pleasant, affable
+gentleman.” Been there long? Oh, a matter of ten years or so--might be
+longer. Scientific gentleman, he was. Professors and people often came
+down from town to see him. Anyway, it was a gay house, always visitors.
+In the face of all this volubility, Tommy felt doubts. Was it possible
+that this genial, well-known figure could be in reality a dangerous
+criminal? His life seemed so open and aboveboard. No hint of sinister
+doings. Suppose it was all a gigantic mistake? Tommy felt a cold chill
+at the thought.
+Then he remembered the private patients--“balmy ones.” He inquired
+carefully if there was a young lady amongst them, describing Tuppence.
+But nothing much seemed to be known about the patients--they were seldom
+seen outside the grounds. A guarded description of Annette also failed
+to provoke recognition.
+Astley Priors was a pleasant red-brick edifice, surrounded by
+well-wooded grounds which effectually shielded the house from
+observation from the road.
+On the first evening Tommy, accompanied by Albert, explored the grounds.
+Owing to Albert’s insistence they dragged themselves along painfully on
+their stomachs, thereby producing a great deal more noise than if
+they had stood upright. In any case, these precautions were totally
+unnecessary. The grounds, like those of any other private house after
+nightfall, seemed untenanted. Tommy had imagined a possible fierce
+watchdog. Albert’s fancy ran to a puma, or a tame cobra. But they
+reached a shrubbery near the house quite unmolested.
+The blinds of the dining-room window were up. There was a large company
+assembled round the table. The port was passing from hand to hand. It
+seemed a normal, pleasant company. Through the open window scraps of
+conversation floated out disjointedly on the night air. It was a heated
+discussion on county cricket!
+Again Tommy felt that cold chill of uncertainty. It seemed impossible
+to believe that these people were other than they seemed. Had he been
+fooled once more? The fair-bearded, spectacled gentleman who sat at the
+head of the table looked singularly honest and normal.
+Tommy slept badly that night. The following morning the indefatigable
+Albert, having cemented an alliance with the greengrocer’s boy, took the
+latter’s place and ingratiated himself with the cook at Malthouse.
+He returned with the information that she was undoubtedly “one of
+the crooks,” but Tommy mistrusted the vividness of his imagination.
+Questioned, he could adduce nothing in support of his statement except
+his own opinion that she wasn’t the usual kind. You could see that at a
+glance.
+The substitution being repeated (much to the pecuniary advantage of the
+real greengrocer’s boy) on the following day, Albert brought back the
+first piece of hopeful news. There _was_ a French young lady staying
+in the house. Tommy put his doubts aside. Here was confirmation of
+his theory. But time pressed. To-day was the 27th. The 29th was the
+much-talked-of “Labour Day,” about which all sorts of rumours were
+running riot. Newspapers were getting agitated. Sensational hints of a
+Labour _coup d’état_ were freely reported. The Government said nothing.
+It knew and was prepared. There were rumours of dissension among the
+Labour leaders. They were not of one mind. The more far-seeing among
+them realized that what they proposed might well be a death-blow to the
+England that at heart they loved. They shrank from the starvation and
+misery a general strike would entail, and were willing to meet the
+Government half-way. But behind them were subtle, insistent forces at
+work, urging the memories of old wrongs, deprecating the weakness of
+half-and-half measures, fomenting misunderstandings.
+Tommy felt that, thanks to Mr. Carter, he understood the position fairly
+accurately. With the fatal document in the hands of Mr. Brown,
+public opinion would swing to the side of the Labour extremists and
+revolutionists. Failing that, the battle was an even chance. The
+Government with a loyal army and police force behind them might
+win--but at a cost of great suffering. But Tommy nourished another and
+a preposterous dream. With Mr. Brown unmasked and captured he
+believed, rightly or wrongly, that the whole organization would crumble
+ignominiously and instantaneously. The strange permeating influence
+of the unseen chief held it together. Without him, Tommy believed an
+instant panic would set in; and, the honest men left to themselves, an
+eleventh-hour reconciliation would be possible.
+“This is a one-man show,” said Tommy to himself. “The thing to do is to
+get hold of the man.”
+It was partly in furtherance of this ambitious design that he had
+requested Mr. Carter not to open the sealed envelope. The draft
+treaty was Tommy’s bait. Every now and then he was aghast at his own
+presumption. How dared he think that he had discovered what so many
+wiser and clever men had overlooked? Nevertheless, he stuck tenaciously
+to his idea.
+That evening he and Albert once more penetrated the grounds of Astley
+Priors. Tommy’s ambition was somehow or other to gain admission to the
+house itself. As they approached cautiously, Tommy gave a sudden gasp.
+On the second floor window some one standing between the window and
+the light in the room threw a silhouette on the blind. It was one Tommy
+would have recognized anywhere! Tuppence was in that house!
+He clutched Albert by the shoulder.
+“Stay here! When I begin to sing, watch that window.”
+He retreated hastily to a position on the main drive, and began in a
+deep roar, coupled with an unsteady gait, the following ditty:
+I am a Soldier
+A jolly British Soldier;
+You can see that I’m a Soldier by my feet....
+It had been a favourite on the gramophone in Tuppence’s hospital days.
+He did not doubt but that she would recognize it and draw her own
+conclusions. Tommy had not a note of music in his voice, but his lungs
+were excellent. The noise he produced was terrific.
+Presently an unimpeachable butler, accompanied by an equally
+unimpeachable footman, issued from the front door. The butler
+remonstrated with him. Tommy continued to sing, addressing the butler
+affectionately as “dear old whiskers.” The footman took him by one arm,
+the butler by the other. They ran him down the drive, and neatly out
+of the gate. The butler threatened him with the police if he intruded
+again. It was beautifully done--soberly and with perfect decorum. Anyone
+would have sworn that the butler was a real butler, the footman a real
+footman--only, as it happened, the butler was Whittington!
+Tommy retired to the inn and waited for Albert’s return. At last that
+worthy made his appearance.
+“Well?” cried Tommy eagerly.
+“It’s all right. While they was a-running of you out the window opened,
+and something was chucked out.” He handed a scrap of paper to Tommy. “It
+was wrapped round a letterweight.”
+On the paper were scrawled three words: “To-morrow--same time.”
+“Good egg!” cried Tommy. “We’re getting going.”
+“I wrote a message on a piece of paper, wrapped it round a stone, and
+chucked it through the window,” continued Albert breathlessly.
+Tommy groaned.
+“Your zeal will be the undoing of us, Albert. What did you say?”
+“Said we was a-staying at the inn. If she could get away, to come there
+and croak like a frog.”
+“She’ll know that’s you,” said Tommy with a sigh of relief. “Your
+imagination runs away with you, you know, Albert. Why, you wouldn’t
+recognize a frog croaking if you heard it.”
+Albert looked rather crest-fallen.
+“Cheer up,” said Tommy. “No harm done. That butler’s an old friend of
+mine--I bet he knew who I was, though he didn’t let on. It’s not their
+game to show suspicion. That’s why we’ve found it fairly plain sailing.
+They don’t want to discourage me altogether. On the other hand, they
+don’t want to make it too easy. I’m a pawn in their game, Albert, that’s
+what I am. You see, if the spider lets the fly walk out too easily,
+the fly might suspect it was a put-up job. Hence the usefulness of that
+promising youth, Mr. T. Beresford, who’s blundered in just at the right
+moment for them. But later, Mr. T. Beresford had better look out!”
+Tommy retired for the night in a state of some elation. He had
+elaborated a careful plan for the following evening. He felt sure that
+the inhabitants of Astley Priors would not interfere with him up to
+a certain point. It was after that that Tommy proposed to give them a
+surprise.
+About twelve o’clock, however, his calm was rudely shaken. He was told
+that some one was demanding him in the bar. The applicant proved to be a
+rude-looking carter well coated with mud.
+“Well, my good fellow, what is it?” asked Tommy.
+“Might this be for you, sir?” The carter held out a very dirty folded
+note, on the outside of which was written: “Take this to the gentleman
+at the inn near Astley Priors. He will give you ten shillings.”
+The handwriting was Tuppence’s. Tommy appreciated her quick-wittedness
+in realizing that he might be staying at the inn under an assumed name.
+He snatched at it.
+“That’s all right.”
+The man withheld it.
+“What about my ten shillings?”
+Tommy hastily produced a ten-shilling note, and the man relinquished his
+find. Tommy unfastened it.
+“DEAR TOMMY,
+“I knew it was you last night. Don’t go this evening. They’ll be lying
+in wait for you. They’re taking us away this morning. I heard something
+about Wales--Holyhead, I think. I’ll drop this on the road if I get a
+chance. Annette told me how you’d escaped. Buck up.
+“Yours,
+“TWOPENCE.”
+Tommy raised a shout for Albert before he had even finished perusing
+this characteristic epistle.
+“Pack my bag! We’re off!”
+“Yes, sir.” The boots of Albert could be heard racing upstairs.
+Holyhead? Did that mean that, after all---- Tommy was puzzled. He read
+on slowly.
+The boots of Albert continued to be active on the floor above.
+Suddenly a second shout came from below.
+“Albert! I’m a damned fool! Unpack that bag!”
+“Yes, sir.”
+Tommy smoothed out the note thoughtfully.
+“Yes, a damned fool,” he said softly. “But so’s some one else! And at
+last I know who it is!”
+CHAPTER XXIV. JULIUS TAKES A HAND
+IN his suite at Claridge’s, Kramenin reclined on a couch and dictated to
+his secretary in sibilant Russian.
+Presently the telephone at the secretary’s elbow purred, and he took up
+the receiver, spoke for a minute or two, then turned to his employer.
+“Some one below is asking for you.”
+“Who is it?”
+“He gives the name of Mr. Julius P. Hersheimmer.”
+“Hersheimmer,” repeated Kramenin thoughtfully. “I have heard that name
+before.”
+“His father was one of the steel kings of America,” explained the
+secretary, whose business it was to know everything. “This young man
+must be a millionaire several times over.”
+The other’s eyes narrowed appreciatively.
+“You had better go down and see him, Ivan. Find out what he wants.”
+The secretary obeyed, closing the door noiselessly behind him. In a few
+minutes he returned.
+“He declines to state his business--says it is entirely private and
+personal, and that he must see you.”
+“A millionaire several times over,” murmured Kramenin. “Bring him up, my
+dear Ivan.”
+The secretary left the room once more, and returned escorting Julius.
+“Monsieur Kramenin?” said the latter abruptly.
+The Russian, studying him attentively with his pale venomous eyes,
+bowed.
+“Pleased to meet you,” said the American. “I’ve got some very important
+business I’d like to talk over with you, if I can see you alone.” He
+looked pointedly at the other.
+“My secretary, Monsieur Grieber, from whom I have no secrets.”
+“That may be so--but I have,” said Julius dryly. “So I’d be obliged if
+you’d tell him to scoot.”
+“Ivan,” said the Russian softly, “perhaps you would not mind retiring
+into the next room----”
+“The next room won’t do,” interrupted Julius. “I know these ducal
+suites--and I want this one plumb empty except for you and me. Send him
+round to a store to buy a penn’orth of peanuts.”
+Though not particularly enjoying the American’s free and easy manner
+of speech, Kramenin was devoured by curiosity. “Will your business take
+long to state?”
+“Might be an all night job if you caught on.”
+“Very good, Ivan. I shall not require you again this evening. Go to the
+theatre--take a night off.”
+“Thank you, your excellency.”
+The secretary bowed and departed.
+Julius stood at the door watching his retreat. Finally, with a satisfied
+sigh, he closed it, and came back to his position in the centre of the
+room.
+“Now, Mr. Hersheimmer, perhaps you will be so kind as to come to the
+point?”
+“I guess that won’t take a minute,” drawled Julius. Then, with an abrupt
+change of manner: “Hands up--or I shoot!”
+For a moment Kramenin stared blindly into the big automatic, then, with
+almost comical haste, he flung up his hands above his head. In that
+instant Julius had taken his measure. The man he had to deal with was an
+abject physical coward--the rest would be easy.
+“This is an outrage,” cried the Russian in a high hysterical voice. “An
+outrage! Do you mean to kill me?”
+“Not if you keep your voice down. Don’t go edging sideways towards that
+bell. That’s better.”
+“What do you want? Do nothing rashly. Remember my life is of the utmost
+value to my country. I may have been maligned----”
+“I reckon,” said Julius, “that the man who let daylight into you would
+be doing humanity a good turn. But you needn’t worry any. I’m not
+proposing to kill you this trip--that is, if you’re reasonable.”
+The Russian quailed before the stern menace in the other’s eyes. He
+passed his tongue over his dry lips.
+“What do you want? Money?”
+“No. I want Jane Finn.”
+“Jane Finn? I--never heard of her!”
+“You’re a darned liar! You know perfectly who I mean.”
+“I tell you I’ve never heard of the girl.”
+“And I tell you,” retorted Julius, “that Little Willie here is just
+hopping mad to go off!”
+The Russian wilted visibly.
+“You wouldn’t dare----”
+“Oh, yes, I would, son!”
+Kramenin must have recognized something in the voice that carried
+conviction, for he said sullenly:
+“Well? Granted I do know who you mean--what of it?”
+“You will tell me now--right here--where she is to be found.”
+Kramenin shook his head.
+“I daren’t.”
+“Why not?”
+“I daren’t. You ask an impossibility.”
+“Afraid, eh? Of whom? Mr. Brown? Ah, that tickles you up! There is such
+a person, then? I doubted it. And the mere mention of him scares you
+stiff!”
+“I have seen him,” said the Russian slowly. “Spoken to him face to face.
+I did not know it until afterwards. He was one of a crowd. I should not
+know him again. Who is he really? I do not know. But I know this--he is
+a man to fear.”
+“He’ll never know,” said Julius.
+“He knows everything--and his vengeance is swift. Even
+I--Kramenin!--would not be exempt!”
+“Then you won’t do as I ask you?”
+“You ask an impossibility.”
+“Sure that’s a pity for you,” said Julius cheerfully. “But the world in
+general will benefit.” He raised the revolver.
+“Stop,” shrieked the Russian. “You cannot mean to shoot me?”
+“Of course I do. I’ve always heard you Revolutionists held life cheap,
+but it seems there’s a difference when it’s your own life in question.
+I gave you just one chance of saving your dirty skin, and that you
+wouldn’t take!”
+“They would kill me!”
+“Well,” said Julius pleasantly, “it’s up to you. But I’ll just say this.
+Little Willie here is a dead cert, and if I was you I’d take a sporting
+chance with Mr. Brown!”
+“You will hang if you shoot me,” muttered the Russian irresolutely.
+“No, stranger, that’s where you’re wrong. You forget the dollars. A
+big crowd of solicitors will get busy, and they’ll get some high-brow
+doctors on the job, and the end of it all will be that they’ll say my
+brain was unhinged. I shall spend a few months in a quiet sanatorium, my
+mental health will improve, the doctors will declare me sane again, and
+all will end happily for little Julius. I guess I can bear a few months’
+retirement in order to rid the world of you, but don’t you kid yourself
+I’ll hang for it!”
+The Russian believed him. Corrupt himself, he believed implicitly in the
+power of money. He had read of American murder trials running much on
+the lines indicated by Julius. He had bought and sold justice himself.
+This virile young American, with the significant drawling voice, had the
+whip hand of him.
+“I’m going to count five,” continued Julius, “and I guess, if you let me
+get past four, you needn’t worry any about Mr. Brown. Maybe he’ll send
+some flowers to the funeral, but _you_ won’t smell them! Are you ready?
+I’ll begin. One--two--three--four----”
+The Russian interrupted with a shriek:
+“Do not shoot. I will do all you wish.”
+Julius lowered the revolver.
+“I thought you’d hear sense. Where is the girl?”
+“At Gatehouse, in Kent. Astley Priors, the place is called.”
+“Is she a prisoner there?”
+“She’s not allowed to leave the house--though it’s safe enough really.
+The little fool has lost her memory, curse her!”
+“That’s been annoying for you and your friends, I reckon. What about the
+other girl, the one you decoyed away over a week ago?”
+“She’s there too,” said the Russian sullenly.
+“That’s good,” said Julius. “Isn’t it all panning out beautifully? And a
+lovely night for the run!”
+“What run?” demanded Kramenin, with a stare.
+“Down to Gatehouse, sure. I hope you’re fond of motoring?”
+“What do you mean? I refuse to go.”
+“Now don’t get mad. You must see I’m not such a kid as to leave you
+here. You’d ring up your friends on that telephone first thing! Ah!” He
+observed the fall on the other’s face. “You see, you’d got it all fixed.
+No, sir, you’re coming along with me. This your bedroom next door here?
+Walk right in. Little Willie and I will come behind. Put on a thick
+coat, that’s right. Fur lined? And you a Socialist! Now we’re ready. We
+walk downstairs and out through the hall to where my car’s waiting. And
+don’t you forget I’ve got you covered every inch of the way. I can shoot
+just as well through my coat pocket. One word, or a glance even, at one
+of those liveried menials, and there’ll sure be a strange face in the
+Sulphur and Brimstone Works!”
+Together they descended the stairs, and passed out to the waiting car.
+The Russian was shaking with rage. The hotel servants surrounded them.
+A cry hovered on his lips, but at the last minute his nerve failed him.
+The American was a man of his word.
+When they reached the car, Julius breathed a sigh of relief. The
+danger-zone was passed. Fear had successfully hypnotized the man by his
+side.
+“Get in,” he ordered. Then as he caught the other’s sidelong glance,
+“No, the chauffeur won’t help you any. Naval man. Was on a submarine in
+Russia when the Revolution broke out. A brother of his was murdered by
+your people. George!”
+“Yes, sir?” The chauffeur turned his head.
+“This gentleman is a Russian Bolshevik. We don’t want to shoot him, but
+it may be necessary. You understand?”
+“Perfectly, sir.”
+“I want to go to Gatehouse in Kent. Know the road at all?”
+“Yes, sir, it will be about an hour and a half’s run.”
+“Make it an hour. I’m in a hurry.”
+“I’ll do my best, sir.” The car shot forward through the traffic.
+Julius ensconced himself comfortably by the side of his victim. He kept
+his hand in the pocket of his coat, but his manner was urbane to the
+last degree.
+“There was a man I shot once in Arizona----” he began cheerfully.
+At the end of the hour’s run the unfortunate Kramenin was more dead than
+alive. In succession to the anecdote of the Arizona man, there had been
+a tough from ‘Frisco, and an episode in the Rockies. Julius’s narrative
+style, if not strictly accurate, was picturesque!
+Slowing down, the chauffeur called over his shoulder that they were just
+coming into Gatehouse. Julius bade the Russian direct them. His plan was
+to drive straight up to the house. There Kramenin was to ask for the two
+girls. Julius explained to him that Little Willie would not be tolerant
+of failure. Kramenin, by this time, was as putty in the other’s hands.
+The terrific pace they had come had still further unmanned him. He had
+given himself up for dead at every corner.
+The car swept up the drive, and stopped before the porch. The chauffeur
+looked round for orders.
+“Turn the car first, George. Then ring the bell, and get back to your
+place. Keep the engine going, and be ready to scoot like hell when I
+give the word.”
+“Very good, sir.”
+The front door was opened by the butler. Kramenin felt the muzzle of the
+revolver pressed against his ribs.
+“Now,” hissed Julius. “And be careful.”
+The Russian beckoned. His lips were white, and his voice was not very
+steady:
+“It is I--Kramenin! Bring down the girl at once! There is no time to
+lose!”
+Whittington had come down the steps. He uttered an exclamation of
+astonishment at seeing the other.
+“You! What’s up? Surely you know the plan----”
+Kramenin interrupted him, using the words that have created many
+unnecessary panics:
+“We have been betrayed! Plans must be abandoned. We must save our own
+skins. The girl! And at once! It’s our only chance.”
+Whittington hesitated, but for hardly a moment.
+“You have orders--from _him?_”
+“Naturally! Should I be here otherwise? Hurry! There is no time to be
+lost. The other little fool had better come too.”
+Whittington turned and ran back into the house. The agonizing minutes
+went by. Then--two figures hastily huddled in cloaks appeared on the
+steps and were hustled into the car. The smaller of the two was inclined
+to resist and Whittington shoved her in unceremoniously. Julius leaned
+forward, and in doing so the light from the open door lit up his face.
+Another man on the steps behind Whittington gave a startled exclamation.
+Concealment was at an end.
+“Get a move on, George,” shouted Julius.
+The chauffeur slipped in his clutch, and with a bound the car started.
+The man on the steps uttered an oath. His hand went to his pocket. There
+was a flash and a report. The bullet just missed the taller girl by an
+inch.
+“Get down, Jane,” cried Julius. “Flat on the bottom of the car.” He
+thrust her sharply forward, then standing up, he took careful aim and
+fired.
+“Have you hit him?” cried Tuppence eagerly.
+“Sure,” replied Julius. “He isn’t killed, though. Skunks like that take
+a lot of killing. Are you all right, Tuppence?”
+“Of course I am. Where’s Tommy? And who’s this?” She indicated the
+shivering Kramenin.
+“Tommy’s making tracks for the Argentine. I guess he thought you’d
+turned up your toes. Steady through the gate, George! That’s right.
+It’ll take ‘em at least five minutes to get busy after us. They’ll use
+the telephone, I guess, so look out for snares ahead--and don’t take the
+direct route. Who’s this, did you say, Tuppence? Let me present Monsieur
+Kramenin. I persuaded him to come on the trip for his health.”
+The Russian remained mute, still livid with terror.
+“But what made them let us go?” demanded Tuppence suspiciously.
+“I reckon Monsieur Kramenin here asked them so prettily they just
+couldn’t refuse!”
+This was too much for the Russian. He burst out vehemently:
+“Curse you--curse you! They know now that I betrayed them. My life won’t
+be safe for an hour in this country.”
+“That’s so,” assented Julius. “I’d advise you to make tracks for Russia
+right away.”
+“Let me go, then,” cried the other. “I have done what you asked. Why do
+you still keep me with you?”
+“Not for the pleasure of your company. I guess you can get right off now
+if you want to. I thought you’d rather I tooled you back to London.”
+“You may never reach London,” snarled the other. “Let me go here and
+now.”
+“Sure thing. Pull up, George. The gentleman’s not making the return
+trip. If I ever come to Russia, Monsieur Kramenin, I shall expect a
+rousing welcome, and----”
+But before Julius had finished his speech, and before the car had
+finally halted, the Russian had swung himself out and disappeared into
+the night.
+“Just a mite impatient to leave us,” commented Julius, as the car
+gathered way again. “And no idea of saying good-bye politely to the
+ladies. Say, Jane, you can get up on the seat now.”
+For the first time the girl spoke.
+“How did you ‘persuade’ him?” she asked.
+Julius tapped his revolver.
+“Little Willie here takes the credit!”
+“Splendid!” cried the girl. The colour surged into her face, her eyes
+looked admiringly at Julius.
+“Annette and I didn’t know what was going to happen to us,” said
+Tuppence. “Old Whittington hurried us off. _We_ thought it was lambs to
+the slaughter.”
+“Annette,” said Julius. “Is that what you call her?”
+His mind seemed to be trying to adjust itself to a new idea.
+“It’s her name,” said Tuppence, opening her eyes very wide.
+“Shucks!” retorted Julius. “She may think it’s her name, because her
+memory’s gone, poor kid. But it’s the one real and original Jane Finn
+we’ve got here.”
+“What?” cried Tuppence.
+But she was interrupted. With an angry spurt, a bullet embedded itself
+in the upholstery of the car just behind her head.
+“Down with you,” cried Julius. “It’s an ambush. These guys have got busy
+pretty quickly. Push her a bit, George.”
+The car fairly leapt forward. Three more shots rang out, but went
+happily wide. Julius, upright, leant over the back of the car.
+“Nothing to shoot at,” he announced gloomily. “But I guess there’ll be
+another little picnic soon. Ah!”
+He raised his hand to his cheek.
+“You are hurt?” said Annette quickly.
+“Only a scratch.”
+The girl sprang to her feet.
+“Let me out! Let me out, I say! Stop the car. It is me they’re after.
+I’m the one they want. You shall not lose your lives because of me. Let
+me go.” She was fumbling with the fastenings of the door.
+Julius took her by both arms, and looked at her. She had spoken with no
+trace of foreign accent.
+“Sit down, kid,” he said gently. “I guess there’s nothing wrong with
+your memory. Been fooling them all the time, eh?”
+The girl looked at him, nodded, and then suddenly burst into tears.
+Julius patted her on the shoulder.
+“There, there--just you sit tight. We’re not going to let you quit.”
+Through her sobs the girl said indistinctly:
+“You’re from home. I can tell by your voice. It makes me home-sick.”
+“Sure I’m from home. I’m your cousin--Julius Hersheimmer. I came over to
+Europe on purpose to find you--and a pretty dance you’ve led me.”
+The car slackened speed. George spoke over his shoulder:
+“Cross-roads here, sir. I’m not sure of the way.”
+The car slowed down till it hardly moved. As it did so a figure climbed
+suddenly over the back, and plunged head first into the midst of them.
+“Sorry,” said Tommy, extricating himself.
+A mass of confused exclamations greeted him. He replied to them
+severally:
+“Was in the bushes by the drive. Hung on behind. Couldn’t let you know
+before at the pace you were going. It was all I could do to hang on. Now
+then, you girls, get out!”
+“Get out?”
+“Yes. There’s a station just up that road. Train due in three minutes.
+You’ll catch it if you hurry.”
+“What the devil are you driving at?” demanded Julius. “Do you think you
+can fool them by leaving the car?”
+“You and I aren’t going to leave the car. Only the girls.”
+“You’re crazed, Beresford. Stark staring mad! You can’t let those girls
+go off alone. It’ll be the end of it if you do.”
+Tommy turned to Tuppence.
+“Get out at once, Tuppence. Take her with you, and do just as I say.
+No one will do you any harm. You’re safe. Take the train to London. Go
+straight to Sir James Peel Edgerton. Mr. Carter lives out of town, but
+you’ll be safe with him.”
+“Darn you!” cried Julius. “You’re mad. Jane, you stay where you are.”
+With a sudden swift movement, Tommy snatched the revolver from Julius’s
+hand, and levelled it at him.
+“Now will you believe I’m in earnest? Get out, both of you, and do as I
+say--or I’ll shoot!”
+Tuppence sprang out, dragging the unwilling Jane after her.
+“Come on, it’s all right. If Tommy’s sure--he’s sure. Be quick. We’ll
+miss the train.”
+They started running.
+Julius’s pent-up rage burst forth.
+“What the hell----”
+Tommy interrupted him.
+“Dry up! I want a few words with you, Mr. Julius Hersheimmer.”
+CHAPTER XXV. JANE’S STORY
+HER arm through Jane’s, dragging her along, Tuppence reached the
+station. Her quick ears caught the sound of the approaching train.
+“Hurry up,” she panted, “or we’ll miss it.”
+They arrived on the platform just as the train came to a standstill.
+Tuppence opened the door of an empty first-class compartment, and the
+two girls sank down breathless on the padded seats.
+A man looked in, then passed on to the next carriage. Jane started
+nervously. Her eyes dilated with terror. She looked questioningly at
+Tuppence.
+“Is he one of them, do you think?” she breathed.
+Tuppence shook her head.
+“No, no. It’s all right.” She took Jane’s hand in hers. “Tommy wouldn’t
+have told us to do this unless he was sure we’d be all right.”
+“But he doesn’t know them as I do!” The girl shivered. “You can’t
+understand. Five years! Five long years! Sometimes I thought I should go
+mad.”
+“Never mind. It’s all over.”
+“Is it?”
+The train was moving now, speeding through the night at a gradually
+increasing rate. Suddenly Jane Finn started up.
+“What was that? I thought I saw a face--looking in through the window.”
+“No, there’s nothing. See.” Tuppence went to the window, and lifting the
+strap let the pane down.
+“You’re sure?”
+“Quite sure.”
+The other seemed to feel some excuse was necessary:
+“I guess I’m acting like a frightened rabbit, but I can’t help it. If
+they caught me now they’d----” Her eyes opened wide and staring.
+“_Don’t!_” implored Tuppence. “Lie back, and _don’t think_. You can be
+quite sure that Tommy wouldn’t have said it was safe if it wasn’t.”
+“My cousin didn’t think so. He didn’t want us to do this.”
+“No,” said Tuppence, rather embarrassed.
+“What are you thinking of?” said Jane sharply.
+“Why?”
+“Your voice was so--queer!”
+“I _was_ thinking of something,” confessed Tuppence. “But I don’t want
+to tell you--not now. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so. It’s just
+an idea that came into my head a long time ago. Tommy’s got it too--I’m
+almost sure he has. But don’t _you_ worry--there’ll be time enough for
+that later. And it mayn’t be so at all! Do what I tell you--lie back and
+don’t think of anything.”
+“I’ll try.” The long lashes drooped over the hazel eyes.
+Tuppence, for her part, sat bolt upright--much in the attitude of a
+watchful terrier on guard. In spite of herself she was nervous. Her eyes
+flashed continually from one window to the other. She noted the exact
+position of the communication cord. What it was that she feared, she
+would have been hard put to it to say. But in her own mind she was
+far from feeling the confidence displayed in her words. Not that she
+disbelieved in Tommy, but occasionally she was shaken with doubts as to
+whether anyone so simple and honest as he was could ever be a match for
+the fiendish subtlety of the arch-criminal.
+If they once reached Sir James Peel Edgerton in safety, all would be
+well. But would they reach him? Would not the silent forces of Mr. Brown
+already be assembling against them? Even that last picture of Tommy,
+revolver in hand, failed to comfort her. By now he might be overpowered,
+borne down by sheer force of numbers.... Tuppence mapped out her plan of
+campaign.
+As the train at length drew slowly into Charing Cross, Jane Finn sat up
+with a start.
+“Have we arrived? I never thought we should!”
+“Oh, I thought we’d get to London all right. If there’s going to be any
+fun, now is when it will begin. Quick, get out. We’ll nip into a taxi.”
+In another minute they were passing the barrier, had paid the necessary
+fares, and were stepping into a taxi.
+“King’s Cross,” directed Tuppence. Then she gave a jump. A man looked in
+at the window, just as they started. She was almost certain it was the
+same man who had got into the carriage next to them. She had a horrible
+feeling of being slowly hemmed in on every side.
+“You see,” she explained to Jane, “if they think we’re going to Sir
+James, this will put them off the scent. Now they’ll imagine we’re going
+to Mr. Carter. His country place is north of London somewhere.”
+Crossing Holborn there was a block, and the taxi was held up. This was
+what Tuppence had been waiting for.
+“Quick,” she whispered. “Open the right-hand door!”
+The two girls stepped out into the traffic. Two minutes later they were
+seated in another taxi and were retracing their steps, this time direct
+to Carlton House Terrace.
+“There,” said Tuppence, with great satisfaction, “this ought to do them.
+I can’t help thinking that I’m really rather clever! How that other taxi
+man will swear! But I took his number, and I’ll send him a postal order
+to-morrow, so that he won’t lose by it if he happens to be genuine.
+What’s this thing swerving----Oh!”
+There was a grinding noise and a bump. Another taxi had collided with
+them.
+In a flash Tuppence was out on the pavement. A policeman was
+approaching. Before he arrived Tuppence had handed the driver five
+shillings, and she and Jane had merged themselves in the crowd.
+“It’s only a step or two now,” said Tuppence breathlessly. The accident
+had taken place in Trafalgar Square.
+“Do you think the collision was an accident, or done deliberately?”
+“I don’t know. It might have been either.”
+Hand-in-hand, the two girls hurried along.
+“It may be my fancy,” said Tuppence suddenly, “but I feel as though
+there was some one behind us.”
+“Hurry!” murmured the other. “Oh, hurry!”
+They were now at the corner of Carlton House Terrace, and their spirits
+lightened. Suddenly a large and apparently intoxicated man barred their
+way.
+“Good evening, ladies,” he hiccupped. “Whither away so fast?”
+“Let us pass, please,” said Tuppence imperiously.
+“Just a word with your pretty friend here.” He stretched out an unsteady
+hand, and clutched Jane by the shoulder. Tuppence heard other footsteps
+behind. She did not pause to ascertain whether they were friends or
+foes. Lowering her head, she repeated a manœuvre of childish days,
+and butted their aggressor full in the capacious middle. The success of
+these unsportsmanlike tactics was immediate. The man sat down abruptly
+on the pavement. Tuppence and Jane took to their heels. The house they
+sought was some way down. Other footsteps echoed behind them. Their
+breath was coming in choking gasps as they reached Sir James’s door.
+Tuppence seized the bell and Jane the knocker.
+The man who had stopped them reached the foot of the steps. For a moment
+he hesitated, and as he did so the door opened. They fell into the hall
+together. Sir James came forward from the library door.
+“Hullo! What’s this?”
+He stepped forward, and put his arm round Jane as she swayed
+uncertainly. He half carried her into the library, and laid her on the
+leather couch. From a tantalus on the table he poured out a few drops of
+brandy, and forced her to drink them. With a sigh she sat up, her eyes
+still wild and frightened.
+“It’s all right. Don’t be afraid, my child. You’re quite safe.”
+Her breath came more normally, and the colour was returning to her
+cheeks. Sir James looked at Tuppence quizzically.
+“So you’re not dead, Miss Tuppence, any more than that Tommy boy of
+yours was!”
+“The Young Adventurers take a lot of killing,” boasted Tuppence.
+“So it seems,” said Sir James dryly. “Am I right in thinking that the
+joint venture has ended in success, and that this”--he turned to the
+girl on the couch--“is Miss Jane Finn?”
+Jane sat up.
+“Yes,” she said quietly, “I am Jane Finn. I have a lot to tell you.”
+“When you are stronger----”
+“No--now!” Her voice rose a little. “I shall feel safer when I have told
+everything.”
+“As you please,” said the lawyer.
+He sat down in one of the big arm-chairs facing the couch. In a low
+voice Jane began her story.
+“I came over on the _Lusitania_ to take up a post in Paris. I was
+fearfully keen about the war, and just dying to help somehow or other. I
+had been studying French, and my teacher said they were wanting help in
+a hospital in Paris, so I wrote and offered my services, and they were
+accepted. I hadn’t got any folk of my own, so it made it easy to arrange
+things.
+“When the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed, a man came up to me. I’d noticed
+him more than once--and I’d figured it out in my own mind that he
+was afraid of somebody or something. He asked me if I was a patriotic
+American, and told me he was carrying papers which were just life or
+death to the Allies. He asked me to take charge of them. I was to watch
+for an advertisement in the _Times_. If it didn’t appear, I was to take
+them to the American Ambassador.
+“Most of what followed seems like a nightmare still. I see it in my
+dreams sometimes.... I’ll hurry over that part. Mr. Danvers had told me
+to watch out. He might have been shadowed from New York, but he didn’t
+think so. At first I had no suspicions, but on the boat to Holyhead I
+began to get uneasy. There was one woman who had been very keen to look
+after me, and chum up with me generally--a Mrs. Vandemeyer. At first I’d
+been only grateful to her for being so kind to me; but all the time I
+felt there was something about her I didn’t like, and on the Irish
+boat I saw her talking to some queer-looking men, and from the way they
+looked I saw that they were talking about me. I remembered that she’d
+been quite near me on the _Lusitania_ when Mr. Danvers gave me the
+packet, and before that she’d tried to talk to him once or twice. I
+began to get scared, but I didn’t quite see what to do.
+“I had a wild idea of stopping at Holyhead, and not going on to London
+that day, but I soon saw that that would be plumb foolishness. The only
+thing was to act as though I’d noticed nothing, and hope for the best.
+I couldn’t see how they could get me if I was on my guard. One thing
+I’d done already as a precaution--ripped open the oilskin packet and
+substituted blank paper, and then sewn it up again. So, if anyone did
+manage to rob me of it, it wouldn’t matter.
+“What to do with the real thing worried me no end. Finally I opened it
+out flat--there were only two sheets--and laid it between two of the
+advertisement pages of a magazine. I stuck the two pages together
+round the edge with some gum off an envelope. I carried the magazine
+carelessly stuffed into the pocket of my ulster.
+“At Holyhead I tried to get into a carriage with people that looked all
+right, but in a queer way there seemed always to be a crowd round me
+shoving and pushing me just the way I didn’t want to go. There was
+something uncanny and frightening about it. In the end I found myself in
+a carriage with Mrs. Vandemeyer after all. I went out into the corridor,
+but all the other carriages were full, so I had to go back and sit down.
+I consoled myself with the thought that there were other people in the
+carriage--there was quite a nice-looking man and his wife sitting just
+opposite. So I felt almost happy about it until just outside London. I
+had leaned back and closed my eyes. I guess they thought I was asleep,
+but my eyes weren’t quite shut, and suddenly I saw the nice-looking man
+get something out of his bag and hand it to Mrs. Vandemeyer, and as he
+did so he _winked_....
+“I can’t tell you how that wink sort of froze me through and through. My
+only thought was to get out in the corridor as quick as ever I could. I
+got up, trying to look natural and easy. Perhaps they saw something--I
+don’t know--but suddenly Mrs. Vandemeyer said ‘Now,’ and flung something
+over my nose and mouth as I tried to scream. At the same moment I felt a
+terrific blow on the back of my head....”
+She shuddered. Sir James murmured something sympathetically. In a minute
+she resumed:
+“I don’t know how long it was before I came back to consciousness. I
+felt very ill and sick. I was lying on a dirty bed. There was a
+screen round it, but I could hear two people talking in the room. Mrs.
+Vandemeyer was one of them. I tried to listen, but at first I couldn’t
+take much in. When at last I did begin to grasp what was going on--I was
+just terrified! I wonder I didn’t scream right out there and then.
+“They hadn’t found the papers. They’d got the oilskin packet with the
+blanks, and they were just mad! They didn’t know whether _I_‘d changed
+the papers, or whether Danvers had been carrying a dummy message,
+while the real one was sent another way. They spoke of”--she closed her
+eyes--“torturing me to find out!
+“I’d never known what fear--really sickening fear--was before! Once
+they came to look at me. I shut my eyes and pretended to be still
+unconscious, but I was afraid they’d hear the beating of my heart.
+However, they went away again. I began thinking madly. What could I do?
+I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand up against torture very long.
+“Suddenly something put the thought of loss of memory into my head. The
+subject had always interested me, and I’d read an awful lot about it.
+I had the whole thing at my finger-tips. If only I could succeed in
+carrying the bluff through, it might save me. I said a prayer, and drew
+a long breath. Then I opened my eyes and started babbling in _French!_
+“Mrs. Vandemeyer came round the screen at once. Her face was so wicked I
+nearly died, but I smiled up at her doubtfully, and asked her in French
+where I was.
+“It puzzled her, I could see. She called the man she had been talking
+to. He stood by the screen with his face in shadow. He spoke to me in
+French. His voice was very ordinary and quiet, but somehow, I don’t know
+why, he scared me worse than the woman. I felt he’d seen right through
+me, but I went on playing my part. I asked again where I was, and
+then went on that there was something I _must_ remember--_must_
+remember--only for the moment it was all gone. I worked myself up to
+be more and more distressed. He asked me my name. I said I didn’t
+know--that I couldn’t remember anything at all.
+“Suddenly he caught my wrist, and began twisting it. The pain was awful.
+I screamed. He went on. I screamed and screamed, but I managed to shriek
+out things in French. I don’t know how long I could have gone on, but
+luckily I fainted. The last thing I heard was his voice saying: ‘That’s
+not bluff! Anyway, a kid of her age wouldn’t know enough.’ I guess he
+forgot American girls are older for their age than English ones, and
+take more interest in scientific subjects.
+“When I came to, Mrs. Vandemeyer was sweet as honey to me. She’d had her
+orders, I guess. She spoke to me in French--told me I’d had a shock
+and been very ill. I should be better soon. I pretended to be rather
+dazed--murmured something about the ‘doctor’ having hurt my wrist. She
+looked relieved when I said that.
+“By and by she went out of the room altogether. I was suspicious still,
+and lay quite quiet for some time. In the end, however, I got up and
+walked round the room, examining it. I thought that even if anyone
+_was_ watching me from somewhere, it would seem natural enough under
+the circumstances. It was a squalid, dirty place. There were no windows,
+which seemed queer. I guessed the door would be locked, but I didn’t
+try it. There were some battered old pictures on the walls, representing
+scenes from _Faust_.”
+Jane’s two listeners gave a simultaneous “Ah!” The girl nodded.
+“Yes--it was the place in Soho where Mr. Beresford was imprisoned. Of
+course, at the time I didn’t even know if I was in London. One thing was
+worrying me dreadfully, but my heart gave a great throb of relief when
+I saw my ulster lying carelessly over the back of a chair. _And the
+magazine was still rolled up in the pocket!_
+“If only I could be certain that I was not being overlooked! I looked
+carefully round the walls. There didn’t seem to be a peep-hole of any
+kind--nevertheless I felt kind of sure there must be. All of a sudden I
+sat down on the edge of the table, and put my face in my hands, sobbing
+out a ‘Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!’ I’ve got very sharp ears. I distinctly heard
+the rustle of a dress, and slight creak. That was enough for me. I was
+being watched!
+“I lay down on the bed again, and by and by Mrs. Vandemeyer brought me
+some supper. She was still sweet as they make them. I guess she’d been
+told to win my confidence. Presently she produced the oilskin packet,
+and asked me if I recognized it, watching me like a lynx all the time.
+“I took it and turned it over in a puzzled sort of way. Then I shook my
+head. I said that I felt I _ought_ to remember something about it, that
+it was just as though it was all coming back, and then, before I could
+get hold of it, it went again. Then she told me that I was her niece,
+and that I was to call her ‘Aunt Rita.’ I did obediently, and she told
+me not to worry--my memory would soon come back.
+“That was an awful night. I’d made my plan whilst I was waiting for her.
+The papers were safe so far, but I couldn’t take the risk of leaving
+them there any longer. They might throw that magazine away any minute.
+I lay awake waiting until I judged it must be about two o’clock in the
+morning. Then I got up as softly as I could, and felt in the dark along
+the left-hand wall. Very gently, I unhooked one of the pictures from its
+nail--Marguerite with her casket of jewels. I crept over to my coat and
+took out the magazine, and an odd envelope or two that I had shoved in.
+Then I went to the washstand, and damped the brown paper at the back
+of the picture all round. Presently I was able to pull it away. I had
+already torn out the two stuck-together pages from the magazine, and now
+I slipped them with their precious enclosure between the picture and its
+brown paper backing. A little gum from the envelopes helped me to
+stick the latter up again. No one would dream the picture had ever been
+tampered with. I rehung it on the wall, put the magazine back in my
+coat pocket, and crept back to bed. I was pleased with my hiding-place.
+They’d never think of pulling to pieces one of their own pictures. I
+hoped that they’d come to the conclusion that Danvers had been carrying
+a dummy all along, and that, in the end, they’d let me go.
+“As a matter of fact, I guess that’s what they did think at first, and,
+in a way, it was dangerous for me. I learnt afterwards that they nearly
+did away with me then and there--there was never much chance of their
+‘letting me go’--but the first man, who was the boss, preferred to keep
+me alive on the chance of my having hidden them, and being able to tell
+where if I recovered my memory. They watched me constantly for weeks.
+Sometimes they’d ask me questions by the hour--I guess there was nothing
+they didn’t know about the third degree!--but somehow I managed to hold
+my own. The strain of it was awful, though....
+“They took me back to Ireland, and over every step of the journey again,
+in case I’d hidden it somewhere _en route_. Mrs. Vandemeyer and another
+woman never left me for a moment. They spoke of me as a young relative
+of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s whose mind was affected by the shock of the
+_Lusitania_. There was no one I could appeal to for help without
+giving myself away to _them_, and if I risked it and failed--and Mrs.
+Vandemeyer looked so rich, and so beautifully dressed, that I felt
+convinced they’d take her word against mine, and think it was part of my
+mental trouble to think myself ‘persecuted’--I felt that the horrors in
+store for me would be too awful once they knew I’d been only shamming.”
+Sir James nodded comprehendingly.
+“Mrs. Vandemeyer was a woman of great personality. With that and her
+social position she would have had little difficulty in imposing her
+point of view in preference to yours. Your sensational accusations
+against her would not easily have found credence.”
+“That’s what I thought. It ended in my being sent to a sanatorium at
+Bournemouth. I couldn’t make up my mind at first whether it was a sham
+affair or genuine. A hospital nurse had charge of me. I was a special
+patient. She seemed so nice and normal that at last I determined to
+confide in her. A merciful providence just saved me in time from falling
+into the trap. My door happened to be ajar, and I heard her talking to
+some one in the passage. _She was one of them!_ They still fancied it
+might be a bluff on my part, and she was put in charge of me to make
+sure! After that, my nerve went completely. I dared trust nobody.
+“I think I almost hypnotized myself. After a while, I almost forgot
+that I was really Jane Finn. I was so bent on playing the part of Janet
+Vandemeyer that my nerves began to play me tricks. I became really
+ill--for months I sank into a sort of stupor. I felt sure I should
+die soon, and that nothing really mattered. A sane person shut up in a
+lunatic asylum often ends by becoming insane, they say. I guess I was
+like that. Playing my part had become second nature to me. I wasn’t even
+unhappy in the end--just apathetic. Nothing seemed to matter. And the
+years went on.
+“And then suddenly things seemed to change. Mrs. Vandemeyer came down
+from London. She and the doctor asked me questions, experimented with
+various treatments. There was some talk of sending me to a specialist in
+Paris. In the end, they did not dare risk it. I overheard something that
+seemed to show that other people--friends--were looking for me. I
+learnt later that the nurse who had looked after me went to Paris,
+and consulted a specialist, representing herself to be me. He put her
+through some searching tests, and exposed her loss of memory to be
+fraudulent; but she had taken a note of his methods and reproduced
+them on me. I dare say I couldn’t have deceived the specialist for a
+minute--a man who has made a lifelong study of a thing is unique--but
+I managed once again to hold my own with them. The fact that I’d not
+thought of myself as Jane Finn for so long made it easier.
+“One night I was whisked off to London at a moment’s notice. They took
+me back to the house in Soho. Once I got away from the sanatorium I felt
+different--as though something in me that had been buried for a long
+time was waking up again.
+“They sent me in to wait on Mr. Beresford. (Of course I didn’t know
+his name then.) I was suspicious--I thought it was another trap. But he
+looked so honest, I could hardly believe it. However, I was careful in
+all I said, for I knew we could be overheard. There’s a small hole, high
+up in the wall.
+“But on the Sunday afternoon a message was brought to the house. They
+were all very disturbed. Without their knowing, I listened. Word had
+come that he was to be killed. I needn’t tell the next part, because
+you know it. I thought I’d have time to rush up and get the papers from
+their hiding-place, but I was caught. So I screamed out that he was
+escaping, and I said I wanted to go back to Marguerite. I shouted the
+name three times very loud. I knew the others would think I meant
+Mrs. Vandemeyer, but I hoped it might make Mr. Beresford think of the
+picture. He’d unhooked one the first day--that’s what made me hesitate
+to trust him.”
+She paused.
+“Then the papers,” said Sir James slowly, “are still at the back of the
+picture in that room.”
+“Yes.” The girl had sunk back on the sofa exhausted with the strain of
+the long story.
+Sir James rose to his feet. He looked at his watch.
+“Come,” he said, “we must go at once.”
+“To-night?” queried Tuppence, surprised.
+“To-morrow may be too late,” said Sir James gravely. “Besides, by
+going to-night we have the chance of capturing that great man and
+super-criminal--Mr. Brown!”
+There was dead silence, and Sir James continued:
+“You have been followed here--not a doubt of it. When we leave the house
+we shall be followed again, but not molested, _for it is Mr. Brown’s
+plan that we are to lead him_. But the Soho house is under police
+supervision night and day. There are several men watching it. When we
+enter that house, Mr. Brown will not draw back--he will risk all, on the
+chance of obtaining the spark to fire his mine. And he fancies the risk
+not great--since he will enter in the guise of a friend!”
+Tuppence flushed, then opened her mouth impulsively.
+“But there’s something you don’t know--that we haven’t told you.” Her
+eyes dwelt on Jane in perplexity.
+“What is that?” asked the other sharply. “No hesitations, Miss Tuppence.
+We need to be sure of our going.”
+But Tuppence, for once, seemed tongue-tied.
+“It’s so difficult--you see, if I’m wrong--oh, it would be dreadful.”
+She made a grimace at the unconscious Jane. “Never forgive me,” she
+observed cryptically.
+“You want me to help you out, eh?”
+“Yes, please. _You_ know who Mr. Brown is, don’t you?”
+“Yes,” said Sir James gravely. “At last I do.”
+“At last?” queried Tuppence doubtfully. “Oh, but I thought----” She
+paused.
+“You thought correctly, Miss Tuppence. I have been morally certain of
+his identity for some time--ever since the night of Mrs. Vandemeyer’s
+mysterious death.”
+“Ah!” breathed Tuppence.
+“For there we are up against the logic of facts. There are only two
+solutions. Either the chloral was administered by her own hand, which
+theory I reject utterly, or else----”
+“Yes?”
+“Or else it was administered in the brandy you gave her. Only three
+people touched that brandy--you, Miss Tuppence, I myself, and one
+other--Mr. Julius Hersheimmer!”
+Jane Finn stirred and sat up, regarding the speaker with wide astonished
+eyes.
+“At first, the thing seemed utterly impossible. Mr. Hersheimmer, as the
+son of a prominent millionaire, was a well-known figure in America. It
+seemed utterly impossible that he and Mr. Brown could be one and the
+same. But you cannot escape from the logic of facts. Since the thing
+was so--it must be accepted. Remember Mrs. Vandemeyer’s sudden and
+inexplicable agitation. Another proof, if proof was needed.
+“I took an early opportunity of giving you a hint. From some words of
+Mr. Hersheimmer’s at Manchester, I gathered that you had understood and
+acted on that hint. Then I set to work to prove the impossible possible.
+Mr. Beresford rang me up and told me, what I had already suspected,
+that the photograph of Miss Jane Finn had never really been out of Mr.
+Hersheimmer’s possession----”
+But the girl interrupted. Springing to her feet, she cried out angrily:
+“What do you mean? What are you trying to suggest? That Mr. Brown is
+_Julius?_ Julius--my own cousin!”
+“No, Miss Finn,” said Sir James unexpectedly. “Not your cousin. The man
+who calls himself Julius Hersheimmer is no relation to you whatsoever.”
+CHAPTER XXVI. MR. BROWN
+SIR James’s words came like a bomb-shell. Both girls looked equally
+puzzled. The lawyer went across to his desk, and returned with a small
+newspaper cutting, which he handed to Jane. Tuppence read it over
+her shoulder. Mr. Carter would have recognized it. It referred to the
+mysterious man found dead in New York.
+“As I was saying to Miss Tuppence,” resumed the lawyer, “I set to work
+to prove the impossible possible. The great stumbling-block was the
+undeniable fact that Julius Hersheimmer was not an assumed name. When I
+came across this paragraph my problem was solved. Julius Hersheimmer set
+out to discover what had become of his cousin. He went out West, where
+he obtained news of her and her photograph to aid him in his search. On
+the eve of his departure from New York he was set upon and murdered. His
+body was dressed in shabby clothes, and the face disfigured to prevent
+identification. Mr. Brown took his place. He sailed immediately for
+England. None of the real Hersheimmer’s friends or intimates saw him
+before he sailed--though indeed it would hardly have mattered if they
+had, the impersonation was so perfect. Since then he had been hand and
+glove with those sworn to hunt him down. Every secret of theirs has been
+known to him. Only once did he come near disaster. Mrs. Vandemeyer knew
+his secret. It was no part of his plan that that huge bribe should ever
+be offered to her. But for Miss Tuppence’s fortunate change of plan, she
+would have been far away from the flat when we arrived there. Exposure
+stared him in the face. He took a desperate step, trusting in his
+assumed character to avert suspicion. He nearly succeeded--but not
+quite.”
+“I can’t believe it,” murmured Jane. “He seemed so splendid.”
+“The real Julius Hersheimmer _was_ a splendid fellow! And Mr. Brown is
+a consummate actor. But ask Miss Tuppence if she also has not had her
+suspicions.”
+Jane turned mutely to Tuppence. The latter nodded.
+“I didn’t want to say it, Jane--I knew it would hurt you. And, after
+all, I couldn’t be sure. I still don’t understand why, if he’s Mr.
+Brown, he rescued us.”
+“Was it Julius Hersheimmer who helped you to escape?”
+Tuppence recounted to Sir James the exciting events of the evening,
+ending up: “But I can’t see _why!_”
+“Can’t you? I can. So can young Beresford, by his actions. As a last
+hope Jane Finn was to be allowed to escape--and the escape must be
+managed so that she harbours no suspicions of its being a put-up job.
+They’re not averse to young Beresford’s being in the neighbourhood, and,
+if necessary, communicating with you. They’ll take care to get him out
+of the way at the right minute. Then Julius Hersheimmer dashes up and
+rescues you in true melodramatic style. Bullets fly--but don’t hit
+anybody. What would have happened next? You would have driven straight
+to the house in Soho and secured the document which Miss Finn would
+probably have entrusted to her cousin’s keeping. Or, if he conducted the
+search, he would have pretended to find the hiding-place already rifled.
+He would have had a dozen ways of dealing with the situation, but the
+result would have been the same. And I rather fancy some accident would
+have happened to both of you. You see, you know rather an inconvenient
+amount. That’s a rough outline. I admit I was caught napping; but
+somebody else wasn’t.”
+“Tommy,” said Tuppence softly.
+“Yes. Evidently when the right moment came to get rid of him--he was too
+sharp for them. All the same, I’m not too easy in my mind about him.”
+“Why?”
+“Because Julius Hersheimmer is Mr. Brown,” said Sir James dryly. “And it
+takes more than one man and a revolver to hold up Mr. Brown....”
+Tuppence paled a little.
+“What can we do?”
+“Nothing until we’ve been to the house in Soho. If Beresford has still
+got the upper hand, there’s nothing to fear. If otherwise, our enemy
+will come to find us, and he will not find us unprepared!” From a drawer
+in the desk, he took a service revolver, and placed it in his coat
+pocket.
+“Now we’re ready. I know better than even to suggest going without you,
+Miss Tuppence----”
+“I should think so indeed!”
+“But I do suggest that Miss Finn should remain here. She will be
+perfectly safe, and I am afraid she is absolutely worn out with all she
+has been through.”
+But to Tuppence’s surprise Jane shook her head.
+“No. I guess I’m going too. Those papers were my trust. I must go
+through with this business to the end. I’m heaps better now anyway.”
+Sir James’s car was ordered round. During the short drive Tuppence’s
+heart beat tumultuously. In spite of momentary qualms of uneasiness
+respecting Tommy, she could not but feel exultation. They were going to
+win!
+The car drew up at the corner of the square and they got out. Sir James
+went up to a plain-clothes man who was on duty with several others, and
+spoke to him. Then he rejoined the girls.
+“No one has gone into the house so far. It is being watched at the back
+as well, so they are quite sure of that. Anyone who attempts to enter
+after we have done so will be arrested immediately. Shall we go in?”
+A policeman produced a key. They all knew Sir James well. They had also
+had orders respecting Tuppence. Only the third member of the party was
+unknown to them. The three entered the house, pulling the door to behind
+them. Slowly they mounted the rickety stairs. At the top was the ragged
+curtain hiding the recess where Tommy had hidden that day. Tuppence had
+heard the story from Jane in her character of “Annette.” She looked at
+the tattered velvet with interest. Even now she could almost swear it
+moved--as though _some one_ was behind it. So strong was the illusion
+that she almost fancied she could make out the outline of a form....
+Supposing Mr. Brown--Julius--was there waiting....
+Impossible of course! Yet she almost went back to put the curtain aside
+and make sure....
+Now they were entering the prison room. No place for anyone to hide
+here, thought Tuppence, with a sigh of relief, then chided herself
+indignantly. She must not give way to this foolish fancying--this
+curious insistent feeling that _Mr. Brown was in the house_.... Hark!
+what was that? A stealthy footstep on the stairs? There _was_ some one
+in the house! Absurd! She was becoming hysterical.
+Jane had gone straight to the picture of Marguerite. She unhooked it
+with a steady hand. The dust lay thick upon it, and festoons of cobwebs
+lay between it and the wall. Sir James handed her a pocket-knife, and
+she ripped away the brown paper from the back.... The advertisement
+page of a magazine fell out. Jane picked it up. Holding apart the frayed
+inner edges she extracted two thin sheets covered with writing!
+No dummy this time! The real thing!
+“We’ve got it,” said Tuppence. “At last....”
+The moment was almost breathless in its emotion. Forgotten the faint
+creakings, the imagined noises of a minute ago. None of them had eyes
+for anything but what Jane held in her hand.
+Sir James took it, and scrutinized it attentively.
+“Yes,” he said quietly, “this is the ill-fated draft treaty!”
+“We’ve succeeded,” said Tuppence. There was awe and an almost wondering
+unbelief in her voice.
+Sir James echoed her words as he folded the paper carefully and put it
+away in his pocket-book, then he looked curiously round the dingy room.
+“It was here that our young friend was confined for so long, was
+it not?” he said. “A truly sinister room. You notice the absence of
+windows, and the thickness of the close-fitting door. Whatever took
+place here would never be heard by the outside world.”
+Tuppence shivered. His words woke a vague alarm in her. What if there
+_was_ some one concealed in the house? Some one who might bar that door
+on them, and leave them to die like rats in a trap? Then she realized
+the absurdity of her thought. The house was surrounded by police who,
+if they failed to reappear, would not hesitate to break in and make a
+thorough search. She smiled at her own foolishness--then looked up with
+a start to find Sir James watching her. He gave her an emphatic little
+nod.
+“Quite right, Miss Tuppence. You scent danger. So do I. So does Miss
+Finn.”
+“Yes,” admitted Jane. “It’s absurd--but I can’t help it.”
+Sir James nodded again.
+“You feel--as we all feel-- _the presence of Mr. Bown_. Yes”--as
+Tuppence made a movement--“not a doubt of it-- _Mr. Brown is here_....”
+“In this house?”
+“In this room.... You don’t understand? _I am Mr. Brown_....”
+Stupefied, unbelieving, they stared at him. The very lines of his face
+had changed. It was a different man who stood before them. He smiled a
+slow cruel smile.
+“Neither of you will leave this room alive! You said just now we had
+succeeded. _I_ have succeeded! The draft treaty is mine.” His smile grew
+wider as he looked at Tuppence. “Shall I tell you how it will be? Sooner
+or later the police will break in, and they will find three victims of
+Mr. Brown--three, not two, you understand, but fortunately the third
+will not be dead, only wounded, and will be able to describe the attack
+with a wealth of detail! The treaty? It is in the hands of Mr. Brown. So
+no one will think of searching the pockets of Sir James Peel Edgerton!”
+He turned to Jane.
+“You outwitted me. I make my acknowledgments. But you will not do it
+again.”
+There was a faint sound behind him, but, intoxicated with success, he
+did not turn his head.
+He slipped his hand into his pocket.
+“Checkmate to the Young Adventurers,” he said, and slowly raised the big
+automatic.
+But, even as he did so, he felt himself seized from behind in a grip of
+iron. The revolver was wrenched from his hand, and the voice of Julius
+Hersheimmer said drawlingly:
+“I guess you’re caught redhanded with the goods upon you.”
+The blood rushed to the K.C.’s face, but his self-control was
+marvellous, as he looked from one to the other of his two captors. He
+looked longest at Tommy.
+“You,” he said beneath his breath. “_You!_ I might have known.”
+Seeing that he was disposed to offer no resistance, their grip
+slackened. Quick as a flash his left hand, the hand which bore the big
+signet ring, was raised to his lips....
+“‘_Ave, Cæsar! te morituri salutant_,’” he said, still looking at
+Tommy.
+Then his face changed, and with a long convulsive shudder he fell
+forward in a crumpled heap, whilst an odour of bitter almonds filled the
+air.
+CHAPTER XXVII. A SUPPER PARTY AT THE _SAVOY_
+THE supper party given by Mr. Julius Hersheimmer to a few friends on the
+evening of the 30th will long be remembered in catering circles. It took
+place in a private room, and Mr. Hersheimmer’s orders were brief and
+forcible. He gave carte blanche--and when a millionaire gives carte
+blanche he usually gets it!
+Every delicacy out of season was duly provided. Waiters carried bottles
+of ancient and royal vintage with loving care. The floral decorations
+defied the seasons, and fruits of the earth as far apart as May and
+November found themselves miraculously side by side. The list of guests
+was small and select. The American Ambassador, Mr. Carter, who had taken
+the liberty, he said, of bringing an old friend, Sir William Beresford,
+with him, Archdeacon Cowley, Dr. Hall, those two youthful adventurers,
+Miss Prudence Cowley and Mr. Thomas Beresford, and last, but not least,
+as guest of honour, Miss Jane Finn.
+Julius had spared no pains to make Jane’s appearance a success. A
+mysterious knock had brought Tuppence to the door of the apartment she
+was sharing with the American girl. It was Julius. In his hand he held a
+cheque.
+“Say, Tuppence,” he began, “will you do me a good turn? Take this, and
+get Jane regularly togged up for this evening. You’re all coming to
+supper with me at the _Savoy_. See? Spare no expense. You get me?”
+“Sure thing,” mimicked Tuppence. “We shall enjoy ourselves. It will be a
+pleasure dressing Jane. She’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
+“That’s so,” agreed Mr. Hersheimmer fervently.
+His fervour brought a momentary twinkle to Tuppence’s eye.
+“By the way, Julius,” she remarked demurely, “I--haven’t given you my
+answer yet.”
+“Answer?” said Julius. His face paled.
+“You know--when you asked me to--marry you,” faltered Tuppence, her
+eyes downcast in the true manner of the early Victorian heroine, “and
+wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’ve thought it well over----”
+“Yes?” said Julius. The perspiration stood on his forehead.
+Tuppence relented suddenly.
+“You great idiot!” she said. “What on earth induced you to do it? I
+could see at the time you didn’t care a twopenny dip for me!”
+“Not at all. I had--and still have--the highest sentiments of esteem and
+respect--and admiration for you----”
+“H’m!” said Tuppence. “Those are the kind of sentiments that very soon
+go to the wall when the other sentiment comes along! Don’t they, old
+thing?”
+“I don’t know what you mean,” said Julius stiffly, but a large and
+burning blush overspread his countenance.
+“Shucks!” retorted Tuppence. She laughed, and closed the door, reopening
+it to add with dignity: “Morally, I shall always consider I have been
+jilted!”
+“What was it?” asked Jane as Tuppence rejoined her.
+“Julius.”
+“What did he want?”
+“Really, I think, he wanted to see you, but I wasn’t going to let him.
+Not until to-night, when you’re going to burst upon every one like King
+Solomon in his glory! Come on! _We’re going to shop!_”
+To most people the 29th, the much-heralded “Labour Day,” had passed much
+as any other day. Speeches were made in the Park and Trafalgar Square.
+Straggling processions, singing the _Red Flag_, wandered through the
+streets in a more or less aimless manner. Newspapers which had hinted at
+a general strike, and the inauguration of a reign of terror, were forced
+to hide their diminished heads. The bolder and more astute among
+them sought to prove that peace had been effected by following their
+counsels. In the Sunday papers a brief notice of the sudden death of Sir
+James Peel Edgerton, the famous K.C., had appeared. Monday’s paper
+dealt appreciatively with the dead man’s career. The exact manner of his
+sudden death was never made public.
+Tommy had been right in his forecast of the situation. It had been a
+one-man show. Deprived of their chief, the organization fell to pieces.
+Kramenin had made a precipitate return to Russia, leaving England early
+on Sunday morning. The gang had fled from Astley Priors in a panic,
+leaving behind, in their haste, various damaging documents which
+compromised them hopelessly. With these proofs of conspiracy in their
+hands, aided further by a small brown diary taken from the pocket of the
+dead man which had contained a full and damning résumé of the whole
+plot, the Government had called an eleventh-hour conference. The Labour
+leaders were forced to recognize that they had been used as a cat’s
+paw. Certain concessions were made by the Government, and were eagerly
+accepted. It was to be Peace, not War!
+But the Cabinet knew by how narrow a margin they had escaped utter
+disaster. And burnt in on Mr. Carter’s brain was the strange scene which
+had taken place in the house in Soho the night before.
+He had entered the squalid room to find that great man, the friend of
+a lifetime, dead--betrayed out of his own mouth. From the dead man’s
+pocket-book he had retrieved the ill-omened draft treaty, and then
+and there, in the presence of the other three, it had been reduced to
+ashes.... England was saved!
+And now, on the evening of the 30th, in a private room at the _Savoy_,
+Mr. Julius P. Hersheimmer was receiving his guests.
+Mr. Carter was the first to arrive. With him was a choleric-looking old
+gentleman, at sight of whom Tommy flushed up to the roots of his hair.
+He came forward.
+“Ha!” said the old gentleman, surveying him apoplectically. “So you’re
+my nephew, are you? Not much to look at--but you’ve done good work, it
+seems. Your mother must have brought you up well after all. Shall we
+let bygones be bygones, eh? You’re my heir, you know; and in future I
+propose to make you an allowance--and you can look upon Chalmers Park as
+your home.”
+“Thank you, sir, it’s awfully decent of you.”
+“Where’s this young lady I’ve been hearing such a lot about?”
+Tommy introduced Tuppence.
+“Ha!” said Sir William, eyeing her. “Girls aren’t what they used to be
+in my young days.”
+“Yes, they are,” said Tuppence. “Their clothes are different, perhaps,
+but they themselves are just the same.”
+“Well, perhaps you’re right. Minxes then--minxes now!”
+“That’s it,” said Tuppence. “I’m a frightful minx myself.”
+“I believe you,” said the old gentleman, chuckling, and pinched her ear
+in high good-humour. Most young women were terrified of the “old bear,”
+as they termed him. Tuppence’s pertness delighted the old misogynist.
+Then came the timid archdeacon, a little bewildered by the company in
+which he found himself, glad that his daughter was considered to have
+distinguished herself, but unable to help glancing at her from time
+to time with nervous apprehension. But Tuppence behaved admirably. She
+forbore to cross her legs, set a guard upon her tongue, and steadfastly
+refused to smoke.
+Dr. Hall came next, and he was followed by the American Ambassador.
+“We might as well sit down,” said Julius, when he had introduced all his
+guests to each other. “Tuppence, will you----”
+He indicated the place of honour with a wave of his hand.
+But Tuppence shook her head.
+“No--that’s Jane’s place! When one thinks of how she’s held out all
+these years, she ought to be made the queen of the feast to-night.”
+Julius flung her a grateful glance, and Jane came forward shyly to the
+allotted seat. Beautiful as she had seemed before, it was as nothing to
+the loveliness that now went fully adorned. Tuppence had performed her
+part faithfully. The model gown supplied by a famous dressmaker had been
+entitled “A tiger lily.” It was all golds and reds and browns, and out
+of it rose the pure column of the girl’s white throat, and the bronze
+masses of hair that crowned her lovely head. There was admiration in
+every eye, as she took her seat.
+Soon the supper party was in full swing, and with one accord Tommy was
+called upon for a full and complete explanation.
+“You’ve been too darned close about the whole business,” Julius accused
+him. “You let on to me that you were off to the Argentine--though I
+guess you had your reasons for that. The idea of both you and Tuppence
+casting me for the part of Mr. Brown just tickles me to death!”
+“The idea was not original to them,” said Mr. Carter gravely. “It was
+suggested, and the poison very carefully instilled, by a past-master in
+the art. The paragraph in the New York paper suggested the plan to him,
+and by means of it he wove a web that nearly enmeshed you fatally.”
+“I never liked him,” said Julius. “I felt from the first that there was
+something wrong about him, and I always suspected that it was he who
+silenced Mrs. Vandemeyer so appositely. But it wasn’t till I heard that
+the order for Tommy’s execution came right on the heels of our interview
+with him that Sunday that I began to tumble to the fact that he was the
+big bug himself.”
+“I never suspected it at all,” lamented Tuppence. “I’ve always thought
+I was so much cleverer than Tommy--but he’s undoubtedly scored over me
+handsomely.”
+Julius agreed.
+“Tommy’s been the goods this trip! And, instead of sitting there as dumb
+as a fish, let him banish his blushes, and tell us all about it.”
+“Hear! hear!”
+“There’s nothing to tell,” said Tommy, acutely uncomfortable. “I was an
+awful mug--right up to the time I found that photograph of Annette, and
+realized that she was Jane Finn. Then I remembered how persistently she
+had shouted out that word ‘Marguerite’--and I thought of the pictures,
+and--well, that’s that. Then of course I went over the whole thing to
+see where I’d made an ass of myself.”
+“Go on,” said Mr. Carter, as Tommy showed signs of taking refuge in
+silence once more.
+“That business about Mrs. Vandemeyer had worried me when Julius told me
+about it. On the face of it, it seemed that he or Sir James must have
+done the trick. But I didn’t know which. Finding that photograph in the
+drawer, after that story of how it had been got from him by Inspector
+Brown, made me suspect Julius. Then I remembered that it was Sir James
+who had discovered the false Jane Finn. In the end, I couldn’t make up
+my mind--and just decided to take no chances either way. I left a note
+for Julius, in case he was Mr. Brown, saying I was off to the Argentine,
+and I dropped Sir James’s letter with the offer of the job by the desk
+so that he would see it was a genuine stunt. Then I wrote my letter to
+Mr. Carter and rang up Sir James. Taking him into my confidence would
+be the best thing either way, so I told him everything except where I
+believed the papers to be hidden. The way he helped me to get on the
+track of Tuppence and Annette almost disarmed me, but not quite. I kept
+my mind open between the two of them. And then I got a bogus note from
+Tuppence--and I knew!”
+“But how?”
+Tommy took the note in question from his pocket and passed it round the
+table.
+“It’s her handwriting all right, but I knew it wasn’t from her because
+of the signature. She’d never spell her name ‘Twopence,’ but anyone
+who’d never seen it written might quite easily do so. Julius _had_ seen
+it--he showed me a note of hers to him once--but _Sir James hadn’t!_
+After that everything was plain sailing. I sent off Albert post-haste to
+Mr. Carter. I pretended to go away, but doubled back again. When Julius
+came bursting up in his car, I felt it wasn’t part of Mr. Brown’s
+plan--and that there would probably be trouble. Unless Sir James was
+actually caught in the act, so to speak, I knew Mr. Carter would never
+believe it of him on my bare word----”
+“I didn’t,” interposed Mr. Carter ruefully.
+“That’s why I sent the girls off to Sir James. I was sure they’d fetch
+up at the house in Soho sooner or later. I threatened Julius with the
+revolver, because I wanted Tuppence to repeat that to Sir James, so that
+he wouldn’t worry about us. The moment the girls were out of sight I
+told Julius to drive like hell for London, and as we went along I told
+him the whole story. We got to the Soho house in plenty of time and met
+Mr. Carter outside. After arranging things with him we went in and hid
+behind the curtain in the recess. The policemen had orders to say, if
+they were asked, that no one had gone into the house. That’s all.”
+And Tommy came to an abrupt halt.
+There was silence for a moment.
+“By the way,” said Julius suddenly, “you’re all wrong about that
+photograph of Jane. It _was_ taken from me, but I found it again.”
+“Where?” cried Tuppence.
+“In that little safe on the wall in Mrs. Vandemeyer’s bedroom.”
+“I knew you found something,” said Tuppence reproachfully. “To tell you
+the truth, that’s what started me off suspecting you. Why didn’t you
+say?”
+“I guess I was a mite suspicious too. It had been got away from me once,
+and I determined I wouldn’t let on I’d got it until a photographer had
+made a dozen copies of it!”
+“We all kept back something or other,” said Tuppence thoughtfully. “I
+suppose secret service work makes you like that!”
+In the pause that ensued, Mr. Carter took from his pocket a small shabby
+brown book.
+“Beresford has just said that I would not have believed Sir James Peel
+Edgerton to be guilty unless, so to speak, he was caught in the act.
+That is so. Indeed, not until I read the entries in this little book
+could I bring myself fully to credit the amazing truth. This book will
+pass into the possession of Scotland Yard, but it will never be publicly
+exhibited. Sir James’s long association with the law would make it
+undesirable. But to you, who know the truth, I propose to read certain
+passages which will throw some light on the extraordinary mentality of
+this great man.”
+He opened the book, and turned the thin pages.
+“... It is madness to keep this book. I know that. It is documentary
+evidence against me. But I have never shrunk from taking risks. And I
+feel an urgent need for self-expression.... The book will only be taken
+from my dead body....
+“... From an early age I realized that I had exceptional abilities. Only
+a fool underestimates his capabilities. My brain power was greatly above
+the average. I know that I was born to succeed. My appearance was
+the only thing against me. I was quiet and insignificant--utterly
+nondescript....
+“... When I was a boy I heard a famous murder trial. I was deeply
+impressed by the power and eloquence of the counsel for the defence.
+For the first time I entertained the idea of taking my talents to that
+particular market.... Then I studied the criminal in the dock.... The
+man was a fool--he had been incredibly, unbelievably stupid. Even
+the eloquence of his counsel was hardly likely to save him. I felt
+an immeasurable contempt for him.... Then it occurred to me that the
+criminal standard was a low one. It was the wastrels, the failures, the
+general riff-raff of civilization who drifted into crime....
+Strange that men of brains had never realized its extraordinary
+opportunities.... I played with the idea.... What a magnificent
+field--what unlimited possibilities! It made my brain reel....
+“... I read standard works on crime and criminals. They all confirmed my
+opinion. Degeneracy, disease--never the deliberate embracing of a career
+by a far-seeing man. Then I considered. Supposing my utmost ambitions
+were realized--that I was called to the bar, and rose to the height of
+my profession? That I entered politics--say, even, that I became Prime
+Minister of England? What then? Was that power? Hampered at every turn
+by my colleagues, fettered by the democratic system of which I should
+be the mere figurehead! No--the power I dreamed of was absolute! An
+autocrat! A dictator! And such power could only be obtained by working
+outside the law. To play on the weaknesses of human nature, then on the
+weaknesses of nations--to get together and control a vast organization,
+and finally to overthrow the existing order, and rule! The thought
+intoxicated me....
+“... I saw that I must lead two lives. A man like myself is bound to
+attract notice. I must have a successful career which would mask my true
+activities.... Also I must cultivate a personality. I modelled myself
+upon famous K.C.’s. I reproduced their mannerisms, their magnetism. If I
+had chosen to be an actor, I should have been the greatest actor living!
+No disguises--no grease paint--no false beards! Personality! I put it
+on like a glove! When I shed it, I was myself, quiet, unobtrusive, a man
+like every other man. I called myself Mr. Brown. There are hundreds of
+men called Brown--there are hundreds of men looking just like me....
+“... I succeeded in my false career. I was bound to succeed. I shall
+succeed in the other. A man like me cannot fail....
+“... I have been reading a life of Napoleon. He and I have much in
+common....
+“... I make a practice of defending criminals. A man should look after
+his own people....
+“... Once or twice I have felt afraid. The first time was in Italy.
+There was a dinner given. Professor D----, the great alienist, was
+present. The talk fell on insanity. He said, ‘A great many men are
+mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves.’ I do not
+understand why he looked at me when he said that. His glance was
+strange.... I did not like it....
+“... The war has disturbed me.... I thought it would further my plans.
+The Germans are so efficient. Their spy system, too, was excellent.
+The streets are full of these boys in khaki. All empty-headed young
+fools.... Yet I do not know.... They won the war.... It disturbs me....
+“... My plans are going well.... A girl butted in--I do not think she
+really knew anything.... But we must give up the Esthonia.... No risks
+now....
+“.... All goes well. The loss of memory is vexing. It cannot be a fake.
+No girl could deceive ME!...
+“...The 29th.... That is very soon....” Mr. Carter paused.
+“I will not read the details of the _coup_ that was planned. But there
+are just two small entries that refer to the three of you. In the light
+of what happened they are interesting.
+“... By inducing the girl to come to me of her own accord, I have
+succeeded in disarming her. But she has intuitive flashes that might be
+dangerous.... She must be got out of the way.... I can do nothing with
+the American. He suspects and dislikes me. But he cannot know. I fancy
+my armour is impregnable.... Sometimes I fear I have underestimated
+the other boy. He is not clever, but it is hard to blind his eyes to
+facts....”
+Mr. Carter shut the book.
+“A great man,” he said. “Genius, or insanity, who can say?”
+There was silence.
+Then Mr. Carter rose to his feet.
+“I will give you a toast. The Joint Venture which has so amply justified
+itself by success!”
+It was drunk with acclamation.
+“There’s something more we want to hear,” continued Mr. Carter. He
+looked at the American Ambassador. “I speak for you also, I know. We’ll
+ask Miss Jane Finn to tell us the story that only Miss Tuppence has
+heard so far--but before we do so we’ll drink her health. The health of
+one of the bravest of America’s daughters, to whom is due the thanks and
+gratitude of two great countries!”
+CHAPTER XXVIII. AND AFTER
+“THAT was a mighty good toast, Jane,” said Mr. Hersheimmer, as he and
+his cousin were being driven back in the Rolls-Royce to the _Ritz_.
+“The one to the joint venture?”
+“No--the one to you. There isn’t another girl in the world who could
+have carried it through as you did. You were just wonderful!”
+Jane shook her head.
+“I don’t feel wonderful. At heart I’m just tired and lonesome--and
+longing for my own country.”
+“That brings me to something I wanted to say. I heard the Ambassador
+telling you his wife hoped you would come to them at the Embassy right
+away. That’s good enough, but I’ve got another plan. Jane--I want you to
+marry me! Don’t get scared and say no at once. You can’t love me right
+away, of course, that’s impossible. But I’ve loved you from the very
+moment I set eyes on your photo--and now I’ve seen you I’m simply crazy
+about you! If you’ll only marry me, I won’t worry you any--you shall
+take your own time. Maybe you’ll never come to love me, and if that’s
+the case I’ll manage to set you free. But I want the right to look after
+you, and take care of you.”
+“That’s what I want,” said the girl wistfully. “Some one who’ll be good
+to me. Oh, you don’t know how lonesome I feel!”
+“Sure thing I do. Then I guess that’s all fixed up, and I’ll see the
+archbishop about a special license to-morrow morning.”
+“Oh, Julius!”
+“Well, I don’t want to hustle you any, Jane, but there’s no sense in
+waiting about. Don’t be scared--I shan’t expect you to love me all at
+once.”
+But a small hand was slipped into his.
+“I love you now, Julius,” said Jane Finn. “I loved you that first moment
+in the car when the bullet grazed your cheek....”
+Five minutes later Jane murmured softly:
+“I don’t know London very well, Julius, but is it such a very long way
+from the _Savoy_ to the _Ritz?_”
+“It depends how you go,” explained Julius unblushingly. “We’re going by
+way of Regent’s Park!”
+“Oh, Julius--what will the chauffeur think?”
+“At the wages I pay him, he knows better than to do any independent
+thinking. Why, Jane, the only reason I had the supper at the _Savoy_ was
+so that I could drive you home. I didn’t see how I was ever going to
+get hold of you alone. You and Tuppence have been sticking together
+like Siamese twins. I guess another day of it would have driven me and
+Beresford stark staring mad!”
+“Oh. Is he----?”
+“Of course he is. Head over ears.”
+“I thought so,” said Jane thoughtfully.
+“Why?”
+“From all the things Tuppence didn’t say!”
+“There you have me beat,” said Mr. Hersheimmer. But Jane only laughed.
+In the meantime, the Young Adventurers were sitting bolt upright,
+very stiff and ill at ease, in a taxi which, with a singular lack of
+originality, was also returning to the _Ritz_ via Regent’s Park.
+A terrible constraint seemed to have settled down between them. Without
+quite knowing what had happened, everything seemed changed. They were
+tongue-tied--paralysed. All the old _camaraderie_ was gone.
+Tuppence could think of nothing to say.
+Tommy was equally afflicted.
+They sat very straight and forbore to look at each other.
+At last Tuppence made a desperate effort.
+“Rather fun, wasn’t it?”
+“Rather.”
+Another silence.
+“I like Julius,” essayed Tuppence again.
+Tommy was suddenly galvanized into life.
+“You’re not going to marry him, do you hear?” he said dictatorially. “I
+forbid it.”
+“Oh!” said Tuppence meekly.
+“Absolutely, you understand.”
+“He doesn’t want to marry me--he really only asked me out of kindness.”
+“That’s not very likely,” scoffed Tommy.
+“It’s quite true. He’s head over ears in love with Jane. I expect he’s
+proposing to her now.”
+“She’ll do for him very nicely,” said Tommy condescendingly.
+“Don’t you think she’s the most lovely creature you’ve ever seen?”
+“Oh, I dare say.”
+“But I suppose you prefer sterling worth,” said Tuppence demurely.
+“I--oh, dash it all, Tuppence, you know!”
+“I like your uncle, Tommy,” said Tuppence, hastily creating a diversion.
+“By the way, what are you going to do, accept Mr. Carter’s offer of
+a Government job, or accept Julius’s invitation and take a richly
+remunerated post in America on his ranch?”
+“I shall stick to the old ship, I think, though it’s awfully good of
+Hersheimmer. But I feel you’d be more at home in London.”
+“I don’t see where I come in.”
+“I do,” said Tommy positively.
+Tuppence stole a glance at him sideways.
+“There’s the money, too,” she observed thoughtfully.
+“What money?”
+“We’re going to get a cheque each. Mr. Carter told me so.”
+“Did you ask how much?” inquired Tommy sarcastically.
+“Yes,” said Tuppence triumphantly. “But I shan’t tell you.”
+“Tuppence, you are the limit!”
+“It has been fun, hasn’t it, Tommy? I do hope we shall have lots more
+adventures.”
+“You’re insatiable, Tuppence. I’ve had quite enough adventures for the
+present.”
+“Well, shopping is almost as good,” said Tuppence dreamily. “Think of
+buying old furniture, and bright carpets, and futurist silk curtains,
+and a polished dining-table, and a divan with lots of cushions.”
+“Hold hard,” said Tommy. “What’s all this for?”
+“Possibly a house--but I think a flat.”
+“Whose flat?”
+“You think I mind saying it, but I don’t in the least! _Ours_, so
+there!”
+“You darling!” cried Tommy, his arms tightly round her. “I was
+determined to make you say it. I owe you something for the relentless
+way you’ve squashed me whenever I’ve tried to be sentimental.”
+Tuppence raised her face to his. The taxi proceeded on its course round
+the north side of Regent’s Park.
+“You haven’t really proposed now,” pointed out Tuppence. “Not what our
+grandmothers would call a proposal. But after listening to a rotten one
+like Julius’s, I’m inclined to let you off.”
+“You won’t be able to get out of marrying me, so don’t you think it.”
+“What fun it will be,” responded Tuppence. “Marriage is called all sorts
+of things, a haven, and a refuge, and a crowning glory, and a state of
+bondage, and lots more. But do you know what I think it is?”
+“What?”
+“A sport!”
+“And a damned good sport too,” said Tommy.",The Secret Adversary,Agatha Christie,320,"['James Peel Edgerton Brown', 'Jane Finn']"
+"
+
+
+      It was no very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard,
+      to look in upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to
+      Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all
+      that was going on at the police headquarters. In return for the
+      news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was always ready to
+      listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the
+      detective was engaged, and was able occasionally, without any
+      active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from
+      his own vast knowledge and experience.
+
+      On this particular evening, Lestrade had spoken of the weather
+      and the newspapers. Then he had fallen silent, puffing
+      thoughtfully at his cigar. Holmes looked keenly at him.
+
+      “Anything remarkable on hand?” he asked.
+
+      “Oh, no, Mr. Holmes—nothing very particular.”
+
+      “Then tell me about it.”
+
+      Lestrade laughed.
+
+      “Well, Mr. Holmes, there is no use denying that there _is_
+      something on my mind. And yet it is such an absurd business, that
+      I hesitated to bother you about it. On the other hand, although
+      it is trivial, it is undoubtedly queer, and I know that you have
+      a taste for all that is out of the common. But, in my opinion, it
+      comes more in Dr. Watson’s line than ours.”
+
+      “Disease?” said I.
+
+      “Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness, too. You wouldn’t think
+      there was anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred
+      of Napoleon the First that he would break any image of him that
+      he could see.”
+
+      Holmes sank back in his chair.
+
+      “That’s no business of mine,” said he.
+
+      “Exactly. That’s what I said. But then, when the man commits
+      burglary in order to break images which are not his own, that
+      brings it away from the doctor and on to the policeman.”
+
+      Holmes sat up again.
+
+      “Burglary! This is more interesting. Let me hear the details.”
+
+      Lestrade took out his official notebook and refreshed his memory
+      from its pages.
+
+      “The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at
+      the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of
+      pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The assistant had
+      left the front shop for an instant, when he heard a crash, and
+      hurrying in he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with
+      several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into
+      fragments. He rushed out into the road, but, although several
+      passers-by declared that they had noticed a man run out of the
+      shop, he could neither see anyone nor could he find any means of
+      identifying the rascal. It seemed to be one of those senseless
+      acts of hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was
+      reported to the constable on the beat as such. The plaster cast
+      was not worth more than a few shillings, and the whole affair
+      appeared to be too childish for any particular investigation.
+
+      “The second case, however, was more serious, and also more
+      singular. It occurred only last night.
+
+      “In Kennington Road, and within a few hundred yards of Morse
+      Hudson’s shop, there lives a well-known medical practitioner,
+      named Dr. Barnicot, who has one of the largest practices upon the
+      south side of the Thames. His residence and principal
+      consulting-room is at Kennington Road, but he has a branch
+      surgery and dispensary at Lower Brixton Road, two miles away.
+      This Dr. Barnicot is an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, and his
+      house is full of books, pictures, and relics of the French
+      Emperor. Some little time ago he purchased from Morse Hudson two
+      duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the
+      French sculptor, Devine. One of these he placed in his hall in
+      the house at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of
+      the surgery at Lower Brixton. Well, when Dr. Barnicot came down
+      this morning he was astonished to find that his house had been
+      burgled during the night, but that nothing had been taken save
+      the plaster head from the hall. It had been carried out and had
+      been dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its
+      splintered fragments were discovered.”
+
+      Holmes rubbed his hands.
+
+      “This is certainly very novel,” said he.
+
+      “I thought it would please you. But I have not got to the end
+      yet. Dr. Barnicot was due at his surgery at twelve o’clock, and
+      you can imagine his amazement when, on arriving there, he found
+      that the window had been opened in the night and that the broken
+      pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It had
+      been smashed to atoms where it stood. In neither case were there
+      any signs which could give us a clue as to the criminal or
+      lunatic who had done the mischief. Now, Mr. Holmes, you have got
+      the facts.”
+
+      “They are singular, not to say grotesque,” said Holmes. “May I
+      ask whether the two busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot’s rooms were
+      the exact duplicates of the one which was destroyed in Morse
+      Hudson’s shop?”
+
+      “They were taken from the same mould.”
+
+      “Such a fact must tell against the theory that the man who breaks
+      them is influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering
+      how many hundreds of statues of the great Emperor must exist in
+      London, it is too much to suppose such a coincidence as that a
+      promiscuous iconoclast should chance to begin upon three
+      specimens of the same bust.”
+
+      “Well, I thought as you do,” said Lestrade. “On the other hand,
+      this Morse Hudson is the purveyor of busts in that part of
+      London, and these three were the only ones which had been in his
+      shop for years. So, although, as you say, there are many hundreds
+      of statues in London, it is very probable that these three were
+      the only ones in that district. Therefore, a local fanatic would
+      begin with them. What do you think, Dr. Watson?”
+
+      “There are no limits to the possibilities of monomania,” I
+      answered. “There is the condition which the modern French
+      psychologists have called the _idée fixe_, which may be trifling
+      in character, and accompanied by complete sanity in every other
+      way. A man who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who had
+      possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great
+      war, might conceivably form such an _idée fixe_ and under its
+      influence be capable of any fantastic outrage.”
+
+      “That won’t do, my dear Watson,” said Holmes, shaking his head,
+      “for no amount of _idée fixe_ would enable your interesting
+      monomaniac to find out where these busts were situated.”
+
+      “Well, how do _you_ explain it?”
+
+      “I don’t attempt to do so. I would only observe that there is a
+      certain method in the gentleman’s eccentric proceedings. For
+      example, in Dr. Barnicot’s hall, where a sound might arouse the
+      family, the bust was taken outside before being broken, whereas
+      in the surgery, where there was less danger of an alarm, it was
+      smashed where it stood. The affair seems absurdly trifling, and
+      yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my
+      most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You
+      will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty
+      family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
+      parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. I can’t afford,
+      therefore, to smile at your three broken busts, Lestrade, and I
+      shall be very much obliged to you if you will let me hear of any
+      fresh development of so singular a chain of events.”
+
+      The development for which my friend had asked came in a quicker
+      and an infinitely more tragic form than he could have imagined. I
+      was still dressing in my bedroom next morning, when there was a
+      tap at the door and Holmes entered, a telegram in his hand. He
+      read it aloud:
+
+      “Come instantly, 131, Pitt Street, Kensington.—LESTRADE.”
+
+      “What is it, then?” I asked.
+
+      “Don’t know—may be anything. But I suspect it is the sequel of
+      the story of the statues. In that case our friend the
+      image-breaker has begun operations in another quarter of London.
+      There’s coffee on the table, Watson, and I have a cab at the
+      door.”
+
+      In half an hour we had reached Pitt Street, a quiet little
+      backwater just beside one of the briskest currents of London
+      life. No. 131 was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable,
+      and most unromantic dwellings. As we drove up, we found the
+      railings in front of the house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes
+      whistled.
+
+      “By George! It’s attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will
+      hold the London message-boy. There’s a deed of violence indicated
+      in that fellow’s round shoulders and outstretched neck. What’s
+      this, Watson? The top steps swilled down and the other ones dry.
+      Footsteps enough, anyhow! Well, well, there’s Lestrade at the
+      front window, and we shall soon know all about it.”
+
+      The official received us with a very grave face and showed us
+      into a sitting-room, where an exceedingly unkempt and agitated
+      elderly man, clad in a flannel dressing-gown, was pacing up and
+      down. He was introduced to us as the owner of the house—Mr.
+      Horace Harker, of the Central Press Syndicate.
+
+      “It’s the Napoleon bust business again,” said Lestrade. “You
+      seemed interested last night, Mr. Holmes, so I thought perhaps
+      you would be glad to be present now that the affair has taken a
+      very much graver turn.”
+
+      “What has it turned to, then?”
+
+      “To murder. Mr. Harker, will you tell these gentlemen exactly
+      what has occurred?”
+
+      The man in the dressing-gown turned upon us with a most
+      melancholy face.
+
+      “It’s an extraordinary thing,” said he, “that all my life I have
+      been collecting other people’s news, and now that a real piece of
+      news has come my own way I am so confused and bothered that I
+      can’t put two words together. If I had come in here as a
+      journalist, I should have interviewed myself and had two columns
+      in every evening paper. As it is, I am giving away valuable copy
+      by telling my story over and over to a string of different
+      people, and I can make no use of it myself. However, I’ve heard
+      your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if you’ll only explain this
+      queer business, I shall be paid for my trouble in telling you the
+      story.”
+
+      Holmes sat down and listened.
+
+      “It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I
+      bought for this very room about four months ago. I picked it up
+      cheap from Harding Brothers, two doors from the High Street
+      Station. A great deal of my journalistic work is done at night,
+      and I often write until the early morning. So it was to-day. I
+      was sitting in my den, which is at the back of the top of the
+      house, about three o’clock, when I was convinced that I heard
+      some sounds downstairs. I listened, but they were not repeated,
+      and I concluded that they came from outside. Then suddenly, about
+      five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell—the most
+      dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes, that ever I heard. It will ring in my
+      ears as long as I live. I sat frozen with horror for a minute or
+      two. Then I seized the poker and went downstairs. When I entered
+      this room I found the window wide open, and I at once observed
+      that the bust was gone from the mantelpiece. Why any burglar
+      should take such a thing passes my understanding, for it was only
+      a plaster cast and of no real value whatever.
+
+      “You can see for yourself that anyone going out through that open
+      window could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride.
+      This was clearly what the burglar had done, so I went round and
+      opened the door. Stepping out into the dark, I nearly fell over a
+      dead man, who was lying there. I ran back for a light and there
+      was the poor fellow, a great gash in his throat and the whole
+      place swimming in blood. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up,
+      and his mouth horribly open. I shall see him in my dreams. I had
+      just time to blow on my police-whistle, and then I must have
+      fainted, for I knew nothing more until I found the policeman
+      standing over me in the hall.”
+
+      “Well, who was the murdered man?” asked Holmes.
+
+      “There’s nothing to show who he was,” said Lestrade. “You shall
+      see the body at the mortuary, but we have made nothing of it up
+      to now. He is a tall man, sunburned, very powerful, not more than
+      thirty. He is poorly dressed, and yet does not appear to be a
+      labourer. A horn-handled clasp knife was lying in a pool of blood
+      beside him. Whether it was the weapon which did the deed, or
+      whether it belonged to the dead man, I do not know. There was no
+      name on his clothing, and nothing in his pockets save an apple,
+      some string, a shilling map of London, and a photograph. Here it
+      is.”
+
+      It was evidently taken by a snapshot from a small camera. It
+      represented an alert, sharp-featured simian man, with thick
+      eyebrows and a very peculiar projection of the lower part of the
+      face, like the muzzle of a baboon.
+
+      “And what became of the bust?” asked Holmes, after a careful
+      study of this picture.
+
+      “We had news of it just before you came. It has been found in the
+      front garden of an empty house in Campden House Road. It was
+      broken into fragments. I am going round now to see it. Will you
+      come?”
+
+      “Certainly. I must just take one look round.” He examined the
+      carpet and the window. “The fellow had either very long legs or
+      was a most active man,” said he. “With an area beneath, it was no
+      mean feat to reach that window ledge and open that window.
+      Getting back was comparatively simple. Are you coming with us to
+      see the remains of your bust, Mr. Harker?”
+
+      The disconsolate journalist had seated himself at a
+      writing-table.
+
+      “I must try and make something of it,” said he, “though I have no
+      doubt that the first editions of the evening papers are out
+      already with full details. It’s like my luck! You remember when
+      the stand fell at Doncaster? Well, I was the only journalist in
+      the stand, and my journal the only one that had no account of it,
+      for I was too shaken to write it. And now I’ll be too late with a
+      murder done on my own doorstep.”
+
+      As we left the room, we heard his pen travelling shrilly over the
+      foolscap.
+
+      The spot where the fragments of the bust had been found was only
+      a few hundred yards away. For the first time our eyes rested upon
+      this presentment of the great emperor, which seemed to raise such
+      frantic and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay
+      scattered, in splintered shards, upon the grass. Holmes picked up
+      several of them and examined them carefully. I was convinced,
+      from his intent face and his purposeful manner, that at last he
+      was upon a clue.
+
+      “Well?” asked Lestrade.
+
+      Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
+
+      “We have a long way to go yet,” said he. “And yet—and yet—well,
+      we have some suggestive facts to act upon. The possession of this
+      trifling bust was worth more, in the eyes of this strange
+      criminal, than a human life. That is one point. Then there is the
+      singular fact that he did not break it in the house, or
+      immediately outside the house, if to break it was his sole
+      object.”
+
+      “He was rattled and bustled by meeting this other fellow. He
+      hardly knew what he was doing.”
+
+      “Well, that’s likely enough. But I wish to call your attention
+      very particularly to the position of this house, in the garden of
+      which the bust was destroyed.”
+
+      Lestrade looked about him.
+
+      “It was an empty house, and so he knew that he would not be
+      disturbed in the garden.”
+
+      “Yes, but there is another empty house farther up the street
+      which he must have passed before he came to this one. Why did he
+      not break it there, since it is evident that every yard that he
+      carried it increased the risk of someone meeting him?”
+
+      “I give it up,” said Lestrade.
+
+      Holmes pointed to the street lamp above our heads.
+
+      “He could see what he was doing here, and he could not there.
+      That was his reason.”
+
+      “By Jove! that’s true,” said the detective. “Now that I come to
+      think of it, Dr. Barnicot’s bust was broken not far from his red
+      lamp. Well, Mr. Holmes, what are we to do with that fact?”
+
+      “To remember it—to docket it. We may come on something later
+      which will bear upon it. What steps do you propose to take now,
+      Lestrade?”
+
+      “The most practical way of getting at it, in my opinion, is to
+      identify the dead man. There should be no difficulty about that.
+      When we have found who he is and who his associates are, we
+      should have a good start in learning what he was doing in Pitt
+      Street last night, and who it was who met him and killed him on
+      the doorstep of Mr. Horace Harker. Don’t you think so?”
+
+      “No doubt; and yet it is not quite the way in which I should
+      approach the case.”
+
+      “What would you do then?”
+
+      “Oh, you must not let me influence you in any way. I suggest that
+      you go on your line and I on mine. We can compare notes
+      afterwards, and each will supplement the other.”
+
+      “Very good,” said Lestrade.
+
+      “If you are going back to Pitt Street, you might see Mr. Horace
+      Harker. Tell him for me that I have quite made up my mind, and
+      that it is certain that a dangerous homicidal lunatic, with
+      Napoleonic delusions, was in his house last night. It will be
+      useful for his article.”
+
+      Lestrade stared.
+
+      “You don’t seriously believe that?”
+
+      Holmes smiled.
+
+      “Don’t I? Well, perhaps I don’t. But I am sure that it will
+      interest Mr. Horace Harker and the subscribers of the Central
+      Press Syndicate. Now, Watson, I think that we shall find that we
+      have a long and rather complex day’s work before us. I should be
+      glad, Lestrade, if you could make it convenient to meet us at
+      Baker Street at six o’clock this evening. Until then I should
+      like to keep this photograph, found in the dead man’s pocket. It
+      is possible that I may have to ask your company and assistance
+      upon a small expedition which will have be undertaken to-night,
+      if my chain of reasoning should prove to be correct. Until then
+      good-bye and good luck!”
+
+      Sherlock Holmes and I walked together to the High Street, where
+      we stopped at the shop of Harding Brothers, whence the bust had
+      been purchased. A young assistant informed us that Mr. Harding
+      would be absent until afternoon, and that he was himself a
+      newcomer, who could give us no information. Holmes’s face showed
+      his disappointment and annoyance.
+
+      “Well, well, we can’t expect to have it all our own way, Watson,”
+      he said, at last. “We must come back in the afternoon, if Mr.
+      Harding will not be here until then. I am, as you have no doubt
+      surmised, endeavouring to trace these busts to their source, in
+      order to find if there is not something peculiar which may
+      account for their remarkable fate. Let us make for Mr. Morse
+      Hudson, of the Kennington Road, and see if he can throw any light
+      upon the problem.”
+
+      A drive of an hour brought us to the picture-dealer’s
+      establishment. He was a small, stout man with a red face and a
+      peppery manner.
+
+      “Yes, sir. On my very counter, sir,” said he. “What we pay rates
+      and taxes for I don’t know, when any ruffian can come in and
+      break one’s goods. Yes, sir, it was I who sold Dr. Barnicot his
+      two statues. Disgraceful, sir! A Nihilist plot—that’s what I make
+      it. No one but an anarchist would go about breaking statues. Red
+      republicans—that’s what I call ’em. Who did I get the statues
+      from? I don’t see what that has to do with it. Well, if you
+      really want to know, I got them from Gelder & Co., in Church
+      Street, Stepney. They are a well-known house in the trade, and
+      have been this twenty years. How many had I? Three—two and one
+      are three—two of Dr. Barnicot’s, and one smashed in broad
+      daylight on my own counter. Do I know that photograph? No, I
+      don’t. Yes, I do, though. Why, it’s Beppo. He was a kind of
+      Italian piece-work man, who made himself useful in the shop. He
+      could carve a bit, and gild and frame, and do odd jobs. The
+      fellow left me last week, and I’ve heard nothing of him since.
+      No, I don’t know where he came from nor where he went to. I had
+      nothing against him while he was here. He was gone two days
+      before the bust was smashed.”
+
+      “Well, that’s all we could reasonably expect from Morse Hudson,”
+      said Holmes, as we emerged from the shop. “We have this Beppo as
+      a common factor, both in Kennington and in Kensington, so that is
+      worth a ten-mile drive. Now, Watson, let us make for Gelder &
+      Co., of Stepney, the source and origin of the busts. I shall be
+      surprised if we don’t get some help down there.”
+
+      In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable
+      London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London,
+      commercial London, and, finally, maritime London, till we came to
+      a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement
+      houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe. Here, in a
+      broad thoroughfare, once the abode of wealthy City merchants, we
+      found the sculpture works for which we searched. Outside was a
+      considerable yard full of monumental masonry. Inside was a large
+      room in which fifty workers were carving or moulding. The
+      manager, a big blond German, received us civilly and gave a clear
+      answer to all Holmes’s questions. A reference to his books showed
+      that hundreds of casts had been taken from a marble copy of
+      Devine’s head of Napoleon, but that the three which had been sent
+      to Morse Hudson a year or so before had been half of a batch of
+      six, the other three being sent to Harding Brothers, of
+      Kensington. There was no reason why those six should be different
+      from any of the other casts. He could suggest no possible cause
+      why anyone should wish to destroy them—in fact, he laughed at the
+      idea. Their wholesale price was six shillings, but the retailer
+      would get twelve or more. The cast was taken in two moulds from
+      each side of the face, and then these two profiles of plaster of
+      Paris were joined together to make the complete bust. The work
+      was usually done by Italians, in the room we were in. When
+      finished, the busts were put on a table in the passage to dry,
+      and afterwards stored. That was all he could tell us.
+
+      But the production of the photograph had a remarkable effect upon
+      the manager. His face flushed with anger, and his brows knotted
+      over his blue Teutonic eyes.
+
+      “Ah, the rascal!” he cried. “Yes, indeed, I know him very well.
+      This has always been a respectable establishment, and the only
+      time that we have ever had the police in it was over this very
+      fellow. It was more than a year ago now. He knifed another
+      Italian in the street, and then he came to the works with the
+      police on his heels, and he was taken here. Beppo was his
+      name—his second name I never knew. Serve me right for engaging a
+      man with such a face. But he was a good workman—one of the best.”
+
+      “What did he get?”
+
+      “The man lived and he got off with a year. I have no doubt he is
+      out now, but he has not dared to show his nose here. We have a
+      cousin of his here, and I daresay he could tell you where he is.”
+
+      “No, no,” cried Holmes, “not a word to the cousin—not a word, I
+      beg of you. The matter is very important, and the farther I go
+      with it, the more important it seems to grow. When you referred
+      in your ledger to the sale of those casts I observed that the
+      date was June 3rd of last year. Could you give me the date when
+      Beppo was arrested?”
+
+      “I could tell you roughly by the pay-list,” the manager answered.
+      “Yes,” he continued, after some turning over of pages, “he was
+      paid last on May 20th.”
+
+      “Thank you,” said Holmes. “I don’t think that I need intrude upon
+      your time and patience any more.” With a last word of caution
+      that he should say nothing as to our researches, we turned our
+      faces westward once more.
+
+      The afternoon was far advanced before we were able to snatch a
+      hasty luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance
+      announced “Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman,” and the
+      contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his
+      account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a
+      highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident.
+      Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he
+      ate. Once or twice he chuckled.
+
+      “This is all right, Watson,” said he. “Listen to this:
+
+      “It is satisfactory to know that there can be no difference of
+      opinion upon this case, since Mr. Lestrade, one of the most
+      experienced members of the official force, and Mr. Sherlock
+      Holmes, the well-known consulting expert, have each come to the
+      conclusion that the grotesque series of incidents, which have
+      ended in so tragic a fashion, arise from lunacy rather than from
+      deliberate crime. No explanation save mental aberration can cover
+      the facts.
+
+      “The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only
+      know how to use it. And now, if you have quite finished, we will
+      hark back to Kensington and see what the manager of Harding
+      Brothers has to say on the matter.”
+
+      The founder of that great emporium proved to be a brisk, crisp
+      little person, very dapper and quick, with a clear head and a
+      ready tongue.
+
+      “Yes, sir, I have already read the account in the evening papers.
+      Mr. Horace Harker is a customer of ours. We supplied him with the
+      bust some months ago. We ordered three busts of that sort from
+      Gelder & Co., of Stepney. They are all sold now. To whom? Oh, I
+      daresay by consulting our sales book we could very easily tell
+      you. Yes, we have the entries here. One to Mr. Harker you see,
+      and one to Mr. Josiah Brown, of Laburnum Lodge, Laburnum Vale,
+      Chiswick, and one to Mr. Sandeford, of Lower Grove Road, Reading.
+      No, I have never seen this face which you show me in the
+      photograph. You would hardly forget it, would you, sir, for I’ve
+      seldom seen an uglier. Have we any Italians on the staff? Yes,
+      sir, we have several among our workpeople and cleaners. I daresay
+      they might get a peep at that sales book if they wanted to. There
+      is no particular reason for keeping a watch upon that book. Well,
+      well, it’s a very strange business, and I hope that you will let
+      me know if anything comes of your inquiries.”
+
+      Holmes had taken several notes during Mr. Harding’s evidence, and
+      I could see that he was thoroughly satisfied by the turn which
+      affairs were taking. He made no remark, however, save that,
+      unless we hurried, we should be late for our appointment with
+      Lestrade. Sure enough, when we reached Baker Street the detective
+      was already there, and we found him pacing up and down in a fever
+      of impatience. His look of importance showed that his day’s work
+      had not been in vain.
+
+      “Well?” he asked. “What luck, Mr. Holmes?”
+
+      “We have had a very busy day, and not entirely a wasted one,” my
+      friend explained. “We have seen both the retailers and also the
+      wholesale manufacturers. I can trace each of the busts now from
+      the beginning.”
+
+      “The busts,” cried Lestrade. “Well, well, you have your own
+      methods, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and it is not for me to say a word
+      against them, but I think I have done a better day’s work than
+      you. I have identified the dead man.”
+
+      “You don’t say so?”
+
+      “And found a cause for the crime.”
+
+      “Splendid!”
+
+      “We have an inspector who makes a specialty of Saffron Hill and
+      the Italian Quarter. Well, this dead man had some Catholic emblem
+      round his neck, and that, along with his colour, made me think he
+      was from the South. Inspector Hill knew him the moment he caught
+      sight of him. His name is Pietro Venucci, from Naples, and he is
+      one of the greatest cut-throats in London. He is connected with
+      the Mafia, which, as you know, is a secret political society,
+      enforcing its decrees by murder. Now, you see how the affair
+      begins to clear up. The other fellow is probably an Italian also,
+      and a member of the Mafia. He has broken the rules in some
+      fashion. Pietro is set upon his track. Probably the photograph we
+      found in his pocket is the man himself, so that he may not knife
+      the wrong person. He dogs the fellow, he sees him enter a house,
+      he waits outside for him, and in the scuffle he receives his own
+      death-wound. How is that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”
+
+      Holmes clapped his hands approvingly.
+
+      “Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!” he cried. “But I didn’t quite
+      follow your explanation of the destruction of the busts.”
+
+      “The busts! You never can get those busts out of your head. After
+      all, that is nothing; petty larceny, six months at the most. It
+      is the murder that we are really investigating, and I tell you
+      that I am gathering all the threads into my hands.”
+
+      “And the next stage?”
+
+      “Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian
+      Quarter, find the man whose photograph we have got, and arrest
+      him on the charge of murder. Will you come with us?”
+
+      “I think not. I fancy we can attain our end in a simpler way. I
+      can’t say for certain, because it all depends—well, it all
+      depends upon a factor which is completely outside our control.
+      But I have great hopes—in fact, the betting is exactly two to
+      one—that if you will come with us to-night I shall be able to
+      help you to lay him by the heels.”
+
+      “In the Italian Quarter?”
+
+      “No, I fancy Chiswick is an address which is more likely to find
+      him. If you will come with me to Chiswick to-night, Lestrade,
+      I’ll promise to go to the Italian Quarter with you to-morrow, and
+      no harm will be done by the delay. And now I think that a few
+      hours’ sleep would do us all good, for I do not propose to leave
+      before eleven o’clock, and it is unlikely that we shall be back
+      before morning. You’ll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are
+      welcome to the sofa until it is time for us to start. In the
+      meantime, Watson, I should be glad if you would ring for an
+      express messenger, for I have a letter to send and it is
+      important that it should go at once.”
+
+      Holmes spent the evening in rummaging among the files of the old
+      daily papers with which one of our lumber-rooms was packed. When
+      at last he descended, it was with triumph in his eyes, but he
+      said nothing to either of us as to the result of his researches.
+      For my own part, I had followed step by step the methods by which
+      he had traced the various windings of this complex case, and,
+      though I could not yet perceive the goal which we would reach, I
+      understood clearly that Holmes expected this grotesque criminal
+      to make an attempt upon the two remaining busts, one of which, I
+      remembered, was at Chiswick. No doubt the object of our journey
+      was to catch him in the very act, and I could not but admire the
+      cunning with which my friend had inserted a wrong clue in the
+      evening paper, so as to give the fellow the idea that he could
+      continue his scheme with impunity. I was not surprised when
+      Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. He had
+      himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop, which was his
+      favourite weapon.
+
+      A four-wheeler was at the door at eleven, and in it we drove to a
+      spot at the other side of Hammersmith Bridge. Here the cabman was
+      directed to wait. A short walk brought us to a secluded road
+      fringed with pleasant houses, each standing in its own grounds.
+      In the light of a street lamp we read “Laburnum Villa” upon the
+      gate-post of one of them. The occupants had evidently retired to
+      rest, for all was dark save for a fanlight over the hall door,
+      which shed a single blurred circle on to the garden path. The
+      wooden fence which separated the grounds from the road threw a
+      dense black shadow upon the inner side, and here it was that we
+      crouched.
+
+      “I fear that you’ll have a long wait,” Holmes whispered. “We may
+      thank our stars that it is not raining. I don’t think we can even
+      venture to smoke to pass the time. However, it’s a two to one
+      chance that we get something to pay us for our trouble.”
+
+      It proved, however, that our vigil was not to be so long as
+      Holmes had led us to fear, and it ended in a very sudden and
+      singular fashion. In an instant, without the least sound to warn
+      us of his coming, the garden gate swung open, and a lithe, dark
+      figure, as swift and active as an ape, rushed up the garden path.
+      We saw it whisk past the light thrown from over the door and
+      disappear against the black shadow of the house. There was a long
+      pause, during which we held our breath, and then a very gentle
+      creaking sound came to our ears. The window was being opened. The
+      noise ceased, and again there was a long silence. The fellow was
+      making his way into the house. We saw the sudden flash of a dark
+      lantern inside the room. What he sought was evidently not there,
+      for again we saw the flash through another blind, and then
+      through another.
+
+      “Let us get to the open window. We will nab him as he climbs
+      out,” Lestrade whispered.
+
+      But before we could move, the man had emerged again. As he came
+      out into the glimmering patch of light, we saw that he carried
+      something white under his arm. He looked stealthily all round
+      him. The silence of the deserted street reassured him. Turning
+      his back upon us he laid down his burden, and the next instant
+      there was the sound of a sharp tap, followed by a clatter and
+      rattle. The man was so intent upon what he was doing that he
+      never heard our steps as we stole across the grass plot. With the
+      bound of a tiger Holmes was on his back, and an instant later
+      Lestrade and I had him by either wrist, and the handcuffs had
+      been fastened. As we turned him over I saw a hideous, sallow
+      face, with writhing, furious features, glaring up at us, and I
+      knew that it was indeed the man of the photograph whom we had
+      secured.
+
+      But it was not our prisoner to whom Holmes was giving his
+      attention. Squatted on the doorstep, he was engaged in most
+      carefully examining that which the man had brought from the
+      house. It was a bust of Napoleon, like the one which we had seen
+      that morning, and it had been broken into similar fragments.
+      Carefully Holmes held each separate shard to the light, but in no
+      way did it differ from any other shattered piece of plaster. He
+      had just completed his examination when the hall lights flew up,
+      the door opened, and the owner of the house, a jovial, rotund
+      figure in shirt and trousers, presented himself.
+
+      “Mr. Josiah Brown, I suppose?” said Holmes.
+
+      “Yes, sir; and you, no doubt, are Mr. Sherlock Holmes? I had the
+      note which you sent by the express messenger, and I did exactly
+      what you told me. We locked every door on the inside and awaited
+      developments. Well, I’m very glad to see that you have got the
+      rascal. I hope, gentlemen, that you will come in and have some
+      refreshment.”
+
+      However, Lestrade was anxious to get his man into safe quarters,
+      so within a few minutes our cab had been summoned and we were all
+      four upon our way to London. Not a word would our captive say,
+      but he glared at us from the shadow of his matted hair, and once,
+      when my hand seemed within his reach, he snapped at it like a
+      hungry wolf. We stayed long enough at the police-station to learn
+      that a search of his clothing revealed nothing save a few
+      shillings and a long sheath knife, the handle of which bore
+      copious traces of recent blood.
+
+      “That’s all right,” said Lestrade, as we parted. “Hill knows all
+      these gentry, and he will give a name to him. You’ll find that my
+      theory of the Mafia will work out all right. But I’m sure I am
+      exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Holmes, for the workmanlike way
+      in which you laid hands upon him. I don’t quite understand it all
+      yet.”
+
+      “I fear it is rather too late an hour for explanations,” said
+      Holmes. “Besides, there are one or two details which are not
+      finished off, and it is one of those cases which are worth
+      working out to the very end. If you will come round once more to
+      my rooms at six o’clock to-morrow, I think I shall be able to
+      show you that even now you have not grasped the entire meaning of
+      this business, which presents some features which make it
+      absolutely original in the history of crime. If ever I permit you
+      to chronicle any more of my little problems, Watson, I foresee
+      that you will enliven your pages by an account of the singular
+      adventure of the Napoleonic busts.”
+
+      When we met again next evening, Lestrade was furnished with much
+      information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was
+      Beppo, second name unknown. He was a well-known ne’er-do-well
+      among the Italian colony. He had once been a skilful sculptor and
+      had earned an honest living, but he had taken to evil courses and
+      had twice already been in jail—once for a petty theft, and once,
+      as we had already heard, for stabbing a fellow-countryman. He
+      could talk English perfectly well. His reasons for destroying the
+      busts were still unknown, and he refused to answer any questions
+      upon the subject, but the police had discovered that these same
+      busts might very well have been made by his own hands, since he
+      was engaged in this class of work at the establishment of Gelder
+      & Co. To all this information, much of which we already knew,
+      Holmes listened with polite attention, but I, who knew him so
+      well, could clearly see that his thoughts were elsewhere, and I
+      detected a mixture of mingled uneasiness and expectation beneath
+      that mask which he was wont to assume. At last he started in his
+      chair, and his eyes brightened. There had been a ring at the
+      bell. A minute later we heard steps upon the stairs, and an
+      elderly red-faced man with grizzled side-whiskers was ushered in.
+      In his right hand he carried an old-fashioned carpet-bag, which
+      he placed upon the table.
+
+      “Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?”
+
+      My friend bowed and smiled. “Mr. Sandeford, of Reading, I
+      suppose?” said he.
+
+      “Yes, sir, I fear that I am a little late, but the trains were
+      awkward. You wrote to me about a bust that is in my possession.”
+
+      “Exactly.”
+
+      “I have your letter here. You said, ‘I desire to possess a copy
+      of Devine’s Napoleon, and am prepared to pay you ten pounds for
+      the one which is in your possession.’ Is that right?”
+
+      “Certainly.”
+
+      “I was very much surprised at your letter, for I could not
+      imagine how you knew that I owned such a thing.”
+
+      “Of course you must have been surprised, but the explanation is
+      very simple. Mr. Harding, of Harding Brothers, said that they had
+      sold you their last copy, and he gave me your address.”
+
+      “Oh, that was it, was it? Did he tell you what I paid for it?”
+
+      “No, he did not.”
+
+      “Well, I am an honest man, though not a very rich one. I only
+      gave fifteen shillings for the bust, and I think you ought to
+      know that before I take ten pounds from you.
+
+      “I am sure the scruple does you honour, Mr. Sandeford. But I have
+      named that price, so I intend to stick to it.”
+
+      “Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. I brought the bust
+      up with me, as you asked me to do. Here it is!” He opened his
+      bag, and at last we saw placed upon our table a complete specimen
+      of that bust which we had already seen more than once in
+      fragments.
+
+      Holmes took a paper from his pocket and laid a ten-pound note
+      upon the table.
+
+      “You will kindly sign that paper, Mr. Sandeford, in the presence
+      of these witnesses. It is simply to say that you transfer every
+      possible right that you ever had in the bust to me. I am a
+      methodical man, you see, and you never know what turn events
+      might take afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Sandeford; here is your
+      money, and I wish you a very good evening.”
+
+      When our visitor had disappeared, Sherlock Holmes’s movements
+      were such as to rivet our attention. He began by taking a clean
+      white cloth from a drawer and laying it over the table. Then he
+      placed his newly acquired bust in the centre of the cloth.
+      Finally, he picked up his hunting-crop and struck Napoleon a
+      sharp blow on the top of the head. The figure broke into
+      fragments, and Holmes bent eagerly over the shattered remains.
+      Next instant, with a loud shout of triumph he held up one
+      splinter, in which a round, dark object was fixed like a plum in
+      a pudding.
+
+      “Gentlemen,” he cried, “let me introduce you to the famous black
+      pearl of the Borgias.”
+
+      Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a
+      spontaneous impulse, we both broke at clapping, as at the
+      well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of colour sprang to
+      Holmes’s pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master
+      dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such
+      moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine,
+      and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The same
+      singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with
+      disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its
+      depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.
+
+      “Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “it is the most famous pearl now
+      existing in the world, and it has been my good fortune, by a
+      connected chain of inductive reasoning, to trace it from the
+      Prince of Colonna’s bedroom at the Dacre Hotel, where it was
+      lost, to the interior of this, the last of the six busts of
+      Napoleon which were manufactured by Gelder & Co., of Stepney. You
+      will remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by the
+      disappearance of this valuable jewel and the vain efforts of the
+      London police to recover it. I was myself consulted upon the
+      case, but I was unable to throw any light upon it. Suspicion fell
+      upon the maid of the Princess, who was an Italian, and it was
+      proved that she had a brother in London, but we failed to trace
+      any connection between them. The maid’s name was Lucretia
+      Venucci, and there is no doubt in my mind that this Pietro who
+      was murdered two nights ago was the brother. I have been looking
+      up the dates in the old files of the paper, and I find that the
+      disappearance of the pearl was exactly two days before the arrest
+      of Beppo, for some crime of violence—an event which took place in
+      the factory of Gelder & Co., at the very moment when these busts
+      were being made. Now you clearly see the sequence of events,
+      though you see them, of course, in the inverse order to the way
+      in which they presented themselves to me. Beppo had the pearl in
+      his possession. He may have stolen it from Pietro, he may have
+      been Pietro’s confederate, he may have been the go-between of
+      Pietro and his sister. It is of no consequence to us which is the
+      correct solution.
+
+      “The main fact is that he _had_ the pearl, and at that moment,
+      when it was on his person, he was pursued by the police. He made
+      for the factory in which he worked, and he knew that he had only
+      a few minutes in which to conceal this enormously valuable prize,
+      which would otherwise be found on him when he was searched. Six
+      plaster casts of Napoleon were drying in the passage. One of them
+      was still soft. In an instant Beppo, a skilful workman, made a
+      small hole in the wet plaster, dropped in the pearl, and with a
+      few touches covered over the aperture once more. It was an
+      admirable hiding-place. No one could possibly find it. But Beppo
+      was condemned to a year’s imprisonment, and in the meanwhile his
+      six busts were scattered over London. He could not tell which
+      contained his treasure. Only by breaking them could he see. Even
+      shaking would tell him nothing, for as the plaster was wet it was
+      probable that the pearl would adhere to it—as, in fact, it has
+      done. Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his search with
+      considerable ingenuity and perseverance. Through a cousin who
+      works with Gelder, he found out the retail firms who had bought
+      the busts. He managed to find employment with Morse Hudson, and
+      in that way tracked down three of them. The pearl was not there.
+      Then, with the help of some Italian employee, he succeeded in
+      finding out where the other three busts had gone. The first was
+      at Harker’s. There he was dogged by his confederate, who held
+      Beppo responsible for the loss of the pearl, and he stabbed him
+      in the scuffle which followed.”
+
+      “If he was his confederate, why should he carry his photograph?”
+      I asked.
+
+      “As a means of tracing him, if he wished to inquire about him
+      from any third person. That was the obvious reason. Well, after
+      the murder I calculated that Beppo would probably hurry rather
+      than delay his movements. He would fear that the police would
+      read his secret, and so he hastened on before they should get
+      ahead of him. Of course, I could not say that he had not found
+      the pearl in Harker’s bust. I had not even concluded for certain
+      that it was the pearl, but it was evident to me that he was
+      looking for something, since he carried the bust past the other
+      houses in order to break it in the garden which had a lamp
+      overlooking it. Since Harker’s bust was one in three, the chances
+      were exactly as I told you—two to one against the pearl being
+      inside it. There remained two busts, and it was obvious that he
+      would go for the London one first. I warned the inmates of the
+      house, so as to avoid a second tragedy, and we went down, with
+      the happiest results. By that time, of course, I knew for certain
+      that it was the Borgia pearl that we were after. The name of the
+      murdered man linked the one event with the other. There only
+      remained a single bust—the Reading one—and the pearl must be
+      there. I bought it in your presence from the owner—and there it
+      lies.”
+
+      We sat in silence for a moment.
+
+      “Well,” said Lestrade, “I’ve seen you handle a good many cases,
+      Mr. Holmes, but I don’t know that I ever knew a more workmanlike
+      one than that. We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No,
+      sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow,
+      there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest
+      constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”
+
+      “Thank you!” said Holmes. “Thank you!” and as he turned away, it
+      seemed to me that he was more nearly moved by the softer human
+      emotions than I had ever seen him. A moment later he was the cold
+      and practical thinker once more. “Put the pearl in the safe,
+      Watson,” said he, “and get out the papers of the Conk-Singleton
+      forgery case. Good-bye, Lestrade. If any little problem comes
+      your way, I shall be happy, if I can, to give you a hint or two
+      as to its solution.”
+
+
+
+
+
+",The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,Arthur Conan Doyle,16,['Beppo']
+"cover
+The Sign of the Four
+by Arthur Conan Doyle
+Contents
+Chapter I. The Science of Deduction
+Chapter II. The Statement of the Case
+Chapter III. In Quest of a Solution
+Chapter IV. The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
+Chapter V. The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
+Chapter VI. Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
+Chapter VII. The Episode of the Barrel
+Chapter VIII. The Baker Street Irregulars
+Chapter IX. A Break in the Chain
+Chapter X. The End of the Islander
+Chapter XI. The Great Agra Treasure
+Chapter XII. The Strange Story of Jonathan Small
+Chapter I
+The Science of Deduction
+Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and
+his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long,
+white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back
+his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully
+upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with
+innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home,
+pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined
+arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.
+Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but
+custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to
+day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled
+nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to
+protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver
+my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant
+air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would
+care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his
+masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many
+extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing
+him.
+Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken
+with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme
+deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no
+longer.
+“Which is it to-day?” I asked,—“morphine or cocaine?”
+He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he
+had opened. “It is cocaine,” he said,—“a seven-per-cent. solution.
+Would you care to try it?”
+“No, indeed,” I answered, brusquely. “My constitution has not got over
+the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon
+it.”
+He smiled at my vehemence. “Perhaps you are right, Watson,” he said. “I
+suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however,
+so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its
+secondary action is a matter of small moment.”
+“But consider!” I said, earnestly. “Count the cost! Your brain may, as
+you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid
+process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a
+permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon
+you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a
+mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which
+you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to
+another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to
+some extent answerable.”
+He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tips
+together and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who
+has a relish for conversation.
+“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me
+work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate
+analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then
+with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence.
+I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own
+particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the only one in
+the world.”
+“The only unofficial detective?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
+“The only unofficial consulting detective,” he answered. “I am the last
+and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson or Lestrade or
+Athelney Jones are out of their depths—which, by the way, is their
+normal state—the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an
+expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such
+cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure
+of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But
+you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the
+Jefferson Hope case.”
+“Yes, indeed,” said I, cordially. “I was never so struck by anything in
+my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure with the somewhat
+fantastic title of ‘A Study in Scarlet.’”
+He shook his head sadly. “I glanced over it,” said he. “Honestly, I
+cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact
+science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.
+You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much
+the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the
+fifth proposition of Euclid.”
+“But the romance was there,” I remonstrated. “I could not tamper with
+the facts.”
+“Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of
+proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the
+case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from
+effects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it.”
+I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially
+designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the
+egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be
+devoted to his own special doings. More than once during the years that
+I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity
+underlay my companion’s quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark,
+however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bullet through
+it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it
+ached wearily at every change of the weather.
+“My practice has extended recently to the Continent,” said Holmes,
+after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. “I was consulted
+last week by François Le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come
+rather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has all
+the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide
+range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments
+of his art. The case was concerned with a will, and possessed some
+features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases,
+the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have
+suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this
+morning acknowledging my assistance.” He tossed over, as he spoke, a
+crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it,
+catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray “magnifiques,”
+“coup-de-maîtres,” and “tours-de-force,” all testifying to the ardent
+admiration of the Frenchman.
+“He speaks as a pupil to his master,” said I.
+“Oh, he rates my assistance too highly,” said Sherlock Holmes, lightly.
+“He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three
+qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of
+observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge; and
+that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into
+French.”
+“Your works?”
+“Oh, didn’t you know?” he cried, laughing. “Yes, I have been guilty of
+several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for
+example, is one ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various
+Tobaccoes.’ In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-,
+cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the
+difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in
+criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a
+clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been
+done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows
+your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference
+between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of
+bird’s-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.”
+“You have an extraordinary genius for minutiæ,” I remarked.
+“I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing
+of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a
+preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little work upon the
+influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the
+hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, and
+diamond-polishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to the
+scientific detective,—especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in
+discovering the antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my
+hobby.”
+“Not at all,” I answered, earnestly. “It is of the greatest interest to
+me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your
+practical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation and
+deduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other.”
+“Why, hardly,” he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair,
+and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. “For example,
+observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street
+Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there
+you dispatched a telegram.”
+“Right!” said I. “Right on both points! But I confess that I don’t see
+how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have
+mentioned it to no one.”
+“It is simplicity itself,” he remarked, chuckling at my surprise,—“so
+absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may
+serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation
+tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep.
+Just opposite the Wigmore Street Office they have taken up the pavement
+and thrown up some earth which lies in such a way that it is difficult
+to avoid treading in it in entering. The earth is of this peculiar
+reddish tint which is found, as far as I know, nowhere else in the
+neighbourhood. So much is observation. The rest is deduction.”
+“How, then, did you deduce the telegram?”
+“Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I sat
+opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there that
+you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of post-cards. What could
+you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire? Eliminate
+all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.”
+“In this case it certainly is so,” I replied, after a little thought.
+“The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you think
+me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?”
+“On the contrary,” he answered, “it would prevent me from taking a
+second dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any problem
+which you might submit to me.”
+“I have heard you say that it is difficult for a man to have any object
+in daily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon it
+in such a way that a trained observer might read it. Now, I have here a
+watch which has recently come into my possession. Would you have the
+kindness to let me have an opinion upon the character or habits of the
+late owner?”
+I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in my
+heart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and I
+intended it as a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which he
+occasionally assumed. He balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard at
+the dial, opened the back, and examined the works, first with his naked
+eyes and then with a powerful convex lens. I could hardly keep from
+smiling at his crestfallen face when he finally snapped the case to and
+handed it back.
+“There are hardly any data,” he remarked. “The watch has been recently
+cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts.”
+“You are right,” I answered. “It was cleaned before being sent to me.”
+In my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame and
+impotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he expect from an
+uncleaned watch?
+“Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren,” he
+observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes.
+“Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to
+your elder brother, who inherited it from your father.”
+“That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?”
+“Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch is
+nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so
+it was made for the last generation. Jewelry usually descends to the
+eldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father.
+Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years. It has,
+therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother.”
+“Right, so far,” said I. “Anything else?”
+“He was a man of untidy habits,—very untidy and careless. He was left
+with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time
+in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally,
+taking to drink, he died. That is all I can gather.”
+I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room with
+considerable bitterness in my heart.
+“This is unworthy of you, Holmes,” I said. “I could not have believed
+that you would have descended to this. You have made inquires into the
+history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this
+knowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot expect me to believe that
+you have read all this from his old watch! It is unkind, and, to speak
+plainly, has a touch of charlatanism in it.”
+“My dear doctor,” said he, kindly, “pray accept my apologies. Viewing
+the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and
+painful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that I never
+even knew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch.”
+“Then how in the name of all that is wonderful did you get these facts?
+They are absolutely correct in every particular.”
+“Ah, that is good luck. I could only say what was the balance of
+probability. I did not at all expect to be so accurate.”
+“But it was not mere guess-work?”
+“No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit,—destructive to the
+logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do
+not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which
+large inferences may depend. For example, I began by stating that your
+brother was careless. When you observe the lower part of that
+watch-case you notice that it is not only dinted in two places, but it
+is cut and marked all over from the habit of keeping other hard
+objects, such as coins or keys, in the same pocket. Surely it is no
+great feat to assume that a man who treats a fifty-guinea watch so
+cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither is it a very far-fetched
+inference that a man who inherits one article of such value is pretty
+well provided for in other respects.”
+I nodded, to show that I followed his reasoning.
+“It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a
+watch, to scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the
+inside of the case. It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk
+of the number being lost or transposed. There are no less than four
+such numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case.
+Inference,—that your brother was often at low water. Secondary
+inference,—that he had occasional bursts of prosperity, or he could not
+have redeemed the pledge. Finally, I ask you to look at the inner
+plate, which contains the key-hole. Look at the thousands of scratches
+all round the hole,—marks where the key has slipped. What sober man’s
+key could have scored those grooves? But you will never see a
+drunkard’s watch without them. He winds it at night, and he leaves
+these traces of his unsteady hand. Where is the mystery in all this?”
+“It is as clear as daylight,” I answered. “I regret the injustice which
+I did you. I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty. May
+I ask whether you have any professional inquiry on foot at present?”
+“None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else
+is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary,
+dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the
+street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more
+hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers,
+doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is
+commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those
+which are commonplace have any function upon earth.”
+I had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade, when with a crisp knock
+our landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.
+“A young lady for you, sir,” she said, addressing my companion.
+“Miss Mary Morstan,” he read. “Hum! I have no recollection of the name.
+Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don’t go, doctor. I should
+prefer that you remain.”
+Chapter II
+The Statement of the Case
+Miss Morstan entered the room with a firm step and an outward composure
+of manner. She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and
+dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, however, a plainness and
+simplicity about her costume which bore with it a suggestion of limited
+means. The dress was a sombre greyish beige, untrimmed and unbraided,
+and she wore a small turban of the same dull hue, relieved only by a
+suspicion of white feather in the side. Her face had neither regularity
+of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and
+amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and
+sympathetic. In an experience of women which extends over many nations
+and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which
+gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature. I could not
+but observe that as she took the seat which Sherlock Holmes placed for
+her, her lip trembled, her hand quivered, and she showed every sign of
+intense inward agitation.
+“I have come to you, Mr. Holmes,” she said, “because you once enabled
+my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester, to unravel a little domestic
+complication. She was much impressed by your kindness and skill.”
+“Mrs. Cecil Forrester,” he repeated thoughtfully. “I believe that I was
+of some slight service to her. The case, however, as I remember it, was
+a very simple one.”
+“She did not think so. But at least you cannot say the same of mine. I
+can hardly imagine anything more strange, more utterly inexplicable,
+than the situation in which I find myself.”
+Holmes rubbed his hands, and his eyes glistened. He leaned forward in
+his chair with an expression of extraordinary concentration upon his
+clear-cut, hawklike features. “State your case,” said he, in brisk,
+business tones.
+I felt that my position was an embarrassing one. “You will, I am sure,
+excuse me,” I said, rising from my chair.
+To my surprise, the young lady held up her gloved hand to detain me.
+“If your friend,” she said, “would be good enough to stop, he might be
+of inestimable service to me.”
+I relapsed into my chair.
+“Briefly,” she continued, “the facts are these. My father was an
+officer in an Indian regiment who sent me home when I was quite a
+child. My mother was dead, and I had no relative in England. I was
+placed, however, in a comfortable boarding establishment at Edinburgh,
+and there I remained until I was seventeen years of age. In the year
+1878 my father, who was senior captain of his regiment, obtained twelve
+months’ leave and came home. He telegraphed to me from London that he
+had arrived all safe, and directed me to come down at once, giving the
+Langham Hotel as his address. His message, as I remember, was full of
+kindness and love. On reaching London I drove to the Langham, and was
+informed that Captain Morstan was staying there, but that he had gone
+out the night before and had not yet returned. I waited all day without
+news of him. That night, on the advice of the manager of the hotel, I
+communicated with the police, and next morning we advertised in all the
+papers. Our inquiries led to no result; and from that day to this no
+word has ever been heard of my unfortunate father. He came home with
+his heart full of hope, to find some peace, some comfort, and instead—”
+She put her hand to her throat, and a choking sob cut short the
+sentence.
+“The date?” asked Holmes, opening his note-book.
+“He disappeared upon the 3rd of December, 1878,—nearly ten years ago.”
+“His luggage?”
+“Remained at the hotel. There was nothing in it to suggest a clue,—some
+clothes, some books, and a considerable number of curiosities from the
+Andaman Islands. He had been one of the officers in charge of the
+convict-guard there.”
+“Had he any friends in town?”
+“Only one that we know of,—Major Sholto, of his own regiment, the 34th
+Bombay Infantry. The major had retired some little time before, and
+lived at Upper Norwood. We communicated with him, of course, but he did
+not even know that his brother officer was in England.”
+“A singular case,” remarked Holmes.
+“I have not yet described to you the most singular part. About six
+years ago—to be exact, upon the 4th of May, 1882—an advertisement
+appeared in the _Times_ asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan and
+stating that it would be to her advantage to come forward. There was no
+name or address appended. I had at that time just entered the family of
+Mrs. Cecil Forrester in the capacity of governess. By her advice I
+published my address in the advertisement column. The same day there
+arrived through the post a small card-board box addressed to me, which
+I found to contain a very large and lustrous pearl. No word of writing
+was enclosed. Since then every year upon the same date there has always
+appeared a similar box, containing a similar pearl, without any clue as
+to the sender. They have been pronounced by an expert to be of a rare
+variety and of considerable value. You can see for yourselves that they
+are very handsome.” She opened a flat box as she spoke, and showed me
+six of the finest pearls that I had ever seen.
+“Your statement is most interesting,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Has
+anything else occurred to you?”
+“Yes, and no later than to-day. That is why I have come to you. This
+morning I received this letter, which you will perhaps read for
+yourself.”
+“Thank you,” said Holmes. “The envelope too, please. Postmark, London,
+S.W. Date, July 7. Hum! Man’s thumb-mark on corner,—probably postman.
+Best quality paper. Envelopes at sixpence a packet. Particular man in
+his stationery. No address. ‘Be at the third pillar from the left
+outside the Lyceum Theatre to-night at seven o’clock. If you are
+distrustful, bring two friends. You are a wronged woman, and shall have
+justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your
+unknown friend.’ Well, really, this is a very pretty little mystery.
+What do you intend to do, Miss Morstan?”
+“That is exactly what I want to ask you.”
+“Then we shall most certainly go. You and I and—yes, why, Dr. Watson is
+the very man. Your correspondent says two friends. He and I have worked
+together before.”
+“But would he come?” she asked, with something appealing in her voice
+and expression.
+“I should be proud and happy,” said I, fervently, “if I can be of any
+service.”
+“You are both very kind,” she answered. “I have led a retired life, and
+have no friends whom I could appeal to. If I am here at six it will do,
+I suppose?”
+“You must not be later,” said Holmes. “There is one other point,
+however. Is this handwriting the same as that upon the pearl-box
+addresses?”
+“I have them here,” she answered, producing half a dozen pieces of
+paper.
+“You are certainly a model client. You have the correct intuition. Let
+us see, now.” He spread out the papers upon the table, and gave little
+darting glances from one to the other. “They are disguised hands,
+except the letter,” he said, presently, “but there can be no question
+as to the authorship. See how the irrepressible Greek _e_ will break
+out, and see the twirl of the final _s_. They are undoubtedly by the
+same person. I should not like to suggest false hopes, Miss Morstan,
+but is there any resemblance between this hand and that of your
+father?”
+“Nothing could be more unlike.”
+“I expected to hear you say so. We shall look out for you, then, at
+six. Pray allow me to keep the papers. I may look into the matter
+before then. It is only half-past three. _Au revoir_, then.”
+“_Au revoir_,” said our visitor, and, with a bright, kindly glance from
+one to the other of us, she replaced her pearl-box in her bosom and
+hurried away. Standing at the window, I watched her walking briskly
+down the street, until the grey turban and white feather were but a
+speck in the sombre crowd.
+“What a very attractive woman!” I exclaimed, turning to my companion.
+He had lit his pipe again, and was leaning back with drooping eyelids.
+“Is she?” he said, languidly. “I did not observe.”
+“You really are an automaton,—a calculating-machine!” I cried. “There
+is something positively inhuman in you at times.”
+He smiled gently. “It is of the first importance,” he said, “not to
+allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to
+me a mere unit,—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are
+antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning
+woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for
+their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is
+a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the
+London poor.”
+“In this case, however—”
+“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule. Have you
+ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make
+of this fellow’s scribble?”
+“It is legible and regular,” I answered. “A man of business habits and
+some force of character.”
+Holmes shook his head. “Look at his long letters,” he said. “They
+hardly rise above the common herd. That _d_ might be an _a_, and that
+_l_ an _e_. Men of character always differentiate their long letters,
+however illegibly they may write. There is vacillation in his _k_’s and
+self-esteem in his capitals. I am going out now. I have some few
+references to make. Let me recommend this book,—one of the most
+remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.’ I
+shall be back in an hour.”
+I sat in the window with the volume in my hand, but my thoughts were
+far from the daring speculations of the writer. My mind ran upon our
+late visitor,—her smiles, the deep rich tones of her voice, the strange
+mystery which overhung her life. If she were seventeen at the time of
+her father’s disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now,—a sweet
+age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little
+sobered by experience. So I sat and mused, until such dangerous
+thoughts came into my head that I hurried away to my desk and plunged
+furiously into the latest treatise upon pathology. What was I, an army
+surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking-account, that I should
+dare to think of such things? She was a unit, a factor,—nothing more.
+If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man
+than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the
+imagination.
+Chapter III
+In Quest of a Solution
+It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and
+in excellent spirits,—a mood which in his case alternated with fits of
+the blackest depression.
+“There is no great mystery in this matter,” he said, taking the cup of
+tea which I had poured out for him. “The facts appear to admit of only
+one explanation.”
+“What! you have solved it already?”
+“Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestive
+fact, that is all. It is, however, _very_ suggestive. The details are
+still to be added. I have just found, on consulting the back files of
+the _Times_, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norword, late of the 34th
+Bombay Infantry, died upon the 28th of April, 1882.”
+“I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what this suggests.”
+“No? You surprise me. Look at it in this way, then. Captain Morstan
+disappears. The only person in London whom he could have visited is
+Major Sholto. Major Sholto denies having heard that he was in London.
+Four years later Sholto dies. _Within a week of his death_ Captain
+Morstan’s daughter receives a valuable present, which is repeated from
+year to year, and now culminates in a letter which describes her as a
+wronged woman. What wrong can it refer to except this deprivation of
+her father? And why should the presents begin immediately after
+Sholto’s death, unless it is that Sholto’s heir knows something of the
+mystery and desires to make compensation? Have you any alternative
+theory which will meet the facts?”
+“But what a strange compensation! And how strangely made! Why, too,
+should he write a letter now, rather than six years ago? Again, the
+letter speaks of giving her justice. What justice can she have? It is
+too much to suppose that her father is still alive. There is no other
+injustice in her case that you know of.”
+“There are difficulties; there are certainly difficulties,” said
+Sherlock Holmes, pensively. “But our expedition of to-night will solve
+them all. Ah, here is a four-wheeler, and Miss Morstan is inside. Are
+you all ready? Then we had better go down, for it is a little past the
+hour.”
+I picked up my hat and my heaviest stick, but I observed that Holmes
+took his revolver from his drawer and slipped it into his pocket. It
+was clear that he thought that our night’s work might be a serious one.
+Miss Morstan was muffled in a dark cloak, and her sensitive face was
+composed, but pale. She must have been more than woman if she did not
+feel some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were
+embarking, yet her self-control was perfect, and she readily answered
+the few additional questions which Sherlock Holmes put to her.
+“Major Sholto was a very particular friend of papa’s,” she said. “His
+letters were full of allusions to the major. He and papa were in
+command of the troops at the Andaman Islands, so they were thrown a
+great deal together. By the way, a curious paper was found in papa’s
+desk which no one could understand. I don’t suppose that it is of the
+slightest importance, but I thought you might care to see it, so I
+brought it with me. It is here.”
+Holmes unfolded the paper carefully and smoothed it out upon his knee.
+He then very methodically examined it all over with his double lens.
+“It is paper of native Indian manufacture,” he remarked. “It has at
+some time been pinned to a board. The diagram upon it appears to be a
+plan of part of a large building with numerous halls, corridors, and
+passages. At one point is a small cross done in red ink, and above it
+is ‘3.37 from left,’ in faded pencil-writing. In the left-hand corner
+is a curious hieroglyphic like four crosses in a line with their arms
+touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters,
+‘The sign of the four,—Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan,
+Dost Akbar.’ No, I confess that I do not see how this bears upon the
+matter. Yet it is evidently a document of importance. It has been kept
+carefully in a pocket-book; for the one side is as clean as the other.”
+“It was in his pocket-book that we found it.”
+“Preserve it carefully, then, Miss Morstan, for it may prove to be of
+use to us. I begin to suspect that this matter may turn out to be much
+deeper and more subtle than I at first supposed. I must reconsider my
+ideas.” He leaned back in the cab, and I could see by his drawn brow
+and his vacant eye that he was thinking intently. Miss Morstan and I
+chatted in an undertone about our present expedition and its possible
+outcome, but our companion maintained his impenetrable reserve until
+the end of our journey.
+It was a September evening, and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had
+been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city.
+Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the
+Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw
+a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare
+from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and
+threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There
+was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless
+procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of
+light,—sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they
+flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once
+more. I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening,
+with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to make
+me nervous and depressed. I could see from Miss Morstan’s manner that
+she was suffering from the same feeling. Holmes alone could rise
+superior to petty influences. He held his open note-book upon his knee,
+and from time to time he jotted down figures and memoranda in the light
+of his pocket-lantern.
+At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the
+side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and
+four-wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of
+shirt-fronted men and beshawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly
+reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a small,
+dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.
+“Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?” he asked.
+“I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends,” said she.
+He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us.
+“You will excuse me, miss,” he said with a certain dogged manner, “but
+I was to ask you to give me your word that neither of your companions
+is a police-officer.”
+“I give you my word on that,” she answered.
+He gave a shrill whistle, on which a street Arab led across a
+four-wheeler and opened the door. The man who had addressed us mounted
+to the box, while we took our places inside. We had hardly done so
+before the driver whipped up his horse, and we plunged away at a
+furious pace through the foggy streets.
+The situation was a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place,
+on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete
+hoax,—which was an inconceivable hypothesis,—or else we had good reason
+to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. Miss
+Morstan’s demeanor was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavored
+to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventures in
+Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our
+situation and so curious as to our destination that my stories were
+slightly involved. To this day she declares that I told her one moving
+anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night,
+and how I fired a double-barrelled tiger cub at it. At first I had some
+idea as to the direction in which we were driving; but soon, what with
+our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of London, I lost my
+bearings, and knew nothing, save that we seemed to be going a very long
+way. Sherlock Holmes was never at fault, however, and he muttered the
+names as the cab rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous
+by-streets.
+“Rochester Row,” said he. “Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the
+Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side, apparently.
+Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses of
+the river.”
+We did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames with the
+lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on, and
+was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other side.
+“Wordsworth Road,” said my companion. “Priory Road. Lark Hall Lane.
+Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbor Lane. Our quest does not
+appear to take us to very fashionable regions.”
+We had, indeed, reached a questionable and forbidding neighbourhood.
+Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare
+and tawdry brilliancy of public houses at the corner. Then came rows of
+two-storied villas each with a fronting of miniature garden, and then
+again interminable lines of new staring brick buildings,—the monster
+tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the country. At
+last the cab drew up at the third house in a new terrace. None of the
+other houses were inhabited, and that at which we stopped was as dark
+as its neighbours, save for a single glimmer in the kitchen window. On
+our knocking, however, the door was instantly thrown open by a Hindoo
+servant clad in a yellow turban, white loose-fitting clothes, and a
+yellow sash. There was something strangely incongruous in this Oriental
+figure framed in the commonplace doorway of a third-rate suburban
+dwelling-house.
+“The Sahib awaits you,” said he, and even as he spoke there came a high
+piping voice from some inner room. “Show them in to me, khitmutgar,” it
+cried. “Show them straight in to me.”
+Chapter IV
+The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
+We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill-lit and
+worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw
+open. A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre
+of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle
+of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which
+shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees. He writhed
+his hands together as he stood, and his features were in a perpetual
+jerk, now smiling, now scowling, but never for an instant in repose.
+Nature had given him a pendulous lip, and a too visible line of yellow
+and irregular teeth, which he strove feebly to conceal by constantly
+passing his hand over the lower part of his face. In spite of his
+obtrusive baldness, he gave the impression of youth. In point of fact
+he had just turned his thirtieth year.
+“Your servant, Miss Morstan,” he kept repeating, in a thin, high voice.
+“Your servant, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A small
+place, miss, but furnished to my own liking. An oasis of art in the
+howling desert of South London.”
+We were all astonished by the appearance of the apartment into which he
+invited us. In that sorry house it looked as out of place as a diamond
+of the first water in a setting of brass. The richest and glossiest of
+curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and there to
+expose some richly-mounted painting or Oriental vase. The carpet was of
+amber-and-black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly
+into it, as into a bed of moss. Two great tiger-skins thrown athwart it
+increased the suggestion of Eastern luxury, as did a huge hookah which
+stood upon a mat in the corner. A lamp in the fashion of a silver dove
+was hung from an almost invisible golden wire in the centre of the
+room. As it burned it filled the air with a subtle and aromatic odour.
+“Mr. Thaddeus Sholto,” said the little man, still jerking and smiling.
+“That is my name. You are Miss Morstan, of course. And these
+gentlemen—”
+“This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and this is Dr. Watson.”
+“A doctor, eh?” cried he, much excited. “Have you your stethoscope?
+Might I ask you—would you have the kindness? I have grave doubts as to
+my mitral valve, if you would be so very good. The aortic I may rely
+upon, but I should value your opinion upon the mitral.”
+I listened to his heart, as requested, but was unable to find anything
+amiss, save indeed that he was in an ecstasy of fear, for he shivered
+from head to foot. “It appears to be normal,” I said. “You have no
+cause for uneasiness.”
+“You will excuse my anxiety, Miss Morstan,” he remarked, airily. “I am
+a great sufferer, and I have long had suspicions as to that valve. I am
+delighted to hear that they are unwarranted. Had your father, Miss
+Morstan, refrained from throwing a strain upon his heart, he might have
+been alive now.”
+I could have struck the man across the face, so hot was I at this
+callous and off-hand reference to so delicate a matter. Miss Morstan
+sat down, and her face grew white to the lips. “I knew in my heart that
+he was dead,” said she.
+“I can give you every information,” said he, “and, what is more, I can
+do you justice; and I will, too, whatever Brother Bartholomew may say.
+I am so glad to have your friends here, not only as an escort to you,
+but also as witnesses to what I am about to do and say. The three of us
+can show a bold front to Brother Bartholomew. But let us have no
+outsiders,—no police or officials. We can settle everything
+satisfactorily among ourselves, without any interference. Nothing would
+annoy Brother Bartholomew more than any publicity.” He sat down upon a
+low settee and blinked at us inquiringly with his weak, watery blue
+eyes.
+“For my part,” said Holmes, “whatever you may choose to say will go no
+further.”
+I nodded to show my agreement.
+“That is well! That is well!” said he. “May I offer you a glass of
+Chianti, Miss Morstan? Or of Tokay? I keep no other wines. Shall I open
+a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to
+tobacco-smoke, to the mild balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco. I am
+a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative.” He
+applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily
+through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semi-circle, with our
+heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky
+little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in the
+centre.
+“When I first determined to make this communication to you,” said he,
+“I might have given you my address, but I feared that you might
+disregard my request and bring unpleasant people with you. I took the
+liberty, therefore, of making an appointment in such a way that my man
+Williams might be able to see you first. I have complete confidence in
+his discretion, and he had orders, if he were dissatisfied, to proceed
+no further in the matter. You will excuse these precautions, but I am a
+man of somewhat retiring, and I might even say refined, tastes, and
+there is nothing more unæsthetic than a policeman. I have a natural
+shrinking from all forms of rough materialism. I seldom come in contact
+with the rough crowd. I live, as you see, with some little atmosphere
+of elegance around me. I may call myself a patron of the arts. It is my
+weakness. The landscape is a genuine Corot, and, though a connoisseur
+might perhaps throw a doubt upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be
+the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern
+French school.”
+“You will excuse me, Mr. Sholto,” said Miss Morstan, “but I am here at
+your request to learn something which you desire to tell me. It is very
+late, and I should desire the interview to be as short as possible.”
+“At the best it must take some time,” he answered; “for we shall
+certainly have to go to Norwood and see Brother Bartholomew. We shall
+all go and try if we can get the better of Brother Bartholomew. He is
+very angry with me for taking the course which has seemed right to me.
+I had quite high words with him last night. You cannot imagine what a
+terrible fellow he is when he is angry.”
+“If we are to go to Norwood it would perhaps be as well to start at
+once,” I ventured to remark.
+He laughed until his ears were quite red. “That would hardly do,” he
+cried. “I don’t know what he would say if I brought you in that sudden
+way. No, I must prepare you by showing you how we all stand to each
+other. In the first place, I must tell you that there are several
+points in the story of which I am myself ignorant. I can only lay the
+facts before you as far as I know them myself.
+“My father was, as you may have guessed, Major John Sholto, once of the
+Indian army. He retired some eleven years ago, and came to live at
+Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood. He had prospered in India, and
+brought back with him a considerable sum of money, a large collection
+of valuable curiosities, and a staff of native servants. With these
+advantages he bought himself a house, and lived in great luxury. My
+twin-brother Bartholomew and I were the only children.
+“I very well remember the sensation which was caused by the
+disappearance of Captain Morstan. We read the details in the papers,
+and, knowing that he had been a friend of our father’s, we discussed
+the case freely in his presence. He used to join in our speculations as
+to what could have happened. Never for an instant did we suspect that
+he had the whole secret hidden in his own breast,—that of all men he
+alone knew the fate of Arthur Morstan.
+“We did know, however, that some mystery—some positive danger—overhung
+our father. He was very fearful of going out alone, and he always
+employed two prize-fighters to act as porters at Pondicherry Lodge.
+Williams, who drove you to-night, was one of them. He was once
+light-weight champion of England. Our father would never tell us what
+it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden
+legs. On one occasion he actually fired his revolver at a wooden-legged
+man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for orders. We
+had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother and I used to
+think this a mere whim of my father’s, but events have since led us to
+change our opinion.
+“Early in 1882 my father received a letter from India which was a great
+shock to him. He nearly fainted at the breakfast-table when he opened
+it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the letter
+we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that it was
+short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for years from
+an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the
+end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope, and that he
+wished to make a last communication to us.
+“When we entered his room he was propped up with pillows and breathing
+heavily. He besought us to lock the door and to come upon either side
+of the bed. Then, grasping our hands, he made a remarkable statement to
+us, in a voice which was broken as much by emotion as by pain. I shall
+try and give it to you in his own very words.
+“‘I have only one thing,’ he said, ‘which weighs upon my mind at this
+supreme moment. It is my treatment of poor Morstan’s orphan. The cursed
+greed which has been my besetting sin through life has withheld from
+her the treasure, half at least of which should have been hers. And yet
+I have made no use of it myself,—so blind and foolish a thing is
+avarice. The mere feeling of possession has been so dear to me that I
+could not bear to share it with another. See that chaplet dipped with
+pearls beside the quinine-bottle. Even that I could not bear to part
+with, although I had got it out with the design of sending it to her.
+You, my sons, will give her a fair share of the Agra treasure. But send
+her nothing—not even the chaplet—until I am gone. After all, men have
+been as bad as this and have recovered.
+“‘I will tell you how Morstan died,’ he continued. ‘He had suffered for
+years from a weak heart, but he concealed it from every one. I alone
+knew it. When in India, he and I, through a remarkable chain of
+circumstances, came into possession of a considerable treasure. I
+brought it over to England, and on the night of Morstan’s arrival he
+came straight over here to claim his share. He walked over from the
+station, and was admitted by my faithful old Lal Chowdar, who is now
+dead. Morstan and I had a difference of opinion as to the division of
+the treasure, and we came to heated words. Morstan had sprung out of
+his chair in a paroxysm of anger, when he suddenly pressed his hand to
+his side, his face turned a dusky hue, and he fell backwards, cutting
+his head against the corner of the treasure-chest. When I stooped over
+him I found, to my horror, that he was dead.
+“‘For a long time I sat half distracted, wondering what I should do. My
+first impulse was, of course, to call for assistance; but I could not
+but recognise that there was every chance that I would be accused of
+his murder. His death at the moment of a quarrel, and the gash in his
+head, would be black against me. Again, an official inquiry could not
+be made without bringing out some facts about the treasure, which I was
+particularly anxious to keep secret. He had told me that no soul upon
+earth knew where he had gone. There seemed to be no necessity why any
+soul ever should know.
+“‘I was still pondering over the matter, when, looking up, I saw my
+servant, Lal Chowdar, in the doorway. He stole in and bolted the door
+behind him. “Do not fear, Sahib,” he said. “No one need know that you
+have killed him. Let us hide him away, and who is the wiser?” “I did
+not kill him,” said I. Lal Chowdar shook his head and smiled. “I heard
+it all, Sahib,” said he. “I heard you quarrel, and I heard the blow.
+But my lips are sealed. All are asleep in the house. Let us put him
+away together.” That was enough to decide me. If my own servant could
+not believe my innocence, how could I hope to make it good before
+twelve foolish tradesmen in a jury-box? Lal Chowdar and I disposed of
+the body that night, and within a few days the London papers were full
+of the mysterious disappearance of Captain Morstan. You will see from
+what I say that I can hardly be blamed in the matter. My fault lies in
+the fact that we concealed not only the body, but also the treasure,
+and that I have clung to Morstan’s share as well as to my own. I wish
+you, therefore, to make restitution. Put your ears down to my mouth.
+The treasure is hidden in—’
+“At this instant a horrible change came over his expression; his eyes
+stared wildly, his jaw dropped, and he yelled, in a voice which I can
+never forget, ‘Keep him out! For Christ’s sake keep him out!’ We both
+stared round at the window behind us upon which his gaze was fixed. A
+face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the
+whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a
+bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of
+concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the window,
+but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head had
+dropped and his pulse had ceased to beat.
+“We searched the garden that night, but found no sign of the intruder,
+save that just under the window a single footmark was visible in the
+flower-bed. But for that one trace, we might have thought that our
+imaginations had conjured up that wild, fierce face. We soon, however,
+had another and a more striking proof that there were secret agencies
+at work all round us. The window of my father’s room was found open in
+the morning, his cupboards and boxes had been rifled, and upon his
+chest was fixed a torn piece of paper, with the words ‘The sign of the
+four’ scrawled across it. What the phrase meant, or who our secret
+visitor may have been, we never knew. As far as we can judge, none of
+my father’s property had been actually stolen, though everything had
+been turned out. My brother and I naturally associated this peculiar
+incident with the fear which haunted my father during his life; but it
+is still a complete mystery to us.”
+The little man stopped to relight his hookah and puffed thoughtfully
+for a few moments. We had all sat absorbed, listening to his
+extraordinary narrative. At the short account of her father’s death
+Miss Morstan had turned deadly white, and for a moment I feared that
+she was about to faint. She rallied however, on drinking a glass of
+water which I quietly poured out for her from a Venetian carafe upon
+the side-table. Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair with an
+abstracted expression and the lids drawn low over his glittering eyes.
+As I glanced at him I could not but think how on that very day he had
+complained bitterly of the commonplaceness of life. Here at least was a
+problem which would tax his sagacity to the utmost. Mr. Thaddeus Sholto
+looked from one to the other of us with an obvious pride at the effect
+which his story had produced, and then continued between the puffs of
+his overgrown pipe.
+“My brother and I,” said he, “were, as you may imagine, much excited as
+to the treasure which my father had spoken of. For weeks and for months
+we dug and delved in every part of the garden, without discovering its
+whereabouts. It was maddening to think that the hiding-place was on his
+very lips at the moment that he died. We could judge the splendour of
+the missing riches by the chaplet which he had taken out. Over this
+chaplet my brother Bartholomew and I had some little discussion. The
+pearls were evidently of great value, and he was averse to part with
+them, for, between friends, my brother was himself a little inclined to
+my father’s fault. He thought, too, that if we parted with the chaplet
+it might give rise to gossip and finally bring us into trouble. It was
+all that I could do to persuade him to let me find out Miss Morstan’s
+address and send her a detached pearl at fixed intervals, so that at
+least she might never feel destitute.”
+“It was a kindly thought,” said our companion, earnestly. “It was
+extremely good of you.”
+The little man waved his hand deprecatingly. “We were your trustees,”
+he said. “That was the view which I took of it, though Brother
+Bartholomew could not altogether see it in that light. We had plenty of
+money ourselves. I desired no more. Besides, it would have been such
+bad taste to have treated a young lady in so scurvy a fashion. ‘Le
+mauvais goût mène au crime.’ The French have a very neat way of putting
+these things. Our difference of opinion on this subject went so far
+that I thought it best to set up rooms for myself: so I left
+Pondicherry Lodge, taking the old khitmutgar and Williams with me.
+Yesterday, however, I learn that an event of extreme importance has
+occurred. The treasure has been discovered. I instantly communicated
+with Miss Morstan, and it only remains for us to drive out to Norwood
+and demand our share. I explained my views last night to Brother
+Bartholomew: so we shall be expected, if not welcome, visitors.”
+Mr. Thaddeus Sholto ceased, and sat twitching on his luxurious settee.
+We all remained silent, with our thoughts upon the new development
+which the mysterious business had taken. Holmes was the first to spring
+to his feet.
+“You have done well, sir, from first to last,” said he. “It is possible
+that we may be able to make you some small return by throwing some
+light upon that which is still dark to you. But, as Miss Morstan
+remarked just now, it is late, and we had best put the matter through
+without delay.”
+Our new acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his
+hookah, and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged
+topcoat with Astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up,
+in spite of the extreme closeness of the night, and finished his attire
+by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging lappets which covered the
+ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky
+face. “My health is somewhat fragile,” he remarked, as he led the way
+down the passage. “I am compelled to be a valetudinarian.”
+Our cab was awaiting us outside, and our programme was evidently
+prearranged, for the driver started off at once at a rapid pace.
+Thaddeus Sholto talked incessantly, in a voice which rose high above
+the rattle of the wheels.
+“Bartholomew is a clever fellow,” said he. “How do you think he found
+out where the treasure was? He had come to the conclusion that it was
+somewhere indoors: so he worked out all the cubic space of the house,
+and made measurements everywhere, so that not one inch should be
+unaccounted for. Among other things, he found that the height of the
+building was seventy-four feet, but on adding together the heights of
+all the separate rooms, and making every allowance for the space
+between, which he ascertained by borings, he could not bring the total
+to more than seventy feet. There were four feet unaccounted for. These
+could only be at the top of the building. He knocked a hole, therefore,
+in the lath-and-plaster ceiling of the highest room, and there, sure
+enough, he came upon another little garret above it, which had been
+sealed up and was known to no one. In the centre stood the
+treasure-chest, resting upon two rafters. He lowered it through the
+hole, and there it lies. He computes the value of the jewels at not
+less than half a million sterling.”
+At the mention of this gigantic sum we all stared at one another
+open-eyed. Miss Morstan, could we secure her rights, would change from
+a needy governess to the richest heiress in England. Surely it was the
+place of a loyal friend to rejoice at such news; yet I am ashamed to
+say that selfishness took me by the soul, and that my heart turned as
+heavy as lead within me. I stammered out some few halting words of
+congratulation, and then sat downcast, with my head drooped, deaf to
+the babble of our new acquaintance. He was clearly a confirmed
+hypochondriac, and I was dreamily conscious that he was pouring forth
+interminable trains of symptoms, and imploring information as to the
+composition and action of innumerable quack nostrums, some of which he
+bore about in a leather case in his pocket. I trust that he may not
+remember any of the answers which I gave him that night. Holmes
+declares that he overheard me caution him against the great danger of
+taking more than two drops of castor oil, while I recommended
+strychnine in large doses as a sedative. However that may be, I was
+certainly relieved when our cab pulled up with a jerk and the coachman
+sprang down to open the door.
+“This, Miss Morstan, is Pondicherry Lodge,” said Mr. Thaddeus Sholto,
+as he handed her out.
+Chapter V
+The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
+It was nearly eleven o’clock when we reached this final stage of our
+night’s adventures. We had left the damp fog of the great city behind
+us, and the night was fairly fine. A warm wind blew from the westward,
+and heavy clouds moved slowly across the sky, with half a moon peeping
+occasionally through the rifts. It was clear enough to see for some
+distance, but Thaddeus Sholto took down one of the side-lamps from the
+carriage to give us a better light upon our way.
+Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds, and was girt round with a
+very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single narrow
+iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide
+knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat.
+“Who is there?” cried a gruff voice from within.
+“It is I, McMurdo. You surely know my knock by this time.”
+There was a grumbling sound and a clanking and jarring of keys. The
+door swung heavily back, and a short, deep-chested man stood in the
+opening, with the yellow light of the lantern shining upon his
+protruded face and twinkling distrustful eyes.
+“That you, Mr. Thaddeus? But who are the others? I had no orders about
+them from the master.”
+“No, McMurdo? You surprise me! I told my brother last night that I
+should bring some friends.”
+“He ain’t been out o’ his room to-day, Mr. Thaddeus, and I have no
+orders. You know very well that I must stick to regulations. I can let
+you in, but your friends must just stop where they are.”
+This was an unexpected obstacle. Thaddeus Sholto looked about him in a
+perplexed and helpless manner. “This is too bad of you, McMurdo!” he
+said. “If I guarantee them, that is enough for you. There is the young
+lady, too. She cannot wait on the public road at this hour.”
+“Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus,” said the porter, inexorably. “Folk may be
+friends o’ yours, and yet no friends o’ the master’s. He pays me well
+to do my duty, and my duty I’ll do. I don’t know none o’ your friends.”
+“Oh, yes you do, McMurdo,” cried Sherlock Holmes, genially. “I don’t
+think you can have forgotten me. Don’t you remember the amateur who
+fought three rounds with you at Alison’s rooms on the night of your
+benefit four years back?”
+“Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” roared the prize-fighter. “God’s truth! how
+could I have mistook you? If instead o’ standin’ there so quiet you had
+just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw, I’d
+ha’ known you without a question. Ah, you’re one that has wasted your
+gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the
+fancy.”
+“You see, Watson, if all else fails me I have still one of the
+scientific professions open to me,” said Holmes, laughing. “Our friend
+won’t keep us out in the cold now, I am sure.”
+“In you come, sir, in you come,—you and your friends,” he answered.
+“Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus, but orders are very strict. Had to be
+certain of your friends before I let them in.”
+Inside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump of
+a house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow save where a
+moonbeam struck one corner and glimmered in a garret window. The vast
+size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence, struck a
+chill to the heart. Even Thaddeus Sholto seemed ill at ease, and the
+lantern quivered and rattled in his hand.
+“I cannot understand it,” he said. “There must be some mistake. I
+distinctly told Bartholomew that we should be here, and yet there is no
+light in his window. I do not know what to make of it.”
+“Does he always guard the premises in this way?” asked Holmes.
+“Yes; he has followed my father’s custom. He was the favourite son, you
+know, and I sometimes think that my father may have told him more than
+he ever told me. That is Bartholomew’s window up there where the
+moonshine strikes. It is quite bright, but there is no light from
+within, I think.”
+“None,” said Holmes. “But I see the glint of a light in that little
+window beside the door.”
+“Ah, that is the housekeeper’s room. That is where old Mrs. Bernstone
+sits. She can tell us all about it. But perhaps you would not mind
+waiting here for a minute or two, for if we all go in together and she
+has no word of our coming she may be alarmed. But hush! what is that?”
+He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light
+flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and
+we all stood with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great
+black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most
+pitiful of sounds,—the shrill, broken whimpering of a frightened woman.
+“It is Mrs. Bernstone,” said Sholto. “She is the only woman in the
+house. Wait here. I shall be back in a moment.” He hurried for the
+door, and knocked in his peculiar way. We could see a tall old woman
+admit him, and sway with pleasure at the very sight of him.
+“Oh, Mr. Thaddeus, sir, I am so glad you have come! I am so glad you
+have come, Mr. Thaddeus, sir!” We heard her reiterated rejoicings until
+the door was closed and her voice died away into a muffled monotone.
+Our guide had left us the lantern. Holmes swung it slowly round, and
+peered keenly at the house, and at the great rubbish-heaps which
+cumbered the grounds. Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand
+was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two who
+had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even
+look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble
+our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marvelled at it
+since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should
+go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also
+the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand
+in hand, like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all
+the dark things that surrounded us.
+“What a strange place!” she said, looking round.
+“It looks as though all the moles in England had been let loose in it.
+I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat,
+where the prospectors had been at work.”
+“And from the same cause,” said Holmes. “These are the traces of the
+treasure-seekers. You must remember that they were six years looking
+for it. No wonder that the grounds look like a gravel-pit.”
+At that moment the door of the house burst open, and Thaddeus Sholto
+came running out, with his hands thrown forward and terror in his eyes.
+“There is something amiss with Bartholomew!” he cried. “I am
+frightened! My nerves cannot stand it.” He was, indeed, half blubbering
+with fear, and his twitching feeble face peeping out from the great
+Astrakhan collar had the helpless appealing expression of a terrified
+child.
+“Come into the house,” said Holmes, in his crisp, firm way.
+“Yes, do!” pleaded Thaddeus Sholto. “I really do not feel equal to
+giving directions.”
+We all followed him into the housekeeper’s room, which stood upon the
+left-hand side of the passage. The old woman was pacing up and down
+with a scared look and restless picking fingers, but the sight of Miss
+Morstan appeared to have a soothing effect upon her.
+“God bless your sweet calm face!” she cried, with an hysterical sob.
+“It does me good to see you. Oh, but I have been sorely tried this
+day!”
+Our companion patted her thin, work-worn hand, and murmured some few
+words of kindly womanly comfort which brought the colour back into the
+other’s bloodless cheeks.
+“Master has locked himself in and will not answer me,” she explained.
+“All day I have waited to hear from him, for he often likes to be
+alone; but an hour ago I feared that something was amiss, so I went up
+and peeped through the key-hole. You must go up, Mr. Thaddeus,—you must
+go up and look for yourself. I have seen Mr. Bartholomew Sholto in joy
+and in sorrow for ten long years, but I never saw him with such a face
+on him as that.”
+Sherlock Holmes took the lamp and led the way, for Thaddeus Sholto’s
+teeth were chattering in his head. So shaken was he that I had to pass
+my hand under his arm as we went up the stairs, for his knees were
+trembling under him. Twice as we ascended Holmes whipped his lens out
+of his pocket and carefully examined marks which appeared to me to be
+mere shapeless smudges of dust upon the cocoa-nut matting which served
+as a stair-carpet. He walked slowly from step to step, holding the
+lamp, and shooting keen glances to right and left. Miss Morstan had
+remained behind with the frightened housekeeper.
+The third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some length,
+with a great picture in Indian tapestry upon the right of it and three
+doors upon the left. Holmes advanced along it in the same slow and
+methodical way, while we kept close at his heels, with our long black
+shadows streaming backwards down the corridor. The third door was that
+which we were seeking. Holmes knocked without receiving any answer, and
+then tried to turn the handle and force it open. It was locked on the
+inside, however, and by a broad and powerful bolt, as we could see when
+we set our lamp up against it. The key being turned, however, the hole
+was not entirely closed. Sherlock Holmes bent down to it, and instantly
+rose again with a sharp intaking of the breath.
+“There is something devilish in this, Watson,” said he, more moved than
+I had ever before seen him. “What do you make of it?”
+I stooped to the hole, and recoiled in horror. Moonlight was streaming
+into the room, and it was bright with a vague and shifty radiance.
+Looking straight at me, and suspended, as it were, in the air, for all
+beneath was in shadow, there hung a face,—the very face of our
+companion Thaddeus. There was the same high, shining head, the same
+circular bristle of red hair, the same bloodless countenance. The
+features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural
+grin, which in that still and moonlit room was more jarring to the
+nerves than any scowl or contortion. So like was the face to that of
+our little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was
+indeed with us. Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us
+that his brother and he were twins.
+“This is terrible!” I said to Holmes. “What is to be done?”
+“The door must come down,” he answered, and, springing against it, he
+put all his weight upon the lock. It creaked and groaned, but did not
+yield. Together we flung ourselves upon it once more, and this time it
+gave way with a sudden snap, and we found ourselves within Bartholomew
+Sholto’s chamber.
+It appeared to have been fitted up as a chemical laboratory. A double
+line of glass-stoppered bottles was drawn up upon the wall opposite the
+door, and the table was littered over with Bunsen burners, test-tubes,
+and retorts. In the corners stood carboys of acid in wicker baskets.
+One of these appeared to leak or to have been broken, for a stream of
+dark-coloured liquid had trickled out from it, and the air was heavy
+with a peculiarly pungent, tar-like odour. A set of steps stood at one
+side of the room, in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and
+above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man
+to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was
+thrown carelessly together.
+By the table, in a wooden arm-chair, the master of the house was seated
+all in a heap, with his head sunk upon his left shoulder, and that
+ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face. He was stiff and cold, and
+had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his
+features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most
+fantastic fashion. By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar
+instrument,—a brown, close-grained stick, with a stone head like a
+hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet
+of note-paper with some words scrawled upon it. Holmes glanced at it,
+and then handed it to me.
+“You see,” he said, with a significant raising of the eyebrows.
+In the light of the lantern I read, with a thrill of horror, “The sign
+of the four.”
+“In God’s name, what does it all mean?” I asked.
+“It means murder,” said he, stooping over the dead man. “Ah, I expected
+it. Look here!” He pointed to what looked like a long, dark thorn stuck
+in the skin just above the ear.
+“It looks like a thorn,” said I.
+“It is a thorn. You may pick it out. But be careful, for it is
+poisoned.”
+I took it up between my finger and thumb. It came away from the skin so
+readily that hardly any mark was left behind. One tiny speck of blood
+showed where the puncture had been.
+“This is all an insoluble mystery to me,” said I. “It grows darker
+instead of clearer.”
+“On the contrary,” he answered, “it clears every instant. I only
+require a few missing links to have an entirely connected case.”
+We had almost forgotten our companion’s presence since we entered the
+chamber. He was still standing in the doorway, the very picture of
+terror, wringing his hands and moaning to himself. Suddenly, however,
+he broke out into a sharp, querulous cry.
+“The treasure is gone!” he said. “They have robbed him of the treasure!
+There is the hole through which we lowered it. I helped him to do it! I
+was the last person who saw him! I left him here last night, and I
+heard him lock the door as I came downstairs.”
+“What time was that?”
+“It was ten o’clock. And now he is dead, and the police will be called
+in, and I shall be suspected of having had a hand in it. Oh, yes, I am
+sure I shall. But you don’t think so, gentlemen? Surely you don’t think
+that it was I? Is it likely that I would have brought you here if it
+were I? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I know that I shall go mad!” He jerked his
+arms and stamped his feet in a kind of convulsive frenzy.
+“You have no reason for fear, Mr. Sholto,” said Holmes, kindly, putting
+his hand upon his shoulder. “Take my advice, and drive down to the
+station to report this matter to the police. Offer to assist them in
+every way. We shall wait here until your return.”
+The little man obeyed in a half-stupefied fashion, and we heard him
+stumbling down the stairs in the dark.
+Chapter VI
+Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
+“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, rubbing his hands, “we have half an hour to
+ourselves. Let us make good use of it. My case is, as I have told you,
+almost complete; but we must not err on the side of over-confidence.
+Simple as the case seems now, there may be something deeper underlying
+it.”
+“Simple!” I ejaculated.
+“Surely,” said he, with something of the air of a clinical professor
+expounding to his class. “Just sit in the corner there, that your
+footprints may not complicate matters. Now to work! In the first place,
+how did these folk come, and how did they go? The door has not been
+opened since last night. How of the window?” He carried the lamp across
+to it, muttering his observations aloud the while, but addressing them
+to himself rather than to me. “Window is snibbed on the inner side.
+Framework is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No
+water-pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the
+window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in
+mould upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again
+upon the floor, and here again by the table. See here, Watson! This is
+really a very pretty demonstration.”
+I looked at the round, well-defined muddy discs. “This is not a
+footmark,” said I.
+“It is something much more valuable to us. It is the impression of a
+wooden stump. You see here on the sill is the boot-mark, a heavy boot
+with the broad metal heel, and beside it is the mark of the
+timber-toe.”
+“It is the wooden-legged man.”
+“Quite so. But there has been some one else,—a very able and efficient
+ally. Could you scale that wall, doctor?”
+I looked out of the open window. The moon still shone brightly on that
+angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the ground, and,
+look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice
+in the brick-work.
+“It is absolutely impossible,” I answered.
+“Without aid it is so. But suppose you had a friend up here who lowered
+you this good stout rope which I see in the corner, securing one end of
+it to this great hook in the wall. Then, I think, if you were an active
+man, You might swarm up, wooden leg and all. You would depart, of
+course, in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope,
+untie it from the hook, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get
+away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point it may be
+noted,” he continued, fingering the rope, “that our wooden-legged
+friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands
+were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark,
+especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he
+slipped down with such velocity that he took the skin off his hand.”
+“This is all very well,” said I, “but the thing becomes more
+unintelligible than ever. How about this mysterious ally? How came he
+into the room?”
+“Yes, the ally!” repeated Holmes, pensively. “There are features of
+interest about this ally. He lifts the case from the regions of the
+commonplace. I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground in the annals
+of crime in this country,—though parallel cases suggest themselves from
+India, and, if my memory serves me, from Senegambia.”
+“How came he, then?” I reiterated. “The door is locked, the window is
+inaccessible. Was it through the chimney?”
+“The grate is much too small,” he answered. “I had already considered
+that possibility.”
+“How then?” I persisted.
+“You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often
+have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible
+whatever remains, _however improbable_, must be the truth? We know that
+he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also
+know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no
+concealment possible. Whence, then, did he come?”
+“He came through the hole in the roof,” I cried.
+“Of course he did. He must have done so. If you will have the kindness
+to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room
+above,—the secret room in which the treasure was found.”
+He mounted the steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung
+himself up into the garret. Then, lying on his face, he reached down
+for the lamp and held it while I followed him.
+The chamber in which we found ourselves was about ten feet one way and
+six the other. The floor was formed by the rafters, with thin
+lath-and-plaster between, so that in walking one had to step from beam
+to beam. The roof ran up to an apex, and was evidently the inner shell
+of the true roof of the house. There was no furniture of any sort, and
+the accumulated dust of years lay thick upon the floor.
+“Here you are, you see,” said Sherlock Holmes, putting his hand against
+the sloping wall. “This is a trap-door which leads out on to the roof.
+I can press it back, and here is the roof itself, sloping at a gentle
+angle. This, then, is the way by which Number One entered. Let us see
+if we can find any other traces of his individuality.”
+He held down the lamp to the floor, and as he did so I saw for the
+second time that night a startled, surprised look come over his face.
+For myself, as I followed his gaze my skin was cold under my clothes.
+The floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot,—clear,
+well defined, perfectly formed, but scarce half the size of those of an
+ordinary man.
+“Holmes,” I said, in a whisper, “a child has done the horrid thing.”
+He had recovered his self-possession in an instant. “I was staggered
+for the moment,” he said, “but the thing is quite natural. My memory
+failed me, or I should have been able to foretell it. There is nothing
+more to be learned here. Let us go down.”
+“What is your theory, then, as to those footmarks?” I asked, eagerly,
+when we had regained the lower room once more.
+“My dear Watson, try a little analysis yourself,” said he, with a touch
+of impatience. “You know my methods. Apply them, and it will be
+instructive to compare results.”
+“I cannot conceive anything which will cover the facts,” I answered.
+“It will be clear enough to you soon,” he said, in an off-hand way. “I
+think that there is nothing else of importance here, but I will look.”
+He whipped out his lens and a tape measure, and hurried about the room
+on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining, with his long thin nose
+only a few inches from the planks, and his beady eyes gleaming and
+deep-set like those of a bird. So swift, silent, and furtive were his
+movements, like those of a trained blood-hound picking out a scent,
+that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made
+had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law, instead of
+exerting them in its defence. As he hunted about, he kept muttering to
+himself, and finally he broke out into a loud crow of delight.
+“We are certainly in luck,” said he. “We ought to have very little
+trouble now. Number One has had the misfortune to tread in the
+creosote. You can see the outline of the edge of his small foot here at
+the side of this evil-smelling mess. The carboy has been cracked, You
+see, and the stuff has leaked out.”
+“What then?” I asked.
+“Why, we have got him, that’s all,” said he. “I know a dog that would
+follow that scent to the world’s end. If a pack can track a trailed
+herring across a shire, how far can a specially-trained hound follow so
+pungent a smell as this? It sounds like a sum in the rule of three. The
+answer should give us the—But halloa! here are the accredited
+representatives of the law.”
+Heavy steps and the clamour of loud voices were audible from below, and
+the hall door shut with a loud crash.
+“Before they come,” said Holmes, “just put your hand here on this poor
+fellow’s arm, and here on his leg. What do you feel?”
+“The muscles are as hard as a board,” I answered.
+“Quite so. They are in a state of extreme contraction, far exceeding
+the usual _rigor mortis_. Coupled with this distortion of the face,
+this Hippocratic smile, or ‘_risus sardonicus_,’ as the old writers
+called it, what conclusion would it suggest to your mind?”
+“Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid,” I answered,—“some
+strychnine-like substance which would produce tetanus.”
+“That was the idea which occurred to me the instant I saw the drawn
+muscles of the face. On getting into the room I at once looked for the
+means by which the poison had entered the system. As you saw, I
+discovered a thorn which had been driven or shot with no great force
+into the scalp. You observe that the part struck was that which would
+be turned towards the hole in the ceiling if the man were erect in his
+chair. Now examine the thorn.”
+I took it up gingerly and held it in the light of the lantern. It was
+long, sharp, and black, with a glazed look near the point as though
+some gummy substance had dried upon it. The blunt end had been trimmed
+and rounded off with a knife.
+“Is that an English thorn?” he asked.
+“No, it certainly is not.”
+“With all these data you should be able to draw some just inference.
+But here are the regulars; so the auxiliary forces may beat a retreat.”
+As he spoke, the steps which had been coming nearer sounded loudly on
+the passage, and a very stout, portly man in a grey suit strode heavily
+into the room. He was red-faced, burly and plethoric, with a pair of
+very small twinkling eyes which looked keenly out from between swollen
+and puffy pouches. He was closely followed by an inspector in uniform,
+and by the still palpitating Thaddeus Sholto.
+“Here’s a business!” he cried, in a muffled, husky voice. “Here’s a
+pretty business! But who are all these? Why, the house seems to be as
+full as a rabbit-warren!”
+“I think you must recollect me, Mr. Athelney Jones,” said Holmes,
+quietly.
+“Why, of course I do!” he wheezed. “It’s Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the
+theorist. Remember you! I’ll never forget how you lectured us all on
+causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate jewel case. It’s
+true you set us on the right track; but you’ll own now that it was more
+by good luck than good guidance.”
+“It was a piece of very simple reasoning.”
+“Oh, come, now, come! Never be ashamed to own up. But what is all this?
+Bad business! Bad business! Stern facts here,—no room for theories. How
+lucky that I happened to be out at Norwood over another case! I was at
+the station when the message arrived. What d’you think the man died
+of?”
+“Oh, this is hardly a case for me to theorise over,” said Holmes,
+dryly.
+“No, no. Still, we can’t deny that you hit the nail on the head
+sometimes. Dear me! Door locked, I understand. Jewels worth half a
+million missing. How was the window?”
+“Fastened; but there are steps on the sill.”
+“Well, well, if it was fastened the steps could have nothing to do with
+the matter. That’s common sense. Man might have died in a fit; but then
+the jewels are missing. Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me
+at times.—Just step outside, sergeant, and you, Mr. Sholto. Your friend
+can remain.—What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own
+confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on
+which Sholto walked off with the treasure. How’s that?”
+“On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on
+the inside.”
+“Hum! There’s a flaw there. Let us apply common sense to the matter.
+This Thaddeus Sholto _was_ with his brother; there _was_ a quarrel; so
+much we know. The brother is dead and the jewels are gone. So much also
+we know. No one saw the brother from the time Thaddeus left him. His
+bed had not been slept in. Thaddeus is evidently in a most disturbed
+state of mind. His appearance is—well, not attractive. You see that I
+am weaving my web round Thaddeus. The net begins to close upon him.”
+“You are not quite in possession of the facts yet,” said Holmes. “This
+splinter of wood, which I have every reason to believe to be poisoned,
+was in the man’s scalp where you still see the mark; this card,
+inscribed as you see it, was on the table; and beside it lay this
+rather curious stone-headed instrument. How does all that fit into your
+theory?���
+“Confirms it in every respect,” said the fat detective, pompously.
+“House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if
+this splinter be poisonous Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use
+of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus,—a blind, as like
+as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is
+a hole in the roof.” With great activity, considering his bulk, he
+sprang up the steps and squeezed through into the garret, and
+immediately afterwards we heard his exulting voice proclaiming that he
+had found the trap-door.
+“He can find something,” remarked Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. “He
+has occasional glimmerings of reason. _Il n’y a pas des sots si
+incommodes que ceux qui ont de l’esprit!_”
+“You see!” said Athelney Jones, reappearing down the steps again.
+“Facts are better than mere theories, after all. My view of the case is
+confirmed. There is a trap-door communicating with the roof, and it is
+partly open.”
+“It was I who opened it.”
+“Oh, indeed! You did notice it, then?” He seemed a little crestfallen
+at the discovery. “Well, whoever noticed it, it shows how our gentleman
+got away. Inspector!”
+“Yes, sir,” from the passage.
+“Ask Mr. Sholto to step this way.—Mr. Sholto, it is my duty to inform
+you that anything which you may say will be used against you. I arrest
+you in the Queen’s name as being concerned in the death of your
+brother.”
+“There, now! Didn’t I tell you!” cried the poor little man, throwing
+out his hands, and looking from one to the other of us.
+“Don’t trouble yourself about it, Mr. Sholto,” said Holmes. “I think
+that I can engage to clear you of the charge.”
+“Don’t promise too much, Mr. Theorist,—don’t promise too much!” snapped
+the detective. “You may find it a harder matter than you think.”
+“Not only will I clear him, Mr. Jones, but I will make you a free
+present of the name and description of one of the two people who were
+in this room last night. His name, I have every reason to believe, is
+Jonathan Small. He is a poorly-educated man, small, active, with his
+right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the
+inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron
+band round the heel. He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has
+been a convict. These few indications may be of some assistance to you,
+coupled with the fact that there is a good deal of skin missing from
+the palm of his hand. The other man—”
+“Ah! the other man—?” asked Athelney Jones, in a sneering voice, but
+impressed none the less, as I could easily see, by the precision of the
+other’s manner.
+“Is a rather curious person,” said Sherlock Holmes, turning upon his
+heel. “I hope before very long to be able to introduce you to the pair
+of them.—A word with you, Watson.”
+He led me out to the head of the stair. “This unexpected occurrence,”
+he said, “has caused us rather to lose sight of the original purpose of
+our journey.”
+“I have just been thinking so,” I answered. “It is not right that Miss
+Morstan should remain in this stricken house.”
+“No. You must escort her home. She lives with Mrs. Cecil Forrester, in
+Lower Camberwell: so it is not very far. I will wait for you here if
+you will drive out again. Or perhaps you are too tired?”
+“By no means. I don’t think I could rest until I know more of this
+fantastic business. I have seen something of the rough side of life,
+but I give you my word that this quick succession of strange surprises
+to-night has shaken my nerve completely. I should like, however, to see
+the matter through with you, now that I have got so far.”
+“Your presence will be of great service to me,” he answered. “We shall
+work the case out independently, and leave this fellow Jones to exult
+over any mare’s-nest which he may choose to construct. When you have
+dropped Miss Morstan I wish you to go on to No. 3, Pinchin Lane, down
+near the water’s edge at Lambeth. The third house on the right-hand
+side is a bird-stuffer’s: Sherman is the name. You will see a weasel
+holding a young rabbit in the window. Knock old Sherman up, and tell
+him, with my compliments, that I want Toby at once. You will bring Toby
+back in the cab with you.”
+“A dog, I suppose.”
+“Yes,—a queer mongrel, with a most amazing power of scent. I would
+rather have Toby’s help than that of the whole detective force of
+London.”
+“I shall bring him, then,” said I. “It is one now. I ought to be back
+before three, if I can get a fresh horse.”
+“And I,” said Holmes, “shall see what I can learn from Mrs. Bernstone,
+and from the Indian servant, who, Mr. Thaddeus tell me, sleeps in the
+next garret. Then I shall study the great Jones’s methods and listen to
+his not too delicate sarcasms. ‘_Wir sind gewohnt das die Menschen
+verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen._’ Goethe is always pithy.”
+Chapter VII
+The Episode of the Barrel
+The police had brought a cab with them, and in this I escorted Miss
+Morstan back to her home. After the angelic fashion of women, she had
+borne trouble with a calm face as long as there was some one weaker
+than herself to support, and I had found her bright and placid by the
+side of the frightened housekeeper. In the cab, however, she first
+turned faint, and then burst into a passion of weeping,—so sorely had
+she been tried by the adventures of the night. She has told me since
+that she thought me cold and distant upon that journey. She little
+guessed the struggle within my breast, or the effort of self-restraint
+which held me back. My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as
+my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities
+of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this
+one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughts which
+sealed the words of affection upon my lips. She was weak and helpless,
+shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to
+obtrude love upon her at such a time. Worse still, she was rich. If
+Holmes’s researches were successful, she would be an heiress. Was it
+fair, was it honourable, that a half-pay surgeon should take such
+advantage of an intimacy which chance had brought about? Might she not
+look upon me as a mere vulgar fortune-seeker? I could not bear to risk
+that such a thought should cross her mind. This Agra treasure
+intervened like an impassable barrier between us.
+It was nearly two o’clock when we reached Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s. The
+servants had retired hours ago, but Mrs. Forrester had been so
+interested by the strange message which Miss Morstan had received that
+she had sat up in the hope of her return. She opened the door herself,
+a middle-aged, graceful woman, and it gave me joy to see how tenderly
+her arm stole round the other’s waist and how motherly was the voice in
+which she greeted her. She was clearly no mere paid dependant, but an
+honoured friend. I was introduced, and Mrs. Forrester earnestly begged
+me to step in and tell her our adventures. I explained, however, the
+importance of my errand, and promised faithfully to call and report any
+progress which we might make with the case. As we drove away I stole a
+glance back, and I still seem to see that little group on the step, the
+two graceful, clinging figures, the half-opened door, the hall-light
+shining through stained glass, the barometer, and the bright
+stair-rods. It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse of a
+tranquil English home in the midst of the wild, dark business which had
+absorbed us.
+And the more I thought of what had happened, the wilder and darker it
+grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence of events as I
+rattled on through the silent gas-lit streets. There was the original
+problem: that at least was pretty clear now. The death of Captain
+Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the advertisement, the letter,—we
+had had light upon all those events. They had only led us, however, to
+a deeper and far more tragic mystery. The Indian treasure, the curious
+plan found among Morstan’s baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto’s
+death, the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by the
+murder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments to the
+crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words upon the card,
+corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan’s chart,—here was indeed
+a labyrinth in which a man less singularly endowed than my
+fellow-lodger might well despair of ever finding the clue.
+Pinchin Lane was a row of shabby two-storied brick houses in the lower
+quarter of Lambeth. I had to knock for some time at No. 3 before I
+could make my impression. At last, however, there was the glint of a
+candle behind the blind, and a face looked out at the upper window.
+“Go on, you drunken vagabone,” said the face. “If you kick up any more
+row I’ll open the kennels and let out forty-three dogs upon you.”
+“If you’ll let one out it’s just what I have come for,” said I.
+“Go on!” yelled the voice. “So help me gracious, I have a wiper in the
+bag, an’ I’ll drop it on your ’ead if you don’t hook it.”
+“But I want a dog,” I cried.
+“I won’t be argued with!” shouted Mr. Sherman. “Now stand clear, for
+when I say ‘three,’ down goes the wiper.”
+“Mr. Sherlock Holmes—” I began, but the words had a most magical
+effect, for the window instantly slammed down, and within a minute the
+door was unbarred and open. Mr. Sherman was a lanky, lean old man, with
+stooping shoulders, a stringy neck, and blue-tinted glasses.
+“A friend of Mr. Sherlock is always welcome,” said he. “Step in, sir.
+Keep clear of the badger; for he bites. Ah, naughty, naughty, would you
+take a nip at the gentleman?” This to a stoat which thrust its wicked
+head and red eyes between the bars of its cage. “Don’t mind that, sir:
+it’s only a slow-worm. It hain’t got no fangs, so I gives it the run o’
+the room, for it keeps the beetles down. You must not mind my bein’
+just a little short wi’ you at first, for I’m guyed at by the children,
+and there’s many a one just comes down this lane to knock me up. What
+was it that Mr. Sherlock Holmes wanted, sir?”
+“He wanted a dog of yours.”
+“Ah! that would be Toby.”
+“Yes, Toby was the name.”
+“Toby lives at No. 7 on the left here.” He moved slowly forward with
+his candle among the queer animal family which he had gathered round
+him. In the uncertain, shadowy light I could see dimly that there were
+glancing, glimmering eyes peeping down at us from every cranny and
+corner. Even the rafters above our heads were lined by solemn fowls,
+who lazily shifted their weight from one leg to the other as our voices
+disturbed their slumbers.
+Toby proved to be an ugly, long-haired, lop-eared creature, half
+spaniel and half lurcher, brown-and-white in colour, with a very clumsy
+waddling gait. It accepted after some hesitation a lump of sugar which
+the old naturalist handed to me, and, having thus sealed an alliance,
+it followed me to the cab, and made no difficulties about accompanying
+me. It had just struck three on the Palace clock when I found myself
+back once more at Pondicherry Lodge. The ex-prize-fighter McMurdo had,
+I found, been arrested as an accessory, and both he and Mr. Sholto had
+been marched off to the station. Two constables guarded the narrow
+gate, but they allowed me to pass with the dog on my mentioning the
+detective’s name.
+Holmes was standing on the door-step, with his hands in his pockets,
+smoking his pipe.
+“Ah, you have him there!” said he. “Good dog, then! Atheney Jones has
+gone. We have had an immense display of energy since you left. He has
+arrested not only friend Thaddeus, but the gatekeeper, the housekeeper,
+and the Indian servant. We have the place to ourselves, but for a
+sergeant upstairs. Leave the dog here, and come up.”
+We tied Toby to the hall table, and re-ascended the stairs. The room
+was as he had left it, save that a sheet had been draped over the
+central figure. A weary-looking police-sergeant reclined in the corner.
+“Lend me your bull’s-eye, sergeant,” said my companion. “Now tie this
+bit of card round my neck, so as to hang it in front of me. Thank you.
+Now I must kick off my boots and stockings.—Just you carry them down
+with you, Watson. I am going to do a little climbing. And dip my
+handkerchief into the creasote. That will do. Now come up into the
+garret with me for a moment.”
+We clambered up through the hole. Holmes turned his light once more
+upon the footsteps in the dust.
+“I wish you particularly to notice these footmarks,” he said. “Do you
+observe anything noteworthy about them?”
+“They belong,” I said, “to a child or a small woman.”
+“Apart from their size, though. Is there nothing else?”
+“They appear to be much as other footmarks.”
+“Not at all. Look here! This is the print of a right foot in the dust.
+Now I make one with my naked foot beside it. What is the chief
+difference?”
+“Your toes are all cramped together. The other print has each toe
+distinctly divided.”
+“Quite so. That is the point. Bear that in mind. Now, would you kindly
+step over to that flap-window and smell the edge of the wood-work? I
+shall stay here, as I have this handkerchief in my hand.”
+I did as he directed, and was instantly conscious of a strong tarry
+smell.
+“That is where he put his foot in getting out. If _you_ can trace him,
+I should think that Toby will have no difficulty. Now run downstairs,
+loose the dog, and look out for Blondin.”
+By the time that I got out into the grounds Sherlock Holmes was on the
+roof, and I could see him like an enormous glow-worm crawling very
+slowly along the ridge. I lost sight of him behind a stack of chimneys,
+but he presently reappeared, and then vanished once more upon the
+opposite side. When I made my way round there I found him seated at one
+of the corner eaves.
+“That you, Watson?” he cried.
+“Yes.”
+“This is the place. What is that black thing down there?”
+“A water-barrel.”
+“Top on it?”
+“Yes.”
+“No sign of a ladder?”
+“No.”
+“Confound the fellow! It’s a most break-neck place. I ought to be able
+to come down where he could climb up. The water-pipe feels pretty firm.
+Here goes, anyhow.”
+There was a scuffling of feet, and the lantern began to come steadily
+down the side of the wall. Then with a light spring he came on to the
+barrel, and from there to the earth.
+“It was easy to follow him,” he said, drawing on his stockings and
+boots. “Tiles were loosened the whole way along, and in his hurry he
+had dropped this. It confirms my diagnosis, as you doctors express it.”
+The object which he held up to me was a small pocket or pouch woven out
+of coloured grasses and with a few tawdry beads strung round it. In
+shape and size it was not unlike a cigarette-case. Inside were half a
+dozen spines of dark wood, sharp at one end and rounded at the other,
+like that which had struck Bartholomew Sholto.
+“They are hellish things,” said he. “Look out that you don’t prick
+yourself. I’m delighted to have them, for the chances are that they are
+all he has. There is the less fear of you or me finding one in our skin
+before long. I would sooner face a Martini bullet, myself. Are you game
+for a six-mile trudge, Watson?”
+“Certainly,” I answered.
+“Your leg will stand it?”
+“Oh, yes.”
+“Here you are, doggy! Good old Toby! Smell it, Toby, smell it!” He
+pushed the creasote handkerchief under the dog’s nose, while the
+creature stood with its fluffy legs separated, and with a most comical
+cock to its head, like a connoisseur sniffing the _bouquet_ of a famous
+vintage. Holmes then threw the handkerchief to a distance, fastened a
+stout cord to the mongrel’s collar, and led him to the foot of the
+water-barrel. The creature instantly broke into a succession of high,
+tremulous yelps, and, with his nose on the ground, and his tail in the
+air, pattered off upon the trail at a pace which strained his leash and
+kept us at the top of our speed.
+The east had been gradually whitening, and we could now see some
+distance in the cold grey light. The square, massive house, with its
+black, empty windows and high, bare walls, towered up, sad and forlorn,
+behind us. Our course led right across the grounds, in and out among
+the trenches and pits with which they were scarred and intersected. The
+whole place, with its scattered dirt-heaps and ill-grown shrubs, had a
+blighted, ill-omened look which harmonized with the black tragedy which
+hung over it.
+On reaching the boundary wall Toby ran along, whining eagerly,
+underneath its shadow, and stopped finally in a corner screened by a
+young beech. Where the two walls joined, several bricks had been
+loosened, and the crevices left were worn down and rounded upon the
+lower side, as though they had frequently been used as a ladder. Holmes
+clambered up, and, taking the dog from me, he dropped it over upon the
+other side.
+“There’s the print of wooden-leg’s hand,” he remarked, as I mounted up
+beside him. “You see the slight smudge of blood upon the white plaster.
+What a lucky thing it is that we have had no very heavy rain since
+yesterday! The scent will lie upon the road in spite of their
+eight-and-twenty hours’ start.”
+I confess that I had my doubts myself when I reflected upon the great
+traffic which had passed along the London road in the interval. My
+fears were soon appeased, however. Toby never hesitated or swerved, but
+waddled on in his peculiar rolling fashion. Clearly, the pungent smell
+of the creasote rose high above all other contending scents.
+“Do not imagine,” said Holmes, “that I depend for my success in this
+case upon the mere chance of one of these fellows having put his foot
+in the chemical. I have knowledge now which would enable me to trace
+them in many different ways. This, however, is the readiest and, since
+fortune has put it into our hands, I should be culpable if I neglected
+it. It has, however, prevented the case from becoming the pretty little
+intellectual problem which it at one time promised to be. There might
+have been some credit to be gained out of it, but for this too palpable
+clue.”
+“There is credit, and to spare,” said I. “I assure you, Holmes, that I
+marvel at the means by which you obtain your results in this case, even
+more than I did in the Jefferson Hope Murder. The thing seems to me to
+be deeper and more inexplicable. How, for example, could you describe
+with such confidence the wooden-legged man?”
+“Pshaw, my dear boy! it was simplicity itself. I don’t wish to be
+theatrical. It is all patent and above-board. Two officers who are in
+command of a convict-guard learn an important secret as to buried
+treasure. A map is drawn for them by an Englishman named Jonathan
+Small. You remember that we saw the name upon the chart in Captain
+Morstan’s possession. He had signed it in behalf of himself and his
+associates,—the sign of the four, as he somewhat dramatically called
+it. Aided by this chart, the officers—or one of them—gets the treasure
+and brings it to England, leaving, we will suppose, some condition
+under which he received it unfulfilled. Now, then, why did not Jonathan
+Small get the treasure himself? The answer is obvious. The chart is
+dated at a time when Morstan was brought into close association with
+convicts. Jonathan Small did not get the treasure because he and his
+associates were themselves convicts and could not get away.”
+“But that is mere speculation,” said I.
+“It is more than that. It is the only hypothesis which covers the
+facts. Let us see how it fits in with the sequel. Major Sholto remains
+at peace for some years, happy in the possession of his treasure. Then
+he receives a letter from India which gives him a great fright. What
+was that?”
+“A letter to say that the men whom he had wronged had been set free.”
+“Or had escaped. That is much more likely, for he would have known what
+their term of imprisonment was. It would not have been a surprise to
+him. What does he do then? He guards himself against a wooden-legged
+man,—a white man, mark you, for he mistakes a white tradesman for him,
+and actually fires a pistol at him. Now, only one white man’s name is
+on the chart. The others are Hindoos or Mohammedans. There is no other
+white man. Therefore we may say with confidence that the wooden-legged
+man is identical with Jonathan Small. Does the reasoning strike you as
+being faulty?”
+“No: it is clear and concise.”
+“Well, now, let us put ourselves in the place of Jonathan Small. Let us
+look at it from his point of view. He comes to England with the double
+idea of regaining what he would consider to be his rights and of having
+his revenge upon the man who had wronged him. He found out where Sholto
+lived, and very possibly he established communications with some one
+inside the house. There is this butler, Lal Rao, whom we have not seen.
+Mrs. Bernstone gives him far from a good character. Small could not
+find out, however, where the treasure was hid, for no one ever knew,
+save the major and one faithful servant who had died. Suddenly Small
+learns that the major is on his death-bed. In a frenzy lest the secret
+of the treasure die with him, he runs the gauntlet of the guards, makes
+his way to the dying man’s window, and is only deterred from entering
+by the presence of his two sons. Mad with hate, however, against the
+dead man, he enters the room that night, searches his private papers in
+the hope of discovering some memorandum relating to the treasure, and
+finally leaves a momento of his visit in the short inscription upon the
+card. He had doubtless planned beforehand that should he slay the major
+he would leave some such record upon the body as a sign that it was not
+a common murder, but, from the point of view of the four associates,
+something in the nature of an act of justice. Whimsical and bizarre
+conceits of this kind are common enough in the annals of crime, and
+usually afford valuable indications as to the criminal. Do you follow
+all this?”
+“Very clearly.”
+“Now, what could Jonathan Small do? He could only continue to keep a
+secret watch upon the efforts made to find the treasure. Possibly he
+leaves England and only comes back at intervals. Then comes the
+discovery of the garret, and he is instantly informed of it. We again
+trace the presence of some confederate in the household. Jonathan, with
+his wooden leg, is utterly unable to reach the lofty room of
+Bartholomew Sholto. He takes with him, however, a rather curious
+associate, who gets over this difficulty, but dips his naked foot into
+creasote, whence comes Toby, and a six-mile limp for a half-pay officer
+with a damaged tendo Achillis.”
+“But it was the associate, and not Jonathan, who committed the crime.”
+“Quite so. And rather to Jonathan’s disgust, to judge by the way he
+stamped about when he got into the room. He bore no grudge against
+Bartholomew Sholto, and would have preferred if he could have been
+simply bound and gagged. He did not wish to put his head in a halter.
+There was no help for it, however: the savage instincts of his
+companion had broken out, and the poison had done its work: so Jonathan
+Small left his record, lowered the treasure-box to the ground, and
+followed it himself. That was the train of events as far as I can
+decipher them. Of course as to his personal appearance he must be
+middle-aged, and must be sunburned after serving his time in such an
+oven as the Andamans. His height is readily calculated from the length
+of his stride, and we know that he was bearded. His hairiness was the
+one point which impressed itself upon Thaddeus Sholto when he saw him
+at the window. I don’t know that there is anything else.”
+“The associate?”
+“Ah, well, there is no great mystery in that. But you will know all
+about it soon enough. How sweet the morning air is! See how that one
+little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo.
+Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It
+shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a
+stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty
+ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces
+of nature! Are you well up in your Jean Paul?”
+“Fairly so. I worked back to him through Carlyle.”
+“That was like following the brook to the parent lake. He makes one
+curious but profound remark. It is that the chief proof of man’s real
+greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. It argues, you
+see, a power of comparison and of appreciation which is in itself a
+proof of nobility. There is much food for thought in Richter. You have
+not a pistol, have you?”
+“I have my stick.”
+“It is just possible that we may need something of the sort if we get
+to their lair. Jonathan I shall leave to you, but if the other turns
+nasty I shall shoot him dead.” He took out his revolver as he spoke,
+and, having loaded two of the chambers, he put it back into the
+right-hand pocket of his jacket.
+We had during this time been following the guidance of Toby down the
+half-rural villa-lined roads which lead to the metropolis. Now,
+however, we were beginning to come among continuous streets, where
+labourers and dockmen were already astir, and slatternly women were
+taking down shutters and brushing door-steps. At the square-topped
+corner public houses business was just beginning, and rough-looking men
+were emerging, rubbing their sleeves across their beards after their
+morning wet. Strange dogs sauntered up and stared wonderingly at us as
+we passed, but our inimitable Toby looked neither to the right nor to
+the left, but trotted onwards with his nose to the ground and an
+occasional eager whine which spoke of a hot scent.
+We had traversed Streatham, Brixton, Camberwell, and now found
+ourselves in Kennington Lane, having borne away through the
+side-streets to the east of the Oval. The men whom we pursued seemed to
+have taken a curiously zigzag road, with the idea probably of escaping
+observation. They had never kept to the main road if a parallel
+side-street would serve their turn. At the foot of Kennington Lane they
+had edged away to the left through Bond Street and Miles Street. Where
+the latter street turns into Knight’s Place, Toby ceased to advance,
+but began to run backwards and forwards with one ear cocked and the
+other drooping, the very picture of canine indecision. Then he waddled
+round in circles, looking up to us from time to time, as if to ask for
+sympathy in his embarrassment.
+“What the deuce is the matter with the dog?” growled Holmes. “They
+surely would not take a cab, or go off in a balloon.”
+“Perhaps they stood here for some time,” I suggested.
+“Ah! it’s all right. He’s off again,” said my companion, in a tone of
+relief.
+He was indeed off, for after sniffing round again he suddenly made up
+his mind, and darted away with an energy and determination such as he
+had not yet shown. The scent appeared to be much hotter than before,
+for he had not even to put his nose on the ground, but tugged at his
+leash and tried to break into a run. I could see by the gleam in
+Holmes’s eyes that he thought we were nearing the end of our journey.
+Our course now ran down Nine Elms until we came to Broderick and
+Nelson’s large timber-yard, just past the White Eagle tavern. Here the
+dog, frantic with excitement, turned down through the side-gate into
+the enclosure, where the sawyers were already at work. On the dog raced
+through sawdust and shavings, down an alley, round a passage, between
+two wood-piles, and finally, with a triumphant yelp, sprang upon a
+large barrel which still stood upon the hand-trolley on which it had
+been brought. With lolling tongue and blinking eyes, Toby stood upon
+the cask, looking from one to the other of us for some sign of
+appreciation. The staves of the barrel and the wheels of the trolley
+were smeared with a dark liquid, and the whole air was heavy with the
+smell of creasote.
+Sherlock Holmes and I looked blankly at each other, and then burst
+simultaneously into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
+Chapter VIII
+The Baker Street Irregulars
+“What now?” I asked. “Toby has lost his character for infallibility.”
+“He acted according to his lights,” said Holmes, lifting him down from
+the barrel and walking him out of the timber-yard. “If you consider how
+much creasote is carted about London in one day, it is no great wonder
+that our trail should have been crossed. It is much used now,
+especially for the seasoning of wood. Poor Toby is not to blame.”
+“We must get on the main scent again, I suppose.”
+“Yes. And, fortunately, we have no distance to go. Evidently what
+puzzled the dog at the corner of Knight’s Place was that there were two
+different trails running in opposite directions. We took the wrong one.
+It only remains to follow the other.”
+There was no difficulty about this. On leading Toby to the place where
+he had committed his fault, he cast about in a wide circle and finally
+dashed off in a fresh direction.
+“We must take care that he does not now bring us to the place where the
+creasote-barrel came from,” I observed.
+“I had thought of that. But you notice that he keeps on the pavement,
+whereas the barrel passed down the roadway. No, we are on the true
+scent now.”
+It tended down towards the river-side, running through Belmont Place
+and Prince’s Street. At the end of Broad Street it ran right down to
+the water’s edge, where there was a small wooden wharf. Toby led us to
+the very edge of this, and there stood whining, looking out on the dark
+current beyond.
+“We are out of luck,” said Holmes. “They have taken to a boat here.”
+Several small punts and skiffs were lying about in the water and on the
+edge of the wharf. We took Toby round to each in turn, but, though he
+sniffed earnestly, he made no sign.
+Close to the rude landing-stage was a small brick house, with a wooden
+placard slung out through the second window. “Mordecai Smith” was
+printed across it in large letters, and, underneath, “Boats to hire by
+the hour or day.” A second inscription above the door informed us that
+a steam launch was kept,—a statement which was confirmed by a great
+pile of coke upon the jetty. Sherlock Holmes looked slowly round, and
+his face assumed an ominous expression.
+“This looks bad,” said he. “These fellows are sharper than I expected.
+They seem to have covered their tracks. There has, I fear, been
+preconcerted management here.”
+He was approaching the door of the house, when it opened, and a little,
+curly-headed lad of six came running out, followed by a stoutish,
+red-faced woman with a large sponge in her hand.
+“You come back and be washed, Jack,” she shouted. “Come back, you young
+imp; for if your father comes home and finds you like that, he’ll let
+us hear of it.”
+“Dear little chap!” said Holmes, strategically. “What a rosy-cheeked
+young rascal! Now, Jack, is there anything you would like?”
+The youth pondered for a moment. “I’d like a shillin’,” said he.
+“Nothing you would like better?”
+“I’d like two shillin’ better,” the prodigy answered, after some
+thought.
+“Here you are, then! Catch!—A fine child, Mrs. Smith!”
+“Lor’ bless you, sir, he is that, and forward. He gets a’most too much
+for me to manage, ’specially when my man is away days at a time.”
+“Away, is he?” said Holmes, in a disappointed voice. “I am sorry for
+that, for I wanted to speak to Mr. Smith.”
+“He’s been away since yesterday mornin’, sir, and, truth to tell, I am
+beginnin’ to feel frightened about him. But if it was about a boat,
+sir, maybe I could serve as well.”
+“I wanted to hire his steam launch.”
+“Why, bless you, sir, it is in the steam launch that he has gone.
+That’s what puzzles me; for I know there ain’t more coals in her than
+would take her to about Woolwich and back. If he’d been away in the
+barge I’d ha’ thought nothin’; for many a time a job has taken him as
+far as Gravesend, and then if there was much doin’ there he might ha’
+stayed over. But what good is a steam launch without coals?”
+“He might have bought some at a wharf down the river.”
+“He might, sir, but it weren’t his way. Many a time I’ve heard him call
+out at the prices they charge for a few odd bags. Besides, I don’t like
+that wooden-legged man, wi’ his ugly face and outlandish talk. What did
+he want always knockin’ about here for?”
+“A wooden-legged man?” said Holmes, with bland surprise.
+“Yes, sir, a brown, monkey-faced chap that’s called more’n once for my
+old man. It was him that roused him up yesternight, and, what’s more,
+my man knew he was comin’, for he had steam up in the launch. I tell
+you straight, sir, I don’t feel easy in my mind about it.”
+“But, my dear Mrs. Smith,” said Holmes, shrugging his shoulders, “You
+are frightening yourself about nothing. How could you possibly tell
+that it was the wooden-legged man who came in the night? I don’t quite
+understand how you can be so sure.”
+“His voice, sir. I knew his voice, which is kind o’ thick and foggy. He
+tapped at the winder,—about three it would be. ‘Show a leg, matey,’
+says he: ‘time to turn out guard.’ My old man woke up Jim,—that’s my
+eldest,—and away they went, without so much as a word to me. I could
+hear the wooden leg clackin’ on the stones.”
+“And was this wooden-legged man alone?”
+“Couldn’t say, I am sure, sir. I didn’t hear no one else.”
+“I am sorry, Mrs. Smith, for I wanted a steam launch, and I have heard
+good reports of the—Let me see, what is her name?”
+“The _Aurora_, sir.”
+“Ah! She’s not that old green launch with a yellow line, very broad in
+the beam?”
+“No, indeed. She’s as trim a little thing as any on the river. She’s
+been fresh painted, black with two red streaks.”
+“Thanks. I hope that you will hear soon from Mr. Smith. I am going down
+the river; and if I should see anything of the _Aurora_ I shall let him
+know that you are uneasy. A black funnel, you say?”
+“No, sir. Black with a white band.”
+“Ah, of course. It was the sides which were black. Good-morning, Mrs.
+Smith.—There is a boatman here with a wherry, Watson. We shall take it
+and cross the river.
+“The main thing with people of that sort,” said Holmes, as we sat in
+the sheets of the wherry, “is never to let them think that their
+information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do, they
+will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under
+protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.”
+“Our course now seems pretty clear,” said I.
+“What would you do, then?”
+“I would engage a launch and go down the river on the track of the
+_Aurora_.”
+“My dear fellow, it would be a colossal task. She may have touched at
+any wharf on either side of the stream between here and Greenwich.
+Below the bridge there is a perfect labyrinth of landing-places for
+miles. It would take you days and days to exhaust them, if you set
+about it alone.”
+“Employ the police, then.”
+“No. I shall probably call Athelney Jones in at the last moment. He is
+not a bad fellow, and I should not like to do anything which would
+injure him professionally. But I have a fancy for working it out
+myself, now that we have gone so far.”
+“Could we advertise, then, asking for information from wharfingers?”
+“Worse and worse! Our men would know that the chase was hot at their
+heels, and they would be off out of the country. As it is, they are
+likely enough to leave, but as long as they think they are perfectly
+safe they will be in no hurry. Jones’s energy will be of use to us
+there, for his view of the case is sure to push itself into the daily
+press, and the runaways will think that every one is off on the wrong
+scent.”
+“What are we to do, then?” I asked, as we landed near Millbank
+Penitentiary.
+“Take this hansom, drive home, have some breakfast, and get an hour’s
+sleep. It is quite on the cards that we may be afoot to-night again.
+Stop at a telegraph-office, cabby! We will keep Toby, for he may be of
+use to us yet.”
+We pulled up at the Great Peter Street post-office, and Holmes
+despatched his wire. “Whom do you think that is to?” he asked, as we
+resumed our journey.
+“I am sure I don’t know.”
+“You remember the Baker Street division of the detective police force
+whom I employed in the Jefferson Hope case?”
+“Well,” said I, laughing.
+“This is just the case where they might be invaluable. If they fail, I
+have other resources; but I shall try them first. That wire was to my
+dirty little lieutenant, Wiggins, and I expect that he and his gang
+will be with us before we have finished our breakfast.”
+It was between eight and nine o’clock now, and I was conscious of a
+strong reaction after the successive excitements of the night. I was
+limp and weary, befogged in mind and fatigued in body. I had not the
+professional enthusiasm which carried my companion on, nor could I look
+at the matter as a mere abstract intellectual problem. As far as the
+death of Bartholomew Sholto went, I had heard little good of him, and
+could feel no intense antipathy to his murderers. The treasure,
+however, was a different matter. That, or part of it, belonged
+rightfully to Miss Morstan. While there was a chance of recovering it I
+was ready to devote my life to the one object. True, if I found it it
+would probably put her forever beyond my reach. Yet it would be a petty
+and selfish love which would be influenced by such a thought as that.
+If Holmes could work to find the criminals, I had a tenfold stronger
+reason to urge me on to find the treasure.
+A bath at Baker Street and a complete change freshened me up
+wonderfully. When I came down to our room I found the breakfast laid
+and Homes pouring out the coffee.
+“Here it is,” said he, laughing, and pointing to an open newspaper.
+“The energetic Jones and the ubiquitous reporter have fixed it up
+between them. But you have had enough of the case. Better have your ham
+and eggs first.”
+I took the paper from him and read the short notice, which was headed
+“Mysterious Business at Upper Norwood.”
+“About twelve o’clock last night,” said the _Standard_, “Mr.
+Bartholomew Sholto, of Pondicherry Lodge, Upper Norwood, was found dead
+in his room under circumstances which point to foul play. As far as we
+can learn, no actual traces of violence were found upon Mr. Sholto’s
+person, but a valuable collection of Indian gems which the deceased
+gentleman had inherited from his father has been carried off. The
+discovery was first made by Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who had
+called at the house with Mr. Thaddeus Sholto, brother of the deceased.
+By a singular piece of good fortune, Mr. Athelney Jones, the well-known
+member of the detective police force, happened to be at the Norwood
+Police Station, and was on the ground within half an hour of the first
+alarm. His trained and experienced faculties were at once directed
+towards the detection of the criminals, with the gratifying result that
+the brother, Thaddeus Sholto, has already been arrested, together with
+the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone, an Indian butler named Lal Rao, and a
+porter, or gatekeeper, named McMurdo. It is quite certain that the
+thief or thieves were well acquainted with the house, for Mr. Jones’s
+well-known technical knowledge and his powers of minute observation
+have enabled him to prove conclusively that the miscreants could not
+have entered by the door or by the window, but must have made their way
+across the roof of the building, and so through a trap-door into a room
+which communicated with that in which the body was found. This fact,
+which has been very clearly made out, proves conclusively that it was
+no mere haphazard burglary. The prompt and energetic action of the
+officers of the law shows the great advantage of the presence on such
+occasions of a single vigorous and masterful mind. We cannot but think
+that it supplies an argument to those who would wish to see our
+detectives more decentralised, and so brought into closer and more
+effective touch with the cases which it is their duty to investigate.”
+“Isn’t it gorgeous!” said Holmes, grinning over his coffee-cup. “What
+do you think of it?”
+“I think that we have had a close shave ourselves of being arrested for
+the crime.”
+“So do I. I wouldn’t answer for our safety now, if he should happen to
+have another of his attacks of energy.”
+At this moment there was a loud ring at the bell, and I could hear Mrs.
+Hudson, our landlady, raising her voice in a wail of expostulation and
+dismay.
+“By heaven, Holmes,” I said, half rising, “I believe that they are
+really after us.”
+“No, it’s not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force,—the
+Baker Street irregulars.”
+As he spoke, there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the
+stairs, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and
+ragged little street-Arabs. There was some show of discipline among
+them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in
+line and stood facing us with expectant faces. One of their number,
+taller and older than the others, stood forward with an air of lounging
+superiority which was very funny in such a disreputable little
+scarecrow.
+“Got your message, sir,” said he, “and brought ’em on sharp. Three bob
+and a tanner for tickets.”
+“Here you are,” said Holmes, producing some silver. “In future they can
+report to you, Wiggins, and you to me. I cannot have the house invaded
+in this way. However, it is just as well that you should all hear the
+instructions. I want to find the whereabouts of a steam launch called
+the _Aurora_, owner Mordecai Smith, black with two red streaks, funnel
+black with a white band. She is down the river somewhere. I want one
+boy to be at Mordecai Smith’s landing-stage opposite Millbank to say if
+the boat comes back. You must divide it out among yourselves, and do
+both banks thoroughly. Let me know the moment you have news. Is that
+all clear?”
+“Yes, guv’nor,” said Wiggins.
+“The old scale of pay, and a guinea to the boy who finds the boat.
+Here’s a day in advance. Now off you go!” He handed them a shilling
+each, and away they buzzed down the stairs, and I saw them a moment
+later streaming down the street.
+“If the launch is above water they will find her,” said Holmes, as he
+rose from the table and lit his pipe. “They can go everywhere, see
+everything, overhear every one. I expect to hear before evening that
+they have spotted her. In the meanwhile, we can do nothing but await
+results. We cannot pick up the broken trail until we find either the
+_Aurora_ or Mr. Mordecai Smith.”
+“Toby could eat these scraps, I dare say. Are you going to bed,
+Holmes?”
+“No; I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember
+feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. I am
+going to smoke and to think over this queer business to which my fair
+client has introduced us. If ever man had an easy task, this of ours
+ought to be. Wooden-legged men are not so common, but the other man
+must, I should think, be absolutely unique.”
+“That other man again!”
+“I have no wish to make a mystery of him,—to you, anyway. But you must
+have formed your own opinion. Now, do consider the data. Diminutive
+footmarks, toes never fettered by boots, naked feet, stone-headed
+wooden mace, great agility, small poisoned darts. What do you make of
+all this?”
+“A savage!” I exclaimed. “Perhaps one of those Indians who were the
+associates of Jonathan Small.”
+“Hardly that,” said he. “When first I saw signs of strange weapons I
+was inclined to think so; but the remarkable character of the footmarks
+caused me to reconsider my views. Some of the inhabitants of the Indian
+Peninsula are small men, but none could have left such marks as that.
+The Hindoo proper has long and thin feet. The sandal-wearing Mohammedan
+has the great toe well separated from the others, because the thong is
+commonly passed between. These little darts, too, could only be shot in
+one way. They are from a blow-pipe. Now, then, where are we to find our
+savage?”
+“South American,” I hazarded.
+He stretched his hand up, and took down a bulky volume from the shelf.
+“This is the first volume of a gazetteer which is now being published.
+It may be looked upon as the very latest authority. What have we here?
+‘Andaman Islands, situated 340 miles to the north of Sumatra, in the
+Bay of Bengal.’ Hum! hum! What’s all this? Moist climate, coral reefs,
+sharks, Port Blair, convict-barracks, Rutland Island, cottonwoods—Ah,
+here we are. ‘The aborigines of the Andaman Islands may perhaps claim
+the distinction of being the smallest race upon this earth, though some
+anthropologists prefer the Bushmen of Africa, the Digger Indians of
+America, and the Terra del Fuegians. The average height is rather below
+four feet, although many full-grown adults may be found who are very
+much smaller than this. They are a fierce, morose, and intractable
+people, though capable of forming most devoted friendships when their
+confidence has once been gained.’ Mark that, Watson. Now, then, listen
+to this. ‘They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads,
+small, fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands,
+however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they that
+all the efforts of the British official have failed to win them over in
+any degree. They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews,
+braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs, or shooting them
+with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by
+a cannibal feast.’ Nice, amiable people, Watson! If this fellow had
+been left to his own unaided devices this affair might have taken an
+even more ghastly turn. I fancy that, even as it is, Jonathan Small
+would give a good deal not to have employed him.”
+“But how came he to have so singular a companion?”
+“Ah, that is more than I can tell. Since, however, we had already
+determined that Small had come from the Andamans, it is not so very
+wonderful that this islander should be with him. No doubt we shall know
+all about it in time. Look here, Watson; you look regularly done. Lie
+down there on the sofa, and see if I can put you to sleep.”
+He took up his violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out he
+began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air,—his own, no doubt, for
+he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance
+of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face, and the rise and fall of his bow.
+Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound,
+until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan
+looking down upon me.
+Chapter IX
+A Break in the Chain
+It was late in the afternoon before I woke, strengthened and refreshed.
+Sherlock Holmes still sat exactly as I had left him, save that he had
+laid aside his violin and was deep in a book. He looked across at me,
+as I stirred, and I noticed that his face was dark and troubled.
+“You have slept soundly,” he said. “I feared that our talk would wake
+you.”
+“I heard nothing,” I answered. “Have you had fresh news, then?”
+“Unfortunately, no. I confess that I am surprised and disappointed. I
+expected something definite by this time. Wiggins has just been up to
+report. He says that no trace can be found of the launch. It is a
+provoking check, for every hour is of importance.”
+“Can I do anything? I am perfectly fresh now, and quite ready for
+another night’s outing.”
+“No, we can do nothing. We can only wait. If we go ourselves, the
+message might come in our absence, and delay be caused. You can do what
+you will, but I must remain on guard.”
+“Then I shall run over to Camberwell and call upon Mrs. Cecil
+Forrester. She asked me to, yesterday.”
+“On Mrs. Cecil Forrester?” asked Holmes, with the twinkle of a smile in
+his eyes.
+“Well, of course Miss Morstan too. They were anxious to hear what
+happened.”
+“I would not tell them too much,” said Holmes. “Women are never to be
+entirely trusted,—not the best of them.”
+I did not pause to argue over this atrocious sentiment. “I shall be
+back in an hour or two,” I remarked.
+“All right! Good luck! But, I say, if you are crossing the river you
+may as well return Toby, for I don’t think it is at all likely that we
+shall have any use for him now.”
+I took our mongrel accordingly, and left him, together with a
+half-sovereign, at the old naturalist’s in Pinchin Lane. At Camberwell
+I found Miss Morstan a little weary after her night’s adventures, but
+very eager to hear the news. Mrs. Forrester, too, was full of
+curiosity. I told them all that we had done, suppressing, however, the
+more dreadful parts of the tragedy. Thus, although I spoke of Mr.
+Sholto’s death, I said nothing of the exact manner and method of it.
+With all my omissions, however, there was enough to startle and amaze
+them.
+“It is a romance!” cried Mrs. Forrester. “An injured lady, half a
+million in treasure, a black cannibal, and a wooden-legged ruffian.
+They take the place of the conventional dragon or wicked earl.”
+“And two knight-errants to the rescue,” added Miss Morstan, with a
+bright glance at me.
+“Why, Mary, your fortune depends upon the issue of this search. I don’t
+think that you are nearly excited enough. Just imagine what it must be
+to be so rich, and to have the world at your feet!”
+It sent a little thrill of joy to my heart to notice that she showed no
+sign of elation at the prospect. On the contrary, she gave a toss of
+her proud head, as though the matter were one in which she took small
+interest.
+“It is for Mr. Thaddeus Sholto that I am anxious,” she said. “Nothing
+else is of any consequence; but I think that he has behaved most kindly
+and honourably throughout. It is our duty to clear him of this dreadful
+and unfounded charge.”
+It was evening before I left Camberwell, and quite dark by the time I
+reached home. My companion’s book and pipe lay by his chair, but he had
+disappeared. I looked about in the hope of seeing a note, but there was
+none.
+“I suppose that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has gone out,” I said to Mrs.
+Hudson as she came up to lower the blinds.
+“No, sir. He has gone to his room, sir. Do you know, sir,” sinking her
+voice into an impressive whisper, “I am afraid for his health?”
+“Why so, Mrs. Hudson?”
+“Well, he’s that strange, sir. After you was gone he walked and he
+walked, up and down, and up and down, until I was weary of the sound of
+his footstep. Then I heard him talking to himself and muttering, and
+every time the bell rang out he came on the stairhead, with ‘What is
+that, Mrs. Hudson?’ And now he has slammed off to his room, but I can
+hear him walking away the same as ever. I hope he’s not going to be
+ill, sir. I ventured to say something to him about cooling medicine,
+but he turned on me, sir, with such a look that I don’t know how ever I
+got out of the room.”
+“I don’t think that you have any cause to be uneasy, Mrs. Hudson,” I
+answered. “I have seen him like this before. He has some small matter
+upon his mind which makes him restless.” I tried to speak lightly to
+our worthy landlady, but I was myself somewhat uneasy when through the
+long night I still from time to time heard the dull sound of his tread,
+and knew how his keen spirit was chafing against this involuntary
+inaction.
+At breakfast-time he looked worn and haggard, with a little fleck of
+feverish colour upon either cheek.
+“You are knocking yourself up, old man,” I remarked. “I heard you
+marching about in the night.”
+“No, I could not sleep,” he answered. “This infernal problem is
+consuming me. It is too much to be balked by so petty an obstacle, when
+all else had been overcome. I know the men, the launch, everything; and
+yet I can get no news. I have set other agencies at work, and used
+every means at my disposal. The whole river has been searched on either
+side, but there is no news, nor has Mrs. Smith heard of her husband. I
+shall come to the conclusion soon that they have scuttled the craft.
+But there are objections to that.”
+“Or that Mrs. Smith has put us on a wrong scent.”
+“No, I think that may be dismissed. I had inquiries made, and there is
+a launch of that description.”
+“Could it have gone up the river?”
+“I have considered that possibility too, and there is a search-party
+who will work up as far as Richmond. If no news comes to-day, I shall
+start off myself to-morrow, and go for the men rather than the boat.
+But surely, surely, we shall hear something.”
+We did not, however. Not a word came to us either from Wiggins or from
+the other agencies. There were articles in most of the papers upon the
+Norwood tragedy. They all appeared to be rather hostile to the
+unfortunate Thaddeus Sholto. No fresh details were to be found,
+however, in any of them, save that an inquest was to be held upon the
+following day. I walked over to Camberwell in the evening to report our
+ill success to the ladies, and on my return I found Holmes dejected and
+somewhat morose. He would hardly reply to my questions, and busied
+himself all evening in an abstruse chemical analysis which involved
+much heating of retorts and distilling of vapours, ending at last in a
+smell which fairly drove me out of the apartment. Up to the small hours
+of the morning I could hear the clinking of his test-tubes which told
+me that he was still engaged in his malodorous experiment.
+In the early dawn I woke with a start, and was surprised to find him
+standing by my bedside, clad in a rude sailor dress with a pea-jacket,
+and a coarse red scarf round his neck.
+“I am off down the river, Watson,” said he. “I have been turning it
+over in my mind, and I can see only one way out of it. It is worth
+trying, at all events.”
+“Surely I can come with you, then?” said I.
+“No; you can be much more useful if you will remain here as my
+representative. I am loath to go, for it is quite on the cards that
+some message may come during the day, though Wiggins was despondent
+about it last night. I want you to open all notes and telegrams, and to
+act on your own judgment if any news should come. Can I rely upon you?”
+“Most certainly.”
+“I am afraid that you will not be able to wire to me, for I can hardly
+tell yet where I may find myself. If I am in luck, however, I may not
+be gone so very long. I shall have news of some sort or other before I
+get back.”
+I had heard nothing of him by breakfast-time. On opening the
+_Standard_, however, I found that there was a fresh allusion to the
+business. “With reference to the Upper Norwood tragedy,” it remarked,
+“we have reason to believe that the matter promises to be even more
+complex and mysterious than was originally supposed. Fresh evidence has
+shown that it is quite impossible that Mr. Thaddeus Sholto could have
+been in any way concerned in the matter. He and the housekeeper, Mrs.
+Bernstone, were both released yesterday evening. It is believed,
+however, that the police have a clue as to the real culprits, and that
+it is being prosecuted by Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard, with
+all his well-known energy and sagacity. Further arrests may be expected
+at any moment.”
+“That is satisfactory so far as it goes,” thought I. “Friend Sholto is
+safe, at any rate. I wonder what the fresh clue may be; though it seems
+to be a stereotyped form whenever the police have made a blunder.”
+I tossed the paper down upon the table, but at that moment my eye
+caught an advertisement in the agony column. It ran in this way:
+“Lost.—Whereas Mordecai Smith, boatman, and his son, Jim, left Smith’s
+Wharf at or about three o’clock last Tuesday morning in the steam
+launch _Aurora_, black with two red stripes, funnel black with a white
+band, the sum of five pounds will be paid to any one who can give
+information to Mrs. Smith, at Smith’s Wharf, or at 221_b_ Baker Street,
+as to the whereabouts of the said Mordecai Smith and the launch
+_Aurora_.”
+This was clearly Holmes’s doing. The Baker Street address was enough to
+prove that. It struck me as rather ingenious, because it might be read
+by the fugitives without their seeing in it more than the natural
+anxiety of a wife for her missing husband.
+It was a long day. Every time that a knock came to the door, or a sharp
+step passed in the street, I imagined that it was either Holmes
+returning or an answer to his advertisement. I tried to read, but my
+thoughts would wander off to our strange quest and to the ill-assorted
+and villainous pair whom we were pursuing. Could there be, I wondered,
+some radical flaw in my companion’s reasoning. Might he be suffering
+from some huge self-deception? Was it not possible that his nimble and
+speculative mind had built up this wild theory upon faulty premises? I
+had never known him to be wrong; and yet the keenest reasoner may
+occasionally be deceived. He was likely, I thought, to fall into error
+through the over-refinement of his logic,—his preference for a subtle
+and bizarre explanation when a plainer and more commonplace one lay
+ready to his hand. Yet, on the other hand, I had myself seen the
+evidence, and I had heard the reasons for his deductions. When I looked
+back on the long chain of curious circumstances, many of them trivial
+in themselves, but all tending in the same direction, I could not
+disguise from myself that even if Holmes’s explanation were incorrect
+the true theory must be equally _outré_ and startling.
+At three o’clock in the afternoon there was a loud peal at the bell, an
+authoritative voice in the hall, and, to my surprise, no less a person
+than Mr. Athelney Jones was shown up to me. Very different was he,
+however, from the brusque and masterful professor of common sense who
+had taken over the case so confidently at Upper Norwood. His expression
+was downcast, and his bearing meek and even apologetic.
+“Good-day, sir; good-day,” said he. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes is out, I
+understand.”
+“Yes, and I cannot be sure when he will be back. But perhaps you would
+care to wait. Take that chair and try one of these cigars.”
+“Thank you; I don’t mind if I do,” said he, mopping his face with a red
+bandanna handkerchief.
+“And a whiskey-and-soda?”
+“Well, half a glass. It is very hot for the time of year; and I have
+had a good deal to worry and try me. You know my theory about this
+Norwood case?”
+“I remember that you expressed one.”
+“Well, I have been obliged to reconsider it. I had my net drawn tightly
+round Mr. Sholto, sir, when pop he went through a hole in the middle of
+it. He was able to prove an alibi which could not be shaken. From the
+time that he left his brother’s room he was never out of sight of some
+one or other. So it could not be he who climbed over roofs and through
+trap-doors. It’s a very dark case, and my professional credit is at
+stake. I should be very glad of a little assistance.”
+“We all need help sometimes,” said I.
+“Your friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes is a wonderful man, sir,” said he, in
+a husky and confidential voice. “He’s a man who is not to be beat. I
+have known that young man go into a good many cases, but I never saw
+the case yet that he could not throw a light upon. He is irregular in
+his methods, and a little quick perhaps in jumping at theories, but, on
+the whole, I think he would have made a most promising officer, and I
+don’t care who knows it. I have had a wire from him this morning, by
+which I understand that he has got some clue to this Sholto business.
+Here is the message.”
+He took the telegram out of his pocket, and handed it to me. It was
+dated from Poplar at twelve o’clock. “Go to Baker Street at once,” it
+said. “If I have not returned, wait for me. I am close on the track of
+the Sholto gang. You can come with us to-night if you want to be in at
+the finish.”
+“This sounds well. He has evidently picked up the scent again,” said I.
+“Ah, then he has been at fault too,” exclaimed Jones, with evident
+satisfaction. “Even the best of us are thrown off sometimes. Of course
+this may prove to be a false alarm; but it is my duty as an officer of
+the law to allow no chance to slip. But there is some one at the door.
+Perhaps this is he.”
+A heavy step was heard ascending the stair, with a great wheezing and
+rattling as from a man who was sorely put to it for breath. Once or
+twice he stopped, as though the climb were too much for him, but at
+last he made his way to our door and entered. His appearance
+corresponded to the sounds which we had heard. He was an aged man, clad
+in seafaring garb, with an old pea-jacket buttoned up to his throat.
+His back was bowed, his knees were shaky, and his breathing was
+painfully asthmatic. As he leaned upon a thick oaken cudgel his
+shoulders heaved in the effort to draw the air into his lungs. He had a
+coloured scarf round his chin, and I could see little of his face save
+a pair of keen dark eyes, overhung by bushy white brows, and long grey
+side-whiskers. Altogether he gave me the impression of a respectable
+master mariner who had fallen into years and poverty.
+“What is it, my man?” I asked.
+He looked about him in the slow methodical fashion of old age.
+“Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?” said he.
+“No; but I am acting for him. You can tell me any message you have for
+him.”
+“It was to him himself I was to tell it,” said he.
+“But I tell you that I am acting for him. Was it about Mordecai Smith’s
+boat?”
+“Yes. I knows well where it is. An’ I knows where the men he is after
+are. An’ I knows where the treasure is. I knows all about it.”
+“Then tell me, and I shall let him know.”
+“It was to him I was to tell it,” he repeated, with the petulant
+obstinacy of a very old man.
+“Well, you must wait for him.”
+“No, no; I ain’t goin’ to lose a whole day to please no one. If Mr.
+Holmes ain’t here, then Mr. Holmes must find it all out for himself. I
+don’t care about the look of either of you, and I won’t tell a word.”
+He shuffled towards the door, but Athelney Jones got in front of him.
+“Wait a bit, my friend,” said he. “You have important information, and
+you must not walk off. We shall keep you, whether you like or not,
+until our friend returns.”
+The old man made a little run towards the door, but, as Athelney Jones
+put his broad back up against it, he recognised the uselessness of
+resistance.
+“Pretty sort o’ treatment this!” he cried, stamping his stick. “I come
+here to see a gentleman, and you two, who I never saw in my life, seize
+me and treat me in this fashion!”
+“You will be none the worse,” I said. “We shall recompense you for the
+loss of your time. Sit over here on the sofa, and you will not have
+long to wait.”
+He came across sullenly enough, and seated himself with his face
+resting on his hands. Jones and I resumed our cigars and our talk.
+Suddenly, however, Holmes’s voice broke in upon us.
+“I think that you might offer me a cigar too,” he said.
+We both started in our chairs. There was Holmes sitting close to us
+with an air of quiet amusement.
+“Holmes!” I exclaimed. “You here! But where is the old man?”
+“Here is the old man,” said he, holding out a heap of white hair. “Here
+he is,—wig, whiskers, eyebrows, and all. I thought my disguise was
+pretty good, but I hardly expected that it would stand that test.”
+“Ah, You rogue!” cried Jones, highly delighted. “You would have made an
+actor, and a rare one. You had the proper workhouse cough, and those
+weak legs of yours are worth ten pounds a week. I thought I knew the
+glint of your eye, though. You didn’t get away from us so easily, You
+see.”
+“I have been working in that get-up all day,” said he, lighting his
+cigar. “You see, a good many of the criminal classes begin to know
+me,—especially since our friend here took to publishing some of my
+cases: so I can only go on the war-path under some simple disguise like
+this. You got my wire?”
+“Yes; that was what brought me here.”
+“How has your case prospered?”
+“It has all come to nothing. I have had to release two of my prisoners,
+and there is no evidence against the other two.”
+“Never mind. We shall give you two others in the place of them. But you
+must put yourself under my orders. You are welcome to all the official
+credit, but you must act on the line that I point out. Is that agreed?”
+“Entirely, if you will help me to the men.”
+“Well, then, in the first place I shall want a fast police-boat—a steam
+launch—to be at the Westminster Stairs at seven o’clock.”
+“That is easily managed. There is always one about there; but I can
+step across the road and telephone to make sure.”
+“Then I shall want two stanch men, in case of resistance.”
+“There will be two or three in the boat. What else?”
+“When we secure the men we shall get the treasure. I think that it
+would be a pleasure to my friend here to take the box round to the
+young lady to whom half of it rightfully belongs. Let her be the first
+to open it.—Eh, Watson?”
+“It would be a great pleasure to me.”
+“Rather an irregular proceeding,” said Jones, shaking his head.
+“However, the whole thing is irregular, and I suppose we must wink at
+it. The treasure must afterwards be handed over to the authorities
+until after the official investigation.”
+“Certainly. That is easily managed. One other point. I should much like
+to have a few details about this matter from the lips of Jonathan Small
+himself. You know I like to work the detail of my cases out. There is
+no objection to my having an unofficial interview with him, either here
+in my rooms or elsewhere, as long as he is efficiently guarded?”
+“Well, you are master of the situation. I have had no proof yet of the
+existence of this Jonathan Small. However, if you can catch him I don’t
+see how I can refuse you an interview with him.”
+“That is understood, then?”
+“Perfectly. Is there anything else?”
+“Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half
+an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little
+choice in white wines.—Watson, you have never yet recognised my merits
+as a housekeeper.”
+Chapter X
+The End of the Islander
+Our meal was a merry one. Holmes could talk exceedingly well when he
+chose, and that night he did choose. He appeared to be in a state of
+nervous exaltation. I have never known him so brilliant. He spoke on a
+quick succession of subjects,—on miracle-plays, on mediæval pottery, on
+Stradivarius violins, on the Buddhism of Ceylon, and on the war-ships
+of the future,—handling each as though he had made a special study of
+it. His bright humour marked the reaction from his black depression of
+the preceding days. Athelney Jones proved to be a sociable soul in his
+hours of relaxation, and faced his dinner with the air of a _bon
+vivant_. For myself, I felt elated at the thought that we were nearing
+the end of our task, and I caught something of Holmes’s gaiety. None of
+us alluded during dinner to the cause which had brought us together.
+When the cloth was cleared, Holmes glanced at his watch, and filled up
+three glasses with port. “One bumper,” said he, “to the success of our
+little expedition. And now it is high time we were off. Have you a
+pistol, Watson?”
+“I have my old service-revolver in my desk.”
+“You had best take it, then. It is well to be prepared. I see that the
+cab is at the door. I ordered it for half-past six.”
+It was a little past seven before we reached the Westminster wharf, and
+found our launch awaiting us. Holmes eyed it critically.
+“Is there anything to mark it as a police-boat?”
+“Yes,—that green lamp at the side.”
+“Then take it off.”
+The small change was made, we stepped on board, and the ropes were cast
+off. Jones, Holmes, and I sat in the stern. There was one man at the
+rudder, one to tend the engines, and two burly police-inspectors
+forward.
+“Where to?” asked Jones.
+“To the Tower. Tell them to stop opposite Jacobson’s Yard.”
+Our craft was evidently a very fast one. We shot past the long lines of
+loaded barges as though they were stationary. Holmes smiled with
+satisfaction as we overhauled a river steamer and left her behind us.
+“We ought to be able to catch anything on the river,” he said.
+“Well, hardly that. But there are not many launches to beat us.”
+“We shall have to catch the _Aurora_, and she has a name for being a
+clipper. I will tell you how the land lies, Watson. You recollect how
+annoyed I was at being balked by so small a thing?”
+“Yes.”
+“Well, I gave my mind a thorough rest by plunging into a chemical
+analysis. One of our greatest statesmen has said that a change of work
+is the best rest. So it is. When I had succeeded in dissolving the
+hydrocarbon which I was at work at, I came back to our problem of the
+Sholtos, and thought the whole matter out again. My boys had been up
+the river and down the river without result. The launch was not at any
+landing-stage or wharf, nor had it returned. Yet it could hardly have
+been scuttled to hide their traces,—though that always remained as a
+possible hypothesis if all else failed. I knew this man Small had a
+certain degree of low cunning, but I did not think him capable of
+anything in the nature of delicate finesse. That is usually a product
+of higher education. I then reflected that since he had certainly been
+in London some time—as we had evidence that he maintained a continual
+watch over Pondicherry Lodge—he could hardly leave at a moment’s
+notice, but would need some little time, if it were only a day, to
+arrange his affairs. That was the balance of probability, at any rate.”
+“It seems to me to be a little weak,” said I. “It is more probable that
+he had arranged his affairs before ever he set out upon his
+expedition.”
+“No, I hardly think so. This lair of his would be too valuable a
+retreat in case of need for him to give it up until he was sure that he
+could do without it. But a second consideration struck me. Jonathan
+Small must have felt that the peculiar appearance of his companion,
+however much he may have top-coated him, would give rise to gossip, and
+possibly be associated with this Norwood tragedy. He was quite sharp
+enough to see that. They had started from their head-quarters under
+cover of darkness, and he would wish to get back before it was broad
+light. Now, it was past three o’clock, according to Mrs. Smith, when
+they got the boat. It would be quite bright, and people would be about
+in an hour or so. Therefore, I argued, they did not go very far. They
+paid Smith well to hold his tongue, reserved his launch for the final
+escape, and hurried to their lodgings with the treasure-box. In a
+couple of nights, when they had time to see what view the papers took,
+and whether there was any suspicion, they would make their way under
+cover of darkness to some ship at Gravesend or in the Downs, where no
+doubt they had already arranged for passages to America or the
+Colonies.”
+“But the launch? They could not have taken that to their lodgings.”
+“Quite so. I argued that the launch must be no great way off, in spite
+of its invisibility. I then put myself in the place of Small, and
+looked at it as a man of his capacity would. He would probably consider
+that to send back the launch or to keep it at a wharf would make
+pursuit easy if the police did happen to get on his track. How, then,
+could he conceal the launch and yet have her at hand when wanted? I
+wondered what I should do myself if I were in his shoes. I could only
+think of one way of doing it. I might hand the launch over to some
+boat-builder or repairer, with directions to make a trifling change in
+her. She would then be removed to his shed or yard, and so be
+effectually concealed, while at the same time I could have her at a few
+hours’ notice.”
+“That seems simple enough.”
+“It is just these very simple things which are extremely liable to be
+overlooked. However, I determined to act on the idea. I started at once
+in this harmless seaman’s rig and inquired at all the yards down the
+river. I drew blank at fifteen, but at the sixteenth—Jacobson’s—I
+learned that the _Aurora_ had been handed over to them two days ago by
+a wooden-legged man, with some trivial directions as to her rudder.
+‘There ain’t naught amiss with her rudder,’ said the foreman. ‘There
+she lies, with the red streaks.’ At that moment who should come down
+but Mordecai Smith, the missing owner? He was rather the worse for
+liquor. I should not, of course, have known him, but he bellowed out
+his name and the name of his launch. ‘I want her to-night at eight
+o’clock,’ said he,—‘eight o’clock sharp, mind, for I have two gentlemen
+who won’t be kept waiting.’ They had evidently paid him well, for he
+was very flush of money, chucking shillings about to the men. I
+followed him some distance, but he subsided into an ale-house: so I
+went back to the yard, and, happening to pick up one of my boys on the
+way, I stationed him as a sentry over the launch. He is to stand at
+water’s edge and wave his handkerchief to us when they start. We shall
+be lying off in the stream, and it will be a strange thing if we do not
+take men, treasure, and all.”
+“You have planned it all very neatly, whether they are the right men or
+not,” said Jones; “but if the affair were in my hands I should have had
+a body of police in Jacobson’s Yard, and arrested them when they came
+down.”
+“Which would have been never. This man Small is a pretty shrewd fellow.
+He would send a scout on ahead, and if anything made him suspicious lie
+snug for another week.”
+“But you might have stuck to Mordecai Smith, and so been led to their
+hiding-place,” said I.
+“In that case I should have wasted my day. I think that it is a hundred
+to one against Smith knowing where they live. As long as he has liquor
+and good pay, why should he ask questions? They send him messages what
+to do. No, I thought over every possible course, and this is the best.”
+While this conversation had been proceeding, we had been shooting the
+long series of bridges which span the Thames. As we passed the City the
+last rays of the sun were gilding the cross upon the summit of St.
+Paul’s. It was twilight before we reached the Tower.
+“That is Jacobson’s Yard,” said Holmes, pointing to a bristle of masts
+and rigging on the Surrey side. “Cruise gently up and down here under
+cover of this string of lighters.” He took a pair of night-glasses from
+his pocket and gazed some time at the shore. “I see my sentry at his
+post,” he remarked, “but no sign of a handkerchief.”
+“Suppose we go down-stream a short way and lie in wait for them,” said
+Jones, eagerly. We were all eager by this time, even the policemen and
+stokers, who had a very vague idea of what was going forward.
+“We have no right to take anything for granted,” Holmes answered. “It
+is certainly ten to one that they go down-stream, but we cannot be
+certain. From this point we can see the entrance of the yard, and they
+can hardly see us. It will be a clear night and plenty of light. We
+must stay where we are. See how the folk swarm over yonder in the
+gaslight.”
+“They are coming from work in the yard.”
+“Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose every one has some little
+immortal spark concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at
+them. There is no _a priori_ probability about it. A strange enigma is
+man!”
+“Some one calls him a soul concealed in an animal,” I suggested.
+“Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks
+that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate
+he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never
+foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what
+an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages
+remain constant. So says the statistician. But do I see a handkerchief?
+Surely there is a white flutter over yonder.”
+“Yes, it is your boy,” I cried. “I can see him plainly.”
+“And there is the _Aurora_,” exclaimed Holmes, “and going like the
+devil! Full speed ahead, engineer. Make after that launch with the
+yellow light. By heaven, I shall never forgive myself if she proves to
+have the heels of us!”
+She had slipped unseen through the yard-entrance and passed behind two
+or three small craft, so that she had fairly got her speed up before we
+saw her. Now she was flying down the stream, near in to the shore,
+going at a tremendous rate. Jones looked gravely at her and shook his
+head.
+“She is very fast,” he said. “I doubt if we shall catch her.”
+“We _must_ catch her!” cried Holmes, between his teeth. “Heap it on,
+stokers! Make her do all she can! If we burn the boat we must have
+them!”
+We were fairly after her now. The furnaces roared, and the powerful
+engines whizzed and clanked, like a great metallic heart. Her sharp,
+steep prow cut through the river-water and sent two rolling waves to
+right and to left of us. With every throb of the engines we sprang and
+quivered like a living thing. One great yellow lantern in our bows
+threw a long, flickering funnel of light in front of us. Right ahead a
+dark blur upon the water showed where the _Aurora_ lay, and the swirl
+of white foam behind her spoke of the pace at which she was going. We
+flashed past barges, steamers, merchant-vessels, in and out, behind
+this one and round the other. Voices hailed us out of the darkness, but
+still the _Aurora_ thundered on, and still we followed close upon her
+track.
+“Pile it on, men, pile it on!” cried Holmes, looking down into the
+engine-room, while the fierce glow from below beat upon his eager,
+aquiline face. “Get every pound of steam you can.”
+“I think we gain a little,” said Jones, with his eyes on the _Aurora_.
+“I am sure of it,” said I. “We shall be up with her in a very few
+minutes.”
+At that moment, however, as our evil fate would have it, a tug with
+three barges in tow blundered in between us. It was only by putting our
+helm hard down that we avoided a collision, and before we could round
+them and recover our way the _Aurora_ had gained a good two hundred
+yards. She was still, however, well in view, and the murky uncertain
+twilight was setting into a clear starlit night. Our boilers were
+strained to their utmost, and the frail shell vibrated and creaked with
+the fierce energy which was driving us along. We had shot through the
+Pool, past the West India Docks, down the long Deptford Reach, and up
+again after rounding the Isle of Dogs. The dull blur in front of us
+resolved itself now clearly enough into the dainty _Aurora_. Jones
+turned our search-light upon her, so that we could plainly see the
+figures upon her deck. One man sat by the stern, with something black
+between his knees over which he stooped. Beside him lay a dark mass
+which looked like a Newfoundland dog. The boy held the tiller, while
+against the red glare of the furnace I could see old Smith, stripped to
+the waist, and shovelling coals for dear life. They may have had some
+doubt at first as to whether we were really pursuing them, but now as
+we followed every winding and turning which they took there could no
+longer be any question about it. At Greenwich we were about three
+hundred paces behind them. At Blackwall we could not have been more
+than two hundred and fifty. I have coursed many creatures in many
+countries during my checkered career, but never did sport give me such
+a wild thrill as this mad, flying man-hunt down the Thames. Steadily we
+drew in upon them, yard by yard. In the silence of the night we could
+hear the panting and clanking of their machinery. The man in the stern
+still crouched upon the deck, and his arms were moving as though he
+were busy, while every now and then he would look up and measure with a
+glance the distance which still separated us. Nearer we came and
+nearer. Jones yelled to them to stop. We were not more than four boat’s
+lengths behind them, both boats flying at a tremendous pace. It was a
+clear reach of the river, with Barking Level upon one side and the
+melancholy Plumstead Marshes upon the other. At our hail the man in the
+stern sprang up from the deck and shook his two clinched fists at us,
+cursing the while in a high, cracked voice. He was a good-sized,
+powerful man, and as he stood poising himself with legs astride I could
+see that from the thigh downwards there was but a wooden stump upon the
+right side. At the sound of his strident, angry cries there was
+movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck. It straightened itself
+into a little black man—the smallest I have ever seen—with a great,
+misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair. Holmes had
+already drawn his revolver, and I whipped out mine at the sight of this
+savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of dark ulster
+or blanket, which left only his face exposed; but that face was enough
+to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply
+marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and
+burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from
+his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with a half animal fury.
+“Fire if he raises his hand,” said Holmes, quietly. We were within a
+boat’s-length by this time, and almost within touch of our quarry. I
+can see the two of them now as they stood, the white man with his legs
+far apart, shrieking out curses, and the unhallowed dwarf with his
+hideous face, and his strong yellow teeth gnashing at us in the light
+of our lantern.
+It was well that we had so clear a view of him. Even as we looked he
+plucked out from under his covering a short, round piece of wood, like
+a school-ruler, and clapped it to his lips. Our pistols rang out
+together. He whirled round, threw up his arms, and with a kind of
+choking cough fell sideways into the stream. I caught one glimpse of
+his venomous, menacing eyes amid the white swirl of the waters. At the
+same moment the wooden-legged man threw himself upon the rudder and put
+it hard down, so that his boat made straight in for the southern bank,
+while we shot past her stern, only clearing her by a few feet. We were
+round after her in an instant, but she was already nearly at the bank.
+It was a wild and desolate place, where the moon glimmered upon a wide
+expanse of marsh-land, with pools of stagnant water and beds of
+decaying vegetation. The launch with a dull thud ran up upon the
+mud-bank, with her bow in the air and her stern flush with the water.
+The fugitive sprang out, but his stump instantly sank its whole length
+into the sodden soil. In vain he struggled and writhed. Not one step
+could he possibly take either forwards or backwards. He yelled in
+impotent rage, and kicked frantically into the mud with his other foot,
+but his struggles only bored his wooden pin the deeper into the sticky
+bank. When we brought our launch alongside he was so firmly anchored
+that it was only by throwing the end of a rope over his shoulders that
+we were able to haul him out, and to drag him, like some evil fish,
+over our side. The two Smiths, father and son, sat sullenly in their
+launch, but came aboard meekly enough when commanded. The _Aurora_
+herself we hauled off and made fast to our stern. A solid iron chest of
+Indian workmanship stood upon the deck. This, there could be no
+question, was the same that had contained the ill-omened treasure of
+the Sholtos. There was no key, but it was of considerable weight, so we
+transferred it carefully to our own little cabin. As we steamed slowly
+up-stream again, we flashed our search-light in every direction, but
+there was no sign of the Islander. Somewhere in the dark ooze at the
+bottom of the Thames lie the bones of that strange visitor to our
+shores.
+“See here,” said Holmes, pointing to the wooden hatchway. “We were
+hardly quick enough with our pistols.” There, sure enough, just behind
+where we had been standing, stuck one of those murderous darts which we
+knew so well. It must have whizzed between us at the instant that we
+fired. Holmes smiled at it and shrugged his shoulders in his easy
+fashion, but I confess that it turned me sick to think of the horrible
+death which had passed so close to us that night.
+Chapter XI
+The Great Agra Treasure
+Our captive sat in the cabin opposite to the iron box which he had done
+so much and waited so long to gain. He was a sunburned, reckless-eyed
+fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany
+features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular
+prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who was not to be
+easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been fifty or
+thereabouts, for his black, curly hair was thickly shot with grey. His
+face in repose was not an unpleasing one, though his heavy brows and
+aggressive chin gave him, as I had lately seen, a terrible expression
+when moved to anger. He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap,
+and his head sunk upon his breast, while he looked with his keen,
+twinkling eyes at the box which had been the cause of his ill-doings.
+It seemed to me that there was more sorrow than anger in his rigid and
+contained countenance. Once he looked up at me with a gleam of
+something like humour in his eyes.
+“Well, Jonathan Small,” said Holmes, lighting a cigar, “I am sorry that
+it has come to this.”
+“And so am I, sir,” he answered, frankly. “I don’t believe that I can
+swing over the job. I give you my word on the book that I never raised
+hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot
+one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as
+grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil
+with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not
+undo it again.”
+“Have a cigar,” said Holmes; “and you had best take a pull out of my
+flask, for you are very wet. How could you expect so small and weak a
+man as this black fellow to overpower Mr. Sholto and hold him while you
+were climbing the rope?”
+“You seem to know as much about it as if you were there, sir. The truth
+is that I hoped to find the room clear. I knew the habits of the house
+pretty well, and it was the time when Mr. Sholto usually went down to
+his supper. I shall make no secret of the business. The best defence
+that I can make is just the simple truth. Now, if it had been the old
+major I would have swung for him with a light heart. I would have
+thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar. But it’s
+cursed hard that I should be lagged over this young Sholto, with whom I
+had no quarrel whatever.”
+“You are under the charge of Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard. He
+is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true
+account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you
+do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the
+poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached
+the room.”
+“That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw him
+grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through the
+window. It fairly shook me, sir. I’d have half killed Tonga for it if
+he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his club, and
+some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say helped to put
+you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than I can tell. I
+don’t feel no malice against you for it. But it does seem a queer
+thing,” he added, with a bitter smile, “that I who have a fair claim to
+nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first half of my
+life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the
+other half digging drains at Dartmoor. It was an evil day for me when
+first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the
+Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the
+man who owned it. To him it brought murder, to Major Sholto it brought
+fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life.”
+At this moment Athelney Jones thrust his broad face and heavy shoulders
+into the tiny cabin. “Quite a family party,” he remarked. “I think I
+shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all
+congratulate each other. Pity we didn’t take the other alive; but there
+was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it rather
+fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her.”
+“All is well that ends well,” said Holmes. “But I certainly did not
+know that the _Aurora_ was such a clipper.”
+“Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that
+if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never
+have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business.”
+“Neither he did,” cried our prisoner,—“not a word. I chose his launch
+because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing, but we paid
+him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our
+vessel, the _Esmeralda_, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils.”
+“Well, if he has done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him.
+If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in
+condemning them.” It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones
+was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the
+capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes’s
+face, I could see that the speech had not been lost upon him.
+“We will be at Vauxhall Bridge presently,” said Jones, “and shall land
+you, Dr. Watson, with the treasure-box. I need hardly tell you that I
+am taking a very grave responsibility upon myself in doing this. It is
+most irregular; but of course an agreement is an agreement. I must,
+however, as a matter of duty, send an inspector with you, since you
+have so valuable a charge. You will drive, no doubt?”
+“Yes, I shall drive.”
+“It is a pity there is no key, that we may make an inventory first. You
+will have to break it open. Where is the key, my man?”
+“At the bottom of the river,” said Small, shortly.
+“Hum! There was no use your giving this unnecessary trouble. We have
+had work enough already through you. However, doctor, I need not warn
+you to be careful. Bring the box back with you to the Baker Street
+rooms. You will find us there, on our way to the station.”
+They landed me at Vauxhall, with my heavy iron box, and with a bluff,
+genial inspector as my companion. A quarter of an hour’s drive brought
+us to Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s. The servant seemed surprised at so late a
+visitor. Mrs. Cecil Forrester was out for the evening, she explained,
+and likely to be very late. Miss Morstan, however, was in the
+drawing-room: so to the drawing-room I went, box in hand, leaving the
+obliging inspector in the cab.
+She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white
+diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and
+waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back
+in the basket chair, playing over her sweet, grave face, and tinting
+with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One
+white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole
+pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my
+foot-fall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of
+surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.
+“I heard a cab drive up,” she said. “I thought that Mrs. Forrester had
+come back very early, but I never dreamed that it might be you. What
+news have you brought me?”
+“I have brought something better than news,” said I, putting down the
+box upon the table and speaking jovially and boisterously, though my
+heart was heavy within me. “I have brought you something which is worth
+all the news in the world. I have brought you a fortune.”
+She glanced at the iron box. “Is that the treasure, then?” she asked,
+coolly enough.
+“Yes, this is the great Agra treasure. Half of it is yours and half is
+Thaddeus Sholto’s. You will have a couple of hundred thousand each.
+Think of that! An annuity of ten thousand pounds. There will be few
+richer young ladies in England. Is it not glorious?”
+I think that I must have been rather overacting my delight, and that
+she detected a hollow ring in my congratulations, for I saw her
+eyebrows rise a little, and she glanced at me curiously.
+“If I have it,” said she, “I owe it to you.”
+“No, no,” I answered, “not to me, but to my friend Sherlock Holmes.
+With all the will in the world, I could never have followed up a clue
+which has taxed even his analytical genius. As it was, we very nearly
+lost it at the last moment.”
+“Pray sit down and tell me all about it, Dr. Watson,” said she.
+I narrated briefly what had occurred since I had seen her
+last,—Holmes’s new method of search, the discovery of the _Aurora_, the
+appearance of Athelney Jones, our expedition in the evening, and the
+wild chase down the Thames. She listened with parted lips and shining
+eyes to my recital of our adventures. When I spoke of the dart which
+had so narrowly missed us, she turned so white that I feared that she
+was about to faint.
+“It is nothing,” she said, as I hastened to pour her out some water. “I
+am all right again. It was a shock to me to hear that I had placed my
+friends in such horrible peril.”
+“That is all over,” I answered. “It was nothing. I will tell you no
+more gloomy details. Let us turn to something brighter. There is the
+treasure. What could be brighter than that? I got leave to bring it
+with me, thinking that it would interest you to be the first to see
+it.”
+“It would be of the greatest interest to me,” she said. There was no
+eagerness in her voice, however. It had struck her, doubtless, that it
+might seem ungracious upon her part to be indifferent to a prize which
+had cost so much to win.
+“What a pretty box!” she said, stooping over it. “This is Indian work,
+I suppose?”
+“Yes; it is Benares metal-work.”
+“And so heavy!” she exclaimed, trying to raise it. “The box alone must
+be of some value. Where is the key?”
+“Small threw it into the Thames,” I answered. “I must borrow Mrs.
+Forrester’s poker.” There was in the front a thick and broad hasp,
+wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha. Under this I thrust the end
+of the poker and twisted it outward as a lever. The hasp sprang open
+with a loud snap. With trembling fingers I flung back the lid. We both
+stood gazing in astonishment. The box was empty!
+No wonder that it was heavy. The iron-work was two-thirds of an inch
+thick all round. It was massive, well made, and solid, like a chest
+constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb
+of metal or jewelry lay within it. It was absolutely and completely
+empty.
+“The treasure is lost,” said Miss Morstan, calmly.
+As I listened to the words and realised what they meant, a great shadow
+seemed to pass from my soul. I did not know how this Agra treasure had
+weighed me down, until now that it was finally removed. It was selfish,
+no doubt, disloyal, wrong, but I could realise nothing save that the
+golden barrier was gone from between us. “Thank God!” I ejaculated from
+my very heart.
+She looked at me with a quick, questioning smile. “Why do you say
+that?” she asked.
+“Because you are within my reach again,” I said, taking her hand. She
+did not withdraw it. “Because I love you, Mary, as truly as ever a man
+loved a woman. Because this treasure, these riches, sealed my lips. Now
+that they are gone I can tell you how I love you. That is why I said,
+‘Thank God.’”
+“Then I say, ‘Thank God,’ too,” she whispered, as I drew her to my
+side. Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained
+one.
+Chapter XII
+The Strange Story of Jonathan Small
+A very patient man was that inspector in the cab, for it was a weary
+time before I rejoined him. His face clouded over when I showed him the
+empty box.
+“There goes the reward!” said he, gloomily. “Where there is no money
+there is no pay. This night’s work would have been worth a tenner each
+to Sam Brown and me if the treasure had been there.”
+“Mr. Thaddeus Sholto is a rich man,” I said. “He will see that you are
+rewarded, treasure or no.”
+The inspector shook his head despondently, however. “It’s a bad job,”
+he repeated; “and so Mr. Athelney Jones will think.”
+His forecast proved to be correct, for the detective looked blank
+enough when I got to Baker Street and showed him the empty box. They
+had only just arrived, Holmes, the prisoner, and he, for they had
+changed their plans so far as to report themselves at a station upon
+the way. My companion lounged in his arm-chair with his usual listless
+expression, while Small sat stolidly opposite to him with his wooden
+leg cocked over his sound one. As I exhibited the empty box he leaned
+back in his chair and laughed aloud.
+“This is your doing, Small,” said Athelney Jones, angrily.
+“Yes, I have put it away where you shall never lay hand upon it,” he
+cried, exultantly. “It is my treasure; and if I can’t have the loot
+I’ll take darned good care that no one else does. I tell you that no
+living man has any right to it, unless it is three men who are in the
+Andaman convict-barracks and myself. I know now that I cannot have the
+use of it, and I know that they cannot. I have acted all through for
+them as much as for myself. It’s been the sign of four with us always.
+Well I know that they would have had me do just what I have done, and
+throw the treasure into the Thames rather than let it go to kith or kin
+of Sholto or of Morstan. It was not to make them rich that we did for
+Achmet. You’ll find the treasure where the key is, and where little
+Tonga is. When I saw that your launch must catch us, I put the loot
+away in a safe place. There are no rupees for you this journey.”
+“You are deceiving us, Small,” said Athelney Jones, sternly. “If you
+had wished to throw the treasure into the Thames it would have been
+easier for you to have thrown box and all.”
+“Easier for me to throw, and easier for you to recover,” he answered,
+with a shrewd, sidelong look. “The man that was clever enough to hunt
+me down is clever enough to pick an iron box from the bottom of a
+river. Now that they are scattered over five miles or so, it may be a
+harder job. It went to my heart to do it, though. I was half mad when
+you came up with us. However, there’s no good grieving over it. I’ve
+had ups in my life, and I’ve had downs, but I’ve learned not to cry
+over spilled milk.”
+“This is a very serious matter, Small,” said the detective. “If you had
+helped justice, instead of thwarting it in this way, you would have had
+a better chance at your trial.”
+“Justice!” snarled the ex-convict. “A pretty justice! Whose loot is
+this, if it is not ours? Where is the justice that I should give it up
+to those who have never earned it? Look how I have earned it! Twenty
+long years in that fever-ridden swamp, all day at work under the
+mangrove-tree, all night chained up in the filthy convict-huts, bitten
+by mosquitoes, racked with ague, bullied by every cursed black-faced
+policeman who loved to take it out of a white man. That was how I
+earned the Agra treasure; and you talk to me of justice because I
+cannot bear to feel that I have paid this price only that another may
+enjoy it! I would rather swing a score of times, or have one of Tonga’s
+darts in my hide, than live in a convict’s cell and feel that another
+man is at his ease in a palace with the money that should be mine.”
+Small had dropped his mask of stoicism, and all this came out in a wild
+whirl of words, while his eyes blazed, and the handcuffs clanked
+together with the impassioned movement of his hands. I could
+understand, as I saw the fury and the passion of the man, that it was
+no groundless or unnatural terror which had possessed Major Sholto when
+he first learned that the injured convict was upon his track.
+“You forget that we know nothing of all this,” said Holmes quietly. “We
+have not heard your story, and we cannot tell how far justice may
+originally have been on your side.”
+“Well, sir, you have been very fair-spoken to me, though I can see that
+I have you to thank that I have these bracelets upon my wrists. Still,
+I bear no grudge for that. It is all fair and above-board. If you want
+to hear my story I have no wish to hold it back. What I say to you is
+God’s truth, every word of it. Thank you; you can put the glass beside
+me here, and I’ll put my lips to it if I am dry.
+“I am a Worcestershire man myself,—born near Pershore. I dare say you
+would find a heap of Smalls living there now if you were to look. I
+have often thought of taking a look round there, but the truth is that
+I was never much of a credit to the family, and I doubt if they would
+be so very glad to see me. They were all steady, chapel-going folk,
+small farmers, well-known and respected over the country-side, while I
+was always a bit of a rover. At last, however, when I was about
+eighteen, I gave them no more trouble, for I got into a mess over a
+girl, and could only get out of it again by taking the Queen’s shilling
+and joining the 3rd Buffs, which was just starting for India.
+“I wasn’t destined to do much soldiering, however. I had just got past
+the goose-step, and learned to handle my musket, when I was fool enough
+to go swimming in the Ganges. Luckily for me, my company sergeant, John
+Holder, was in the water at the same time, and he was one of the finest
+swimmers in the service. A crocodile took me, just as I was half-way
+across, and nipped off my right leg as clean as a surgeon could have
+done it, just above the knee. What with the shock and the loss of
+blood, I fainted, and should have drowned if Holder had not caught hold
+of me and paddled for the bank. I was five months in hospital over it,
+and when at last I was able to limp out of it with this timber toe
+strapped to my stump I found myself invalided out of the army and
+unfitted for any active occupation.
+“I was, as you can imagine, pretty down on my luck at this time, for I
+was a useless cripple though not yet in my twentieth year. However, my
+misfortune soon proved to be a blessing in disguise. A man named Abel
+White, who had come out there as an indigo-planter, wanted an overseer
+to look after his coolies and keep them up to their work. He happened
+to be a friend of our colonel’s, who had taken an interest in me since
+the accident. To make a long story short, the colonel recommended me
+strongly for the post and, as the work was mostly to be done on
+horseback, my leg was no great obstacle, for I had enough knee left to
+keep good grip on the saddle. What I had to do was to ride over the
+plantation, to keep an eye on the men as they worked, and to report the
+idlers. The pay was fair, I had comfortable quarters, and altogether I
+was content to spend the remainder of my life in indigo-planting. Mr.
+Abel White was a kind man, and he would often drop into my little
+shanty and smoke a pipe with me, for white folk out there feel their
+hearts warm to each other as they never do here at home.
+“Well, I was never in luck’s way long. Suddenly, without a note of
+warning, the great mutiny broke upon us. One month India lay as still
+and peaceful, to all appearance, as Surrey or Kent; the next there were
+two hundred thousand black devils let loose, and the country was a
+perfect hell. Of course you know all about it, gentlemen,—a deal more
+than I do, very like, since reading is not in my line. I only know what
+I saw with my own eyes. Our plantation was at a place called Muttra,
+near the border of the Northwest Provinces. Night after night the whole
+sky was alight with the burning bungalows, and day after day we had
+small companies of Europeans passing through our estate with their
+wives and children, on their way to Agra, where were the nearest
+troops. Mr. Abel White was an obstinate man. He had it in his head that
+the affair had been exaggerated, and that it would blow over as
+suddenly as it had sprung up. There he sat on his veranda, drinking
+whiskey-pegs and smoking cheroots, while the country was in a blaze
+about him. Of course we stuck by him, I and Dawson, who, with his wife,
+used to do the book-work and the managing. Well, one fine day the crash
+came. I had been away on a distant plantation, and was riding slowly
+home in the evening, when my eye fell upon something all huddled
+together at the bottom of a steep nullah. I rode down to see what it
+was, and the cold struck through my heart when I found it was Dawson’s
+wife, all cut into ribbons, and half eaten by jackals and native dogs.
+A little further up the road Dawson himself was lying on his face,
+quite dead, with an empty revolver in his hand and four Sepoys lying
+across each other in front of him. I reined up my horse, wondering
+which way I should turn, but at that moment I saw thick smoke curling
+up from Abel White’s bungalow and the flames beginning to burst through
+the roof. I knew then that I could do my employer no good, but would
+only throw my own life away if I meddled in the matter. From where I
+stood I could see hundreds of the black fiends, with their red coats
+still on their backs, dancing and howling round the burning house. Some
+of them pointed at me, and a couple of bullets sang past my head; so I
+broke away across the paddy-fields, and found myself late at night safe
+within the walls at Agra.
+“As it proved, however, there was no great safety there, either. The
+whole country was up like a swarm of bees. Wherever the English could
+collect in little bands they held just the ground that their guns
+commanded. Everywhere else they were helpless fugitives. It was a fight
+of the millions against the hundreds; and the cruellest part of it was
+that these men that we fought against, foot, horse, and gunners, were
+our own picked troops, whom we had taught and trained, handling our own
+weapons, and blowing our own bugle-calls. At Agra there were the 3rd
+Bengal Fusiliers, some Sikhs, two troops of horse, and a battery of
+artillery. A volunteer corps of clerks and merchants had been formed,
+and this I joined, wooden leg and all. We went out to meet the rebels
+at Shahgunge early in July, and we beat them back for a time, but our
+powder gave out, and we had to fall back upon the city.
+“Nothing but the worst news came to us from every side,—which is not to
+be wondered at, for if you look at the map you will see that we were
+right in the heart of it. Lucknow is rather better than a hundred miles
+to the east, and Cawnpore about as far to the south. From every point
+on the compass there was nothing but torture and murder and outrage.
+“The city of Agra is a great place, swarming with fanatics and fierce
+devil-worshippers of all sorts. Our handful of men were lost among the
+narrow, winding streets. Our leader moved across the river, therefore,
+and took up his position in the old fort at Agra. I don’t know if any
+of you gentlemen have ever read or heard anything of that old fort. It
+is a very queer place,—the queerest that ever I was in, and I have been
+in some rum corners, too. First of all, it is enormous in size. I
+should think that the enclosure must be acres and acres. There is a
+modern part, which took all our garrison, women, children, stores, and
+everything else, with plenty of room over. But the modern part is
+nothing like the size of the old quarter, where nobody goes, and which
+is given over to the scorpions and the centipedes. It is all full of
+great deserted halls, and winding passages, and long corridors twisting
+in and out, so that it is easy enough for folk to get lost in it. For
+this reason it was seldom that any one went into it, though now and
+again a party with torches might go exploring.
+“The river washes along the front of the old fort, and so protects it,
+but on the sides and behind there are many doors, and these had to be
+guarded, of course, in the old quarter as well as in that which was
+actually held by our troops. We were short-handed, with hardly men
+enough to man the angles of the building and to serve the guns. It was
+impossible for us, therefore, to station a strong guard at every one of
+the innumerable gates. What we did was to organise a central
+guard-house in the middle of the fort, and to leave each gate under the
+charge of one white man and two or three natives. I was selected to
+take charge during certain hours of the night of a small isolated door
+upon the southwest side of the building. Two Sikh troopers were placed
+under my command, and I was instructed if anything went wrong to fire
+my musket, when I might rely upon help coming at once from the central
+guard. As the guard was a good two hundred paces away, however, and as
+the space between was cut up into a labyrinth of passages and
+corridors, I had great doubts as to whether they could arrive in time
+to be of any use in case of an actual attack.
+“Well, I was pretty proud at having this small command given me, since
+I was a raw recruit, and a game-legged one at that. For two nights I
+kept the watch with my Punjaubees. They were tall, fierce-looking
+chaps, Mahomet Singh and Abdullah Khan by name, both old fighting-men
+who had borne arms against us at Chilian-wallah. They could talk
+English pretty well, but I could get little out of them. They preferred
+to stand together and jabber all night in their queer Sikh lingo. For
+myself, I used to stand outside the gateway, looking down on the broad,
+winding river and on the twinkling lights of the great city. The
+beating of drums, the rattle of tomtoms, and the yells and howls of the
+rebels, drunk with opium and with bang, were enough to remind us all
+night of our dangerous neighbours across the stream. Every two hours
+the officer of the night used to come round to all the posts, to make
+sure that all was well.
+“The third night of my watch was dark and dirty, with a small, driving
+rain. It was dreary work standing in the gateway hour after hour in
+such weather. I tried again and again to make my Sikhs talk, but
+without much success. At two in the morning the rounds passed, and
+broke for a moment the weariness of the night. Finding that my
+companions would not be led into conversation, I took out my pipe, and
+laid down my musket to strike the match. In an instant the two Sikhs
+were upon me. One of them snatched my firelock up and levelled it at my
+head, while the other held a great knife to my throat and swore between
+his teeth that he would plunge it into me if I moved a step.
+“My first thought was that these fellows were in league with the
+rebels, and that this was the beginning of an assault. If our door were
+in the hands of the Sepoys the place must fall, and the women and
+children be treated as they were in Cawnpore. Maybe you gentlemen think
+that I am just making out a case for myself, but I give you my word
+that when I thought of that, though I felt the point of the knife at my
+throat, I opened my mouth with the intention of giving a scream, if it
+was my last one, which might alarm the main guard. The man who held me
+seemed to know my thoughts; for, even as I braced myself to it, he
+whispered, ‘Don’t make a noise. The fort is safe enough. There are no
+rebel dogs on this side of the river.’ There was the ring of truth in
+what he said, and I knew that if I raised my voice I was a dead man. I
+could read it in the fellow’s brown eyes. I waited, therefore, in
+silence, to see what it was that they wanted from me.
+“‘Listen to me, Sahib,’ said the taller and fiercer of the pair, the
+one whom they called Abdullah Khan. ‘You must either be with us now or
+you must be silenced forever. The thing is too great a one for us to
+hesitate. Either you are heart and soul with us on your oath on the
+cross of the Christians, or your body this night shall be thrown into
+the ditch and we shall pass over to our brothers in the rebel army.
+There is no middle way. Which is it to be, death or life? We can only
+give you three minutes to decide, for the time is passing, and all must
+be done before the rounds come again.’
+“‘How can I decide?’ said I. ‘You have not told me what you want of me.
+But I tell you now that if it is anything against the safety of the
+fort I will have no truck with it, so you can drive home your knife and
+welcome.’
+“‘It is nothing against the fort,’ said he. ‘We only ask you to do that
+which your countrymen come to this land for. We ask you to be rich. If
+you will be one of us this night, we will swear to you upon the naked
+knife, and by the threefold oath which no Sikh was ever known to break,
+that you shall have your fair share of the loot. A quarter of the
+treasure shall be yours. We can say no fairer.’
+“‘But what is the treasure, then?’ I asked. ‘I am as ready to be rich
+as you can be, if you will but show me how it can be done.’
+“‘You will swear, then,’ said he, ‘by the bones of your father, by the
+honour of your mother, by the cross of your faith, to raise no hand and
+speak no word against us, either now or afterwards?’
+“‘I will swear it,’ I answered, ‘provided that the fort is not
+endangered.’
+“‘Then my comrade and I will swear that you shall have a quarter of the
+treasure which shall be equally divided among the four of us.’
+“‘There are but three,’ said I.
+“‘No; Dost Akbar must have his share. We can tell the tale to you while
+we await them. Do you stand at the gate, Mahomet Singh, and give notice
+of their coming. The thing stands thus, Sahib, and I tell it to you
+because I know that an oath is binding upon a Feringhee, and that we
+may trust you. Had you been a lying Hindoo, though you had sworn by all
+the gods in their false temples, your blood would have been upon the
+knife, and your body in the water. But the Sikh knows the Englishman,
+and the Englishman knows the Sikh. Hearken, then, to what I have to
+say.
+“‘There is a rajah in the northern provinces who has much wealth,
+though his lands are small. Much has come to him from his father, and
+more still he has set by himself, for he is of a low nature and hoards
+his gold rather than spend it. When the troubles broke out he would be
+friends both with the lion and the tiger,—with the Sepoy and with the
+Company’s Raj. Soon, however, it seemed to him that the white men’s day
+was come, for through all the land he could hear of nothing but of
+their death and their overthrow. Yet, being a careful man, he made such
+plans that, come what might, half at least of his treasure should be
+left to him. That which was in gold and silver he kept by him in the
+vaults of his palace, but the most precious stones and the choicest
+pearls that he had he put in an iron box, and sent it by a trusty
+servant who, under the guise of a merchant, should take it to the fort
+at Agra, there to lie until the land is at peace. Thus, if the rebels
+won he would have his money, but if the Company conquered his jewels
+would be saved to him. Having thus divided his hoard, he threw himself
+into the cause of the Sepoys, since they were strong upon his borders.
+By doing this, mark you, Sahib, his property becomes the due of those
+who have been true to their salt.
+“‘This pretended merchant, who travels under the name of Achmet, is now
+in the city of Agra, and desires to gain his way into the fort. He has
+with him as travelling-companion my foster-brother Dost Akbar, who
+knows his secret. Dost Akbar has promised this night to lead him to a
+side-postern of the fort, and has chosen this one for his purpose. Here
+he will come presently, and here he will find Mahomet Singh and myself
+awaiting him. The place is lonely, and none shall know of his coming.
+The world shall know of the merchant Achmet no more, but the great
+treasure of the rajah shall be divided among us. What say you to it,
+Sahib?’
+“In Worcestershire the life of a man seems a great and a sacred thing;
+but it is very different when there is fire and blood all round you and
+you have been used to meeting death at every turn. Whether Achmet the
+merchant lived or died was a thing as light as air to me, but at the
+talk about the treasure my heart turned to it, and I thought of what I
+might do in the old country with it, and how my folk would stare when
+they saw their ne’er-do-well coming back with his pockets full of gold
+moidores. I had, therefore, already made up my mind. Abdullah Khan,
+however, thinking that I hesitated, pressed the matter more closely.
+“‘Consider, Sahib,’ said he, ‘that if this man is taken by the
+commandant he will be hung or shot, and his jewels taken by the
+government, so that no man will be a rupee the better for them. Now,
+since we do the taking of him, why should we not do the rest as well?
+The jewels will be as well with us as in the Company’s coffers. There
+will be enough to make every one of us rich men and great chiefs. No
+one can know about the matter, for here we are cut off from all men.
+What could be better for the purpose? Say again, then, Sahib, whether
+you are with us, or if we must look upon you as an enemy.’
+“‘I am with you heart and soul,’ said I.
+“‘It is well,’ he answered, handing me back my firelock. ‘You see that
+we trust you, for your word, like ours, is not to be broken. We have
+now only to wait for my brother and the merchant.’
+“‘Does your brother know, then, of what you will do?’ I asked.
+“‘The plan is his. He has devised it. We will go to the gate and share
+the watch with Mahomet Singh.’
+“The rain was still falling steadily, for it was just the beginning of
+the wet season. Brown, heavy clouds were drifting across the sky, and
+it was hard to see more than a stone-cast. A deep moat lay in front of
+our door, but the water was in places nearly dried up, and it could
+easily be crossed. It was strange to me to be standing there with those
+two wild Punjaubees waiting for the man who was coming to his death.
+“Suddenly my eye caught the glint of a shaded lantern at the other side
+of the moat. It vanished among the mound-heaps, and then appeared again
+coming slowly in our direction.
+“‘Here they are!’ I exclaimed.
+“‘You will challenge him, Sahib, as usual,’ whispered Abdullah. ‘Give
+him no cause for fear. Send us in with him, and we shall do the rest
+while you stay here on guard. Have the lantern ready to uncover, that
+we may be sure that it is indeed the man.’
+“The light had flickered onwards, now stopping and now advancing, until
+I could see two dark figures upon the other side of the moat. I let
+them scramble down the sloping bank, splash through the mire, and climb
+half-way up to the gate, before I challenged them.
+“‘Who goes there?’ said I, in a subdued voice.
+“‘Friends,’ came the answer. I uncovered my lantern and threw a flood
+of light upon them. The first was an enormous Sikh, with a black beard
+which swept nearly down to his cummerbund. Outside of a show I have
+never seen so tall a man. The other was a little, fat, round fellow,
+with a great yellow turban, and a bundle in his hand, done up in a
+shawl. He seemed to be all in a quiver with fear, for his hands
+twitched as if he had the ague, and his head kept turning to left and
+right with two bright little twinkling eyes, like a mouse when he
+ventures out from his hole. It gave me the chills to think of killing
+him, but I thought of the treasure, and my heart set as hard as a flint
+within me. When he saw my white face he gave a little chirrup of joy
+and came running up towards me.
+“‘Your protection, Sahib,’ he panted,—‘your protection for the unhappy
+merchant Achmet. I have travelled across Rajpootana that I might seek
+the shelter of the fort at Agra. I have been robbed and beaten and
+abused because I have been the friend of the Company. It is a blessed
+night this when I am once more in safety,—I and my poor possessions.’
+“‘What have you in the bundle?’ I asked.
+“‘An iron box,’ he answered, ‘which contains one or two little family
+matters which are of no value to others, but which I should be sorry to
+lose. Yet I am not a beggar; and I shall reward you, young Sahib, and
+your governor also, if he will give me the shelter I ask.’
+“I could not trust myself to speak longer with the man. The more I
+looked at his fat, frightened face, the harder did it seem that we
+should slay him in cold blood. It was best to get it over.
+“‘Take him to the main guard,’ said I. The two Sikhs closed in upon him
+on each side, and the giant walked behind, while they marched in
+through the dark gateway. Never was a man so compassed round with
+death. I remained at the gateway with the lantern.
+“I could hear the measured tramp of their footsteps sounding through
+the lonely corridors. Suddenly it ceased, and I heard voices, and a
+scuffle, with the sound of blows. A moment later there came, to my
+horror, a rush of footsteps coming in my direction, with the loud
+breathing of a running man. I turned my lantern down the long, straight
+passage, and there was the fat man, running like the wind, with a smear
+of blood across his face, and close at his heels, bounding like a
+tiger, the great black-bearded Sikh, with a knife flashing in his hand.
+I have never seen a man run so fast as that little merchant. He was
+gaining on the Sikh, and I could see that if he once passed me and got
+to the open air he would save himself yet. My heart softened to him,
+but again the thought of his treasure turned me hard and bitter. I cast
+my firelock between his legs as he raced past, and he rolled twice over
+like a shot rabbit. Ere he could stagger to his feet the Sikh was upon
+him, and buried his knife twice in his side. The man never uttered moan
+nor moved muscle, but lay were he had fallen. I think myself that he
+may have broken his neck with the fall. You see, gentlemen, that I am
+keeping my promise. I am telling you every work of the business just
+exactly as it happened, whether it is in my favour or not.”
+He stopped, and held out his manacled hands for the whiskey-and-water
+which Holmes had brewed for him. For myself, I confess that I had now
+conceived the utmost horror of the man, not only for this cold-blooded
+business in which he had been concerned, but even more for the somewhat
+flippant and careless way in which he narrated it. Whatever punishment
+was in store for him, I felt that he might expect no sympathy from me.
+Sherlock Holmes and Jones sat with their hands upon their knees, deeply
+interested in the story, but with the same disgust written upon their
+faces. He may have observed it, for there was a touch of defiance in
+his voice and manner as he proceeded.
+“It was all very bad, no doubt,” said he. “I should like to know how
+many fellows in my shoes would have refused a share of this loot when
+they knew that they would have their throats cut for their pains.
+Besides, it was my life or his when once he was in the fort. If he had
+got out, the whole business would come to light, and I should have been
+court-martialled and shot as likely as not; for people were not very
+lenient at a time like that.”
+“Go on with your story,” said Holmes, shortly.
+“Well, we carried him in, Abdullah, Akbar, and I. A fine weight he was,
+too, for all that he was so short. Mahomet Singh was left to guard the
+door. We took him to a place which the Sikhs had already prepared. It
+was some distance off, where a winding passage leads to a great empty
+hall, the brick walls of which were all crumbling to pieces. The earth
+floor had sunk in at one place, making a natural grave, so we left
+Achmet the merchant there, having first covered him over with loose
+bricks. This done, we all went back to the treasure.
+“It lay where he had dropped it when he was first attacked. The box was
+the same which now lies open upon your table. A key was hung by a
+silken cord to that carved handle upon the top. We opened it, and the
+light of the lantern gleamed upon a collection of gems such as I have
+read of and thought about when I was a little lad at Pershore. It was
+blinding to look upon them. When we had feasted our eyes we took them
+all out and made a list of them. There were one hundred and forty-three
+diamonds of the first water, including one which has been called, I
+believe, ‘the Great Mogul’ and is said to be the second largest stone
+in existence. Then there were ninety-seven very fine emeralds, and one
+hundred and seventy rubies, some of which, however, were small. There
+were forty carbuncles, two hundred and ten sapphires, sixty-one agates,
+and a great quantity of beryls, onyxes, cats’-eyes, turquoises, and
+other stones, the very names of which I did not know at the time,
+though I have become more familiar with them since. Besides this, there
+were nearly three hundred very fine pearls, twelve of which were set in
+a gold coronet. By the way, these last had been taken out of the chest
+and were not there when I recovered it.
+“After we had counted our treasures we put them back into the chest and
+carried them to the gateway to show them to Mahomet Singh. Then we
+solemnly renewed our oath to stand by each other and be true to our
+secret. We agreed to conceal our loot in a safe place until the country
+should be at peace again, and then to divide it equally among
+ourselves. There was no use dividing it at present, for if gems of such
+value were found upon us it would cause suspicion, and there was no
+privacy in the fort nor any place where we could keep them. We carried
+the box, therefore, into the same hall where we had buried the body,
+and there, under certain bricks in the best-preserved wall, we made a
+hollow and put our treasure. We made careful note of the place, and
+next day I drew four plans, one for each of us, and put the sign of the
+four of us at the bottom, for we had sworn that we should each always
+act for all, so that none might take advantage. That is an oath that I
+can put my hand to my heart and swear that I have never broken.
+“Well, there’s no use my telling you gentlemen what came of the Indian
+mutiny. After Wilson took Delhi and Sir Colin relieved Lucknow the back
+of the business was broken. Fresh troops came pouring in, and Nana
+Sahib made himself scarce over the frontier. A flying column under
+Colonel Greathed came round to Agra and cleared the Pandies away from
+it. Peace seemed to be settling upon the country, and we four were
+beginning to hope that the time was at hand when we might safely go off
+with our shares of the plunder. In a moment, however, our hopes were
+shattered by our being arrested as the murderers of Achmet.
+“It came about in this way. When the rajah put his jewels into the
+hands of Achmet he did it because he knew that he was a trusty man.
+They are suspicious folk in the East, however: so what does this rajah
+do but take a second even more trusty servant and set him to play the
+spy upon the first? This second man was ordered never to let Achmet out
+of his sight, and he followed him like his shadow. He went after him
+that night and saw him pass through the doorway. Of course he thought
+he had taken refuge in the fort, and applied for admission there
+himself next day, but could find no trace of Achmet. This seemed to him
+so strange that he spoke about it to a sergeant of guides, who brought
+it to the ears of the commandant. A thorough search was quickly made,
+and the body was discovered. Thus at the very moment that we thought
+that all was safe we were all four seized and brought to trial on a
+charge of murder,—three of us because we had held the gate that night,
+and the fourth because he was known to have been in the company of the
+murdered man. Not a word about the jewels came out at the trial, for
+the rajah had been deposed and driven out of India: so no one had any
+particular interest in them. The murder, however, was clearly made out,
+and it was certain that we must all have been concerned in it. The
+three Sikhs got penal servitude for life, and I was condemned to death,
+though my sentence was afterwards commuted into the same as the others.
+“It was rather a queer position that we found ourselves in then. There
+we were all four tied by the leg and with precious little chance of
+ever getting out again, while we each held a secret which might have
+put each of us in a palace if we could only have made use of it. It was
+enough to make a man eat his heart out to have to stand the kick and
+the cuff of every petty jack-in-office, to have rice to eat and water
+to drink, when that gorgeous fortune was ready for him outside, just
+waiting to be picked up. It might have driven me mad; but I was always
+a pretty stubborn one, so I just held on and bided my time.
+“At last it seemed to me to have come. I was changed from Agra to
+Madras, and from there to Blair Island in the Andamans. There are very
+few white convicts at this settlement, and, as I had behaved well from
+the first, I soon found myself a sort of privileged person. I was given
+a hut in Hope Town, which is a small place on the slopes of Mount
+Harriet, and I was left pretty much to myself. It is a dreary,
+fever-stricken place, and all beyond our little clearings was infested
+with wild cannibal natives, who were ready enough to blow a poisoned
+dart at us if they saw a chance. There was digging, and ditching, and
+yam-planting, and a dozen other things to be done, so we were busy
+enough all day; though in the evening we had a little time to
+ourselves. Among other things, I learned to dispense drugs for the
+surgeon, and picked up a smattering of his knowledge. All the time I
+was on the lookout for a chance of escape; but it is hundreds of miles
+from any other land, and there is little or no wind in those seas: so
+it was a terribly difficult job to get away.
+“The surgeon, Dr. Somerton, was a fast, sporting young chap, and the
+other young officers would meet in his rooms of an evening and play
+cards. The surgery, where I used to make up my drugs, was next to his
+sitting-room, with a small window between us. Often, if I felt
+lonesome, I used to turn out the lamp in the surgery, and then,
+standing there, I could hear their talk and watch their play. I am fond
+of a hand at cards myself, and it was almost as good as having one to
+watch the others. There was Major Sholto, Captain Morstan, and
+Lieutenant Bromley Brown, who were in command of the native troops, and
+there was the surgeon himself, and two or three prison-officials,
+crafty old hands who played a nice sly safe game. A very snug little
+party they used to make.
+“Well, there was one thing which very soon struck me, and that was that
+the soldiers used always to lose and the civilians to win. Mind, I
+don’t say that there was anything unfair, but so it was. These
+prison-chaps had done little else than play cards ever since they had
+been at the Andamans, and they knew each other’s game to a point, while
+the others just played to pass the time and threw their cards down
+anyhow. Night after night the soldiers got up poorer men, and the
+poorer they got the more keen they were to play. Major Sholto was the
+hardest hit. He used to pay in notes and gold at first, but soon it
+came to notes of hand and for big sums. He sometimes would win for a
+few deals, just to give him heart, and then the luck would set in
+against him worse than ever. All day he would wander about as black as
+thunder, and he took to drinking a deal more than was good for him.
+“One night he lost even more heavily than usual. I was sitting in my
+hut when he and Captain Morstan came stumbling along on the way to
+their quarters. They were bosom friends, those two, and never far
+apart. The major was raving about his losses.
+“‘It’s all up, Morstan,’ he was saying, as they passed my hut. ‘I shall
+have to send in my papers. I am a ruined man.’
+“‘Nonsense, old chap!’ said the other, slapping him upon the shoulder.
+‘I’ve had a nasty facer myself, but—’ That was all I could hear, but it
+was enough to set me thinking.
+“A couple of days later Major Sholto was strolling on the beach: so I
+took the chance of speaking to him.
+“‘I wish to have your advice, major,’ said I.
+“‘Well, Small, what is it?’ he asked, taking his cheroot from his lips.
+“‘I wanted to ask you, sir,’ said I, ‘who is the proper person to whom
+hidden treasure should be handed over. I know where half a million
+worth lies, and, as I cannot use it myself, I thought perhaps the best
+thing that I could do would be to hand it over to the proper
+authorities, and then perhaps they would get my sentence shortened for
+me.’
+“‘Half a million, Small?’ he gasped, looking hard at me to see if I was
+in earnest.
+“‘Quite that, sir,—in jewels and pearls. It lies there ready for any
+one. And the queer thing about it is that the real owner is outlawed
+and cannot hold property, so that it belongs to the first comer.’
+“‘To government, Small,’ he stammered,—‘to government.’ But he said it
+in a halting fashion, and I knew in my heart that I had got him.
+“‘You think, then, sir, that I should give the information to the
+Governor-General?’ said I, quietly.
+“‘Well, well, you must not do anything rash, or that you might repent.
+Let me hear all about it, Small. Give me the facts.’
+“I told him the whole story, with small changes so that he could not
+identify the places. When I had finished he stood stock still and full
+of thought. I could see by the twitch of his lip that there was a
+struggle going on within him.
+“‘This is a very important matter, Small,’ he said, at last. ‘You must
+not say a word to any one about it, and I shall see you again soon.’
+“Two nights later he and his friend Captain Morstan came to my hut in
+the dead of the night with a lantern.
+“‘I want you just to let Captain Morstan hear that story from your own
+lips, Small,’ said he.
+“I repeated it as I had told it before.
+“‘It rings true, eh?’ said he. ‘It’s good enough to act upon?’
+“Captain Morstan nodded.
+“‘Look here, Small,’ said the major. ‘We have been talking it over, my
+friend here and I, and we have come to the conclusion that this secret
+of yours is hardly a government matter, after all, but is a private
+concern of your own, which of course you have the power of disposing of
+as you think best. Now, the question is, what price would you ask for
+it? We might be inclined to take it up, and at least look into it, if
+we could agree as to terms.’ He tried to speak in a cool, careless way,
+but his eyes were shining with excitement and greed.
+“‘Why, as to that, gentlemen,’ I answered, trying also to be cool, but
+feeling as excited as he did, ‘there is only one bargain which a man in
+my position can make. I shall want you to help me to my freedom, and to
+help my three companions to theirs. We shall then take you into
+partnership, and give you a fifth share to divide between you.’
+“‘Hum!’ said he. ‘A fifth share! That is not very tempting.’
+“‘It would come to fifty thousand apiece,’ said I.
+“‘But how can we gain your freedom? You know very well that you ask an
+impossibility.’
+“‘Nothing of the sort,’ I answered. ‘I have thought it all out to the
+last detail. The only bar to our escape is that we can get no boat fit
+for the voyage, and no provisions to last us for so long a time. There
+are plenty of little yachts and yawls at Calcutta or Madras which would
+serve our turn well. Do you bring one over. We shall engage to get
+aboard her by night, and if you will drop us on any part of the Indian
+coast you will have done your part of the bargain.’
+“‘If there were only one,’ he said.
+“‘None or all,’ I answered. ‘We have sworn it. The four of us must
+always act together.’
+“‘You see, Morstan,’ said he, ‘Small is a man of his word. He does not
+flinch from his friend. I think we may very well trust him.’
+“‘It’s a dirty business,’ the other answered. ‘Yet, as you say, the
+money would save our commissions handsomely.’
+“‘Well, Small,’ said the major, ‘we must, I suppose, try and meet you.
+We must first, of course, test the truth of your story. Tell me where
+the box is hid, and I shall get leave of absence and go back to India
+in the monthly relief-boat to inquire into the affair.’
+“‘Not so fast,’ said I, growing colder as he got hot. ‘I must have the
+consent of my three comrades. I tell you that it is four or none with
+us.’
+“‘Nonsense!’ he broke in. ‘What have three black fellows to do with our
+agreement?’
+“‘Black or blue,’ said I, ‘they are in with me, and we all go
+together.’
+“Well, the matter ended by a second meeting, at which Mahomet Singh,
+Abdullah Khan, and Dost Akbar were all present. We talked the matter
+over again, and at last we came to an arrangement. We were to provide
+both the officers with charts of the part of the Agra fort and mark the
+place in the wall where the treasure was hid. Major Sholto was to go to
+India to test our story. If he found the box he was to leave it there,
+to send out a small yacht provisioned for a voyage, which was to lie
+off Rutland Island, and to which we were to make our way, and finally
+to return to his duties. Captain Morstan was then to apply for leave of
+absence, to meet us at Agra, and there we were to have a final division
+of the treasure, he taking the major’s share as well as his own. All
+this we sealed by the most solemn oaths that the mind could think or
+the lips utter. I sat up all night with paper and ink, and by the
+morning I had the two charts all ready, signed with the sign of
+four,—that is, of Abdullah, Akbar, Mahomet, and myself.
+“Well, gentlemen, I weary you with my long story, and I know that my
+friend Mr. Jones is impatient to get me safely stowed in chokey. I’ll
+make it as short as I can. The villain Sholto went off to India, but he
+never came back again. Captain Morstan showed me his name among a list
+of passengers in one of the mail-boats very shortly afterwards. His
+uncle had died, leaving him a fortune, and he had left the army, yet he
+could stoop to treat five men as he had treated us. Morstan went over
+to Agra shortly afterwards, and found, as we expected, that the
+treasure was indeed gone. The scoundrel had stolen it all, without
+carrying out one of the conditions on which we had sold him the secret.
+From that day I lived only for vengeance. I thought of it by day and I
+nursed it by night. It became an overpowering, absorbing passion with
+me. I cared nothing for the law,—nothing for the gallows. To escape, to
+track down Sholto, to have my hand upon his throat,—that was my one
+thought. Even the Agra treasure had come to be a smaller thing in my
+mind than the slaying of Sholto.
+“Well, I have set my mind on many things in this life, and never one
+which I did not carry out. But it was weary years before my time came.
+I have told you that I had picked up something of medicine. One day
+when Dr. Somerton was down with a fever a little Andaman Islander was
+picked up by a convict-gang in the woods. He was sick to death, and had
+gone to a lonely place to die. I took him in hand, though he was as
+venomous as a young snake, and after a couple of months I got him all
+right and able to walk. He took a kind of fancy to me then, and would
+hardly go back to his woods, but was always hanging about my hut. I
+learned a little of his lingo from him, and this made him all the
+fonder of me.
+“Tonga—for that was his name—was a fine boatman, and owned a big, roomy
+canoe of his own. When I found that he was devoted to me and would do
+anything to serve me, I saw my chance of escape. I talked it over with
+him. He was to bring his boat round on a certain night to an old wharf
+which was never guarded, and there he was to pick me up. I gave him
+directions to have several gourds of water and a lot of yams,
+cocoa-nuts, and sweet potatoes.
+“He was stanch and true, was little Tonga. No man ever had a more
+faithful mate. At the night named he had his boat at the wharf. As it
+chanced, however, there was one of the convict-guard down there,—a vile
+Pathan who had never missed a chance of insulting and injuring me. I
+had always vowed vengeance, and now I had my chance. It was as if fate
+had placed him in my way that I might pay my debt before I left the
+island. He stood on the bank with his back to me, and his carbine on
+his shoulder. I looked about for a stone to beat out his brains with,
+but none could I see. Then a queer thought came into my head and showed
+me where I could lay my hand on a weapon. I sat down in the darkness
+and unstrapped my wooden leg. With three long hops I was on him. He put
+his carbine to his shoulder, but I struck him full, and knocked the
+whole front of his skull in. You can see the split in the wood now
+where I hit him. We both went down together, for I could not keep my
+balance, but when I got up I found him still lying quiet enough. I made
+for the boat, and in an hour we were well out at sea. Tonga had brought
+all his earthly possessions with him, his arms and his gods. Among
+other things, he had a long bamboo spear, and some Andaman cocoa-nut
+matting, with which I made a sort of sail. For ten days we were beating
+about, trusting to luck, and on the eleventh we were picked up by a
+trader which was going from Singapore to Jiddah with a cargo of Malay
+pilgrims. They were a rum crowd, and Tonga and I soon managed to settle
+down among them. They had one very good quality: they let you alone and
+asked no questions.
+“Well, if I were to tell you all the adventures that my little chum and
+I went through, you would not thank me, for I would have you here until
+the sun was shining. Here and there we drifted about the world,
+something always turning up to keep us from London. All the time,
+however, I never lost sight of my purpose. I would dream of Sholto at
+night. A hundred times I have killed him in my sleep. At last, however,
+some three or four years ago, we found ourselves in England. I had no
+great difficulty in finding where Sholto lived, and I set to work to
+discover whether he had realised the treasure, or if he still had it. I
+made friends with someone who could help me,—I name no names, for I
+don’t want to get any one else in a hole,—and I soon found that he
+still had the jewels. Then I tried to get at him in many ways; but he
+was pretty sly, and had always two prize-fighters, besides his sons and
+his khitmutgar, on guard over him.
+“One day, however, I got word that he was dying. I hurried at once to
+the garden, mad that he should slip out of my clutches like that, and,
+looking through the window, I saw him lying in his bed, with his sons
+on each side of him. I’d have come through and taken my chance with the
+three of them, only even as I looked at him his jaw dropped, and I knew
+that he was gone. I got into his room that same night, though, and I
+searched his papers to see if there was any record of where he had
+hidden our jewels. There was not a line, however: so I came away,
+bitter and savage as a man could be. Before I left I bethought me that
+if I ever met my Sikh friends again it would be a satisfaction to know
+that I had left some mark of our hatred; so I scrawled down the sign of
+the four of us, as it had been on the chart, and I pinned it on his
+bosom. It was too much that he should be taken to the grave without
+some token from the men whom he had robbed and befooled.
+“We earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs
+and other such places as the black cannibal. He would eat raw meat and
+dance his war-dance: so we always had a hatful of pennies after a day’s
+work. I still heard all the news from Pondicherry Lodge, and for some
+years there was no news to hear, except that they were hunting for the
+treasure. At last, however, came what we had waited for so long. The
+treasure had been found. It was up at the top of the house, in Mr.
+Bartholomew Sholto’s chemical laboratory. I came at once and had a look
+at the place, but I could not see how with my wooden leg I was to make
+my way up to it. I learned, however, about a trap-door in the roof, and
+also about Mr. Sholto’s supper-hour. It seemed to me that I could
+manage the thing easily through Tonga. I brought him out with me with a
+long rope wound round his waist. He could climb like a cat, and he soon
+made his way through the roof, but, as ill luck would have it,
+Bartholomew Sholto was still in the room, to his cost. Tonga thought he
+had done something very clever in killing him, for when I came up by
+the rope I found him strutting about as proud as a peacock. Very much
+surprised was he when I made at him with the rope’s end and cursed him
+for a little blood-thirsty imp. I took the treasure-box and let it
+down, and then slid down myself, having first left the sign of the four
+upon the table, to show that the jewels had come back at last to those
+who had most right to them. Tonga then pulled up the rope, closed the
+window, and made off the way that he had come.
+“I don’t know that I have anything else to tell you. I had heard a
+waterman speak of the speed of Smith’s launch the _Aurora_, so I
+thought she would be a handy craft for our escape. I engaged with old
+Smith, and was to give him a big sum if he got us safe to our ship. He
+knew, no doubt, that there was some screw loose, but he was not in our
+secrets. All this is the truth, and if I tell it to you, gentlemen, it
+is not to amuse you,—for you have not done me a very good turn,—but it
+is because I believe the best defence I can make is just to hold back
+nothing, but let all the world know how badly I have myself been served
+by Major Sholto, and how innocent I am of the death of his son.”
+“A very remarkable account,” said Sherlock Holmes. “A fitting wind-up
+to an extremely interesting case. There is nothing at all new to me in
+the latter part of your narrative, except that you brought your own
+rope. That I did not know. By the way, I had hoped that Tonga had lost
+all his darts; yet he managed to shoot one at us in the boat.”
+“He had lost them all, sir, except the one which was in his blow-pipe
+at the time.”
+“Ah, of course,” said Holmes. “I had not thought of that.”
+“Is there any other point which you would like to ask about?” asked the
+convict, affably.
+“I think not, thank you,” my companion answered.
+“Well, Holmes,” said Athelney Jones, “You are a man to be humoured, and
+we all know that you are a connoisseur of crime, but duty is duty, and
+I have gone rather far in doing what you and your friend asked me. I
+shall feel more at ease when we have our story-teller here safe under
+lock and key. The cab still waits, and there are two inspectors
+downstairs. I am much obliged to you both for your assistance. Of
+course you will be wanted at the trial. Good-night to you.”
+“Good-night, gentlemen both,” said Jonathan Small.
+“You first, Small,” remarked the wary Jones as they left the room.
+“I’ll take particular care that you don’t club me with your wooden leg,
+whatever you may have done to the gentleman at the Andaman Isles.”
+“Well, and there is the end of our little drama,” I remarked, after we
+had set some time smoking in silence. “I fear that it may be the last
+investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your
+methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband
+in prospective.”
+He gave a most dismal groan. “I feared as much,” said he. “I really
+cannot congratulate you.”
+I was a little hurt. “Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my
+choice?” I asked.
+“Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I
+ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been
+doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in which she
+preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But
+love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to
+that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never
+marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.”
+“I trust,” said I, laughing, “that my judgment may survive the ordeal.
+But you look weary.”
+“Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for
+a week.”
+“Strange,” said I, “how terms of what in another man I should call
+laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.”
+“Yes,” he answered, “there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer
+and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines
+of old Goethe,—
+Schade dass die Natur nur _einen_ Mensch aus Dir schuf,
+Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.
+“By the way, _à propos_ of this Norwood business, you see that they
+had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none other
+than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the undivided honour of
+having caught one fish in his great haul.”
+“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the
+work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit,
+pray what remains for you?”
+“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the
+cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.",The Sign of the Four,Arthur Conan Doyle,128,['Jonathan Small']
+"Produced by Tim Lindell, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+Transcriber’s Note:
+Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+On page 117, ""Mrs. Thipps's forehead"" should possibly be ""Mr.
+Thipps's forehead.""
+Whose Body?
+[Illustration: AS MY WHIMSY TAKES ME]
+Whose Body?
+DOROTHY L. SAYERS
+A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
+[Illustration]
+HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
+WHOSE BODY?
+Copyright, 1923, by Dorothy Sayers
+Printed in the United States of America
+All rights in this book are reserved.
+No part of the book may be used or reproduced
+in any manner whatsoever without written permission
+except in the case of brief quotations
+embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
+information address Harper & Brothers
+49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N. Y.
+The Singular Adventure of the
+Man with the Golden Pince-Nez
+To M. J.
+Dear Jim:
+This book is your fault. If it had not been for your brutal insistence,
+Lord Peter would never have staggered through to the end of this
+enquiry. Pray consider that he thanks you with his accustomed suavity.
+Yours ever,
+D. L. S.
+CHAPTER I
+“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi, driver!”
+The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the
+intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a
+19 ’bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.
+“I’ve left the catalogue behind,” said Lord Peter deprecatingly.
+“Uncommonly careless of me. D’you mind puttin’ back to where we came
+from?”
+“To the Savile Club, sir?”
+“No—110 Piccadilly—just beyond—thank you.”
+“Thought you was in a hurry,” said the man, overcome with a sense of
+injury.
+“I’m afraid it’s an awkward place to turn in,” said Lord Peter,
+answering the thought rather than the words. His long, amiable face
+looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white
+maggots breed from Gorgonzola.
+The taxi, under the severe eye of a policeman, revolved by slow jerks,
+with a noise like the grinding of teeth.
+The block of new, perfect and expensive flats in which Lord Peter
+dwelt upon the second floor, stood directly opposite the Green Park,
+in a spot for many years occupied by the skeleton of a frustrate
+commercial enterprise. As Lord Peter let himself in he heard his man’s
+voice in the library, uplifted in that throttled stridency peculiar to
+well-trained persons using the telephone.
+“I believe that’s his lordship just coming in again—if your Grace would
+kindly hold the line a moment.”
+“What is it, Bunter?”
+“Her Grace has just called up from Denver, my lord. I was just saying
+your lordship had gone to the sale when I heard your lordship’s
+latchkey.”
+“Thanks,” said Lord Peter; “and you might find me my catalogue, would
+you? I think I must have left it in my bedroom, or on the desk.”
+He sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely courtesy, as
+though it were an acquaintance dropped in for a chat.
+“Hullo, Mother—that you?”
+“Oh, there you are, dear,” replied the voice of the Dowager Duchess. “I
+was afraid I’d just missed you.”
+“Well, you had, as a matter of fact. I’d just started off to
+Brocklebury’s sale to pick up a book or two, but I had to come back for
+the catalogue. What’s up?”
+“Such a quaint thing,” said the Duchess. “I thought I’d tell you. You
+know little Mr. Thipps?”
+“Thipps?” said Lord Peter. “Thipps? Oh, yes, the little architect man
+who’s doing the church roof. Yes. What about him?”
+“Mrs. Throgmorton’s just been in, in quite a state of mind.”
+“Sorry, Mother, I can’t hear. Mrs. Who?”
+“Throgmorton—Throgmorton—the vicar’s wife.”
+“Oh, Throgmorton, yes?”
+“Mr. Thipps rang them up this morning. It was his day to come down, you
+know.”
+“Yes?”
+“He rang them up to say he couldn’t. He was so upset, poor little man.
+He’d found a dead body in his bath.”
+“Sorry, Mother, I can’t hear; found what, where?”
+“A dead body, dear, in his bath.”
+“What?—no, no, we haven’t finished. Please don’t cut us off. Hullo!
+Hullo! Is that you, Mother? Hullo!—Mother!—Oh, yes—sorry, the girl was
+trying to cut us off. What sort of body?”
+“A dead man, dear, with nothing on but a pair of pince-nez. Mrs.
+Throgmorton positively blushed when she was telling me. I’m afraid
+people do get a little narrow-minded in country vicarages.”
+“Well, it sounds a bit unusual. Was it anybody he knew?”
+“No, dear, I don’t think so, but, of course, he couldn’t give her many
+details. She said he sounded quite distracted. He’s such a respectable
+little man—and having the police in the house and so on, really worried
+him.”
+“Poor little Thipps! Uncommonly awkward for him. Let’s see, he lives in
+Battersea, doesn’t he?”
+“Yes, dear; 59, Queen Caroline Mansions; opposite the Park. That big
+block just round the corner from the Hospital. I thought perhaps you’d
+like to run round and see him and ask if there’s anything we can do. I
+always thought him a nice little man.”
+“Oh, quite,” said Lord Peter, grinning at the telephone. The Duchess
+was always of the greatest assistance to his hobby of criminal
+investigation, though she never alluded to it, and maintained a polite
+fiction of its non-existence.
+“What time did it happen, Mother?”
+“I think he found it early this morning, but, of course, he didn’t
+think of telling the Throgmortons just at first. She came up to me just
+before lunch—so tiresome, I had to ask her to stay. Fortunately, I was
+alone. I don’t mind being bored myself, but I hate having my guests
+bored.”
+“Poor old Mother! Well, thanks awfully for tellin’ me. I think I’ll
+send Bunter to the sale and toddle round to Battersea now an’ try and
+console the poor little beast. So-long.”
+“Good-bye, dear.”
+“Bunter!”
+“Yes, my lord.”
+“Her Grace tells me that a respectable Battersea architect has
+discovered a dead man in his bath.”
+“Indeed, my lord? That’s very gratifying.”
+“Very, Bunter. Your choice of words is unerring. I wish Eton and
+Balliol had done as much for me. Have you found the catalogue?”
+“Here it is, my lord.”
+“Thanks. I am going to Battersea at once. I want you to attend the sale
+for me. Don’t lose time—I don’t want to miss the Folio Dante[A] nor the
+de Voragine—here you are—see? ‘Golden Legend’—Wynkyn de Worde, 1493—got
+that?—and, I say, make a special effort for the Caxton folio of the
+‘Four Sons of Aymon’—it’s the 1489 folio and unique. Look! I’ve marked
+the lots I want, and put my outside offer against each. Do your best
+for me. I shall be back to dinner.”
+“Very good, my lord.”
+“Take my cab and tell him to hurry. He may for you; he doesn’t like
+me very much. Can I,” said Lord Peter, looking at himself in the
+eighteenth-century mirror over the mantelpiece, “can I have the heart
+to fluster the flustered Thipps further—that’s very difficult to say
+quickly—by appearing in a top-hat and frock-coat? I think not. Ten to
+one he will overlook my trousers and mistake me for the undertaker.
+A grey suit, I fancy, neat but not gaudy, with a hat to tone, suits
+my other self better. Exit the amateur of first editions; new motive
+introduced by solo bassoon; enter Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a
+walking gentleman. There goes Bunter. Invaluable fellow—never offers to
+do his job when you’ve told him to do somethin’ else. Hope he doesn’t
+miss the ‘Four Sons of Aymon.’ Still, there _is_ another copy of
+that—in the Vatican.[B] It might become available, you never know —if
+the Church of Rome went to pot or Switzerland invaded Italy—whereas a
+strange corpse doesn’t turn up in a suburban bathroom more than once
+in a lifetime—at least, I should think not—at any rate, the number
+of times it’s happened, _with_ a pince-nez, might be counted on the
+fingers of one hand, I imagine. Dear me! it’s a dreadful mistake to
+ride two hobbies at once.”
+He had drifted across the passage into his bedroom, and was changing
+with a rapidity one might not have expected from a man of his
+mannerisms. He selected a dark-green tie to match his socks and tied it
+accurately without hesitation or the slightest compression of his lips;
+substituted a pair of brown shoes for his black ones, slipped a monocle
+into a breast pocket, and took up a beautiful Malacca walking-stick
+with a heavy silver knob.
+“That’s all, I think,” he murmured to himself. “Stay—I may as well have
+you—you may come in useful—one never knows.” He added a flat silver
+matchbox to his equipment, glanced at his watch, and seeing that it
+was already a quarter to three, ran briskly downstairs, and, hailing a
+taxi, was carried to Battersea Park.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Mr. Alfred Thipps was a small, nervous man, whose flaxen hair was
+beginning to abandon the unequal struggle with destiny. One might
+say that his only really marked feature was a large bruise over the
+left eyebrow, which gave him a faintly dissipated air incongruous
+with the rest of his appearance. Almost in the same breath with his
+first greeting, he made a self-conscious apology for it, murmuring
+something about having run against the dining-room door in the dark.
+He was touched almost to tears by Lord Peter’s thoughtfulness and
+condescension in calling.
+“I’m sure it’s most kind of your lordship,” he repeated for the
+dozenth time, rapidly blinking his weak little eyelids. “I appreciate
+it very deeply, very deeply, indeed, and so would Mother, only she’s
+so deaf, I don’t like to trouble you with making her understand. It’s
+been very hard all day,” he added, “with the policemen in the house
+and all this commotion. It’s what Mother and me have never been used
+to, always living very retired, and it’s most distressing to a man of
+regular habits, my lord, and reely, I’m almost thankful Mother doesn’t
+understand, for I’m sure it would worry her terribly if she was to know
+about it. She was upset at first, but she’s made up some idea of her
+own about it now, and I’m sure it’s all for the best.”
+The old lady who sat knitting by the fire nodded grimly in response to
+a look from her son.
+“I always said as you ought to complain about that bath, Alfred,” she
+said suddenly, in the high, piping voice peculiar to the deaf, “and
+it’s to be ’oped the landlord’ll see about it now; not but what I think
+you might have managed without having the police in, but there! you
+always were one to make a fuss about a little thing, from chicken-pox
+up.”
+“There now,” said Mr. Thipps apologetically, “you see how it is.
+Not but what it’s just as well she’s settled on that, because she
+understands we’ve locked up the bathroom and don’t try to go in
+there. But it’s been a terrible shock to me, sir—my lord, I should
+say, but there! my nerves are all to pieces. Such a thing has never
+’appened—happened to me in all my born days. Such a state I was in this
+morning—I didn’t know if I was on my head or my heels—I reely didn’t,
+and my heart not being too strong, I hardly knew how to get out of
+that horrid room and telephone for the police. It’s affected me, sir,
+it’s affected me, it reely has—I couldn’t touch a bit of breakfast,
+nor lunch neither, and what with telephoning and putting off clients
+and interviewing people all morning, I’ve hardly known what to do with
+myself.”
+“I’m sure it must have been uncommonly distressin’,” said Lord Peter,
+sympathetically, “especially comin’ like that before breakfast. Hate
+anything tiresome happenin’ before breakfast. Takes a man at such a
+confounded disadvantage, what?”
+“That’s just it, that’s just it,” said Mr. Thipps, eagerly. “When I saw
+that dreadful thing lying there in my bath, mother-naked, too, except
+for a pair of eyeglasses, I assure you, my lord, it regularly turned
+my stomach, if you’ll excuse the expression. I’m not very strong, sir,
+and I get that sinking feeling sometimes in the morning, and what with
+one thing and another I ’ad—had to send the girl for a stiff brandy,
+or I don’t know _what_ mightn’t have happened. I felt so queer, though
+I’m anything but partial to spirits as a rule. Still, I make it a rule
+never to be without brandy in the house, in case of emergency, you
+know?”
+“Very wise of you,” said Lord Peter, cheerfully. “You’re a very
+far-seein’ man, Mr. Thipps. Wonderful what a little nip’ll do in case
+of need, and the less you’re used to it the more good it does you.
+Hope your girl is a sensible young woman, what? Nuisance to have women
+faintin’ and shriekin’ all over the place.”
+“Oh, Gladys is a good girl,” said Mr. Thipps, “very reasonable indeed.
+She was shocked, of course; that’s very understandable. I was shocked
+myself, and it wouldn’t be proper in a young woman not to be shocked
+under the circumstances, but she is reely a helpful, energetic girl in
+a crisis, if you understand me. I consider myself very fortunate these
+days to have got a good, decent girl to do for me and Mother, even
+though she is a bit careless and forgetful about little things, but
+that’s only natural. She was very sorry indeed about having left the
+bathroom window open, she reely was, and though I was angry at first,
+seeing what’s come of it, it wasn’t anything to speak of, not in the
+ordinary way, as you might say. Girls will forget things, you know, my
+lord, and reely she was so distressed I didn’t like to say too much to
+her. All I said was: ‘It might have been burglars,’ I said, ‘remember
+that, next time you leave a window open all night; this time it was
+a dead man,’ I said, ‘and that’s unpleasant enough, but next time it
+might be burglars,’ I said, ‘and all of us murdered in our beds.’ But
+the police-inspector—Inspector Sugg, they called him, from the Yard—he
+was very sharp with her, poor girl. Quite frightened her, and made her
+think he suspected her of something, though what good a body could be
+to her, poor girl, I can’t imagine, and so I told the Inspector. He was
+quite rude to me, my lord—I may say I didn’t like his manner at all.
+‘If you’ve got anything definite to accuse Gladys or me of, Inspector,’
+I said to him, ‘bring it forward, that’s what you have to do,’ I said,
+‘but I’ve yet to learn that you’re paid to be rude to a gentleman in
+his own ’ouse—house.’ Reely,” said Mr. Thipps, growing quite pink on
+the top of his head, “he regularly roused me, regularly roused me, my
+lord, and I’m a mild man as a rule.”
+“Sugg all over,” said Lord Peter. “I know him. When he don’t know what
+else to say, he’s rude. Stands to reason you and the girl wouldn’t
+go collectin’ bodies. Who’d want to saddle himself with a body?
+Difficulty’s usually to get rid of ’em. Have you got rid of this one
+yet, by the way?”
+“It’s still in the bathroom,” said Mr. Thipps. “Inspector Sugg
+said nothing was to be touched till his men came in to move it. I’m
+expecting them at any time. If it would interest your lordship to have
+a look at it—”
+“Thanks awfully,” said Lord Peter. “I’d like to very much, if I’m not
+puttin’ you out.”
+“Not at all,” said Mr. Thipps. His manner as he led the way along
+the passage convinced Lord Peter of two things—first, that, gruesome
+as his exhibit was, he rejoiced in the importance it reflected upon
+himself and his flat, and secondly, that Inspector Sugg had forbidden
+him to exhibit it to anyone. The latter supposition was confirmed by
+the action of Mr. Thipps, who stopped to fetch the door-key from his
+bedroom, saying that the police had the other, but that he made it a
+rule to have two keys to every door, in case of accident.
+The bathroom was in no way remarkable. It was long and narrow, the
+window being exactly over the head of the bath. The panes were of
+frosted glass; the frame wide enough to admit a man’s body. Lord Peter
+stepped rapidly across to it, opened it and looked out.
+The flat was the top one of the building and situated about the middle
+of the block. The bathroom window looked out upon the back-yards of the
+flats, which were occupied by various small outbuildings, coal-holes,
+garages, and the like. Beyond these were the back gardens of a parallel
+line of houses. On the right rose the extensive edifice of St. Luke’s
+Hospital, Battersea, with its grounds, and, connected with it by a
+covered way, the residence of the famous surgeon, Sir Julian Freke,
+who directed the surgical side of the great new hospital, and was, in
+addition, known in Harley Street as a distinguished neurologist with a
+highly individual point of view.
+This information was poured into Lord Peter’s ear at considerable
+length by Mr. Thipps, who seemed to feel that the neighbourhood of
+anybody so distinguished shed a kind of halo of glory over Queen
+Caroline Mansions.
+“We had him round here himself this morning,” he said, “about this
+horrid business. Inspector Sugg thought one of the young medical
+gentlemen at the hospital might have brought the corpse round
+for a joke, as you might say, they always having bodies in the
+dissecting-room. So Inspector Sugg went round to see Sir Julian this
+morning to ask if there was a body missing. He was very kind, was Sir
+Julian, very kind indeed, though he was at work when they got there, in
+the dissecting-room. He looked up the books to see that all the bodies
+were accounted for, and then very obligingly came round here to look at
+this”—he indicated the bath—“and said he was afraid he couldn’t help
+us—there was no corpse missing from the hospital, and this one didn’t
+answer to the description of any they’d had.”
+“Nor to the description of any of the patients, I hope,” suggested Lord
+Peter casually.
+At this grisly hint Mr. Thipps turned pale.
+“I didn’t hear Inspector Sugg inquire,” he said, with some agitation.
+“What a very horrid thing that would be—God bless my soul, my lord, I
+never thought of it.”
+“Well, if they had missed a patient they’d probably have discovered it
+by now,” said Lord Peter. “Let’s have a look at this one.”
+He screwed his monocle into his eye, adding: “I see you’re troubled
+here with the soot blowing in. Beastly nuisance, ain’t it? I get it,
+too—spoils all my books, you know. Here, don’t you trouble, if you
+don’t care about lookin’ at it.”
+He took from Mr. Thipps’s hesitating hand the sheet which had been
+flung over the bath, and turned it back.
+The body which lay in the bath was that of a tall, stout man of
+about fifty. The hair, which was thick and black and naturally curly,
+had been cut and parted by a master hand, and exuded a faint violet
+perfume, perfectly recognisable in the close air of the bathroom. The
+features were thick, fleshy and strongly marked, with prominent dark
+eyes, and a long nose curving down to a heavy chin. The clean-shaven
+lips were full and sensual, and the dropped jaw showed teeth stained
+with tobacco. On the dead face the handsome pair of gold pince-nez
+mocked death with grotesque elegance; the fine gold chain curved over
+the naked breast. The legs lay stiffly stretched out side by side; the
+arms reposed close to the body; the fingers were flexed naturally. Lord
+Peter lifted one arm, and looked at the hand with a little frown.
+“Bit of a dandy, your visitor, what?” he murmured. “Parma violet and
+manicure.” He bent again, slipping his hand beneath the head. The
+absurd eyeglasses slipped off, clattering into the bath, and the noise
+put the last touch to Mr. Thipps’s growing nervousness.
+“If you’ll excuse me,” he murmured, “it makes me feel quite faint, it
+reely does.”
+He slipped outside, and he had no sooner done so than Lord Peter,
+lifting the body quickly and cautiously, turned it over and inspected
+it with his head on one side, bringing his monocle into play with
+the air of the late Joseph Chamberlain approving a rare orchid. He
+then laid the head over his arm, and bringing out the silver matchbox
+from his pocket, slipped it into the open mouth. Then making the
+noise usually written “Tut-tut,” he laid the body down, picked up
+the mysterious pince-nez, looked at it, put it on his nose and looked
+through it, made the same noise again, readjusted the pince-nez upon
+the nose of the corpse, so as to leave no traces of interference for
+the irritation of Inspector Sugg; rearranged the body; returned to
+the window and, leaning out, reached upwards and sideways with his
+walking-stick, which he had somewhat incongruously brought along with
+him. Nothing appearing to come of these investigations, he withdrew his
+head, closed the window, and rejoined Mr. Thipps in the passage.
+Mr. Thipps, touched by this sympathetic interest in the younger son
+of a duke, took the liberty, on their return to the sitting-room, of
+offering him a cup of tea. Lord Peter, who had strolled over to the
+window and was admiring the outlook on Battersea Park, was about to
+accept, when an ambulance came into view at the end of Prince of Wales
+Road. Its appearance reminded Lord Peter of an important engagement,
+and with a hurried “By Jove!” he took his leave of Mr. Thipps.
+“My mother sent kind regards and all that,” he said, shaking hands
+fervently; “hopes you’ll soon be down at Denver again. Good-bye, Mrs.
+Thipps,” he bawled kindly into the ear of the old lady. “Oh, no, my
+dear sir, please don’t trouble to come down.”
+He was none too soon. As he stepped out of the door and turned towards
+the station, the ambulance drew up from the other direction, and
+Inspector Sugg emerged from it with two constables. The Inspector spoke
+to the officer on duty at the Mansions, and turned a suspicious gaze on
+Lord Peter’s retreating back.
+“Dear old Sugg,” said that nobleman, fondly, “dear, dear old bird! How
+he does hate me, to be sure.”
+CHAPTER II
+“Excellent, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, sinking with a sigh into a
+luxurious armchair. “I couldn’t have done better myself. The thought
+of the Dante makes my mouth water—and the ‘Four Sons of Aymon.’ And
+you’ve saved me £60—that’s glorious. What shall we spend it on, Bunter?
+Think of it—all ours, to do as we like with, for as Harold Skimpole so
+rightly observes, £60 saved is £60 gained, and I’d reckoned on spending
+it all. It’s your saving, Bunter, and properly speaking, your £60.
+What do we want? Anything in your department? Would you like anything
+altered in the flat?”
+“Well, my lord, as your lordship is so good”—the man-servant paused,
+about to pour an old brandy into a liqueur glass.
+“Well, out with it, my Bunter, you imperturbable old hypocrite. It’s
+no good talking as if you were announcing dinner—you’re spilling the
+brandy. The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of
+Esau. What does that blessed darkroom of yours want now?”
+“There’s a Double Anastigmat with a set of supplementary lenses, my
+lord,” said Bunter, with a note almost of religious fervour. “If it
+was a case of forgery now—or footprints—I could enlarge them right up
+on the plate. Or the wide-angled lens would be useful. It’s as though
+the camera had eyes at the back of its head, my lord. Look—I’ve got it
+here.”
+He pulled a catalogue from his pocket, and submitted it, quivering, to
+his employer’s gaze.
+Lord Peter perused the description slowly, the corners of his long
+mouth lifted into a faint smile.
+“It’s Greek to me,” he said, “and £50 seems a ridiculous price for a
+few bits of glass. I suppose, Bunter, you’d say £750 was a bit out of
+the way for a dirty old book in a dead language, wouldn’t you?”
+“It wouldn’t be my place to say so, my lord.”
+“No, Bunter, I pay you £200 a year to keep your thoughts to yourself.
+Tell me, Bunter, in these democratic days, don’t you think that’s
+unfair?”
+“No, my lord.”
+“You don’t. D’you mind telling me frankly why you don’t think it
+unfair?”
+“Frankly, my lord, your lordship is paid a nobleman’s income to
+take Lady Worthington in to dinner and refrain from exercising your
+lordship’s undoubted powers of repartee.”
+Lord Peter considered this.
+“That’s your idea, is it, Bunter? Noblesse oblige—for a consideration.
+I daresay you’re right. Then you’re better off than I am, because I’d
+have to behave myself to Lady Worthington if I hadn’t a penny. Bunter,
+if I sacked you here and now, would you tell me what you think of me?”
+“No, my lord.”
+“You’d have a perfect right to, my Bunter, and if I sacked you on top
+of drinking the kind of coffee you make, I’d deserve everything you
+could say of me. You’re a demon for coffee, Bunter—I don’t want to know
+how you do it, because I believe it to be witchcraft, and I don’t want
+to burn eternally. You can buy your cross-eyed lens.”
+“Thank you, my lord.”
+“Have you finished in the dining-room?”
+“Not quite, my lord.”
+“Well, come back when you have. I have many things to tell you. Hullo!
+who’s that?”
+The doorbell had rung sharply.
+“Unless it’s anybody interestin’ I’m not at home.”
+“Very good, my lord.”
+Lord Peter’s library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in
+London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with
+rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the
+embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood
+fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on
+the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the
+eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it
+seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like
+a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediaeval painting.
+“Mr. Parker, my lord.”
+Lord Peter jumped up with genuine eagerness.
+“My dear man, I’m delighted to see you. What a beastly foggy night,
+ain’t it? Bunter, some more of that admirable coffee and another glass
+and the cigars. Parker, I hope you’re full of crime—nothing less than
+arson or murder will do for us tonight. ‘On such a night as this—’
+Bunter and I were just sitting down to carouse. I’ve got a Dante, and
+a Caxton folio that is practically unique, at Sir Ralph Brocklebury’s
+sale. Bunter, who did the bargaining, is going to have a lens which
+does all kinds of wonderful things with its eyes shut, and
+We both have got a body in a bath,
+We both have got a body in a bath—
+For in spite of all temptations
+To go in for cheap sensations
+We insist upon a body in a bath—
+Nothing less will do for us, Parker. It’s mine at present, but we’re
+going shares in it. Property of the firm. Won’t you join us? You really
+must put _something_ in the jack-pot. Perhaps you have a body. Oh, do
+have a body. Every body welcome.
+Gin a body meet a body
+Hauled before the beak,
+Gin a body jolly well knows who murdered a
+body and that old Sugg is on the wrong tack,
+Need a body speak?
+Not a bit of it. He tips a glassy wink to yours truly and yours truly
+reads the truth.”
+“Ah,” said Parker, “I knew you’d been round to Queen Caroline Mansions.
+So’ve I, and met Sugg, and he told me he’d seen you. He was cross, too.
+Unwarrantable interference, he calls it.”
+“I knew he would,” said Lord Peter. “I love taking a rise out of dear
+old Sugg, he’s always so rude. I see by the Star that he has excelled
+himself by taking the girl, Gladys What’s-her-name, into custody. Sugg
+of the evening, beautiful Sugg! But what were _you_ doing there?”
+“To tell you the truth,” said Parker, “I went round to see if the
+Semitic-looking stranger in Mr. Thipps’s bath was by any extraordinary
+chance Sir Reuben Levy. But he isn’t.”
+“Sir Reuben Levy? Wait a minute, I saw something about that. I know! A
+headline: ‘Mysterious disappearance of famous financier.’ What’s it all
+about? I didn’t read it carefully.”
+“Well, it’s a bit odd, though I daresay it’s nothing really—old
+chap may have cleared for some reason best known to himself. It only
+happened this morning, and nobody would have thought anything about
+it, only it happened to be the day on which he had arranged to attend a
+most important financial meeting and do some deal involving millions—I
+haven’t got all the details. But I know he’s got enemies who’d just
+as soon the deal didn’t come off, so when I got wind of this fellow
+in the bath, I buzzed round to have a look at him. It didn’t seem
+likely, of course, but unlikelier things do happen in our profession.
+The funny thing is, old Sugg had got bitten with the idea it is him,
+and is wildly telegraphing to Lady Levy to come and identify him. But
+as a matter of fact, the man in the bath is no more Sir Reuben Levy
+than Adolf Beck, poor devil, was John Smith. Oddly enough, though,
+he would be really extraordinarily like Sir Reuben if he had a beard,
+and as Lady Levy is abroad with the family, somebody may say it’s him,
+and Sugg will build up a lovely theory, like the Tower of Babel, and
+destined so to perish.”
+“Sugg’s a beautiful, braying ass,” said Lord Peter. “He’s like a
+detective in a novel. Well, I don’t know anything about Levy, but I’ve
+seen the body, and I should say the idea was preposterous upon the face
+of it. What do you think of the brandy?”
+“Unbelievable, Wimsey—sort of thing makes one believe in heaven. But I
+want your yarn.”
+“D’you mind if Bunter hears it, too? Invaluable man, Bunter—amazin’
+fellow with a camera. And the odd thing is, he’s always on the spot
+when I want my bath or my boots. I don’t know when he develops things—I
+believe he does ’em in his sleep. Bunter!”
+“Yes, my lord.”
+“Stop fiddling about in there, and get yourself the proper things to
+drink and join the merry throng.”
+“Certainly, my lord.”
+“Mr. Parker has a new trick: The Vanishing Financier. Absolutely no
+deception. Hey, presto, pass! and where is he? Will some gentleman from
+the audience kindly step upon the platform and inspect the cabinet?
+Thank you, sir. The quickness of the ’and deceives the heye.”
+“I’m afraid mine isn’t much of a story,” said Parker. “It’s just one
+of those simple things that offer no handle. Sir Reuben Levy dined last
+night with three friends at the Ritz. After dinner the friends went to
+the theatre. He refused to go with them on account of an appointment. I
+haven’t yet been able to trace the appointment, but anyhow, he returned
+home to his house—9a, Park Lane—at twelve o’clock.”
+“Who saw him?��
+“The cook, who had just gone up to bed, saw him on the doorstep, and
+heard him let himself in. He walked upstairs, leaving his greatcoat on
+the hall peg and his umbrella in the stand—you remember how it rained
+last night. He undressed and went to bed. Next morning he wasn’t there.
+That’s all,” said Parker abruptly, with a wave of the hand.
+“It isn’t all, it isn’t all. Daddy, go on, that’s not _half_ a story,”
+pleaded Lord Peter.
+“But it _is_ all. When his man came to call him he wasn’t there. The
+bed had been slept in. His pyjamas and all his clothes were there,
+the only odd thing being that they were thrown rather untidily on
+the ottoman at the foot of the bed, instead of being neatly folded
+on a chair, as is Sir Reuben’s custom—looking as though he had been
+rather agitated or unwell. No clean clothes were missing, no suit,
+no boots—nothing. The boots he had worn were in his dressing-room
+as usual. He had washed and cleaned his teeth and done all the usual
+things. The housemaid was down cleaning the hall at half-past six, and
+can swear that nobody came in or out after that. So one is forced to
+suppose that a respectable middle-aged Hebrew financier either went mad
+between twelve and six a.m. and walked quietly out of the house in his
+birthday suit on a November night, or else was spirited away like the
+lady in the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’ body and bones, leaving only a heap of
+crumpled clothes behind him.”
+“Was the front door bolted?”
+“That’s the sort of question you _would_ ask, straight off; it took me
+an hour to think of it. No; contrary to custom, there was only the Yale
+lock on the door. On the other hand, some of the maids had been given
+leave to go to the theatre, and Sir Reuben may quite conceivably have
+left the door open under the impression they had not come in. Such a
+thing has happened before.”
+“And that’s really all?”
+“Really all. Except for one very trifling circumstance.”
+“I love trifling circumstances,” said Lord Peter, with childish
+delight; “so many men have been hanged by trifling circumstances. What
+was it?”
+“Sir Reuben and Lady Levy, who are a most devoted couple, always share
+the same room. Lady Levy, as I said before, is in Mentonne at the
+moment for her health. In her absence, Sir Reuben sleeps in the double
+bed as usual, and invariably on his own side—the outside—of the bed.
+Last night he put the two pillows together and slept in the middle, or,
+if anything, rather closer to the wall than otherwise. The housemaid,
+who is a most intelligent girl, noticed this when she went up to make
+the bed, and, with really admirable detective instinct, refused to
+touch the bed or let anybody else touch it, though it wasn’t till later
+that they actually sent for the police.”
+“Was nobody in the house but Sir Reuben and the servants?”
+“No; Lady Levy was away with her daughter and her maid. The valet,
+cook, parlourmaid, housemaid and kitchenmaid were the only people in
+the house, and naturally wasted an hour or two squawking and gossiping.
+I got there about ten.”
+“What have you been doing since?”
+“Trying to get on the track of Sir Reuben’s appointment last night,
+since, with the exception of the cook, his ‘appointer’ was the last
+person who saw him before his disappearance. There may be some quite
+simple explanation, though I’m dashed if I can think of one for the
+moment. Hang it all, a man doesn’t come in and go to bed and walk away
+again ‘mid nodings on’ in the middle of the night.”
+“He may have been disguised.”
+“I thought of that—in fact, it seems the only possible explanation.
+But it’s deuced odd, Wimsey. An important city man, on the eve of an
+important transaction, without a word of warning to anybody, slips
+off in the middle of the night, disguised down to his skin, leaving
+behind his watch, purse, cheque-book, and—most mysterious and important
+of all—his spectacles, without which he can’t see a step, as he is
+extremely short-sighted. He—”
+“That _is_ important,” interrupted Wimsey. “You are sure he didn’t take
+a second pair?”
+“His man vouches for it that he had only two pairs, one of which was
+found on his dressing-table, and the other in the drawer where it is
+always kept.”
+Lord Peter whistled.
+“You’ve got me there, Parker. Even if he’d gone out to commit suicide
+he’d have taken those.”
+“So you’d think—or the suicide would have happened the first time he
+started to cross the road. However, I didn’t overlook the possibility.
+I’ve got particulars of all today’s street accidents, and I can lay my
+hand on my heart and say that none of them is Sir Reuben. Besides, he
+took his latchkey with him, which looks as though he’d meant to come
+back.”
+“Have you seen the men he dined with?”
+“I found two of them at the club. They said that he seemed in the best
+of health and spirits, spoke of looking forward to joining Lady Levy
+later on—perhaps at Christmas—and referred with great satisfaction to
+this morning’s business transaction, in which one of them—a man called
+Anderson of Wyndham’s—was himself concerned.”
+“Then up till about nine o’clock, anyhow, he had no apparent intention
+or expectation of disappearing.”
+“None—unless he was a most consummate actor. Whatever happened to
+change his mind must have happened either at the mysterious appointment
+which he kept after dinner, or while he was in bed between midnight and
+5.30 a.m.”
+“Well, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “what do you make of it?”
+“Not in my department, my lord. Except that it is odd that a gentleman
+who was too flurried or unwell to fold his clothes as usual should
+remember to clean his teeth and put his boots out. Those are two things
+that quite frequently get overlooked, my lord.”
+“If you mean anything personal, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “I can
+only say that I think the speech an unworthy one. It’s a sweet little
+problem, Parker mine. Look here, I don’t want to butt in, but I should
+dearly love to see that bedroom tomorrow. ’Tis not that I mistrust
+thee, dear, but I should uncommonly like to see it. Say me not nay—take
+another drop of brandy and a Villar Villar, but say not, say not nay!”
+“Of course you can come and see it—you’ll probably find lots of things
+I’ve overlooked,” said the other, equably, accepting the proffered
+hospitality.
+“Parker, acushla, you’re an honour to Scotland Yard. I look at you, and
+Sugg appears a myth, a fable, an idiot-boy, spawned in a moonlight hour
+by some fantastic poet’s brain. Sugg is too perfect to be possible.
+What does he make of the body, by the way?”
+“Sugg says,” replied Parker, with precision, “that the body died from
+a blow on the back of the neck. The doctor told him that. He says it’s
+been dead a day or two. The doctor told him that, too. He says it’s the
+body of a well-to-do Hebrew of about fifty. Anybody could have told
+him that. He says it’s ridiculous to suppose it came in through the
+window without anybody knowing anything about it. He says it probably
+walked in through the front door and was murdered by the household.
+He’s arrested the girl because she’s short and frail-looking and quite
+unequal to downing a tall and sturdy Semite with a poker. He’d arrest
+Thipps, only Thipps was away in Manchester all yesterday and the day
+before and didn’t come back till late last night—in fact, he wanted to
+arrest him till I reminded him that if the body had been a day or two
+dead, little Thipps couldn’t have done him in at 10.30 last night. But
+he’ll arrest him tomorrow as an accessory—and the old lady with the
+knitting, too, I shouldn’t wonder.”
+“Well, I’m glad the little man has so much of an alibi,” said Lord
+Peter, “though if you’re only glueing your faith to cadaveric lividity,
+rigidity, and all the other quiddities, you must be prepared to have
+some sceptical beast of a prosecuting counsel walk slap-bang through
+the medical evidence. Remember Impey Biggs defending in that Chelsea
+tea-shop affair? Six bloomin’ medicos contradictin’ each other in
+the box, an’ old Impey elocutin’ abnormal cases from Glaister and
+Dixon Mann till the eyes of the jury reeled in their heads! ‘Are you
+prepared to swear, Dr. Thingumtight, that the onset of rigor mortis
+indicates the hour of death without the possibility of error?’ ‘So far
+as my experience goes, in the majority of cases,’ says the doctor, all
+stiff. ‘Ah!’ says Biggs, ‘but this is a Court of Justice, Doctor, not
+a Parliamentary election. We can’t get on without a minority report.
+The law, Dr. Thingumtight, respects the rights of the minority, alive
+or dead.’ Some ass laughs, and old Biggs sticks his chest out and
+gets impressive. ‘Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. My client—an
+upright and honourable gentleman—is being tried for his life—for his
+life, gentlemen—and it is the business of the prosecution to show his
+guilt—if they can—without a shadow of doubt. Now, Dr. Thingumtight,
+I ask you again, can you solemnly swear, without the least shadow of
+doubt,—probable, possible shadow of doubt—that this unhappy woman met
+her death neither sooner nor later than Thursday evening? A probable
+opinion? Gentlemen, we are not Jesuits, we are straightforward
+Englishmen. You cannot ask a British-born jury to convict any man on
+the authority of a probable opinion.’ Hum of applause.”
+“Biggs’s man was guilty all the same,” said Parker.
+“Of course he was. But he was acquitted all the same, an’ what you’ve
+just said is libel.” Wimsey walked over to the bookshelf and took down
+a volume of Medical Jurisprudence. “‘Rigor mortis—can only be stated in
+a very general way—many factors determine the result.’ Cautious brute.
+‘On the average, however, stiffening will have begun—neck and jaw—5 to
+6 hours after death’—m’m—‘in all likelihood have passed off in the bulk
+of cases by the end of 36 hours. Under certain circumstances, however,
+it may appear unusually early, or be retarded unusually long!’ Helpful,
+ain’t it, Parker? ‘Brown-Séquard states ... 3½ minutes after death....
+In certain cases not until lapse of 16 hours after death ... present
+as long as 21 days thereafter.’ Lord! ‘Modifying factors—age—muscular
+state—or febrile diseases—or where temperature of environment is
+high’—and so on and so on—any bloomin’ thing. Never mind. You can run
+the argument for what it’s worth to Sugg. _He_ won’t know any better.”
+He tossed the book away. “Come back to facts. What did _you_ make of
+the body?”
+“Well,” said the detective, “not very much—I was puzzled—frankly. I
+should say he had been a rich man, but self-made, and that his good
+fortune had come to him fairly recently.”
+“Ah, you noticed the calluses on the hands—I thought you wouldn’t miss
+that.”
+“Both his feet were badly blistered—he had been wearing tight shoes.”
+“Walking a long way in them, too,” said Lord Peter, “to get such
+blisters as that. Didn’t that strike you as odd, in a person evidently
+well off?”
+“Well, I don’t know. The blisters were two or three days old. He might
+have got stuck in the suburbs one night, perhaps—last train gone and no
+taxi—and had to walk home.”
+“Possibly.”
+“There were some little red marks all over his back and one leg I
+couldn’t quite account for.”
+“I saw them.”
+“What did you make of them?”
+“I’ll tell you afterwards. Go on.”
+“He was very long-sighted—oddly long-sighted for a man in the prime
+of life; the glasses were like a very old man’s. By the way, they
+had a very beautiful and remarkable chain of flat links chased with a
+pattern. It struck me he might be traced through it.”
+“I’ve just put an advertisement in the _Times_ about it,” said Lord
+Peter. “Go on.”
+“He had had the glasses some time—they had been mended twice.”
+“Beautiful, Parker, beautiful. Did you realize the importance of that?”
+“Not specially, I’m afraid—why?”
+“Never mind—go on.”
+“He was probably a sullen, ill-tempered man—his nails were filed down
+to the quick as though he habitually bit them, and his fingers were
+bitten as well. He smoked quantities of cigarettes without a holder. He
+was particular about his personal appearance.”
+“Did you examine the room at all? I didn’t get a chance.”
+“I couldn’t find much in the way of footprints. Sugg & Co. had tramped
+all over the place, to say nothing of little Thipps and the maid, but
+I noticed a very indefinite patch just behind the head of the bath, as
+though something damp might have stood there. You could hardly call it
+a print.”
+“It rained hard all last night, of course.”
+“Yes; did you notice that the soot on the window-sill was vaguely
+marked?”
+“I did,” said Wimsey, “and I examined it hard with this little fellow,
+but I could make nothing of it except that something or other had
+rested on the sill.” He drew out his monocle and handed it to Parker.
+“My word, that’s a powerful lens.”
+“It is,” said Wimsey, “and jolly useful when you want to take a good
+squint at somethin’ and look like a bally fool all the time. Only it
+don’t do to wear it permanently—if people see you full-face they say:
+‘Dear me! how weak the sight of that eye must be!’ Still, it’s useful.”
+“Sugg and I explored the ground at the back of the building,” went on
+Parker, “but there wasn’t a trace.”
+“That’s interestin’. Did you try the roof?”
+“No.”
+“We’ll go over it tomorrow. The gutter’s only a couple of feet off the
+top of the window. I measured it with my stick—the gentleman-scout’s
+vade-mecum, I call it—it’s marked off in inches. Uncommonly handy
+companion at times. There’s a sword inside and a compass in the head.
+Got it made specially. Anything more?”
+“Afraid not. Let’s hear your version, Wimsey.”
+“Well, I think you’ve got most of the points. There are just one or
+two little contradictions. For instance, here’s a man wears expensive
+gold-rimmed pince-nez and has had them long enough to be mended twice.
+Yet his teeth are not merely discoloured, but badly decayed and look as
+if he’d never cleaned them in his life. There are four molars missing
+on one side and three on the other and one front tooth broken right
+across. He’s a man careful of his personal appearance, as witness his
+hair and his hands. What do you say to that?”
+“Oh, these self-made men of low origin don’t think much about teeth,
+and are terrified of dentists.”
+“True; but one of the molars has a broken edge so rough that it had
+made a sore place on the tongue. Nothing’s more painful. D’you mean
+to tell me a man would put up with that if he could afford to get the
+tooth filed?”
+“Well, people are queer. I’ve known servants endure agonies rather than
+step over a dentist’s doormat. How did you see that, Wimsey?”
+“Had a look inside; electric torch,” said Lord Peter. “Handy little
+gadget. Looks like a matchbox. Well—I daresay it’s all right, but
+I just draw your attention to it. Second point: Gentleman with hair
+smellin’ of Parma violet and manicured hands and all the rest of it,
+never washes the inside of his ears. Full of wax. Nasty.”
+“You’ve got me there, Wimsey; I never noticed it. Still—old bad habits
+die hard.”
+“Right oh! Put it down at that. Third point: Gentleman with the
+manicure and the brilliantine and all the rest of it suffers from
+fleas.”
+“By Jove, you’re right! Flea-bites. It never occurred to me.”
+“No doubt about it, old son. The marks were faint and old, but
+unmistakable.”
+“Of course, now you mention it. Still, that might happen to anybody. I
+loosed a whopper in the best hotel in Lincoln the week before last. I
+hope it bit the next occupier!”
+“Oh, all these things _might_ happen to anybody—separately. Fourth
+point: Gentleman who uses Parma violet for his hair, etc., etc., washes
+his body in strong carbolic soap—so strong that the smell hangs about
+twenty-four hours later.”
+“Carbolic to get rid of the fleas.”
+“I will say for you, Parker, you’ve an answer for everything. Fifth
+point: Carefully got-up gentleman, with manicured, though masticated,
+finger-nails, has filthy black toe-nails which look as if they hadn’t
+been cut for years.”
+“All of a piece with habits as indicated.”
+“Yes, I know, but such habits! Now, sixth and last point: This
+gentleman with the intermittently gentlemanly habits arrives in the
+middle of a pouring wet night, and apparently through the window, when
+he has already been twenty-four hours dead, and lies down quietly in
+Mr. Thipps’s bath, unseasonably dressed in a pair of pince-nez. Not
+a hair on his head is ruffled—the hair has been cut so recently that
+there are quite a number of little short hairs stuck on his neck and
+the sides of the bath—and he has shaved so recently that there is a
+line of dried soap on his cheek—”
+“Wimsey!”
+“Wait a minute—and _dried soap in his mouth_.”
+Bunter got up and appeared suddenly at the detective’s elbow, the
+respectful man-servant all over.
+“A little more brandy, sir?” he murmured.
+“Wimsey,” said Parker, “you are making me feel cold all over.” He
+emptied his glass—stared at it as though he were surprised to find
+it empty, set it down, got up, walked across to the bookcase, turned
+round, stood with his back against it and said:
+“Look here, Wimsey—you’ve been reading detective stories; you’re
+talking nonsense.”
+“No, I ain’t,” said Lord Peter, sleepily, “uncommon good incident for
+a detective story, though, what? Bunter, we’ll write one, and you shall
+illustrate it with photographs.”
+“Soap in his—Rubbish!” said Parker. “It was something else—some
+discoloration—”
+“No,” said Lord Peter, “there were hairs as well. Bristly ones. He had
+a beard.”
+He took his watch from his pocket, and drew out a couple of longish,
+stiff hairs, which he had imprisoned between the inner and the outer
+case.
+Parker turned them over once or twice in his fingers, looked at them
+close to the light, examined them with a lens, handed them to the
+impassible Bunter, and said:
+“Do you mean to tell me, Wimsey, that any man alive would”—he laughed
+harshly—“shave off his beard with his mouth open, and then go and get
+killed with his mouth full of hairs? You’re mad.”
+“I don’t tell you so,” said Wimsey. “You policemen are all alike—only
+one idea in your skulls. Blest if I can make out why you’re ever
+appointed. He was shaved after he was dead. Pretty, ain’t it?
+Uncommonly jolly little job for the barber, what? Here, sit down, man,
+and don’t be an ass, stumpin’ about the room like that. Worse things
+happen in war. This is only a blinkin’ old shillin’ shocker. But I’ll
+tell you what, Parker, we’re up against a criminal—_the_ criminal—the
+real artist and blighter with imagination—real, artistic, finished
+stuff. I’m enjoyin’ this, Parker.”
+CHAPTER III
+Lord Peter finished a Scarlatti sonata, and sat looking thoughtfully
+at his own hands. The fingers were long and muscular, with wide, flat
+joints and square tips. When he was playing, his rather hard grey eyes
+softened, and his long, indeterminate mouth hardened in compensation.
+At no other time had he any pretensions to good looks, and at all times
+he was spoilt by a long, narrow chin, and a long, receding forehead,
+accentuated by the brushed-back sleekness of his tow-coloured hair.
+Labour papers, softening down the chin, caricatured him as a typical
+aristocrat.
+“That’s a wonderful instrument,” said Parker.
+“It ain’t so bad,” said Lord Peter, “but Scarlatti wants a harpsichord.
+Piano’s too modern—all thrills and overtones. No good for our job,
+Parker. Have you come to any conclusion?”
+“The man in the bath,” said Parker, methodically, “was _not_ a well-off
+man careful of his personal appearance. He was a labouring man,
+unemployed, but who had only recently lost his employment. He had been
+tramping about looking for a job when he met with his end. Somebody
+killed him and washed him and scented him and shaved him in order to
+disguise him, and put him into Thipps’s bath without leaving a trace.
+Conclusion: the murderer was a powerful man, since he killed him with
+a single blow on the neck, a man of cool head and masterly intellect,
+since he did all that ghastly business without leaving a mark, a man
+of wealth and refinement, since he had all the apparatus of an elegant
+toilet handy, and a man of bizarre, and almost perverted imagination,
+as is shown in the two horrible touches of putting the body in the bath
+and of adorning it with a pair of pince-nez.”
+“He is a poet of crime,” said Wimsey. “By the way, your difficulty
+about the pince-nez is cleared up. Obviously, the pince-nez never
+belonged to the body.”
+“That only makes a fresh puzzle. One can’t suppose the murderer left
+them in that obliging manner as a clue to his own identity.”
+“We can hardly suppose that; I’m afraid this man possessed what most
+criminals lack—a sense of humour.”
+“Rather macabre humour.”
+“True. But a man who can afford to be humorous at all in such
+circumstances is a terrible fellow. I wonder what he did with the
+body between the murder and depositing it chez Thipps. Then there are
+more questions. How did he get it there? And why? Was it brought in
+at the door, as Sugg of our heart suggests? or through the window,
+as we think, on the not very adequate testimony of a smudge on the
+window-sill? Had the murderer accomplices? Is little Thipps really
+in it, or the girl? It don’t do to put the notion out of court merely
+because Sugg inclines to it. Even idiots occasionally speak the truth
+accidentally. If not, why was Thipps selected for such an abominable
+practical joke? Has anybody got a grudge against Thipps? Who are the
+people in the other flats? We must find out that. Does Thipps play
+the piano at midnight over their heads or damage the reputation of
+the staircase by bringing home dubiously respectable ladies? Are there
+unsuccessful architects thirsting for his blood? Damn it all, Parker,
+there must be a motive somewhere. Can’t have a crime without a motive,
+you know.”
+“A madman—” suggested Parker, doubtfully.
+“With a deuced lot of method in his madness. He hasn’t made a
+mistake—not one, unless leaving hairs in the corpse’s mouth can be
+called a mistake. Well, anyhow, it’s not Levy—you’re right there. I
+say, old thing, neither your man nor mine has left much clue to go
+upon, has he? And there don’t seem to be any motives knockin’ about,
+either. And we seem to be two suits of clothes short in last night’s
+work. Sir Reuben makes tracks without so much as a fig-leaf, and a
+mysterious individual turns up with a pince-nez, which is quite useless
+for purposes of decency. Dash it all! If only I had some good excuse
+for takin’ up this body case officially—”
+The telephone bell rang. The silent Bunter, whom the other two had
+almost forgotten, padded across to it.
+“It’s an elderly lady, my lord,” he said. “I think she’s deaf—I can’t
+make her hear anything, but she’s asking for your lordship.”
+Lord Peter seized the receiver, and yelled into it a “Hullo!” that
+might have cracked the vulcanite. He listened for some minutes with an
+incredulous smile, which gradually broadened into a grin of delight.
+At length he screamed: “All right! all right!” several times, and rang
+off.
+“By Jove!” he announced, beaming, “sportin’ old bird! It’s old Mrs.
+Thipps. Deaf as a post. Never used the ’phone before. But determined.
+Perfect Napoleon. The incomparable Sugg has made a discovery and
+arrested little Thipps. Old lady abandoned in the flat. Thipps’s last
+shriek to her: ‘Tell Lord Peter Wimsey.’ Old girl undaunted. Wrestles
+with telephone book. Wakes up the people at the exchange. Won’t take
+no for an answer (not bein’ able to hear it), gets through, says:
+‘Will I do what I can?’ Says she would feel safe in the hands of a
+real gentleman. Oh, Parker, Parker! I could kiss her, I reely could,
+as Thipps says. I’ll write to her instead—no, hang it, Parker, we’ll
+go round. Bunter, get your infernal machine and the magnesium. I say,
+we’ll all go into partnership—pool the two cases and work ’em out
+together. You shall see my body tonight, Parker, and I’ll look for your
+wandering Jew tomorrow. I feel so happy, I shall explode. O Sugg, Sugg,
+how art thou suggified! Bunter, my shoes. I say, Parker, I suppose
+yours are rubber-soled. Not? Tut, tut, you mustn’t go out like that.
+We’ll lend you a pair. Gloves? Here. My stick, my torch, the lampblack,
+the forceps, knife, pill-boxes—all complete?”
+“Certainly, my lord.”
+“Oh, Bunter, don’t look so offended. I mean no harm. I believe in
+you, I trust you—what money have I got? That’ll do. I knew a man
+once, Parker, who let a world-famous poisoner slip through his fingers
+because the machine on the Underground took nothing but pennies. There
+was a queue at the booking office and the man at the barrier stopped
+him, and while they were arguing about accepting a five-pound-note
+(which was all he had) for a twopenny ride to Baker Street, the
+criminal had sprung into a Circle train, and was next heard of in
+Constantinople, disguised as an elderly Church of England clergyman
+touring with his niece. Are we all ready? Go!”
+They stepped out, Bunter carefully switching off the lights behind them.
+*       *       *       *       *
+As they emerged into the gloom and gleam of Piccadilly, Wimsey stopped
+short with a little exclamation.
+“Wait a second,” he said. “I’ve thought of something. If Sugg’s there
+he’ll make trouble. I must short-circuit him.”
+He ran back, and the other two men employed the few minutes of his
+absence in capturing a taxi.
+Inspector Sugg and a subordinate Cerberus were on guard at 59, Queen
+Caroline Mansions, and showed no disposition to admit unofficial
+inquirers. Parker, indeed, they could not easily turn away, but Lord
+Peter found himself confronted with a surly manner and what Lord
+Beaconsfield described as a masterly inactivity. It was in vain that
+Lord Peter pleaded that he had been retained by Mrs. Thipps on behalf
+of her son.
+“Retained!” said Inspector Sugg, with a snort. “_She’ll_ be retained
+if she doesn’t look out. Shouldn’t wonder if she wasn’t in it herself,
+only she’s so deaf, she’s no good for anything at all.”
+“Look here, Inspector,” said Lord Peter, “what’s the use of bein’ so
+bally obstructive? You’d much better let me in—you know I’ll get there
+in the end. Dash it all, it’s not as if I was takin’ the bread out of
+your children’s mouths. Nobody paid me for finding Lord Attenbury’s
+emeralds for you.”
+“It’s my duty to keep out the public,” said Inspector Sugg, morosely,
+“and it’s going to stay out.”
+“I never said anything about your keeping out of the public,” said
+Lord Peter, easily, sitting down on the staircase to thrash the matter
+out comfortably, “though I’ve no doubt pussyfoot’s a good thing, on
+principle, if not exaggerated. The golden mean, Sugg, as Aristotle
+says, keeps you from bein’ a golden ass. Ever been a golden ass, Sugg?
+I have. It would take a whole rose-garden to cure me, Sugg—
+“‘You are my garden of beautiful roses,
+My own rose, my one rose, that’s you!’”
+“I’m not going to stay any longer talking to you,” said the harassed
+Sugg; “it’s bad enough— Hullo, drat that telephone. Here, Cawthorn, go
+and see what it is, if that old catamaran will let you into the room.
+Shutting herself up there and screaming,” said the Inspector, “it’s
+enough to make a man give up crime and take to hedging and ditching.”
+The constable came back:
+“It’s from the Yard, sir,” he said, coughing apologetically; “the Chief
+says every facility is to be given to Lord Peter Wimsey, sir. Um!” He
+stood apart noncommittally, glazing his eyes.
+“Five aces,” said Lord Peter, cheerfully. “The Chief’s a dear friend
+of my mother’s. No go, Sugg, it’s no good buckin’; you’ve got a full
+house. I’m goin’ to make it a bit fuller.”
+He walked in with his followers.
+The body had been removed a few hours previously, and when the bathroom
+and the whole flat had been explored by the naked eye and the camera
+of the competent Bunter, it became evident that the real problem of
+the household was old Mrs. Thipps. Her son and servant had both been
+removed, and it appeared that they had no friends in town, beyond
+a few business acquaintances of Thipps’s, whose very addresses the
+old lady did not know. The other flats in the building were occupied
+respectively by a family of seven, at present departed to winter
+abroad, an elderly Indian colonel of ferocious manners, who lived
+alone with an Indian man-servant, and a highly respectable family on
+the third floor, whom the disturbance over their heads had outraged to
+the last degree. The husband, indeed, when appealed to by Lord Peter,
+showed a little human weakness, but Mrs. Appledore, appearing suddenly
+in a warm dressing-gown, extricated him from the difficulties into
+which he was carelessly wandering.
+“I am sorry,” she said, “I’m afraid we can’t interfere in any way.
+This is a very unpleasant business, Mr.— I’m afraid I didn’t catch
+your name, and we have always found it better not to be mixed up with
+the police. Of course, _if_ the Thippses are innocent, and I am sure
+I hope they are, it is very unfortunate for them, but I must say that
+the circumstances seem to me most suspicious, and to Theophilus too,
+and I should not like to have it said that we had assisted murderers.
+We might even be supposed to be accessories. Of course you are young,
+Mr.—”
+“This is Lord Peter Wimsey, my dear,” said Theophilus mildly.
+She was unimpressed.
+“Ah, yes,” she said, “I believe you are distantly related to my late
+cousin, the Bishop of Carisbrooke. Poor man! He was always being taken
+in by impostors; he died without ever learning any better. I imagine
+you take after him, Lord Peter.”
+“I doubt it,” said Lord Peter. “So far as I know he is only a
+connection, though it’s a wise child that knows its own father. I
+congratulate you, dear lady, on takin’ after the other side of the
+family. You’ll forgive my buttin’ in upon you like this in the middle
+of the night, though, as you say, it’s all in the family, and I’m
+sure I’m very much obliged to you, and for permittin’ me to admire
+that awfully fetchin’ thing you’ve got on. Now, don’t you worry, Mr.
+Appledore. I’m thinkin’ the best thing I can do is to trundle the old
+lady down to my mother and take her out of your way, otherwise you
+might be findin’ your Christian feelin’s gettin’ the better of you some
+fine day, and there’s nothin’ like Christian feelin’s for upsettin’
+a man’s domestic comfort. Good-night, sir—good-night, dear lady—it’s
+simply rippin’ of you to let me drop in like this.”
+“Well!” said Mrs. Appledore, as the door closed behind him.
+And—
+“I thank the goodness and the grace
+That on my birth have smiled,”
+said Lord Peter, “and taught me to be bestially impertinent when I
+choose. Cat!”
+Two a.m. saw Lord Peter Wimsey arrive in a friend’s car at the Dower
+House, Denver Castle, in company with a deaf and aged lady and an
+antique portmanteau.
+*       *       *       *       *
+“It’s very nice to see you, dear,” said the Dowager Duchess, placidly.
+She was a small, plump woman, with perfectly white hair and exquisite
+hands. In feature she was as unlike her second son as she was like
+him in character; her black eyes twinkled cheerfully, and her manners
+and movements were marked with a neat and rapid decision. She wore a
+charming wrap from Liberty’s, and sat watching Lord Peter eat cold beef
+and cheese as though his arrival in such incongruous circumstances and
+company were the most ordinary event possible, which with him, indeed,
+it was.
+“Have you got the old lady to bed?” asked Lord Peter.
+“Oh, yes, dear. Such a striking old person, isn’t she? And very
+courageous. She tells me she has never been in a motor-car before. But
+she thinks you a very nice lad, dear—that careful of her, you remind
+her of her own son. Poor little Mr. Thipps—whatever made your friend
+the inspector think he could have murdered anybody?”
+“My friend the inspector—no, no more, thank you, Mother—is determined
+to prove that the intrusive person in Thipps’s bath is Sir Reuben Levy,
+who disappeared mysteriously from his house last night. His line of
+reasoning is: We’ve lost a middle-aged gentleman without any clothes on
+in Park Lane; we’ve found a middle-aged gentleman without any clothes
+on in Battersea. Therefore they’re one and the same person, Q.E.D., and
+put little Thipps in quod.”
+“You’re very elliptical, dear,” said the Duchess, mildly. “Why should
+Mr. Thipps be arrested even if they are the same?”
+“Sugg must arrest somebody,” said Lord Peter, “but there is one odd
+little bit of evidence come out which goes a long way to support
+Sugg’s theory, only that I know it to be no go by the evidence of
+my own eyes. Last night at about 9.15 a young woman was strollin’ up
+the Battersea Park Road for purposes best known to herself, when she
+saw a gentleman in a fur coat and top-hat saunterin’ along under an
+umbrella, lookin’ at the names of all the streets. He looked a bit out
+of place, so, not bein’ a shy girl, you see, she walked up to him, and
+said: ‘Good-evening.’ ‘Can you tell me, please,’ says the mysterious
+stranger, ‘whether this street leads into Prince of Wales Road?’ She
+said it did, and further asked him in a jocular manner what he was
+doing with himself and all the rest of it, only she wasn’t altogether
+so explicit about that part of the conversation, because she was
+unburdenin’ her heart to Sugg, d’you see, and he’s paid by a grateful
+country to have very pure, high-minded ideals, what? Anyway, the old
+boy said he couldn’t attend to her just then as he had an appointment.
+‘I’ve got to go and see a man, my dear,’ was how she said he put it,
+and he walked on up Alexandra Avenue towards Prince of Wales Road. She
+was starin’ after him, still rather surprised, when she was joined
+by a friend of hers, who said: ‘It’s no good wasting your time with
+him—that’s Levy—I knew him when I lived in the West End, and the girls
+used to call him Peagreen Incorruptible’—friend’s name suppressed,
+owing to implications of story, but girl vouches for what was said. She
+thought no more about it till the milkman brought news this morning
+of the excitement at Queen Caroline Mansions; then she went round,
+though not likin’ the police as a rule, and asked the man there whether
+the dead gentleman had a beard and glasses. Told he had glasses but
+no beard, she incautiously said: ‘Oh, then, it isn’t him,’ and the
+man said: ‘Isn’t who?’ and collared her. That’s her story. Sugg’s
+delighted, of course, and quodded Thipps on the strength of it.”
+“Dear me,” said the Duchess, “I hope the poor girl won’t get into
+trouble.”
+“Shouldn’t think so,” said Lord Peter. “Thipps is the one that’s going
+to get it in the neck. Besides, he’s done a silly thing. I got that
+out of Sugg, too, though he was sittin’ tight on the information.
+Seems Thipps got into a confusion about the train he took back from
+Manchester. Said first he got home at 10.30. Then they pumped Gladys
+Horrocks, who let out he wasn’t back till after 11.45. Then Thipps,
+bein’ asked to explain the discrepancy, stammers and bungles and says,
+first, that he missed the train. Then Sugg makes inquiries at St.
+Pancras and discovers that he left a bag in the cloakroom there at ten.
+Thipps, again asked to explain, stammers worse an’ says he walked about
+for a few hours—met a friend—can’t say who—didn’t meet a friend—can’t
+say what he did with his time—can’t explain why he didn’t go back for
+his bag—can’t say what time he _did_ get in—can’t explain how he got a
+bruise on his forehead. In fact, can’t explain himself at all. Gladys
+Horrocks interrogated again. Says, this time, Thipps came in at 10.30.
+Then admits she didn’t hear him come in. Can’t say why she didn’t hear
+him come in. Can’t say why she said first of all that she _did_ hear
+him. Bursts into tears. Contradicts herself. Everybody’s suspicion
+roused. Quod ’em both.”
+“As you put it, dear,” said the Duchess, “it all sounds very confusing,
+and not quite respectable. Poor little Mr. Thipps would be terribly
+upset by anything that wasn’t respectable.”
+“I wonder what he did with himself,” said Lord Peter thoughtfully. “I
+really don’t think he was committing a murder. Besides, I believe the
+fellow has been dead a day or two, though it don’t do to build too much
+on doctors’ evidence. It’s an entertainin’ little problem.”
+“Very curious, dear. But so sad about poor Sir Reuben. I must write
+a few lines to Lady Levy; I used to know her quite well, you know,
+dear, down in Hampshire, when she was a girl. Christine Ford, she was
+then, and I remember so well the dreadful trouble there was about her
+marrying a Jew. That was before he made his money, of course, in that
+oil business out in America. The family wanted her to marry Julian
+Freke, who did so well afterwards and was connected with the family,
+but she fell in love with this Mr. Levy and eloped with him. He was
+very handsome, then, you know, dear, in a foreign-looking way, but he
+hadn’t any means, and the Fords didn’t like his religion. Of course
+we’re all Jews nowadays, and they wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d
+pretended to be something else, like that Mr. Simons we met at Mrs.
+Porchester’s, who always tells everybody that he got his nose in Italy
+at the Renaissance, and claims to be descended somehow or other from
+La Bella Simonetta—so foolish, you know, dear—as if anybody believed
+it; and I’m sure some Jews are very good people, and personally I’d
+much rather they believed something, though of course it must be very
+inconvenient, what with not working on Saturdays and circumcising the
+poor little babies and everything depending on the new moon and that
+funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name, and never
+being able to have bacon for breakfast. Still, there it was, and it was
+much better for the girl to marry him if she was really fond of him,
+though I believe young Freke was really devoted to her, and they’re
+still great friends. Not that there was ever a real engagement, only
+a sort of understanding with her father, but he’s never married, you
+know, and lives all by himself in that big house next to the hospital,
+though he’s very rich and distinguished now, and I know ever so many
+people have tried to get hold of him—there was Lady Mainwaring wanted
+him for that eldest girl of hers, though I remember saying at the
+time it was no use expecting a surgeon to be taken in by a figure that
+was all padding—they have so many opportunities of judging, you know,
+dear.”
+“Lady Levy seems to have had the knack of makin’ people devoted to
+her,” said Peter. “Look at the pea-green incorruptible Levy.”
+“That’s quite true, dear; she was a most delightful girl, and they
+say her daughter is just like her. I rather lost sight of them when
+she married, and you know your father didn’t care much about business
+people, but I know everybody always said they were a model couple.
+In fact it was a proverb that Sir Reuben was as well loved at home
+as he was hated abroad. I don’t mean in foreign countries, you know,
+dear—just the proverbial way of putting things—like ‘a saint abroad and
+a devil at home’—only the other way on, reminding one of the _Pilgrim’s
+Progress_.”
+“Yes,” said Peter, “I daresay the old man made one or two enemies.”
+“Dozens, dear—such a dreadful place, the City, isn’t it? Everybody
+Ishmaels together—though I don’t suppose Sir Reuben would like to be
+called that, would he? Doesn’t it mean illegitimate, or not a proper
+Jew, anyway? I always did get confused with those Old Testament
+characters.”
+Lord Peter laughed and yawned.
+“I think I’ll turn in for an hour or two,” he said. “I must be back in
+town at eight—Parker’s coming to breakfast.”
+The Duchess looked at the clock, which marked five minutes to three.
+“I’ll send up your breakfast at half-past six, dear,” she said. “I hope
+you’ll find everything all right. I told them just to slip a hot-water
+bottle in; those linen sheets are so chilly; you can put it out if it’s
+in your way.”
+CHAPTER IV
+“—So there it is, Parker,” said Lord Peter, pushing his coffee-cup
+aside and lighting his after-breakfast pipe; “you may find it leads
+you to something, though it don’t seem to get me any further with my
+bathroom problem. Did you do anything more at that after I left?”
+“No; but I’ve been on the roof this morning.”
+“The deuce you have—what an energetic devil you are! I say, Parker, I
+think this co-operative scheme is an uncommonly good one. It’s much
+easier to work on someone else’s job than one’s own—gives one that
+delightful feelin’ of interferin’ and bossin’ about, combined with the
+glorious sensation that another fellow is takin’ all one’s own work off
+one’s hands. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, what? Did you
+find anything?”
+“Not very much. I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally,
+with all this rain, there wasn’t a sign. Of course, if this were a
+detective story, there’d have been a convenient shower exactly an
+hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only
+have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being
+real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints
+in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and came to the jolly
+conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might
+have done it. All the staircases open on to the roof and the leads are
+quite flat; you can walk along as easy as along Shaftesbury Avenue.
+Still, I’ve got some evidence that the body did walk along there.”
+“What’s that?”
+Parker brought out his pocketbook and extracted a few shreds of
+material, which he laid before his friend.
+“One was caught in the gutter just above Thipps’s bathroom window,
+another in a crack of the stone parapet just over it, and the rest
+came from the chimney-stack behind, where they had caught in an iron
+stanchion. What do you make of them?”
+Lord Peter scrutinized them very carefully through his lens.
+“Interesting,” he said, “damned interesting. Have you developed those
+plates, Bunter?” he added, as that discreet assistant came in with the
+post.
+“Yes, my lord.”
+“Caught anything?”
+“I don’t know whether to call it anything or not, my lord,” said
+Bunter, dubiously. “I’ll bring the prints in.”
+“Do,” said Wimsey. “Hallo! here’s our advertisement about the gold
+chain in the _Times_—very nice it looks: ‘Write,’phone or call 110,
+Piccadilly.’ Perhaps it would have been safer to put a box number,
+though I always think that the franker you are with people, the more
+you’re likely to deceive ’em; so unused is the modern world to the open
+hand and the guileless heart, what?”
+“But you don’t think the fellow who left that chain on the body is
+going to give himself away by coming here and inquiring about it?”
+“I don’t, fathead,” said Lord Peter, with the easy politeness of the
+real aristocracy; “that’s why I’ve tried to get hold of the jeweller
+who originally sold the chain. See?” He pointed to the paragraph.
+“It’s not an old chain—hardly worn at all. Oh, thanks, Bunter. Now,
+see here, Parker, these are the finger-marks you noticed yesterday on
+the window-sash and on the far edge of the bath. I’d overlooked them; I
+give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is
+Watson, and you need not say what you were just going to say, because
+I admit it all. Now we shall—Hullo, hullo, hullo!”
+The three men stared at the photographs.
+“The criminal,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, “climbed over the roofs in
+the wet and not unnaturally got soot on his fingers. He arranged the
+body in the bath, and wiped away all traces of himself except two,
+which he obligingly left to show us how to do our job. We learn from
+a smudge on the floor that he wore india rubber boots, and from this
+admirable set of finger-prints on the edge of the bath that he had the
+usual number of fingers and wore rubber gloves. That’s the kind of man
+he is. Take the fool away, gentlemen.”
+He put the prints aside, and returned to an examination of the shreds
+of material in his hand. Suddenly he whistled softly.
+“Do you make anything of these, Parker?”
+“They seemed to me to be ravellings of some coarse cotton stuff—a
+sheet, perhaps, or an improvised rope.”
+“Yes,” said Lord Peter—“yes. It may be a mistake—it may be _our_
+mistake. I wonder. Tell me, d’you think these tiny threads are long
+enough and strong enough to hang a man?”
+He was silent, his long eyes narrowing into slits behind the smoke of
+his pipe.
+“What do you suggest doing this morning?” asked Parker.
+“Well,” said Lord Peter, “it seems to me it’s about time I took a hand
+in your job. Let’s go round to Park Lane and see what larks Sir Reuben
+Levy was up to in bed last night.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+“And now, Mrs. Pemming, if you would be so kind as to give me a
+blanket,” said Mr. Bunter, coming down into the kitchen, “and permit of
+me hanging a sheet across the lower part of this window, and drawing
+the screen across here, so—so as to shut off any reflections, if you
+understand me, we’ll get to work.”
+Sir Reuben Levy’s cook, with her eye upon Mr. Bunter’s gentlemanly
+and well-tailored appearance, hastened to produce what was necessary.
+Her visitor placed on the table a basket, containing a water-bottle,
+a silver-backed hair-brush, a pair of boots, a small roll of linoleum,
+and the “Letters of a Self-made Merchant to His Son,” bound in polished
+morocco. He drew an umbrella from beneath his arm and added it to
+the collection. He then advanced a ponderous photographic machine and
+set it up in the neighbourhood of the kitchen range; then, spreading
+a newspaper over the fair, scrubbed surface of the table, he began
+to roll up his sleeves and insinuate himself into a pair of surgical
+gloves. Sir Reuben Levy’s valet, entering at the moment and finding
+him thus engaged, put aside the kitchenmaid, who was staring from a
+front-row position, and inspected the apparatus critically. Mr. Bunter
+nodded brightly to him, and uncorked a small bottle of grey powder.
+“Odd sort of fish, your employer, isn’t he?” said the valet, carelessly.
+“Very singular, indeed,” said Mr. Bunter. “Now, my dear,” he added,
+ingratiatingly, to the kitchen-maid, “I wonder if you’d just pour
+a little of this grey powder over the edge of the bottle while I’m
+holding it—and the same with this boot—here, at the top—thank you,
+Miss—what is your name? Price? Oh, but you’ve got another name besides
+Price, haven’t you? Mabel, eh? That’s a name I’m uncommonly partial
+to—that’s very nicely done, you’ve a steady hand, Miss Mabel—see that?
+That’s the finger marks—three there, and two here, and smudged over in
+both places. No, don’t you touch ’em, my dear, or you’ll rub the bloom
+off. We’ll stand ’em up here till they’re ready to have their portraits
+taken. Now then, let’s take the hair-brush next. Perhaps, Mrs. Pemming,
+you’d like to lift him up very carefully by the bristles.”
+“By the bristles, Mr. Bunter?”
+“If you please, Mrs. Pemming—and lay him here. Now, Miss Mabel,
+another little exhibition of your skill, _if_ you please. No—we’ll try
+lamp-black this time. Perfect. Couldn’t have done it better myself.
+Ah! there’s a beautiful set. No smudges this time. That’ll interest
+his lordship. Now the little book—no, I’ll pick that up myself—with
+these gloves, you see, and by the edges—I’m a careful criminal, Mrs.
+Pemming, I don’t want to leave any traces. Dust the cover all over,
+Miss Mabel; now this side—that’s the way to do it. Lots of prints and
+no smudges. All according to plan. Oh, please, Mr. Graves, you mustn’t
+touch it—it’s as much as my place is worth to have it touched.”
+“D’you have to do much of this sort of thing?” inquired Mr. Graves,
+from a superior standpoint.
+“Any amount,” replied Mr. Bunter, with a groan calculated to appeal to
+Mr. Graves’s heart and unlock his confidence. “If you’d kindly hold one
+end of this bit of linoleum, Mrs. Pemming, I’ll hold up this end while
+Miss Mabel operates. Yes, Mr. Graves, it’s a hard life, valeting by day
+and developing by night—morning tea at any time from 6.30 to 11, and
+criminal investigation at all hours. It’s wonderful, the ideas these
+rich men with nothing to do get into their heads.”
+“I wonder you stand it,” said Mr. Graves. “Now there’s none of that
+here. A quiet, orderly, domestic life, Mr. Bunter, has much to be
+said for it. Meals at regular hours; decent, respectable families to
+dinner—none of your painted women—and no valeting at night, there’s
+_much_ to be said for it. I don’t hold with Hebrews as a rule, Mr.
+Bunter, and of course I understand that you may find it to your
+advantage to be in a titled family, but there’s less thought of that
+these days, and I will say, for a self-made man, no one could call Sir
+Reuben vulgar, and my lady at any rate is county—Miss Ford, she was,
+one of the Hampshire Fords, and both of them always most considerate.”
+“I agree with you, Mr. Graves—his lordship and me have never held with
+being narrow-minded—why, yes, my dear, of course it’s a footmark, this
+is the washstand linoleum. A good Jew can be a good man, that’s what
+I’ve always said. And regular hours and considerate habits have a great
+deal to recommend them. Very simple in his tastes, now, Sir Reuben,
+isn’t he? for such a rich man, I mean.”
+“Very simple indeed,” said the cook; “the meals he and her ladyship
+have when they’re by themselves with Miss Rachel—well, there now—if it
+wasn’t for the dinners, which is always good when there’s company, I’d
+be wastin’ my talents and education here, if you understand me, Mr.
+Bunter.”
+Mr. Bunter added the handle of the umbrella to his collection, and
+began to pin a sheet across the window, aided by the housemaid.
+“Admirable,” said he. “Now, if I might have this blanket on the table
+and another on a towel-horse or something of that kind by way of a
+background—you’re very kind, Mrs. Pemming.... Ah! I wish his lordship
+never wanted valeting at night. Many’s the time I’ve sat up till three
+and four, and up again to call him early to go off Sherlocking at the
+other end of the country. And the mud he gets on his clothes and his
+boots!”
+“I’m sure it’s a shame, Mr. Bunter,” said Mrs. Pemming, warmly. “Low,
+I calls it. In my opinion, police-work ain’t no fit occupation for a
+gentleman, let alone a lordship.”
+“Everything made so difficult, too,” said Mr. Bunter nobly sacrificing
+his employer’s character and his own feelings in a good cause; “boots
+chucked into a corner, clothes hung up on the floor, as they say—”
+“That’s often the case with these men as are born with a silver spoon
+in their mouths,” said Mr. Graves. “Now, Sir Reuben, he’s never lost
+his good old-fashioned habits. Clothes folded up neat, boots put
+out in his dressing-room, so as a man could get them in the morning,
+everything made easy.”
+“He forgot them the night before last, though.”
+“The clothes, not the boots. Always thoughtful for others, is Sir
+Reuben. Ah! I hope nothing’s happened to him.”
+“Indeed, no, poor gentleman,” chimed in the cook, “and as for what
+they’re sayin’, that he’d ’ave gone out surrepshous-like to do
+something he didn’t ought, well, I’d never believe it of him, Mr.
+Bunter, not if I was to take my dying oath upon it.”
+“Ah!” said Mr. Bunter, adjusting his arc-lamps and connecting them with
+the nearest electric light, “and that’s more than most of us could say
+of them as pays us.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+“Five foot ten,” said Lord Peter, “and not an inch more.” He peered
+dubiously at the depression in the bed clothes, and measured it a
+second time with the gentleman-scout’s vade-mecum. Parker entered this
+particular in a neat pocketbook.
+“I suppose,” he said, “a six-foot-two man _might_ leave a five-foot-ten
+depression if he curled himself up.”
+“Have you any Scotch blood in you, Parker?” inquired his colleague,
+bitterly.
+“Not that I know of,” replied Parker. “Why?”
+“Because of all the cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded
+devils I know,” said Lord Peter, “you are the most cautious,
+ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded. Here am I, sweating my brains
+out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and
+disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a
+single spark of enthusiasm.”
+“Well, it’s no good jumping at conclusions.”
+“Jump? You don’t even crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion. I
+believe if you caught the cat with her head in the cream-jug you’d say
+it was conceivable that the jug was empty when she got there.”
+“Well, it would be conceivable, wouldn’t it?”
+“Curse you,” said Lord Peter. He screwed his monocle into his eye,
+and bent over the pillow, breathing hard and tightly through his nose.
+“Here, give me the tweezers,” he said presently. “Good heavens, man,
+don’t blow like that, you might be a whale.” He nipped up an almost
+invisible object from the linen.
+“What is it?” asked Parker.
+“It’s a hair,” said Wimsey grimly, his hard eyes growing harder. “Let’s
+go and look at Levy’s hats, shall we? And you might just ring for that
+fellow with the churchyard name, do you mind?”
+Mr. Graves, when summoned, found Lord Peter Wimsey squatting on the
+floor of the dressing-room before a row of hats arranged upside down
+before him.
+“Here you are,” said that nobleman cheerfully. “Now, Graves, this is a
+guessin’ competition—a sort of three-hat trick, to mix metaphors. Here
+are nine hats, including three top-hats. Do you identify all these hats
+as belonging to Sir Reuben Levy? You do? Very good. Now I have three
+guesses as to which hat he wore the night he disappeared, and if I
+guess right, I win; if I don’t, you win. See? Ready? Go. I suppose you
+know the answer yourself, by the way?”
+“Do I understand your lordship to be asking which hat Sir Reuben wore
+when he went out on Monday night, your lordship?”
+“No, you don’t understand a bit,” said Lord Peter. “I’m asking if _you_
+know—don’t tell me, I’m going to guess.”
+“I do know, your lordship,” said Mr. Graves, reprovingly.
+“Well,” said Lord Peter, “as he was dinin’ at the Ritz he wore a
+topper. Here are three toppers. In three guesses I’d be bound to hit
+the right one, wouldn’t I? That don’t seem very sportin’. I’ll take one
+guess. It was this one.”
+He indicated the hat next the window.
+“Am I right, Graves—have I got the prize?”
+“That _is_ the hat in question, my lord,” said Mr. Graves, without
+excitement.
+“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “that’s all I wanted to know. Ask Bunter to
+step up, would you?”
+Mr. Bunter stepped up with an aggrieved air, and his usually smooth
+hair ruffled by the focussing cloth.
+“Oh, there you are, Bunter,” said Lord Peter; “look here—”
+“Here I am, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, with respectful reproach, “but
+if you’ll excuse me saying so, downstairs is where I ought to be,
+with all those young women about—they’ll be fingering the evidence, my
+lord.”
+“I cry your mercy,” said Lord Peter, “but I’ve quarrelled hopelessly
+with Mr. Parker and distracted the estimable Graves, and I want you to
+tell me what finger-prints you have found. I shan’t be happy till I get
+it, so don’t be harsh with me, Bunter.”
+“Well, my lord, your lordship understands I haven’t photographed them
+yet, but I won’t deny that their appearance is interesting, my lord.
+The little book off the night table, my lord, has only the marks of
+one set of fingers—there’s a little scar on the right thumb which makes
+them easy recognised. The hair-brush, too, my lord, has only the same
+set of marks. The umbrella, the toothglass and the boots all have two
+sets: the hand with the scarred thumb, which I take to be Sir Reuben’s,
+my lord, and a set of smudges superimposed upon them, if I may put it
+that way, my lord, which may or may not be the same hand in rubber
+gloves. I could tell you better when I’ve got the photographs made,
+to measure them, my lord. The linoleum in front of the washstand is
+very gratifying indeed, my lord, if you will excuse my mentioning it.
+Besides the marks of Sir Reuben’s boots which your lordship pointed
+out, there’s the print of a man’s naked foot—a much smaller one, my
+lord, not much more than a ten-inch sock, I should say if you asked
+me.”
+Lord Peter’s face became irradiated with almost a dim, religious light.
+“A mistake,” he breathed, “a mistake, a little one, but he can’t afford
+it. When was the linoleum washed last, Bunter?”
+“Monday morning, my lord. The housemaid did it and remembered to
+mention it. Only remark she’s made yet, and it’s to the point. The
+other domestics—”
+His features expressed disdain.
+“What did I say, Parker? Five-foot-ten and not an inch longer. And he
+didn’t dare to use the hair-brush. Beautiful. But he _had_ to risk the
+top-hat. Gentleman can’t walk home in the rain late at night without
+a hat, you know, Parker. Look! what do you make of it? Two sets of
+finger-prints on everything but the book and the brush, two sets of
+feet on the linoleum, and two kinds of hair in the hat!”
+He lifted the top-hat to the light, and extracted the evidence with
+tweezers.
+“Think of it, Parker—to remember the hair-brush and forget the hat—to
+remember his fingers all the time, and to make that one careless step
+on the tell-tale linoleum. Here they are, you see, black hair and tan
+hair—black hair in the bowler and the panama, and black and tan in
+last night’s topper. And then, just to make certain that we’re on the
+right track, just one little auburn hair on the pillow, on this pillow,
+Parker, which isn’t quite in the right place. It almost brings tears to
+my eyes.”
+“Do you mean to say—” said the detective, slowly.
+“I mean to say,” said Lord Peter, “that it was not Sir Reuben Levy whom
+the cook saw last night on the doorstep. I say that it was another man,
+perhaps a couple of inches shorter, who came here in Levy’s clothes and
+let himself in with Levy’s latchkey. Oh, he was a bold, cunning devil,
+Parker. He had on Levy’s boots, and every stitch of Levy’s clothing
+down to the skin. He had rubber gloves on his hands which he never took
+off, and he did everything he could to make us think that Levy slept
+here last night. He took his chances, and won. He walked upstairs, he
+undressed, he even washed and cleaned his teeth, though he didn’t use
+the hair-brush for fear of leaving red hairs in it. He had to guess
+what Levy did with boots and clothes; one guess was wrong and the other
+right, as it happened. The bed must look as if it had been slept in, so
+he gets in, and lies there in his victim’s very pyjamas. Then, in the
+morning sometime, probably in the deadest hour between two and three,
+he gets up, dresses himself in his own clothes that he has brought with
+him in a bag, and creeps downstairs. If anybody wakes, he is lost, but
+he is a bold man, and he takes his chance. He knows that people do not
+wake as a rule—and they don’t wake. He opens the street door which he
+left on the latch when he came in—he listens for the stray passer-by
+or the policeman on his beat. He slips out. He pulls the door quietly
+to with the latchkey. He walks briskly away in rubber-soled shoes—he’s
+the kind of criminal who isn’t complete without rubber-soled shoes. In
+a few minutes he is at Hyde Park Corner. After that—”
+He paused, and added:
+“He did all that, and unless he had nothing at stake, he had everything
+at stake. Either Sir Reuben Levy has been spirited away for some silly
+practical joke, or the man with the auburn hair has the guilt of murder
+upon his soul.”
+“Dear me!” ejaculated the detective, “you’re very dramatic about it.”
+Lord Peter passed his hand rather wearily over his hair.
+“My true friend,” he murmured in a voice surcharged with emotion,
+“you recall me to the nursery rhymes of my youth—the sacred duty of
+flippancy:
+“There was an old man of Whitehaven
+Who danced a quadrille with a raven,
+But they said: It’s absurd
+To encourage that bird—
+So they smashed that old man of Whitehaven.
+That’s the correct attitude, Parker. Here’s a poor old buffer spirited
+away—such a joke—and I don’t believe he’d hurt a fly himself—that makes
+it funnier. D’you know, Parker, I don’t care frightfully about this
+case after all.”
+“Which, this or yours?”
+“Both. I say, Parker, shall we go quietly home and have lunch and go to
+the Coliseum?”
+“You can if you like,” replied the detective; “but you forget I do this
+for my bread and butter.”
+“And I haven’t even that excuse,” said Lord Peter; “well, what’s the
+next move? What would you do in my case?”
+“I’d do some good, hard grind,” said Parker. “I’d distrust every
+bit of work Sugg ever did, and I’d get the family history of every
+tenant of every flat in Queen Caroline Mansions. I’d examine all their
+box-rooms and rooftraps, and I would inveigle them into conversations
+and suddenly bring in the words ‘body’ and ‘pince-nez,’ and see if they
+wriggled, like those modern psyo-what’s-his-names.”
+“You would, would you?” said Lord Peter with a grin. “Well, we’ve
+exchanged cases, you know, so just you toddle off and do it. I’m going
+to have a jolly time at Wyndham’s.”
+Parker made a grimace.
+“Well,” he said, “I don’t suppose you’d ever do it, so I’d better.
+You’ll never become a professional till you learn to do a little work,
+Wimsey. How about lunch?”
+“I’m invited out,” said Lord Peter, magnificently. “I’ll run around
+and change at the club. Can’t feed with Freddy Arbuthnot in these bags;
+Bunter!”
+“Yes, my lord.”
+“Pack up if you’re ready, and come round and wash my face and hands for
+me at the club.”
+“Work here for another two hours, my lord. Can’t do with less than
+thirty minutes’ exposure. The current’s none too strong.”
+“You see how I’m bullied by my own man, Parker? Well, I must bear it,
+I suppose. Ta-ta!”
+He whistled his way downstairs.
+The conscientious Mr. Parker, with a groan, settled down to a
+systematic search through Sir Reuben Levy’s papers, with the assistance
+of a plate of ham sandwiches and a bottle of Bass.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Lord Peter and the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, looking together like
+an advertisement for gents’ trouserings, strolled into the dining-room
+at Wyndham’s.
+“Haven’t seen you for an age,” said the Honourable Freddy. “What have
+you been doin’ with yourself?”
+“Oh, foolin’ about,” said Lord Peter, languidly.
+“Thick or clear, sir?” inquired the waiter of the Honourable Freddy.
+“Which’ll you have, Wimsey?” said that gentleman, transferring the
+burden of selection to his guest. “They’re both equally poisonous.”
+“Well, clear’s less trouble to lick out of the spoon,” said Lord Peter.
+“Clear,” said the Honourable Freddy.
+“Consommé Polonais,” agreed the waiter. “Very nice, sir.”
+Conversation languished until the Honourable Freddy found a bone in the
+filleted sole, and sent for the head waiter to explain its presence.
+When this matter had been adjusted Lord Peter found energy to say:
+“Sorry to hear about your gov’nor, old man.”
+“Yes, poor old buffer,” said the Honourable Freddy; “they say he can’t
+last long now. What? Oh! the Montrachet ’08. There’s nothing fit to
+drink in this place,” he added gloomily.
+After this deliberate insult to a noble vintage there was a further
+pause, till Lord Peter said: “How’s ’Change?”
+“Rotten,” said the Honourable Freddy.
+He helped himself gloomily to salmis of game.
+“Can I do anything?” asked Lord Peter.
+“Oh, no, thanks—very decent of you, but it’ll pan out all right in
+time.”
+“This isn’t a bad salmis,” said Lord Peter.
+“I’ve eaten worse,” admitted his friend.
+“What about those Argentines?” inquired Lord Peter. “Here, waiter,
+there’s a bit of cork in my glass.”
+“Cork?” cried the Honourable Freddy, with something approaching
+animation; “you’ll hear about this, waiter. It’s an amazing thing a
+fellow who’s paid to do the job can’t manage to take a cork out of a
+bottle. What you say? Argentines? Gone all to hell. Old Levy bunkin’
+off like that’s knocked the bottom out of the market.”
+“You don’t say so,” said Lord Peter. “What d’you suppose has happened
+to the old man?”
+“Cursed if I know,” said the Honourable Freddy; “knocked on the head by
+the bears, I should think.”
+“P’r’aps he’s gone off on his own,” suggested Lord Peter. “Double life,
+you know. Giddy old blighters, some of these City men.”
+“Oh, no,” said the Honourable Freddy, faintly roused; “no, hang it all,
+Wimsey, I wouldn’t care to say that. He’s a decent old domestic bird,
+and his daughter’s a charmin’ girl. Besides, he’s straight enough—he’d
+_do_ you down fast enough, but he wouldn’t _let_ you down. Old Anderson
+is badly cut up about it.”
+“Who’s Anderson?”
+“Chap with property out there. He belongs here. He was goin’ to meet
+Levy on Tuesday. He’s afraid those railway people will get in now, and
+then it’ll be all U. P.”
+“Who’s runnin’ the railway people over here?” inquired Lord Peter.
+“Yankee blighter, John P. Milligan. He’s got an option, or says he has.
+You can’t trust these brutes.”
+“Can’t Anderson hold on?”
+“Anderson isn’t Levy. Hasn’t got the shekels. Besides, he’s only one.
+Levy covers the ground—he could boycott Milligan’s beastly railway if
+he liked. That’s where he’s got the pull, you see.”
+“B’lieve I met the Milligan man somewhere,” said Lord Peter,
+thoughtfully. “Ain’t he a hulking brute with black hair and a beard?”
+“You’re thinkin’ of somebody else,” said the Honourable Freddy.
+“Milligan don’t stand any higher than I do, unless you call
+five-feet-ten hulking—and he’s bald, anyway.”
+Lord Peter considered this over the Gorgonzola. Then he said: “Didn’t
+know Levy had a charmin’ daughter.”
+“Oh, yes,” said the Honourable Freddy, with an elaborate detachment.
+“Met her and Mamma last year abroad. That’s how I got to know the old
+man. He’s been very decent. Let me into this Argentine business on the
+ground floor, don’t you know?”
+“Well,” said Lord Peter, “you might do worse. Money’s money, ain’t it?
+And Lady Levy is quite a redeemin’ point. At least, my mother knew her
+people.”
+“Oh, _she’s_ all right,” said the Honourable Freddy, “and the old man’s
+nothing to be ashamed of nowadays. He’s self-made, of course, but he
+don’t pretend to be anything else. No side. Toddles off to business on
+a 96 ’bus every morning. ‘Can’t make up my mind to taxis, my boy,’ he
+says. ‘I had to look at every halfpenny when I was a young man, and I
+can’t get out of the way of it now.’ Though, if he’s takin’ his family
+out, nothing’s too good. Rachel—that’s the girl—always laughs at the
+old man’s little economies.”
+“I suppose they’ve sent for Lady Levy,” said Lord Peter.
+“I suppose so,” agreed the other. “I’d better pop round and express
+sympathy or somethin’, what? Wouldn’t look well not to, d’you think?
+But it’s deuced awkward. What am I to say?”
+“I don’t think it matters much what you say,” said Lord Peter,
+helpfully. “I should ask if you can do anything.”
+“Thanks,” said the lover, “I will. Energetic young man. Count on me.
+Always at your service. Ring me up any time of the day or night. That’s
+the line to take, don’t you think?”
+“That’s the idea,” said Lord Peter.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Mr. John P. Milligan, the London representative of the great Milligan
+railroad and shipping company, was dictating code cables to his
+secretary in an office in Lombard Street, when a card was brought up to
+him, bearing the simple legend:
+LORD PETER WIMSEY
+_Marlborough Club_
+Mr. Milligan was annoyed at the interruption, but, like many of his
+nation, if he had a weak point, it was the British aristocracy. He
+postponed for a few minutes the elimination from the map of a modest
+but promising farm, and directed that the visitor should be shown up.
+“Good-afternoon,” said that nobleman, ambling genially in, “it’s most
+uncommonly good of you to let me come round wastin’ your time like
+this. I’ll try not to be too long about it, though I’m not awfully good
+at comin’ to the point. My brother never would let me stand for the
+county, y’know—said I wandered on so nobody’d know what I was talkin’
+about.”
+“Pleased to meet you, Lord Wimsey,” said Mr. Milligan. “Won’t you take
+a seat?”
+“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “but I’m not a peer, you know—that’s my
+brother Denver. My name’s Peter. It’s a silly name, I always think,
+so old-world and full of homely virtue and that sort of thing, but my
+godfathers and godmothers in my baptism are responsible for that, I
+suppose, officially—which is rather hard on them, you know, as they
+didn’t actually choose it. But we always have a Peter, after the third
+duke, who betrayed five kings somewhere about the Wars of the Roses,
+though come to think of it, it ain’t anything to be proud of. Still,
+one has to make the best of it.”
+Mr. Milligan, thus ingeniously placed at that disadvantage which
+attends ignorance, manoeuvred for position, and offered his interrupter
+a Corona Corona.
+“Thanks, awfully,” said Lord Peter, “though you really mustn’t tempt
+me to stay here burblin’ all afternoon. By Jove, Mr. Milligan, if you
+offer people such comfortable chairs and cigars like these, I wonder
+they don’t come an’ live in your office.” He added mentally: “I wish to
+goodness I could get those long-toed boots off you. How’s a man to know
+the size of your feet? And a head like a potato. It’s enough to make
+one swear.”
+“Say now, Lord Peter,” said Mr. Milligan, “can I do anything for you?”
+“Well, d’you know,” said Lord Peter, “I’m wonderin’ if you would.
+It’s damned cheek to ask you, but fact is, it’s my mother, you know.
+Wonderful woman, but don’t realize what it means, demands on the time
+of a busy man like you. We don’t understand hustle over here, you know,
+Mr. Milligan.”
+“Now don’t you mention that,” said Mr. Milligan; “I’d be surely charmed
+to do anything to oblige the Duchess.”
+He felt a momentary qualm as to whether a duke’s mother were also a
+duchess, but breathed more freely as Lord Peter went on:
+“Thanks—that’s uncommonly good of you. Well, now, it’s like this.
+My mother—most energetic, self-sacrificin’ woman, don’t you see,
+is thinkin’ of gettin’ up a sort of a charity bazaar down at Denver
+this winter, in aid of the church roof, y’know. Very sad case, Mr.
+Milligan—fine old antique—early English windows and decorated angel
+roof, and all that—all tumblin’ to pieces, rain pourin’ in and so
+on—vicar catchin’ rheumatism at early service, owin’ to the draught
+blowin’ in over the altar—you know the sort of thing. They’ve got a
+man down startin’ on it—little beggar called Thipps—lives with an aged
+mother in Battersea—vulgar little beast, but quite good on angel roofs
+and things, I’m told.”
+At this point, Lord Peter watched his interlocutor narrowly, but
+finding that this rigmarole produced in him no reaction more startling
+than polite interest tinged with faint bewilderment, he abandoned this
+line of investigation, and proceeded:
+“I say, I beg your pardon, frightfully—I’m afraid I’m bein’ beastly
+long-winded. Fact is, my mother is gettin’ up this bazaar, and
+she thought it’d be an awfully interestin’ side-show to have some
+lectures—sort of little talks, y’know—by eminent business men of all
+nations. ‘How I Did It’ kind of touch, y’know—‘A Drop of Oil with
+a Kerosene King’—‘Cash Conscience and Cocoa’ and so on. It would
+interest people down there no end. You see, all my mother’s friends
+will be there, and we’ve none of us any money—not what you’d call
+money, I mean—I expect our incomes wouldn’t pay your telephone calls,
+would they?—but we like awfully to hear about the people who can make
+money. Gives us a sort of uplifted feelin’, don’t you know. Well,
+anyway, I mean, my mother’d be frightfully pleased and grateful to
+you, Mr. Milligan, if you’d come down and give us a few words as a
+representative American. It needn’t take more than ten minutes or so,
+y’know, because the local people can’t understand much beyond shootin’
+and huntin’, and my mother’s crowd can’t keep their minds on anythin’
+more than ten minutes together, but we’d really appreciate it very much
+if you’d come and stay a day or two and just give us a little breezy
+word on the almighty dollar.”
+“Why, yes,” said Mr. Milligan, “I’d like to, Lord Peter. It’s kind of
+the Duchess to suggest it. It’s a very sad thing when these fine old
+antiques begin to wear out. I’ll come with great pleasure. And perhaps
+you’d be kind enough to accept a little donation to the Restoration
+Fund.”
+This unexpected development nearly brought Lord Peter up all standing.
+To pump, by means of an ingenious lie, a hospitable gentleman whom
+you are inclined to suspect of a peculiarly malicious murder, and to
+accept from him in the course of the proceedings a large cheque for a
+charitable object, has something about it unpalatable to any but the
+hardened Secret Service agent. Lord Peter temporized.
+“That’s awfully decent of you,” he said. “I’m sure they’d be no
+end grateful. But you’d better not give it to me, you know. I
+might spend it, or lose it. I’m not very reliable, I’m afraid.
+The vicar’s the right person—the Rev. Constantine Throgmorton, St.
+John-before-the-Latin-Gate Vicarage, Duke’s Denver, if you like to send
+it there.”
+“I will,” said Mr. Milligan. “Will you write it out now for a thousand
+pounds, Scoot, in case it slips my mind later?”
+The secretary, a sandy-haired young man with a long chin and no
+eyebrows, silently did as he was requested. Lord Peter looked from the
+bald head of Mr. Milligan to the red head of the secretary, hardened
+his heart and tried again.
+“Well, I’m no end grateful to you, Mr. Milligan, and so’ll my mother
+be when I tell her. I’ll let you know the date of the bazaar—it’s not
+quite settled yet, and I’ve got to see some other business men, don’t
+you know. I thought of askin’ someone from one of the big newspaper
+combines to represent British advertisin’ talent, what?—and a friend of
+mine promises me a leadin’ German financier—very interestin’ if there
+ain’t too much feelin’ against it down in the country, and I’ll have
+to find somebody or other to do the Hebrew point of view. I thought of
+askin’ Levy, y’know, only he’s floated off in this inconvenient way.”
+“Yes,” said Mr. Milligan, “that’s a very curious thing, though I don’t
+mind saying, Lord Peter, that it’s a convenience to me. He had a cinch
+on my railroad combine, but I’d nothing against him personally, and if
+he turns up after I’ve brought off a little deal I’ve got on, I’ll be
+happy to give him the right hand of welcome.”
+A vision passed through Lord Peter’s mind of Sir Reuben kept somewhere
+in custody till a financial crisis was over. This was exceedingly
+possible, and far more agreeable than his earlier conjecture; it also
+agreed better with the impression he was forming of Mr. Milligan.
+“Well, it’s a rum go,” said Lord Peter, “but I daresay he had his
+reasons. Much better not inquire into people’s reasons, y’know, what?
+Specially as a police friend of mine who’s connected with the case says
+the old johnnie dyed his hair before he went.”
+Out of the tail of his eye, Lord Peter saw the redheaded secretary add
+up five columns of figures simultaneously and jot down the answer.
+“Dyed his hair, did he?” said Mr. Milligan.
+“Dyed it red,” said Lord Peter. The secretary looked up. “Odd thing
+is,” continued Wimsey, “they can’t lay hands on the bottle. Somethin’
+fishy there, don’t you think, what?”
+The secretary’s interest seemed to have evaporated. He inserted a fresh
+sheet into his looseleaf ledger, and carried forward a row of digits
+from the preceding page.
+“I daresay there’s nothin’ in it,” said Lord Peter, rising to go.
+“Well, it’s uncommonly good of you to be bothered with me like this,
+Mr. Milligan—my mother’ll be no end pleased. She’ll write you about the
+date.”
+“I’m charmed,” said Mr. Milligan. “Very pleased to have met you.”
+Mr. Scoot rose silently to open the door, uncoiling as he did so a
+portentous length of thin leg, hitherto hidden by the desk. With a
+mental sigh Lord Peter estimated him at six-foot-four.
+“It’s a pity I can’t put Scoot’s head on Milligan’s shoulders,” said
+Lord Peter, emerging into the swirl of the city. “And what _will_ my
+mother say?”
+CHAPTER V
+Mr. Parker was a bachelor, and occupied a Georgian but inconvenient
+flat at No. 12A Great Ormond Street, for which he paid a pound a
+week. His exertions in the cause of civilization were rewarded, not
+by the gift of diamond rings from empresses or munificent cheques from
+grateful Prime Ministers, but by a modest, though sufficient, salary,
+drawn from the pockets of the British taxpayer. He awoke, after a long
+day of arduous and inconclusive labour, to the smell of burnt porridge.
+Through his bedroom window, hygienically open top and bottom, a raw fog
+was rolling slowly in, and the sight of a pair of winter pants, flung
+hastily over a chair the previous night, fretted him with a sense of
+the sordid absurdity of the human form. The telephone bell rang, and
+he crawled wretchedly out of bed and into the sitting-room, where Mrs.
+Munns, who did for him by the day, was laying the table, sneezing as
+she went.
+Mr. Bunter was speaking.
+“His lordship says he’d be very glad, sir, if you could make it
+convenient to step round to breakfast.”
+If the odour of kidneys and bacon had been wafted along the wire, Mr.
+Parker could not have experienced a more vivid sense of consolation.
+“Tell his lordship I’ll be with him in half an hour,” he said,
+thankfully, and plunging into the bathroom, which was also the kitchen,
+he informed Mrs. Munns, who was just making tea from a kettle which had
+gone off the boil, that he should be out to breakfast.
+“You can take the porridge home for the family,” he added, viciously,
+and flung off his dressing-gown with such determination that Mrs. Munns
+could only scuttle away with a snort.
+A 19 ’bus deposited him in Piccadilly only fifteen minutes later
+than his rather sanguine impulse had prompted him to suggest, and
+Mr. Bunter served him with glorious food, incomparable coffee, and
+the _Daily Mail_ before a blazing fire of wood and coal. A distant
+voice singing the “et iterum venturus est” from Bach’s Mass in B minor
+proclaimed that for the owner of the flat cleanliness and godliness
+met at least once a day, and presently Lord Peter roamed in, moist and
+verbena-scented, in a bath-robe cheerfully patterned with unnaturally
+variegated peacocks.
+“Mornin’, old dear,” said that gentleman. “Beast of a day, ain’t it?
+Very good of you to trundle out in it, but I had a letter I wanted you
+to see, and I hadn’t the energy to come round to your place. Bunter and
+I’ve been makin’ a night of it.”
+“What’s the letter?” asked Parker.
+“Never talk business with your mouth full,” said Lord Peter,
+reprovingly; “have some Oxford marmalade—and then I’ll show you my
+Dante; they brought it round last night. What ought I to read this
+morning, Bunter?”
+“Lord Erith’s collection is going to be sold, my lord. There is
+a column about it in the _Morning Post_. I think your lordship
+should look at this review of Sir Julian Freke’s new book on ‘The
+Physiological Bases of the Conscience’ in the _Times Literary
+Supplement_. Then there is a very singular little burglary in
+the _Chronicle_, my lord, and an attack on titled families in
+the _Herald_—rather ill-written, if I may say so, but not without
+unconscious humour which your lordship will appreciate.”
+“All right, give me that and the burglary,” said his lordship.
+“I have looked over the other papers,” pursued Mr. Bunter, indicating a
+formidable pile, “and marked your lordship’s after-breakfast reading.”
+“Oh, pray don’t allude to it,” said Lord Peter; “you take my appetite
+away.”
+There was silence, but for the crunching of toast and the crackling of
+paper.
+“I see they adjourned the inquest,” said Parker presently.
+“Nothing else to do,” said Lord Peter; “but Lady Levy arrived last
+night, and will have to go and fail to identify the body this morning
+for Sugg’s benefit.”
+“Time, too,” said Mr. Parker shortly.
+Silence fell again.
+“I don’t think much of your burglary, Bunter,” said Lord Peter.
+“Competent, of course, but no imagination. I want imagination in a
+criminal. Where’s the _Morning Post_?”
+After a further silence, Lord Peter said: “You might send for the
+catalogue, Bunter, that Apollonios Rhodios[C] might be worth looking
+at. No, I’m damned if I’m going to stodge through that review, but you
+can stick the book on the library list if you like. His book on crime
+was entertainin’ enough as far as it went, but the fellow’s got a bee
+in his bonnet. Thinks God’s a secretion of the liver—all right once
+in a way, but there’s no need to keep on about it. There’s nothing
+you can’t prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. Look at
+Sugg.”
+“I beg your pardon,” said Parker; “I wasn’t attending. Argentines are
+steadying a little, I see.”
+“Milligan,” said Lord Peter.
+“Oil’s in a bad way. Levy’s made a difference there. That funny little
+boom in Peruvians that came on just before he disappeared has died away
+again. I wonder if he was concerned in it. D’you know at all?”
+“I’ll find out,” said Lord Peter. “What was it?”
+“Oh, an absolutely dud enterprise that hadn’t been heard of for years.
+It suddenly took a little lease of life last week. I happened to notice
+it because my mother got let in for a couple of hundred shares a long
+time ago. It never paid a dividend. Now it’s petered out again.”
+Wimsey pushed his plate aside and lit a pipe.
+“Having finished, I don’t mind doing some work,” he said. “How did you
+get on yesterday?”
+“I didn’t,” replied Parker. “I sleuthed up and down those flats in my
+own bodily shape and two different disguises. I was a gas-meter man and
+a collector for a Home for Lost Doggies, and I didn’t get a thing to
+go on, except a servant in the top flat at the Battersea Bridge Road
+end of the row who said she thought she heard a bump on the roof one
+night. Asked which night, she couldn’t rightly say. Asked if it was
+Monday night, she thought it very likely. Asked if it mightn’t have
+been in that high wind on Saturday night that blew my chimney-pot off,
+she couldn’t say but what it might have been. Asked if she was sure it
+was on the roof and not inside the flat, said to be sure they did find
+a picture tumbled down next morning. Very suggestible girl. I saw your
+friends, Mr. and Mrs. Appledore, who received me coldly, but could make
+no definite complaint about Thipps except that his mother dropped her
+h’s, and that he once called on them uninvited, armed with a pamphlet
+about anti-vivisection. The Indian Colonel on the first floor was loud,
+but unexpectedly friendly. He gave me Indian curry for supper and some
+very good whisky, but he’s a sort of hermit, and all _he_ could tell me
+was that he couldn’t stand Mrs. Appledore.”
+“Did you get nothing at the house?”
+“Only Levy’s private diary. I brought it away with me. Here it is.
+It doesn’t tell one much, though. It’s full of entries like: ‘Tom and
+Annie to dinner’; and ‘My dear wife’s birthday; gave her an old opal
+ring’; ‘Mr. Arbuthnot dropped in to tea; he wants to marry Rachel, but
+I should like someone steadier for my treasure.’ Still, I thought it
+would show who came to the house and so on. He evidently wrote it up at
+night. There’s no entry for Monday.”
+“I expect it’ll be useful,” said Lord Peter, turning over the pages.
+“Poor old buffer. I say, I’m not so certain now he was done away with.”
+He detailed to Mr. Parker his day’s work.
+“Arbuthnot?” said Parker. “Is that the Arbuthnot of the diary?”
+“I suppose so. I hunted him up because I knew he was fond of fooling
+round the Stock Exchange. As for Milligan, he _looks_ all right, but I
+believe he’s pretty ruthless in business and you never can tell. Then
+there’s the red-haired secretary—lightnin’ calculator man with a face
+like a fish, keeps on sayin’ nuthin’—got the Tarbaby in his family
+tree, I should think. Milligan’s got a jolly good motive for, at any
+rate, suspendin’ Levy for a few days. Then there’s the new man.”
+“What new man?”
+“Ah, that’s the letter I mentioned to you. Where did I put it? Here we
+are. Good parchment paper, printed address of solicitor’s office in
+Salisbury, and postmark to correspond. Very precisely written with a
+fine nib by an elderly business man of old-fashioned habits.”
+Parker took the letter and read:
+CRIMPLESHAM AND WICKS,
+_Solicitors_,
+MILFORD HILL, SALISBURY,
+17 November, 192—.
+Sir,
+With reference to your advertisement today in the
+personal column of _The Times_, I am disposed to believe
+that the eyeglasses and chain in question may be those
+I lost on the L. B. & S. C. Electric Railway while
+visiting London last Monday. I left Victoria by the
+5.45 train, and did not notice my loss till I arrived at
+Balham. This indication and the optician’s specification
+of the glasses, which I enclose, should suffice at once
+as an identification and a guarantee of my bona fides.
+If the glasses should prove to be mine, I should be
+greatly obliged to you if you would kindly forward them
+to me by registered post, as the chain was a present
+from my daughter, and is one of my dearest possessions.
+Thanking you in advance for this kindness, and
+regretting the trouble to which I shall be putting you,
+I am,
+Yours very truly,
+THOS. CRIMPLESHAM
+Lord Peter Wimsey,
+110, Piccadilly, W.
+(Encl.)
+“Dear me,” said Parker, “this is what you might call unexpected.”
+“Either it is some extraordinary misunderstanding,” said Lord Peter,
+“or Mr. Crimplesham is a very bold and cunning villain. Or possibly, of
+course, they are the wrong glasses. We may as well get a ruling on that
+point at once. I suppose the glasses are at the Yard. I wish you’d just
+ring ’em up and ask ’em to send round an optician’s description of them
+at once—and you might ask at the same time whether it’s a very common
+prescription.”
+“Right you are,” said Parker, and took the receiver off its hook.
+“And now,” said his friend, when the message was delivered, “just come
+into the library for a minute.”
+On the library table, Lord Peter had spread out a series of bromide
+prints, some dry, some damp, and some but half-washed.
+“These little ones are the originals of the photos we’ve been taking,”
+said Lord Peter, “and these big ones are enlargements all made
+to precisely the same scale. This one here is the footmark on the
+linoleum; we’ll put that by itself at present. Now these finger-prints
+can be divided into five lots. I’ve numbered ’em on the prints—see?—and
+made a list:
+“A. The finger-prints of Levy himself, off his little bedside book and
+his hair-brush—this and this—you can’t mistake the little scar on the
+thumb.
+“B. The smudges made by the gloved fingers of the man who slept in
+Levy’s room on Monday night. They show clearly on the water-bottle
+and on the boots—superimposed on Levy’s. They are very distinct on the
+boots—surprisingly so for gloved hands, and I deduce that the gloves
+were rubber ones and had recently been in water.
+“Here’s another interestin’ point. Levy walked in the rain on Monday
+night, as we know, and these dark marks are mud-splashes. You see they
+lie _over_ Levy’s finger-prints in every case. Now see: on this left
+boot we find the stranger’s thumb-mark _over_ the mud on the leather
+above the heel. That’s a funny place to find a thumb-mark on a boot,
+isn’t it? That is, if Levy took off his own boots. But it’s the place
+where you’d expect to see it if somebody forcibly removed his boots
+for him. Again, most of the stranger’s finger-marks come _over_ the
+mud-marks, but here is one splash of mud which comes on top of them
+again. Which makes me infer that the stranger came back to Park Lane,
+wearing Levy’s boots, in a cab, carriage or car, but that at some point
+or other he walked a little way—just enough to tread in a puddle and
+get a splash on the boots. What do you say?”
+“Very pretty,” said Parker. “A bit intricate, though, and the marks are
+not all that I could wish a finger-print to be.”
+“Well, I won’t lay too much stress on it. But it fits in with our
+previous ideas. Now let’s turn to:
+“C. The prints obligingly left by my own particular villain on the
+further edge of Thipps’s bath, where you spotted them, and I ought to
+be scourged for not having spotted them. The left hand, you notice, the
+base of the palm and the fingers, but not the tips, looking as though
+he had steadied himself on the edge of the bath while leaning down to
+adjust something at the bottom, the pince-nez perhaps. Gloved, you see,
+but showing no ridge or seam of any kind—I say rubber, you say rubber.
+That’s that. Now see here:
+“D and E come off a visiting-card of mine. There’s this thing at the
+corner, marked F, but that you can disregard; in the original document
+it’s a sticky mark left by the thumb of the youth who took it from me,
+after first removing a piece of chewing-gum from his teeth with his
+finger to tell me that Mr. Milligan might or might not be disengaged. D
+and E are the thumb-marks of Mr. Milligan and his red-haired secretary.
+I’m not clear which is which, but I saw the youth with the chewing-gum
+hand the card to the secretary, and when I got into the inner shrine
+I saw John P. Milligan standing with it in his hand, so it’s one or
+the other, and for the moment it’s immaterial to our purpose which is
+which. I boned the card from the table when I left.
+“Well, now, Parker, here’s what’s been keeping Bunter and me up till
+the small hours. I’ve measured and measured every way backwards and
+forwards till my head’s spinnin’, and I’ve stared till I’m nearly
+blind, but I’m hanged if I can make my mind up. Question 1. Is C
+identical with B? Question 2. Is D or E identical with B? There’s
+nothing to go on but the size and shape, of course, and the marks are
+so faint—what do you think?”
+Parker shook his head doubtfully.
+“I think E might almost be put out of the question,” he said; “it
+seems such an excessively long and narrow thumb. But I think there is a
+decided resemblance between the span of B on the water-bottle and C on
+the bath. And I don’t see any reason why D shouldn’t be the same as B,
+only there’s so little to judge from.”
+“Your untutored judgment and my measurements have brought us both to
+the same conclusion—if you can call it a conclusion,” said Lord Peter,
+bitterly.
+“Another thing,” said Parker. “Why on earth should we try to connect
+B with C? The fact that you and I happen to be friends doesn’t make
+it necessary to conclude that the two cases we happen to be interested
+in have any organic connection with one another. Why should they? The
+only person who thinks they have is Sugg, and he’s nothing to go by. It
+would be different if there were any truth in the suggestion that the
+man in the bath was Levy, but we know for a certainty he wasn’t. It’s
+ridiculous to suppose that the same man was employed in committing two
+totally distinct crimes on the same night, one in Battersea and the
+other in Park Lane.”
+“I know,” said Wimsey, “though of course we mustn’t forget that Levy
+_was_ in Battersea at the time, and now we know he didn’t return
+home at twelve as was supposed, we’ve no reason to think he ever left
+Battersea at all.”
+“True. But there are other places in Battersea besides Thipps’s
+bathroom. And he _wasn’t_ in Thipps’s bathroom. In fact, come to think
+of it, that’s the one place in the universe where we know definitely
+that he wasn’t. So what’s Thipps’s bath got to do with it?”
+“I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “Well, perhaps we shall get something
+better to go on today.”
+He leaned back in his chair and smoked thoughtfully for some time over
+the papers which Bunter had marked for him.
+“They’ve got you out in the limelight,” he said. “Thank Heaven, Sugg
+hates me too much to give me any publicity. What a dull Agony Column!
+‘Darling Pipsey—Come back soon to your distracted Popsey’—and the usual
+young man in need of financial assistance, and the usual injunction
+to ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.’ Hullo! there’s the
+bell. Oh, it’s our answer from Scotland Yard.”
+The note from Scotland Yard enclosed an optician’s specification
+identical with that sent by Mr. Crimplesham, and added that it was
+an unusual one, owing to the peculiar strength of the lenses and the
+marked difference between the sight of the two eyes.
+“That’s good enough,” said Parker.
+“Yes,” said Wimsey. “Then Possibility No. 3 is knocked on the head.
+There remain Possibility No. 1: Accident or Misunderstanding, and No.
+2: Deliberate Villainy, of a remarkably bold and calculating kind—of
+a kind, in fact, characteristic of the author or authors of our two
+problems. Following the methods inculcated at that University of which
+I have the honour to be a member, we will now examine severally the
+various suggestions afforded by Possibility No. 2. This Possibility
+may be again subdivided into two or more Hypotheses. On Hypothesis 1
+(strongly advocated by my distinguished colleague Professor Snupshed),
+the criminal, whom we may designate as X, is not identical with
+Crimplesham, but is using the name of Crimplesham as his shield, or
+aegis. This hypothesis may be further subdivided into two alternatives.
+Alternative A: Crimplesham is an innocent and unconscious accomplice,
+and X is in his employment. X writes in Crimplesham’s name on
+Crimplesham’s office-paper and obtains that the object in question,
+i.e., the eyeglasses, be despatched to Crimplesham’s address. He is in
+a position to intercept the parcel before it reaches Crimplesham. The
+presumption is that X is Crimplesham’s charwoman, office-boy, clerk,
+secretary or porter. This offers a wide field of investigation. The
+method of inquiry will be to interview Crimplesham and discover whether
+he sent the letter, and if not, who has access to his correspondence.
+Alternative B: Crimplesham is under X’s influence or in his power,
+and has been induced to write the letter by (_a_) bribery, (_b_)
+misrepresentation or (_c_) threats. X may in that case be a persuasive
+relation or friend, or else a creditor, blackmailer or assassin;
+Crimplesham, on the other hand, is obviously venal or a fool. The
+method of inquiry in this case, I would tentatively suggest, is again
+to interview Crimplesham, put the facts of the case strongly before
+him, and assure him in the most intimidating terms that he is liable
+to a prolonged term of penal servitude as an accessory after the fact
+in the crime of murder— Ah-hem! Trusting, gentlemen, that you have
+followed me thus far, we will pass to the consideration of Hypothesis
+No. 2, to which I personally incline, and according to which X is
+identical with Crimplesham.
+“In this case, Crimplesham, who is, in the words of an English classic,
+a man-of-infinite-resource-and-sagacity, correctly deduces that,
+of all people, the last whom we shall expect to find answering our
+advertisement is the criminal himself. Accordingly, he plays a bold
+game of bluff. He invents an occasion on which the glasses may very
+easily have been lost or stolen, and applies for them. If confronted,
+nobody will be more astonished than he to learn where they were found.
+He will produce witnesses to prove that he left Victoria at 5.45 and
+emerged from the train at Balham at the scheduled time, and sat up all
+Monday night playing chess with a respectable gentleman well known
+in Balham. In this case, the method of inquiry will be to pump the
+respectable gentleman in Balham, and if he should happen to be a single
+gentleman with a deaf housekeeper, it may be no easy matter to impugn
+the alibi, since, outside detective romances, few ticket-collectors and
+’bus-conductors keep an exact remembrance of all the passengers passing
+between Balham and London on any and every evening of the week.
+“Finally, gentlemen, I will frankly point out the weak point of all
+these hypotheses, namely: that none of them offers any explanation as
+to why the incriminating article was left so conspicuously on the body
+in the first instance.”
+Mr. Parker had listened with commendable patience to this academic
+exposition.
+“Might not X,” he suggested, “be an enemy of Crimplesham’s, who
+designed to throw suspicion upon him?”
+“He might. In that case he should be easy to discover, since he
+obviously lives in close proximity to Crimplesham and his glasses, and
+Crimplesham in fear of his life will then be a valuable ally for the
+prosecution.”
+“How about the first possibility of all, misunderstanding or accident?”
+“Well! Well, for purposes of discussion, nothing, because it really
+doesn’t afford any data for discussion.”
+“In any case,” said Parker, “the obvious course appears to be to go to
+Salisbury.”
+“That seems indicated,” said Lord Peter.
+“Very well,” said the detective, “is it to be you or me or both of us?”
+“It is to be me,” said Lord Peter, “and that for two reasons.
+First, because, if (by Possibility No. 2, Hypothesis 1, Alternative
+A) Crimplesham is an innocent catspaw, the person who put in the
+advertisement is the proper person to hand over the property. Secondly,
+because, if we are to adopt Hypothesis 2, we must not overlook the
+sinister possibility that Crimplesham-X is laying a careful trap to rid
+himself of the person who so unwarily advertised in the daily press his
+interest in the solution of the Battersea Park mystery.”
+“That appears to me to be an argument for our both going,” objected the
+detective.
+“Far from it,” said Lord Peter. “Why play into the hands of
+Crimplesham-X by delivering over to him the only two men in London with
+the evidence, such as it is, and shall I say the wits, to connect him
+with the Battersea body?”
+“But if we told the Yard where we were going, and we both got nobbled,”
+said Mr. Parker, “it would afford strong presumptive evidence of
+Crimplesham’s guilt, and anyhow, if he didn’t get hanged for murdering
+the man in the bath he’d at least get hanged for murdering us.”
+“Well,” said Lord Peter, “if he only murdered me you could still hang
+him—what’s the good of wasting a sound, marriageable young male like
+yourself? Besides, how about old Levy? If you’re incapacitated, do you
+think anybody else is going to find him?”
+“But we could frighten Crimplesham by threatening him with the Yard.”
+“Well, dash it all, if it comes to that, I can frighten him by
+threatening him with _you_, which, seeing you hold what evidence there
+is, is much more to the point. And, then, suppose it’s a wild-goose
+chase after all, you’ll have wasted time when you might have been
+getting on with the case. There are several things that need doing.”
+“Well,” said Parker, silenced but reluctant, “why can’t I go, in that
+case?”
+“Bosh!” said Lord Peter. “I am retained (by old Mrs. Thipps, for whom
+I entertain the greatest respect) to deal with this case, and it’s only
+by courtesy I allow you to have anything to do with it.”
+Mr. Parker groaned.
+“Will you at least take Bunter?” he said.
+“In deference to your feelings,” replied Lord Peter, “I will
+take Bunter, though he could be far more usefully employed taking
+photographs or overhauling my wardrobe. When is there a good train to
+Salisbury, Bunter?”
+“There is an excellent train at 10.50, my lord.”
+“Kindly make arrangements to catch it,” said Lord Peter, throwing
+off his bath-robe and trailing away with it into his bedroom. “And,
+Parker—if you have nothing else to do you might get hold of Levy’s
+secretary and look into that little matter of the Peruvian oil.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+Lord Peter took with him, for light reading in the train, Sir Reuben
+Levy’s diary. It was a simple, and in the light of recent facts, rather
+a pathetic document. The terrible fighter of the Stock Exchange, who
+could with one nod set the surly bear dancing, or bring the savage bull
+to feed out of his hand, whose breath devastated whole districts with
+famine or swept financial potentates from their seats, was revealed
+in private life as kindly, domestic, innocently proud of himself
+and his belongings, confiding, generous and a little dull. His own
+small economies were duly chronicled side by side with extravagant
+presents to his wife and daughter. Small incidents of household routine
+appeared, such as: “Man came to mend the conservatory roof,” or “The
+new butler (Simpson) has arrived, recommended by the Goldbergs. I
+think he will be satisfactory.” All visitors and entertainments were
+duly entered, from a very magnificent lunch to Lord Dewsbury, the
+Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Dr. Jabez K. Wort, the American
+plenipotentiary, through a series of diplomatic dinners to eminent
+financiers, down to intimate family gatherings of persons designated
+by Christian names or nicknames. About May there came a mention of
+Lady Levy’s nerves, and further reference was made to the subject in
+subsequent months. In September it was stated that “Freke came to see
+my dear wife and advised complete rest and change of scene. She thinks
+of going abroad with Rachel.” The name of the famous nerve-specialist
+occurred as a diner or luncher about once a month, and it came
+into Lord Peter’s mind that Freke would be a good person to consult
+about Levy himself. “People sometimes tell things to the doctor,” he
+murmured to himself. “And, by Jove! if Levy was simply going round
+to see Freke on Monday night, that rather disposes of the Battersea
+incident, doesn’t it?” He made a note to look up Sir Julian and turned
+on further. On September 18th, Lady Levy and her daughter had left for
+the south of France. Then suddenly, under the date October 5th, Lord
+Peter found what he was looking for: “Goldberg, Skriner and Milligan to
+dinner.”
+There was the evidence that Milligan had been in that house. There had
+been a formal entertainment—a meeting as of two duellists shaking hands
+before the fight. Skriner was a well-known picture-dealer; Lord Peter
+imagined an after-dinner excursion upstairs to see the two Corots in
+the drawing-room, and the portrait of the oldest Levy girl, who had
+died at the age of sixteen. It was by Augustus John, and hung in the
+bedroom. The name of the red-haired secretary was nowhere mentioned,
+unless the initial S., occurring in another entry, referred to him.
+Throughout September and October, Anderson (of Wyndham’s) had been a
+frequent visitor.
+Lord Peter shook his head over the diary, and turned to the
+consideration of the Battersea Park mystery. Whereas in the Levy affair
+it was easy enough to supply a motive for the crime, if crime it were,
+and the difficulty was to discover the method of its carrying out and
+the whereabouts of the victim, in the other case the chief obstacle
+to inquiry was the entire absence of any imaginable motive. It was odd
+that, although the papers had carried news of the affair from one end
+of the country to the other and a description of the body had been sent
+to every police station in the country, nobody had as yet come forward
+to identify the mysterious occupant of Mr. Thipps’s bath. It was true
+that the description, which mentioned the clean-shaven chin, elegantly
+cut hair and the pince-nez, was rather misleading, but on the other
+hand, the police had managed to discover the number of molars missing,
+and the height, complexion and other data were correctly enough stated,
+as also the date at which death had presumably occurred. It seemed,
+however, as though the man had melted out of society without leaving
+a gap or so much as a ripple. Assigning a motive for the murder of
+a person without relations or antecedents or even clothes is like
+trying to visualize the fourth dimension—admirable exercise for the
+imagination, but arduous and inconclusive. Even if the day’s interview
+should disclose black spots in the past or present of Mr. Crimplesham,
+how were they to be brought into connection with a person apparently
+without a past, and whose present was confined to the narrow limits of
+a bath and a police mortuary?
+“Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “I beg that in the future you will restrain
+me from starting two hares at once. These cases are gettin’ to be a
+strain on my constitution. One hare has nowhere to run from, and the
+other has nowhere to run to. It’s a kind of mental D.T., Bunter. When
+this is over I shall turn pussyfoot, forswear the police news, and take
+to an emollient diet of the works of the late Charles Garvice.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+It was its comparative proximity to Milford Hill that induced Lord
+Peter to lunch at the Minster Hotel rather than at the White Hart
+or some other more picturesquely situated hostel. It was not a
+lunch calculated to cheer his mind; as in all Cathedral cities, the
+atmosphere of the Close pervades every nook and corner of Salisbury,
+and no food in that city but seems faintly flavoured with prayer-books.
+As he sat sadly consuming that impassive pale substance known to
+the English as “cheese” unqualified (for there are cheeses which go
+openly by their names, as Stilton, Camembert, Gruyère, Wensleydale
+or Gorgonzola, but “cheese” is cheese and everywhere the same), he
+inquired of the waiter the whereabouts of Mr. Crimplesham’s office.
+The waiter directed him to a house rather further up the street on the
+opposite side, adding: “But anybody’ll tell you, sir; Mr. Crimplesham’s
+very well known hereabouts.”
+“He’s a good solicitor, I suppose?” said Lord Peter.
+“Oh, yes, sir,” said the waiter, “you couldn’t do better than trust
+to Mr. Crimplesham, sir. There’s folk say he’s old-fashioned, but I’d
+rather have my little bits of business done by Mr. Crimplesham than
+by one of these fly-away young men. Not but what Mr. Crimplesham’ll
+be retiring soon, sir, I don’t doubt, for he must be close on eighty,
+sir, if he’s a day, but then there’s young Mr. Wicks to carry on the
+business, and he’s a very nice, steady-like young gentleman.”
+“Is Mr. Crimplesham really as old as that?” said Lord Peter. “Dear
+me! He must be very active for his years. A friend of mine was doing
+business with him in town last week.”
+“Wonderful active, sir,” agreed the waiter, “and with his game leg,
+too, you’d be surprised. But there, sir, I often think when a man’s
+once past a certain age, the older he grows the tougher he gets, and
+women the same or more so.”
+“Very likely,” said Lord Peter, calling up and dismissing the mental
+picture of a gentleman of eighty with a game leg carrying a dead
+body over the roof of a Battersea flat at midnight. “‘He’s tough,
+sir, tough, is old Joey Bagstock, tough and devilish sly,’” he added,
+thoughtlessly.
+“Indeed, sir?” said the waiter. “I couldn’t say, I’m sure.”
+“I beg your pardon,” said Lord Peter; “I was quoting poetry. Very silly
+of me. I got the habit at my mother’s knee and I can’t break myself of
+it.”
+“No, sir,” said the waiter, pocketing a liberal tip. “Thank you
+very much, sir. You’ll find the house easy. Just afore you come to
+Penny-farthing Street, sir, about two turnings off, on the right-hand
+side opposite.”
+“Afraid that disposes of Crimplesham-X,” said Lord Peter. “I’m rather
+sorry; he was a fine sinister figure as I had pictured him. Still, his
+may yet be the brain behind the hands—the aged spider sitting invisible
+in the centre of the vibrating web, you know, Bunter.”
+“Yes, my lord,” said Bunter. They were walking up the street together.
+“There is the office over the way,” pursued Lord Peter. “I think,
+Bunter, you might step into this little shop and purchase a sporting
+paper, and if I do not emerge from the villain’s lair—say within
+three-quarters of an hour, you may take such steps as your perspicuity
+may suggest.”
+Mr. Bunter turned into the shop as desired, and Lord Peter walked
+across and rang the lawyer’s bell with decision.
+“The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is my long suit
+here, I fancy,” he murmured, and when the door was opened by a clerk he
+delivered over his card with an unflinching air.
+He was ushered immediately into a confidential-looking office,
+obviously furnished in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and
+never altered since. A lean, frail-looking old gentleman rose briskly
+from his chair as he entered and limped forward to meet him.
+“My dear sir,” exclaimed the lawyer, “how extremely good of you to come
+in person! Indeed, I am ashamed to have given you so much trouble. I
+trust you were passing this way, and that my glasses have not put you
+to any great inconvenience. Pray take a seat, Lord Peter.” He peered
+gratefully at the young man over a pince-nez obviously the fellow of
+that now adorning a dossier in Scotland Yard.
+Lord Peter sat down. The lawyer sat down. Lord Peter picked up a glass
+paper-weight from the desk and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand.
+Subconsciously he noted what an admirable set of finger-prints he was
+leaving upon it. He replaced it with precision on the exact centre of
+a pile of letters.
+“It’s quite all right,” said Lord Peter. “I was here on business. Very
+happy to be of service to you. Very awkward to lose one’s glasses, Mr.
+Crimplesham.”
+“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I assure you I feel quite lost without them.
+I have this pair, but they do not fit my nose so well—besides, that
+chain has a great sentimental value for me. I was terribly distressed
+on arriving at Balham to find that I had lost them. I made inquiries of
+the railway, but to no purpose. I feared they had been stolen. There
+were such crowds at Victoria, and the carriage was packed with people
+all the way to Balham. Did you come across them in the train?”
+“Well, no,” said Lord Peter, “I found them in rather an unexpected
+place. Do you mind telling me if you recognized any of your
+fellow-travellers on that occasion?”
+The lawyer stared at him.
+“Not a soul,” he answered. “Why do you ask?”
+“Well,” said Lord Peter, “I thought perhaps the—the person with whom I
+found them might have taken them for a joke.”
+The lawyer looked puzzled.
+“Did the person claim to be an acquaintance of mine?” he inquired. “I
+know practically nobody in London, except the friend with whom I was
+staying in Balham, Dr. Philpots, and I should be very greatly surprised
+at his practising a jest upon me. He knew very well how distressed I
+was at the loss of the glasses. My business was to attend a meeting
+of shareholders in Medlicott’s Bank, but the other gentlemen present
+were all personally unknown to me, and I cannot think that any of them
+would take so great a liberty. In any case,” he added, “as the glasses
+are here, I will not inquire too closely into the manner of their
+restoration. I am deeply obliged to you for your trouble.”
+Lord Peter hesitated.
+“Pray forgive my seeming inquisitiveness,” he said, “but I must ask you
+another question. It sounds rather melodramatic, I’m afraid, but it’s
+this. Are you aware that you have any enemy—anyone, I mean, who would
+profit by your—er—decease or disgrace?”
+Mr. Crimplesham sat frozen into stony surprise and disapproval.
+“May I ask the meaning of this extraordinary question?” he inquired
+stiffly.
+“Well,” said Lord Peter, “the circumstances are a little unusual. You
+may recollect that my advertisement was addressed to the jeweller who
+sold the chain.”
+“That surprised me at the time,” said Mr. Crimplesham, “but I begin to
+think your advertisement and your behaviour are all of a piece.”
+“They are,” said Lord Peter. “As a matter of fact I did not expect
+the owner of the glasses to answer my advertisement. Mr. Crimplesham,
+you have no doubt read what the papers have to say about the Battersea
+Park mystery. Your glasses are the pair that was found on the body, and
+they are now in the possession of the police at Scotland Yard, as you
+may see by this.” He placed the specification of the glasses and the
+official note before Crimplesham.
+“Good God!” exclaimed the lawyer. He glanced at the paper, and then
+looked narrowly at Lord Peter.
+“Are you yourself connected with the police?” he inquired.
+“Not officially,” said Lord Peter. “I am investigating the matter
+privately, in the interests of one of the parties.”
+Mr. Crimplesham rose to his feet.
+“My good man,” he said, “this is a very impudent attempt, but blackmail
+is an indictable offence, and I advise you to leave my office before
+you commit yourself.” He rang the bell.
+“I was afraid you’d take it like that,” said Lord Peter. “It looks as
+though this ought to have been my friend Detective Parker’s job, after
+all.” He laid Parker’s card on the table beside the specification, and
+added: “If you should wish to see me again, Mr. Crimplesham, before
+tomorrow morning, you will find me at the Minster Hotel.”
+Mr. Crimplesham disdained to reply further than to direct the clerk who
+entered to “show this person out.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+In the entrance Lord Peter brushed against a tall young man who was
+just coming in, and who stared at him with surprised recognition.
+His face, however, aroused no memories in Lord Peter’s mind, and that
+baffled nobleman, calling out Bunter from the newspaper shop, departed
+to his hotel to get a trunk-call through to Parker.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Meanwhile, in the office, the meditations of the indignant Mr.
+Crimplesham were interrupted by the entrance of his junior partner.
+“I say,” said the latter gentleman, “has somebody done something really
+wicked at last? Whatever brings such a distinguished amateur of crime
+on our sober doorstep?”
+“I have been the victim of a vulgar attempt at blackmail,” said the
+lawyer; “an individual passing himself off as Lord Peter Wimsey—”
+“But that _is_ Lord Peter Wimsey,” said Mr. Wicks, “there’s no
+mistaking him. I saw him give evidence in the Attenbury emerald case.
+He’s a big little pot in his way, you know, and goes fishing with the
+head of Scotland Yard.”
+“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Crimplesham.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Fate arranged that the nerves of Mr. Crimplesham should be tried that
+afternoon. When, escorted by Mr. Wicks, he arrived at the Minster
+Hotel, he was informed by the porter that Lord Peter Wimsey had
+strolled out, mentioning that he thought of attending Evensong. “But
+his man is here, sir,” he added, “if you’d like to leave a message.”
+Mr. Wicks thought that on the whole it would be well to leave a
+message. Mr. Bunter, on inquiry, was found to be sitting by the
+telephone, waiting for a trunk-call. As Mr. Wicks addressed him the
+bell rang, and Mr. Bunter, politely excusing himself, took down the
+receiver.
+“Hullo!” he said. “Is that Mr. Parker? Oh, thanks! Exchange! Exchange!
+Sorry, can you put me through to Scotland Yard? Excuse me, gentlemen,
+keeping you waiting.—Exchange! all right—Scotland Yard—Hullo! Is that
+Scotland Yard?—Is Detective Parker round there?—Can I speak to him?—I
+shall have done in a moment, gentlemen.—Hullo! is that you, Mr. Parker?
+Lord Peter would be much obliged if you could find it convenient to
+step down to Salisbury, sir. Oh, no, sir, he’s in excellent health,
+sir—just stepped round to hear Evensong, sir—oh, no, I think tomorrow
+morning would do excellently, sir, thank you, sir.”
+CHAPTER VI
+It was, in fact, inconvenient for Mr. Parker to leave London. He
+had had to go and see Lady Levy towards the end of the morning, and
+subsequently his plans for the day had been thrown out of gear and his
+movements delayed by the discovery that the adjourned inquest of Mr.
+Thipps’s unknown visitor was to be held that afternoon, since nothing
+very definite seemed forthcoming from Inspector Sugg’s inquiries. Jury
+and witnesses had been convened accordingly for three o’clock. Mr.
+Parker might altogether have missed the event, had he not run against
+Sugg that morning at the Yard and extracted the information from him
+as one would a reluctant tooth. Inspector Sugg, indeed, considered Mr.
+Parker rather interfering; moreover, he was hand-in-glove with Lord
+Peter Wimsey, and Inspector Sugg had no words for the interferingness
+of Lord Peter. He could not, however, when directly questioned, deny
+that there was to be an inquest that afternoon, nor could he prevent
+Mr. Parker from enjoying the inalienable right of any interested
+British citizen to be present. At a little before three, therefore, Mr.
+Parker was in his place, and amusing himself with watching the efforts
+of those persons who arrived after the room was packed to insinuate,
+bribe or bully themselves into a position of vantage. The Coroner,
+a medical man of precise habits and unimaginative aspect, arrived
+punctually, and looking peevishly round at the crowded assembly,
+directed all the windows to be opened, thus letting in a stream of
+drizzling fog upon the heads of the unfortunates on that side of the
+room. This caused a commotion and some expressions of disapproval,
+checked sternly by the Coroner, who said that with the influenza about
+again an unventilated room was a death-trap; that anybody who chose to
+object to open windows had the obvious remedy of leaving the court, and
+further, that if any disturbance was made he would clear the court.
+He then took a Formamint lozenge, and proceeded, after the usual
+preliminaries, to call up fourteen good and lawful persons and swear
+them diligently to inquire and a true presentment make of all matters
+touching the death of the gentleman with the pince-nez and to give
+a true verdict according to the evidence, so help them God. When an
+expostulation by a woman juror—an elderly lady in spectacles who kept a
+sweet-shop, and appeared to wish she was back there—had been summarily
+quashed by the Coroner, the jury departed to view the body. Mr. Parker
+gazed round again and identified the unhappy Mr. Thipps and the girl
+Gladys led into an adjoining room under the grim guard of the police.
+They were soon followed by a gaunt old lady in a bonnet and mantle.
+With her, in a wonderful fur coat and a motor bonnet of fascinating
+construction, came the Dowager Duchess of Denver, her quick, dark
+eyes darting hither and thither about the crowd. The next moment they
+had lighted on Mr. Parker, who had several times visited the Dower
+House, and she nodded to him, and spoke to a policeman. Before long,
+a way opened magically through the press, and Mr. Parker found himself
+accommodated with a front seat just behind the Duchess, who greeted him
+charmingly, and said: “What’s happened to poor Peter?” Parker began to
+explain, and the Coroner glanced irritably in their direction. Somebody
+went up and whispered in his ear, at which he coughed, and took another
+Formamint.
+“We came up by car,” said the Duchess—“so tiresome—such bad roads
+between Denver and Gunbury St. Walters—and there were people coming
+to lunch—I had to put them off—I couldn’t let the old lady go alone,
+could I? By the way, such an odd thing’s happened about the Church
+Restoration Fund—the Vicar—oh, dear, here are these people coming
+back again; well, I’ll tell you afterwards—do look at that woman
+looking shocked, and the girl in tweeds trying to look as if she sat
+on undraped gentlemen every day of her life—I don’t mean that—corpses
+of course—but one finds oneself being so Elizabethan nowadays—what
+an awful little man the coroner is, isn’t he? He’s looking daggers at
+me—do you think he’ll dare to clear me out of the court or commit me
+for what-you-may-call-it?”
+The first part of the evidence was not of great interest to Mr. Parker.
+The wretched Mr. Thipps, who had caught cold in gaol, deposed in an
+unhappy croak to having discovered the body when he went in to take his
+bath at eight o’clock. He had had such a shock, he had to sit down and
+send the girl for brandy. He had never seen the deceased before. He had
+no idea how he came there.
+Yes, he had been in Manchester the day before. He had arrived at St.
+Pancras at ten o’clock. He had cloak-roomed his bag. At this point Mr.
+Thipps became very red, unhappy and confused, and glanced nervously
+about the court.
+“Now, Mr. Thipps,” said the Coroner, briskly, “we must have your
+movements quite clear. You must appreciate the importance of the
+matter. You have chosen to give evidence, which you need not have done,
+but having done so, you will find it best to be perfectly explicit.”
+“Yes,” said Mr. Thipps faintly.
+“Have you cautioned this witness, officer?” inquired the Coroner,
+turning sharply to Inspector Sugg.
+The Inspector replied that he had told Mr. Thipps that anything he said
+might be used agin’ him at his trial. Mr. Thipps became ashy, and said
+in a bleating voice that he ’adn’t—hadn’t meant to do anything that
+wasn’t right.
+This remark produced a mild sensation, and the Coroner became even more
+acidulated in manner than before.
+“Is anybody representing Mr. Thipps?” he asked, irritably. “No? Did you
+not explain to him that he could—that he _ought_ to be represented? You
+did not? Really, Inspector! Did you not know, Mr. Thipps, that you had
+a right to be legally represented?”
+Mr. Thipps clung to a chair-back for support, and said, “No,” in a
+voice barely audible.
+“It is incredible,” said the Coroner, “that so-called educated people
+should be so ignorant of the legal procedure of their own country. This
+places us in a very awkward position. I doubt, Inspector, whether I
+should permit the prisoner—Mr. Thipps—to give evidence at all. It is a
+delicate position.”
+The perspiration stood on Mrs. Thipps’s forehead.
+“Save us from our friends,” whispered the Duchess to Parker. “If that
+cough-drop-devouring creature had openly instructed those fourteen
+people—and what unfinished-looking faces they have—so characteristic, I
+always think, of the lower middle-class, rather like sheep, or calves’
+head (boiled, I mean), to bring in wilful murder against the poor
+little man, he couldn’t have made himself plainer.”
+“He can’t let him incriminate himself, you know,” said Parker.
+“Stuff!” said the Duchess. “How could the man incriminate himself when
+he never did anything in his life? You men never think of anything but
+your red tape.”
+Meanwhile Mr. Thipps, wiping his brow with a handkerchief, had summoned
+up courage. He stood up with a kind of weak dignity, like a small white
+rabbit brought to bay.
+“I would rather tell you,” he said, “though it’s reelly very unpleasant
+for a man in my position. But I reelly couldn’t have it thought for a
+moment that I’d committed this dreadful crime. I assure you, gentlemen,
+I _couldn’t bear_ that. No. I’d rather tell you the truth, though I’m
+afraid it places me in rather a—well, I’ll tell you.”
+“You fully understand the gravity of making such a statement, Mr.
+Thipps,” said the Coroner.
+“Quite,” said Mr. Thipps. “It’s all right—I—might I have a drink of
+water?”
+“Take your time,” said the Coroner, at the same time robbing his remark
+of all conviction by an impatient glance at his watch.
+“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Thipps. “Well, then, it’s true I got to St.
+Pancras at ten. But there was a man in the carriage with me. He’d got
+in at Leicester. I didn’t recognise him at first, but he turned out to
+be an old school-fellow of mine.”
+“What was this gentleman’s name?” inquired the Coroner, his pencil
+poised.
+Mr. Thipps shrank together visibly.
+“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said. “You see—that is, you
+_will_ see—it would get him into trouble, and I couldn’t do that—no, I
+reelly couldn’t do that, not if my life depended on it. No!” he added,
+as the ominous pertinence of the last phrase smote upon him, “I’m sure
+I couldn’t do that.”
+“Well, well,” said the Coroner.
+The Duchess leaned over to Parker again. “I’m beginning quite to admire
+the little man,” she said.
+Mr. Thipps resumed.
+“When we got to St. Pancras I was going home, but my friend said no.
+We hadn’t met for a long time and we ought to—to make a night of it,
+was his expression. I fear I was weak, and let him overpersuade me to
+accompany him to one of his haunts. I use the word advisedly,” said Mr.
+Thipps, “and I assure you, sir, that if I had known beforehand where we
+were going I never would have set foot in the place.
+“I cloak-roomed my bag, for he did not like the notion of our being
+encumbered with it, and we got into a taxicab and drove to the corner
+of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. We then walked a little way,
+and turned into a side street (I do not recollect which) where there
+was an open door, with the light shining out. There was a man at a
+counter, and my friend bought some tickets, and I heard the man at the
+counter say something to him about ‘Your friend,’ meaning me, and my
+friend said, ‘Oh, yes, he’s been here before, haven’t you, Alf?’ (which
+was what they called me at school), though I assure you, sir”—here Mr.
+Thipps grew very earnest—“I never had, and nothing in the world should
+induce me to go to such a place again.
+“Well, we went down into a room underneath, where there were drinks,
+and my friend had several, and made me take one or two—though I am an
+abstemious man as a rule—and he talked to some other men and girls
+who were there—a very vulgar set of people, I thought them, though
+I wouldn’t say but what some of the young ladies were nice-looking
+enough. One of them sat on my friend’s knee and called him a slow old
+thing, and told him to come on—so we went into another room, where
+there were a lot of people dancing all these up-to-date dances. My
+friend went and danced, and I sat on a sofa. One of the young ladies
+came up to me and said, didn’t I dance, and I said ‘No,’ so she said
+wouldn’t I stand her a drink then. ‘You’ll stand us a drink then,
+darling,’ that was what she said, and I said, ‘Wasn’t it after hours?’
+and she said that didn’t matter. So I ordered the drink—a gin and
+bitters it was—for I didn’t like not to, the young lady seemed to
+expect it of me and I felt it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to refuse when
+she asked. But it went against my conscience—such a young girl as
+she was—and she put her arm round my neck afterwards and kissed me
+just like as if she was paying for the drink—and it reelly went to
+my ’eart,” said Mr. Thipps, a little ambiguously, but with uncommon
+emphasis.
+Here somebody at the back said, “Cheer-oh!” and a sound was heard as of
+the noisy smacking of lips.
+“Remove the person who made that improper noise,” said the Coroner,
+with great indignation. “Go on, please, Mr. Thipps.”
+“Well,” said Mr. Thipps, “about half-past twelve, as I should reckon,
+things began to get a bit lively, and I was looking for my friend to
+say good-night, not wishing to stay longer, as you will understand,
+when I saw him with one of the young ladies, and they seemed to be
+getting on altogether too well, if you follow me, my friend pulling the
+ribbons off her shoulder and the young lady laughing—and so on,” said
+Mr. Thipps, hurriedly, “so I thought I’d just slip quietly out, when I
+heard a scuffle and a shout—and before I knew what was happening there
+were half-a-dozen policemen in, and the lights went out, and everybody
+stampeding and shouting—quite horrid, it was. I was knocked down in
+the rush, and hit my head a nasty knock on a chair—that was where I got
+that bruise they asked me about—and I was dreadfully afraid I’d never
+get away and it would all come out, and perhaps my photograph in the
+papers, when someone caught hold of me—I think it was the young lady
+I’d given the gin and bitters to—and she said, ‘This way,’ and pushed
+me along a passage and out at the back somewhere. So I ran through some
+streets, and found myself in Goodge Street, and there I got a taxi and
+came home. I saw the account of the raid afterwards in the papers, and
+saw my friend had escaped, and so, as it wasn’t the sort of thing I
+wanted made public, and I didn’t want to get him into difficulties, I
+just said nothing. But that’s the truth.”
+“Well, Mr. Thipps,” said the Coroner, “we shall be able to substantiate
+a certain amount of this story. Your friend’s name—”
+“No,” said Mr. Thipps, stoutly, “not on any account.”
+“Very good,” said the Coroner. “Now, can you tell us what time you did
+get in?”
+“About half-past one, I should think. Though reelly, I was so upset—”
+“Quite so. Did you go straight to bed?”
+“Yes, I took my sandwich and glass of milk first. I thought it might
+settle my inside, so to speak,” added the witness, apologetically, “not
+being accustomed to alcohol so late at night and on an empty stomach,
+as you may say.”
+“Quite so. Nobody sat up for you?”
+“Nobody.”
+“How long did you take getting to bed first and last?”
+Mr. Thipps thought it might have been half-an-hour.
+“Did you visit the bathroom before turning in?”
+“No.”
+“And you heard nothing in the night?”
+“No. I fell fast asleep. I was rather agitated, so I took a little dose
+to make me sleep, and what with being so tired and the milk and the
+dose, I just tumbled right off and didn’t wake till Gladys called me.”
+Further questioning elicited little from Mr. Thipps. Yes, the bathroom
+window had been open when he went in in the morning, he was sure of
+that, and he had spoken very sharply to the girl about it. He was ready
+to answer any questions; he would be only too ’appy—happy to have this
+dreadful affair sifted to the bottom.
+Gladys Horrocks stated that she had been in Mr. Thipps’s employment
+about three months. Her previous employers would speak to her
+character. It was her duty to make the round of the flat at night, when
+she had seen Mrs. Thipps to bed at ten. Yes, she remembered doing so on
+Monday evening. She had looked into all the rooms. Did she recollect
+shutting the bathroom window that night? Well, no, she couldn’t swear
+to it, not in particular, but when Mr. Thipps called her into the
+bathroom in the morning it certainly _was_ open. She had not been into
+the bathroom before Mr. Thipps went in. Well, yes, it had happened that
+she had left that window open before, when anyone had been ’aving a
+bath in the evening and ’ad left the blind down. Mrs. Thipps ’ad ’ad a
+bath on Monday evening, Mondays was one of her regular bath nights. She
+was very much afraid she ’adn’t shut the window on Monday night, though
+she wished her ’ead ’ad been cut off afore she’d been so forgetful.
+Here the witness burst into tears and was given some water, while the
+Coroner refreshed himself with a third lozenge.
+Recovering, witness stated that she had certainly looked into all the
+rooms before going to bed. No, it was quite impossible for a body
+to be ’idden in the flat without her seeing of it. She ’ad been in
+the kitchen all evening, and there wasn’t ’ardly room to keep the
+best dinner service there, let alone a body. Old Mrs. Thipps sat in
+the drawing-room. Yes, she was sure she’d been into the dining-room.
+How? Because she put Mr. Thipps’s milk and sandwiches there ready
+for him. There had been nothing in there—that she could swear to. Nor
+yet in her own bedroom, nor in the ’all. Had she searched the bedroom
+cupboard and the box-room? Well, no, not to say searched; she wasn’t
+use to searchin’ people’s ’ouses for skelintons every night. So that
+a man might have concealed himself in the box-room or a wardrobe? She
+supposed he might.
+In reply to a woman juror—well, yes, she was walking out with a young
+man. Williams was his name, Bill Williams,—well, yes, William Williams,
+if they insisted. He was a glazier by profession. Well, yes, he ’ad
+been in the flat sometimes. Well, she supposed you might say he was
+acquainted with the flat. Had she ever—no, she ’adn’t, and if she’d
+thought such a question was going to be put to a respectable girl she
+wouldn’t ’ave offered to give evidence. The vicar of St. Mary’s would
+speak to her character and to Mr. Williams’s. Last time Mr. Williams
+was at the flat was a fortnight ago.
+Well, no, it wasn’t exactly the last time she ’ad seen Mr. Williams.
+Well, yes, the last time was Monday—well, yes, Monday night. Well,
+if she must tell the truth, she must. Yes, the officer had cautioned
+her, but there wasn’t any ’arm in it, and it was better to lose her
+place than to be ’ung, though it was a cruel shame a girl couldn’t
+’ave a bit of fun without a nasty corpse comin’ in through the window
+to get ’er into difficulties. After she ’ad put Mrs. Thipps to bed,
+she ’ad slipped out to go to the Plumbers’ and Glaziers’ Ball at the
+“Black Faced Ram.” Mr. Williams ’ad met ’er and brought ’er back. ’E
+could testify to where she’d been and that there wasn’t no ’arm in it.
+She’d left before the end of the ball. It might ’ave been two o’clock
+when she got back. She’d got the keys of the flat from Mrs. Thipps’s
+drawer when Mrs. Thipps wasn’t looking. She ’ad asked leave to go, but
+couldn’t get it, along of Mr. Thipps bein’ away that night. She was
+bitterly sorry she ’ad be’aved so, and she was sure she’d been punished
+for it. She had ’eard nothing suspicious when she came in. She had gone
+straight to bed without looking round the flat. She wished she were
+dead.
+No, Mr. and Mrs. Thipps didn’t ’ardly ever ’ave any visitors; they kep’
+themselves very retired. She had found the outside door bolted that
+morning as usual. She wouldn’t never believe any ’arm of Mr. Thipps.
+Thank you, Miss Horrocks. Call Georgiana Thipps, and the Coroner
+thought we had better light the gas.
+The examination of Mrs. Thipps provided more entertainment than
+enlightenment, affording as it did an excellent example of the game
+called “cross questions and crooked answers.” After fifteen minutes’
+suffering, both in voice and temper, the Coroner abandoned the
+struggle, leaving the lady with the last word.
+“You needn’t try to bully me, young man,” said that octogenarian with
+spirit, “settin’ there spoilin’ your stomach with them nasty jujubes.”
+At this point a young man arose in court and demanded to give evidence.
+Having explained that he was William Williams, glazier, he was sworn,
+and corroborated the evidence of Gladys Horrocks in the matter of
+her presence at the “Black Faced Ram” on the Monday night. They had
+returned to the flat rather before two, he thought, but certainly later
+than 1.30. He was sorry that he had persuaded Miss Horrocks to come out
+with him when she didn’t ought. He had observed nothing of a suspicious
+nature in Prince of Wales Road at either visit.
+Inspector Sugg gave evidence of having been called in at about
+half-past eight on Monday morning. He had considered the girl’s manner
+to be suspicious and had arrested her. On later information, leading
+him to suspect that the deceased might have been murdered that night,
+he had arrested Mr. Thipps. He had found no trace of breaking into
+the flat. There were marks on the bathroom window-sill which pointed
+to somebody having got in that way. There were no ladder marks or
+footmarks in the yard; the yard was paved with asphalt. He had examined
+the roof, but found nothing on the roof. In his opinion the body had
+been brought into the flat previously and concealed till the evening by
+someone who had then gone out during the night by the bathroom window,
+with the connivance of the girl. In that case, why should not the
+girl have let the person out by the door? Well, it might have been so.
+Had he found traces of a body or a man or both having been hidden in
+the flat? He found nothing to show that they might _not_ have been so
+concealed. What was the evidence that led him to suppose that the death
+had occurred that night?
+At this point Inspector Sugg appeared uneasy, and endeavoured to retire
+upon his professional dignity. On being pressed, however, he admitted
+that the evidence in question had come to nothing.
+_One of the jurors_: Was it the case that any finger-marks had been
+left by the criminal?
+Some marks had been found on the bath, but the criminal had worn gloves.
+_The Coroner_: Do you draw any conclusion from this fact as to the
+experience of the criminal?
+_Inspector Sugg_: Looks as if he was an old hand, sir.
+_The Juror_: Is that very consistent with the charge against Alfred
+Thipps, Inspector?
+The Inspector was silent.
+_The Coroner_: In the light of the evidence which you have just
+heard, do you still press the charge against Alfred Thipps and Gladys
+Horrocks?
+_Inspector Sugg_: I consider the whole set-out highly suspicious.
+Thipps’s story isn’t corroborated, and as for the girl Horrocks, how do
+we know this Williams ain’t in it as well?
+_William Williams_: Now, you drop that. I can bring a ’undred witnesses—
+_The Coroner_: Silence, if you please. I am surprised, Inspector, that
+you should make this suggestion in that manner. It is highly improper.
+By the way, can you tell us whether a police raid was actually carried
+out on the Monday night on any Night Club in the neighbourhood of St.
+Giles’s Circus?
+_Inspector Sugg_ (sulkily): I believe there was something of the sort.
+_The Coroner_: You will, no doubt, inquire into the matter. I seem to
+recollect having seen some mention of it in the newspapers. Thank you,
+Inspector, that will do.
+Several witnesses having appeared and testified to the characters of
+Mr. Thipps and Gladys Horrocks, the Coroner stated his intention of
+proceeding to the medical evidence.
+“Sir Julian Freke.”
+There was considerable stir in the court as the great specialist
+walked up to give evidence. He was not only a distinguished man,
+but a striking figure, with his wide shoulders, upright carriage and
+leonine head. His manner as he kissed the Book presented to him with
+the usual deprecatory mumble by the Coroner’s officer, was that of a
+St. Paul condescending to humour the timid mumbo-jumbo of superstitious
+Corinthians.
+“So handsome, I always think,” whispered the Duchess to Mr. Parker;
+“just exactly like William Morris, with that bush of hair and beard
+and those exciting eyes looking out of it—so splendid, these dear men
+always devoted to something or other—not but what I think socialism is
+a mistake—of course it works with all those nice people, so good and
+happy in art linen and the weather always perfect—Morris, I mean, you
+know—but so difficult in real life. Science is different—I’m sure if I
+had nerves I should go to Sir Julian just to look at him—eyes like that
+give one something to think about, and that’s what most of these people
+want, only I never had any—nerves, I mean. Don’t you think so?”
+“You are Sir Julian Freke,” said the Coroner, “and live at St. Luke’s
+House, Prince of Wales Road, Battersea, where you exercise a general
+direction over the surgical side of St. Luke’s Hospital?”
+Sir Julian assented briefly to this definition of his personality.
+“You were the first medical man to see the deceased?”
+“I was.”
+“And you have since conducted an examination in collaboration with Dr.
+Grimbold of Scotland Yard?”
+“I have.”
+“You are in agreement as to the cause of death?”
+“Generally speaking, yes.”
+“Will you communicate your impressions to the Jury?”
+“I was engaged in research work in the dissecting room at St. Luke’s
+Hospital at about nine o’clock on Monday morning, when I was informed
+that Inspector Sugg wished to see me. He told me that the dead body of
+a man had been discovered under mysterious circumstances at 59 Queen
+Caroline Mansions. He asked me whether it could be supposed to be a
+joke perpetrated by any of the medical students at the hospital. I was
+able to assure him, by an examination of the hospital’s books, that
+there was no subject missing from the dissecting room.”
+“Who would be in charge of such bodies?”
+“William Watts, the dissecting-room attendant.”
+“Is William Watts present?” inquired the Coroner of the officer.
+William Watts was present, and could be called if the Coroner thought
+it necessary.
+“I suppose no dead body would be delivered to the hospital without your
+knowledge, Sir Julian?”
+“Certainly not.”
+“Thank you. Will you proceed with your statement?”
+“Inspector Sugg then asked me whether I would send a medical man round
+to view the body. I said that I would go myself.”
+“Why did you do that?”
+“I confess to my share of ordinary human curiosity, Mr. Coroner.”
+Laughter from a medical student at the back of the room.
+“On arriving at the flat I found the deceased lying on his back in
+the bath. I examined him, and came to the conclusion that death had
+been caused by a blow on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth
+and fifth cervical vertebrae, bruising the spinal cord and producing
+internal haemorrhage and partial paralysis of the brain. I judged the
+deceased to have been dead at least twelve hours, possibly more. I
+observed no other sign of violence of any kind upon the body. Deceased
+was a strong, well-nourished man of about fifty to fifty-five years of
+age.”
+“In your opinion, could the blow have been self-inflicted?”
+“Certainly not. It had been made with a heavy, blunt instrument
+from behind, with great force and considerable judgment. It is quite
+impossible that it was self-inflicted.”
+“Could it have been the result of an accident?”
+“That is possible, of course.”
+“If, for example, the deceased had been looking out of the window, and
+the sash had shut violently down upon him?”
+“No; in that case there would have been signs of strangulation and a
+bruise upon the throat as well.”
+“But deceased might have been killed through a heavy weight
+accidentally falling upon him?”
+“He might.”
+“Was death instantaneous, in your opinion?”
+“It is difficult to say. Such a blow might very well cause death
+instantaneously, or the patient might linger in a partially paralyzed
+condition for some time. In the present case I should be disposed
+to think that deceased might have lingered for some hours. I base my
+decision upon the condition of the brain revealed at the autopsy. I may
+say, however, that Dr. Grimbold and I are not in complete agreement on
+the point.”
+“I understand that a suggestion has been made as to the identification
+of the deceased. _You_ are not in a position to identify him?”
+“Certainly not. I never saw him before. The suggestion to which you
+refer is a preposterous one, and ought never to have been made. I was
+not aware until this morning that it had been made; had it been made to
+me earlier, I should have known how to deal with it, and I should like
+to express my strong disapproval of the unnecessary shock and distress
+inflicted upon a lady with whom I have the honour to be acquainted.”
+_The Coroner_: It was not my fault, Sir Julian; I had nothing to
+do with it; I agree with you that it was unfortunate you were not
+consulted.
+The reporters scribbled busily, and the court asked each other what was
+meant, while the jury tried to look as if they knew already.
+“In the matter of the eyeglasses found upon the body, Sir Julian. Do
+these give any indication to a medical man?”
+“They are somewhat unusual lenses; an oculist would be able to speak
+more definitely, but I will say for myself that I should have expected
+them to belong to an older man than the deceased.”
+“Speaking as a physician, who has had many opportunities of observing
+the human body, did you gather anything from the appearance of the
+deceased as to his personal habits?”
+“I should say that he was a man in easy circumstances, but who had only
+recently come into money. His teeth are in a bad state, and his hands
+shows signs of recent manual labour.”
+“An Australian colonist, for instance, who had made money?”
+“Something of that sort; of course, I could not say positively.”
+“Of course not. Thank you, Sir Julian.”
+Dr. Grimbold, called, corroborated his distinguished colleague in every
+particular, except that, in his opinion, death had not occurred for
+several days after the blow. It was with the greatest hesitancy that he
+ventured to differ from Sir Julian Freke, and he might be wrong. It was
+difficult to tell in any case, and when he saw the body, deceased had
+been dead at least twenty-four hours, in his opinion.
+Inspector Sugg, recalled. Would he tell the jury what steps had been
+taken to identify the deceased?
+A description had been sent to every police station and had been
+inserted in all the newspapers. In view of the suggestion made by Sir
+Julian Freke, had inquiries been made at all the seaports? They had.
+And with no results? With no results at all. No one had come forward
+to identify the body? Plenty of people had come forward; but nobody
+had succeeded in identifying it. Had any effort been made to follow
+up the clue afforded by the eyeglasses? Inspector Sugg submitted that,
+having regard to the interests of justice, he would beg to be excused
+from answering that question. Might the jury see the eyeglasses? The
+eyeglasses were handed to the jury.
+William Watts, called, confirmed the evidence of Sir Julian Freke with
+regard to dissecting-room subjects. He explained the system by which
+they were entered. They usually were supplied by the workhouses and
+free hospitals. They were under his sole charge. The young gentlemen
+could not possibly get the keys. Had Sir Julian Freke, or any of the
+house surgeons, the keys? No, not even Sir Julian Freke. The keys had
+remained in his possession on Monday night? They had. And, in any case,
+the inquiry was irrelevant, as there was no body missing, nor ever had
+been? That was the case.
+The Coroner then addressed the jury, reminding them with some
+asperity that they were not there to gossip about who the deceased
+could or could not have been, but to give their opinion as to the
+cause of death. He reminded them that they should consider whether,
+according to the medical evidence, death could have been accidental
+or self-inflicted, or whether it was deliberate murder, or homicide.
+If they considered the evidence on this point insufficient, they could
+return an open verdict. In any case, their verdict could not prejudice
+any person; if they brought it in “murder,” all the whole evidence
+would have to be gone through again before the magistrate. He then
+dismissed them, with the unspoken adjuration to be quick about it.
+Sir Julian Freke, after giving his evidence, had caught the eye of the
+Duchess, and now came over and greeted her.
+“I haven’t seen you for an age,” said that lady. “How are you?”
+“Hard at work,” said the specialist. “Just got my new book out. This
+kind of thing wastes time. Have you seen Lady Levy yet?”
+“No, poor dear,” said the Duchess. “I only came up this morning, for
+this. Mrs. Thipps is staying with me—one of Peter’s eccentricities,
+you know. Poor Christine! I must run round and see her. This is Mr.
+Parker,” she added, “who is investigating that case.”
+“Oh,” said Sir Julian, and paused. “Do you know,” he said in a low
+voice to Parker, “I am very glad to meet you. Have you seen Lady Levy
+yet?”
+“I saw her this morning.”
+“Did she ask you to go on with the inquiry?”
+“Yes,” said Parker; “she thinks,” he added, “that Sir Reuben may be
+detained in the hands of some financial rival or that perhaps some
+scoundrels are holding him to ransom.”
+“And is that _your_ opinion?” asked Sir Julian.
+“I think it very likely,” said Parker, frankly.
+Sir Julian hesitated again.
+“I wish you would walk back with me when this is over,” he said.
+“I should be delighted,” said Parker.
+At this moment the jury returned and took their places, and there was a
+little rustle and hush. The Coroner addressed the foreman and inquired
+if they were agreed upon their verdict.
+“We are agreed, Mr. Coroner, that deceased died of the effects of a
+blow upon the spine, but how that injury was inflicted we consider that
+there is not sufficient evidence to show.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+Mr. Parker and Sir Julian Freke walked up the road together.
+“I had absolutely no idea until I saw Lady Levy this morning,” said the
+doctor, “that there was any idea of connecting this matter with the
+disappearance of Sir Reuben. The suggestion was perfectly monstrous,
+and could only have grown up in the mind of that ridiculous police
+officer. If I had had any idea what was in his mind I could have
+disabused him and avoided all this.”
+“I did my best to do so,” said Parker, “as soon as I was called in to
+the Levy case—”
+“Who called you in, if I may ask?” inquired Sir Julian.
+“Well, the household first of all, and then Sir Reuben’s uncle, Mr.
+Levy of Portman Square, wrote to me to go on with the investigation.”
+“And now Lady Levy has confirmed those instructions?”
+“Certainly,” said Parker in some surprise.
+Sir Julian was silent for a little time.
+“I’m afraid I was the first person to put the idea into Sugg’s head,”
+said Parker, rather penitently. “When Sir Reuben disappeared, my first
+step, almost, was to hunt up all the street accidents and suicides and
+so on that had turned up during the day, and I went down to see this
+Battersea Park body as a matter of routine. Of course, I saw that the
+thing was ridiculous as soon as I got there, but Sugg froze on to the
+idea—and it’s true there was a good deal of resemblance between the
+dead man and the portraits I’ve seen of Sir Reuben.”
+“A strong superficial likeness,” said Sir Julian. “The upper part of
+the face is a not uncommon type, and as Sir Reuben wore a heavy beard
+and there was no opportunity of comparing the mouths and chins, I can
+understand the idea occurring to anybody. But only to be dismissed at
+once. I am sorry,” he added, “as the whole matter has been painful to
+Lady Levy. You may know, Mr. Parker, that I am an old, though I should
+not call myself an intimate, friend of the Levys.”
+“I understood something of the sort.”
+“Yes. When I was a young man I—in short, Mr. Parker, I hoped once to
+marry Lady Levy.” (Mr. Parker gave the usual sympathetic groan.) “I
+have never married, as you know,” pursued Sir Julian. “We have remained
+good friends. I have always done what I could to spare her pain.”
+“Believe me, Sir Julian,” said Parker, “that I sympathize very much
+with you and with Lady Levy, and that I did all I could to disabuse
+Inspector Sugg of this notion. Unhappily, the coincidence of Sir
+Reuben’s being seen that evening in the Battersea Park Road—”
+“Ah, yes,” said Sir Julian. “Dear me, here we are at home. Perhaps
+you would come in for a moment, Mr. Parker, and have tea or a
+whisky-and-soda or something.”
+Parker promptly accepted this invitation, feeling that there were other
+things to be said.
+The two men stepped into a square, finely furnished hall with a
+fireplace on the same side as the door, and a staircase opposite. The
+dining-room door stood open on their right, and as Sir Julian rang the
+bell a man-servant appeared at the far end of the hall.
+“What will you take?” asked the doctor.
+“After that dreadfully cold place,” said Parker, “what I really want is
+gallons of hot tea, if you, as a nerve specialist, can bear the thought
+of it.”
+“Provided you allow of a judicious blend of China in it,” replied
+Sir Julian in the same tone, “I have no objection to make. Tea in the
+library at once,” he added to the servant, and led the way upstairs.
+“I don’t use the downstairs rooms much, except the dining-room,” he
+explained as he ushered his guest into a small but cheerful library
+on the first floor. “This room leads out of my bedroom and is more
+convenient. I only live part of my time here, but it’s very handy for
+my research work at the hospital. That’s what I do there, mostly. It’s
+a fatal thing for a theorist, Mr. Parker, to let the practical work get
+behindhand. Dissection is the basis of all good theory and all correct
+diagnosis. One must keep one’s hand and eye in training. This place
+is far more important to me than Harley Street, and some day I shall
+abandon my consulting practice altogether and settle down here to cut
+up my subjects and write my books in peace. So many things in this life
+are a waste of time, Mr. Parker.”
+Mr. Parker assented to this.
+“Very often,” said Sir Julian, “the only time I get for any research
+work—necessitating as it does the keenest observation and the faculties
+at their acutest—has to be at night, after a long day’s work and by
+artificial light, which, magnificent as the lighting of the dissecting
+room here is, is always more trying to the eyes than daylight.
+Doubtless your own work has to be carried on under even more trying
+conditions.”
+“Yes, sometimes,” said Parker; “but then you see,” he added, “the
+conditions are, so to speak, part of the work.”
+“Quite so, quite so,” said Sir Julian; “you mean that the burglar, for
+example, does not demonstrate his methods in the light of day, or plant
+the perfect footmark in the middle of a damp patch of sand for you to
+analyze.”
+“Not as a rule,” said the detective, “but I have no doubt many of your
+diseases work quite as insidiously as any burglar.”
+“They do, they do,” said Sir Julian, laughing, “and it is my pride, as
+it is yours, to track them down for the good of society. The neuroses,
+you know, are particularly clever criminals—they break out into as many
+disguises as—”
+“As Leon Kestrel, the Master-Mummer,” suggested Parker, who read
+railway-stall detective stories on the principle of the ’busman’s
+holiday.
+“No doubt,” said Sir Julian, who did not, “and they cover up their
+tracks wonderfully. But when you can really investigate, Mr. Parker,
+and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the
+scalpel, you always find the footmarks—the little trail of ruin or
+disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar
+pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing
+the surface symptoms—the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness,
+conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a
+murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit
+of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical
+irritation which has produced it.”
+“You regard all these things as physical?”
+“Undoubtedly. I am not ignorant of the rise of another school of
+thought, Mr. Parker, but its exponents are mostly charlatans or
+self-deceivers. ‘_Sie haben sich so weit darin eingeheimnisst_’
+that, like Sludge the Medium, they are beginning to believe their own
+nonsense. I should like to have the exploring of some of their brains,
+Mr. Parker; I would show you the little faults and landslips in the
+cells—the misfiring and short-circuiting of the nerves, which produce
+these notions and these books. At least,” he added, gazing sombrely at
+his guest, “at least, if I could not quite show you today, I shall be
+able to do so tomorrow—or in a year’s time—or before I die.”
+He sat for some minutes gazing into the fire, while the red light
+played upon his tawny beard and struck out answering gleams from his
+compelling eyes.
+Parker drank tea in silence, watching him. On the whole, however, he
+remained but little interested in the causes of nervous phenomena and
+his mind strayed to Lord Peter, coping with the redoubtable Crimplesham
+down in Salisbury. Lord Peter had wanted him to come: that meant,
+either that Crimplesham was proving recalcitrant or that a clue wanted
+following. But Bunter had said that tomorrow would do, and it was just
+as well. After all, the Battersea affair was not Parker’s case; he had
+already wasted valuable time attending an inconclusive inquest, and he
+really ought to get on with his legitimate work. There was still Levy’s
+secretary to see and the little matter of the Peruvian Oil to be looked
+into. He looked at his watch.
+“I am very much afraid—if you will excuse me—” he murmured.
+Sir Julian came back with a start to the consideration of actuality.
+“Your work calls you?” he said, smiling. “Well, I can understand that.
+I won’t keep you. But I wanted to say something to you in connection
+with your present inquiry—only I hardly know—I hardly like—”
+Parker sat down again, and banished every indication of hurry from his
+face and attitude.
+“I shall be very grateful for any help you can give me,” he said.
+“I’m afraid it’s more in the nature of hindrance,” said Sir Julian,
+with a short laugh. “It’s a case of destroying a clue for you, and a
+breach of professional confidence on my side. But since—accidentally—a
+certain amount has come out, perhaps the whole had better do so.”
+Mr. Parker made the encouraging noise which, among laymen, supplies the
+place of the priest’s insinuating, “Yes, my son?”
+“Sir Reuben Levy’s visit on Monday night was to me,” said Sir Julian.
+“Yes?” said Mr. Parker, without expression.
+“He found cause for certain grave suspicions concerning his health,”
+said Sir Julian, slowly, as though weighing how much he could in
+honour disclose to a stranger. “He came to me, in preference to his
+own medical man, as he was particularly anxious that the matter should
+be kept from his wife. As I told you, he knew me fairly well, and Lady
+Levy had consulted me about a nervous disorder in the summer.”
+“Did he make an appointment with you?” asked Parker.
+“I beg your pardon,” said the other, absently.
+“Did he make an appointment?”
+“An appointment? Oh, no! He turned up suddenly in the evening after
+dinner when I wasn’t expecting him. I took him up here and examined
+him, and he left me somewhere about ten o’clock, I should think.”
+“May I ask what was the result of your examination?”
+“Why do you want to know?”
+“It might illuminate—well, conjecture as to his subsequent conduct,”
+said Parker, cautiously. This story seemed to have little coherence
+with the rest of the business, and he wondered whether coincidence was
+alone responsible for Sir Reuben’s disappearance on the same night that
+he visited the doctor.
+“I see,” said Sir Julian. “Yes. Well, I will tell you in confidence
+that I saw grave grounds of suspicion, but as yet, no absolute
+certainty of mischief.”
+“Thank you. Sir Reuben left you at ten o’clock?”
+“Then or thereabouts. I did not at first mention the matter as it was
+so very much Sir Reuben’s wish to keep his visit to me secret, and
+there was no question of accident in the street or anything of that
+kind, since he reached home safely at midnight.”
+“Quite so,” said Parker.
+“It would have been, and is, a breach of confidence,” said Sir Julian,
+“and I only tell you now because Sir Reuben was accidentally seen, and
+because I would rather tell you in private than have you ferretting
+round here and questioning my servants, Mr. Parker. You will excuse my
+frankness.”
+“Certainly,” said Parker. “I hold no brief for the pleasantness of my
+profession, Sir Julian. I am very much obliged to you for telling me
+this. I might otherwise have wasted valuable time following up a false
+trail.”
+“I am sure I need not ask you, in your turn, to respect this
+confidence,” said the doctor. “To publish the matter abroad could only
+harm Sir Reuben and pain his wife, besides placing me in no favourable
+light with my patients.”
+“I promise to keep the thing to myself,” said Parker, “except of
+course,” he added hastily, “that I must inform my colleague.”
+“You have a colleague in the case?”
+“I have.”
+“What sort of person is he?”
+“He will be perfectly discreet, Sir Julian.”
+“Is he a police officer?”
+“You need not be afraid of your confidence getting into the records at
+Scotland Yard.”
+“I see that you know how to be discreet, Mr. Parker.”
+“We also have our professional etiquette, Sir Julian.”
+*       *       *       *       *
+On returning to Great Ormond Street, Mr. Parker found a wire awaiting
+him, which said: “Do not trouble to come. All well. Returning tomorrow.
+Wimsey.”
+CHAPTER VII
+On returning to the flat just before lunch-time on the following
+morning, after a few confirmatory researches in Balham and the
+neighbourhood of Victoria Station, Lord Peter was greeted at the
+door by Mr. Bunter (who had gone straight home from Waterloo) with a
+telephone message and a severe and nursemaid-like eye.
+“Lady Swaffham rang up, my lord, and said she hoped your lordship had
+not forgotten you were lunching with her.”
+“I have forgotten, Bunter, and I mean to forget. I trust you told
+her I had succumbed to lethargic encephalitis suddenly, no flowers by
+request.”
+“Lady Swaffham said, my lord, she was counting on you. She met the
+Duchess of Denver yesterday—”
+“If my sister-in-law’s there I won’t go, that’s flat,” said Lord Peter.
+“I beg your pardon, my lord, the Dowager Duchess.”
+“What’s she doing in town?”
+“I imagine she came up for the inquest, my lord.”
+“Oh, yes—we missed that, Bunter.”
+“Yes, my lord. Her Grace is lunching with Lady Swaffham.”
+“Bunter, I can’t. I can’t, really. Say I’m in bed with whooping cough,
+and ask my mother to come round after lunch.”
+“Very well, my lord. Mrs. Tommy Frayle will be at Lady Swaffham’s, my
+lord, and Mr. Milligan—”
+“Mr. who?”
+“Mr. John P. Milligan, my lord, and—”
+“Good God, Bunter, why didn’t you say so before? Have I time to get
+there before he does? All right. I’m off. With a taxi I can just—”
+“Not in those trousers, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, blocking the way to
+the door with deferential firmness.
+“Oh, Bunter,” pleaded his lordship, “do let me—just this once. You
+don’t know how important it is.”
+“Not on any account, my lord. It would be as much as my place is worth.”
+“The trousers are all right, Bunter.”
+“Not for Lady Swaffham’s, my lord. Besides, your lordship forgets the
+man that ran against you with a milk-can at Salisbury.”
+And Mr. Bunter laid an accusing finger on a slight stain of grease
+showing across the light cloth.
+“I wish to God I’d never let you grow into a privileged family
+retainer, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, dashing his walking-stick
+into the umbrella-stand. “You’ve no conception of the mistakes my
+mother may be making.”
+Mr. Bunter smiled grimly and led his victim away.
+When an immaculate Lord Peter was ushered, rather late for lunch, into
+Lady Swaffham’s drawing-room, the Dowager Duchess of Denver was seated
+on a sofa, plunged in intimate conversation with Mr. John P. Milligan
+of Chicago.
+*       *       *       *       *
+“I’m vurry pleased to meet you, Duchess,” had been that financier’s
+opening remark, “to thank you for your exceedingly kind invitation. I
+assure you it’s a compliment I deeply appreciate.”
+The Duchess beamed at him, while conducting a rapid rally of all her
+intellectual forces.
+“Do come and sit down and talk to me, Mr. Milligan,” she said. “I do
+so love talking to you great business men—let me see, is it a railway
+king you are or something about puss-in-the-corner—at least, I don’t
+mean that exactly, but that game one used to play with cards, all
+about wheat and oats, and there was a bull and a bear, too—or was it a
+horse?—no, a bear, because I remember one always had to try and get rid
+of it and it used to get so dreadfully crumpled and torn, poor thing,
+always being handed about, one got to recognise it, and then one had to
+buy a new pack—so foolish it must seem to you, knowing the real thing,
+and dreadfully noisy, but really excellent for breaking the ice with
+rather stiff people who didn’t know each other—I’m quite sorry it’s
+gone out.”
+Mr. Milligan sat down.
+“Wal, now,” he said, “I guess it’s as interesting for us business men
+to meet British aristocrats as it is for Britishers to meet American
+railway kings, Duchess. And I guess I’ll make as many mistakes talking
+your kind of talk as you would make if you were tryin’ to run a corner
+in wheat in Chicago. Fancy now, I called that fine lad of yours Lord
+Wimsey the other day, and he thought I’d mistaken him for his brother.
+That made me feel rather green.”
+This was an unhoped-for lead. The Duchess walked warily.
+“Dear boy,” she said, “I am so glad you met him, Mr. Milligan. _Both_
+my sons are a _great_ comfort to me, you know, though, of course,
+Gerald is more conventional—just the right kind of person for the House
+of Lords, you know, and a splendid farmer. I can’t see Peter down at
+Denver half so well, though he is always going to all the right things
+in town, and very amusing sometimes, poor boy.”
+“I was vurry much gratified by Lord Peter’s suggestion,” pursued
+Mr. Milligan, “for which I understand you are responsible, and I’ll
+surely be very pleased to come any day you like, though I think you’re
+flattering me too much.”
+“Ah, well,” said the Duchess, “I don’t know if you’re the best judge of
+that, Mr. Milligan. Not that I know anything about business myself,”
+she added. “I’m rather old-fashioned for these days, you know, and I
+can’t pretend to do more than know a nice _man_ when I see him; for the
+other things I rely on my son.”
+The accent of this speech was so flattering that Mr. Milligan purred
+almost audibly, and said:
+“Wal, Duchess, I guess that’s where a lady with a real, beautiful,
+old-fashioned soul has the advantage of these modern young
+blatherskites—there aren’t many men who wouldn’t be nice—to her, and
+even then, if they aren’t rock-bottom she can see through them.”
+“But that leaves me where I was,” thought the Duchess. “I believe,”
+she said aloud, “that I ought to be thanking you in the name of the
+vicar of Duke’s Denver for a very munificent cheque which reached him
+yesterday for the Church Restoration Fund. He was so delighted and
+astonished, poor dear man.”
+“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Mr. Milligan, “we haven’t any fine old
+crusted buildings like yours over on our side, so it’s a privilege to
+be allowed to drop a little kerosene into the worm-holes when we hear
+of one in the old country suffering from senile decay. So when your
+lad told me about Duke’s Denver I took the liberty to subscribe without
+waiting for the Bazaar.”
+“I’m sure it was very kind of you,” said the Duchess. “You are coming
+to the Bazaar, then?” she continued, gazing into his face appealingly.
+“Sure thing,” said Mr. Milligan, with great promptness. “Lord Peter
+said you’d let me know for sure about the date, but we can always make
+time for a little bit of good work anyway. Of course I’m hoping to
+be able to avail myself of your kind invitation to stop, but if I’m
+rushed, I’ll manage anyhow to pop over and speak my piece and pop back
+again.”
+“I hope so very much,” said the Duchess. “I must see what can be done
+about the date—of course, I can’t promise—”
+“No, no,” said Mr. Milligan heartily. “I know what these things are to
+fix up. And then there’s not only me—there’s all the real big men of
+European eminence your son mentioned, to be consulted.”
+The Duchess turned pale at the thought that any one of these
+illustrious persons might some time turn up in somebody’s drawing-room,
+but by this time she had dug herself in comfortably, and was even
+beginning to find her range.
+“I can’t say how grateful we are to you,” she said; “it will be such a
+treat. Do tell me what you think of saying.”
+“Wal—” began Mr. Milligan.
+Suddenly everybody was standing up and a penitent voice was heard to
+say:
+“Really, most awfully sorry, y’know—hope you’ll forgive me, Lady
+Swaffham, what? Dear lady, could I possibly forget an invitation from
+you? Fact is, I had to go an’ see a man down in Salisbury—absolutely
+true, ’pon my word, and the fellow wouldn’t let me get away. I’m simply
+grovellin’ before you, Lady Swaffham. Shall I go an’ eat my lunch in
+the corner?”
+Lady Swaffham gracefully forgave the culprit.
+“Your dear mother is here,” she said.
+“How do, Mother?” said Lord Peter, uneasily.
+“How are you, dear?” replied the Duchess. “You really oughtn’t to
+have turned up just yet. Mr. Milligan was just going to tell me what
+a thrilling speech he’s preparing for the Bazaar, when you came and
+interrupted us.”
+Conversation at lunch turned, not unnaturally, on the Battersea
+inquest, the Duchess giving a vivid impersonation of Mrs. Thipps being
+interrogated by the Coroner.
+“‘Did you hear anything unusual in the night?’ says the little man,
+leaning forward and screaming at her, and so crimson in the face
+and his ears sticking out so—just like a cherubim in that poem of
+Tennyson’s—or is a cherub blue?—perhaps it’s a seraphim I mean—anyway,
+you know what I mean, all eyes, with little wings on its head. And
+dear old Mrs. Thipps saying, ‘Of course I have, any time these eighty
+years,’ and _such_ a sensation in court till they found out she thought
+he’d said, ‘Do you sleep without a light?’ and everybody laughing, and
+then the Coroner said quite loudly, ‘Damn the woman,’ and she heard
+that, I can’t think why, and said: ‘Don’t you get swearing, young man,
+sitting there in the presence of Providence, as you may say. I don’t
+know what young people are coming to nowadays’—and he’s sixty if he’s
+a day, you know,” said the Duchess.
+*       *       *       *       *
+By a natural transition, Mrs. Tommy Frayle referred to the man who was
+hanged for murdering three brides in a bath.
+“I always thought that was so ingenious,” she said, gazing soulfully
+at Lord Peter, “and do you know, as it happened, Tommy had just made
+me insure my life, and I got so frightened, I gave up my morning bath
+and took to having it in the afternoon when he was in the House—I mean,
+when he was _not_ in the house—not at home, I mean.”
+“Dear lady,” said Lord Peter, reproachfully, “I have a distinct
+recollection that all those brides were thoroughly unattractive. But
+it was an uncommonly ingenious plan—the first time of askin’—only he
+shouldn’t have repeated himself.”
+“One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers,”
+said Lady Swaffham. “Like dramatists, you know—so much easier in
+Shakespeare’s time, wasn’t it? Always the same girl dressed up as
+a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody.
+I’m sure if I’d been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a
+slim-legged young page-boy I’d have said: ‘Odsbodikins! There’s that
+girl again!’”
+“That’s just what happened, as a matter of fact,” said Lord Peter. “You
+see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing
+you’ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas.
+Most people don’t associate anythin’—their ideas just roll about like
+so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise and goin’ nowhere,
+but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s
+goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?”
+“Dear me!” said Mrs. Tommy Frayle, with a little scream, “what a
+blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all!”
+“Y’see,” said Lord Peter, balancing a piece of duck on his fork and
+frowning, “it’s only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that, that
+people think things out logically. Or’nar’ly, if somebody tells you
+somethin’ out of the way, you just say, ‘By Jove!’ or ‘How sad!’
+an’ leave it at that, an’ half the time you forget about it, ’nless
+somethin’ turns up afterwards to drive it home. F’r instance, Lady
+Swaffham, I told you when I came in that I’d been down to Salisbury,
+’n’ that’s true, only I don’t suppose it impressed you much; ’n’ I
+don’t suppose it’d impress you much if you read in the paper tomorrow
+of a tragic discovery of a dead lawyer down in Salisbury, but if I went
+to Salisbury again next week ’n’ there was a Salisbury doctor found
+dead the day after, you might begin to think I was a bird of ill omen
+for Salisbury residents; and if I went there again the week after,
+’n’ you heard next day that the see of Salisbury had fallen vacant
+suddenly, you might begin to wonder what took me to Salisbury, an’
+why I’d never mentioned before that I had friends down there, don’t
+you see, an’ you might think of goin’ down to Salisbury yourself, an’
+askin’ all kinds of people if they’d happened to see a young man in
+plum-coloured socks hangin’ round the Bishop’s Palace.”
+“I daresay I should,” said Lady Swaffham.
+“Quite. An’ if you found that the lawyer and the doctor had once upon
+a time been in business at Poggleton-on-the-Marsh when the Bishop
+had been vicar there, you’d begin to remember you’d once heard of me
+payin’ a visit to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh a long time ago, an’ you’d
+begin to look up the parish registers there an’ discover I’d been
+married under an assumed name by the vicar to the widow of a wealthy
+farmer, who’d died suddenly of peritonitis, as certified by the doctor,
+after the lawyer’d made a will leavin’ me all her money, and _then_
+you’d begin to think I might have very good reasons for gettin’ rid of
+such promisin’ blackmailers as the lawyer, the doctor an’ the bishop.
+Only, if I hadn’t started an association in your mind by gettin’ rid
+of ’em all in the same place, you’d never have thought of goin’ to
+Poggleton-on-the-Marsh, ’n’ you wouldn’t even have remembered I’d ever
+been there.”
+“_Were_ you ever there, Lord Peter?” inquired Mrs. Tommy, anxiously.
+“I don’t think so,” said Lord Peter; “the name threads no beads in my
+mind. But it might, any day, you know.”
+“But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d
+have to begin by the usual things, I suppose—finding out what the
+person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a
+motive, wouldn’t you?”
+“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives
+for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people
+I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”
+“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham. “There’s that dreadful—perhaps I’d better
+not say it, though, for fear you should remember it later on.”
+“Well, I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Peter, amiably. “You never know.
+It’d be beastly awkward if the person died suddenly tomorrow.”
+“The difficulty with this Battersea case, I guess,” said Mr. Milligan,
+“is that nobody seems to have any associations with the gentleman in
+the bath.”
+“So hard on poor Inspector Sugg,” said the Duchess. “I quite felt for
+the man, having to stand up there and answer a lot of questions when he
+had nothing at all to say.”
+Lord Peter applied himself to the duck, having got a little behindhand.
+Presently he heard somebody ask the Duchess if she had seen Lady Levy.
+“She is in great distress,” said the woman who had spoken, a Mrs.
+Freemantle, “though she clings to the hope that he will turn up. I
+suppose you knew him, Mr. Milligan—know him, I should say, for I hope
+he’s still alive somewhere.”
+Mrs. Freemantle was the wife of an eminent railway director, and
+celebrated for her ignorance of the world of finance. Her _faux pas_ in
+this connection enlivened the tea parties of City men’s wives.
+“Wal, I’ve dined with him,” said Mr. Milligan, good-naturedly. “I think
+he and I’ve done our best to ruin each other, Mrs. Freemantle. If this
+were the States,” he added, “I’d be much inclined to suspect myself of
+having put Sir Reuben in a safe place. But we can’t do business that
+way in your old country; no, ma’am.”
+“It must be exciting work doing business in America,” said Lord Peter.
+“It is,” said Mr. Milligan. “I guess my brothers are having a good
+time there now. I’ll be joining them again before long, as soon as I’ve
+fixed up a little bit of work for them on this side.”
+“Well, you mustn’t go till after my bazaar,” said the Duchess.
+Lord Peter spent the afternoon in a vain hunt for Mr. Parker. He ran
+him down eventually after dinner in Great Ormond Street.
+Parker was sitting in an elderly but affectionate armchair, with his
+feet on the mantelpiece, relaxing his mind with a modern commentary
+on the Epistle to the Galatians. He received Lord Peter with quiet
+pleasure, though without rapturous enthusiasm, and mixed him a
+whisky-and-soda. Peter took up the book his friend had laid down and
+glanced over the pages.
+“All these men work with a bias in their minds, one way or other,” he
+said; “they find what they are looking for.”
+“Oh, they do,” agreed the detective; “but one learns to discount that
+almost automatically, you know. When I was at college, I was all on
+the other side—Conybeare and Robertson and Drews and those people,
+you know, till I found they were all so busy looking for a burglar
+whom nobody had ever seen, that they couldn’t recognise the footprints
+of the household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning to be
+cautious.”
+“Hum,” said Lord Peter, “theology must be good exercise for the brain
+then, for you’re easily the most cautious devil I know. But I say,
+do go on reading—it’s a shame for me to come and root you up in your
+off-time like this.”
+“It’s all right, old man,” said Parker.
+The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said:
+“D’you like your job?”
+The detective considered the question, and replied:
+“Yes—yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it
+quite well—not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take
+a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to
+the mark and not get slack. And there’s a future to it. Yes, I like it.
+Why?”
+“Oh, nothing,” said Peter. “It’s a hobby to me, you see. I took it up
+when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was
+so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it—up to a point.
+If it was all on paper I’d enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning
+of a job—when one doesn’t know any of the people and it’s just exciting
+and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and
+getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don’t seem as if
+there was any excuse for me buttin’ in, since I don’t have to make my
+livin’ by it. And I feel as if I oughtn’t ever to find it amusin’. But
+I do.”
+Parker gave this speech his careful attention.
+“I see what you mean,” he said.
+“There’s old Milligan, f’r instance,” said Lord Peter. “On paper,
+nothin’ would be funnier than to catch old Milligan out. But he’s
+rather a decent old bird to talk to. Mother likes him. He’s taken a
+fancy to me. It’s awfully entertainin’ goin’ and pumpin’ him with stuff
+about a bazaar for church expenses, but when he’s so jolly pleased
+about it and that, I feel a worm. S’pose old Milligan has cut Levy’s
+throat and plugged him into the Thames. It ain’t my business.”
+“It’s as much yours as anybody’s,” said Parker; “it’s no better to do
+it for money than to do it for nothing.”
+“Yes, it is,” said Peter stubbornly. “Havin’ to live is the only excuse
+there is for doin’ that kind of thing.”
+“Well, but look here!” said Parker. “If Milligan has cut poor old
+Levy’s throat for no reason except to make himself richer, I don’t see
+why he should buy himself off by giving £1,000 to Duke’s Denver church
+roof, or why he should be forgiven just because he’s childishly vain,
+or childishly snobbish.”
+“That’s a nasty one,” said Lord Peter.
+“Well, if you like, even because he has taken a fancy to you.”
+“No, but—”
+“Look here, Wimsey—do you think he _has_ murdered Levy?”
+“Well, he may have.”
+“But do you think he has?”
+“I don’t want to think so.”
+“Because he has taken a fancy to you?”
+“Well, that biases me, of course—”
+“I daresay it’s quite a legitimate bias. You don’t think a callous
+murderer would be likely to take a fancy to you?”
+“Well—besides, I’ve taken rather a fancy to him.”
+“I daresay that’s quite legitimate, too. You’ve observed him and made
+a subconscious deduction from your observations, and the result is, you
+don’t think he did it. Well, why not? You’re entitled to take that into
+account.”
+“But perhaps I’m wrong and he did do it.”
+“Then why let your vainglorious conceit in your own power of estimating
+character stand in the way of unmasking the singularly cold-blooded
+murder of an innocent and lovable man?”
+“I know—but I don’t feel I’m playing the game somehow.”
+“Look here, Peter,” said the other with some earnestness, “suppose you
+get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and
+for all. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant
+has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the
+argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair
+to treat it as a game?”
+“That’s what I’m ashamed of, really,” said Lord Peter. “It _is_ a game
+to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see
+that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it.”
+“Yes, yes, I know,” said the detective, “but that’s because you’re
+thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to
+look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets
+or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and
+things. But that’s childish. If you’ve any duty to society in the way
+of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude
+that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That’s all
+right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn’t any value
+in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent—what’s
+that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport
+of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, ‘Well played—hard
+luck—you shall have your revenge tomorrow!’ Well, you can’t do it like
+that. Life’s not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You
+can’t be a sportsman. You’re a responsible person.”
+“I don’t think you ought to read so much theology,” said Lord Peter.
+���It has a brutalizing influence.”
+He got up and paced about the room, looking idly over the bookshelves.
+Then he sat down again, filled and lit his pipe, and said:
+“Well, I’d better tell you about the ferocious and hardened
+Crimplesham.”
+He detailed his visit to Salisbury. Once assured of his bona fides, Mr.
+Crimplesham had given him the fullest details of his visit to town.
+“And I’ve substantiated it all,” groaned Lord Peter, “and unless he’s
+corrupted half Balham, there’s no doubt he spent the night there. And
+the afternoon was really spent with the bank people. And half the
+residents of Salisbury seem to have seen him off on Monday before
+lunch. And nobody but his own family or young Wicks seems to have
+anything to gain by his death. And even if young Wicks wanted to make
+away with him, it’s rather far-fetched to go and murder an unknown man
+in Thipps’s place in order to stick Crimplesham’s eyeglasses on his
+nose.”
+“Where was young Wicks on Monday?” asked Parker.
+“At a dance given by the Precentor,” said Lord Peter, wildly.
+“David—his name is David—dancing before the ark of the Lord in the face
+of the whole Cathedral Close.”
+There was a pause.
+“Tell me about the inquest,” said Wimsey.
+Parker obliged with a summary of the evidence.
+“Do you believe the body could have been concealed in the flat after
+all?” he asked. “I know we looked, but I suppose we might have missed
+something.”
+“We might. But Sugg looked as well.”
+“Sugg!”
+“You do Sugg an injustice,” said Lord Peter; “if there had been any
+signs of Thipps’s complicity in the crime, Sugg would have found them.”
+“Why?”
+“Why? Because he was looking for them. He’s like your commentators on
+Galatians. He thinks that either Thipps, or Gladys Horrocks, or Gladys
+Horrocks’s young man did it. Therefore he found marks on the window
+sill where Gladys Horrocks’s young man might have come in or handed
+something in to Gladys Horrocks. He didn’t find any signs on the roof,
+because he wasn’t looking for them.”
+“But he went over the roof before me.”
+“Yes, but only in order to prove that there were no marks there. He
+reasons like this: Gladys Horrocks’s young man is a glazier. Glaziers
+come on ladders. Glaziers have ready access to ladders. Therefore
+Gladys Horrocks’s young man had ready access to a ladder. Therefore
+Gladys Horrocks’s young man came on a ladder. Therefore there will
+be marks on the window sill and none on the roof. Therefore he finds
+marks on the window sill but none on the roof. He finds no marks on
+the ground, but he thinks he would have found them if the yard didn’t
+happen to be paved with asphalt. Similarly, he thinks Mr. Thipps may
+have concealed the body in the box-room or elsewhere. Therefore you may
+be sure he searched the box-room and all the other places for signs of
+occupation. If they had been there he would have found them, because
+he was looking for them. Therefore, if he didn’t find them it’s because
+they weren’t there.”
+“All right,” said Parker, “stop talking. I believe you.”
+He went on to detail the medical evidence.
+“By the way,” said Lord Peter, “to skip across for a moment to the
+other case, has it occurred to you that perhaps Levy was going out to
+see Freke on Monday night?”
+“He was; he did,” said Parker, rather unexpectedly, and proceeded to
+recount his interview with the nerve-specialist.
+“Humph!” said Lord Peter. “I say, Parker, these are funny cases, ain’t
+they? Every line of inquiry seems to peter out. It’s awfully exciting
+up to a point, you know, and then nothing comes of it. It’s like rivers
+getting lost in the sand.”
+“Yes,” said Parker. “And there’s another one I lost this morning.”
+“What’s that?”
+“Oh, I was pumping Levy’s secretary about his business. I couldn’t get
+much that seemed important except further details about the Argentine
+and so on. Then I thought I’d just ask round in the City about those
+Peruvian Oil shares, but Levy hadn’t even heard of them so far as I
+could make out. I routed out the brokers, and found a lot of mystery
+and concealment, as one always does, you know, when somebody’s been
+rigging the market, and at last I found one name at the back of it. But
+it wasn’t Levy’s.”
+“No? Whose was it?”
+“Oddly enough, Freke’s. It seems mysterious. He bought a lot of shares
+last week, in a secret kind of way, a few of them in his own name, and
+then quietly sold ’em out on Tuesday at a small profit—a few hundreds,
+not worth going to all that trouble about, you wouldn’t think.”
+“Shouldn’t have thought he ever went in for that kind of gamble.”
+“He doesn’t as a rule. That’s the funny part of it.”
+“Well, you never know,” said Lord Peter; “people do these things just
+to prove to themselves or somebody else that they could make a fortune
+that way if they liked. I’ve done it myself in a small way.”
+He knocked out his pipe and rose to go.
+“I say, old man,” he said suddenly, as Parker was letting him out,
+“does it occur to you that Freke’s story doesn’t fit in awfully well
+with what Anderson said about the old boy having been so jolly at
+dinner on Monday night? Would you be, if you thought you’d got anything
+of that sort?”
+“No, I shouldn’t,” said Parker; “but,” he added with his habitual
+caution, “some men will jest in the dentist’s waiting-room. You, for
+one.”
+“Well, that’s true,” said Lord Peter, and went downstairs.
+CHAPTER VIII
+Lord Peter reached home about midnight, feeling extraordinarily wakeful
+and alert. Something was jigging and worrying in his brain; it felt
+like a hive of bees, stirred up by a stick. He felt as though he were
+looking at a complicated riddle, of which he had once been told the
+answer but had forgotten it and was always on the point of remembering.
+“Somewhere,” said Lord Peter to himself, “somewhere I’ve got the key to
+these two things. I know I’ve got it, only I can’t remember what it is.
+Somebody said it. Perhaps I said it. I can’t remember where, but I know
+I’ve got it. Go to bed, Bunter, I shall sit up a little. I’ll just slip
+on a dressing-gown.”
+Before the fire he sat down with his pipe in his mouth and his
+jazz-coloured peacocks gathered about him. He traced out this line and
+that line of investigation—rivers running into the sand. They ran out
+from the thought of Levy, last seen at ten o’clock in Prince of Wales
+Road. They ran back from the picture of the grotesque dead man in Mr.
+Thipps’s bathroom—they ran over the roof, and were lost—lost in the
+sand. Rivers running into the sand—rivers running underground, very far
+down—
+Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
+Through caverns measureless to man
+Down to a sunless sea.
+By leaning his head down, it seemed to Lord Peter that he could hear
+them, very faintly, lipping and gurgling somewhere in the darkness. But
+where? He felt quite sure that somebody had told him once, only he had
+forgotten.
+He roused himself, threw a log on the fire, and picked up a book which
+the indefatigable Bunter, carrying on his daily fatigues amid the
+excitements of special duty, had brought from the Times Book Club.
+It happened to be Sir Julian Freke’s “Physiological Bases of the
+Conscience,” which he had seen reviewed two days before.
+“This ought to send one to sleep,” said Lord Peter; “if I can’t leave
+these problems to my subconscious I’ll be as limp as a rag tomorrow.”
+He opened the book slowly, and glanced carelessly through the preface.
+“I wonder if that’s true about Levy being ill,” he thought, putting the
+book down; “it doesn’t seem likely. And yet—Dash it all, I’ll take my
+mind off it.”
+He read on resolutely for a little.
+“I don’t suppose Mother’s kept up with the Levys much,” was the next
+importunate train of thought. “Dad always hated self-made people and
+wouldn’t have ’em at Denver. And old Gerald keeps up the tradition. I
+wonder if she knew Freke well in those days. She seems to get on with
+Milligan. I trust Mother’s judgment a good deal. She was a brick about
+that bazaar business. I ought to have warned her. She said something
+once—”
+He pursued an elusive memory for some minutes, till it vanished
+altogether with a mocking flicker of the tail. He returned to his
+reading.
+Presently another thought crossed his mind aroused by a photograph of
+some experiment in surgery.
+“If the evidence of Freke and that man Watts hadn’t been so positive,”
+he said to himself, “I should be inclined to look into the matter of
+those shreds of lint on the chimney.”
+He considered this, shook his head and read with determination.
+Mind and matter were one thing, that was the theme of the physiologist.
+Matter could erupt, as it were, into ideas. You could carve passions in
+the brain with a knife. You could get rid of imagination with drugs and
+cure an outworn convention like a disease. “The knowledge of good and
+evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of
+the brain-cells, which is removable.” That was one phrase; and again:
+“Conscience in man may, in fact, be compared to the sting of a
+hive-bee, which, so far from conducing to the welfare of its possessor,
+cannot function, even in a single instance, without occasioning its
+death. The survival-value in each case is thus purely social; and
+if humanity ever passes from its present phase of social development
+into that of a higher individualism, as some of our philosophers have
+ventured to speculate, we may suppose that this interesting mental
+phenomenon may gradually cease to appear; just as the nerves and
+muscles which once controlled the movements of our ears and scalps
+have, in all save a few backward individuals, become atrophied and of
+interest only to the physiologist.”
+“By Jove!” thought Lord Peter, idly, “that’s an ideal doctrine for the
+criminal. A man who believed that would never—”
+And then it happened—the thing he had been half-unconsciously
+expecting. It happened suddenly, surely, as unmistakably, as sunrise.
+He remembered—not one thing, nor another thing, nor a logical
+succession of things, but everything—the whole thing, perfect,
+complete, in all its dimensions as it were and instantaneously; as
+if he stood outside the world and saw it suspended in infinitely
+dimensional space. He no longer needed to reason about it, or even to
+think about it. He knew it.
+There is a game in which one is presented with a jumble of letters and
+is required to make a word out of them, as thus:
+C O S S S S R I
+The slow way of solving the problem is to try out all the permutations
+and combinations in turn, throwing away impossible conjunctions of
+letters, as:
+S S S I R C
+or
+S C S R S O
+Another way is to stare at the inco-ordinate elements until, by no
+logical process that the conscious mind can detect, or under some
+adventitious external stimulus, the combination:
+S C I S S O R S
+presents itself with calm certainty. After that, one does not even need
+to arrange the letters in order. The thing is done.
+Even so, the scattered elements of two grotesque conundrums, flung
+higgledy-piggledy into Lord Peter’s mind, resolved themselves,
+unquestioned henceforward. A bump on the roof of the end house—Levy
+in a welter of cold rain talking to a prostitute in the Battersea
+Park Road—a single ruddy hair—lint bandages—Inspector Sugg calling
+the great surgeon from the dissecting-room of the hospital—Lady
+Levy with a nervous attack—the smell of carbolic soap—the Duchess’s
+voice—“not really an engagement, only a sort of understanding with her
+father”—shares in Peruvian Oil—the dark skin and curved, fleshy profile
+of the man in the bath—Dr. Grimbold giving evidence, “In my opinion,
+death did not occur for several days after the blow”—india-rubber
+gloves—even, faintly, the voice of Mr. Appledore, “He called on me,
+sir, with an anti-vivisectionist pamphlet”—all these things and many
+others rang together and made one sound, they swung together like bells
+in a steeple, with the deep tenor booming through the clamour:
+“The knowledge of good and evil is a phenomenon of the brain, and is
+removable, removable, removable. The knowledge of good and evil is
+removable.”
+Lord Peter Wimsey was not a young man who habitually took himself very
+seriously, but this time he was frankly appalled. “It’s impossible,”
+said his reason, feebly; “_credo quia impossibile_,” said his interior
+certainty with impervious self-satisfaction. “All right,” said
+conscience, instantly allying itself with blind faith, “what are you
+going to do about it?”
+Lord Peter got up and paced the room: “Good Lord!” he said. “Good
+Lord!” He took down “Who’s Who” from the little shelf over the
+telephone and sought comfort in its pages:
+FREKE, Sir Julian, Kt. _cr._ 1916; G.C.V.O. _cr._ 1919;
+K.C.V.O. 1917; K.C.B. 1918; M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S.,
+Dr. en Méd. Paris; D. Sci. Cantab.; Knight of Grace of
+the Order of S. John of Jerusalem; Consulting Surgeon
+of St. Luke’s Hospital, Battersea. _b._ Gryllingham,
+16 March, 1872, _only son_ of Edward Curzon Freke,
+Esq., of Gryll Court, Gryllingham. _Educ._ Harrow and
+Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Col. A.M.S.; late Member
+of the Advisory Board of the Army Medical Service.
+_Publications_: Some Notes on the Pathological Aspects
+of Genius, 1892; Statistical Contributions to the
+Study of Infantile Paralysis in England and Wales,
+1894; Functional Disturbances of the Nervous System,
+1899; Cerebro-Spinal Diseases, 1904; The Borderland
+of Insanity, 1906; An Examination into the Treatment
+of Pauper Lunacy in the United Kingdom, 1906; Modern
+Developments in Psycho-Therapy: A Criticism, 1910;
+Criminal Lunacy, 1914; The Application of Psycho-Therapy
+to the Treatment of Shell-Shock, 1917; An Answer to
+Professor Freud, with a Description of Some Experiments
+Carried Out at the Base Hospital at Amiens, 1919;
+Structural Modifications Accompanying the More Important
+Neuroses, 1920. _Clubs_: White’s; Oxford and Cambridge;
+Alpine, etc. _Recreations_: Chess, Mountaineering,
+Fishing. _Address_: 282, Harley Street and St. Luke’s
+House, Prince of Wales Road, Battersea Park, S.W.11.
+He flung the book away. “Confirmation!” he groaned. “As if I needed it!”
+He sat down again and buried his face in his hands. He remembered quite
+suddenly how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at
+Denver Castle—a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously
+beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver
+urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling
+in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth—twitched
+it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons
+rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his
+hardest—he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn
+and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sèvres breakfast service had
+crashed down in one stupendous ruin—he remembered the horrified face of
+the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.
+A log broke across and sank into a fluff of white ash. A belated
+motor-lorry rumbled past the window.
+Mr. Bunter, sleeping the sleep of the true and faithful servant, was
+aroused in the small hours by a hoarse whisper, “Bunter!”
+“Yes, my lord,” said Bunter, sitting up and switching on the light.
+“Put that light out, damn you!” said the voice. “Listen—over
+there—listen—can’t you hear it?”
+“It’s nothing, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, hastily getting out of bed
+and catching hold of his master; “it’s all right, you get to bed quick
+and I’ll fetch you a drop of bromide. Why, you’re all shivering—you’ve
+been sitting up too late.”
+“Hush! no, no—it’s the water,” said Lord Peter with chattering teeth;
+“it’s up to their waists down there, poor devils. But listen! can’t you
+hear it? Tap, tap, tap—they’re mining us—but I don’t know where—I can’t
+hear—I can’t. Listen, you! There it is again—we must find it—we must
+stop it.... Listen! Oh, my God! I can’t hear—I can’t hear anything for
+the noise of the guns. Can’t they stop the guns?”
+“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Bunter to himself. “No, no—it’s all right,
+Major—don’t you worry.”
+“But I hear it,” protested Peter.
+“So do I,” said Mr. Bunter stoutly; “very good hearing, too, my lord.
+That’s our own sappers at work in the communication trench. Don’t you
+fret about that, sir.”
+Lord Peter grasped his wrist with a feverish hand.
+“Our own sappers,” he said; “sure of that?”
+“Certain of it,” said Mr. Bunter, cheerfully.
+“They’ll bring down the tower,” said Lord Peter.
+“To be sure they will,” said Mr. Bunter, “and very nice, too. You just
+come and lay down a bit, sir—they’ve come to take over this section.”
+“You’re sure it’s safe to leave it?” said Lord Peter.
+“Safe as houses, sir,” said Mr. Bunter, tucking his master’s arm under
+his and walking him off to his bedroom.
+Lord Peter allowed himself to be dosed and put to bed without further
+resistance. Mr. Bunter, looking singularly un-Bunterlike in striped
+pyjamas, with his stiff black hair ruffled about his head, sat grimly
+watching the younger man’s sharp cheekbones and the purple stains under
+his eyes.
+“Thought we’d had the last of these attacks,” he said. “Been overdoin’
+of himself. Asleep?” He peered at him anxiously. An affectionate note
+crept into his voice. “Bloody little fool!” said Sergeant Bunter.
+CHAPTER IX
+Mr. Parker, summoned the next morning to 110 Piccadilly, arrived to
+find the Dowager Duchess in possession. She greeted him charmingly.
+“I am going to take this silly boy down to Denver for the week-end,”
+she said, indicating Peter, who was writing and only acknowledged his
+friend’s entrance with a brief nod. “He’s been doing too much—running
+about to Salisbury and places and up till all hours of the night—you
+really shouldn’t encourage him, Mr. Parker, it’s very naughty of
+you—waking poor Bunter up in the middle of the night with scares about
+Germans, as if that wasn’t all over years ago, and he hasn’t had an
+attack for ages, but there! Nerves are such funny things, and Peter
+always did have nightmares when he was quite a little boy—though very
+often of course it was only a little pill he wanted; but he was so
+dreadfully bad in 1918, you know, and I suppose we can’t expect to
+forget all about a great war in a year or two, and, really, I ought to
+be very thankful with both my boys safe. Still, I think a little peace
+and quiet at Denver won’t do him any harm.”
+“Sorry you’ve been having a bad turn, old man,” said Parker, vaguely
+sympathetic; “you’re looking a bit seedy.”
+“Charles,” said Lord Peter, in a voice entirely void of expression,
+“I am going away for a couple of days because I can be no use to you
+in London. What has got to be done for the moment can be much better
+done by you than by me. I want you to take this”—he folded up his
+writing and placed it in an envelope—“to Scotland Yard immediately and
+get it sent out to all the workhouses, infirmaries, police stations,
+Y.M.C.A.’s and so on in London. It is a description of Thipps’s corpse
+as he was before he was shaved and cleaned up. I want to know whether
+any man answering to that description has been taken in anywhere, alive
+or dead, during the last fortnight. You will see Sir Andrew Mackenzie
+personally, and get the paper sent out at once, by his authority; you
+will tell him that you have solved the problems of the Levy murder and
+the Battersea mystery”—Mr. Parker made an astonished noise to which his
+friend paid no attention—“and you will ask him to have men in readiness
+with a warrant to arrest a very dangerous and important criminal at any
+moment on your information. When the replies to this paper come in, you
+will search for any mention of St. Luke’s Hospital, or of any person
+connected with St. Luke’s Hospital, and you will send for me at once.
+“Meanwhile you will scrape acquaintance—I don’t care how—with one of
+the students at St. Luke’s. Don’t march in there blowing about murders
+and police warrants, or you may find yourself in Queer Street. I shall
+come up to town as soon as I hear from you, and I shall expect to find
+a nice ingenuous Sawbones here to meet me.” He grinned faintly.
+“D’you mean you’ve got to the bottom of this thing?” asked Parker.
+“Yes. I may be wrong. I hope I am, but I know I’m not.”
+“You won’t tell me?”
+“D’you know,” said Peter, “honestly I’d rather not. I say I _may_ be
+wrong—and I’d feel as if I’d libelled the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
+“Well, tell me—is it one mystery or two?”
+“One.”
+“You talked of the Levy murder. Is Levy dead?”
+“God—yes!” said Peter, with a strong shudder.
+The Duchess looked up from where she was reading the _Tatler_.
+“Peter,” she said, “is that your ague coming on again? Whatever you two
+are chattering about, you’d better stop it at once if it excites you.
+Besides, it’s about time to be off.”
+“All right, Mother,” said Peter. He turned to Bunter, standing
+respectfully in the door with an overcoat and suitcase. “You understand
+what you have to do, don’t you?” he said.
+“Perfectly, thank you, my lord. The car is just arriving, your Grace.”
+“With Mrs. Thipps inside it,” said the Duchess. “She’ll be delighted
+to see you again, Peter. You remind her so of Mr. Thipps. Good-morning,
+Bunter.”
+“Good-morning, your Grace.”
+Parker accompanied them downstairs.
+When they had gone he looked blankly at the paper in his hand—then,
+remembering that it was Saturday and there was need for haste, he
+hailed a taxi.
+“Scotland Yard!” he cried.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Tuesday morning saw Lord Peter and a man in a velveteen jacket swishing
+merrily through seven acres of turnip-tops, streaked yellow with early
+frosts. A little way ahead, a sinuous undercurrent of excitement among
+the leaves proclaimed the unseen yet ever-near presence of one of
+the Duke of Denver’s setter pups. Presently a partridge flew up with
+a noise like a police rattle, and Lord Peter accounted for it very
+creditably for a man who, a few nights before, had been listening to
+imaginary German sappers. The setter bounded foolishly through the
+turnips, and fetched back the dead bird.
+“Good dog,” said Lord Peter.
+Encouraged by this, the dog gave a sudden ridiculous gambol and barked,
+its ear tossed inside out over its head.
+“Heel,” said the man in velveteen, violently. The animal sidled up,
+ashamed.
+“Fool of a dog, that,” said the man in velveteen; “can’t keep quiet.
+Too nervous, my lord. One of old Black Lass’s pups.”
+“Dear me,” said Peter, “is the old dog still going?”
+“No, my lord; we had to put her away in the spring.”
+Peter nodded. He always proclaimed that he hated the country and
+was thankful to have nothing to do with the family estates, but this
+morning he enjoyed the crisp air and the wet leaves washing darkly over
+his polished boots. At Denver things moved in an orderly way; no one
+died sudden and violent deaths except aged setters—and partridges, to
+be sure. He sniffed up the autumn smell with appreciation. There was a
+letter in his pocket which had come by the morning post, but he did not
+intend to read it just yet. Parker had not wired; there was no hurry.
+*       *       *       *       *
+He read it in the smoking-room after lunch. His brother was there,
+dozing over the _Times_—a good, clean Englishman, sturdy and
+conventional, rather like Henry VIII in his youth; Gerald, sixteenth
+Duke of Denver. The Duke considered his cadet rather degenerate, and
+not quite good form; he disliked his taste for police-court news.
+The letter was from Mr. Bunter.
+110, Piccadilly,
+W.1.
+My Lord:
+I write (Mr. Bunter had been carefully educated and knew
+that nothing is more vulgar than a careful avoidance of
+beginning a letter with the first person singular) as
+your lordship directed, to inform you of the result of
+my investigations.
+I experienced no difficulty in becoming acquainted with
+Sir Julian Freke’s man-servant. He belongs to the same
+club as the Hon. Frederick Arbuthnot’s man, who is a
+friend of mine, and was very willing to introduce me.
+He took me to the club yesterday (Sunday) evening, and
+we dined with the man, whose name is John Cummings,
+and afterwards I invited Cummings to drinks and a
+cigar in the flat. Your lordship will excuse me doing
+this, knowing that it is not my habit, but it has
+always been my experience that the best way to gain a
+man’s confidence is to let him suppose that one takes
+advantage of one’s employer.
+(“I always suspected Bunter of being a student of human
+nature,” commented Lord Peter.)
+I gave him the best old port (“The deuce you did,” said
+Lord Peter), having heard you and Mr. Arbuthnot talk
+over it. (“Hum!” said Lord Peter.)
+Its effects were quite equal to my expectations as
+regards the principal matter in hand, but I very much
+regret to state that the man had so little understanding
+of what was offered to him that he smoked a cigar with
+it (one of your lordship’s Villar Villars). You will
+understand that I made no comment on this at the time,
+but your lordship will sympathize with my feelings.
+May I take this opportunity of expressing my grateful
+appreciation of your lordship’s excellent taste in food,
+drink and dress? It is, if I may say so, more than a
+pleasure—it is an education, to valet and buttle your
+lordship.
+Lord Peter bowed his head gravely.
+“What on earth are you doing, Peter, sittin’ there noddin’ an’ grinnin’
+like a what-you-may-call-it?” demanded the Duke, coming suddenly out of
+a snooze. “Someone writin’ pretty things to you, what?”
+“Charming things,” said Lord Peter.
+The Duke eyed him doubtfully.
+“Hope to goodness you don’t go and marry a chorus beauty,” he muttered
+inwardly, and returned to the _Times_.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Over dinner I had set myself to discover Cummings’s tastes, and found
+them to run in the direction of the music-hall stage. During his first
+glass I drew him out in this direction, your lordship having kindly
+given me opportunities of seeing every performance in London, and I
+spoke more freely than I should consider becoming in the ordinary way
+in order to make myself pleasant to him. I may say that his views on
+women and the stage were such as I should have expected from a man who
+would smoke with your lordship’s port.
+With the second glass I introduced the subject of your lordship’s
+inquiries. In order to save time I will write our conversation in the
+form of a dialogue, as nearly as possible as it actually took place.
+_Cummings_: You seem to get many opportunities of seeing a bit of life,
+Mr. Bunter.
+_Bunter_: One can always make opportunities if one knows how.
+_Cummings_: Ah, it’s very easy for you to talk, Mr. Bunter. You’re not
+married, for one thing.
+_Bunter_: I know better than that, Mr. Cummings.
+_Cummings_: So do I—_now_, when it’s too late. (He sighed heavily, and
+I filled up his glass.)
+_Bunter_: Does Mrs. Cummings live with you at Battersea?
+_Cummings_: Yes, her and me we do for my governor. Such a life! Not but
+what there’s a char comes in by the day. But what’s a char? I can tell
+you it’s dull all by ourselves in that d—d Battersea suburb.
+_Bunter_: Not very convenient for the Halls, of course.
+_Cummings_: I believe you. It’s all right for you, here in Piccadilly,
+right on the spot as you might say. And I daresay your governor’s often
+out all night, eh?
+_Bunter_: Oh, frequently, Mr. Cummings.
+_Cummings_: And I daresay you take the opportunity to slip off yourself
+every so often, eh?
+_Bunter_: Well, what do _you_ think, Mr. Cummings?
+_Cummings_: That’s it; there you are! But what’s a man to do with a
+nagging fool of a wife and a blasted scientific doctor for a governor,
+as sits up all night cutting up dead bodies and experimenting with
+frogs?
+_Bunter_: Surely he goes out sometimes.
+_Cummings_: Not often. And always back before twelve. And the way he
+goes on if he rings the bell and you ain’t there. I give you _my_ word,
+Mr. Bunter.
+_Bunter_: Temper?
+_Cummings_: No-o-o—but looking through you, nasty-like, as if you was
+on that operating table of his and he was going to cut you up. Nothing
+a man could rightly complain of, you understand, Mr. Bunter, just nasty
+looks. Not but what I will say he’s very correct. Apologizes if he’s
+been inconsiderate. But what’s the good of that when he’s been and gone
+and lost you your night’s rest?
+_Bunter_: How does he do that? Keeps you up late, you mean?
+_Cummings_: Not him; far from it. House locked up and household to bed
+at half-past ten. That’s his little rule. Not but what I’m glad enough
+to go as a rule, it’s that dreary. Still, when I _do_ go to bed I like
+to go to sleep.
+_Bunter_: What does he do? Walk about the house?
+_Cummings_: Doesn’t he? All night. And in and out of the private door
+to the hospital.
+_Bunter_: You don’t mean to say, Mr. Cummings, a great specialist like
+Sir Julian Freke does night work at the hospital?
+_Cummings_: No, no; he does his own work—research work, as you may
+say. Cuts people up. They say he’s very clever. Could take you or me to
+pieces like a clock, Mr. Bunter, and put us together again.
+_Bunter_: Do you sleep in the basement, then, to hear him so plain?
+_Cummings_: No; our bedroom’s at the top. But, Lord! what’s that? He’ll
+bang the door so you can hear him all over the house.
+_Bunter_: Ah, many’s the time I’ve had to speak to Lord Peter about
+that. And talking all night. And baths.
+_Cummings_: Baths? You may well say that, Mr. Bunter. Baths? Me and my
+wife sleep next to the cistern-room. Noise fit to wake the dead. All
+hours. When d’you think he chose to have a bath, no later than last
+Monday night, Mr. Bunter?
+_Bunter_: I’ve known them to do it at two in the morning, Mr. Cummings.
+_Cummings_: Have you, now? Well, this was at three. Three o’clock in
+the morning we was waked up. I give you _my_ word.
+_Bunter_: You don’t say so, Mr. Cummings.
+_Cummings_: He cuts up diseases, you see, Mr. Bunter, and then he
+don’t like to go to bed till he’s washed the bacilluses off, if you
+understand me. Very natural, too, I daresay. But what I say is, the
+middle of the night’s no time for a gentleman to be occupying his mind
+with diseases.
+_Bunter_: These great men have their own way of doing things.
+_Cummings_: Well, all I can say is, it isn’t my way.
+(I could believe that, your lordship. Cummings has no signs of
+greatness about him, and his trousers are not what I would wish to see
+in a man of his profession.)
+_Bunter_: Is he habitually as late as that, Mr. Cummings?
+_Cummings_: Well, no, Mr. Bunter, I will say, not as a general rule.
+He apologized, too, in the morning, and said he would have the cistern
+seen to—and very necessary, in my opinion, for the air gets into the
+pipes, and the groaning and screeching as goes on is something awful.
+Just like Niagara, if you follow me, Mr. Bunter, I give you _my_ word.
+_Bunter_: Well, that’s as it should be, Mr. Cummings. One can put up
+with a great deal from a gentleman that has the manners to apologize.
+And, of course, sometimes they can’t help themselves. A visitor will
+come in unexpectedly and keep them late, perhaps.
+_Cummings_: That’s true enough, Mr. Bunter. Now I come to think of
+it, there _was_ a gentleman come in on Monday evening. Not that he
+came late, but he stayed about an hour, and may have put Sir Julian
+behindhand.
+_Bunter_: Very likely. Let me give you some more port, Mr. Cummings. Or
+a little of Lord Peter’s old brandy.
+_Cummings_: A little of the brandy, thank you, Mr. Bunter. I suppose
+you have the run of the cellar here. (He winked at me.)
+“Trust me for that,” I said, and I fetched him the Napoleon. I assure
+your lordship it went to my heart to pour it out for a man like that.
+However, seeing we had got on the right tack, I felt it wouldn’t be
+wasted.
+“I’m sure I wish it was always gentlemen that come here at night,”
+I said. (Your lordship will excuse me, I am sure, making such a
+suggestion.)
+(“Good God,” said Lord Peter, “I wish Bunter was less thorough in his
+methods.”)
+_Cummings_: Oh, he’s that sort, his lordship, is he? (He chuckled and
+poked me. I suppress a portion of his conversation here, which could
+not fail to be as offensive to your lordship as it was to myself. He
+went on:) No, it’s none of that with Sir Julian. Very few visitors at
+night, and always gentlemen. And going early as a rule, like the one I
+mentioned.
+_Bunter:_ Just as well. There’s nothing I find more wearisome, Mr.
+Cummings, than sitting up to see visitors out.
+_Cummings:_ Oh, I didn’t see this one out. Sir Julian let him out
+himself at ten o’clock or thereabouts. I heard the gentleman shout
+“Good-night” and off he goes.
+_Bunter:_ Does Sir Julian always do that?
+_Cummings:_ Well, that depends. If he sees visitors downstairs, he lets
+them out himself: if he sees them upstairs in the library, he rings for
+me.
+_Bunter:_ This was a downstairs visitor, then?
+_Cummings:_ Oh, yes. Sir Julian opened the door to him, I remember. He
+happened to be working in the hall. Though now I come to think of it,
+they went up to the library afterwards. That’s funny. I know they did,
+because I happened to go up to the hall with coals, and I heard them
+upstairs. Besides, Sir Julian rang for me in the library a few minutes
+later. Still, anyway, we heard him go at ten, or it may have been a bit
+before. He hadn’t only stayed about three-quarters of an hour. However,
+as I was saying, there was Sir Julian banging in and out of the private
+door all night, and a bath at three in the morning, and up again for
+breakfast at eight—it beats me. If I had all his money, curse me if
+I’d go poking about with dead men in the middle of the night. I’d find
+something better to do with my time, eh, Mr. Bunter—
+I need not repeat any more of his conversation, as it became unpleasant
+and incoherent, and I could not bring him back to the events of Monday
+night. I was unable to get rid of him till three. He cried on my neck,
+and said I was the bird, and you were the governor for him. He said
+that Sir Julian would be greatly annoyed with him for coming home so
+late, but Sunday night was his night out and if anything was said about
+it he would give notice. I think he will be ill-advised to do so, as I
+feel he is not a man I could conscientiously recommend if I were in Sir
+Julian Freke’s place. I noticed that his boot-heels were slightly worn
+down.
+I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your
+lordship’s cellar, that, although I was obliged to drink a somewhat
+large quantity both of the Cockburn ’68 and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no
+headache or other ill effects this morning.
+Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit from the country
+air, and that the little information I have been able to obtain will
+prove satisfactory, I remain.
+With respectful duty to all the family,
+Obediently yours,
+MERVYN BUNTER.
+“Y’know,” said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself, “I sometimes think
+Mervyn Bunter’s pullin’ my leg. What is it, Soames?”
+“A telegram, my lord.”
+“Parker,” said Lord Peter, opening it. It said:
+“Description recognised Chelsea Workhouse. Unknown
+vagrant injured street accident Wednesday week. Died
+workhouse Monday. Delivered St. Luke’s same evening by
+order Freke. Much puzzled. Parker.”
+“Hurray!” said Lord Peter, suddenly sparkling. “I’m glad I’ve puzzled
+Parker. Gives me confidence in myself. Makes me feel like Sherlock
+Holmes. ‘Perfectly simple, Watson.’ Dash it all, though! this is a
+beastly business. Still, it’s puzzled Parker.”
+“What’s the matter?” asked the Duke, getting up and yawning.
+“Marching orders,” said Peter, “back to town. Many thanks for your
+hospitality, old bird—I’m feelin’ no end better. Ready to tackle
+Professor Moriarty or Leon Kestrel or any of ’em.”
+“I do wish you’d keep out of the police courts,” grumbled the Duke.
+“It makes it so dashed awkward for me, havin’ a brother makin’ himself
+conspicuous.”
+“Sorry, Gerald,” said the other; “I know I’m a beastly blot on the
+’scutcheon.”
+“Why can’t you marry and settle down and live quietly, doin’ something
+useful?” said the Duke, unappeased.
+“Because that was a wash-out as you perfectly well know,” said Peter;
+“besides,” he added cheerfully, “I’m bein’ no end useful. You may come
+to want me yourself, you never know. When anybody comes blackmailin’
+you, Gerald, or your first deserted wife turns up unexpectedly from
+the West Indies, you’ll realize the pull of havin’ a private detective
+in the family. ‘Delicate private business arranged with tact and
+discretion. Investigations undertaken. Divorce evidence a specialty.
+Every guarantee!’ Come, now.”
+“Ass!” said Lord Denver, throwing the newspaper violently into his
+armchair. “When do you want the car?”
+“Almost at once. I say, Jerry, I’m taking Mother up with me.”
+“Why should she be mixed up in it?”
+“Well, I want her help.”
+“I call it most unsuitable,” said the Duke.
+The Dowager Duchess, however, made no objection.
+“I used to know her quite well,” she said, “when she was Christine
+Ford. Why, dear?”
+“Because,” said Lord Peter, “there’s a terrible piece of news to be
+broken to her about her husband.”
+“Is he dead, dear?”
+“Yes; and she will have to come and identify him.”
+“Poor Christine.”
+“Under very revolting circumstances, Mother.”
+“I’ll come with you, dear.”
+“Thank you, Mother, you’re a brick. D’you mind gettin’ your things
+on straight away and comin’ up with me? I’ll tell you about it in the
+car.”
+CHAPTER X
+Mr. Parker, a faithful though doubting Thomas, had duly secured his
+medical student: a large young man like an overgrown puppy, with
+innocent eyes and a freckled face. He sat on the Chesterfield before
+Lord Peter’s library fire, bewildered in equal measure by his errand,
+his surroundings and the drink which he was absorbing. His palate,
+though untutored, was naturally a good one, and he realized that
+even to call this liquid a drink—the term ordinarily used by him to
+designate cheap whisky, post-war beer or a dubious glass of claret in
+a Soho restaurant—was a sacrilege; this was something outside normal
+experience: a genie in a bottle.
+The man called Parker, whom he had happened to run across the evening
+before in the public-house at the corner of Prince of Wales Road,
+seemed to be a good sort. He had insisted on bringing him round to
+see this friend of his, who lived splendidly in Piccadilly. Parker
+was quite understandable; he put him down as a government servant, or
+perhaps something in the City. The friend was embarrassing; he was
+a lord, to begin with, and his clothes were a kind of rebuke to the
+world at large. He talked the most fatuous nonsense, certainly, but
+in a disconcerting way. He didn’t dig into a joke and get all the fun
+out of it; he made it in passing, so to speak, and skipped away to
+something else before your retort was ready. He had a truly terrible
+man-servant—the sort you read about in books—who froze the marrow in
+your bones with silent criticism. Parker appeared to bear up under
+the strain, and this made you think more highly of Parker; he must be
+more habituated to the surroundings of the great than you would think
+to look at him. You wondered what the carpet had cost on which Parker
+was carelessly spilling cigar ash; your father was an upholsterer—Mr.
+Piggott, of Piggott & Piggott, Liverpool—and you knew enough about
+carpets to know that you couldn’t even guess at the price of this one.
+When you moved your head on the bulging silk cushion in the corner of
+the sofa, it made you wish you shaved more often and more carefully.
+The sofa was a monster—but even so, it hardly seemed big enough to
+contain you. This Lord Peter was not very tall—in fact, he was rather
+a small man, but he didn’t look undersized. He looked right; he made
+you feel that to be six-foot-three was rather vulgarly assertive; you
+felt like Mother’s new drawing-room curtains—all over great big blobs.
+But everybody was very decent to you, and nobody said anything you
+couldn’t understand, or sneered at you. There were some frightfully
+deep-looking books on the shelves all round, and you had looked into
+a great folio Dante which was lying on the table, but your hosts were
+talking quite ordinarily and rationally about the sort of books you
+read yourself—clinking good love stories and detective stories. You had
+read a lot of those, and could give an opinion, and they listened to
+what you had to say, though Lord Peter had a funny way of talking about
+books, too, as if the author had confided in him beforehand, and told
+him how the story was put together, and which bit was written first. It
+reminded you of the way old Freke took a body to pieces.
+“Thing I object to in detective stories,” said Mr. Piggott, “is the way
+fellows remember every bloomin’ thing that’s happened to ’em within
+the last six months. They’re always ready with their time of day and
+was it rainin’ or not, and what were they doin’ on such an’ such a
+day. Reel it all off like a page of poetry. But one ain’t like that in
+real life, d’you think so, Lord Peter?” Lord Peter smiled, and young
+Piggott, instantly embarrassed, appealed to his earlier acquaintance.
+“You know what I mean, Parker. Come now. One day’s so like another, I’m
+sure I couldn’t remember—well, I might remember yesterday, p’r’aps, but
+I couldn’t be certain about what I was doin’ last week if I was to be
+shot for it.”
+“No,” said Parker, “and evidence given in police statements sounds
+just as impossible. But they don’t really get it like that, you know. I
+mean, a man doesn’t just say, ‘Last Friday I went out at 10 a.m. to buy
+a mutton chop. As I was turning into Mortimer Street I noticed a girl
+of about twenty-two with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a green
+jumper, check skirt, Panama hat and black shoes, riding a Royal Sunbeam
+Cycle at about ten miles an hour turning the corner by the Church of
+St. Simon and St. Jude on the wrong side of the road riding towards the
+market place!’ It amounts to that, of course, but it’s really wormed
+out of him by a series of questions.”
+“And in short stories,” said Lord Peter, “it has to be put in statement
+form, because the real conversation would be so long and twaddly and
+tedious, and nobody would have the patience to read it. Writers have to
+consider their readers, if any, y’see.”
+“Yes,” said Mr. Piggott, “but I bet you most people would find it
+jolly difficult to remember, even if you asked ’em things. I should—of
+course, I know I’m a bit of a fool, but then, most people are, ain’t
+they? You know what I mean. Witnesses ain’t detectives, they’re just
+average idiots like you and me.”
+“Quite so,” said Lord Peter, smiling as the force of the last phrase
+sank into its unhappy perpetrator; “you mean, if I were to ask you in a
+general way what you were doin’—say, a week ago today, you wouldn’t be
+able to tell me a thing about it offhand?”
+“No—I’m sure I shouldn’t.” He considered. “No. I was in at the Hospital
+as usual, I suppose, and, being Tuesday, there’d be a lecture on
+something or the other—dashed if I know what—and in the evening I
+went out with Tommy Pringle—no, that must have been Monday—or was it
+Wednesday? I tell you, I couldn’t swear to anything.”
+“You do yourself an injustice,” said Lord Peter gravely. “I’m sure, for
+instance, you recollect what work you were doing in the dissecting-room
+on that day, for example.”
+“Lord, no! not for certain. I mean, I daresay it might come back to me
+if I thought for a long time, but I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of
+law.”
+“I’ll bet you half-a-crown to sixpence,” said Lord Peter, “that you’ll
+remember within five minutes.”
+“I’m sure I can’t.”
+“We’ll see. Do you keep a notebook of the work you do when you dissect?
+Drawings or anything?”
+“Oh, yes.”
+“Think of that. What’s the last thing you did in it?”
+“That’s easy, because I only did it this morning. It was leg muscles.”
+“Yes. Who was the subject?”
+“An old woman of sorts; died of pneumonia.”
+“Yes. Turn back the pages of your drawing book in your mind. What came
+before that?”
+“Oh, some animals—still legs; I’m doing motor muscles at present. Yes.
+That was old Cunningham’s demonstration on comparative anatomy. I did
+rather a good thing of a hare’s legs and a frog’s, and rudimentary legs
+on a snake.”
+“Yes. Which day does Mr. Cunningham lecture?”
+“Friday.”
+“Friday; yes. Turn back again. What comes before that?”
+Mr. Piggott shook his head.
+“Do your drawings of legs begin on the right-hand page or the left-hand
+page? Can you see the first drawing?”
+“Yes—yes—I can see the date written at the top. It’s a section of a
+frog’s hind leg, on the right-hand page.”
+“Yes. Think of the open book in your mind’s eye. What is opposite to
+it?”
+This demanded some mental concentration.
+“Something round—coloured—oh, yes—it’s a hand.”
+“Yes. You went on from the muscles of the hand and arm to leg- and
+foot-muscles?”
+“Yes; that’s right. I’ve got a set of drawings of arms.”
+“Yes. Did you make those on the Thursday?”
+“No; I’m never in the dissecting-room on Thursday.”
+“On Wednesday, perhaps?”
+“Yes; I must have made them on Wednesday. Yes; I did. I went in there
+after we’d seen those tetanus patients in the morning. I did them on
+Wednesday afternoon. I know I went back because I wanted to finish ’em.
+I worked rather hard—for me. That’s why I remember.”
+“Yes; you went back to finish them. When had you begun them, then?”
+“Why, the day before.”
+“The day before. That was Tuesday, wasn’t it?”
+“I’ve lost count—yes, the day before Wednesday—yes, Tuesday.”
+“Yes. Were they a man’s arms or a woman’s arms?”
+“Oh, a man’s arms.
+“Yes; last Tuesday, a week ago today, you were dissecting a man’s arms
+in the dissecting-room. Sixpence, please.”
+“By Jove!”
+“Wait a moment. You know a lot more about it than that. You’ve no idea
+how much you know. You know what kind of man he was.”
+“Oh, I never saw him complete, you know. I got there a bit late that
+day, I remember. I’d asked for an arm specially, because I was rather
+weak in arms, and Watts—that’s the attendant—had promised to save me
+one.”
+“Yes. You have arrived late and found your arm waiting for you. You are
+dissecting it—taking your scissors and slitting up the skin and pinning
+it back. Was it very young, fair skin?”
+“Oh, no—no. Ordinary skin, I think—with dark hairs on it—yes, that was
+it.”
+“Yes. A lean, stringy arm, perhaps, with no extra fat anywhere?”
+“Oh, no—I was rather annoyed about that. I wanted a good, muscular arm,
+but it was rather poorly developed and the fat got in my way.”
+“Yes; a sedentary man who didn’t do much manual work.”
+“That’s right.”
+“Yes. You dissected the hand, for instance, and made a drawing of it.
+You would have noticed any hard calluses.”
+“Oh, there was nothing of that sort.”
+“No. But should you say it was a young man’s arm? Firm young flesh and
+limber joints?”
+“No—no.”
+“No. Old and stringy, perhaps.”
+“No. Middle-aged—with rheumatism. I mean, there was a chalky deposit in
+the joints, and the fingers were a bit swollen.”
+“Yes. A man about fifty.”
+“About that.”
+“Yes. There were other students at work on the same body.”
+“Oh, yes.”
+“Yes. And they made all the usual sort of jokes about it.”
+“I expect so—oh, yes!”
+“You can remember some of them. Who is your local funny man, so to
+speak?”
+“Tommy Pringle.”
+“What was Tommy Pringle’s doing?”
+“Can’t remember.”
+“Whereabouts was Tommy Pringle working?”
+“Over by the instrument cupboard—by sink C.”
+“Yes. Get a picture of Tommy Pringle in your mind’s eye.”
+Piggott began to laugh.
+“I remember now. Tommy Pringle said the old Sheeny—”
+“Why did he call him a Sheeny?”
+“I don’t know. But I know he did.”
+“Perhaps he looked like it. Did you see his head?”
+“No.”
+“Who had the head?”
+“I don’t know—oh, yes, I do, though. Old Freke bagged the head himself,
+and little Bouncible Binns was very cross about it, because he’d been
+promised a head to do with old Scrooger.”
+“I see. What was Sir Julian doing with the head?”
+“He called us up and gave us a jaw on spinal haemorrhage and nervous
+lesions.”
+“Yes. Well, go back to Tommy Pringle.”
+Tommy Pringle’s joke was repeated, not without some embarrassment.
+“Quite so. Was that all?”
+“No. The chap who was working with Tommy said that sort of thing came
+from over-feeding.”
+“I deduce that Tommy Pringle’s partner was interested in the alimentary
+canal.”
+“Yes; and Tommy said, if he’d thought they’d feed you like that he’d go
+to the workhouse himself.”
+“Then the man was a pauper from the workhouse?”
+“Well, he must have been, I suppose.”
+“Are workhouse paupers usually fat and well-fed?”
+“Well, no—come to think of it, not as a rule.”
+“In fact, it struck Tommy Pringle and his friend that this was
+something a little out of the way in a workhouse subject?”
+“Yes.”
+“And if the alimentary canal was so entertaining to these gentlemen, I
+imagine the subject had come by his death shortly after a full meal.”
+“Yes—oh, yes—he’d have had to, wouldn’t he?”
+“Well, I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “That’s in your department, you
+know. That would be your inference, from what they said.”
+“Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”
+“Yes; you wouldn’t, for example, expect them to make that observation
+if the patient had been ill for a long time and fed on slops.”
+“Of course not.”
+“Well, you see, you really know a lot about it. On Tuesday week you
+were dissecting the arm muscles of a rheumatic middle-aged Jew, of
+sedentary habits, who had died shortly after eating a heavy meal, of
+some injury producing spinal haemorrhage and nervous lesions, and so
+forth, and who was presumed to come from the workhouse?”
+“Yes.”
+“And you could swear to those facts, if need were?”
+“Well, if you put it in that way, I suppose I could.”
+“Of course you could.”
+Mr. Piggott sat for some moments in contemplation.
+“I say,” he said at last, “I did know all that, didn’t I?”
+“Oh, yes—you knew it all right—like Socrates’s slave.”
+“Who’s he?”
+“A person in a book I used to read as a boy.”
+“Oh—does he come in ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’?”
+“No—another book—I daresay you escaped it. It’s rather dull.”
+“I never read much except Henty and Fenimore Cooper at school....
+But—have I got rather an extra good memory, then?”
+“You have a better memory than you credit yourself with.”
+“Then why can’t I remember all the medical stuff? It all goes out of my
+head like a sieve.”
+“Well, why can’t you?” said Lord Peter, standing on the hearthrug and
+smiling down at his guest.
+“Well,” said the young man, “the chaps who examine one don’t ask the
+same sort of questions you do.”
+“No?”
+“No—they leave you to remember all by yourself. And it’s beastly hard.
+Nothing to catch hold of, don’t you know? But, I say—how did you know
+about Tommy Pringle being the funny man and—”
+“I didn’t, till you told me.”
+“No; I know. But how did you know he’d be there if you did ask? I
+mean to say—I say,” said Mr. Piggott, who was becoming mellowed by
+influences themselves not unconnected with the alimentary canal—“I say,
+are you rather clever, or am I rather stupid?”
+“No, no,” said Lord Peter, “it’s me. I’m always askin’ such stupid
+questions, everybody thinks I must mean somethin’ by ’em.”
+This was too involved for Mr. Piggott.
+“Never mind,” said Parker, soothingly, “he’s always like that. You
+mustn’t take any notice. He can’t help it. It’s premature senile decay,
+often observed in the families of hereditary legislators. Go away,
+Wimsey, and play us the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or something.”
+“That’s good enough, isn’t it?” said Lord Peter, when the happy Mr.
+Piggott had been despatched home after a really delightful evening.
+“I’m afraid so,” said Parker. “But it seems almost incredible.”
+“There’s nothing incredible in human nature,” said Lord Peter; “at
+least, in educated human nature. Have you got that exhumation order?”
+“I shall have it tomorrow. I thought of fixing up with the workhouse
+people for tomorrow afternoon. I shall have to go and see them first.”
+“Right you are; I’ll let my mother know.”
+“I begin to feel like you, Wimsey, I don’t like this job.”
+“I like it a deal better than I did.”
+“You are really certain we’re not making a mistake?”
+Lord Peter had strolled across to the window. The curtain was not
+perfectly drawn, and he stood gazing out through the gap into lighted
+Piccadilly. At this he turned round:
+“If we are,” he said, “we shall know tomorrow, and no harm will have
+been done. But I rather think you will receive a certain amount of
+confirmation on your way home. Look here, Parker, d’you know, if I were
+you I’d spend the night here. There’s a spare bedroom; I can easily put
+you up.”
+Parker stared at him.
+“Do you mean—I’m likely to be attacked?”
+“I think it very likely indeed.”
+“Is there anybody in the street?”
+“Not now; there was half-an-hour ago.”
+“When Piggott left?”
+“Yes.”
+“I say—I hope the boy is in no danger.”
+“That’s what I went down to see. I don’t think so. Fact is, I don’t
+suppose anybody would imagine we’d exactly made a confidant of Piggott.
+But I think you and I are in danger. You’ll stay?”
+“I’m damned if I will, Wimsey. Why should I run away?”
+“Bosh!” said Peter. “You’d run away all right if you believed me, and
+why not? You don’t believe me. In fact, you’re still not certain I’m on
+the right tack. Go in peace, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
+“I won’t; I’ll dictate a message with my dying breath to say I was
+convinced.”
+“Well, don’t walk—take a taxi.”
+“Very well, I’ll do that.”
+“And don’t let anybody else get into it.”
+“No.”
+It was a raw, unpleasant night. A taxi deposited a load of people
+returning from the theatre at the block of flats next door, and Parker
+secured it for himself. He was just giving the address to the driver,
+when a man came hastily running up from a side street. He was in
+evening dress and an overcoat. He rushed up, signalling frantically.
+“Sir—sir!—dear me! why, it’s Mr. Parker! How fortunate! If you
+would be so kind—summoned from the club—a sick friend—can’t find
+a taxi—everybody going home from the theatre—if I might share your
+cab—you are returning to Bloomsbury? I want Russell Square—if I might
+presume—a matter of life and death.”
+He spoke in hurried gasps, as though he had been running violently and
+far. Parker promptly stepped out of the taxi.
+“Delighted to be of service to you, Sir Julian,” he said; “take my
+taxi. I am going down to Craven Street myself, but I’m in no hurry.
+Pray make use of the cab.”
+“It’s extremely kind of you,” said the surgeon. “I am ashamed—”
+“That’s all right,” said Parker, cheerily. “I can wait.” He assisted
+Freke into the taxi. “What number? 24 Russell Square, driver, and look
+sharp.”
+The taxi drove off. Parker remounted the stairs and rang Lord Peter’s
+bell.
+“Thanks, old man,” he said. “I’ll stop the night, after all.”
+“Come in,” said Wimsey.
+“Did you see that?” asked Parker.
+“I saw something. What happened exactly?”
+Parker told his story. “Frankly,” he said, “I’ve been thinking you a
+bit mad, but now I’m not quite so sure of it.”
+Peter laughed.
+“Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Bunter, Mr.
+Parker will stay the night.”
+“Look here, Wimsey, let’s have another look at this business. Where’s
+that letter?”
+Lord Peter produced Bunter’s essay in dialogue. Parker studied it for
+a short time in silence.
+“You know, Wimsey, I’m as full of objections to this idea as an egg is
+of meat.”
+“So’m I, old son. That’s why I want to dig up our Chelsea pauper. But
+trot out your objections.”
+“Well—”
+“Well, look here, I don’t pretend to be able to fill in all the blanks
+myself. But here we have two mysterious occurrences in one night, and
+a complete chain connecting the one with another through one particular
+person. It’s beastly, but it’s not unthinkable.”
+“Yes, I know all that. But there are one or two quite definite
+stumbling-blocks.”
+“Yes, I know. But, see here. On the one hand, Levy disappeared after
+being last seen looking for Prince of Wales Road at nine o’clock. At
+eight next morning a dead man, not unlike him in general outline, is
+discovered in a bath in Queen Caroline Mansions. Levy, by Freke’s own
+admission, was going to see Freke. By information received from Chelsea
+workhouse a dead man, answering to the description of the Battersea
+corpse in its natural state, was delivered that same day to Freke. We
+have Levy with a past, and no future, as it were; an unknown vagrant
+with a future (in the cemetery) and no past, and Freke stands between
+their future and their past.”
+“That looks all right—”
+“Yes. Now, further: Freke has a motive for getting rid of Levy—an old
+jealousy.”
+“Very old—and not much of a motive.”
+“People have been known to do that sort of thing.[D] You’re thinking
+that people don’t keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so.
+Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word
+and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks.
+Humiliation. And we’ve all got a sore spot we don’t like to have
+touched. I’ve got it. You’ve got it. Some blighter said hell knew no
+fury like a woman scorned. Stickin’ it on to women, poor devils. Sex
+is every man’s loco spot—you needn’t fidget, you know it’s true—he’ll
+take a disappointment, but not a humiliation. I knew a man once who’d
+been turned down—not too charitably—by a girl he was engaged to. He
+spoke quite decently about her. I asked what had become of her. ‘Oh,’
+he said, ‘she married the other fellow.’ And then burst out—couldn’t
+help himself. ‘Lord, yes!’ he cried. ‘To think of it—jilted for a
+Scotchman!’ I don’t know why he didn’t like Scots, but that was what
+got him on the raw. Look at Freke. I’ve read his books. His attacks on
+his antagonists are savage. And he’s a scientist. Yet he can’t bear
+opposition, even in his work, which is where any first-class man is
+most sane and open-minded. Do you think he’s a man to take a beating
+from any man on a side-issue? On a man’s most sensitive side-issue?
+People are opinionated about side-issues, you know. I see red if
+anybody questions my judgment about a book. And Levy—who was nobody
+twenty years ago—romps in and carries off Freke’s girl from under
+his nose. It isn’t the girl Freke would bother about—it’s having his
+aristocratic nose put out of joint by a little Jewish nobody.
+“There’s another thing. Freke’s got another side-issue. He likes crime.
+In that criminology book of his he gloats over a hardened murderer.
+I’ve read it, and I’ve seen the admiration simply glaring out between
+the lines whenever he writes about a callous and successful criminal.
+He reserves his contempt for the victims or the penitents or the men
+who lose their heads and get found out. His heroes are Edmond de la
+Pommerais, who persuaded his mistress into becoming an accessory to
+her own murder, and George Joseph Smith of Brides-in-a-bath fame, who
+could make passionate love to his wife in the night and carry out his
+plot to murder her in the morning. After all, he thinks conscience is a
+sort of vermiform appendix. Chop it out and you’ll feel all the better.
+Freke isn’t troubled by the usual conscientious deterrent. Witness his
+own hand in his books. Now again. The man who went to Levy’s house in
+his place knew the house: Freke knew the house; he was a red-haired
+man, smaller than Levy, but not much smaller, since he could wear
+his clothes without appearing ludicrous: you have seen Freke—you know
+his height—about five-foot-eleven, I suppose, and his auburn mane; he
+probably wore surgical gloves: Freke is a surgeon; he was a methodical
+and daring man: surgeons are obliged to be both daring and methodical.
+Now take the other side. The man who got hold of the Battersea corpse
+had to have access to dead bodies. Freke obviously had access to
+dead bodies. He had to be cool and quick and callous about handling a
+dead body. Surgeons are all that. He had to be a strong man to carry
+the body across the roofs and dump it in at Thipps’s window. Freke
+is a powerful man and a member of the Alpine Club. He probably wore
+surgical gloves and he let the body down from the roof with a surgical
+bandage. This points to a surgeon again. He undoubtedly lived in the
+neighbourhood. Freke lives next door. The girl you interviewed heard a
+bump on the roof of the end house. That is the house next to Freke’s.
+Every time we look at Freke, he leads somewhere, whereas Milligan and
+Thipps and Crimplesham and all the other people we’ve honoured with our
+suspicion simply led nowhere.”
+“Yes; but it’s not quite so simple as you make out. What was Levy doing
+in that surreptitious way at Freke’s on Monday night?”
+“Well, you have Freke’s explanation.”
+“Rot, Wimsey. You said yourself it wouldn’t do.”
+“Excellent. It won’t do. Therefore Freke was lying. Why should he lie
+about it, unless he had some object in hiding the truth?”
+“Well, but why mention it at all?”
+“Because Levy, contrary to all expectation, had been seen at the corner
+of the road. That was a nasty accident for Freke. He thought it best to
+be beforehand with an explanation—of sorts. He reckoned, of course, on
+nobody’s ever connecting Levy with Battersea Park.”
+“Well, then, we come back to the first question: Why did Levy go there?”
+“I don’t know, but he was got there somehow. Why did Freke buy all
+those Peruvian Oil shares?”
+“I don’t know,” said Parker in his turn.
+“Anyway,” went on Wimsey, “Freke expected him, and made arrangements to
+let him in himself, so that Cummings shouldn’t see who the caller was.”
+“But the caller left again at ten.”
+“Oh, Charles! I did not expect this of you. This is the purest Suggery!
+Who saw him go? Somebody said ‘Good-night’ and walked away down the
+street. And you believe it was Levy because Freke didn’t go out of his
+way to explain that it wasn’t.”
+“D’you mean that Freke walked cheerfully out of the house to Park Lane,
+and left Levy behind—dead or alive—for Cummings to find?”
+“We have Cummings’s word that he did nothing of the sort. A few minutes
+after the steps walked away from the house, Freke rang the library bell
+and told Cummings to shut up for the night.”
+“Then—”
+“Well—there’s a side door to the house, I suppose—in fact, you know
+there is—Cummings said so—through the hospital.”
+“Yes—well, where was Levy?”
+“Levy went up into the library and never came down. You’ve been in
+Freke’s library. Where would you have put him?”
+“In my bedroom next door.”
+“Then that’s where he did put him.”
+“But suppose the man went in to turn down the bed?”
+“Beds are turned down by the housekeeper, earlier than ten o’clock.”
+“Yes.... But Cummings heard Freke about the house all night.”
+“He heard him go in and out two or three times. He’d expect him to do
+that, anyway.”
+“Do you mean to say Freke got all that job finished before three in the
+morning?”
+“Why not?”
+“Quick work.”
+“Well, call it quick work. Besides, why three? Cummings never saw him
+again till he called him for eight o’clock breakfast.”
+“But he was having a bath at three.”
+“I don’t say he didn’t get back from Park Lane before three. But I
+don’t suppose Cummings went and looked through the bathroom keyhole to
+see if he was in the bath.”
+Parker considered again.
+“How about Crimplesham’s pince-nez?” he asked.
+“That is a bit mysterious,” said Lord Peter.
+“And why Thipps’s bathroom?”
+“Why, indeed? Pure accident, perhaps—or pure devilry.”
+“Do you think all this elaborate scheme could have been put together in
+a night, Wimsey?”
+“Far from it. It was conceived as soon as that man who bore a
+superficial resemblance to Levy came into the workhouse. He had several
+days.”
+“I see.”
+“Freke gave himself away at the inquest. He and Grimbold disagreed
+about the length of the man’s illness. If a small man (comparatively
+speaking) like Grimbold presumes to disagree with a man like Freke,
+it’s because he is sure of his ground.”
+“Then—if your theory is sound—Freke made a mistake.”
+“Yes. A very slight one. He was guarding, with unnecessary caution,
+against starting a train of thought in the mind of anybody—say, the
+workhouse doctor. Up till then he’d been reckoning on the fact that
+people don’t think a second time about anything (a body, say) that’s
+once been accounted for.”
+“What made him lose his head?”
+“A chain of unforeseen accidents. Levy’s having been recognised—my
+mother’s son having foolishly advertised in the _Times_ his connection
+with the Battersea end of the mystery—Detective Parker (whose
+photograph has been a little prominent in the illustrated press lately)
+seen sitting next door to the Duchess of Denver at the inquest. His aim
+in life was to prevent the two ends of the problem from linking up. And
+there were two of the links, literally side by side. Many criminals are
+wrecked by over-caution.”
+Parker was silent.
+CHAPTER XI
+“A regular pea-souper, by Jove,” said Lord Peter.
+Parker grunted, and struggled irritably into an overcoat.
+“It affords me, if I may say so, the greatest satisfaction,”
+continued the noble lord, “that in a collaboration like ours all the
+uninteresting and disagreeable routine work is done by you.”
+Parker grunted again.
+“Do you anticipate any difficulty about the warrant?” inquired Lord
+Peter.
+Parker grunted a third time.
+“I suppose you’ve seen to it that all this business is kept quiet?”
+“Of course.”
+“You’ve muzzled the workhouse people?”
+“Of course.”
+“And the police?”
+“Yes.”
+“Because, if you haven’t there’ll probably be nobody to arrest.”
+“My dear Wimsey, do you think I’m a fool?”
+“I had no such hope.”
+Parker grunted finally and departed.
+Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no
+solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective
+by a public-school education. Despite Parker’s admonitions, he was
+not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young
+growth by “Raffles” and “Sherlock Holmes,” or the sentiments for which
+they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.
+“I am an amateur,” said Lord Peter.
+Nevertheless, while communing with Dante, he made up his mind.
+*       *       *       *       *
+In the afternoon he found himself in Harley Street. Sir Julian Freke
+might be consulted about one’s nerves from two till four on Tuesdays
+and Fridays. Lord Peter rang the bell.
+“Have you an appointment, sir?” inquired the man who opened the door.
+“No,” said Lord Peter, “but will you give Sir Julian my card? I think
+it possible he may see me without one.”
+He sat down in the beautiful room in which Sir Julian’s patients
+awaited his healing counsel. It was full of people. Two or three
+fashionably dressed women were discussing shops and servants together,
+and teasing a toy griffon. A big, worried-looking man by himself in
+a corner looked at his watch twenty times a minute. Lord Peter knew
+him by sight. It was Wintrington, a millionaire, who had tried to
+kill himself a few months ago. He controlled the finances of five
+countries, but he could not control his nerves. The finances of five
+countries were in Sir Julian Freke’s capable hands. By the fireplace
+sat a soldierly-looking young man, of about Lord Peter’s own age. His
+face was prematurely lined and worn; he sat bolt upright, his restless
+eyes darting in the direction of every slightest sound. On the sofa
+was an elderly woman of modest appearance, with a young girl. The girl
+seemed listless and wretched; the woman’s look showed deep affection,
+and anxiety tempered with a timid hope. Close beside Lord Peter was
+another younger woman, with a little girl, and Lord Peter noticed in
+both of them the broad cheekbones and beautiful grey, slanting eyes
+of the Slav. The child, moving restlessly about, trod on Lord Peter’s
+patent-leather toe, and the mother admonished her in French before
+turning to apologize to Lord Peter.
+“Mais je vous en prie, madame,” said the young man, “it is nothing.”
+“She is nervous, pauvre petite,” said the young woman.
+“You are seeking advice for her?”
+“Yes. He is wonderful, the doctor. Figure to yourself, monsieur, she
+cannot forget, poor child, the things she has seen.” She leaned nearer,
+so that the child might not hear. “We have escaped—from starving
+Russia—six months ago. I dare not tell you—she has such quick ears,
+and then, the cries, the tremblings, the convulsions—they all begin
+again. We were skeletons when we arrived—mon Dieu!—but that is better
+now. See, she is thin, but she is not starved. She would be fatter
+but for the nerves that keep her from eating. We who are older, we
+forget—enfin, on apprend à ne pas y penser—but these children! When one
+is young, monsieur, tout ça impressionne trop.”
+Lord Peter, escaping from the thraldom of British good form, expressed
+himself in that language in which sympathy is not condemned to mutism.
+“But she is much better, much better,” said the mother, proudly; “the
+great doctor, he does marvels.”
+“C’est un homme précieux,” said Lord Peter.
+“Ah, monsieur, c’est un saint qui opère des miracles! Nous prions
+pour lui, Natasha et moi, tous les jours. N’est-ce pas, chérie? And
+consider, monsieur, that he does it all, ce grand homme, cet homme
+illustre, for nothing at all. When we come here, we have not even
+the clothes upon our backs—we are ruined, famished. Et avec ça que
+nous sommes de bonne famille—mais hélas! monsieur, en Russie, comme
+vous savez, ça ne vous vaut que des insultes—des atrocités. Enfin!
+the great Sir Julian sees us, he says—‘Madame, your little girl is
+very interesting to me. Say no more. I cure her for nothing—pour ses
+beaux yeux,’ a-t-il ajouté en riant. Ah, monsieur, c’est un saint, un
+véritable saint! and Natasha is much, much better.”
+“Madame, je vous en félicite.”
+“And you, monsieur? You are young, well, strong—you also suffer? It is
+still the war, perhaps?”
+“A little remains of shell-shock,” said Lord Peter.
+“Ah, yes. So many good, brave, young men—”
+“Sir Julian can spare you a few minutes, my lord, if you will come in
+now,” said the servant.
+Lord Peter bowed to his neighbour, and walked across the waiting-room.
+As the door of the consulting-room closed behind him, he remembered
+having once gone, disguised, into the staff-room of a German officer.
+He experienced the same feeling—the feeling of being caught in a trap,
+and a mingling of bravado and shame.
+*       *       *       *       *
+He had seen Sir Julian Freke several times from a distance, but
+never close. Now, while carefully and quite truthfully detailing
+the circumstances of his recent nervous attack, he considered the
+man before him. A man taller than himself, with immense breadth of
+shoulder, and wonderful hands. A face beautiful, impassioned and
+inhuman; fanatical, compelling eyes, bright blue amid the ruddy bush
+of hair and beard. They were not the cool and kindly eyes of the family
+doctor, they were the brooding eyes of the inspired scientist, and they
+searched one through.
+“Well,” thought Lord Peter, “I shan’t have to be explicit, anyhow.”
+“Yes,” said Sir Julian, “yes. You had been working too hard. Puzzling
+your mind. Yes. More than that, perhaps—troubling your mind, shall we
+say?”
+“I found myself faced with a very alarming contingency.”
+“Yes. Unexpectedly, perhaps.”
+“Very unexpected indeed.”
+“Yes. Following on a period of mental and physical strain.”
+“Well—perhaps. Nothing out of the way.”
+“Yes. The unexpected contingency was—personal to yourself?”
+“It demanded an immediate decision as to my own actions—yes, in that
+sense it was certainly personal.”
+“Quite so. You would have to assume some responsibility, no doubt.”
+“A very grave responsibility.”
+“Affecting others besides yourself?”
+“Affecting one other person vitally, and a very great number
+indirectly.”
+“Yes. The time was night. You were sitting in the dark?”
+“Not at first. I think I put the light out afterwards.”
+“Quite so—that action would naturally suggest itself to you. Were you
+warm?”
+“I think the fire had died down. My man tells me that my teeth were
+chattering when I went in to him.”
+“Yes. You live in Piccadilly?”
+“Yes.”
+“Heavy traffic sometimes goes past during the night, I expect.”
+“Oh, frequently.”
+“Just so. Now this decision you refer to—you had taken that decision.”
+“Yes.”
+“Your mind was made up?”
+“Oh, yes.”
+“You had decided to take the action, whatever it was.”
+“Yes.”
+“Yes. It involved perhaps a period of inaction.”
+“Of comparative inaction—yes.”
+“Of suspense, shall we say?”
+“Yes—of suspense, certainly.”
+“Possibly of some danger?”
+“I don’t know that that was in my mind at the time.”
+“No—it was a case in which you could not possibly consider yourself.”
+“If you like to put it that way.”
+“Quite so. Yes. You had these attacks frequently in 1918?”
+“Yes—I was very ill for some months.”
+“Quite. Since then they have recurred less frequently?”
+“Much less frequently.”
+“Yes—when did the last occur?”
+“About nine months ago.”
+“Under what circumstances?”
+“I was being worried by certain family matters. It was a question of
+deciding about some investments, and I was largely responsible.��
+“Yes. You were interested last year, I think, in some police case?”
+“Yes—in the recovery of Lord Attenbury’s emerald necklace.”
+“That involved some severe mental exercise?”
+“I suppose so. But I enjoyed it very much.”
+“Yes. Was the exertion of solving the problem attended by any bad
+results physically?”
+“None.”
+“No. You were interested, but not distressed.”
+“Exactly.”
+“Yes. You have been engaged in other investigations of the kind?”
+“Yes. Little ones.”
+“With bad results for your health?”
+“Not a bit of it. On the contrary. I took up these cases as a sort of
+distraction. I had a bad knock just after the war, which didn’t make
+matters any better for me, don’t you know.”
+“Ah! you are not married?”
+“No.”
+“No. Will you allow me to make an examination? Just come a little
+nearer to the light. I want to see your eyes. Whose advice have you had
+till now?”
+“Sir James Hodges’.”
+“Ah! yes—he was a sad loss to the medical profession. A really great
+man—a true scientist. Yes. Thank you. Now I should like to try you with
+this little invention.”
+“What’s it do?”
+“Well—it tells me about your nervous reactions. Will you sit here?”
+The examination that followed was purely medical. When it was
+concluded, Sir Julian said:
+“Now, Lord Peter, I’ll tell you about yourself in quite untechnical
+language—”
+“Thanks,” said Peter, “that’s kind of you. I’m an awful fool about long
+words.”
+“Yes. Are you fond of private theatricals, Lord Peter?”
+“Not particularly,” said Peter, genuinely surprised. “Awful bore as a
+rule. Why?”
+“I thought you might be,” said the specialist, drily. “Well, now. You
+know quite well that the strain you put on your nerves during the war
+has left its mark on you. It has left what I may call old wounds in
+your brain. Sensations received by your nerve-endings sent messages
+to your brain, and produced minute physical changes there—changes we
+are only beginning to be able to detect, even with our most delicate
+instruments. These changes in their turn set up sensations; or I should
+say, more accurately, that sensations are the names we give to these
+changes of tissue when we perceive them: we call them horror, fear,
+sense of responsibility and so on.”
+“Yes, I follow you.”
+“Very well. Now, if you stimulate those damaged places in your brain
+again, you run the risk of opening up the old wounds. I mean, that if
+you get nerve-sensations of any kind producing the reactions which we
+call horror, fear, and sense of responsibility, they may go on to make
+disturbance right along the old channel, and produce in their turn
+physical changes which you will call by the names you were accustomed
+to associate with them—dread of German mines, responsibility for the
+lives of your men, strained attention and the inability to distinguish
+small sounds through the overpowering noise of guns.”
+“I see.”
+“This effect would be increased by extraneous circumstances producing
+other familiar physical sensations—night, cold or the rattling of heavy
+traffic, for instance.”
+“Yes.”
+“Yes. The old wounds are nearly healed, but not quite. The ordinary
+exercise of your mental faculties has no bad effect. It is only when
+you excite the injured part of your brain.”
+“Yes, I see.”
+“Yes. You must avoid these occasions. You must learn to be
+irresponsible, Lord Peter.”
+“My friends say I’m only too irresponsible already.”
+“Very likely. A sensitive nervous temperament often appears so, owing
+to its mental nimbleness.”
+“Oh!”
+“Yes. This particular responsibility you were speaking of still rests
+upon you?”
+“Yes, it does.”
+“You have not yet completed the course of action on which you have
+decided?”
+“Not yet.”
+“You feel bound to carry it through?”
+“Oh, yes—I can’t back out of it now.”
+“No. You are expecting further strain?”
+“A certain amount.”
+“Do you expect it to last much longer?”
+“Very little longer now.”
+“Ah! Your nerves are not all they should be.”
+“No?”
+“No. Nothing to be alarmed about, but you must exercise care while
+undergoing this strain, and afterwards you should take a complete
+rest. How about a voyage in the Mediterranean or the South Seas or
+somewhere?”
+“Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
+“Meanwhile, to carry you over the immediate trouble I will give you
+something to strengthen your nerves. It will do you no permanent good,
+you understand, but it will tide you over the bad time. And I will give
+you a prescription.”
+“Thank you.”
+Sir Julian got up and went into a small surgery leading out of the
+consulting-room. Lord Peter watched him moving about—boiling something
+and writing. Presently he returned with a paper and a hypodermic
+syringe.
+“Here is the prescription. And now, if you will just roll up your
+sleeve, I will deal with the necessity of the immediate moment.”
+Lord Peter obediently rolled up his sleeve. Sir Julian Freke selected
+a portion of his forearm and anointed it with iodine.
+“What’s that you’re goin’ to stick into me. Bugs?”
+The surgeon laughed.
+“Not exactly,” he said. He pinched up a portion of flesh between his
+finger and thumb. “You’ve had this kind of thing before, I expect.”
+“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter. He watched the cool fingers, fascinated,
+and the steady approach of the needle. “Yes—I’ve had it before—and,
+d’you know—I don’t care frightfully about it.”
+He had brought up his right hand, and it closed over the surgeon’s
+wrist like a vice.
+The silence was like a shock. The blue eyes did not waver; they burned
+down steadily upon the heavy white lids below them. Then these slowly
+lifted; the grey eyes met the blue—coldly, steadily—and held them.
+When lovers embrace, there seems no sound in the world but their own
+breathing. So the two men breathed face to face.
+“As you like, of course, Lord Peter,” said Sir Julian, courteously.
+“Afraid I’m rather a silly ass,” said Lord Peter, “but I never could
+abide these little gadgets. I had one once that went wrong and gave me
+a rotten bad time. They make me a bit nervous.”
+“In that case,” replied Sir Julian, “it would certainly be better not
+to have the injection. It might rouse up just those sensations which we
+are desirous of avoiding. You will take the prescription, then, and do
+what you can to lessen the immediate strain as far as possible.”
+“Oh, yes—I’ll take it easy, thanks,” said Lord Peter. He rolled his
+sleeve down neatly. “I’m much obliged to you. If I have any further
+trouble I’ll look in again.”
+“Do—do—” said Sir Julian, cheerfully. “Only make an appointment another
+time. I’m rather rushed these days. I hope your mother is quite well.
+I saw her the other day at that Battersea inquest. You should have been
+there. It would have interested you.”
+CHAPTER XII
+The vile, raw fog tore your throat and ravaged your eyes. You could not
+see your feet. You stumbled in your walk over poor men’s graves.
+The feel of Parker’s old trench-coat beneath your fingers was
+comforting. You had felt it in worse places. You clung on now for fear
+you should get separated. The dim people moving in front of you were
+like Brocken spectres.
+“Take care, gentlemen,” said a toneless voice out of the yellow
+darkness, “there’s an open grave just hereabouts.”
+You bore away to the right, and floundered in a mass of freshly turned
+clay.
+“Hold up, old man,” said Parker.
+“Where is Lady Levy?”
+“In the mortuary; the Duchess of Denver is with her. Your mother is
+wonderful, Peter.”
+“Isn’t she?” said Lord Peter.
+A dim blue light carried by somebody ahead wavered and stood still.
+“Here you are,” said a voice.
+Two Dantesque shapes with pitchforks loomed up.
+“Have you finished?” asked somebody.
+“Nearly done, sir.” The demons fell to work again with the
+pitchforks—no, spades.
+Somebody sneezed. Parker located the sneezer and introduced him.
+“Mr. Levett represents the Home Secretary. Lord Peter Wimsey. We are
+sorry to drag you out on such a day, Mr. Levett.”
+“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Mr. Levett, hoarsely. He was muffled
+to the eyes.
+The sound of the spades for many minutes. An iron noise of tools thrown
+down. Demons stooping and straining.
+A black-bearded spectre at your elbow. Introduced. The Master of the
+Workhouse.
+“A very painful matter, Lord Peter. You will forgive me for hoping you
+and Mr. Parker may be mistaken.”
+“I should like to be able to hope so too.”
+Something heaving, straining, coming up out of the ground.
+“Steady, men. This way. Can you see? Be careful of the graves—they lie
+pretty thick hereabouts. Are you ready?”
+“Right you are, sir. You go on with the lantern. We can follow you.”
+Lumbering footsteps. Catch hold of Parker’s trench-coat again. “That
+you, old man? Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Levett—thought you were
+Parker.”
+“Hullo, Wimsey—here you are.”
+More graves. A headstone shouldered crookedly aslant. A trip and jerk
+over the edge of the rough grass. The squeal of gravel under your feet.
+“This way, gentlemen, mind the step.”
+The mortuary. Raw red brick and sizzling gas-jets. Two women in black,
+and Dr. Grimbold. The coffin laid on the table with a heavy thump.
+“’Ave you got that there screw-driver, Bill? Thank ’ee. Be keerful wi’
+the chisel now. Not much substance to these ’ere boards, sir.”
+Several long creaks. A sob. The Duchess’s voice, kind but peremptory.
+“Hush, Christine. You mustn’t cry.”
+A mutter of voices. The lurching departure of the Dante demons—good,
+decent demons in corduroy.
+Dr. Grimbold’s voice—cool and detached as if in the consulting room.
+“Now—have you got that lamp, Mr. Wingate? Thank you. Yes, here on
+the table, please. Be careful not to catch your elbow in the flex,
+Mr. Levett. It would be better, I think, if you came on this side.
+Yes—yes—thank you. That’s excellent.”
+The sudden brilliant circle of an electric lamp over the table. Dr.
+Grimbold’s beard and spectacles. Mr. Levett blowing his nose. Parker
+bending close. The Master of the Workhouse peering over him. The rest
+of the room in the enhanced dimness of the gas-jets and the fog.
+A low murmur of voices. All heads bent over the work.
+Dr. Grimbold again—beyond the circle of the lamplight.
+“We don’t want to distress you unnecessarily, Lady Levy. If you will
+just tell us what to look for—the—? Yes, yes, certainly—and—yes—stopped
+with gold? Yes—the lower jaw, the last but one on the right? Yes—no
+teeth missing—no—yes? What kind of a mole? Yes—just over the left
+breast? Oh, I beg your pardon, just under—yes—appendicitis? Yes—a
+long one—yes—in the middle? Yes, I quite understand—a scar on the
+arm? Yes, I don’t know if we shall be able to find that—yes—any little
+constitutional weakness that might—? Oh, yes—arthritis—yes—thank you,
+Lady Levy—that’s very clear. Don’t come unless I ask you to. Now,
+Wingate.”
+A pause. A murmur. “Pulled out? After death, you think—well, so do
+I. Where is Dr. Colegrove? You attended this man in the workhouse?
+Yes. Do you recollect—? No? You’re quite certain about that? Yes—we
+mustn’t make a mistake, you know. Yes, but there are reasons why Sir
+Julian can’t be present; I’m asking _you_, Dr. Colegrove. Well, you’re
+certain—that’s all I want to know. Just bring the light closer, Mr.
+Wingate, if you please. These miserable shells let the damp in so
+quickly. Ah! what do you make of this? Yes—yes—well, that’s rather
+unmistakable, isn’t it? Who did the head? Oh, Freke—of course. I was
+going to say they did good work at St. Luke’s. Beautiful, isn’t it,
+Dr. Colegrove? A wonderful surgeon—I saw him when he was at Guy’s. Oh,
+no, gave it up years ago. Nothing like keeping your hand in. Ah—yes,
+undoubtedly that’s it. Have you a towel handy, sir? Thank you. Over
+the head, if you please—I think we might have another here. Now, Lady
+Levy—I am going to ask you to look at a scar, and see if you recognise
+it. I’m sure you are going to help us by being very firm. Take your
+time—you won’t see anything more than you absolutely must.”
+“Lucy, don’t leave me.”
+“No, dear.”
+A space cleared at the table. The lamplight on the Duchess’s white hair.
+“Oh, yes—oh, yes! No, no—I couldn’t be mistaken. There’s that funny
+little kink in it. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Oh, Lucy—Reuben!”
+“Only a moment more, Lady Levy. The mole—”
+“I—I think so—oh, yes, that is the very place.”
+“Yes. And the scar—was it three-cornered, just above the elbow?”
+“Yes, oh, yes.”
+“Is this it?”
+“Yes—yes—”
+“I must ask you definitely, Lady Levy. Do you, from these three marks
+identify the body as that of your husband?”
+“Oh! I must, mustn’t I? Nobody else could have them just the same in
+just those places? It is my husband. It is Reuben. Oh—”
+“Thank you, Lady Levy. You have been very brave and very helpful.”
+“But—I don’t understand yet. How did he come here? Who did this
+dreadful thing?”
+“Hush, dear,” said the Duchess; “the man is going to be punished.”
+“Oh, but—how cruel! Poor Reuben! Who could have wanted to hurt him? Can
+I see his face?”
+“No, dear,” said the Duchess. “That isn’t possible. Come away—you
+mustn’t distress the doctors and people.”
+“No—no—they’ve all been so kind. Oh, Lucy!”
+“We’ll go home, dear. You don’t want us any more, Dr. Grimbold?”
+“No, Duchess, thank you. We are very grateful to you and to Lady Levy
+for coming.”
+There was a pause, while the two women went out, Parker, collected and
+helpful, escorting them to their waiting car. Then Dr. Grimbold again:
+“I think Lord Peter Wimsey ought to see—the correctness of his
+deductions—Lord Peter—very painful—you may wish to see—yes, I was
+uneasy at the inquest—yes—Lady Levy—remarkably clear evidence—yes—most
+shocking case—ah, here’s Mr. Parker—you and Lord Peter Wimsey entirely
+justified—do I really understand—? Really? I can hardly believe
+it—so distinguished a man—as you say, when a great brain turns to
+crime—yes—look here! Marvellous work—marvellous—somewhat obscured by
+this time, of course—but the most beautiful sections—here, you see,
+the left hemisphere—and here—through the corpus striatum—here again—the
+very track of the damage done by the blow—wonderful—guessed it—saw the
+effect of the blow as he struck it, you know—ah, I should like to see
+_his_ brain, Mr. Parker—and to think that—heavens, Lord Peter, you
+don’t know what a blow you have struck at the whole profession—the
+whole civilized world! Oh, my dear sir! Can you ask me? My lips are
+sealed of course—all our lips are sealed.”
+The way back through the burial ground. Fog again, and the squeal of
+wet gravel.
+“Are your men ready, Charles?”
+“They have gone. I sent them off when I saw Lady Levy to the car.”
+“Who is with them?”
+“Sugg.”
+“Sugg?”
+“Yes—poor devil. They’ve had him up on the mat at headquarters for
+bungling the case. All that evidence of Thipps’s about the night club
+was corroborated, you know. That girl he gave the gin-and-bitters to
+was caught, and came and identified him, and they decided their case
+wasn’t good enough, and let Thipps and the Horrocks girl go. Then
+they told Sugg he had overstepped his duty and ought to have been more
+careful. So he ought, but he can’t help being a fool. I was sorry for
+him. It may do him some good to be in at the death. After all, Peter,
+you and I had special advantages.”
+“Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. Whoever goes won’t get there in time.
+Sugg’s as good as another.”
+But Sugg—an experience rare in his career—was in time.
+*       *       *       *       *
+Parker and Lord Peter were at 110 Piccadilly. Lord Peter was playing
+Bach and Parker was reading Origen when Sugg was announced.
+“We’ve got our man, sir,” said he.
+“Good God!” said Peter. “Alive?”
+“We were just in time, my lord. We rang the bell and marched straight
+up past his man to the library. He was sitting there doing some
+writing. When we came in, he made a grab for his hypodermic, but we
+were too quick for him, my lord. We didn’t mean to let him slip through
+our hands, having got so far. We searched him thoroughly and marched
+him off.”
+“He is actually in gaol, then?”
+“Oh, yes—safe enough—with two warders to see he doesn’t make away with
+himself.”
+“You surprise me, Inspector. Have a drink.”
+“Thank you, my lord. I may say that I’m very grateful to you—this
+case was turning out a pretty bad egg for me. If I was rude to your
+lordship—”
+“Oh, it’s all right, Inspector,” said Lord Peter, hastily. “I don’t see
+how you could possibly have worked it out. I had the good luck to know
+something about it from other sources.”
+“That’s what Freke says.” Already the great surgeon was a common
+criminal in the inspector’s eyes—a mere surname. “He was writing a full
+confession when we got hold of him, addressed to your lordship. The
+police will have to have it, of course, but seeing it’s written for
+you, I brought it along for you to see first. Here it is.”
+He handed Lord Peter a bulky document.
+“Thanks,” said Peter. “Like to hear it, Charles?”
+“Rather.”
+Accordingly Lord Peter read it aloud.
+CHAPTER XIII
+Dear Lord Peter—When I was a young man I used to play chess with an
+old friend of my father’s. He was a very bad, and a very slow, player,
+and he could never see when a checkmate was inevitable, but insisted
+on playing every move out. I never had any patience with that kind of
+attitude, and I will freely admit now that the game is yours. I must
+either stay at home and be hanged or escape abroad and live in an idle
+and insecure obscurity. I prefer to acknowledge defeat.
+If you have read my book on “Criminal Lunacy,” you will remember that
+I wrote: “In the majority of cases, the criminal betrays himself
+by some abnormality attendant upon this pathological condition of
+the nervous tissues. His mental instability shows itself in various
+forms: an overweening vanity, leading him to brag of his achievement;
+a disproportionate sense of the importance of the offence, resulting
+from the hallucination of religion, and driving him to confession;
+egomania, producing the sense of horror or conviction of sin, and
+driving him to headlong flight without covering his tracks; a reckless
+confidence, resulting in the neglect of the most ordinary precautions,
+as in the case of Henry Wainwright, who left a boy in charge of the
+murdered woman’s remains while he went to call a cab, or on the other
+hand, a nervous distrust of apperceptions in the past, causing him to
+revisit the scene of the crime to assure himself that all traces have
+been as safely removed as _his own judgment knows them to be_. I will
+not hesitate to assert that a perfectly sane man, not intimidated by
+religious or other delusions, could always render himself perfectly
+secure from detection, provided, that is, that the crime were
+sufficiently premeditated and that he were not pressed for time or
+thrown out in his calculations by purely fortuitous coincidence.
+You know as well as I do, how far I have made this assertion good
+in practice. The two accidents which betrayed me, I could not by any
+possibility have foreseen. The first was the chance recognition of Levy
+by the girl in the Battersea Park Road, which suggested a connection
+between the two problems. The second was that Thipps should have
+arranged to go down to Denver on the Tuesday morning, thus enabling
+your mother to get word of the matter through to you before the body
+was removed by the police and to suggest a motive for the murder out
+of what she knew of my previous personal history. If I had been able
+to destroy these two accidentally forged links of circumstance, I will
+venture to say that you would never have so much as suspected me, still
+less obtained sufficient evidence to convict.
+Of all human emotions, except perhaps those of hunger and fear,
+the sexual appetite produces the most violent, and, under some
+circumstances, the most persistent reactions; I think, however, I am
+right in saying that at the time when I wrote my book, my original
+sensual impulse to kill Sir Reuben Levy had already become profoundly
+modified by my habits of thought. To the animal lust to slay and
+the primitive human desire for revenge, there was added the rational
+intention of substantiating my own theories for the satisfaction of
+myself and the world. If all had turned out as I had planned, I should
+have deposited a sealed account of my experiment with the Bank of
+England, instructing my executors to publish it after my death. Now
+that accident has spoiled the completeness of my demonstration, I
+entrust the account to you, whom it cannot fail to interest, with the
+request that you will make it known among scientific men, in justice to
+my professional reputation.
+The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money
+and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make
+the second. During my early career, though I was fairly well-off, I
+had not absolute command of circumstance. Accordingly I devoted myself
+to my profession, and contented myself with keeping up a friendly
+connection with Reuben Levy and his family. This enabled me to remain
+in touch with his fortunes and interests, so that, when the moment for
+action should arrive, I might know what weapons to use.
+Meanwhile, I carefully studied criminology in fiction and fact—my work
+on “Criminal Lunacy” was a side-product of this activity—and saw how,
+in every murder, the real crux of the problem was the disposal of the
+body. As a doctor, the means of death were always ready to my hand, and
+I was not likely to make any error in that connection. Nor was I likely
+to betray myself on account of any illusory sense of wrong-doing. The
+sole difficulty would be that of destroying all connection between
+my personality and that of the corpse. You will remember that Michael
+Finsbury, in Stevenson’s entertaining romance, observes: “What hangs
+people is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt.” It became clear to
+me that the mere leaving about of a superfluous corpse could convict
+nobody, provided that nobody was guilty in connection _with that
+particular corpse_. Thus the idea of substituting the one body for
+the other was early arrived at, though it was not till I obtained
+the practical direction of St. Luke’s Hospital that I found myself
+perfectly unfettered in the choice and handling of dead bodies. From
+this period on, I kept a careful watch on all the material brought in
+for dissection.
+My opportunity did not present itself until the week before Sir
+Reuben’s disappearance, when the medical officer at the Chelsea
+workhouse sent word to me that an unknown vagrant had been injured that
+morning by the fall of a piece of scaffolding, and was exhibiting some
+very interesting nervous and cerebral reactions. I went round and saw
+the case, and was immediately struck by the man’s strong superficial
+resemblance to Sir Reuben. He had been heavily struck on the back
+of the neck, dislocating the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae and
+heavily bruising the spinal cord. It seemed highly unlikely that he
+could ever recover, either mentally or physically, and in any case
+there appeared to me to be no object in indefinitely prolonging so
+unprofitable an existence. He had obviously been able to support life
+until recently, as he was fairly well nourished, but the state of his
+feet and clothing showed that he was unemployed, and under present
+conditions he was likely to remain so. I decided that he would suit my
+purpose very well, and immediately put in train certain transactions
+in the City which I had already sketched out in my own mind. In
+the meantime, the reactions mentioned by the workhouse doctor were
+interesting, and I made careful studies of them, and arranged for the
+delivery of the body to the hospital when I should have completed my
+preparations.
+On the Thursday and Friday of that week I made private arrangements
+with various brokers to buy the stock of certain Peruvian Oil-fields,
+which had gone down almost to waste-paper. This part of my experiment
+did not cost me very much, but I contrived to arouse considerable
+curiosity, and even a mild excitement. At this point I was of course
+careful not to let my name appear. The incidence of Saturday and Sunday
+gave me some anxiety lest my man should after all die before I was
+ready for him, but by the use of saline injections I contrived to keep
+him alive and, late on Sunday night, he even manifested disquieting
+symptoms of at any rate a partial recovery.
+On Monday morning the market in Peruvians opened briskly. Rumours had
+evidently got about that somebody knew something, and this day I was
+not the only buyer in the market. I bought a couple of hundred more
+shares in my own name, and left the matter to take care of itself. At
+lunch time I made my arrangements to run into Levy accidentally at the
+corner of the Mansion House. He expressed (as I expected) his surprise
+at seeing me in that part of London. I simulated some embarrassment and
+suggested that we should lunch together. I dragged him to a place a bit
+off the usual beat, and there ordered a good wine and drank of it as
+much as he might suppose sufficient to induce a confidential mood. I
+asked him how things were going on ’Change. He said, “Oh, all right,”
+but appeared a little doubtful, and asked me whether I did anything in
+that way. I said I had a little flutter occasionally, and that, as a
+matter of fact, I’d been put on to rather a good thing. I glanced round
+apprehensively at this point, and shifted my chair nearer to his.
+“I suppose you don’t know anything about Peruvian Oil, do you?” he said.
+I started and looked round again, and leaning across to him, said,
+dropping my voice:
+“Well, I do, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want it to get about. I
+stand to make a good bit on it.”
+“But I thought the thing was hollow,” he said; “it hasn’t paid a
+dividend for umpteen years.”
+“No,” I said, “it hasn’t, but it’s going to. I’ve got inside
+information.” He looked a bit unconvinced, and I emptied off my glass,
+and edged right up to his ear.
+“Look here,” I said, “I’m not giving this away to everyone, but I don’t
+mind doing you and Christine a good turn. You know, I’ve always kept
+a soft place in my heart for her, ever since the old days. You got in
+ahead of me that time, and now it’s up to me to heap coals of fire on
+you both.”
+I was a little excited by this time, and he thought I was drunk.
+“It’s very kind of you, old man,” he said, “but I’m a cautious bird,
+you know, always was. I’d like a bit of proof.”
+And he shrugged up his shoulders and looked like a pawnbroker.
+“I’ll give it to you,” I said, “but it isn’t safe here. Come round to
+my place tonight after dinner, and I’ll show you the report.”
+“How d’you get hold of it?” said he.
+“I’ll tell you tonight,” said I. “Come round after dinner—any time
+after nine, say.”
+“To Harley Street?” he asked, and I saw that he meant coming.
+“No,” I said, “to Battersea—Prince of Wales Road; I’ve got some work to
+do at the hospital. And look here,” I said, “don’t you let on to a soul
+that you’re coming. I bought a couple of hundred shares today, in my
+own name, and people are sure to get wind of it. If we’re known to be
+about together, someone’ll twig something. In fact, it’s anything but
+safe talking about it in this place.”
+“All right,” he said, “I won’t say a word to anybody. I’ll turn up
+about nine o’clock. You’re sure it’s a sound thing?”
+“It can’t go wrong,” I assured him. And I meant it.
+We parted after that, and I went round to the workhouse. My man had
+died at about eleven o’clock. I had seen him just after breakfast, and
+was not surprised. I completed the usual formalities with the workhouse
+authorities, and arranged for his delivery at the hospital at about
+seven o’clock.
+In the afternoon, as it was not one of my days to be in Harley Street,
+I looked up an old friend who lives close to Hyde Park, and found
+that he was just off to Brighton on some business or other. I had
+tea with him, and saw him off by the 5.35 from Victoria. On issuing
+from the barrier it occurred to me to purchase an evening paper, and
+I thoughtlessly turned my steps to the bookstall. The usual crowds
+were rushing to catch suburban trains home, and on moving away I found
+myself involved in a contrary stream of travellers coming up out of the
+Underground, or bolting from all sides for the 5.45 to Battersea Park
+and Wandsworth Common. I disengaged myself after some buffeting and
+went home in a taxi; and it was not till I was safely seated there that
+I discovered somebody’s gold-rimmed pince-nez involved in the astrakhan
+collar of my overcoat. The time from 6.15 to seven I spent concocting
+something to look like a bogus report for Sir Reuben.
+At seven I went through to the hospital, and found the workhouse van
+just delivering my subject at the side door. I had him taken straight
+up to the theatre, and told the attendant, William Watts, that I
+intended to work there that night. I told him I would prepare the
+body myself—the injection of a preservative would have been a most
+regrettable complication. I sent him about his business, and then went
+home and had dinner. I told my man that I should be working in the
+hospital that evening, and that he could go to bed at 10.30 as usual,
+as I could not tell whether I should be late or not. He is used to
+my erratic ways. I only keep two servants in the Battersea house—the
+man-servant and his wife, who cooks for me. The rougher domestic work
+is done by a charwoman, who sleeps out. The servants’ bedroom is at the
+top of the house, overlooking Prince of Wales Road.
+As soon as I had dined I established myself in the hall with some
+papers. My man had cleared dinner by a quarter past eight, and I told
+him to give me the syphon and tantalus; and sent him downstairs. Levy
+rang the bell at twenty minutes past nine, and I opened the door to him
+myself. My man appeared at the other end of the hall, but I called to
+him that it was all right, and he went away. Levy wore an overcoat with
+evening dress and carried an umbrella. “Why, how wet you are!” I said.
+“How did you come?” “By ’bus,” he said, “and the fool of a conductor
+forgot to put me down at the end of the road. It’s pouring cats and
+dogs and pitch-dark—I couldn’t see where I was.” I was glad he hadn’t
+taken a taxi, but I had rather reckoned on his not doing so. “Your
+little economies will be the death of you one of these days,” I said.
+I was right there, but I hadn’t reckoned on their being the death of me
+as well. I say again, I could not have foreseen it.
+I sat him down by the fire, and gave him a whisky. He was in high
+spirits about some deal in Argentines he was bringing off the next day.
+We talked money for about a quarter of an hour and then he said:
+“Well, how about this Peruvian mare’s-nest of yours?”
+“It’s no mare’s-nest,” I said; “come and have a look at it.”
+I took him upstairs into the library, and switched on the centre light
+and the reading lamp on the writing table. I gave him a chair at the
+table with his back to the fire, and fetched the papers I had been
+faking, out of the safe. He took them, and began to read them, poking
+over them in his short-sighted way, while I mended the fire. As soon as
+I saw his head in a favourable position I struck him heavily with the
+poker, just over the fourth cervical. It was delicate work calculating
+the exact force necessary to kill him without breaking the skin, but
+my professional experience was useful to me. He gave one loud gasp,
+and tumbled forward on to the table quite noiselessly. I put the poker
+back, and examined him. His neck was broken, and he was quite dead. I
+carried him into my bedroom and undressed him. It was about ten minutes
+to ten when I had finished. I put him away under my bed, which had been
+turned down for the night, and cleared up the papers in the library.
+Then I went downstairs, took Levy’s umbrella, and let myself out at
+the hall door, shouting “Good-night” loudly enough to be heard in the
+basement if the servants should be listening. I walked briskly away
+down the street, went in by the hospital side door, and returned to
+the house noiselessly by way of the private passage. It would have been
+awkward if anybody had seen me then, but I leaned over the back stairs
+and heard the cook and her husband still talking in the kitchen. I
+slipped back into the hall, replaced the umbrella in the stand, cleared
+up my papers there, went up into the library and rang the bell. When
+the man appeared I told him to lock up everything except the private
+door to the hospital. I waited in the library until he had done so,
+and about 10.30 I heard both servants go up to bed. I waited a quarter
+of an hour longer and then went through to the dissecting-room. I
+wheeled one of the stretcher tables through the passage to the house
+door, and then went to fetch Levy. It was a nuisance having to get him
+downstairs, but I had not liked to make away with him in any of the
+ground-floor rooms, in case my servant should take a fancy to poke his
+head in during the few minutes that I was out of the house, or while
+locking up. Besides, that was a flea-bite to what I should have to
+do later. I put Levy on the table, wheeled him across to the hospital
+and substituted him for my interesting pauper. I was sorry to have to
+abandon the idea of getting a look at the latter’s brain, but I could
+not afford to incur suspicion. It was still rather early, so I knocked
+down a few minutes getting Levy ready for dissection. Then I put my
+pauper on the table and trundled him over to the house. It was now five
+past eleven, and I thought I might conclude that the servants were in
+bed. I carried the body into my bedroom. He was rather heavy, but less
+so than Levy, and my Alpine experience had taught me how to handle
+bodies. It is as much a matter of knack as of strength, and I am, in
+any case, a powerful man for my height. I put the body into the bed—not
+that I expected anyone to look in during my absence, but if they should
+they might just as well see me apparently asleep in bed. I drew the
+clothes a little over his head, stripped, and put on Levy’s clothes,
+which were fortunately a little big for me everywhere, not forgetting
+to take his spectacles, watch and other oddments. At a little before
+half-past eleven I was in the road looking for a cab. People were just
+beginning to come home from the theatre, and I easily secured one at
+the corner of Prince of Wales Road. I told the man to drive me to Hyde
+Park Corner. There I got out, tipped him well, and asked him to pick
+me up again at the same place in an hour’s time. He assented with an
+understanding grin, and I walked on up Park Lane. I had my own clothes
+with me in a suitcase, and carried my own overcoat and Levy’s umbrella.
+When I got to No. 9A there were lights in some of the top windows.
+I was very nearly too early, owing to the old man’s having sent the
+servants to the theatre. I waited about for a few minutes, and heard it
+strike the quarter past midnight. The lights were extinguished shortly
+after, and I let myself in with Levy’s key.
+It had been my original intention, when I thought over this plan
+of murder, to let Levy disappear from the study or the dining-room,
+leaving only a heap of clothes on the hearth-rug. The accident of my
+having been able to secure Lady Levy’s absence from London, however,
+made possible a solution more misleading, though less pleasantly
+fantastic. I turned on the hall light, hung up Levy’s wet overcoat and
+placed his umbrella in the stand. I walked up noisily and heavily to
+the bedroom and turned off the light by the duplicate switch on the
+landing. I knew the house well enough, of course. There was no chance
+of my running into the man-servant. Old Levy was a simple old man,
+who liked doing things for himself. He gave his valet little work,
+and never required any attendance at night. In the bedroom I took off
+Levy’s gloves and put on a surgical pair, so as to leave no tell-tale
+finger-prints. As I wished to convey the impression that Levy had gone
+to bed in the usual way, I simply went to bed. The surest and simplest
+method of making a thing appear to have been done is to do it. A bed
+that has been rumpled about with one’s hands, for instance, never looks
+like a bed that has been slept in. I dared not use Levy’s brush, of
+course, as my hair is not of his colour, but I did everything else. I
+supposed that a thoughtful old man like Levy would put his boots handy
+for his valet, and I ought to have deduced that he would fold up his
+clothes. That was a mistake, but not an important one. Remembering that
+well-thought-out little work of Mr. Bentley’s, I had examined Levy’s
+mouth for false teeth, but he had none. I did not forget, however, to
+wet his tooth-brush.
+At one o’clock I got up and dressed in my own clothes by the light of
+my own pocket torch. I dared not turn on the bedroom lights, as there
+were light blinds to the windows. I put on my own boots and an old
+pair of goloshes outside the door. There was a thick Turkey carpet on
+the stairs and hall-floor, and I was not afraid of leaving marks. I
+hesitated whether to chance the banging of the front door, but decided
+it would be safer to take the latchkey. (It is now in the Thames.
+I dropped it over Battersea Bridge the next day.) I slipped quietly
+down, and listened for a few minutes with my ear to the letter-box.
+I heard a constable tramp past. As soon as his steps had died away
+in the distance I stepped out and pulled the door gingerly to. It
+closed almost soundlessly, and I walked away to pick up my cab. I
+had an overcoat of much the same pattern as Levy’s, and had taken the
+precaution to pack an opera hat in my suitcase. I hoped the man would
+not notice that I had no umbrella this time. Fortunately the rain
+had diminished for the moment to a sort of drizzle, and if he noticed
+anything he made no observation. I told him to stop at 50 Overstrand
+Mansions, and I paid him off there, and stood under the porch till
+he had driven away. Then I hurried round to my own side door and let
+myself in. It was about a quarter to two, and the harder part of my
+task still lay before me.
+My first step was so to alter the appearance of my subject as to
+eliminate any immediate suggestion either of Levy or of the workhouse
+vagrant. A fairly superficial alteration was all I considered
+necessary, since there was not likely to be any hue-and-cry after the
+pauper. He was fairly accounted for, and his deputy was at hand to
+represent him. Nor, if Levy was after all traced to my house, would
+it be difficult to show that the body in evidence was, as a matter of
+fact, not his. A clean shave and a little hair-oiling and manicuring
+seemed sufficient to suggest a distinct personality for my silent
+accomplice. His hands had been well washed in hospital, and though
+calloused, were not grimy. I was not able to do the work as thoroughly
+as I should have liked, because time was getting on. I was not sure
+how long it would take me to dispose of him, and moreover, I feared
+the onset of _rigor mortis_, which would make my task more difficult.
+When I had him barbered to my satisfaction, I fetched a strong sheet
+and a couple of wide roller bandages, and fastened him up carefully,
+padding him with cotton wool wherever the bandages might chafe or leave
+a bruise.
+Now came the really ticklish part of the business. I had already
+decided in my own mind that the only way of conveying him from the
+house was by the roof. To go through the garden at the back in this
+soft wet weather was to leave a ruinous trail behind us. To carry
+a dead man down a suburban street in the middle of the night seemed
+outside the range of practical politics. On the roof, on the other
+hand, the rain, which would have betrayed me on the ground, would stand
+my friend.
+To reach the roof, it was necessary to carry my burden to the top
+of the house, past my servants’ room, and hoist him out through the
+trap-door in the box-room roof. Had it merely been a question of
+going quietly up there myself, I should have had no fear of waking the
+servants, but to do so burdened by a heavy body was more difficult.
+It would be possible, provided that the man and his wife were soundly
+asleep, but if not, the lumbering tread on the narrow stair and the
+noise of opening the trap-door would be only too plainly audible.
+I tiptoed delicately up the stair and listened at their door. To my
+disgust I heard the man give a grunt and mutter something as he moved
+in his bed.
+I looked at my watch. My preparations had taken nearly an hour, first
+and last, and I dared not be too late on the roof. I determined to
+take a bold step and, as it were, bluff out an alibi. I went without
+precaution against noise into the bathroom, turned on the hot and cold
+water taps to the full and pulled out the plug.
+My household has often had occasion to complain of my habit of using
+the bath at irregular night hours. Not only does the rush of water
+into the cistern disturb any sleepers on the Prince of Wales Road
+side of the house, but my cistern is afflicted with peculiarly loud
+gurglings and thumpings, while frequently the pipes emit a loud
+groaning sound. To my delight, on this particular occasion, the cistern
+was in excellent form, honking, whistling and booming like a railway
+terminus. I gave the noise five minutes’ start, and when I calculated
+that the sleepers would have finished cursing me and put their heads
+under the clothes to shut out the din, I reduced the flow of water to
+a small stream and left the bathroom, taking good care to leave the
+light burning and lock the door after me. Then I picked up my pauper
+and carried him upstairs as lightly as possible.
+The box-room is a small attic on the side of the landing opposite to
+the servants’ bedroom and the cistern-room. It has a trap-door, reached
+by a short, wooden ladder. I set this up, hoisted up my pauper and
+climbed up after him. The water was still racing into the cistern,
+which was making a noise as though it were trying to digest an iron
+chain, and with the reduced flow in the bathroom the groaning of the
+pipes had risen almost to a hoot. I was not afraid of anybody hearing
+other noises. I pulled the ladder through on to the roof after me.
+Between my house and the last house in Queen Caroline Mansions there
+is a space of only a few feet. Indeed, when the Mansions were put up,
+I believe there was some trouble about ancient lights, but I suppose
+the parties compromised somehow. Anyhow, my seven-foot ladder reached
+well across. I tied the body firmly to the ladder, and pushed it over
+till the far end was resting on the parapet of the opposite house. Then
+I took a short run across the cistern-room and the box-room roof, and
+landed easily on the other side, the parapet being happily both low and
+narrow.
+The rest was simple. I carried my pauper along the flat roofs,
+intending to leave him, like the hunchback in the story, on someone’s
+staircase or down a chimney. I had got about half-way along when I
+suddenly thought, “Why, this must be about little Thipps’s place,” and
+I remembered his silly face, and his silly chatter about vivisection.
+It occurred to me pleasantly how delightful it would be to deposit my
+parcel with him and see what he made of it. I lay down and peered over
+the parapet at the back. It was pitch-dark and pouring with rain again
+by this time, and I risked using my torch. That was the only incautious
+thing I did, and the odds against being seen from the houses opposite
+were long enough. One second’s flash showed me what I had hardly dared
+to hope—an open window just below me.
+I knew those flats well enough to be sure it was either the bathroom
+or the kitchen. I made a noose in a third bandage that I had brought
+with me, and made it fast under the arms of the corpse. I twisted it
+into a double rope, and secured the end to the iron stanchion of a
+chimney-stack. Then I dangled our friend over. I went down after him
+myself with the aid of a drain-pipe and was soon hauling him in by
+Thipps’s bathroom window.
+By that time I had got a little conceited with myself, and spared a
+few minutes to lay him out prettily and make him shipshape. A sudden
+inspiration suggested that I should give him the pair of pince-nez
+which I had happened to pick up at Victoria. I came across them in my
+pocket while I was looking for a penknife to loosen a knot, and I saw
+what distinction they would lend his appearance, besides making it more
+misleading. I fixed them on him, effaced all traces of my presence as
+far as possible, and departed as I had come, going easily up between
+the drain-pipe and the rope.
+I walked quietly back, re-crossed my crevasse and carried in my ladder
+and sheet. My discreet accomplice greeted me with a reassuring gurgle
+and thump. I didn’t make a sound on the stairs. Seeing that I had now
+been having a bath for about three-quarters of an hour, I turned the
+water off, and enabled my deserving domestics to get a little sleep. I
+also felt it was time I had a little myself.
+First, however, I had to go over to the hospital and make all safe
+there. I took off Levy’s head, and started to open up the face. In
+twenty minutes his own wife could not have recognised him. I returned,
+leaving my wet goloshes and mackintosh by the garden door. My trousers
+I dried by the gas stove in my bedroom, and brushed away all traces of
+mud and brickdust. My pauper’s beard I burned in the library.
+I got a good two hours’ sleep from five to seven, when my man called me
+as usual. I apologized for having kept the water running so long and so
+late, and added that I thought I would have the cistern seen to.
+I was interested to note that I was rather extra hungry at breakfast,
+showing that my night’s work had caused a certain wear-and-tear of
+tissue. I went over afterwards to continue my dissection. During the
+morning a peculiarly thick-headed police inspector came to inquire
+whether a body had escaped from the hospital. I had him brought to me
+where I was, and had the pleasure of showing him the work I was doing
+on Sir Reuben Levy’s head. Afterwards I went round with him to Thipps’s
+and was able to satisfy myself that my pauper looked very convincing.
+As soon as the Stock Exchange opened I telephoned my various brokers,
+and by exercising a little care, was able to sell out the greater
+part of my Peruvian stock on a rising market. Towards the end of the
+day, however, buyers became rather unsettled as a result of Levy’s
+death, and in the end I did not make more than a few hundreds by the
+transaction.
+Trusting I have now made clear to you any point which you may have
+found obscure, and with congratulations on the good fortune and
+perspicacity which have enabled you to defeat me, I remain, with kind
+remembrances to your mother,
+Yours very truly,
+JULIAN FREKE
+_Post-Scriptum_: My will is made, leaving my money to St. Luke’s
+Hospital, and bequeathing my body to the same institution for
+dissection. I feel sure that my brain will be of interest to the
+scientific world. As I shall die by my own hand, I imagine that there
+may be a little difficulty about this. Will you do me the favour, if
+you can, of seeing the persons concerned in the inquest, and obtaining
+that the brain is not damaged by an unskilful practitioner at the
+post-mortem, and that the body is disposed of according to my wish?
+By the way, it may be of interest to you to know that I appreciated
+your motive in calling this afternoon. It conveyed a warning, and I
+am acting upon it in spite of the disastrous consequences to myself.
+I was pleased to realize that you had not underestimated my nerve and
+intelligence, and refused the injection. Had you submitted to it, you
+would, of course, never have reached home alive. No trace would have
+been left in your body of the injection, which consisted of a harmless
+preparation of strychnine, mixed with an almost unknown poison, for
+which there is at present no recognised test, a concentrated solution
+of sn—
+*       *       *       *       *
+At this point the manuscript broke off.
+“Well, that’s all clear enough,” said Parker.
+“Isn’t it queer?” said Lord Peter. “All that coolness, all those
+brains—and then he couldn’t resist writing a confession to show how
+clever he was, even to keep his head out of the noose.”
+“And a very good thing for us,” said Inspector Sugg, “but Lord bless
+you, sir, these criminals are all alike.”
+“Freke’s epitaph,” said Parker, when the Inspector had departed. “What
+next, Peter?”
+“I shall now give a dinner party,” said Lord Peter, “to Mr. John P.
+Milligan and his secretary and to Messrs. Crimplesham and Wicks. I feel
+they deserve it for not having murdered Levy.”
+“Well, don’t forget the Thippses,” said Mr. Parker.
+“On no account,” said Lord Peter, “would I deprive myself of the
+pleasure of Mrs. Thipps’s company. Bunter!”
+“My lord?”
+“The Napoleon brandy.”
+FOOTNOTES
+[A] This is the first Florence edition, 1481, by Niccolo
+di Lorenzo. Lord Peter’s collection of printed Dantes
+is worth inspection. It includes, besides the famous
+Aldine 8vo. of 1502, the Naples folio of 1477—“edizione
+rarissima,” according to Colomb. This copy has no
+history, and Mr. Parker’s private belief is that its
+present owner conveyed it away by stealth from somewhere
+or other. Lord Peter’s own account is that he “picked
+it up in a little place in the hills,” when making a
+walking-tour through Italy.
+[B] Lord Peter’s wits were wool-gathering. The book is
+in the possession of Earl Spencer. The Brocklebury copy
+is incomplete, the last five signatures being altogether
+missing, but is unique in possessing the colophon.
+[C] Apollonios Rhodios. Lorenzobodi Alopa. Firenze.
+of the Battersea Mystery did not prevent Lord Peter
+from securing this rare work before his departure for
+Corsica.
+[D] Lord Peter was not without authority for his
+opinion: “With respect to the alleged motive, it is of
+great importance to see whether there was a motive for
+committing such a crime, or whether there was not, or
+whether there is an improbability of its having been
+committed so strong as not to be overpowered by positive
+evidence. But _if there be any motive which can be
+assigned, I am bound to tell you that the inadequacy of
+that motive is of little importance_. We know, from the
+experience of criminal courts, that atrocious crimes of
+this sort have been committed from very slight motives;
+_not merely from malice and revenge_, but to gain a
+small pecuniary advantage, and to drive off for a time
+pressing difficulties.”—L. C. J. Campbell, summing up in
+Reg. v. Palmer, Shorthand Report, p. 308 C. C. C., May,
+1856, Sess. Pa. 5. (Italics mine. D. L. S.)",Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel,Dorothy L. Sayers,288,"['Julian Freke', 'Ballmeyer']"
+"
+
+It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy.  It cost one
+man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man
+the penalties of the law.  Yet there was certainly an element of
+comedy.  Well, you shall judge for yourselves.
+
+I remember the date very well, for it was in the same month that Holmes
+refused a knighthood for services which may perhaps some day be
+described.  I only refer to the matter in passing, for in my position
+of partner and confidant I am obliged to be particularly careful to
+avoid any indiscretion.  I repeat, however, that this enables me to fix
+the date, which was the latter end of June, 1902, shortly after the
+conclusion of the South African War.  Holmes had spent several days in
+bed, as was his habit from time to time, but he emerged that morning
+with a long foolscap document in his hand and a twinkle of amusement in
+his austere grey eyes.
+
+""There is a chance for you to make some money, friend Watson,"" said he.
+""Have you ever heard the name of Garrideb?""
+
+I admitted that I had not.
+
+""Well, if you can lay your hand upon a Garrideb, there's money in it.""
+
+""Why?""
+
+""Ah, that's a long story--rather a whimsical one, too.  I don't think
+in all our explorations of human complexities we have ever come upon
+anything more singular.  The fellow will be here presently for
+cross-examination, so I won't open the matter up till he comes.  But
+meanwhile, that's the name we want.""
+
+The telephone directory lay on the table beside me, and I turned over
+the pages in a rather hopeless quest.  But to my amazement there was
+this strange name in its due place.  I gave a cry of triumph.
+
+""Here you are, Holmes!  Here it is!""
+
+Holmes took the book from my hand.
+
+""'Garrideb, N.,'"" he read, ""'136 Little Ryder Street, W.'  Sorry to
+disappoint you, my dear Watson, but this is the man himself.  That is
+the address upon his letter.  We want another to match him.""
+
+Mrs. Hudson had come in with a card upon a tray.  I took it up and
+glanced at it.
+
+""Why, here it is!"" I cried in amazement.  ""This is a different initial.
+John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law, Moorville, Kansas, U.S.A.""
+
+Holmes smiled as he looked at the card.  ""I am afraid you must make yet
+another effort, Watson,"" said he.  ""This gentleman is also in the plot
+already, though I certainly did not expect to see him this morning.
+However, he is in a position to tell us a good deal which I want to
+know.""
+
+A moment later he was in the room.  Mr. John Garrideb, Counsellor at
+Law, was a short, powerful man with the round, fresh, clean-shaven face
+characteristic of so many American men of affairs.  The general effect
+was chubby and rather childlike, so that one received the impression of
+quite a young man with a broad set smile upon his face.  His eyes,
+however, were arresting.  Seldom in any human head have I seen a pair
+which bespoke a more intense inward life, so bright were they, so
+alert, so responsive to every change of thought.  His accent was
+American, but was not accompanied by any eccentricity of speech.
+
+""Mr. Holmes?"" he asked, glancing from one to the other.  ""Ah, yes!
+Your pictures are not unlike you, sir, if I may say so.  I believe you
+have had a letter from my namesake, Mr. Nathan Garrideb, have you not?""
+
+""Pray sit down,"" said Sherlock Holmes.  ""We shall, I fancy, have a good
+deal to discuss.""  He took up his sheets of foolscap.  ""You are, of
+course, the Mr. John Garrideb mentioned in this document.  But surely
+you have been in England some time?""
+
+""Why do you say that, Mr. Holmes?"" I seemed to read sudden suspicion in
+those expressive eyes.
+
+""Your whole outfit is English.""
+
+Mr. Garrideb forced a laugh.  ""I've read of your tricks, Mr. Holmes,
+but I never thought I would be the subject of them.  Where do you read
+that?""
+
+""The shoulder cut of your coat, the toes of your boots--could anyone
+doubt it?""
+
+""Well, well, I had no idea I was so obvious a Britisher.  But business
+brought me over here some time ago, and so, as you say, my outfit is
+nearly all London.  However, I guess your time is of value, and we did
+not meet to talk about the cut of my socks.  What about getting down to
+that paper you hold in your hand?""
+
+Holmes had in some way ruffled our visitor, whose chubby face had
+assumed a far less amiable expression.
+
+""Patience!  Patience, Mr. Garrideb!"" said my friend in a soothing
+voice.  ""Dr. Watson would tell you that these little digressions of
+mine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on the matter.
+But why did Mr. Nathan Garrideb not come with you?""
+
+""Why did he ever drag you into it at all?"" asked our visitor, with a
+sudden outflame of anger.  ""What in thunder had you to do with it?
+Here was a bit of professional business between two gentlemen, and one
+of them must needs call in a detective!  I saw him this morning, and he
+told me this fool-trick he had played me, and that's why I am here.
+But I feel bad about it, all the same.""
+
+""There was no reflection upon you, Mr. Garrideb.  It was simply zeal
+upon his part to gain your end--an end which is, I understand, equally
+vital for both of you.  He knew that I had means of getting
+information, and, therefore, it was very natural that he should apply
+to me.""
+
+Our visitor's angry face gradually cleared.
+
+""Well, that puts it different,"" said he.  ""When I went to see him this
+morning and he told me he had sent to a detective, I just asked for
+your address and came right away.  I don't want police butting into a
+private matter.  But if you are content just to help us find the man,
+there can be no harm in that.""
+
+""Well, that is just how it stands,"" said Holmes.  ""And now, sir, since
+you are here, we had best have a clear account from your own lips.  My
+friend here knows nothing of the details.""
+
+Mr. Garrideb surveyed me with not too friendly a gaze.
+
+""Need he know?"" he asked.
+
+""We usually work together.""
+
+""Well, there's no reason it should be kept a secret.  I'll give you the
+facts as short as I can make them.  If you came from Kansas I would not
+need to explain to you who Alexander Hamilton Garrideb was.  He made
+his money in real estate, and afterwards in the wheat pit at Chicago,
+but he spent it in buying up as much land as would make one of your
+counties, lying along the Arkansas River, west of Fort Dodge.  It's
+grazing-land and lumber-land and arable-land and mineralized-land, and
+just every sort of land that brings dollars to the man that owns it.
+
+""He had no kith nor kin--or, if he had, I never heard of it.  But he
+took a kind of pride in the queerness of his name.  That was what
+brought us together.  I was in the law at Topeka, and one day I had a
+visit from the old man, and he was tickled to death to meet another man
+with his own name.  It was his pet fad, and he was dead set to find out
+if there were any more Garridebs in the world.  'Find me another!' said
+he.  I told him I was a busy man and could not spend my life hiking
+round the world in search of Garridebs.  'None the less,' said he,
+'that is just what you will do if things pan out as I planned them.'  I
+thought he was joking, but there was a powerful lot of meaning in the
+words, as I was soon to discover.
+
+""For he died within a year of saying them, and he left a will behind
+him.  It was the queerest will that has ever been filed in the State of
+Kansas.  His property was divided into three parts, and I was to have
+one on condition that I found two Garridebs who would share the
+remainder.  It's five million dollars for each if it is a cent, but we
+can't lay a finger on it until we all three stand in a row.
+
+""It was so big a chance that I just let my legal practice slide and I
+set forth looking for Garridebs.  There is not one in the United
+States.  I went through it, sir, with a fine-toothed comb and never a
+Garrideb could I catch.  Then I tried the old country.  Sure enough
+there was the name in the London Telephone Directory.  I went after him
+two days ago and explained the whole matter to him.  But he is a lone
+man, like myself, with some women relations, but no men.  It says three
+adult men in the will.  So you see we still have a vacancy, and if you
+can help to fill it we will be very ready to pay your charges.""
+
+""Well, Watson,"" said Holmes, with a smile, ""I said it was rather
+whimsical, did I not?  I should have thought, sir, that your obvious
+way was to advertise in the agony columns of the papers.""
+
+""I have done that, Mr. Holmes.  No replies.""
+
+""Dear me!  Well, it is certainly a most curious little problem.  I may
+take a glance at it in my leisure.  By the way, it is curious that you
+should have come from Topeka.  I used to have a correspondent--he is
+dead now--old Dr. Lysander Starr, who was Mayor in 1890.""
+
+""Good old Dr. Starr!"" said our visitor.  ""His name is still honoured.
+Well, Mr. Holmes, I suppose all we can do is to report to you and let
+you know how we progress.  I reckon you will hear within a day or two.""
+With this assurance our American bowed and departed.
+
+Holmes had lit his pipe, and he sat for some time with a curious smile
+upon his face.
+
+""Well?"" I asked at last.
+
+""I am wondering, Watson--just wondering!""
+
+""At what?""
+
+Holmes took his pipe from his lips.
+
+""I was wondering, Watson, what on earth could be the object of this man
+in telling us such a rigmarole of lies.  I nearly asked him so--for
+there are times when a brutal frontal attack is the best policy--but I
+judged it better to let him think he had fooled us.  Here is a man with
+an English coat frayed at the elbow and trousers bagged at the knee
+with a year's wear, and yet by this document and by his own account he
+is a provincial American lately landed in London.  There have been no
+advertisements in the agony columns.  You know that I miss nothing
+there.  They are my favourite covert for putting up a bird, and I would
+never have overlooked such a cock pheasant as that.  I never knew a Dr.
+Lysander Starr of Topeka.  Touch him where you would he was false.  I
+think the fellow is really an American, but he has worn his accent
+smooth with years of London.  What is his game, then, and what motive
+lies behind this preposterous search for Garridebs?  It's worth our
+attention, for, granting that the man is a rascal, he is certainly a
+complex and ingenious one.  We must now find out if our other
+correspondent is a fraud also.  Just ring him up, Watson.""
+
+I did so, and heard a thin, quavering voice at the other end of the
+line.
+
+""Yes, yes, I am Mr. Nathan Garrideb.  Is Mr. Holmes there?  I should
+very much like to have a word with Mr. Holmes.""
+
+My friend took the instrument and I heard the usual syncopated dialogue.
+
+""Yes, he has been here.  I understand that you don't know him....  How
+long? ... Only two days! ... Yes, yes, of course, it is a most
+captivating prospect.  Will you be at home this evening?  I suppose
+your namesake will not be there?  ... Very good, we will come then, for
+I would rather have a chat without him....  Dr. Watson will come with
+me....  I understood from your note that you did not go out often....
+Well, we shall be round about six.  You need not mention it to the
+American lawyer....  Very good.  Good-bye!""
+
+It was twilight of a lovely spring evening, and even Little Ryder
+Street, one of the smaller offshoots from the Edgware Road, within a
+stone-cast of old Tyburn Tree of evil memory, looked golden and
+wonderful in the slanting rays of the setting sun.  The particular
+house to which we were directed was a large, old-fashioned, Early
+Georgian edifice with a flat brick face broken only by two deep bay
+windows on the ground floor.  It was on this ground floor that our
+client lived, and, indeed, the low windows proved to be the front of
+the huge room in which he spent his waking hours.  Holmes pointed as we
+passed to the small brass plate which bore the curious name.
+
+""Up some years, Watson,"" he remarked, indicating its discoloured
+surface.  ""It's his real name, anyhow, and that is something to note.""
+
+The house had a common stair, and there were a number of names painted
+in the hall some indicating offices and some private chambers.  It was
+not a collection of residential flats, but rather the abode of Bohemian
+bachelors.  Our client opened the door for us himself and apologized by
+saying that the woman in charge left at four o'clock.  Mr. Nathan
+Garrideb proved to be a very tall, loose-jointed, round-backed person,
+gaunt and bald, some sixty-odd years of age.  He had a cadaverous face,
+with the dull dead skin of a man to whom exercise was unknown.  Large
+round spectacles and a small projecting goat's beard combined with his
+stooping attitude to give him an expression of peering curiosity.  The
+general effect, however, was amiable, though eccentric.
+
+The room was as curious as its occupant.  It looked like a small
+museum.  It was both broad and deep, with cupboards and cabinets all
+round, crowded with specimens, geological and anatomical.  Cases of
+butterflies and moths flanked each side of the entrance.  A large table
+in the centre was littered with all sorts of debris, while the tall
+brass tube of a powerful microscope bristled up amongst them.  As I
+glanced round I was surprised at the universality of the man's
+interests.  Here was a case of ancient coins.  There was a cabinet of
+flint instruments.  Behind his central table was a large cupboard of
+fossil bones.  Above was a line of plaster skulls with such names as
+""Neanderthal,"" ""Heidelberg,"" ""Cromagnon"" printed beneath them.  It was
+clear that he was a student of many subjects.  As he stood in front of
+us now, he held a piece of chamois leather in his right hand with which
+he was polishing a coin.
+
+""Syracusan--of the best period,"" he explained, holding it up.  ""They
+degenerated greatly towards the end.  At their best I hold them
+supreme, though some prefer the Alexandrian school.  You will find a
+chair here, Mr. Holmes.  Pray allow me to clear these bones.  And you,
+sir--ah, yes, Dr. Watson--if you would have the goodness to put the
+Japanese vase to one side.  You see round me my little interests in
+life.  My doctor lectures me about never going out, but why should I go
+out when I have so much to hold me here?  I can assure you that the
+adequate cataloguing of one of those cabinets would take me three good
+months.""
+
+Holmes looked round him with curiosity.
+
+""But do you tell me that you _never_ go out?"" he said
+
+""Now and again I drive down to Sotheby's or Christie's.  Otherwise I
+very seldom leave my room.  I am not too strong, and my researches are
+very absorbing.  But you can imagine, Mr. Holmes, what a terrific
+shock--pleasant but terrific--it was for me when I heard of this
+unparalleled good fortune.  It only needs one more Garrideb to complete
+the matter, and surely we can find one.  I had a brother, but he is
+dead, and female relatives are disqualified.  But there must surely be
+others in the world.  I had heard that you handled strange cases, and
+that was why I sent to you.  Of course, this American gentleman is
+quite right, and I should have taken his advice first, but I acted for
+the best.""
+
+""I think you acted very wisely indeed,"" said Holmes.  ""But are you
+really anxious to acquire an estate in America?""
+
+""Certainly not, sir.  Nothing would induce me to leave my collection.
+But this gentleman has assured me that he will buy me out as soon as we
+have established our claim.  Five million dollars was the sum named.
+There are a dozen specimens in the market at the present moment which
+fill gaps in my collection, and which I am unable to purchase for want
+of a few hundred pounds.  Just think what I could do with five million
+dollars.  Why, I have the nucleus of a national collection.  I shall be
+the Hans Sloane of my age.""
+
+His eyes gleamed behind his great spectacles.  It was very clear that
+no pains would be spared by Mr. Nathan Garrideb in finding a namesake.
+
+""I merely called to make your acquaintance, and there is no reason why
+I should interrupt your studies,"" said Holmes.  ""I prefer to establish
+personal touch with those with whom I do business.  There are few
+questions I need ask, for I have your very clear narrative in my
+pocket, and I filled up the blanks when this American gentleman called.
+I understand that up to this week you were unaware of his existence.""
+
+""That is so.  He called last Tuesday.""
+
+""Did he tell you of our interview to-day?""
+
+""Yes, he came straight back to me.  He had been very angry.""
+
+""Why should he be angry?""
+
+""He seemed to think it was some reflection on his honour.  But he was
+quite cheerful again when he returned.""
+
+""Did he suggest any course of action?""
+
+""No, sir, he did not.""
+
+""Has he had, or asked for, any money from you?""
+
+""No, sir, never!""
+
+""You see no possible object he has in view?""
+
+""None, except what he states.""
+
+""Did you tell him of our telephone appointment?""
+
+""Yes, sir, I did.""
+
+Holmes was lost in thought.  I could see that he was puzzled.
+
+""Have you any articles of great value in your collection?""
+
+""No, sir.  I am not a rich man.  It is a good collection, but not a
+very valuable one.""
+
+""You have no fear of burglars?""
+
+""Not the least.""
+
+""How long have you been in these rooms?""
+
+""Nearly five years.""
+
+Holmes's cross-examination was interrupted by an imperative knocking at
+the door.  No sooner had our client unlatched it than the American
+lawyer burst excitedly into the room.
+
+""Here you are!"" he cried, waving a paper over his head.  ""I thought I
+should be in time to get you.  Mr. Nathan Garrideb, my congratulations!
+You are a rich man, sir.  Our business is happily finished and all is
+well.  As to you, Mr. Holmes, we can only say we are sorry if we have
+given you any useless trouble.""
+
+He handed over the paper to our client, who stood staring at a marked
+advertisement.  Holmes and I leaned forward and read it over his
+shoulder.  This is how it ran:
+
+  +-----------------------------------------------------+
+  |                                                     |
+  | HOWARD GARRIDEB.                                    |
+  |                                                     |
+  | Constructor of Agricultural Machinery.              |
+  |                                                     |
+  | Binders, reapers' steam and hand plows, drills,     |
+  | harrows, farmers' carts, buckboards, and all other  |
+  | appliances.                                         |
+  |                                                     |
+  | Estimates for Artesian Wells.                       |
+  |                                                     |
+  | Apply Grosvenor Buildings, Aston.                   |
+  |                                                     |
+  +-----------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+""Glorious!"" gasped our host.  ""That makes our third man.""
+
+""I had opened up inquiries in Birmingham,"" said the American, ""and my
+agent there has sent me this advertisement from a local paper.  We must
+hustle and put the thing through.  I have written to this man and told
+him that you will see him in his office to-morrow afternoon at four
+o'clock.""
+
+""You want _me_ to see him?""
+
+""What do you say, Mr. Holmes?  Don't you think it would be wiser?  Here
+am I, a wandering American with a wonderful tale.  Why should he
+believe what I tell him?  But you are a Britisher with solid
+references, and he is bound to take notice of what you say.  I would go
+with you if you wished, but I have a very busy day to-morrow, and I
+could always follow you if you are in any trouble.""
+
+""Well, I have not made such a journey for years.""
+
+""It is nothing, Mr. Garrideb.  I have figured out your connections.
+You leave at twelve and should be there soon after two.  Then you can
+be back the same night.  All you have to do is to see this man, explain
+the matter, and get an affidavit of his existence.  By the Lord!"" he
+added hotly, ""considering I've come all the way from the centre of
+America, it is surely little enough if you go a hundred miles in order
+to put this matter through.""
+
+""Quite so,"" said Holmes.  ""I think what this gentleman says is very
+true.""
+
+Mr. Nathan Garrideb shrugged his shoulders with a disconsolate air.
+""Well, if you insist I shall go,"" said he.  ""It is certainly hard for
+me to refuse you anything, considering the glory of hope that you have
+brought into my life.""
+
+""Then that is agreed,"" said Holmes, ""and no doubt you will let me have
+a report as soon as you can.""
+
+""I'll see to that,"" said the American.  ""Well,"" he added, looking at
+his watch, ""I'll have to get on.  I'll call to-morrow, Mr. Nathan, and
+see you off to Birmingham.  Coming my way, Mr. Holmes?  Well, then,
+good-bye, and we may have good news for you to-morrow night.""
+
+I noticed that my friend's face cleared when the American left the
+room, and the look of thoughtful perplexity had vanished.
+
+""I wish I could look over your collection, Mr. Garrideb,"" said he.  ""In
+my profession all sorts of odd knowledge comes useful, and this room of
+yours is a storehouse of it.""
+
+Our client shone with pleasure and his eyes gleamed from behind his big
+glasses.
+
+""I had always heard, sir, that you were a very intelligent man,"" said
+he.  ""I could take you round now, if you have the time.""
+
+""Unfortunately, I have not.  But these specimens are so well labelled
+and classified that they hardly need your personal explanation.  If I
+should be able to look in to-morrow, I presume that there would be no
+objection to my glancing over them?""
+
+""None at all.  You are most welcome.  The place will, of course, be
+shut up, but Mrs. Saunders is in the basement up to four o'clock and
+would let you in with her key.""
+
+""Well, I happen to be clear to-morrow afternoon.  If you would say a
+word to Mrs. Saunders it would be quite in order.  By the way, who is
+your house-agent?""
+
+Our client was amazed at the sudden question.
+
+""Holloway and Steele, in the Edgware Road.  But why?""
+
+""I am a bit of an archæologist myself when it comes to houses,"" said
+Holmes, laughing.  ""I was wondering if this was Queen Anne or Georgian.""
+
+""Georgian, beyond doubt.""
+
+""Really.  I should have thought a little earlier.  However, it is
+easily ascertained.  Well, good-bye, Mr. Garrideb, and may you have
+every success in your Birmingham journey.""
+
+The house-agent's was close by, but we found that it was closed for the
+day, so we made our way back to Baker Street.  It was not till after
+dinner that Holmes reverted to the subject.
+
+""Our little problem draws to a close,"" said he.  ""No doubt you have
+outlined the solution in your own mind.""
+
+""I can make neither head nor tail of it.""
+
+""The head is surely clear enough and the tail we should see to-morrow.
+Did you notice nothing curious about that advertisement?""
+
+""I saw that the word 'plough' was misspelt.""
+
+""Oh, you did notice that, did you?  Come, Watson, you improve all the
+time.  Yes, it was bad English but good American.  The printer had set
+it up as received.  Then the buckboards.  That is American also.  And
+artesian wells are commoner with them than with us.  It was a typical
+American advertisement, but purporting to be from an English firm.
+What do you make of that?""
+
+""I can only suppose that this American lawyer put it in himself.  What
+his object was I fail to understand.""
+
+""Well, there are alternative explanations.  Anyhow, he wanted to get
+this good old fossil up to Birmingham.  That is very clear.  I might
+have told him that he was clearly going on a wild-goose chase, but, on
+second thoughts, it seemed better to clear the stage by letting him go.
+To-morrow, Watson--well, to-morrow will speak for itself.""
+
+
+Holmes was up and out early.  When he returned at lunch-time I noticed
+that his face was very grave.
+
+""This is a more serious matter than I had expected, Watson,"" said he.
+""It is fair to tell you so, though I know it will only be an additional
+reason to you for running your head into danger.  I should know my
+Watson by now.  But there is danger, and you should know it.""
+
+""Well, it is not the first we have shared, Holmes.  I hope it may not
+be the last.  What is the particular danger this time?""
+
+""We are up against a very hard case.  I have identified Mr. John
+Garrideb, Counsellor at Law.  He is none other than 'Killer' Evans, of
+sinister and murderous reputation.""
+
+""I fear I am none the wiser.""
+
+""Ah, it is not part of your profession to carry about a portable
+Newgate Calendar in your memory.  I have been down to see friend
+Lestrade at the Yard.  There may be an occasional want of imaginative
+intuition down there, but they lead the world for thoroughness and
+method.  I had an idea that we might get on the track of our American
+friend in their records.  Sure enough, I found his chubby face smiling
+up at me from the Rogues' Portrait Gallery.  James Winter, _alias_
+Morecroft, _alias_ Killer Evans, was the inscription below.""  Holmes
+drew an envelope from his pocket.  ""I scribbled down a few points from
+his dossier.  Aged forty-four.  Native of Chicago.  Known to have shot
+three men in the States.  Escaped from penitentiary through political
+influence.  Came to London in 1893.  Shot a man over cards in a night
+club in the Waterloo Road in January, 1895.  Man died, but he was shown
+to have been the aggressor in the row.  Dead man was identified as
+Rodger Prescott, famous as forger and coiner in Chicago.  Killer Evans
+released in 1901.  Has been under police supervision since, but so far
+as known has led an honest life.  Very dangerous man, usually carries
+arms and is prepared to use them.  That is our bird, Watson--a sporting
+bird, as you must admit.""
+
+""But what is his game?""
+
+""Well, it begins to define itself.  I have been to the house-agents.
+Our client, as he told us, has been there five years.  It was unlet for
+a year before then.  The previous tenant was a gentleman at large named
+Waldron.  Waldron's appearance was well remembered at the office.  He
+had suddenly vanished and nothing more been heard of him.  He was a
+tall, bearded man with very dark features.  Now, Prescott, the man whom
+Killer Evans had shot, was, according to Scotland Yard, a tall, dark
+man with a beard.  As a working hypothesis, I think we may take it that
+Prescott, the American criminal, used to live in the very room which
+our innocent friend now devotes to his museum.  So at last we get a
+link, you see.""
+
+""And the next link?""
+
+""Well, we must go now and look for that.""
+
+He took a revolver from the drawer and handed it to me.
+
+""I have my old favourite with me.  If our Wild West friend tries to
+live up to his nickname, we must be ready for him.  I'll give you an
+hour for a siesta, Watson, and then I think it will be time for our
+Ryder Street adventure.""
+
+It was just four o'clock when we reached the curious apartment of
+Nathan Garrideb.  Mrs. Saunders, the caretaker, was about to leave, but
+she had no hesitation in admitting us, for the door shut with a spring
+lock and Holmes promised to see that all was safe before we left.
+Shortly afterwards the outer door closed, her bonnet passed the bow
+window, and we knew that we were alone in the lower floor of the house.
+Holmes made a rapid examination of the premises.  There was one
+cupboard in a dark corner which stood out a little from the wall.  It
+was behind this that we eventually crouched, while Holmes in a whisper
+outlined his intentions.
+
+""He wanted to get our amiable friend out of his room--that is very
+clear, and, as the collector never went out, it took some planning to
+do it.  The whole of this Garrideb invention was apparently for no
+other end.  I must say, Watson, that there is a certain devilish
+ingenuity about it, even if the queer name of the tenant did give him
+an opening which he could hardly have expected.  He wove his plot with
+remarkable cunning.""
+
+""But what did he want?""
+
+""Well, that is what we are here to find out.  It has nothing whatever
+to do with our client, so far as I can read the situation.  It is
+something connected with the man he murdered--the man who may have been
+his confederate in crime.  There is some guilty secret in the room.
+That is how I read it.  At first I thought our friend might have
+something in his collection more valuable than he knew--something worth
+the attention of a big criminal.  But the fact that Rodger Prescott of
+evil memory inhabited these rooms points to some deeper reason.  Well,
+Watson, we can but possess our souls in patience and see what the hour
+may bring.""
+
+That hour was not long in striking.  We crouched closer in the shadow
+as we heard the outer door open and shut.  Then came the sharp,
+metallic snap of a key, and the American was in the room.  He closed
+the door softly behind him, took a sharp glance around him to see that
+all was safe, threw off his overcoat, and walked up to the central
+table with the brisk manner of one who knows exactly what he has to do
+and how to do it.  He pushed the table to one side, tore up the square
+of carpet on which it rested, rolled it completely back, and then,
+drawing a jemmy from his inside pocket, he knelt down and worked
+vigorously upon the floor.  Presently we heard the sound of sliding
+boards, and an instant later a square had opened in the planks.  Killer
+Evans struck a match, lit a stump of candle, and vanished from our view.
+
+Clearly our moment had come.  Holmes touched my wrist as a signal, and
+together we stole across to the open trapdoor.  Gently as we moved,
+however, the old floor must have creaked under our feet, for the head
+of our American, peering anxiously round, emerged suddenly from the
+open space.  His face turned upon us with a glare of baffled rage,
+which gradually softened into a rather shamefaced grin as he realized
+that two pistols were pointed at his head.
+
+""Well, well!"" said he, coolly, as he scrambled to the surface.  ""I
+guess you have been one too many for me, Mr. Holmes.  Saw through my
+game, I suppose, and played me for a sucker from the first.  Well, sir,
+I hand it to you; you have me beat and----""
+
+In an instant he had whisked out a revolver from his breast and had
+fired two shots.  I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had
+been pressed to my thigh.  There was a crash as Holmes's pistol came
+down on the man's head.  I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor
+with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons.
+Then my friend's wiry arms were round me and he was leading me to a
+chair.
+
+""You're not hurt, Watson?  For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!""
+
+It was worth a wound--it was worth many wounds--to know the depth of
+loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask.  The clear, hard eyes
+were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking.  For the one
+and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great
+brain.  All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in
+that moment of revelation.
+
+""It's nothing, Holmes.  It's a mere scratch.""
+
+He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.
+
+""You are right,"" he cried, with an immense sigh of relief.  ""It is
+quite superficial.""  His face set like flint as he glared at our
+prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face.  ""By the Lord, it is as
+well for you.  If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of
+this room alive.  Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?""
+
+He had nothing to say for himself.  He only lay and scowled.  I leaned
+on Holmes's arm, and together we looked down into the small cellar
+which had been disclosed by the secret flap.  It was still illuminated
+by the candle which Evans had taken down with him.  Our eyes fell upon
+a mass of rusted machinery, great rolls of paper, a litter of bottles,
+and, neatly arranged upon a small table, a number of neat little
+bundles.
+
+""A printing press--a counterfeiter's outfit,"" said Holmes.
+
+""Yes, sir,"" said our prisoner, staggering slowly to his feet and then
+sinking into the chair.  ""The greatest counterfeiter London ever saw.
+That's Prescott's machine, and those bundles on the table are two
+thousand of Prescott's notes worth a hundred each and fit to pass
+anywhere.  Help yourselves, gentlemen.  Call it a deal and let me beat
+it.""
+
+Holmes laughed.
+
+""We don't do things like that, Mr. Evans.  There is no bolt-hole for
+you in this country.  You shot this man Prescott, did you not?""
+
+""Yes, sir, and got five years for it, though it was he who pulled on
+me.  Five years--when I should have had a medal the size of a soup
+plate.  No living man could tell a Prescott from a Bank of England, and
+if I hadn't put him out he would have flooded London with them.  I was
+the only one in the world who knew where he made them.  Can you wonder
+that I wanted to get to the place?  And can you wonder that when I
+found this crazy boob of a bug-hunter with the queer name squatting
+right on the top of it, and never quitting his room, I had to do the
+best I could to shift him?  Maybe I would have been wiser if I had put
+him away.  It would have been easy enough, but I'm a soft-hearted guy
+that can't begin shooting unless the other man has a gun also.  But
+say, Mr. Holmes, what have I done wrong, anyhow?  I've not used this
+plant.  I've not hurt this old stiff.  Where do you get me?""
+
+""Only attempted murder, so far as I can see,"" said Holmes.  ""But that's
+not our job.  They take that at the next stage.  What we wanted at
+present was just your sweet self.  Please give the Yard a call, Watson.
+It won't be entirely unexpected.""
+
+So those were the facts about Killer Evans and his remarkable invention
+of the three Garridebs.  We heard later that our poor old friend never
+got over the shock of his dissipated dreams.  When his castle in the
+air fell down, it buried him beneath the ruins.  He was last heard of
+at a nursing-home in Brixton.  It was a glad day at the Yard when the
+Prescott outfit was discovered, for, though they knew that it existed,
+they had never been able, after the death of the man, to find out where
+it was.  Evans had indeed done great service and caused several worthy
+C.I.D. men to sleep the sounder, for the counterfeiter stands in a
+class by himself as a public danger.  They would willingly have
+subscribed to that soup-plate medal of which the criminal had spoken,
+but an unappreciative Bench took a less favourable view, and the Killer
+returned to those shades from which he had just emerged.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+",The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,Arthur Conan Doyle,17,"['James Winter', 'Killer Evans']"
+"The D’Arblay Mystery
+by R. Austin Freeman
+CONTENTS
+I. The Pool in the Wood
+II. A Conference with Dr. Thorndyke
+III. The Doctor’s Revelations
+IV. Mr. Bendelow
+V. Inspector Follett’s Discovery
+VI. Marion D’Arblay at Home
+VII. Thorndyke Enlarges His Knowledge
+VIII. Simon Bendelow, Deceased
+IX. A Strange Misadventure
+X. Marion’s Peril
+XI. Arms and the Man
+XII. A Dramatic Discovery
+XIII. A Narrow Escape
+XIV. The Haunted Man
+XV. Thorndyke Proposes a New Move
+XVI. A Surprise for the Superintendent
+XVII. A Chapter of Surprises
+XVIII. The Last Act
+XIX. Thorndyke Disentangles the Threads
+CHAPTER I.
+The Pool in the Wood
+There are certain days in our lives which, as we recall them, seem to
+detach themselves from the general sequence as forming the
+starting-point of a new epoch. Doubtless, if we examined them
+critically, we should find them to be but links in a connected chain.
+But in a retrospective glance their continuity with the past is
+unperceived, and we see them in relation to the events which followed
+them rather than to those which went before.
+Such a day is that on which I look back through a vista of some twenty
+years; for on that day I was, suddenly and without warning, plunged
+into the very heart of a drama so strange and incredible that in the
+recital of its events I am conscious of a certain diffidence and
+hesitation.
+The picture that rises before me as I write is very clear and vivid. I
+see myself, a youngster of twenty-five, the owner of a brand-new
+medical diploma, wending my way gaily down Wood-lane, Highgate, at
+about eight o’clock on a sunny morning in early autumn. I was taking a
+day’s holiday, the last I was likely to enjoy for some time; for on
+the morrow I was to enter on the duties of my first professional
+appointment. I had nothing in view to-day but sheer, delightful
+idleness. It is true that a sketch-book in one pocket and a box of
+collecting-tubes in another suggested a bare hint of purpose in the
+expedition; but primarily it was a holiday, a pleasure jaunt, to which
+art and science were no more than possible sources of contributory
+satisfaction.
+At the lower end of the lane was the entrance to Church-yard Bottom
+Wood, then open and unguarded save by a few hurdles (it has since been
+enclosed and re-named “Queen’s Wood”). I entered and took my way along
+the broad, rough path, pleasantly conscious of the deep silence and
+seeming remoteness of this surviving remnant of the primeval forest of
+Britain, and letting my thoughts stray to the great plague-pit in the
+haunted wood that gave the place its name. The foliage of the oaks was
+still unchanged despite the waning of the year. The low-slanting
+sunlight spangled it with gold and made rosy patterns on the path,
+where lay a few prematurely fallen leaves; but in the hollows among
+the undergrowth traces of the night-mists lingered, shrouding
+tree-bole, bush, and fern in a mystery of gauzy blue.
+A turn of the path brought me suddenly within a few paces of a girl
+who was stooping at the entrance to a side-track, and seemed to be
+peering into the undergrowth as if looking for something. As I
+appeared, she stood up and looked round at me with a startled,
+apprehensive manner that caused me to look away and pass as if I had
+not seen her. But the single glance had shown me that she was a
+strikingly handsome girl—indeed, I should have used the word
+“beautiful”; that she seemed to be about my own age, and that she was
+evidently a lady.
+The apparition, pleasant as it was, set me speculating as I strode
+forward. It was early for a girl like this to be afoot in the woods,
+and alone, too. Not so very safe, either, as she had seemed to
+realize, judging by the start that my approach seemed to have given
+her. And what could it be that she was looking for? Had she lost
+something at some previous time and come to search for it before any
+one was about? It might be so. Certainly she was not a poacher, for
+there was nothing to poach, and she hardly had the manner or
+appearance of a naturalist.
+A little farther on I struck into a side path which led, as I knew, in
+the direction of a small pond. That pond I had had in my mind when I
+put the box of collecting-tubes in my pocket, and I now made my way to
+it as directly as the winding track would let me; but still it was not
+the pond or its inmates that occupied my thoughts, but the mysterious
+maiden whom I had left peering into the undergrowth. Perhaps if she
+had been less attractive I might have given her less consideration.
+But I was twenty-five; and if a man at twenty-five has not a keen and
+appreciative eye for a pretty girl, there must be something radically
+wrong with his mental make-up.
+In the midst of my reflections I came out into a largish opening in
+the wood, at the centre of which, in a slight hollow, was the pond: a
+small oval piece of water, fed by the trickle of a tiny stream, the
+continuation of which carried away the overflow towards the invisible
+valley.
+Approaching the margin, I brought out my box of tubes and, uncorking
+one, stooped and took a trial dip. When I held the glass tube against
+the light and examined its contents through my pocket lens I found
+that I was in luck. The “catch” included a green hydra, clinging to a
+rootlet of duckweed, several active water-fleas, a scarlet water-mite,
+and a beautiful sessile rotifer. Evidently this pond was a rich
+hunting ground.
+Delighted with my success, I corked the tube, put it away, and brought
+out another, with which I took a fresh dip. This was less successful,
+but the naturalist’s ardour and the collector’s cupidity being
+thoroughly aroused, I persevered, gradually enriching my collection
+and working my way slowly round the margin of the pond, forgetful of
+everything—even of the mysterious maiden—but the objects of my search;
+indeed, so engrossed was I with my pursuit of the minute denizens of
+this watery world that I failed to observe a much larger object which
+must have been in view most of the time. Actually, I did not see it
+until I was right over it. Then, as I was stooping to clear away the
+duckweed for a fresh dip, I found myself confronted by a human face,
+just below the surface and half-concealed by the pond-weed.
+It was a truly appalling experience. Utterly unprepared for this awful
+apparition, I was so overcome by astonishment and horror that I
+remained stooping, with motion arrested, as if petrified, staring at
+the thing in silence and hardly breathing. The face was that of a man
+of about fifty or a little more: a handsome, refined, rather
+intellectual face, with a moustache and Vandyke beard, and surmounted
+by a thickish growth of iron-grey hair. Of the rest of the body little
+was to be seen, for the duckweed and water-crowfoot had drifted over
+it, and I had no inclination to disturb them.
+Recovering somewhat from the shock of this sudden and fearful
+encounter, I stood up and rapidly considered what I had better do. It
+was clearly not for me to make any examination or meddle with the
+corpse in any way; indeed, when I considered the early hour and the
+remoteness of this solitary place, it seemed prudent to avoid the
+possibility of being seen there by any chance stranger. Thus
+reflecting, with my eyes still riveted on the pallid, impassive face,
+so strangely sleeping below the glassy surface and conveying to me
+somehow a dim sense of familiarity, I pocketed my tubes, and, turning
+back, stole away along the woodland track, treading lightly, almost
+stealthily, as one escaping from the scene of a crime.
+Very different was my mood, as I retraced my steps, from that in which
+I had come. Gone was all my gaiety and holiday spirit. The dread
+meeting had brought me into an atmosphere of tragedy, perchance even
+of something more than tragedy. With death I was familiar enough;
+death as it comes to men, prefaced by sickness or even by injury. But
+the dead man who lay in that still and silent pool in the heart of the
+wood had come there by none of the ordinary chances of normal life. It
+seemed barely possible that he could have fallen in by mere
+misadventure, for the pond was too shallow and its bottom shelved too
+gently for accidental drowning to be conceivable. Nor was the strange,
+sequestered spot without significance. It was just such a spot as
+might well be chosen by one who sought to end his life—or another’s.
+I had nearly reached the main path when an abrupt turn of the narrow
+track brought me once more face to face with the girl whose existence
+I had till now forgotten. She was still peering into the dense
+undergrowth as if searching for something; and again, on my sudden
+appearance, she turned a startled face towards me. But this time I did
+not look away. Something in her face struck me with a nameless fear.
+It was not only that she was pale and haggard, but that her expression
+betokened anxiety and even terror. As I looked at her I understood in
+a flash the dim sense of familiarity of which I had been conscious in
+the pallid face beneath the water. It was her face that it had
+recalled.
+With my heart in my mouth, I halted and, taking off my cap, addressed
+her.
+“Pray pardon me; you seem to be searching for something. Can I help
+you in any way or give you any information?”
+She looked at me a little shyly and, as I thought, with slight
+distrust, but she answered civilly enough, though rather stiffly:
+“Thank you, but I am afraid you can’t help me. I am not in need of any
+assistance.”
+This, under ordinary circumstances, would have brought the interview
+to an abrupt end. But the circumstances were not ordinary, and as she
+made as if to pass me I ventured to persist.
+“Please,” I urged, “don’t think me impertinent, but would you mind
+telling me what you are looking for? I have a reason for asking, and
+it isn’t curiosity.”
+She reflected for a few moments before replying, and I feared that she
+was about to administer another snub. Then, without looking at me, she
+replied:
+“I am looking for my father” (and at these words my heart sank). “He
+did not come home last night. He left Hornsey to come home, and he
+would ordinarily have come by the path through the wood. He always
+came that way from Hornsey. So I am looking through the wood in case
+he missed his way, or was taken ill, or——”
+Here the poor girl suddenly broke off, and, letting her dignity go,
+burst into tears. I huskily murmured a few indistinct words of
+condolence, but, in truth, I was little less affected than she was. It
+was a terrible position, but there was no escape from it. The corpse
+that I had just seen was almost certainly her father’s corpse. At any
+rate, the question whether it was or not had to be settled now, and
+settled by me—and her. That was quite clear; but yet I could not screw
+my courage up to the point of telling her. While I was hesitating,
+however, she forced the position by a direct question.
+“You said just now that you had a reason for asking what I was
+searching for. Would it be——?” She paused and looked at me inquiringly
+as she wiped her eyes.
+I made a last, frantic search for some means of breaking the horrid
+news to her. Of course there was none. Eventually I stammered:
+“The reason I asked was—er—the fact is that I have just seen the body
+of a man lying——”
+“Where?” she demanded. “Show me the place!”
+Without replying, I turned and began quickly to retrace my steps along
+the narrow track. A few minutes brought me to the opening in which the
+pond was situated, and I was just beginning to skirt the margin,
+closely followed by my companion, when I heard her utter a low,
+gasping cry. The next moment she had passed me and was running along
+the bank towards a spot where I could now see the toe of a boot just
+showing through the duckweed. I stopped short and watched her with my
+heart in my throat. Straight to the fatal spot she ran, and for a
+moment stood on the brink, stooping over the weedy surface. Then, with
+a terrible, wailing cry, she stepped into the water.
+Instantly I ran forward and waded into the pond to her side. Already
+she had her arms round the dead man’s neck and was raising the face
+above the surface. I saw that she meant to bring the body ashore, and,
+useless as it was, it seemed a natural thing to do. Silently I passed
+my arms under the corpse and lifted it; and as she supported the head
+we bore it through the shallows and up the bank, where I laid it down
+gently in the high grass.
+Not a word had been spoken, nor was there any question that need be
+asked. The pitiful tale told itself only too plainly. As I stood
+looking with swimming eyes at the tragic group, a whole history seemed
+to unfold itself; a history of love and companionship, of a happy,
+peaceful past made sunny by mutual affection, shattered in an instant
+by the hideous present, with its portent of a sad and lonely future.
+She had sat down on the grass and taken the dead head on her lap,
+tenderly wiping the face with her handkerchief, smoothing the grizzled
+hair and crooning or moaning words of endearment into the insensible
+ears. She had forgotten my presence: indeed, she was oblivious of
+everything but the still form that bore the outward semblance of her
+father.
+Some minutes passed thus. I stood a little apart, cap in hand, more
+moved than I had ever been in my life, and, naturally enough,
+unwilling to break in upon a grief so overwhelming and, as it seemed
+to me, so sacred. But presently it began to be borne in on me that
+something had to be done. The body would have to be removed from this
+place, and the proper authorities ought to be notified. Still, it was
+some time before I could gather courage to intrude on her sorrow; to
+profane her grief with the sordid realities of everyday life. At last
+I braced myself up for the effort, and addressed her.
+“Your father,” I said gently—I could not refer to him as “the
+body”—“will have to be taken away from here; and the proper persons
+will have to be informed of what has happened. Shall I go alone, or
+will you come with me? I don’t like to leave you here.”
+She looked up at me, and to my relief answered me with quiet
+composure:
+“I can’t leave him here all alone. I must stay with him until he is
+taken away. Do you mind telling whoever ought to be told”—like me, she
+instinctively avoided the word “police”—“and making what arrangements
+are necessary?”
+There was nothing more to be said; and loath as I was to leave her
+alone with the dead, my heart assented to her decision. In her place,
+I should have had the same feeling. Accordingly, with a promise to
+return as quickly as I could, I stole away along the woodland track.
+When I turned to take a last glance at her before plunging into the
+wood, she was once more leaning over the head that lay in her lap,
+looking with fond grief into the impassive face and stroking the dank
+hair.
+My intention had been to go straight to the police-station, when I had
+ascertained its whereabouts, and make my report to the officer in
+charge. But a fortunate chance rendered this proceeding unnecessary,
+for, at the moment when I emerged from the top of Wood-lane, I saw a
+police-officer, mounted on a bicycle—a road patrol, as I assumed him
+to be—approaching along the Archway-road. I hailed him to stop, and as
+he dismounted and stepped on to the footway I gave him a brief account
+of the finding of the body and my meeting with the daughter of the
+dead man. He listened with calm, business-like interest, and, when I
+had finished, said:
+“We had better get the body removed as quickly as possible. I will run
+along to the station and get the wheeled stretcher. There is no need
+for you to come. If you will go back and wait for us at the entrance
+to the wood that will save time. We shall be there within a quarter of
+an hour.”
+I agreed gladly to this arrangement, and when I had seen him mount his
+machine and shoot away along the road, I turned back down the Lane and
+re-entered the wood. Before taking up my post, I walked quickly down
+the path and along the track to the opening by the pond. My new friend
+was sitting just as I had left her, but she looked up as I emerged
+from the track and advanced towards her. I told her briefly what had
+happened and was about to retire when she asked: “Will they take him
+to our house?”
+“I am afraid not,” I replied. “There will have to be an inquiry by the
+coroner, and until that is finished his body will have to remain in
+the mortuary.”
+“I was afraid it might be so,” she said with quiet resignation; and as
+she spoke she looked down with infinite sadness at the waxen face in
+her lap. A good deal relieved by her reasonable acceptance of the
+painful necessities, I turned back and made my way to the rendezvous
+at the entrance to the wood.
+As I paced to and fro on the shady path, keeping a look-out up the
+Lane, my mind was busy with the tragedy to which I had become a party.
+It was a grievous affair. The passionate grief which I had witnessed
+spoke of no common affection. On one life at least this disaster had
+inflicted irreparable loss, and there were probably others on whom the
+blow had yet to fall. But it was not only a grievous affair; it was
+highly mysterious. The dead man had apparently been returning home at
+night in a customary manner and by a familiar way. That he could have
+strayed by chance from the open, well-worn path into the recesses of
+the wood was inconceivable, while the hour and the circumstances made
+it almost as incredible that he should have been wandering in the wood
+by choice. And again, the water in which he had been lying was quite
+shallow; so shallow as to rule out accidental drowning as an
+impossibility.
+What could the explanation be? There seemed to be but three
+possibilities, and two of them could hardly be entertained. The idea
+of intoxication I rejected at once. The girl was evidently a lady, and
+her father was presumably a gentleman, who would not be likely to be
+wandering abroad drunk; nor could a man who was sober enough to have
+reached the pond have been so helpless as to be drowned in its shallow
+waters. To suppose that he might have fallen into the water in a fit
+was to leave unexplained the circumstance of his being in that remote
+place at such an hour. The only possibility that remained was that of
+suicide; and I could not but admit that some of the appearances seemed
+to support that view. The solitary place—more solitary still at
+night—was precisely such as an intending suicide might be expected to
+seek; the shallow water presented no inconsistency; and when I
+recalled how I had found his daughter searching the wood with evident
+foreboding of evil, I could not escape the feeling that the dreadful
+possibility had not been entirely unforeseen.
+My meditations had reached this point when, as I turned once more
+towards the entrance and looked up the Lane, I saw two constables
+approaching, trundling a wheeled stretcher, while a third man,
+apparently an inspector, walked by its side. As the little procession
+reached the entrance, and I turned back to show the way, the latter
+joined me and began at once to interrogate me. I gave him my name,
+address, and occupation, and followed this with a rapid sketch of the
+facts as known to me, which he jotted down in a large notebook, and he
+then said:
+“As you are a doctor, you can probably tell me how long the man had
+been dead when you first saw him.”
+“By the appearance and the rigidity,” I replied, “I should say about
+nine or ten hours; which agrees pretty well with the account his
+daughter gave of his movements.”
+The inspector nodded. “The man and the young lady,” said he, “are
+strangers to you, I understand. I suppose you haven’t picked up
+anything that would throw any light on the affair?”
+“No,” I answered; “I know nothing but what I have told you.”
+“Well,” he remarked, “it’s a queer business. It is a queer place for a
+man to be in at night, and he must have gone there of his own accord.
+But there, it is no use guessing. It will all be thrashed out at the
+inquest.”
+As he reached this discreet conclusion, we came out into the opening
+and I heard him murmur very feelingly, “Dear, dear! Poor thing.” The
+girl seemed hardly to have changed her position since I had last seen
+her, but she now tenderly laid the dead head on the grass and rose as
+we approached; and I saw with great concern that her skirts were
+soaked almost from the waist downwards.
+The officer took off his cap and as he drew near looked down gravely
+but with an inquisitive eye at the dead man. Then he turned to the
+girl and said in a singularly gentle and deferential manner:
+“This is a very terrible thing, Miss. A dreadful thing. I assure you
+that I am more sorry for you than I can tell; and I hope you will
+forgive me for having to intrude on your sorrow by asking questions. I
+won’t trouble you more than I can help.”
+“Thank you,” she replied quietly. “Of course I realize your position.
+What do you want me to tell you?”
+“I understand,” replied the inspector, “that this poor gentleman was
+your father. Would you mind telling me who he was and where he lived
+and giving me your own name and address?”
+“My father’s name,” she answered, “was Julius D’Arblay. His private
+address was Ivy Cottage, North Grove, Highgate. His studio and
+workshop, where he carried on the profession of a modeller, is in
+Abbey-road, Hornsey. My name is Marion D’Arblay, and I lived with my
+father. He was a widower and I was his only child.”
+As she concluded, with a slight break in her voice, the inspector
+shook his head, and again murmured, “Dear, dear,” as he rapidly
+entered her answers in his notebook. Then, in a deeply apologetic
+tone, he asked:
+“Would you mind telling us what you know as to how this happened?”
+“I know very little,” she replied. “As he did not come home last
+night, I went to the studio this morning quite early to see if he was
+there. He sometimes stayed there all night when he was working very
+late. The woman who lives in the adjoining house and looks after the
+studio, told me that he had been working late last night, but that he
+left to come home soon after ten. He always used to come through the
+wood because it was the shortest way and the most pleasant. So when I
+learned that he had started to come home, I came to the wood to see if
+I could find any traces of him. Then I met this gentleman, and he told
+me that he had seen a dead man in the wood, and——” Here she suddenly
+broke down, and, sobbing passionately, flung out her hand towards the
+corpse.
+The inspector shut his notebook and, murmuring some indistinct words
+of sympathy, nodded to the constables, who had drawn up the stretcher
+a few paces away and lifted off the cover. On this silent instruction
+they approached the body, and, with the inspector’s assistance and
+mine, lifted it on to the stretcher without removing the latter from
+its carriage. As they picked up the cover the inspector turned to Miss
+D’Arblay and said gently but finally: “You had better not come with
+us. We must take him to the mortuary, but you will see him again after
+the inquest, when he will be brought to your house if you wish it.”
+She made no objection; but as the constables approached with the cover
+she stooped over the stretcher and kissed the dead man on the
+forehead. Then she turned away; the cover was placed in position; the
+inspector and the constables saluted reverently, and the stretcher was
+wheeled away along the narrow track.
+For some time after it had gone, we stood in silence at the margin of
+the pond with our eyes fixed on the place where it had disappeared. I
+considered in no little embarrassment what was to be done next. It was
+most desirable that Miss D’Arblay should be got home as soon as
+possible, and I did not at all like the idea of her going alone, for
+her appearance, with her drenched skirts and her dazed and rather wild
+expression, was such as to attract unpleasant attention. But I was a
+total stranger to her, and I felt a little shy of pressing my company
+on her. However, it seemed a plain duty, and, as I saw her shiver
+slightly, I said:
+“You had better go home now and change your clothes. They are very
+wet. And you have some distance to go.”
+She looked down at her soaked dress and then she looked at me.
+“You are rather wet, too,” she said. “I am afraid I have given you a
+great deal of trouble.”
+“It is little enough that I have been able to do,” I replied. “But you
+must really go home now; and if you will let me walk with you and see
+you safely to your house, I shall be much more easy in my mind.”
+“Thank you,” she replied. “It is kind of you to offer to see me home,
+and I am glad not to have to go alone.”
+With this, we walked together to the edge of the opening, and
+proceeded in single file along the track to the main path, and so out
+into Wood-lane, at the top of which we crossed the Archway Road into
+Southwood-lane. We walked mostly in silence, for I was unwilling to
+disturb her meditations with attempts at conversation, which could
+only have seemed banal or impertinent. For her part, she appeared to
+be absorbed in reflections the nature of which I could easily guess,
+and her grief was too fresh for any thought of distraction. But I
+found myself speculating with profound discomfort on what might be
+awaiting her at home. It is true that her own desolate state as an
+orphan without brothers or sisters had its compensation in that there
+was no wife to whom the dreadful tidings had to be imparted, nor any
+fellow orphans to have their bereavement broken to them. But there
+must be some one who cared; or, if there were not, what a terrible
+loneliness would reign in that house!
+“I hope,” I said, as we approached our destination, “that there is
+some one at home to share your grief and comfort you a little.”
+“There is,” she replied. “I was thinking of her, and how grievous it
+will be to have to tell her: an old servant and a dear friend. She was
+my mother’s nurse when the one was a child and the other but a young
+girl. She came to our house when my mother married, and has managed
+our home ever since. This will be a terrible shock to her, for she
+loved my father dearly—every one loved him who knew him. And she has
+been like a mother to me since my own mother died. I don’t know how I
+shall break it to her.”
+Her voice trembled as she concluded and I was deeply troubled to think
+of the painful homecoming that loomed before her; but still it was a
+comfort to know that her sorrow would be softened by sympathy and
+loving companionship, not heightened by the empty desolation that I
+had feared.
+A few minutes more brought us to the little square—which, by the way,
+was triangular—and to a pleasant little old-fashioned house, on the
+gate of which was painted the name, “Ivy Cottage.” In the bay window
+on the ground floor I observed a formidable-looking elderly woman, who
+was watching our approach with evident curiosity; which, as we drew
+nearer and the state of our clothing became visible, gave place to
+anxiety and alarm. Then she disappeared suddenly, to reappear a few
+moments later at the open door, where she stood viewing us both with
+consternation and me in particular with profound disfavour.
+At the gate Miss D’Arblay halted and held out her hand. “Good-bye,”
+she said. “I must thank you some other time for all your kindness;”
+and with this she turned abruptly, and, opening the gate, walked up
+the little paved path to the door where the old woman was waiting.
+CHAPTER II.
+A Conference with Dr. Thorndyke
+The sound of the closing door seemed, as it were, to punctuate my
+experiences and to mark the end of a particular phase. So long as Miss
+D’Arblay was present, my attention was entirely taken up by her grief
+and distress; but now that I was alone I found myself considering at
+large the events of this memorable morning. What was the meaning of
+this tragedy? How came this man to be lying dead in that pool? No
+common misadventure seemed to fit the case. A man may easily fall into
+deep water and be drowned; may step over a quay-side in the dark or
+trip on a mooring-rope or ring-bolt. But here there was nothing to
+suggest any possible accident. The water was hardly two feet deep
+where the body was lying and much less close to the edge. If he had
+walked in in the dark, he would simply have walked out again. Besides,
+how came he there at all? The only explanation that was intelligible
+was that he went there with the deliberate purpose of making away with
+himself.
+I pondered this explanation, and found myself unwilling to accept it,
+notwithstanding that his daughter’s presence in the wood, her obvious
+apprehension, and her terrified searching among the underwood seemed
+to hint at a definite expectation on her part. But yet that
+possibility was discounted by what his daughter had told me of him.
+Little as she had said, it was clear that he was a man universally
+beloved. Such men, in making the world a pleasant place for others,
+make it pleasant for themselves. They are usually happy men; and happy
+men do not commit suicide. Yet, if the idea of suicide were rejected,
+what was left? Nothing but an insoluble mystery.
+I turned the problem over again and again as I sat on the top of the
+tram (where I could keep my wet trousers out of sight), not as a
+matter of mere curiosity but as one in which I was personally
+concerned. Friendships spring up into sudden maturity under great
+emotional stress. I had known Marion D’Arblay but an hour or two, but
+they were hours which neither of us would ever forget; and in that
+brief space she had become to me a friend who was entitled, as of
+right, to sympathy and service. So, as I revolved in my mind the
+mystery of this man’s death, I found myself thinking of him not as a
+chance stranger but as the father of a friend; and thus it seemed to
+devolve upon me to elucidate the mystery, if possible.
+It is true that I had no special qualifications for investigating an
+obscure case of this kind, but yet I was better equipped than most
+young medical men. For my hospital, St. Margaret’s, though its medical
+school was but a small one, had one great distinction; the chair of
+Medical Jurisprudence was occupied by one of the greatest living
+authorities on the subject, Dr. John Thorndyke. To him and his
+fascinating lectures my mind naturally turned as I ruminated on the
+problem; and presently, when I found myself unable to evolve any
+reasonable suggestion, the idea occurred to me to go and lay the facts
+before the great man himself.
+Once started, the idea took full possession of me, and I decided to
+waste no time but to seek him at once. This was not his day for
+lecturing at the hospital, but I could find his address in our school
+calendar; and as my means, though modest, allowed of my retaining him
+in a regular way, I need have no scruples as to occupying his time. I
+looked at my watch. It was even now but a little past noon. I had time
+to change and get an early lunch and still make my visit while the day
+was young.
+A couple of hours later found me walking slowly down the pleasant,
+tree-shaded footway of King’s Bench-walk in the Inner Temple, looking
+up at the numbers above the entries. Dr. Thorndyke’s number was 5a,
+which I presently discovered inscribed on the keystone of a fine,
+dignified brick portico of the seventeenth century, on the jamb
+whereof was painted his name as the occupant of the “1st pair.” I
+accordingly ascended the first pair, and was relieved to find that my
+teacher was apparently at home; for a massive outer door, above which
+his name was painted, stood wide open, revealing an inner door,
+furnished with a small, brilliantly burnished brass knocker, on which
+I ventured to execute a modest rat-tat. Almost immediately the door
+was opened by a small, clerical-looking gentleman who wore a black
+linen apron—and ought, from his appearance, to have had black gaiters
+to match—and who regarded me with a look of polite inquiry.
+“I wanted to see Dr. Thorndyke,” said I, adding discreetly, “on a
+matter of professional business.”
+The little gentleman beamed on me benevolently. “The doctor,” said he,
+“has gone to lunch at his club, but he will be coming in quite
+shortly. Would you like to wait for him?”
+“Thank you,” I replied, “I should, if you think I shall not be
+disturbing him.”
+The little gentleman smiled; that is to say, the multitudinous
+wrinkles that covered his face arranged themselves into a sort of
+diagram of geniality. It was the crinkliest smile that I have ever
+seen, but a singularly pleasant one.
+“The doctor,” said he, “is never disturbed by professional business.
+No man is ever disturbed by having to do what he enjoys doing.”
+As he spoke, his eyes turned unconsciously to the table, on which
+stood a microscope, a tray of slides and mounting material, and a
+small heap of what looked like dressmaker’s cuttings.
+“Well,” I said, “don’t let me disturb you, if you are busy.”
+He thanked me very graciously, and, having installed me in an easy
+chair, sat down at the table and resumed his occupation, which
+apparently consisted in isolating fibres from the various samples of
+cloth and mounting them as microscopic specimens. I watched him as he
+worked, admiring his neat, precise, unhurried methods, and speculating
+on the purpose of his proceedings; whether he was preparing what one
+might call museum specimens, to be kept for reference, or whether
+these preparations were related to some particular case. I was
+considering whether it would be admissible for me to ask a question on
+the subject when he paused in his work, assuming a listening attitude,
+with one hand—holding a mounting-needle—raised and motionless.
+“Here comes the doctor,” said he.
+I listened intently and became aware of footsteps, very faint and far
+away, and only barely perceptible. But my clerical friend—who must
+have had the auditory powers of a watch-dog—had no doubts as to their
+identity, for he began quietly to pack all his material on the tray.
+Meanwhile the footsteps drew nearer; they turned in at the entry and
+ascended the “first pair,” by which time my crinkly-faced acquaintance
+had the door open. The next moment Dr. Thorndyke entered and was duly
+informed that “a gentleman was waiting to see” him.
+“You under-estimate my powers of observation, Polton,” he informed his
+subordinate, with a smile. “I can see the gentleman distinctly with
+the naked eye. How do you do, Gray?”—and he shook my hand cordially.
+“I hope I haven’t come at the wrong time, sir,” said I. “If I have,
+you must adjourn me. But I want to consult you about a rather queer
+case.”
+“Good,” said Thorndyke. “There is no wrong time for a queer case. Let
+me hang up my hat and fill my pipe and then you can proceed to make my
+flesh creep.”
+He disposed of his hat, and when Mr. Polton had departed with his tray
+of material he filled his pipe, laid a note block on the table, and
+invited me to begin; whereupon I gave him a detailed account of what
+had befallen me in the course of the morning, to which he listened
+with close attention, jotting down an occasional note, but not
+interrupting my narrative. When I had finished he read through his
+notes and then said:
+“It is, of course, evident to you that all the appearances point to
+suicide. Have you any reasons, other than those you have mentioned,
+for rejecting that view?”
+“I am afraid not,” I replied gloomily. “But you have always taught us
+to beware of too ready acceptance of the theory of suicide in doubtful
+cases.”
+He nodded approvingly. “Yes,” he said, “that is a cardinal principle
+in medico-legal practice. All other possibilities should be explored
+before suicide is accepted. But our difficulty in this case is that we
+have hardly any of the relevant facts. The evidence at the inquest may
+make everything clear. On the other hand it may leave things obscure.
+But what is your concern with the case? You are merely a witness to
+the finding of the body. The parties are all strangers to you, are
+they not?”
+“They were,” I replied. “But I feel that some one ought to keep an eye
+on things for Miss D’Arblay’s sake, and circumstances seem to have put
+the duty on me. So, as I can afford to pay any costs that are likely
+to be incurred, I proposed to ask you to undertake the case—on a
+strict business footing, you know, sir.”
+“When you speak of my undertaking the case,” said he, “what is it that
+is in your mind? What do you want me to do in the matter?”
+“I want you to take any measures that you may think necessary,” I
+replied, “to ascertain definitely, if possible, how this man came by
+his death.”
+He reflected awhile before answering. At length he said:
+“The examination of the body will be conducted by the person whom the
+coroner appoints, probably the police surgeon. I will write to the
+coroner for permission to be present at the post-mortem examination.
+He will certainly make no difficulties. I will also write to the
+police surgeon, who is sure to be quite helpful. If the post-mortem
+throws no light on the case—in fact, in any event—I will instruct a
+first-class shorthand writer to attend at the inquest and make a
+verbatim report of the evidence; and you, of course, will be present
+as a witness. That, I think, is about all that we can do at present.
+When we have heard all the evidence, including that furnished by the
+body itself, we shall be able to judge whether the case calls for
+further investigation. How will that do?”
+“It is all that I could wish,” I answered, “and I am most grateful to
+you, sir, for giving your time to the case. I hope you don’t think I
+have been unduly meddlesome.”
+“Not in the least,” he replied warmly. “I think you have shown a very
+proper spirit in the way you have interpreted your neighbourly duties
+to this poor, bereaved girl, who, apparently, has no one else to watch
+over her interests. And I take it as a compliment from an old pupil
+that you should seek my help.”
+I thanked him again, very sincerely, and had risen to take my leave,
+when he held up his hand.
+“Sit down, Gray, if you are not in a hurry,” said he. “I hear the
+pleasant clink of crockery. Let us follow the example of the eminent
+Mr. Pepys—though it isn’t always a safe thing to do—and taste of the
+‘China drinke called Tee,’ while you tell me what you have been doing
+since you went forth from the fold.”
+It struck me that the sense of hearing was uncommonly well developed
+in this establishment, for I had heard nothing; but a few moments
+later the door opened very quietly, and Mr. Polton entered with a tray
+on which was a very trim, and even dainty, tea service, which he set
+out noiselessly and with a curious neatness of hand, on a small table
+placed conveniently between our chairs.
+“Thank you, Polton,” said Thorndyke. “I see you diagnosed my visitor
+as a professional brother.”
+Polton crinkled benevolently and admitted that he “thought the
+gentleman looked like one of us’; and with this he melted away,
+closing the door behind him without a sound.
+“Well,” said Thorndyke, as he handed me my tea-cup, “what have you
+been doing with yourself since you left the hospital?”
+“Principally looking for a job,” I replied; “and now I’ve found one—a
+temporary job, though I don’t know how temporary. To-morrow I take
+over the practice of a man named Cornish in Mecklenburgh-square.
+Cornish is a good deal run down, and wants to take a quiet holiday on
+the East Coast. He doesn’t know how long he will be away. It depends
+on his health; but I have told him that I am prepared to stay as long
+as he wants me to. I hope I shan’t make a mess of the job, but I know
+nothing of general practice.”
+“You will soon pick it up,” said Thorndyke; “but you had better get
+your principal to show you the ropes before he goes, particularly the
+dispensing and bookkeeping. The essentials of practice, you know, but
+the little practical details have to be learnt, and you are doing well
+to make your first plunge into professional life in a practice that is
+a going concern. The experience will be valuable when you make a start
+on your own account.”
+On this plane of advice and comment our talk proceeded until I thought
+that I had stayed long enough, when I once more rose to depart. Then,
+as we were shaking hands, Thorndyke reverted to the object of my
+visit.
+“I shall not appear in this case unless the coroner wishes me to,”
+said he. “I shall consult with the official medical witness, and he
+will probably give our joint conclusions in his evidence; unless we
+should fail to agree, which is very unlikely. But you will be present,
+and you had better attend closely to the evidence of all the witnesses
+and let me have your account of the inquest as well as the shorthand
+writer’s report. Good-bye, Gray. You won’t be far away if you should
+want my help or advice.”
+I left the precincts of the Temple in a much more satisfied frame of
+mind. The mystery which seemed to me to surround the death of Julius
+D’Arblay would be investigated by a supremely competent observer, and
+I need not further concern myself with it. Perhaps there was no
+mystery at all. Possibly the evidence at the inquest would supply a
+simple explanation. At any rate, it was out of my hands and into those
+of one immeasurably more capable and I could now give my undivided
+attention to the new chapter of my life that was to open on the
+morrow.
+CHAPTER III.
+The Doctor’s Revelations
+It was in the evening of the very day on which I took up my duties at
+number 61 Mecklenburgh-square that the little blue paper was delivered
+summoning me to attend at the inquest on the following day.
+Fortunately, Dr. Cornish’s practice was not of a highly strenuous
+type, and the time of year tended to a small visiting list, so that I
+had no difficulty in making the necessary arrangements. In fact, I
+made them so well that I was the first to arrive at the little
+building in which the inquiry was to be held and was admitted by the
+caretaker to the empty room. A few minutes later, however, the
+inspector made his appearance, and while I was exchanging a few words
+with him the jury began to straggle in, followed by the reporters, a
+few spectators and witnesses, and finally the coroner, who immediately
+took his place at the head of the table and prepared to open the
+proceedings.
+At this moment I observed Miss D’Arblay standing hesitatingly in the
+doorway and looking into the room as if reluctant to enter. I at once
+rose and went to her, and as I approached she greeted me with a
+friendly smile and held out her hand; and I then perceived, lurking
+just outside, a tall, black-apparelled woman, whose face I recognized
+as that which I had seen at the window.
+“This,” said Miss D’Arblay, presenting me, “is my friend, Miss Boler,
+of whom I spoke to you. This, Arabella dear, is the gentleman who was
+so kind to me on that dreadful day.”
+I bowed deferentially, and Miss Boler recognized my existence by a
+majestic inclination, remarking that she remembered me. As the coroner
+now began his preliminary address to the jury, I hastened to find
+three chairs near the table, and, having inducted the ladies into two
+of them, took the third myself, next to Miss D’Arblay. The coroner and
+the jury now rose and went out to the adjacent mortuary to view the
+body, and during their absence I stole an occasional critical glance
+at my fair friend.
+Marion D’Arblay was, as I have said, a strikingly handsome girl. The
+fact seemed now to dawn on me afresh, as a new discovery; for the
+harrowing circumstances of our former meeting had so preoccupied me
+that I had given little attention to her personality. But now, as I
+looked her over anxiously to see how the grievous days had dealt with
+her, it was with a sort of surprised admiration that I noted the
+beautiful, thoughtful face, the fine features, and the wealth of dark,
+gracefully disposed hair. I was relieved, too, to see the change that
+a couple of days had wrought. The wild, dazed look was gone. Though
+she was pale and heavy-eyed and looked tired and infinitely sad, her
+manner was calm, quiet and perfectly self-possessed.
+“I am afraid,” said I, “that this is going to be rather a painful
+ordeal for you.”
+“Yes,” she agreed; “it is all very dreadful. But it is a dreadful
+thing in any case to be bereft in a moment of the one whom one loves
+best in all the world. The circumstances of the loss cannot make very
+much difference. It is the loss itself that matters. The worst moment
+was when the blow fell—when we found him. This inquiry and the funeral
+are just the drab accompaniments that bring home the reality of what
+has happened.”
+“Has the inspector called on you?” I asked.
+“Yes,” she replied. “He had to, to get the particulars; and he was so
+kind and delicate that I am not in the least afraid of the examination
+by the coroner. Every one has been kind to me, but none so kind as you
+were on that terrible morning.”
+I could not see that I had done anything to call for so much
+gratitude, and I was about to enter a modest disclaimer when the
+coroner and the jury returned, and the inspector approached somewhat
+hurriedly.
+“It will be necessary,” said he, “for Miss D’Arblay to see the
+body—just to identify deceased; a glance will be enough. And, as you
+are a witness, Doctor, you had better go with her to the mortuary. I
+will show you the way.”
+Miss D’Arblay rose without any comment or apparent reluctance, and we
+followed the inspector to the adjoining mortuary, where, having
+admitted us, he stood outside awaiting us. The body lay on the
+slate-topped table, covered with a sheet excepting the face, which was
+exposed and was undisfigured by any traces of the examination. I
+watched my friend a little nervously as we entered the grim chamber,
+fearful that this additional trial might be too much for her
+self-control. But she kept command of herself, though she wept quietly
+as she stood beside the table looking down on the still, waxen-faced
+figure. After standing thus for a few moments, she turned away with a
+smothered sob, wiped her eyes, and walked out of the mortuary.
+When we re-entered the court-room, we found our chairs moved up to the
+table, and the coroner waiting to call the witnesses. As I had
+expected, my name was the first on the list, and, on being called, I
+took my place by the table near to the coroner and was duly sworn.
+“Will you give us your name, occupation, and address?” the coroner
+asked.
+“My name is Stephen Gray,” I replied. “I am a medical practitioner,
+and my temporary address is 61, Mecklenburgh-square, London.”
+“When you say ‘your temporary address’ you mean——?”
+“I am taking charge of a medical practice at that address. I shall be
+there six weeks or more.”
+“Then that will be your address for our purposes. Have you viewed the
+body that is now lying in the mortuary, and, if so, do you recognize
+it?”
+“Yes. It is the body which I saw lying in a pond in Church-yard Bottom
+Wood on the morning of the 16th instant—last Tuesday.”
+“Can you tell us how long deceased had been dead when you first saw
+the body?”
+“I should say he had been dead nine or ten hours.”
+“Will you relate the circumstances under which you discovered the
+body?”
+I gave a circumstantial account of the manner in which I made the
+tragic discovery, to which not only the jury but also the spectators
+listened with eager interest. When I had finished my narrative, the
+coroner asked: “Did you observe anything which led you, as a medical
+man, to form any opinion as to the cause of death?”
+“No,” I replied. “I saw no injuries or marks of violence or anything
+which was not consistent with death by drowning.”
+This concluded my evidence, and when I had resumed my seat, the name
+of Marion D’Arblay was called by the coroner, who directed that a
+chair should be placed for the witness. When she had taken her seat,
+he conveyed to her, briefly, but feelingly, his own and the jury’s
+sympathy.
+“It has been a terrible experience for you,” he said, “and we are most
+sorry to have to trouble you in your great affliction, but you will
+understand that it is unavoidable.”
+“I quite understand that,” she replied, “and I wish to thank you and
+the jury for your kind sympathy.”
+She was then sworn, and having given her name and address, proceeded
+to answer the questions addressed to her, which elicited a narrative
+of the events substantially identical with that which she had given to
+the inspector and which I have already recorded.
+“You have told us,” said the coroner, “that when Dr. Gray spoke to
+you, you were searching among the bushes. Will you tell us what was in
+your mind—what you were searching for, and what induced you to make
+that search?”
+“I was very uneasy about my father,” she replied. “He had not been
+home that night, and he had not told me that he intended to stay at
+the studio—as he sometimes did when he was working very late. So, in
+the morning I went to the studio in Abbey-road to see if he was there;
+but the caretaker told me that he had started for home about ten
+o’clock. Then I began to fear that something had happened to him, and
+as he always came home by the path through the wood, I went there to
+see if—if anything had happened to him.”
+“Had you in your mind any definite idea as to what might have happened
+to him?”
+“I thought he might have been taken ill or have fallen down dead. He
+once told me that he would probably die quite suddenly. I believe that
+he suffered from some affection of the heart, but he did not like
+speaking about his health.”
+“Are you sure that there was nothing more than this in your mind?”
+“There was nothing more. I thought that his heart might have failed
+and that he might have wandered, in a half-conscious state, away from
+the main path and fallen dead in one of the thickets.”
+The coroner pondered this reply for some time. I could not see why,
+for it was plain and straightforward enough. At length he said, very
+gravely and with what seemed to me unnecessary emphasis:
+“I want you to be quite frank and open with us, Miss D’Arblay. Can you
+swear that there was no other possibility in your mind than that of
+sudden illness?”
+She looked at him in surprise, apparently not understanding the drift
+of the question. As to me, I assumed that he was endeavoring
+delicately to ascertain whether deceased was addicted to drink.
+“I have told you exactly what was in my mind,” she replied.
+“Have you ever had any reason to suppose, or to entertain the
+possibility, that your father might take his own life?”
+“Never,” she answered emphatically. “He was a happy, even-tempered
+man, always interested in his work, and always in good spirits. I am
+sure he would never have taken his own life.”
+The coroner nodded with a rather curious air of satisfaction, as if he
+were concurring with the witness’s statement. Then he asked in the
+same grave, emphatic manner:
+“So far as you know, had your father any enemies?”
+“No,” she replied confidently. “He was a kindly, amiable man who
+disliked nobody, and every one who knew him loved him.”
+As she uttered this panegyric (and what prouder testimony could a
+daughter have given?), her eyes filled, and the coroner looked at her
+with deep sympathy but yet with a somewhat puzzled expression.
+“You are sure,” he said gently, “that there was no one whom he might
+have injured—even inadvertently—or who bore him any grudge or
+ill-will?”
+“I am sure,” she answered, “that he never injured or gave offence to
+any one, and I do not believe that there was any person in the whole
+world who bore him anything but goodwill.”
+The coroner noted this reply, and as he entered it in the depositions
+his face bore the same curious puzzled or doubtful expression. When he
+had written the answer down, he asked:
+“By the way, what was the deceased’s occupation?”
+“He was a sculptor by profession, but in late years he worked
+principally as a modeller for various trades—pottery manufacturers,
+picture-frame makers, carvers, and the makers of high-class wax
+figures for shop windows.”
+“Had he any assistants or subordinates?”
+“No. He worked alone. Occasionally I helped him with his moulds when
+he was very busy or had a very large work on hand; but usually he did
+everything himself. Of course, he occasionally employed models.”
+“Do you know who those models were?”
+“They were professional models. The men, I think, were all Italians,
+and some of the women were too. I believe my father kept a list of
+them in his address book.”
+“Was he working from a model on the night of his death?”
+“No. He was making the moulds for a porcelain statuette.”
+“Did you ever hear that he had any kind of trouble with his models?”
+“Never. He seemed always on the best of terms with them, and he used
+to speak of them most appreciatively.”
+“What sort of persons are professional models? Should you say they are
+a decent, well-conducted class?”
+“Yes. They are usually most respectable, hard-working people; and, of
+course, they are sober and decent in their habits or they would be of
+no use for their professional duties.”
+The coroner meditated on these replies with a speculative eye on the
+witness. After a short pause, he began along another line.
+“Did deceased ever carry about with him property of any considerable
+value?”
+“Never, to my knowledge.”
+“No jewellery, plate, or valuable material?”
+“No. His work was practically all in plaster or wax. He did no
+goldsmith’s work and he used no precious material.”
+“Did he ever have any considerable sums of money about him?”
+“No. He received all his payments by cheque and he made his payments
+in the same way. His habit was to carry very little money on his
+person—usually not more than one or two pounds.”
+Once more the coroner reflected profoundly. It seemed to me that he
+was trying to elicit some fact—I could not imagine what—and was
+failing utterly. At length, after another puzzled look at the witness,
+he turned to the jury and inquired if any of them wished to put any
+questions; and when they had severally shaken their heads he thanked
+Miss D’Arblay for the clear and straightforward way in which she had
+given her evidence and released her.
+While the examination had been proceeding, I had allowed my eyes to
+wander round the room with some curiosity: for this was the first time
+that I had ever been present at an inquest. From the jury, the
+witnesses in waiting and the reporters—among whom I tried to identify
+Dr. Thorndyke’s stenographer—my attention was presently transferred to
+the spectators. There were only a few of them, but I found myself
+wondering why there should be any. What kind of person attends as a
+spectator at an ordinary inquest such as this appeared to be? The
+newspaper reports of the finding of the body were quite unsensational
+and promised no startling developments. Finally I decided that they
+were probably local residents who had some knowledge of the deceased
+and were just indulging their neighbourly curiosity.
+Among them my attention was particularly attracted by a middle-aged
+woman who sat near me: at least I judged her to be middle-aged, though
+the rather dense black veil that she wore obscured her face to a great
+extent. Apparently she was a widow, and advertised the fact by the
+orthodox, old-fashioned “weeds.” But I could see that she had white
+hair and wore spectacles. She held a folded newspaper on her knee,
+apparently dividing her attention between the printed matter and the
+proceedings of the court. She gave me the impression of having come in
+to spend an idle hour, combining a somewhat perfunctory reading of the
+paper with a still more perfunctory attention to the rather gruesome
+entertainment that the inquest afforded.
+The next witness called was the doctor who had made the official
+examination of the body; on whom my bereaved friend bestowed a
+listless, incurious glance and then returned to her newspaper. He was
+a youngish man, though his hair was turning gray, with a quiet but
+firm and confident manner and a very clear, pleasant voice. The
+preliminaries having been disposed of, the coroner led off with the
+question:
+“You have made an examination of the body of the deceased?”
+“Yes. It is that of a well-proportioned, fairly muscular man of about
+sixty, quite healthy with the exception of the heart, one of the
+valves of which—the mitral valve—was incompetent and allowed some
+leakage of blood to take place.”
+“Was the heart affection sufficient to account for the death of
+deceased?”
+“No. It was quite a serviceable heart. There was good
+compensation—that is to say, there was extra growth of muscle to make
+up for the leaky valve. So far as his heart was concerned, deceased
+might have lived for another twenty years.”
+“Were you able to ascertain what actually was the cause of death?”
+“Yes. The cause of death was aconitine poisoning.”
+At this reply a murmur of astonishment arose from the jury, and I
+heard Miss D’Arblay suddenly draw in her breath. The spectators sat up
+on their benches, and even the veiled lady was so far interested as to
+look up from her paper.
+“How had the poison been administered?” the coroner asked.
+“It had been injected under the skin by means of a hypodermic
+syringe.”
+“Can you give an opinion as to whether the poison was administered to
+deceased by himself or by some other person?”
+“It could not have been injected by deceased himself,” the witness
+replied. “The needle-puncture was in the back, just below the left
+shoulder-blade. It is, in my opinion, physically impossible for any
+one to inject into his own body with a hypodermic syringe in that
+spot. And, of course, a person who was administering an injection to
+himself would select the most convenient spot—such as the front of the
+thigh. But apart from the question of convenience, the place in which
+the needle-puncture was found was actually out of reach.” Here the
+witness produced a hypodermic syringe, the action of which he
+demonstrated with the aid of a glass of water; and having shown the
+impossibility of applying it to the spot that he had described, passed
+the syringe round for the jury’s inspection.
+“Have you formed any opinion as to the purpose for which this drug was
+administered in this manner?”
+“I have no doubt that it was administered for the purpose of causing
+the death of deceased.”
+“Might it not have been administered for medicinal purposes?”
+“That is quite inconceivable. Leaving out of consideration the
+circumstances—the time and place where the administration occurred—the
+dose excludes the possibility of medicinal purposes. It was a lethal
+dose. From the tissues round the needle-puncture we recovered the
+twelfth of a grain of aconitine. That alone was more than enough to
+cause death. But a quantity of the poison had been absorbed, as was
+shown by the fact that we recovered a recognizable trace from the
+liver.”
+“What is the medicinal dose of aconitine?”
+“The maximum medicinal dose is about the four-hundredth of a grain,
+and even that is not very safe. As a matter of fact, aconitine is very
+seldom used in medical practice. It is a dangerous drug, and of no
+particular value.”
+“How much aconitine do you suppose was injected?”
+“Not less than the tenth of a grain—that is about forty times the
+maximum medicinal dose. Probably more.”
+“There can, I suppose, be no doubt as to the accuracy of the facts
+that you have stated—as to the nature and quantity of the poison?”
+“There can be no doubt whatever. The analysis was made in my presence
+by Professor Woodford, of St. Margaret’s Hospital, after I had removed
+the tissues from the body in his presence. He has not been called
+because, in accordance with the procedure under Coroner’s Law, I am
+responsible for the analysis and the conclusions drawn from it.”
+“Taking the medical facts as known to you, are you able to form an
+opinion as to what took place when the poison was administered?”
+“That,” the witness replied, “is a matter of inference or conjecture.
+I infer that the person who administered the poison thrust the needle
+violently into the back of the deceased, intending to inject the
+poison into the chest. Actually, the needle struck a rib and bent up
+sharply, so that the contents of the syringe were delivered just under
+the skin. Then I take it that the assailant ran away—probably towards
+the pond—and deceased pursued him. Very soon the poison would take
+effect, and then deceased would have fallen. He may have fallen into
+the pond, or more probably, was thrown in. He was alive when he fell
+into the pond, as is proved by the presence of water in the lungs; but
+he must then have been insensible; and in a dying condition, for there
+was no water in the stomach, which proves that the swallowing reflex
+had already ceased.”
+“Your considered opinion, then, based on the medical facts ascertained
+by you, is, I understand, that deceased died from the effects of a
+poison injected into his body by some other person with homicidal
+intent?”
+“Yes; that is my considered opinion, and I affirm that the facts do
+not admit of any other interpretation.”
+The coroner looked towards the jury. “Do any of you gentlemen wish to
+ask the witness any questions?” he inquired; and when the foreman had
+replied that the jury were entirely satisfied with the doctor’s
+explanations, he thanked the witness, who thereupon retired. The
+medical witness was succeeded by the inspector, who made a short
+statement respecting the effects found on the person of deceased. They
+comprised a small sum of money—under two pounds—a watch, keys, and
+other articles, none of them of any appreciable value, but, such as
+they were, furnishing evidence that at least petty robbery had not
+been the object of the attack.
+When the last witness had been heard, the coroner glanced at his notes
+and then proceeded to address the jury.
+“There is little, gentlemen,” he began, “that I need say to you. The
+facts are before you, and they seem to admit of only one
+interpretation. I remind you that, by the terms of your oath, your
+finding must be ‘according to the evidence.’ Now the medical evidence
+is quite clear and definite. It is to the effect that deceased met his
+death by poison, administered violently by some other person: that is
+by homicide. Homicide is the killing of a human being, and it may or
+may not be criminal. But if the homicidal act is done with the intent
+to kill; if that intention has been deliberately formed—that is to
+say, if the homicidal act has been premeditated; then that homicide is
+wilful murder.
+“Now the person who killed the deceased came to the place where the
+act was done provided with a solution of a very powerful and uncommon
+vegetable poison. He was also provided with a very special
+appliance—to wit, a hypodermic syringe—for injecting it into the body.
+The fact that he was furnished with the poison and the appliance
+creates a strong enough presumption that he came to this place with
+the deliberate intention of killing the deceased. That is to say, this
+fact constitutes strong evidence of premeditation.
+“As to the motive for this act, we are completely in the dark; nor
+have we any evidence pointing to the identity of the person who
+committed that act. But a coroner’s inquest is not necessarily
+concerned with motives, nor is it our business to fix the act on any
+particular person. We have to find how and by what means the deceased
+met his death; and for that purpose we have clear and sufficient
+evidence. I need say no more, but will leave you to agree upon your
+finding.”
+There was a brief interval of silence when the coroner had finished
+speaking. The jury whispered together for a few seconds; then the
+foreman announced that they had agreed upon their verdict.
+“And what is your decision, gentlemen?” the coroner asked.
+“We find,” was the reply, “that deceased met his death by wilful
+murder, committed by some person unknown.”
+The coroner bowed. “I am in entire agreement with you, gentlemen,”
+said he. “No other verdict was possible, and I am sure you will join
+me in the hope that the wretch who committed this dastardly crime may
+be identified and in due course brought to justice.”
+This brought the proceedings to an end. As the Court rose the
+spectators filed out of the building and the coroner approached Miss
+D’Arblay to express once more his deep sympathy with her in her tragic
+bereavement. I stood apart with Miss Boler, whose rugged face was wet
+with tears, but set in a grim and wrathful scowl.
+“Things have taken a terrible turn,” I ventured to observe.
+She shook her head and uttered a sort of low growl. “It won’t bear
+thinking of,” she said gruffly. “There is no possible retribution that
+would meet the case. One has thought that some of the old punishments
+were cruel and barbarous, but if I could lay my hands on the villain
+that did this——” She broke off, leaving the conclusion to my
+imagination, and in an extraordinarily different voice said: “Come,
+Miss Marion, let us get out of this awful place.”
+As we walked away slowly and in silence, I looked at Miss D’Arblay,
+not without anxiety. She was very pale, and the dazed expression that
+her face had borne on the fatal day of the discovery had, to some
+extent, reappeared. But now the signs of bewilderment and grief were
+mingled with something new. The rigid face, the compressed lips, and
+lowered brows spoke of a deep and abiding wrath.
+Suddenly she turned to me and said, abruptly, almost harshly:
+“I was wrong in what I said to you before the inquiry. You remember
+that I said that the circumstances of the loss could make no
+difference; but they make a whole world of difference. I had supposed
+that my dear father had died as he had thought he would die; that it
+was the course of Nature, which we cannot rebel against. Now I know,
+from what the doctor said, that he might have lived on happily for the
+full span of human life but for the malice of this unknown wretch. His
+life was not lost; it was stolen—from him and from me.”
+“Yes,” I said somewhat lamely. “It is a horrible affair.”
+“It is beyond bearing!” she exclaimed. “If his death had been natural,
+I would have tried to resign myself to it. I would have tried to put
+my grief away. But to think that his happy, useful life has been
+snatched from him—that he has been torn from us who loved him by the
+deliberate act of this murderer—it is unendurable. It will be with me
+every hour of my life until I die. And every hour I shall call on God
+for justice against this wretch.”
+I looked at her with a sort of admiring surprise. A quiet, gentle girl
+as I believed her to be at ordinary times, now, with her flushed
+cheeks, her flashing eyes and ominous brows, she reminded me of one of
+the heroines of the French Revolution. Her grief seemed to be merged
+in a longing for vengeance.
+While she had been speaking Miss Boler had kept up a running
+accompaniment in a deep, humming bass. I could not catch the words—if
+there were any—but was aware only of a low, continuous bourdon. She
+now said with grim decision:
+“God will not let him escape. He shall pay the debt to the uttermost
+farthing.” Then, with sudden fierceness, she added: “If I should ever
+meet with him I could kill him with my own hand.”
+After this both women relapsed into silence, which I was loth to
+interrupt. The circumstances were too tragic for conversation. When we
+reached their gate Miss D’Arblay held out her hand and once again
+thanked me for my help and sympathy.
+“I have done nothing,” said I, “that any stranger would not have done,
+and I deserve no thanks. But I should like to think that you will look
+on me as a friend, and if you should need any help will let me have
+the privilege of being of use to you.”
+“I look on you as a friend already,” she replied; “and I hope you will
+come and see us sometimes—when we have settled down to our new
+conditions of life.”
+As Miss Boler seemed to confirm this invitation, I thanked them both
+and took my leave, glad to think that I had now a recognized status as
+a friend and might pursue a project which had formed in my mind even
+before we had left the court-house.
+The evidence of the murder, which had fallen like a thunderbolt on us
+all, had a special significance for me; for I knew that Dr. Thorndyke
+was behind this discovery, though to what extent I could not judge.
+The medical witness was an obviously capable man, and it might be that
+he would have made the discovery without assistance. But a
+needle-puncture in the back is a very inconspicuous thing. Ninety-nine
+doctors in a hundred would almost certainly have overlooked it,
+especially in the case of a body apparently “found drowned,” and
+seeming to call for no special examination beyond the search for gross
+injuries. The revelation was very characteristic of Thorndyke’s
+methods and principles. It illustrated in a most striking manner the
+truth which he was never tired of insisting on: that it is never safe
+to accept obvious appearances, and that every case, no matter how
+apparently simple and commonplace, should be approached with suspicion
+and scepticism and subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny. That was
+precisely what had been done in this case; and thereby an obvious
+suicide had been resolved into a cunningly planned and skilfully
+executed murder. It was quite possible that, but for my visit to
+Thorndyke, those cunning plans would have succeeded and the murderer
+have secured the cover of a verdict of “Death by misadventure” or
+“Suicide while temporarily insane.” At any rate, the results had
+justified me in invoking Dr. Thorndyke’s aid; and the question now
+arose whether it would be possible to retain him for the further
+investigation of the case.
+This was the project that had occurred to me as I listened to the
+evidence and realized how completely the unknown murderer had covered
+up his tracks. But there were difficulties. Thorndyke might consider
+such an investigation outside his province. Again, the costs involved
+might be on a scale entirely beyond my means. The only thing to be
+done was to call on Thorndyke and hear what he had to say on the
+subject, and this I determined to do on the first opportunity. And
+having formed this resolution, I made my way back by the shortest
+route to Mecklenburgh-square, where the evening consultations were now
+nearly due.
+CHAPTER IV.
+Mr. Bendelow
+There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys
+to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed, the entire
+streets, have been picked up second-hand. There is in this aspect a
+grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique
+shop, but rather of the marine store dealers; a quality which even
+communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the
+impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.
+It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the
+top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish’s brougham
+being at the moment under repairs and his horse “out to grass” during
+the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of
+Hoxton—Market-street by name—which abutted, as I had noticed when
+making out my route, on the Regent’s Canal. The said route I had
+written out, and now, in the intervals of my surveys of the unlovely
+prospect, I divided my attention between it and the note which had
+summoned me to these remote regions.
+Concerning the latter I was somewhat curious, for the envelope was
+addressed, not to Dr. Cornish, but to “Dr. Stephen Gray.” This was
+really quite an odd circumstance. Either the writer knew me personally
+or was aware that I was acting as locum tenens for Cornish. But the
+name—James Morris—was unknown to me, and a careful inspection of the
+index of the ledger had failed to bring to light any one answering to
+the description. So Mr. Morris was presumably a stranger to my
+principal also. The note, which had been left by hand in the morning,
+requested me to call “as early in the forenoon as possible,” which
+seemed to hint at some degree of urgency. Naturally, as a young
+practitioner, I speculated with interest, not entirely unmingled with
+anxiety, on the possible nature of the case, and also on the patient’s
+reasons for selecting a medical attendant whose residence was so
+inconveniently far away.
+In accordance with my written route, I got off the omnibus at the
+corner of Shepherdess-walk, and pursuing that pastoral thoroughfare
+for some distance, presently plunged into a labyrinth of streets
+adjoining it and succeeded most effectually in losing myself. However,
+inquiries addressed to an intelligent fish-vendor elicited a most
+lucid direction and I soon found myself in a little, drab street which
+justified its name by giving accommodation to a row of stationary
+barrows loaded with what looked like the “throw-outs” from a colossal
+spring clean. Passing along this kerb-side market and reflecting (like
+Diogenes, in similar circumstances) how many things there were in the
+world that I did not want, I walked slowly up the street looking for
+Number 23—my patient’s number—and the canal which I had seen on the
+map. I located them both at the same instant, for Number 23 turned out
+to be the last house on the opposite side, and a few yards beyond it
+the street was barred by a low wall, over which, as I looked, the mast
+of a sailing-barge came into view and slowly crept past. I stepped up
+to the wall and looked over. Immediately beneath me was the
+towing-path, alongside which the barge was now bringing up and
+beginning to lower her mast, apparently in order to pass under a
+bridge that spanned the canal some two hundred yards farther along.
+From these nautical manœuvres I transferred my attention to my
+patient’s house—or, at least, so much of it as I could see; for Number
+23 appeared to consist of a shop with nothing over it. There was,
+however, in a wall which extended to the canal wall a side door with a
+bell and knocker, so I inferred that the house was behind the shop,
+and that the latter had been built on a formerly existing front
+garden. The shop itself was somewhat reminiscent of the stalls down
+the street, for though the fascia was newly painted (with the
+inscription “J. Morris, General Dealer”) the stock-in-trade exhibited
+in the window was in the last stage of senile decay. It included, I
+remember, a cracked Toby jug, a mariner’s sextant of an obsolete type,
+a Dutch clock without hands, a snuff-box, one or two plaster
+statuettes, an invalid punch-bowl, a shiny, dark, and inscrutable oil
+painting and a plaster mask, presumably the death mask of some
+celebrity whose face was unknown to me.
+My examination of this collection was brought to a sudden end by the
+apparition of a face above the half-blind of glazed shop-door; the
+face of a middle-aged woman who seemed to be inspecting me with
+malevolent interest. Assuming—rather too late—a brisk, professional
+manner, I opened the shop door, thereby setting a bell jangling
+within, and confronted the owner of the face.
+“I am Dr. Gray,” I began to explain.
+“Side door,” she interrupted brusquely. “Ring the bell and knock.”
+I backed out hastily and proceeded to follow the directions, giving a
+tug at the bell and delivering a flourish on the knocker. The hollow
+reverberations of the latter almost suggested an empty house, but my
+vigorous pull at the bell-handle produced no audible result, from
+which I inferred—wrongly, as afterwards appeared—that it was out of
+repair. After waiting quite a considerable time, I was about to repeat
+the performance when I heard sounds within; and then the door was
+opened, to my surprise, by the identical sour-faced woman whom I had
+seen in the shop. As her appearance and manner did not invite
+conversation, and she uttered no word, I followed her in silence
+through a long passage, or covered way, which ran parallel to the side
+of the shop and presumably crossed the site of the garden. It ended at
+a door which opened into the hall proper; a largish square space into
+which the doors of the ground-floor rooms opened. It contained the
+main staircase and was closed in at the farther end by a heavy curtain
+which extended from wall to wall.
+We proceeded in this funereal manner up the stairs to the first floor
+on the landing of which my conductress halted and for the first time
+broke the silence.
+“You will probably find Mr. Bendelow asleep or dozing,” she said in a
+rather gruff voice. “If he is, there is no need for you to disturb
+him.”
+“Mr. Bendelow!” I exclaimed. “I understood that his name was Morris.”
+“Well, it isn’t,” she retorted. “It is Bendelow. My name is Morris and
+so is my husband’s. It was he who wrote to you.”
+“By the way,” said I, “how did he know my name? I am acting for Dr.
+Cornish, you know.”
+“I didn’t know,” said she, “and I don’t suppose he did. Probably the
+servant told him. But it doesn’t matter. Here you are, and you will do
+as well as another. I was telling you about Mr. Bendelow. He is in a
+pretty bad way. The specialist whom Mr. Morris took him to—Dr. Artemus
+Cropper—said he had cancer of the bi-lorus, whatever that is——”
+“Pylorus,” I corrected.
+“Well, pylorus, then, if you prefer it,” she said impatiently. “At any
+rate, whatever it is, he’s got cancer of it; and, as I said before, he
+is in a pretty bad way. Dr. Cropper told us what to do, and we are
+doing it. He wrote out full directions as to diet—I will show them to
+you presently—and he said that Mr. Bendelow was to have a dose of
+morphia if he complained of pain—which he does, of course; and that,
+as there was no chance of his getting better, it didn’t matter how
+much morphia he had. The great thing was to keep him out of pain. So
+we give it to him twice a day—at least, my husband does—and that keeps
+him fairly comfortable. In fact, he sleeps most of the time, and is
+probably dozing now; so you are not likely to get much out of him,
+especially as he is rather hard of hearing even when he is awake. And
+now you had better come in and have a look at him.”
+She advanced to the door of a room and opened it softly, and I
+followed in a somewhat uncomfortable frame of mind. It seemed to me
+that I had no function but that of a mere figure-head. Dr. Cropper,
+whom I knew by name as a physician of some reputation, had made the
+diagnosis and prescribed the treatment, neither of which I, as a mere
+beginner, would think of contesting. It was an unsatisfactory, even an
+ignominious, position from which my professional pride revolted. But
+apparently it had to be accepted.
+Mr. Bendelow was a most remarkable-looking man. Probably he had always
+been somewhat peculiar in appearance; but now the frightful emaciation
+(which strongly confirmed Cropper’s diagnosis) had so accentuated his
+original peculiarities that he had the appearance of some dreadful,
+mirthless caricature. Under the influence of the remorseless disease,
+every structure which was capable of shrinking had shrunk to the
+vanishing-point, leaving the unshrinkable skeleton jutting out with a
+most horrible and grotesque effect. His great hooked nose, which must
+always have been strikingly prominent, stuck out now, thin and sharp,
+like the beak of some bird of prey. His heavy, beetling brows, which
+must always have given to his face a frowning sullenness, now overhung
+sockets which had shrunk away into mere caverns. His naturally high
+cheek-bones were now not only prominent, but exhibited the details of
+their structure as one sees them in a dry skull. Altogether, his
+aspect was at once pitiable and forbidding. Of his age I could form no
+estimate. He might have been a hundred. The wonder was that he was
+still alive; that there was yet left in that shrivelled body enough
+material to enable its mechanism to continue its functions.
+He was not asleep, but was in that somnolent, lethargic state that is
+characteristic of the effects of morphia. He took no notice of me when
+I approached the bed, nor even when I spoke his name somewhat loudly.
+“I told you you wouldn’t get much out of him,” said Mrs. Morris,
+looking at me with a sort of grim satisfaction. “He doesn’t have a
+great deal to say to any of us nowadays.”
+“Well,” said I, “there is no need to rouse him, but I had better just
+examine him, if only as a matter of form. I can’t take the case
+entirely on hearsay.”
+“I suppose not,” she agreed. “You know best. Do what you think
+necessary, but don’t disturb him more than you can help.”
+It was not a prolonged examination. The first touch of my fingers on
+the shrunken abdomen made me aware of the unmistakable hard mass and
+rendered further exploration needless. There could be no doubt as to
+the nature of the case or of what the future held in store. It was
+only a question of time, and a short time at that.
+The patient submitted to the examination quite passively, but he
+seemed to be fully aware of what was going on, for he looked at me in
+a sort of drunken, dreamy fashion, but without any sign of interest in
+my proceedings. When I had finished, I looked him over again, trying
+to reconstitute him as he might have been before this deadly disease
+fastened on him. I observed that he seemed to have a fair crop of hair
+of a darkish iron-grey. I say “seemed,” because the greater part of
+his head was covered by a skull cap of black silk; but a fringe of
+hair straying from under it on to the forehead suggested that he was
+not bald. His teeth, too, which were rather conspicuous, were natural
+teeth and in good preservation. In order to verify this fact, I
+stooped and raised his lip the better to examine them. But at this
+point Mrs. Morris intervened.
+“There, that will do,” she said impatiently. “You are not a dentist,
+and his teeth will last as long as he will want them. If you have
+finished you had better come with me and I will show you Dr. Cropper’s
+prescriptions. Then you can tell me if you have any further directions
+to give.”
+She led the way out of the room, and when I had made a farewell
+gesture to the patient (of which he took no notice) I followed her
+down the stairs to the ground floor where she ushered me into a small,
+rather elegantly furnished room. Here she opened the flap of a bureau
+and from one of the little drawers took an open envelope which she
+handed to me. It contained one or two prescriptions for occasional
+medicines, and a sheet of directions relative to the diet and general
+management of the patient, including the administration of morphia.
+The latter read, under the general heading, “Simon Bendelow, Esq.”:
+“As the case progresses, it will probably be necessary to administer
+morphine regularly, but the amount given should, if possible, be
+restricted to ¼ gr. Morph. Sulph., not more than twice a day; but, of
+course, the hopeless prognosis and probable early termination of the
+case make some latitude admissible.”
+Although I was in complete agreement with the writer, I was a little
+puzzled by these documents. They were signed “Artemus Cropper, M.D.,”
+but they were not addressed to any person by name. They appeared to
+have been given to Mr. Morris, in whose possession they now were; but
+the use of the word “morphine” instead of the more familiar “morphia”
+and the generally technical phraseology seemed inappropriate to
+directions addressed to lay persons. As I returned them I remarked:
+“These directions read as if they had been intended for the
+information of a medical man.”
+“They were,” she replied. “They were meant for the doctor who was
+attending Mr. Bendelow at the time. When we moved to this place I got
+them from him to show to the new doctor. You are the new doctor.”
+“Then you haven’t been here very long?”
+“No,” she replied. “We have only just moved in. And that reminds me
+that our stock of morphia is running out. Could you bring a fresh tube
+of the tabloids next time you call? My husband left an empty tube for
+me to give you to remind you what size the tabloids are. He gives Mr.
+Bendelow the injections.”
+“Thank you,” said I, “but I don’t want the empty tube. I read the
+prescription and shan’t forget the dose. I will bring a new tube
+to-morrow—that is, if you want me to call every day. It seems hardly
+necessary.”
+“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “I should think twice a week would be
+quite enough. Monday and Thursday would suit me best; if you could
+manage to come about this time I should be sure to be in. My time is
+rather taken up, as I haven’t a servant at present.”
+It was a bad arrangement. Fixed appointments are things to avoid in
+medical practice. Nevertheless I agreed to it—subject to unforeseen
+obstacles—and was forthwith conducted back along the covered way and
+launched into the outer world with a farewell which it would be
+inadequate to describe as unemotional.
+As I turned away from the door I cast a passing glance at the shop
+window; and once again I perceived a face above the half-blind. It was
+a man’s face this time; presumably the face of Mr. Morris. And, like
+his wife, he seemed to be “taking stock of me.” I returned the
+attention, and carried away with me the instantaneous mental
+photograph of a man in that unprepossessing transitional state between
+being clean-shaved and wearing a beard which is characterized by a
+sort of grubby prickliness that disfigures the features without
+obscuring them. His stubble was barely a week old, but as his
+complexion and hair were dark, the effect was very untidy and
+disreputable. And yet, as I have said, it did not obscure the
+features. I was even able, in that momentary glance, to note a detail
+which would probably have escaped a non-medical eye: the scar of a
+hare-lip which had been very neatly and skilfully mended, and which a
+moustache would probably have concealed altogether.
+I did not, however, give much thought to Mr. Morris. It was his
+dour-faced wife, with her gruff, over-bearing manner who principally
+occupied my reflections. She seemed to have divined in some way that I
+was but a beginner—perhaps my youthful appearance gave her the
+hint—and to have treated me with almost open contempt. In truth my
+position was not a very dignified one. The diagnosis of the case had
+been made for me, the treatment had been prescribed for me, and was
+being carried out by other hands than mine. My function was to support
+a kind of legal fiction that I was conducting the case, but
+principally to supply the morphia (which a chemist might have refused
+to do), and when the time came, to sign the death certificate. It was
+an ignominious rôle for a young and ambitious practitioner, and my
+pride was disposed to boggle at it. But yet there was nothing to which
+I could object. The diagnosis was undoubtedly correct, and the
+treatment and management of the case exactly such as I should have
+prescribed. Finally I decided that my dissatisfaction was principally
+due to the unattractive personality of Mrs. Morris; and with this
+conclusion I dismissed the case from my mind and let my thoughts
+wander into more agreeable channels.
+CHAPTER V.
+Inspector Follett’s Discovery
+To a man whose mind is working actively, walking is a more acceptable
+mode of progression than riding in a vehicle. There is a sort of
+reciprocity between the muscles and the brain—possibly due to the
+close association of the motor and psychical centres—whereby the
+activity of the one appears to act as a stimulus to the other. A sharp
+walk sets the mind working, and, conversely, a state of lively
+reflection begets an impulse to bodily movement.
+Hence, when I had emerged from Market-street and set my face
+homewards, I let the omnibuses rumble past unheeded. I knew my way
+now. I had but to retrace the route by which I had come, and,
+preserving my isolation amidst the changing crowd, let my thoughts
+keep pace with my feet. And I had, in fact, a good deal to think
+about; a general subject for reflection which arranged itself around
+two personalities, Miss D’Arblay and Dr. Thorndyke.
+To the former I had written suggesting a call on her, “subject to the
+exigencies of the service,” on Sunday afternoon, and had received a
+short but cordial note definitely inviting me to tea. So that matter
+was settled, and really required no further consideration, though it
+did actually occupy my thoughts for an appreciable part of my walk.
+But that was mere self-indulgence: the preliminary savouring of an
+anticipated pleasure. My cogitations respecting Dr. Thorndyke were, on
+the other hand, somewhat troubled. I was eager to invoke his aid in
+solving the hideous mystery which his acuteness had (I felt convinced)
+brought into view. But it would probably be a costly business, and my
+pecuniary resources were not great. To apply to him for services of
+which I could not meet the cost was not to be thought of. The
+too-common meanness of sponging on a professional man was totally
+abhorrent to me.
+But what was the alternative? The murder of Julius D’Arblay was one of
+those crimes which offer the police no opportunity; at least, so it
+seemed to me. Out of the darkness this fiend had stolen to commit this
+unspeakable atrocity, and into the darkness he had straightway
+vanished, leaving no trace of his identity nor any hint of his
+diabolical motive. It might well be that he had vanished for ever;
+that the mystery of the crime was beyond solution. But if any solution
+was possible, the one man who seemed capable of discovering it was
+John Thorndyke.
+This conclusion, to which my reflections led again and again,
+committed me to the dilemma that either this villain must be allowed
+to go his way unmolested, if the police could find no clue to his
+identity—a position that I utterly refused to accept; or that the one
+supremely skilful investigator should be induced, if possible, to take
+up the inquiry. In the end I decided to call on Thorndyke and frankly
+lay the facts before him, but to postpone the interview until I had
+seen Miss D’Arblay and ascertained what view the police took of the
+case, and whether any new facts had transpired.
+The train of reflection which brought me to this conclusion had
+brought me also, by way of Pentonville, to the more familiar
+neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, and I had just turned into a somewhat
+squalid by-street, which seemed to bear in the right direction, when
+my attention was arrested by a brass plate affixed to the door of one
+of those hybrid establishments, intermediate between a shop and a
+private house, known by the generic name of “Open Surgery.” The name
+upon the plate—“Dr. Solomon Usher”—awakened certain reminiscences. In
+my freshman days there had been a student of that name at our
+hospital; a middle-aged man (elderly, we considered him, seeing that
+he was near upon forty), who, after years of servitude as an
+unqualified assistant, had scraped together the means of completing
+his curriculum. I remembered him very well: a facetious, seedy,
+slightly bibulous but entirely good-natured man, invincibly amiable
+(as he had need to be), and always in the best of spirits. I recalled
+the quaint figure that furnished such rich material for our schoolboy
+wit; the solemn spectacles, the ridiculous side-whiskers, the
+chimney-pot hat, the formal frock-coat (too often decorated with a
+label secretly pinned to the coat-tail, and bearing some such
+inscription as “This style 10/6,” or other scintillations of freshman
+humour), and, looking over the establishment, decided that it seemed
+to present a complete congruity with that well-remembered personality.
+But the identification was not left to mere surmise, for even as my
+eye roamed along a range of stoppered bottles that peeped over the
+wire blind, the door opened and there he was, spectacles,
+side-whiskers, top-hat, and frock-coat, all complete, plus an
+œdematous-looking umbrella.
+He did not recognize me at first—naturally, for I had changed a good
+deal more than he had in the five or six years that had slipped
+away—but inquired gravely if I wished to see him. I replied that it
+had been the dearest wish of my heart, now at length gratified. Then,
+as I grinned in his face, my identity suddenly dawned on him.
+“Why, it’s Gray!” he exclaimed, seizing my hand. “God bless me, what a
+surprise! I didn’t know you. Getting quite a man. Well, I am delighted
+to see you. Come in and have a drink.”
+He held the door open invitingly, but I shook my head.
+“No, thanks,” I replied. “Not at this time in the day.”
+“Nonsense,” he urged. “Do you good. I’ve just had one myself. Can’t
+say more than that, excepting that I am ready to have another. Won’t
+you really? Pity. Should never waste an opportunity. Which way are you
+going?”
+It seemed that we were going the same way for some distance and we
+accordingly set off together.
+“So you’ve flopped out of the nest,” he remarked, looking me over, “at
+least so I judge by the adult clothes that you are wearing. Are you in
+practice in these parts?”
+“No,” I replied, “I am doing a locum. Only just qualified, you know.”
+“Good,” said he. “A locum’s the way to begin. Try your ’prentice hand
+on somebody else’s patients and pick up the art of general practice,
+which they don’t teach you at the hospital.”
+“You mean bookkeeping and dispensing and the general routine of the
+day’s work?” I suggested.
+“No, I don’t,” he replied. “I mean practice; the art of pleasing your
+patients and keeping your end up. You’ve got a lot to learn, my boy.
+Experientia does it. Scientific stuff is all very well at the
+hospital, but in practice it is experience, gumption, tact, knowledge
+of human nature, that counts.”
+“I suppose a little knowledge of diagnosis and treatment is useful?” I
+suggested.
+“For your own satisfaction, yes,” he admitted, “but for practical
+purposes a little knowledge of men and women is a good deal better. It
+isn’t your scientific learning that brings you kudos, nor is it
+out-of-the-way cases. It is just common sense brought to bear on
+common ailments. Take the case of an aurist. You think that he lives
+by dealing with obscure and difficult middle and internal ear cases.
+Nothing of the kind. He lives on wax. Wax is the foundation of his
+practice. Patient comes to him as deaf as a post. He does all the
+proper jugglery—tuning-fork, otoscope, speculum, and so on, for the
+moral effect. Then he hikes out a good old plug of cerumen, and the
+patient hears perfectly. Of course, he is delighted. Thinks a miracle
+has been performed. Goes away convinced that the aurist is a genius;
+and so he is if he has managed the case properly. I made my reputation
+here on a fish-bone.”
+“Well, a fish-bone isn’t always so very easy to extract,” said I.
+“It isn’t,” he agreed. “Especially if it isn’t there.”
+“What do you mean?” I asked.
+“I’ll tell you about it,” he replied. “A chappie here got a fish-bone
+stuck in his throat. Of course, it didn’t stay there. They never do.
+But the prick in his soft palate did, and he was convinced that the
+bone was still there. So he sent for a doctor. Doctor came, looked in
+his throat. Couldn’t see any fish-bone, and, like a fool, said so.
+Tried to persuade the patient that there was no bone there. But the
+chappie said it was his throat and he knew better. He could feel it
+there. So he sent for another doctor and the same thing happened. No
+go. He had four different doctors and they hadn’t the sense of an
+infant among them. Then he sent for me.
+“Now, as soon as I heard how the land lay, I nipped into the surgery
+and got a fish-bone that I keep there in a pill-box for emergencies,
+stuck it into the jaws of a pair of throat forceps, and off I went.
+‘Show me whereabouts it is,’ says I, handing him a probe to point
+with. He showed me the spot and nearly swallowed the probe. ‘All
+right,’ said I. ‘I can see it. Just shut your eyes and open your mouth
+wide and I will have it out in a jiffy.’ I popped the forceps into his
+mouth, gave a gentle prod with the point on the soft palate; patient
+hollered out, ‘Hoo!’ I whisked out the forceps and held them up before
+his eyes with the fish-bone grasped in their jaws.
+“‘Ha!’ says he. ‘Thank Gawd! What a relief! I can swallow quite well
+now.’ And so he could. It was a case of suggestion and
+counter-suggestion. Imaginary fish-bone cured by imaginary extraction.
+And it made my local reputation. Well, good-bye, old chap. I’ve got a
+visit to make here. Come in one evening and smoke a pipe with me. You
+know where to find me. And take my advice to heart. Never go to
+extract a fish-bone without one in your pocket; and it isn’t a bad
+thing to keep a dried earwig by you. I do. People will persist in
+thinking they’ve got one in their ears. So long. Look me up soon,” and
+with a farewell flourish of the umbrella, he turned to a shabby street
+door and began to work the top bell-pull as if it were the handle of
+an air-pump.
+I went on my way, not a little amused by my friend’s genial cynicism,
+nor entirely uninstructed. For “there is a soul of truth in things
+erroneous,” as the philosopher reminds us; and if the precepts of
+Solomon Usher did not sound the highest note of professional ethics,
+they were based on a very solid foundation of worldly wisdom.
+When, having finished my short round of visits, I arrived at my
+temporary home, I was informed by the housemaid in a mysterious
+whisper that a police officer was waiting to see me. “Name of
+Follett,” she added. “He’s waiting in the consulting-room.”
+Proceeding thither, I found my friend, the Highgate inspector, with
+one eye closed, standing before a card of test-types that hung on the
+wall. We greeted one another cordially and then, as I looked at him
+inquiringly, he produced from his pocket without remark an official
+envelope from which he extracted a coin, a silver pencil-case and a
+button. These objects he laid on the writing-table and silently
+directed my attention to them. A little puzzled by his manner I picked
+up the coin and examined it attentively. It was a Charles the Second
+guinea dated 1663, very clean and bright and in remarkably perfect
+preservation. But I could not see that it was any concern of mine.
+“It is a beautiful coin,” I remarked; “but what about it?”
+“It doesn’t belong to you, then?” he asked.
+“No. I wish it did.”
+“Have you ever seen it before?”
+“Never, to my knowledge.”
+“What about the pencil-case?”
+I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers. “No,” I said; “it is
+not mine and I have no recollection of ever having seen it before.”
+“And the button?”
+“It is apparently a waistcoat button,” I said after having inspected
+it, “apparently belonging to a tweed waistcoat; and judging by the
+appearance of the thread and the wisp of cloth that it still holds, it
+must have been pulled off with some violence. But it isn’t off my
+waist-coat, if that is what you want to know.��
+“I didn’t much think it was,” he replied, “but I thought it best to
+make sure. And it didn’t come from poor Mr. D’Arblay’s waistcoat,
+because I have examined that and there is no button missing. I showed
+these things to Miss D’Arblay, and she is sure that none of them
+belonged to her father. He never used a pencil-case—artists don’t, as
+a rule—and as to the guinea, she knew nothing about it. If it was her
+father’s, he must have come by it immediately before his death;
+otherwise she felt sure he would have shown it to her, seeing that
+they were both interested in anything in the nature of sculpture.”
+“Where did you get these things?” I asked.
+“From the pond in the wood,” he replied. “I will tell you how I came
+to find them—that is, if I am not taking up too much of your time.”
+“Not at all,” I assured him; and even as I spoke I thought of Solomon
+Usher. He wouldn’t have said that. He would have anxiously consulted
+his engagement-book to see how many minutes he could spare. However,
+Inspector Follett was not a patient, and I wanted to hear his story.
+So having established him in the easy-chair, I sat down to listen.
+“The morning after the inquest,” he began, “an officer of the C.I.D.
+came up to get particulars of the case and see what was to be done.
+Well, as soon as I had told him all I knew and shown him our copy of
+the depositions, it was pretty clear to me that he didn’t think there
+was anything to be done but wait for some fresh evidence. Mind you,
+Doctor, this is in strict confidence.”
+“I understand that. But if the Criminal Investigation Department
+doesn’t investigate crime, what the deuce is the good of it?”
+“That is hardly a fair way of putting it,” he protested. “The people
+at Scotland Yard have got their hands pretty full, and they can’t
+spend their time in speculating about cases in which there is no
+evidence. They can’t create evidence; and you can see for yourself
+that there isn’t the ghost of a clue to the identity of the man who
+committed this murder. But they are keeping the case in mind, and
+meanwhile we have got to report any new facts that may turn up. Those
+were our instructions, and when I heard them I decided to do a bit of
+investigating on my own, with the Superintendent’s permission, of
+course.
+“Well, I began by searching the wood thoroughly, but I got nothing out
+of that excepting Mr. D’Arblay’s hat, which I found in the undergrowth
+not far from the main path.
+“Then I thought of dragging the pond; but I decided that, as it was
+only a small pond and shallow, it would be best to empty it and expose
+the bottom completely. So I dammed up the little stream that feeds it,
+and deepened the outflow, and very soon I had it quite empty excepting
+a few small puddles. And I think it was well worth the trouble. These
+things don’t tell us much, but they may be useful one day for
+identification. And they do tell us something. They suggest that this
+man was a collector of coins; and they make it fairly clear that there
+was a struggle in the pond before Mr. D’Arblay fell down.”
+“That is, assuming that the things belonged to the murderer,” I
+interposed. “There is no evidence that they did.”
+“No, there isn’t,” he admitted; “but if you consider the three things
+together they suggest a very strong probability. Here is a waistcoat
+button violently pulled off, and here are two things such as would be
+carried in a waistcoat pocket and might fall out if the waistcoat were
+dragged at violently when the wearer was stooping over a fallen man
+and struggling to avoid being pulled down with him. And then there is
+this coin. Its face value is a guinea, but it must be worth a good
+deal more than that. Do you suppose anybody would leave a thing of
+that kind in a shallow pond, from which it could be easily recovered
+with a common landing-net? Why, it would have paid to have had the
+pond dragged or even emptied. But, as I say, that wouldn’t have been
+necessary.”
+“I am inclined to think you are right, Inspector,” said I, rather
+impressed by the way in which he had reasoned the matter out; “but
+even so, it doesn’t seem to me that we are much more forward. The
+things don’t point to any particular person.”
+“Not at present,” he rejoined. “But a fact is a fact, and you can
+never tell in advance what you may get out of it. If we should get a
+hint of any other kind pointing to some particular person, these
+things might furnish invaluable evidence connecting that person with
+the crime. They may even give a clue now to the people at the C.I.D.,
+though that isn’t very likely.”
+“Then you are going to hand them over to the Scotland Yard people?”
+“Certainly. The C.I.D. are the lions, you know. I’m only a jackal.”
+I was rather sorry to hear this, for the idea had floated into my mind
+that I should have liked Thorndyke to see these waifs, which, could
+they have spoken, would have had so much to tell. To me they conveyed
+nothing that threw any light on the ghastly events of that night of
+horror. But to my teacher, with his vast experience and his wonderful
+power of analyzing evidence they might convey some quite important
+significance.
+I reflected rapidly on the matter. It would not be wise to say
+anything to the inspector about Thorndyke, and it was quite certain
+that a loan of the articles would not be entertained. Probably a
+description of them would be enough for the purpose; but still I had a
+feeling that an inspection of them would be better. Suddenly I had a
+bright idea, and proceeded cautiously to broach it.
+“I should rather like to have a record of these things,” said I;
+“particularly of the coin. Would you object to my taking an impression
+of it in sealing-wax?”
+Inspector Follett looked doubtful. “It would be a bit irregular,” he
+said. “It is a bit irregular for me to have shown it to you, but you
+are interested in the case, and you are a responsible person. What did
+you want the impression for?”
+“Well,” I said, “we don’t know much about that coin. I thought I might
+be able to pick up some further information. Of course, I understand
+that what you have told me is strictly confidential. I shouldn’t go
+showing the thing about, or talking. But I should like to have the
+impression to refer to if necessary.”
+“Very well,” said he. “On that understanding, I have no objection. But
+see that you don’t leave any wax on the coin, or the C.I.D. people
+will be asking questions.”
+With this permission, I set about the business gleefully, determined
+to get as good an impression as possible. From the surgery I fetched
+an ointment slab, a spirit lamp, a stick of sealing-wax, a teaspoon,
+some powder-papers, a bowl of water, and a jar of vaseline. Laying a
+paper on the slab, I put the coin on it and traced its outline with a
+pencil. Then I broke off a piece of sealing-wax, melted it in the
+teaspoon, and poured it out carefully into the marked circle so that
+it formed a round, convex button of the right size. While the wax was
+cooling to the proper consistency, I smeared the coin with vaseline,
+and wiped the excess off with my handkerchief. Then I carefully laid
+it on the stiffening wax and made steady pressure. After a few moments
+I cautiously lifted the paper and dropped it into the water, leaving
+it to cool completely. When, finally, I turned it over under water,
+the coin dropped away by its own weight.
+“It is a beautiful impression,” the inspector remarked, as he examined
+it with the aid of my pocket lens, while I prepared to operate on the
+reverse of the coin. “As good as the original. You seem rather a dab
+at this sort of thing, Doctor. I wonder if you would mind doing
+another pair for me?”
+Of course, I complied gladly; and when the inspector departed a few
+minutes later he took with him a couple of excellent wax impressions
+to console him for the necessity of parting with the original.
+As soon as he was gone I proceeded to execute a plan that had already
+formed in my mind. First I packed the two wax impressions very
+carefully in lint and bestowed them in a tin tobacco-box, which I made
+up into a neat parcel and addressed it to Dr. Thorndyke. Then I wrote
+him a short letter giving him the substance of my talk with Inspector
+Follett and asking for an appointment early in the following week to
+discuss the situation with him. I did not suppose that the wax
+impressions would convey, even to him, anything that would throw fresh
+light on this extraordinarily obscure crime. But one never knew. And
+the mere finding of the coin might suggest to him some significance
+that I had overlooked. In any case, the new incident gave me an excuse
+for reopening the matter with him.
+I did not trust the precious missives to the maid, but as soon as the
+letter was written I took it and the parcel in my own hands to the
+post, dropping the letter into the box but giving the parcel the added
+security of registration. This business being thus despatched, my mind
+was free to occupy itself with pleasurable anticipations of the
+projected visit to Highgate on the morrow and to deal with whatever
+exigencies might arise in the course of the Saturday evening
+consultations.
+CHAPTER VI.
+Marion D’Arblay at Home
+Most of us have, I imagine, been conscious at times of certain
+misgivings as to whether the Progress of which we hear so much has
+done for us all that it is assumed to have done; whether the undoubted
+gain of advancing knowledge has not a somewhat heavy counterpoise of
+loss. We moderns are accustomed to look upon a world filled with
+objects that would have made our forefathers gasp with admiring
+astonishment; and we are accordingly a little puffed up by our
+superiority. But the museums and galleries and ancient buildings
+sometimes tell a different tale. By them we are made aware that these
+same “rude forefathers” were endowed with certain powers and aptitudes
+that seem to be denied to the present generation.
+Some such reflections as these passed through my mind as I sauntered
+about the ancient village of Highgate, having arrived in the
+neighbourhood nearly an hour too early. Very delightful the old
+village was to look upon, and so it had been, even when the mellow red
+brick was new and the plaster on the timber houses was but freshly
+laid; when the great elms were saplings and the stage-wagon with its
+procession of horses rumbled along the road which now resounds to the
+thunder of the electric tram. It was not Time that had made beautiful
+its charming old houses and pleasant streets and closes, but fine
+workmanship guided by unerring taste.
+At four o’clock precisely, by the chime of the church clock, I pushed
+open the gate of Ivy Cottage, and as I walked up the flagged path,
+read the date, 1709, on a stone tablet let into the brickwork. I had
+no occasion to knock, for my approach had been observed, and as I
+mounted the threshold the door opened and Miss D’Arblay stood in the
+opening.
+“Miss Boler saw you coming up the Grove,” she explained, as we shook
+hands. “It is surprising how much of the outer world you can see from
+a bay window. It is as good as a watch tower.” She disposed of my hat
+and stick, and then preceded me into the room to which the window
+appertained, where, beside a bright fire, Miss Boler was at the moment
+occupied with a brilliantly burnished copper kettle and a silver
+teapot. She greeted me with an affable smile, and as much of a bow as
+was possible under the circumstances, and then proceeded to make the
+tea with an expression of deep concentration.
+“I do like punctual people,” she remarked, placing the teapot on a
+carved wooden stand. “You know where you are with them. At the very
+moment when you turned the corner, Sir, Miss Marion finished buttering
+the last muffin and the kettle boiled over. So you won’t have to wait
+a moment.”
+Miss D’Arblay laughed softly. “You speak as if Dr. Gray had staggered
+into the house in a famished condition, roaring for food,” said she.
+“Well,” retorted Miss Boler, “you said ‘tea at four o’clock,’ and at
+four o’clock the tea was ready and Dr. Gray was here. If he hadn’t
+been he would have had to eat leathery muffins, that’s all.”
+“Horrible!” exclaimed Miss D’Arblay. “One doesn’t like to think of it;
+and there is no need to, as it hasn’t happened. Remember that this is
+a gate-legged table, Dr. Gray, when you sit down. They are
+delightfully picturesque, but exceedingly bad for the knees of the
+unwary.”
+I thanked her for the warning, and took my seat with due caution. Then
+Miss Boler poured out the tea and uncovered the muffins with the grave
+and attentive air of one performing some ceremonial rite.
+As the homely, simple meal proceeded, to an accompaniment of desultory
+conversation on every-day topics, I found myself looking at the two
+women with a certain ill-defined surprise. Both were garbed in
+unobtrusive black, and both, in moments of repose, looked somewhat
+tired and worn. But in their manner and the subjects of their
+conversation, they were astonishingly ordinary and normal. No
+stranger, looking at them and listening to their talk, would have
+dreamed of the tragedy that overshadowed their lives. But so it
+constantly happens. We go into a house of mourning, and are almost
+scandalized by its cheerfulness, forgetting that whereas to us the
+bereavement is the one salient fact, to the bereaved there is the
+necessity of taking up afresh the threads of their lives. Food must be
+prepared even while the corpse lies under the roof, and the common
+daily round of duty stands still for no human affliction.
+But, as I have said, in the pauses of the conversation, when their
+faces were in repose, both women looked strained and tired. Especially
+was this so in the case of Miss D’Arblay. She was not only pale, but
+she had a nervous, shaken manner which I did not like. And as I looked
+anxiously at the delicate, pallid face, I noticed, not for the first
+time, several linear scratches on the cheek and a small cut on the
+temple.
+“What have you been doing to yourself?” I asked. “You look as if you
+had had a fall.”
+“She has,” said Miss Boler in an indignant tone. “It is a marvel that
+she is here to tell the tale. The wretches!”
+I looked at Miss D’Arblay in consternation. “What wretches?” I asked.
+“Ah! indeed!” growled Miss Boler. “I wish I knew. Tell him about it,
+Miss Marion.”
+“It was really rather a terrifying experience,” said Miss D’Arblay;
+“and most mysterious. You know Southwood Lane and the long, steep hill
+at the bottom of it?” I nodded, and she continued: “I have been going
+down to the studio every day on my bicycle, just to tidy up, and, of
+course, I went by Southwood Lane. It is really the only way. But I
+always put on the brake at the top of the hill and go down quite
+slowly because of the crossroads at the bottom. Well, three days ago I
+started as usual and ran down the Lane pretty fast until I got on the
+hill. Then I put on the brake; and I could feel at once that it wasn’t
+working.”
+“Has your bicycle only one brake?” I asked.
+“It had. I am having a second one fixed now. Well, when I found that
+the brake wasn’t acting, I was terrified. I was already going too fast
+to jump off, and the speed increased every moment. I simply flew down
+the hill, faster and faster with the wind whistling about my ears and
+the trees and the houses whirling past like express trains. Of course,
+I could do nothing but steer straight down the hill; but at the bottom
+there was the Archway Road with the trams and ’buses and wagons. I
+knew that if a tram crossed the bottom of the Lane as I reached the
+road, it was practically certain death. I was horribly frightened.
+“However, mercifully the Archway Road was clear when I flew across it,
+and I steered to run on down Muswell Hill Road, which is nearly in a
+line with the lane. But suddenly I saw a steam roller and a heavy
+cart, side by side and taking up the whole of the road. There was no
+room to pass. The only possible thing was to swerve round, if I could,
+into Wood-lane. And I just managed it. But Wood-lane is pretty steep,
+and I flew down it faster than ever. That nearly broke down my nerve;
+for at the bottom of the lane is the wood—the horrible wood that I can
+never even think of without a shudder. And there I seemed to be
+rushing towards it to my death.”
+She paused and drew a deep breath, and her hand shook so that the cup
+which it held rattled in the saucer.
+“Well,” she continued, “down the Lane I flew with my heart in my mouth
+and the entrance to the wood rushing to meet me. I could see that the
+opening in the hurdles was just wide enough for me to pass through,
+and I steered for it. I whizzed through into the wood and the bicycle
+went bounding down the steep, rough path at a fearful pace until it
+came to a sharp turn; and then I don’t quite know what happened. There
+was a crash of snapping branches and a violent shock, but I must have
+been partly stunned, for the next thing that I remember is opening my
+eyes and looking stupidly at a lady who was stooping over me. She had
+seen me fly down the Lane, and had followed me into the wood to see
+what happened to me. She lived in the Lane, and she very kindly took
+me to her house and cared for me until I was quite recovered; and then
+she saw me home and wheeled the bicycle.”
+“It is a wonder you were not killed outright!” I exclaimed.
+“Yes,” she agreed; “it was a narrow escape. But the odd thing is that,
+with the exception of these scratches and a few slight bruises, I was
+not hurt at all; only very much shaken. And the bicycle was not
+damaged a bit.”
+“By the way,” said I, “what had happened to the brake?”
+“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Boler; “there you are. The villains!”
+Miss D’Arblay laughed softly. “Ferocious Arabella!” said she. “But it
+is really a most mysterious affair. Naturally, I thought that the wire
+of the brake had snapped. But it hadn’t. It had been cut.”
+“Are you quite sure of that?” I asked.
+“Oh, there is no doubt at all,” she replied. “The man at the repair
+shop showed it to me. It wasn’t merely cut in one place. A length of
+it had been cut right out. And I can tell within a few minutes when it
+was done, for I had been riding the machine in the morning and I know
+the brake was all right then. But I left it for a few minutes outside
+the gate while I went into the house to change my shoes, and when I
+came out, I started on my adventurous journey. In those few minutes
+some one must have come along and just snipped the wire through in two
+places and taken away the piece.”
+“Scoundrel!” muttered Miss Boler; and I agreed with her most
+cordially.
+“It was an infamous thing to do,” I exclaimed, “and the act of an
+abject fool. I suppose you have no idea or suspicion as to who the
+idiot might be?”
+“Not the slightest,” Miss D’Arblay replied. “I can’t even guess at the
+kind of person who would do such a thing. Boys are sometimes very
+mischievous, but this is hardly like a boy’s mischief.”
+“No,” I agreed, “it is more like the mischief of a mentally defective
+adult; the sort of half-baked larrykin who sets fire to a rick if he
+gets the chance.”
+Miss Boler sniffed. “Looks to me more like deliberate malice,” said
+she.
+“Mischievous acts usually do,” I rejoined; “but yet they are mostly
+the outcome of stupidity that is indifferent to consequences.”
+“And it is of no use arguing about it,” said Miss D’Arblay, “because
+we don’t know who did it or why he did it, and we have no means of
+finding out. But I shall have two brakes in future, and I shall test
+them both every time I take the machine out.”
+“I hope you will,” said Miss Boler; and this closed the topic so far
+as conversation went, though I suspect that, in the interval of
+silence that followed, we all continued to pursue it in our thoughts.
+And to all of us, doubtless, the mention of Church-yard Bottom Wood
+had awakened memories of that fatal morning when the pool gave up its
+dead. No reference to the tragedy had yet been made, but it was
+inevitable that the thoughts which were at the back of all our minds
+should sooner or later come to the surface. They were, in fact,
+brought there by me, though unintentionally; for, as I sat at the
+table, my eyes had strayed more than once to a bust—or rather a head,
+for there were no shoulders—which occupied the centre of the
+mantelpiece. It was apparently of lead, and was a portrait, and a very
+good one, of Miss D’Arblay’s father. At the first glance I had
+recognized the face which I had first seen through the water of the
+pool. Miss D’Arblay, who was sitting facing it, caught my glance, and
+said: “You are looking at that head of my dear father. I suppose you
+recognized it?”
+“Yes, instantly. I should take it to be an excellent likeness.”
+“It is,” she replied; “and that is something of an achievement in a
+self-portrait in the round.”
+“Then he modelled it himself?”
+“Yes, with the aid of one or two photographs and a couple of mirrors.
+I helped him by taking the dimensions with callipers and drawing out a
+scale. Then he made a wax cast and a fireproof mould, and we cast it
+together in type-metal, as we had no means of melting bronze. Poor
+Daddy! How proud he was when we broke away the mould and found the
+casting quite perfect!”
+She sighed as she gazed fondly on the beloved features, and her eyes
+filled. Then, after a brief silence, she turned to me and asked:
+“Did Inspector Follett call on you? He said he was going to.”
+“Yes, he called yesterday to show me the things that he had found in
+the pond. Of course, they were not mine, and he seemed to have no
+doubt—and I think he is right—that they belonged to the—to the——”
+“Murderer,” said Miss Boler.
+“Yes. He seemed to think that they might furnish some kind of clue,
+but I am afraid he had nothing very clear in his mind. I suppose that
+coin suggested nothing to you?”
+Miss D’Arblay shook her head. “Nothing,” she replied. “As it is an
+ancient coin, the man may be a collector or a dealer——”
+“Or a forger,” interposed Miss Boler.
+“Or a forger. But no such person is known to us. And even that is mere
+guesswork.”
+“Your father was not interested in coins, then?”
+“As a sculptor, yes, and more especially in medals and plaquettes. But
+not as a collector. He had no desire to possess; only to create. And
+so far as I know, he was not acquainted with any collectors. So this
+discovery of the inspector’s, so far from solving the mystery, only
+adds a fresh problem.”
+She reflected for a few moments with knitted brows; then, turning to
+me quickly, she asked:
+“Did the inspector take you into his confidence at all? He was very
+reticent to me, though most kind and sympathetic. But do you think
+that he, or the others, are taking any active measures?”
+“My impression,” I answered reluctantly, “is that the police are not
+in a position to do anything. The truth is that this villain seems to
+have got away without leaving a trace.”
+“That is what I feared,” she sighed. Then with sudden passion, though
+in a quiet, suppressed voice, she exclaimed: “But he must not escape!
+It would be too hideous an injustice. Nothing can bring back my dear
+father from the grave; but if there is a God of Justice, this
+murderous wretch must be called to account and made to pay the penalty
+of his crime.”
+“He must,” Miss Boler assented in deep, ominous tones, “and he shall;
+though God knows how it is to be done.”
+“For the present,” said I, “there is nothing to be done but to wait
+and see if the police are able to obtain any fresh information; and
+meanwhile to turn over every circumstance that you can think of; to
+recall the way your father spent his time, the people he knew, and the
+possibility in each case that some cause of enmity may have arisen.”
+“That is what I have done,” said Miss D’Arblay. “Every night I lie
+awake, thinking, thinking; but nothing comes of it. The thing is
+incomprehensible. This man must have been a deadly enemy of my
+father’s. He must have hated him with the most intense hatred, or he
+must have had some strong reason other than mere hatred for making
+away with him. But I cannot imagine any person hating my father, and I
+certainly have no knowledge of any such person, nor can I conceive of
+any reason that any human creature could have had for wishing for my
+father’s death. I cannot begin to understand the meaning of what has
+happened.”
+“But yet,” said I, “there must be a meaning. This man—unless he was a
+lunatic, which he apparently was not—must have had a motive for
+committing the murder. That motive must have had some background, some
+connexion with circumstances of which somebody has knowledge. Sooner
+or later those circumstances will almost certainly come to light, and
+then the motive for the murder will come into view. But once the
+motive is known, it should not be difficult to discover who could be
+influenced by such a motive. Let us, for the present, be patient and
+see how events shape, but let us also keep a constant watch for any
+glimmer of light, for any fact that may bear on either the motive or
+the person.”
+The two women looked at me earnestly and with an expression of
+respectful confidence, of which I knew myself to be wholly
+undeserving.
+“It gives me new courage,” said Miss D’Arblay, “to hear you speak in
+that reasonable, confident tone. I was in despair, but I feel that you
+are right. There must be some explanation of this awful thing; and if
+there is, it must be possible to discover it. But we ought not to put
+the burden of our troubles on you, though you have been so kind.”
+“You have done me the honour,” said I, “to allow me to consider myself
+your friend. Surely friends should help to bear one another’s
+burdens.”
+“Yes,” she replied, “in reason; and you have given most generous help
+already. But we must not put too much on you. When my father was
+alive, he was my great interest and chief concern. Now that he is
+gone, the great purpose of my life is to find the wretch who murdered
+him and to see that justice is done. That is all that seems to matter
+to me. But it is my own affair. I ought not to involve my friends in
+it.”
+“I can’t admit that,” said I. “The foundation of friendship is
+sympathy and service. If I am your friend, then what matters to you
+matters to me; and I may say that in the very moment when I first knew
+that your father had been murdered, I made the resolve to devote
+myself to the discovery and punishment of his murderer by any means
+that lay in my power. So you must count me as your ally as well as
+your friend.”
+As I made this declaration—to an accompaniment of approving growls
+from Miss Boler—Marion D’Arblay gave me one quick glance and then
+looked down; and once more, her eyes filled. For a few moments she
+made no reply; and when, at length, she spoke, her voice trembled.
+“You leave me nothing to say,” she murmured, “but to thank you from my
+heart. But you little know what it means to us, who felt so helpless,
+to know that we have a friend so much wiser and stronger than
+ourselves.”
+I was a little abashed, knowing my own weakness and helplessness, to
+find her putting so much reliance on me. However, there was Thorndyke
+in the background; and now I was resolved that, if the thing was in
+any way to be compassed, his help must be secured without delay.
+A longish pause followed, and as it seemed to me that there was
+nothing more to say on this subject until I had seen Thorndyke, I
+ventured to open a fresh topic.
+“What will happen to your father’s practice?” I asked. “Will you be
+able to get any one to carry it on for you?”
+“I am glad you asked that,” said Miss D’Arblay, “because, now that you
+are our counsellor we can take your opinion, I have already talked the
+matter over with Arabella—with Miss Boler.”
+“There’s no need to stand on ceremony,” the latter lady interposed.
+“Arabella is good enough for me.”
+“Arabella is good enough for any one,” said Miss D’Arblay. “Well, the
+position is this. The part of my father’s practice that was concerned
+with original work—pottery figures and reliefs and models for
+goldsmith’s work—will have to go. No one but a sculptor of his own
+class could carry that on. But the wax figures for the shop windows
+are different. When he first started, he used to model the heads and
+limbs in clay and make plaster casts from which to make the gelatine
+moulds for the wax-work. But as time went on, these casts accumulated
+and he very seldom had need to model fresh heads or limbs. The old
+casts could be used over and over again. Now there is a large
+collection of plaster models in the studio—heads, arms, legs, and
+faces, especially faces—and as I have a fair knowledge of the
+wax-work, from watching my father and sometimes helping him, it seemed
+that I might be able to carry on that part of the practice.”
+“You think you could make the wax figures yourself?” I asked.
+“Of course she could,” exclaimed Miss Boler. “She’s her father’s
+daughter. Julius D’Arblay was a man who could do anything he turned
+his hand to and do it well. And Miss Marion is just like him. She is
+quite a good modeller—so her father said; and she wouldn’t have to
+make the figures. Only the wax parts.”
+“Then they are not wax all over?” said I.
+“No,” answered Miss D’Arblay. “They are just dummies; wooden
+frameworks covered with stuffed canvas, with wax heads, busts, and
+arms, and shaped legs. That was what poor Daddy used to hate about
+them. He would have liked to model complete figures.”
+“And as to the business side. Could you dispose of them?”
+“Yes, if I could do them satisfactorily. The agent who dealt with my
+father’s work has already written to me asking if I could carry on. I
+know he will help me so far as he can. He was quite fond of my
+father.”
+“And you have nothing else in view?”
+“Nothing by which I could earn a real living. For the last year or two
+I have worked at writing and illuminating; addresses, testimonials,
+and church services, when I could get them, and filled in the time
+writing special window-tickets. But that isn’t very remunerative,
+whereas the wax figures would yield quite a good living. And then,”
+she added, after a pause, “I have the feeling that Daddy would have
+liked me to carry on his work, and I should like it myself. He taught
+me quite a lot and I think he meant me to join him when he got old.”
+As she had evidently made up her mind, and as her decision seemed
+quite a wise one, I concurred with as much enthusiasm as I could
+muster.
+“I am glad you agree,” said she, “and I know Arabella does. So that is
+settled, subject to my being able to carry out the plan. And now, if
+we have finished, I should like to show you some of my father’s works.
+The house is full of them and so, even, is the garden. Perhaps we had
+better go there first before the light fails.”
+As the treasures of this singularly interesting home were presented,
+one after another, for my inspection, I began to realize the truth of
+Miss Boler’s statement. Julius D’Arblay had been a remarkably
+versatile man. He had worked in all sorts of mediums and in all
+equally well. From the carved stone sundial and the leaden garden
+figures to the clock-case decorated with gilded gesso and enriched
+with delicate bronze plaquettes, all his works were eloquent of
+masterly skill and a fresh, graceful fancy. It seems to me little
+short of a tragedy that an artist of his ability should have spent the
+greater part of his time in fabricating those absurd, posturing
+effigies that simper and smirk so grotesquely in the enormous windows
+of Vanity Fair.
+I had intended, in compliance with the polite conventions, to make
+this, my first visit, a rather short one; but a tentative movement to
+depart only elicited protests, and I was easily persuaded to stay
+until the exigencies of Dr. Cornish’s practice seemed to call me. When
+at last I shut the gate of Ivy Cottage behind me and glanced back at
+the two figures standing in the lighted doorway, I had the feeling of
+turning away from a house with which, and its inmates, I had been
+familiar for years.
+On my arrival at Mecklenburgh-square I found a note which had been
+left by hand earlier in the evening. It was from Dr. Thorndyke, asking
+me, if possible, to lunch with him at his chambers on the morrow. I
+looked over my visiting list, and finding that Monday would be a light
+day—most of my days here were light days—I wrote a short letter
+accepting the invitation and posted it forthwith.
+CHAPTER VII.
+Enlarging Thorndyke’s Knowledge
+“I am glad you were able to come,” said Thorndyke, as we took our
+places at the table. “Your letter was a shade ambiguous. You spoke of
+discussing the D’Arblay case, but I think you had something more than
+discussion in your mind.”
+“You are quite right,” I replied. “I had in my mind to ask if it would
+be possible for me to retain you—I believe that is the correct
+expression—to investigate the case, as the police seem to think there
+is nothing to go on; and if the costs would be likely to be within my
+means.”
+“As to the costs,” said he, “we can dismiss them. I see no reason to
+suppose that there would be any costs.”
+“But your time, Sir——” I began.
+He laughed derisively. “Do you propose to pay me for indulging in my
+pet hobby? No, my dear fellow, it is I who should pay you for bringing
+a most interesting and intriguing case to my notice. So your questions
+are answered. I shall be delighted to look into this case, and there
+will be no costs unless we have to pay for some special services. If
+we do, I will let you know.”
+I was about to utter a protest, but he continued:
+“And now, having disposed of the preliminaries, let us consider the
+case itself. Your very shrewd and capable inspector believes that the
+Scotland Yard people will take no active measures unless some new
+facts turn up. I have no doubt he is right, and I think they are
+right, too. They can’t spend a lot of time—which means public money—on
+a case in which hardly any data are available, and which holds out no
+promise of any result. But we mustn’t forget that we are in the same
+boat. Our chances of success are infinitesimal. This investigation is
+a forlorn hope. That, I may say, is what commends it to me; but I want
+you to understand clearly that failure is what we have to expect.”
+“I understand that,” I answered gloomily, but nevertheless rather
+disappointed at this pessimistic view. “There seems to be nothing
+whatever to go upon.”
+“Oh, it isn’t so bad as that,” he rejoined. “Let us just run over the
+data that we have. Our object is to fix the identity of the man who
+killed Julius D’Arblay. Let us see what we know about him. We will
+begin with the evidence at the inquest. From that we learned: 1. That
+he is a man of some education, ingenious, subtle, resourceful. This
+murder was planned with extraordinary ingenuity and foresight. The
+body was found in the pond with no telltale mark on it but an almost
+invisible pinprick in the back. The chances were a thousand to one, or
+more, against that tiny puncture ever being observed; and if it had
+not been observed, the verdict would have been ‘Found drowned,’ or
+‘Found dead,’ and the fact of the murder would never have been
+discovered.
+“2. We also learn that he has some knowledge of poisons. The common,
+vulgar, poisoner is reduced to fly-papers, weed-killer, or
+rat-poison—arsenic or strychnine. But this man selects the most
+suitable of all poisons for his purpose, and administers it in the
+most effective manner; with a hypodermic syringe.
+“3. We learned further that he must have had some extraordinarily
+strong reason for making away with D’Arblay. He made most elaborate
+plans, he took endless trouble—for instance, it must have been no easy
+matter to get possession of that quantity of aconitine (unless he were
+a doctor, which God forbid!). That strong reason—the motive, in
+fact—is the key of the problem. It is the murderer’s one vulnerable
+point, for it can hardly be beyond discovery; and its discovery must
+be our principal objective.”
+I nodded, not without some self-congratulation as I recalled how I had
+made this very point in my talk with Miss D’Arblay.
+“Those,” Thorndyke continued, “are the data that the inquest
+furnished. Now we come to those added by Inspector Follett.”
+“I don’t see that they help us at all,” said I. “The ancient coin was
+a curious find, but it doesn’t appear to tell us anything new
+excepting that this man may have been a collector or a dealer. On the
+other hand, he may not. It doesn’t seem to me that the coin has any
+significance.”
+“Doesn’t it really?” said Thorndyke, as he refilled my glass. “You are
+surely overlooking the very curious coincidence that it presents.”
+“What coincidence is that?” I asked, in some surprise.
+“The coincidence,” he replied, “that both the murderer and the victim
+should be, to a certain extent, connected with a particular form of
+activity. Here is a man who commits a murder and who, at the time of
+committing it appears to have been in possession of a coin, which is
+not a current coin, but a collector’s piece; and behold! the murdered
+man is a sculptor—a man who, presumably, was capable of making a coin,
+or at least the working model.”
+“There is no evidence,” I objected, “that D’Arblay was capable of
+cutting a die. He was not a die sinker.”
+“There was no need for him to be,” Thorndyke rejoined. “Formerly, the
+medallist who designed the coin cut the die himself. But that is not
+the modern practice. Nowadays, the designer makes the model, first in
+wax and then in plaster, on a comparatively large scale. The model of
+a shilling may be three inches or more in diameter. The actual
+die-sinking is done by a copying machine which produces a die of the
+required size by mechanical reduction. I think there could be no doubt
+that D’Arblay could have modelled the design for a coin on the usual
+scale, say three or four inches in diameter.”
+“Yes,” I agreed, “he certainly could, for I have seen some of his
+small relief work; some little plaquettes, not more than two inches
+long and most delicately and beautifully modelled. But still, I don’t
+see the connexion, otherwise than as a rather odd coincidence.”
+“There may be nothing more,” said he. “There may be nothing in it at
+all. But odd coincidences should always be noted with very special
+attention.”
+“Yes, I realize that. But I can’t imagine what significance there
+could be in the coincidence.”
+“Well,” said Thorndyke, “let us take an imaginary case, just as an
+illustration. Suppose this man to have been a fraudulent dealer in
+antiquities; and suppose him to have obtained enlarged photographs of
+a medal or coin of extreme rarity and of great value, which was in
+some museum or private collection. Suppose him to have taken the
+photographs to D’Arblay and commissioned him to model from them a pair
+of exact replicas in hardened plaster. From those plaster models he
+could, with a copying machine, produce a pair of dies with which he
+could strike replicas in the proper metal and of the exact size; and
+these could be sold for large sums to judiciously chosen collectors.”
+“I don’t believe D’Arblay would have accepted such a commission,” I
+exclaimed indignantly.
+“We may assume that he would not, if the fraudulent intent had been
+known to him. But it would not have been; and there is no reason why
+he should have refused a commission merely to make a copy. Still, I am
+not suggesting that anything of the kind really happened. I am simply
+giving you an illustration of one of the innumerable ways in which a
+perfectly honest sculptor might be made use of by a fraudulent dealer.
+In that case his honesty would be a source of danger to him; for if a
+really great fraud were perpetrated by means of his work, it would
+clearly be to the interest of the perpetrator to get rid of him. An
+honest and unconscious collaborator in a crime is apt to be a
+dangerous witness if questions arise.”
+I was a good deal impressed by this demonstration. Here, it seemed to
+me, was something very like a tangible clue. But at this point
+Thorndyke again applied a cold douche.
+“Still,” he said, “we are only dealing with generalities, and rather
+speculative ones. Our assumptions are subject to all sorts of
+qualifications. It is possible, for instance, though very improbable,
+that D’Arblay may have been murdered in error by a perfect stranger;
+that he may have walked into an ambush prepared for some one else.
+Again, the coin may not have belonged to the murderer at all, though
+that is also most improbable. But there are numerous possibilities of
+error; and we can eliminate them only by following up each suggested
+clue and seeking verification or disproof. Every new fact that we
+learn is a multiple gain. For as money makes money, so knowledge
+begets knowledge.”
+“That is very true,” I answered dejectedly—for it sounded rather like
+a platitude; “but I don’t see any means of following up any of these
+clues.”
+“We are going to follow up one of them after lunch, if you have time,”
+said he. As he spoke, he took from the table drawer a paper packet and
+a jeweller’s leather case. “This,” he said, handing me the packet,
+“contains your sealing-wax moulds. You had better take care of them
+and keep the box with the marked side up to prevent the wax from
+warping. Here are a pair of casts in hardened plaster—‘fictile ivory,’
+as it is called—which my assistant, Polton, has made.”
+He opened the case and passed it to me, when I saw that it was lined
+with purple velvet and contained what looked like two old ivory
+replicas of the mysterious coin.
+“Mr. Polton is quite an artist,” I said, regarding them admiringly.
+“But what are you going to do with these?”
+“I had intended to take them round to the British Museum and show them
+to the keeper of the coins and medals, or one of his colleagues. But I
+think I will just ask a few questions and hear what he says before I
+produce the casts. Have you time to come round with me?”
+“I shall make time. But what do you want to know about the coin?”
+“It is just a matter of verification,” he replied. “My books on the
+British coinage describe the Charles the Second guinea as having a
+tiny elephant under the bust on the obverse, to show that the gold
+from which it was minted came from the Guinea Coast.”
+“Yes,” said I. “Well, there is a little elephant under the bust in
+this coin.”
+“True,” he replied. “But this elephant has a castle on his back, and
+would ordinarily be described as an elephant and castle, to
+distinguish him from the plain elephant which appeared on some coins.
+What I want to ascertain is whether there were two different types of
+guinea. The books make no mention of a second variety.”
+“Surely they would have referred to it if there had been,” said I.
+“So I thought,” he replied; “but it is better to make sure than to
+think.”
+“I suppose it is,” I agreed without much conviction, “though I don’t
+see that, even if there were two varieties, that fact would have any
+bearing on what we want to know.”
+“Neither do I,” he admitted. “But then you can never tell what a fact
+will prove until you are in possession of the fact. And now, as we
+seem to have finished, perhaps we had better make our way to the
+Museum.”
+The department of coins and medals is associated in my mind with an
+impassive-looking Chinese person in bronze who presides over the upper
+landing of the main staircase. In fact, we halted for a moment before
+him to exchange a final word.
+“It will probably be best,” said Thorndyke, “to say nothing about this
+coin, or, indeed, about anything else. We don’t want to enter into any
+explanations.”
+“No,” I agreed. “It is best to keep one’s own counsel;” and with this
+we entered the hall, where Thorndyke led the way to a small door and
+pressed the electric bell-push. An attendant admitted us, and when we
+had signed our names in the visitors’ book, he ushered us into the
+keeper’s room. As we entered, a keen-faced, middle-aged man who was
+seated at a table inspected us over his spectacles, and, apparently
+recognizing Thorndyke, rose and held out his hand.
+“Quite a long time since I have seen you,” he remarked after the
+preliminary greetings. “I wonder what your quest is this time.”
+“It is a very simple one,” said Thorndyke. “I am going to ask if you
+can let me look at a Charles the Second guinea dated 1663.”
+“Certainly I can,” was the reply, accompanied by an inquisitive glance
+at my friend. “It is not a rarity, you know.”
+He crossed the room to a large cabinet, and having run his eye over
+the multitudinous labels, drew out a small, very shallow drawer. With
+this in his hand he returned, and picking a coin out of its circular
+pit, held it out to Thorndyke, who took it from him, holding it
+delicately by the edge. He looked at it attentively for a few moments,
+and then silently presented the obverse for my inspection. Naturally
+my eye at once sought the little elephant under the bust, and there it
+was; but there was no castle on its back.
+“Is this the only type of guinea issued at that date?” Thorndyke
+asked.
+“The only type,” was the reply. “This is the first issue of the
+guinea.”
+“There was no variation or alternative form?”
+“There was a form which had no elephant under the bust. Only those
+which were minted from African gold bore the elephant.”
+“I notice that this coin has a plain elephant under the bust; but I
+seem to have heard of a guinea, bearing this date, which had an
+elephant and castle under the bust. You are sure there was no such
+guinea?”
+Our official friend shook his head as he took the coin from Thorndyke
+and replaced it in its cell. “As sure,” he replied, “as one can be of
+a universal negative. The elephant and castle did not appear until
+1685.” He picked up the drawer and was just moving away towards the
+cabinet when there came a sudden change in his manner.
+“Wait!” he exclaimed, stopping and putting down the drawer. “You are
+quite right. Only it was not an issue; it was a trial piece, and only
+a single coin was struck. I will tell you about it. There is a rather
+curious story hanging to that piece.
+“This guinea, as you probably know, was struck from dies cut by John
+Roettier, and was one of the first coined by the mill-and-screw
+process in place of the old hammer-and-pile method. Now when Roettier
+had finished the dies, a trial piece was struck; and in striking that
+piece the obverse die cracked right across, but apparently only at the
+last turn of the screw, for the trial piece was quite perfect. Of
+course, Roettier had to cut a new die; and for some reason he made a
+slight alteration. The first die had an elephant and castle under the
+bust. In the second one he changed this to a plain elephant. So your
+impression was, so far, correct; but the coin, if it still exists, is
+absolutely unique.”
+“Is it not known, then, what became of that trial piece?”
+“Oh, yes—up to a point. That is the queerest part of the story. For a
+time it remained in the possession of the Slingsby family—Slingsby was
+the Master of the Mint when it was struck. Then it passed through the
+hands of various collectors, and finally was bought by an American
+collector named Van Zellen. Now Van Zellen was a millionaire, and his
+collection was a typical millionaire’s collection. It consisted
+entirely of things of enormous value which no ordinary man could
+afford, or of unique things of which nobody could possibly have a
+duplicate. It seems that he was a rather solitary man, and that he
+spent most of his evenings alone in his museum, gloating over his
+possessions.
+“One morning Van Zellen was found dead in the little study attached to
+the museum. That was about eighteen months ago. There was an empty
+champagne bottle on the table and a half-emptied glass, which smelt of
+bitter almonds, and in his pocket was an empty phial labelled
+‘Hydrocyanic Acid.’ At first it was assumed that he had committed
+suicide, but when, later, the collection was examined, it was found
+that a considerable part of it was missing. A clean sweep had been
+made of the gems, jewels, and other portable objects of value, and,
+among other things, this unique trial guinea had vanished. Surely you
+remember the case?”
+“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I do, now you mention it, but I never heard
+what was stolen. Do you happen to know what the later developments
+were?”
+“There were none. The identity of the murderer was never even guessed
+at, and not a single item of the stolen property has ever been traced.
+To this day the crime remains an impenetrable mystery—unless you know
+something about it,” and again our friend cast an inquisitive glance
+at Thorndyke.
+“My practice,” the latter replied, “does not extend to the United
+States. Their own very efficient investigators seem to be able to do
+all that is necessary. But I am very much obliged to you for having
+given us so much of your time, to say nothing of this extremely
+interesting information. I shall make a note of it, for American crime
+occasionally has its repercussions on this side.”
+I secretly admired the adroit way in which Thorndyke had evaded the
+rather pointed question without making any actual mis-statement. But
+the motive for the evasion was not very obvious to me. I was about to
+put a question on the subject, but he anticipated it, for, as soon as
+we were outside, he remarked with a chuckle: “It is just as well that
+we didn’t begin by exhibiting the casts. We could hardly have sworn
+our friend to secrecy, seeing that the original is undoubtedly stolen
+property.”
+“But aren’t you going to draw the attention of the police to the
+fact?”
+“I think not,” he replied. “They have got the original, and no doubt
+they have a list of the stolen property. We must assume that they will
+make use of their knowledge; but if they don’t, it may be all the
+better for us. The police are very discreet; but they do sometimes
+give the Press more information than I should. And what is told to the
+Press is told to the criminal.”
+“And why not?” I asked. “What is the harm of his knowing?”
+“My dear Gray!” exclaimed Thorndyke. “You surprise me. Just consider
+the position. This man aimed at being entirely unsuspected. That
+failed. But still his identity is unknown, and he is probably
+confident that it will never be ascertained. Then he is, so far, off
+his guard. There is no need for him to disappear or go into hiding.
+But let him know that he is being tracked and he will almost certainly
+take fresh precautions against discovery. Probably he will slip away
+beyond our reach. Our aim must be to encourage in him a feeling of
+perfect security; and that aim commits us to the strictest secrecy. No
+one must know what cards we hold or that we hold any; or even that we
+are taking a hand.”
+“What about Miss D’Arblay?” I asked anxiously. “May I not tell her
+that you are working on her behalf?”
+He looked at me somewhat dubiously. “It would obviously be better not
+to,” he said, “but that might seem a little unfriendly and
+unsympathetic.”
+“It would be an immense relief to her to know that you are trying to
+help her, and I think you could trust her to keep your secrets.”
+“Very well,” he conceded. “But warn her very thoroughly. Remember that
+our antagonist is hidden from us. Let us remain hidden from him, so
+far as our activities are concerned.”
+“I will make her promise absolute secrecy,” I agreed: and then, with a
+slight sense of anti-climax, I added: “But we don’t seem to have so
+very much to conceal. This curious story of the stolen coin is
+interesting, but it doesn’t appear to get us any more forward.”
+“Doesn’t it?” he asked. “Now I was just congratulating myself on the
+progress that we had made; on the way in which we are narrowing down
+the field of inquiry. Let us trace our progress. When you found the
+body there was no evidence as to the cause of death; no suspicion of
+any agent whatever. Then came the inquest, demonstrating the cause of
+death and bringing into view a person of unknown identity, but having
+certain distinguishing characteristics. Then Follett’s discovery added
+some further characteristics and suggested certain possible motives
+for the crime. But still there was no hint as to the person’s identity
+or position in life. Now we have good evidence that he is a
+professional criminal of a dangerous type, that he is connected with
+another crime and with a quantity of easily identified stolen
+property. We also know that he was in America about eighteen months
+ago, and we can easily get exact information as to dates and locality.
+This man is no longer a mere formless shadow. He is in a definite
+category of possible persons.”
+“But,” I objected, “the fact that he had the coin in his possession
+does not prove that he is the man who stole it.”
+“Not by itself,” Thorndyke agreed. “But taken in conjunction with the
+crime, it is almost conclusive. You appear to be overlooking the
+striking similarity of the two crimes. Each was a violent murder
+committed by means of poison; and in each case, the poison selected
+was the most suitable one for the purpose. The one, aconitine, was
+calculated to escape detection; the other, hydrocyanic acid—the most
+rapidly acting of all poisons—was calculated to produce almost instant
+death in a man who was probably struggling and might have raised an
+alarm. I think we are fairly justified in assuming that the murderer
+of Van Zellen was the murderer of D’Arblay. If that is so, we have two
+groups of circumstances to investigate, two tracks by which to follow
+him; and, sooner or later, I feel confident, we shall be able to give
+him a name. Then if we have kept our own counsel, and he is
+unconscious of the pursuit, we shall be able to lay our hands on him.
+But here we are at the Foundling Hospital. It is time for each of us
+to get back to the routine of duty.”
+CHAPTER VIII.
+Simon Bendelow, Deceased
+It was near the close of my incumbency of Dr. Cornish’s
+practice—indeed, Cornish had returned on the previous evening—that my
+unsatisfactory attendance on Mr. Simon Bendelow came to an end. It had
+been a wearisome affair. In medical practice, perhaps even more than
+in most human activities, continuous effort calls for the sustenance
+of achievement. A patient who cannot be cured or even substantially
+relieved is of all patients the most depressing. Week after week I had
+made my fruitless visits, had watched the silent, torpid sufferer grow
+yet more shrivelled and wasted, speculating even a little impatiently
+on the possible duration of his long-drawn-out passage to the grave.
+But at last the end came.
+“Good morning, Mrs. Morris,” I said as that grim female opened the
+door and surveyed me impassively, “and how is our patient to-day?”
+“He isn’t our patient any longer,” she replied. “He’s dead.”
+“Ha!” I exclaimed. “Well, it had to be, sooner or later. Poor Mr.
+Bendelow! When did he die?”
+“Yesterday afternoon, about five,” she answered.
+“H’m. If you had sent me a note I could have brought the certificate.
+However, I can post it to you. Shall I go up and have a look at him?”
+“You can if you like,” she replied. “But the ordinary certificate
+won’t be enough in this case. He is going to be cremated.”
+“Oh, indeed!” said I, once more unpleasantly conscious of my
+inexperience. “What sort of certificate is required for cremation?”
+“Oh, all sorts of formalities have to be gone through,” she answered.
+“Just come into the drawing-room, and I will tell you what has to be
+done.”
+She preceded me along the passage, and I followed meekly,
+anathematizing myself for my ignorance, and my instructors for having
+sent me forth crammed with academic knowledge, but with the practical
+business of my profession all to learn.
+“Why are you having him cremated?” I asked, as we entered the room and
+shut the door.
+“Because it is one of the provisions of his will,” she answered. “I
+may as well let you see it.”
+She opened a bureau and took from it a foolscap envelope, from which
+she drew out a folded document. This she first unfolded and then
+re-folded, so that its concluding clauses were visible, and laid it on
+the flap of the bureau. Placing her finger on it, she said: “That is
+the cremation clause. You had better read it.”
+I ran my eye over the clause, which read: “I desire that my body shall
+be cremated, and I appoint Sarah Elizabeth Morris, the wife of the
+aforesaid James Morris, to be the residuary legatee and sole executrix
+of this my will.” Then followed the attestation clause, underneath
+which was the shaky but characteristic signature of “Simon Bendelow,”
+and opposite this the signatures of the witnesses, Anne Dewsnep and
+Martha Bonington, both described as spinsters and both of a joint
+address which was hidden by the folding of the document.
+“So much for that,” said Mrs. Morris, returning the will to its
+envelope; “and now as to the certificate. There is a special form for
+cremation which has to be signed by two doctors, and one of them must
+be a hospital doctor or a consultant. So I wrote off at once to Dr.
+Cropper, as he knew the patient, and I have had a telegram from him
+this morning saying that he will be here this evening at eight o’clock
+to examine the body and sign the certificate. Can you manage to meet
+him at that time?”
+“Yes,” I replied, “fortunately I can, as Dr. Cornish is back.”
+“Very well,” said she; “then in that case you needn’t go up now. You
+will be able to make the examination together. Eight o’clock, sharp,
+remember.”
+With this she re-conducted me along the passage and—I had almost said
+ejected me; but she sped the parting guest with a business-like
+directness that was perhaps accounted for by the presence opposite the
+door of one of those grim parcels-delivery vans in which undertakers
+distribute their wares, and from which a rough-looking coffin was at
+the moment being hoisted out by two men.
+The extraordinary promptitude of this proceeding so impressed me that
+I remarked: “They haven’t been long making the coffin.”
+“They didn’t have to make it,” she replied. “I ordered it a month ago.
+It’s no use leaving things to the last moment.”
+I turned away with somewhat mixed feelings. There was certainly a
+horrible efficiency about this woman. Executrix, indeed! Her
+promptness in carrying out the provisions of the will was positively
+appalling. She must have written to Cropper before the breath was
+fairly out of poor Bendelow’s body, but her forethought in the matter
+of the coffin fairly made my flesh creep.
+Dr. Cornish made no difficulty about taking over the evening
+consultations, in fact he had intended to do so in any case.
+Accordingly, after a rather early dinner, I made my way in leisurely
+fashion back to Hoxton, where, after all, I arrived fully ten minutes
+too soon. I realized my prematureness when I halted at the corner of
+Market-street to look at my watch; and as ten additional minutes of
+Mrs. Morris’s society offered no allurement, I was about to turn back
+and fill up the time with a short walk when my attention was arrested
+by a mast which had just appeared above the wall at the end of the
+street. With its black-painted truck and halyard blocks and its long
+tricolour pennant, it looked like the mast of a Dutch schuyt or
+galliot, but I could hardly believe it possible that such a craft
+could make its appearance in the heart of London. All agog with
+curiosity, I hurried up the street and looked over the wall at the
+canal below; and there, sure enough, she was—a big Dutch sloop,
+broad-bosomed, massive, and mediæval, just such a craft as one may see
+in the pictures of old Vandervelde, painted when Charles the Second
+was king.
+I leaned on the low wall and watched her with delighted interest as
+she crawled forward slowly to her berth, bringing with her, as it
+seemed, a breath of the distant sea and the echo of the surf,
+murmuring on sandy beaches. I noted appreciatively her old-world air,
+her antique build, her gay and spotless paint, and the muslin curtains
+in the little windows of her deck-house, and was, in fact, so absorbed
+in watching her that the late Simon Bendelow had passed completely out
+of my mind. Suddenly, however, the chiming of a clock recalled me to
+my present business. With a hasty glance at my watch I tore myself
+away reluctantly, darted across the street, and gave a vigorous pull
+at the bell.
+Dr. Cropper had not yet arrived, but the deceased had not been
+entirely neglected, for when I had spent some five minutes staring
+inquisitively about the drawing-room into which Mrs. Morris had shown
+me, that lady returned, accompanied by two other ladies, whom she
+introduced to me somewhat informally by the names of Miss Dewsnep and
+Miss Bonington respectively. I recognized the names as those of the
+two witnesses to the will and inspected them with furtive curiosity,
+though, indeed, they were quite unremarkable excepting as typical
+specimens of the genus elderly spinster.
+“Poor Mr. Bendelow!” murmured Miss Dewsnep, shaking her head and
+causing an artificial cherry on her bonnet to waggle idiotically. “How
+beautiful he looks in his coffin!”
+She looked at me as if for confirmation, so that I was fain to admit
+that his beauty in this new setting had not yet been revealed to me.
+“So peaceful,” she added, with another shake of her head, and Miss
+Bonington chimed in with the comment, “Peaceful and restful.” Then
+they both looked at me and I mumbled indistinctly that I had no doubt
+he did; the fact being that the inmates of coffins are not in general
+much addicted to boisterous activity.
+“Ah!” Miss Dewsnep resumed, “how little did I think when I first saw
+him, sitting up in bed so cheerful in that nice, sunny room in the
+house at——”
+“Why not?” interrupted Mrs. Morris. “Did you think he was going to
+live for ever?”
+“No, Mrs. Morris, ma’am,” was the dignified reply, “I did not. No such
+idea ever entered my head. I know too well that we mortals are all
+born to be gathered in at last as the—er—as the——”
+“Sparks fly upwards,” murmured Miss Bonington.
+“As the corn is gathered in at harvest time,” Miss Dewsnep continued
+with slight emphasis. “But not to be cast into a burning fiery
+furnace. When I first saw him in the other house at——”
+“I don’t see what objection you need have to cremation,” interrupted
+Mrs. Morris. “It was his own choice, and a good one, too. Look at
+those great cemeteries. What sense is there in letting the dead occupy
+the space that is wanted for the living?”
+“Well,” said Miss Dewsnep, “I may be old-fashioned, but it does seem
+to me that a nice, quiet funeral with plenty of flowers and a proper,
+decent grave in a church-yard is the natural end to a human life. That
+is what I look forward to, myself.”
+“Then you are not likely to be disappointed,” said Mrs. Morris;
+“though I don’t quite see what satisfaction you expect to get out of
+your own funeral.”
+Miss Dewsnep made no reply, and an interval of dismal silence
+followed. Mrs. Morris was evidently impatient of Dr. Cropper’s
+unpunctuality. I could see that she was listening intently for the
+sound of the bell, as she had been even while the conversation was in
+progress; indeed, I had been dimly conscious all the while of a sense
+of tension and anxiety on her part. She had seemed to me to watch her
+two friends with a sort of uneasiness, and to give a quite
+uncalled-for attention to their rather trivial utterances.
+At length her suspense was relieved by a loud ringing of the bell. She
+started up and opened the door, but she had barely crossed the
+threshold when she suddenly turned back and addressed me.
+“That will be Dr. Cropper. Perhaps you had better come out with me and
+meet him.”
+It struck me as an odd suggestion, but I rose without comment and
+followed her along the passage to the street door, which we reached
+just as another loud peal of the bell sounded in the house behind us.
+She flung the door wide open, and a small, spectacled man charged in
+and seized my hand, which he shook with violent cordiality.
+“How do you do, Mr. Morris?” he exclaimed. “So sorry to keep you
+waiting, but I was unfortunately detained at a consultation.”
+Here Mrs. Morris sourly intervened to explain who I was; upon which he
+shook my hand again, and expressed his joy at making my acquaintance.
+He also made polite inquiries as to our hostess’ health, which she
+acknowledged gruffly over her shoulder as she preceded us along the
+passage, which was now pitch-dark, and where Cropper dropped his hat
+and trod on it, finally bumping his head against the unseen wall in a
+frantic effort to recover it.
+When we emerged into the dimly lighted hall, I observed the two ladies
+peering inquisitively out of the drawing-room door. But Mrs. Morris
+took no notice of them, leading the way directly up the stairs to the
+room with which I was already familiar. It was poorly illuminated by a
+single gas-bracket over the fireplace, but the light was enough to
+show us a coffin resting on three chairs, and beyond it the shadowy
+figure of a man whom I recognized as Mr. Morris.
+We crossed the room to the coffin, which was plainly finished with
+zinc fastenings, in accordance with the regulations of the cremation
+authorities, and had let into the top what I first took to be a pane
+of glass, but which turned out to be a plate of clear celluloid. When
+we had made our salutations to Mr. Morris, Cropper and I looked in
+through the celluloid window. The yellow, shrunken face of the dead
+man, surmounted by the skull cap which he had always worn, looked so
+little changed that he might still have been in the drowsy, torpid
+state in which I had been accustomed to see him. He had always looked
+so like a dead man that the final transition was hardly noticeable.
+“I suppose,” said Morris, “you would like to have the coffin-lid taken
+off?”
+“God bless my soul, yes!” exclaimed Cropper. “What are we here for? We
+shall want him out of the coffin, too.”
+“Are you proposing to make a post-mortem?” I asked, observing that Dr.
+Cropper had brought a good-sized handbag. “It seems hardly necessary,
+as we both know what he died of.”
+Cropper shook his head. “That won’t do,” said he. “You mustn’t treat a
+cremation certificate as a mere formality. We have got to certify that
+we have verified the cause of death. Looking at a body through a
+window is not verifying the cause of death. We should cut a pretty
+figure in a court of law if any question arose and we had to admit
+that we had certified without any examination at all. But we needn’t
+do much, you know. Just get the body out on the bed and a single small
+incision will settle the nature of the growth. Then everything will be
+regular and in order. I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Morris,” he added,
+suavely, turning to that lady.
+“You must do what you think necessary,” she replied, indifferently.
+“It is no affair of mine;” and with this she went out of the room and
+shut the door.
+While we had been speaking, Mr. Morris, who apparently had kept a
+screwdriver in readiness for the possible contingency, had been neatly
+extracting the zinc screws and now lifted off the coffin-lid. Then the
+three of us raised the shrivelled body—it was as light as a
+child’s—and laid it on the bed. I left Cropper to do what he thought
+necessary, and while he was unpacking his instruments I took the
+opportunity to have a good look at Mr. Morris; for it is a singular
+fact that in all the weeks of my attendance at this house I had never
+come into contact with him since that first morning when I had caught
+a momentary glimpse of him as he looked out over the blind through the
+glazed shop door. In the interval his appearance had changed
+considerably for the better. He was no longer a merely unshaved man;
+his beard had grown to a respectable length, and, so far as I could
+judge in the uncertain light, the hare-lip scar was completely
+concealed by his moustache.
+“Let me see,” said Cropper, as he polished a scalpel on the palm of
+his hand, “when did you say Mr. Bendelow died?”
+“Yesterday afternoon at about five o’clock,” replied Mr. Morris.
+“Did he really?” said Cropper, lifting one of the limp arms and
+letting it drop on the bed. “Yesterday afternoon! Now, Gray, doesn’t
+that show how careful one should be in giving opinions as to the time
+that has elapsed since death? If I had been shown this body and asked
+how long the man had been dead, I should have said three or four days.
+There isn’t the least trace of rigor mortis left; and the other
+appearances—but there it is. You are never safe in giving dogmatic
+opinions.”
+“No,” I agreed. “I should have said he had been dead more than
+twenty-four hours. But I suppose there is a good deal of variation.”
+“There is,” he replied. “You can’t apply averages to particular
+cases.”
+I did not consider it necessary to take any active part in the
+proceedings. It was his diagnosis, and it was for him to verify it. At
+his request Mr. Morris fetched a candle and held it as he was
+directed; and while these preparations were in progress, I looked out
+of the window, which commanded a partial view of the canal. The moon
+had now risen and its full light fell on the white-painted hull of the
+Dutch sloop, which had come to rest and made fast alongside a small
+wharf. It was quite a pleasant picture, strangely at variance with the
+squalid neighbourhood around. As I looked down on the little vessel,
+with the ruddy light glowing from the deck-house windows and casting
+shimmering reflections in the quiet water, the sight seemed to carry
+me far away from the sordid streets around into the fellowship of the
+breezy ocean and the far-away shores whence the little craft had
+sailed; and I determined, as soon as our business was finished, to
+seek some access to the canal and indulge myself with a quiet stroll
+in the moonlight along the deserted towing-path.
+“Well, Gray,” said Cropper, standing up with the scalpel and forceps
+in his hands, “there it is if you want to see it. Typical carcinoma.
+Now we can sign the certificates with a clear conscience. I’ll just
+put in a stitch or two, and then we can put him back in his coffin. I
+suppose you have got the forms?”
+“They are downstairs,” said Mr. Morris. “When we have got him back I
+will show you the way down.”
+This, however, was unnecessary, as there was only one staircase, and I
+was not a stranger. Accordingly, when we had replaced the body, we
+took our leave of Mr. Morris and departed; and, glancing back as I
+passed out of the door, I saw him driving in the screws with the ready
+skill of a cabinet-maker.
+The filling-up of the forms was a portentous business which was
+carried out in the drawing-room under the superintendence of Mrs.
+Morris, and was watched with respectful interest by the two spinsters.
+When it was finished and I had handed the registration certificate to
+Mrs. Morris, Cropper gathered up the forms “B” and “C,” and slipped
+them into a long envelope on which the Medical Referee’s address was
+printed.
+“I will post this off to-night,” said he; “and you will send in Form
+A, Mrs. Morris, when you have filled it in.”
+“I have sent it off already,” she replied.
+“Good,” said Dr. Cropper. “Then that is all; and now I must run away.
+Can I put you down anywhere, Gray?”
+“Thank you, no,” I replied. “I thought of taking a walk along the
+tow-path, if you can tell me how to get down to it, Mrs. Morris.”
+“I can’t,” she replied. “But when Dr. Cropper has gone, I will run up
+and ask my husband. I daresay he knows.”
+We escorted Cropper along the passage to the door, which he reached
+without mishap, and having seen him into his brougham, turned back to
+the hall, where Mrs. Morris ascended the stairs, and I went into the
+drawing-room, where the two spinsters appeared to be preparing for
+departure. In a couple of minutes Mrs. Morris returned, and seeing
+both the ladies standing, said: “You are not going yet, Miss Dewsnep.
+You must have some refreshment before you go. Besides, I thought you
+wanted to see Mr. Bendelow again.”
+“So we should,” said Miss Dewsnep. “Just a little peep, to see how he
+looks after——”
+“I will take you up in a minute,” interrupted Mrs. Morris. “When Dr.
+Gray has gone.” Then addressing me, she said: “My husband says that
+you can get down to the tow-path through that alley nearly opposite.
+There is a flight of steps at the end which comes right out on the
+path.”
+I thanked her for the direction, and having bidden farewell to the
+spinsters, was once more escorted along the passage and finally
+launched into the outer world.
+CHAPTER IX.
+A Strange Misadventure
+Although I had been in harness but a few weeks, it was with a pleasant
+sense of freedom that I turned from the door and crossed the road
+towards the alley. My time was practically my own, for, though I was
+remaining with Dr. Cornish until the end of the week, he was now in
+charge, and my responsibilities were at an end.
+The alley was entered by an arched opening, so narrow that I had never
+suspected it of being a public thoroughfare, and I now threaded it
+with my shoulders almost touching the walls. Whither it finally led I
+have no idea, for when I reached another arched opening in the left
+hand wall and saw that this gave on a flight of stone steps, I
+descended the latter and found myself on the tow-path. At the foot of
+the steps I stood awhile and looked about me. The moon was nearly
+full, and shone brightly on the opposite side of the canal, but the
+tow-path was in deep shadow, being flanked by a high wall, behind
+which were the houses of the adjoining streets. Looking back—that is,
+to my left—I could just make out the bridge and the adjoining
+buildings, all their unlovely details blotted out by the thin
+night-haze, which reduced them to mere flat shapes of grey. A little
+nearer, one or two spots of ruddy light with wavering reflections
+beneath them, marked the cabin windows of the sloop, and her mast,
+rising above the grey obscurity, was clearly visible against the sky.
+Naturally, I turned in that direction, sauntering luxuriously and
+filling my pipe as I went. Doubtless, by day the place was sordid
+enough in aspect—though it is hard to vulgarize a navigable
+water-way—but now, in the moon-lit haze, the scene was almost
+romantic. And it was astonishingly quiet and peaceful. From above,
+beyond the high wall, the noises of the streets came subdued and
+distant, like sounds from another world; but here there was neither
+sound nor movement. The tow-path was utterly deserted, and the only
+sign of human life was the glimmer of light from the sloop.
+It was delightfully restful. I found myself treading the gravel
+lightly not to disturb the grateful silence, and as I strolled along,
+enjoying my pipe, I let my thoughts ramble idly from one topic to
+another. Somewhere above me, in that rather mysterious house, Simon
+Bendelow was lying in his narrow bed, the wasted, yellow face looking
+out into the darkness through that queer little celluloid window, or
+perhaps Miss Dewsnep and her friend were even now taking their
+farewell peep at him. I looked up, but, of course, the house was not
+visible from the tow-path, nor was I now able to guess at its
+position.
+A little farther, and the hull of the sloop came clearly into view,
+and nearly opposite to it, on the tow-path, I could see some kind of
+shed or hut against the wall, with a derrick in front of it
+overhanging a little quay. When I had nearly reached the shed, I
+passed a door in the wall, which apparently communicated with some
+house in one of the streets above. Then I came to the shed, a small
+wooden building which probably served as a lighterman’s office, and I
+noticed that the derrick swung from one of the corner-posts. But at
+this moment my attention was attracted by sounds of mild revelry from
+across the canal. Some one in the sloop’s deck-house had burst into
+song.
+I stepped out on to the little quay and stood at the edge, looking
+across at the homely curtained windows and wondering what the interior
+of the deck-house looked like at this moment. Suddenly my ear caught
+an audible creak from behind me. I was in the act of turning to see
+whence it came when something struck me a heavy, glancing blow on the
+arm, crashed to the ground, and sent me flying over the edge of the
+quay.
+Fortunately the water here was not more than four feet deep, and as I
+had plunged in feet first, and am a good swimmer, I never lost control
+of myself. In a moment I was standing up with my head and shoulders
+out of water, not particularly alarmed, though a good deal annoyed and
+much puzzled as to what had happened. My first care was to recover my
+hat, which was floating forlornly close by, and the next was to
+consider how I should get ashore. My left arm was numb from the blow
+and was evidently useless for climbing. Moreover, the face of the quay
+was of smooth concrete, as was also the wall below the tow-path. But I
+remembered having passed a pair of boat-steps some fifty yards back,
+and decided to make for them. I had thought of hailing the sloop, but
+as the droning song still came from the deck-house, it was clear that
+the Dutchmen had heard nothing, and I did not think it worth while to
+disturb them. Accordingly, I set forth for the steps, walking with no
+little difficulty over the soft, muddy bottom, keeping close to the
+side and steadying myself with my right hand, with which I could just
+reach the edge of the coping.
+It seemed a long journey, for one cannot progress very fast over soft
+mud with the water up to one’s armpits; but at last I reached the
+steps and managed to scramble up on to the tow-path. There I stood for
+a moment or two irresolute. My first impulse was to hurry back as fast
+as I could and seek the Morrises’ hospitality; for I was already
+chilled to the bone and felt as physically wretched as the proverbial
+cat in similar circumstances. But I was devoured by curiosity as to
+what had happened, and moreover I believed that I had dropped my stick
+on the quay. The latter consideration decided me, for it was a
+favourite stick, and I set out for the quay at a very different pace
+from that at which I had approached it the first time.
+The mystery was solved long before I arrived at the quay; at least it
+was solved in part. For the derrick which had overhung the quay, now
+lay on the ground. Obviously it had fallen—and had missed my head only
+by a matter of inches. But how had it come to fall? Again, obviously,
+the guy-rope had given way. As it could not have broken, seeing that
+the derrick was unloaded and the rope must have been strong enough to
+bear the last load, I was a good deal puzzled as to how the accident
+could have befallen. Nor was I much less puzzled when I had made my
+inspection. The rope was, of course, unbroken and its “fall”—the part
+below the pulley-blocks—passed into the shed through a window-like
+hole. This I could see as I approached, and also that a door in the
+end of the shed nearest to me was ajar. Opening it, I plunged into the
+dark interior, and partly by touch and partly by the faint glimmer
+that came in at the window, I was able to make out the state of
+affairs. Just below the hole through which the rope entered was a
+large cleat, on which the fall must have been delayed. But the cleat
+was vacant, the rope hung down from the hole and its end lay in an
+untidy raffle on the floor. It looked as if it had been cast off the
+cleat; but as there had apparently been no one in the shed, the only
+possible supposition was that the rope had been badly secured, that it
+had gradually worked loose and had at last slipped off the cleat. But
+it was difficult to understand how it had slipped right off.
+I found my stick lying at the edge of the quay and close by it my
+pipe. Having recovered these treasures, I set off to retrace my steps
+along the tow-path, sped on my way by a jovial chorus from the sloop.
+A very few minutes brought me to the steps, which I ascended two at a
+time, and then, having traversed the alley, I came out sheepishly into
+Market-street. To my relief, I saw a light in Mr. Morris’ shop, and
+could even make out a moving figure in the background. I hurried
+across, and, opening the glazed door, entered the shop, at the back of
+which Mr Morris was seated at a bench filing some small object which
+was fixed in a vice. He looked round at me with no great cordiality,
+but suddenly observing my condition, he dropped his file on the bench,
+and exclaimed:
+“Good Lord, Doctor! What on earth have you been doing?”
+“Nothing on earth,” I replied, with a feeble grin, “but something in
+the water. I’ve been into the canal.”
+“But what for?” he demanded.
+“Oh, I didn’t go in intentionally,” I replied; and then I gave him a
+sketch of the incident, as short as I could make it, for my teeth were
+chattering and explanations were chilly work. However, he rose nobly
+to the occasion. “You’ll catch your death of cold!” he exclaimed,
+starting up. “Come in here, and slip off your things at once, while I
+go for some blankets.”
+He led me into a little den behind the shop, and, having lighted a gas
+fire, went out by a back door. I lost no time in peeling off my
+dripping clothes, and by the time that he returned I was in a state in
+which I ought to have been when I took my plunge.
+“Here you are,” said he. “Put on this dressing-gown and wrap yourself
+in the blankets. We’ll draw this chair up to the fire, and then you
+will be all right for the present.”
+I followed his directions, pouring out my thanks as well as my
+chattering teeth would let me.
+“Oh, that’s all right,” said he. “If you will empty your pockets, the
+missus can put some of the things through the wringer, and then
+they’ll soon dry. There happens to be a good fire in the kitchen; some
+advance cooking on account of the funeral. You can dry your hat and
+boots here. If any one comes to the shop you might just press that
+electric bell-push.”
+When he had gone, I drew the Windsor armchair close to the fire and
+made myself as comfortable as I could, dividing my attention between
+my hat and my boots, which called for careful roasting, and the
+contents of the room. The latter appeared to be a sort of store for
+the reserve stock-in-trade, and certainly this was a most amazing
+collection. I could not see a single article for which I would have
+given sixpence. The array on the shelves suggested that the shop had
+been stocked with the sweepings of all the stalls in Market-street,
+with those of Shoreditch High-street thrown in. As I ran my eye along
+the ranks of dial-less clocks, cracked fiddles, stopperless decanters,
+and tattered theological volumes, I found myself speculating
+profoundly on how Mr. Morris made a livelihood. He professed to be a
+“dealer in antiques,” and there was assuredly no question as to the
+antiquity of the goods in this room. But there is little pecuniary
+value in the kind of antiquity that is unearthed from a dust bin.
+It was really rather mysterious. Mr. Morris was a somewhat superior
+man, and he did not appear to be poor. Yet this shop did not seem
+capable of yielding an income that would have been acceptable to a
+rag-picker. And during the whole of the time in which I sat warming
+myself, there was not a single visitor to the shop. However, it was no
+concern of mine; and I had just reached this sage conclusion when Mr.
+Morris returned with my clothes.
+“There,” he said, “they are very creased and disreputable, but they
+are quite dry. They would have had to be cleaned and pressed, in any
+case.”
+With this he went out into the shop and resumed his filing, while I
+put on the stiff and crumpled garments. When I was dressed, I followed
+him and thanked him effusively for his kind offices, leaving also a
+grateful message for his wife. He took my thanks rather stolidly, and
+having wished me “good night,” picked up his file and fell to work
+again.
+I decided to walk home; principally, I think, to avoid exhibiting
+myself in a public vehicle. But my self-consciousness soon wore off,
+and when, in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, I perceived Dr. Usher,
+on the opposite side of the street, I crossed the road and touched his
+arm. He looked round quickly, and, recognizing me, shook hands
+cordially.
+“What are you doing on my beat at this time of night?” he asked. “You
+are not still at Cornish’s, are you?”
+“Yes,” I answered, “but not for long. I have just made my last visit
+and signed the death certificate.”
+“Good man,” said he. “Very methodical. Nothing like finishing a case
+up neatly. They didn’t invite you to the funeral, I suppose?”
+“No,” I replied, “and I shouldn’t have gone if they had.”
+“Quite right,” he agreed. “Funerals are rather outside medical
+practice. But you have to go sometimes. Policy, you know. I had to go
+to one the day before yesterday. Beastly nuisance it was. Chappie
+would insist on putting me down at my own door in the mourning coach.
+Meant well, of course, but it was very awkward. All the neighbours
+came to their shop doors and grinned as I got out. Felt an awful fool;
+couldn’t grin back, you see. Had to keep up the farce to the end.”
+“I don’t see that it was exactly a farce,” I objected.
+“That is because you weren’t there,” he retorted. “It was the silliest
+exhibition you ever saw. Just think of it! The parson who ran the show
+had actually got a lot of schoolchildren to stand round the grave and
+sing a blooming hymn: ‘Safe in the arms of’—you know the confounded
+doggerel.”
+“Well, why not?” I protested. “I daresay the friends of the deceased
+liked it.”
+“No doubt,” said he. “I expect they put the parson up to it. But it
+was sickening to hear those kids bleating that stuff. How did they
+know where he was—an old rip with malignant disease of the pancreas,
+too!”
+“Really, Usher!” I exclaimed, laughing at his quaint cynicism, “you
+are unreasonable. There are no pathological disqualifications for the
+better land, I hope.”
+“I suppose not,” he agreed, with a grin. “Don’t have to show a clean
+bill of health before they let you in. But it was a trying business,
+you must admit. I hate cant of that sort; and yet one had to pull a
+long face and join in the beastly chorus.”
+The picture that his last words suggested was too much for my gravity.
+I laughed long and joyously. However, Usher was not offended; indeed,
+I suspect that he appreciated the humour of the situation as much as I
+did. But he had trained himself to an outward solemnity of manner that
+was doubtless a valuable asset in his particular class of practice,
+and he walked at my side in unmoved gravity, taking an occasional,
+quick, critical look at me. When we came to the parting of our ways he
+once more shook my hand warmly and delivered a little farewell speech.
+“You’ve never been to see me, Gray. Haven’t had time, I suppose. But
+when you are free you might look me up one evening to have a smoke and
+a glass and talk over old times. There’s always a bit of grub going,
+you know.”
+I promised to drop in before long, and he then added: “I gave you one
+or two tips when I saw you last. Now I’m going to give you another.
+Never neglect your appearance. It’s a great mistake. Treat yourself
+with respect and the world will respect you. No need to be a dandy.
+But just keep an eye on your tailor and your laundress—especially your
+laundress. Clean collars don’t cost much and they pay; and so does a
+trousers press. People expect a doctor to be well turned out. Now you
+mustn’t think me impertinent. We are old pals and I want you to get
+on. So long, old chap. Look me up as soon as you can”; and without
+giving me the opportunity to reply, he turned about and bustled off,
+swinging his umbrella and offering, perhaps, a not very impressive
+illustration of his own excellent precepts. But his words served as a
+reminder which caused me to pursue the remainder of my journey by way
+of side-streets neither too well lighted nor too much frequented.
+As I let myself in with my key and closed the street door, Cornish
+stepped out of the dining-room.
+“I thought you were lost, Gray,” said he. “Where the deuce have you
+been all this time?” Then, as I came into the light of the hall lamp,
+he exclaimed: “And what in the name of Fortune have you been up to?”
+“I have had a wetting,” I explained. “I’ll tell you all about it
+presently.”
+“Dr. Thorndyke is in the dining-room,” said he; “came in a few minutes
+ago to see you.” He seized me by the arm and ran me into the room,
+where I found Thorndyke methodically filling his pipe. He looked up as
+I entered and regarded me with raised eyebrows.
+“Why, my dear fellow, you’ve been in the water!” he exclaimed. “But
+yet your clothes are not wet. What has been happening to you?”
+“If you can wait a few minutes,” I replied, “while I wash and change,
+I will relate my adventures. But perhaps you haven’t time.”
+“I want to hear all about it,” he replied, “so run along and be as
+quick as you can.”
+I bustled up to my room, and having washed and executed a lightning
+change, came down to the dining-room, where I found Cornish in the act
+of setting out decanters and glasses.
+“I’ve told Dr. Thorndyke what took you to Hoxton,” said he, “and he
+wants a full account of everything that happened. He is always
+suspicious of cremation cases, as you know from his lectures.”
+“Yes, I remember his warnings,” said I. “But this was a perfectly
+commonplace, straightforward affair.”
+“Did you go for your swim before or after the examination?” Thorndyke
+asked.
+“Oh, after,” I replied.
+“Then let us hear about the examination first,” said he.
+On this I plunged into a detailed account of all that had befallen
+since my arrival at Market-street, to which Thorndyke listened, not
+only patiently, but with the closest attention, and even
+cross-examined me to elicit further details. Everything seemed to
+interest him, from the construction of the coffin to the contents of
+Mr. Morris’ shop. When I had finished, Cornish remarked:
+“Well, it is a queer affair. I don’t understand that rope at all.
+Ropes don’t uncleat themselves. They may slip, but they don’t come
+right off the cleat. It looks more as if some mischievous fool had
+cast it off for a joke.”
+“But there was no one there,” said I. “The shed was empty when I
+examined it, and there was not a soul in sight on the tow-path.”
+“Could you see the shed when you were in the water?” Thorndyke asked.
+“No. My head was below the level of the tow-path. But if any one had
+run out and made off, I must have seen him on the path when I came
+out. He couldn’t have got out of sight in the time. Besides, it is
+incredible that even a fool should play such a trick as that.”
+“It is,” he agreed. “But every explanation seems incredible. The only
+plain fact is that it happened. It is a queer business altogether; and
+not the least queer feature in the case is your friend Morris. Hoxton
+is an unlikely place for a dealer in antiques, unless he should happen
+to deal in other things as well; things, I mean, of ambiguous
+ownership.”
+“Just what I was thinking,” said Cornish. “Sounds uncommonly like a
+fence. However, that is no business of ours.”
+“No,” agreed Thorndyke, rising and knocking out his pipe. “And now I
+must be going. Do you care to walk with me to the bottom of
+Doughty-street, Gray?”
+I assented at once, suspecting that he had something to say to me that
+he did not wish to say before Cornish. And so it turned out; for as
+soon as we were outside he said:
+“What I really called about was this: it seems that we have done the
+police an injustice. They were more on the spot than we gave them
+credit for. I have learned—and this is in the strictest
+confidence—that they took that coin round to the British Museum for
+the expert’s report. Then a very curious fact came to light. That coin
+is not the original which was stolen. It is an electrotype in gold,
+made in two halves very neatly soldered together and carefully worked
+on the milled edge to hide the join. That is extremely important in
+several respects. In the first place, it suggests an explanation of
+the otherwise incredible circumstance that it was being carried loose
+in the waistcoat pocket. It had probably been recently obtained from
+the electrotyper. That suggests the question, is it possible that
+D’Arblay might have been that electrotyper? Did he ever work the
+electrotype process? We must ascertain whether he did.”
+“There is no need,” said I. “It is known to me as a fact that he did.
+The little plaquettes that I took for castings are electrotypes, made
+by himself. He worked the process quite a lot, and was very skilful in
+finishing. For instance, he did a small bust of his daughter in two
+parts and brazed them together.”
+“Then, you see, Gray,” said Thorndyke, “that advances us considerably.
+We now have a plausible suggestion as to the motive and a new field of
+investigation. Let us suppose that this man employed D’Arblay to make
+electrotype copies of certain unique objects with the intention of
+disposing of them to collectors. The originals, being stolen property,
+would be almost impossible to dispose of with safety, but a copy would
+not necessarily incriminate the owner. But when D’Arblay had made the
+copies, he would be a dangerous person, for he would know who had the
+originals. Here, to a man whom we know to be a callous murderer, would
+be a sufficient reason for making away with D’Arblay.”
+“But do you think that D’Arblay would have undertaken such a decidedly
+fishy job? It seems hardly like him.”
+“Why not?” demanded Thorndyke. “There was nothing suspicious about the
+transaction. The man who wanted the copies was the owner of the
+originals, and D’Arblay would not know or suspect that they were
+stolen.”
+“That is true,” I admitted. “But you were speaking of a new field of
+investigation.”
+“Yes. If a number of copies of different objects have been made, there
+is a fair chance that some of them have been disposed of. If they
+have, and can be traced, they will give us a start along a new line,
+which may bring us in sight of the man himself. Do you ever see Miss
+D’Arblay now?”
+“Oh, yes,” I replied. “I am quite one of the family at Highgate. I
+have been there every Sunday lately.”
+“Have you!” he exclaimed with a smile. “You are a pretty locum tenens.
+However, if you are quite at home there you can make a few discreet
+inquiries. Find out, if you can, whether any electros had been made
+recently, and if so, what they were and who was the client. Will you
+do that?”
+I agreed readily, only too glad to take an active part in the
+investigation; and having by this time reached the end of
+Doughty-street, I took leave of Thorndyke, and made my way back to
+Cornish’s house.
+CHAPTER X.
+Marion’s Peril
+The mist, which had been gathering since the early afternoon, began to
+thicken ominously as I approached Abbey-road, Hornsey, from Crouch End
+Station, causing me to quicken my pace so that I might make my
+destination before the fog closed in; for this was my first visit to
+Marion D’Arblay’s studio, and the neighbourhood was strange to me. And
+in fact I was none too soon; for hardly had I set my hand on the
+quaint bronze knocker above the plate inscribed “Mr. J. D’Arblay,”
+when the adjoining houses grew pale and shadowy and then vanished
+altogether.
+My elaborate knock—in keeping with the distinguished knocker—was
+followed by soft, quick footsteps, the sound whereof set my heart
+ticking in double-quick time; the door opened, and there stood Miss
+D’Arblay, garbed in a most alluring blue smock or pinafore, with
+sleeves rolled up to the elbow, with a smile of friendly welcome on
+her comely face, and looking so sweet and charming that I yearned then
+and there to take her in my arms and kiss her. This, however being
+inadmissible, I shook her hand warmly and was forthwith conducted
+through the outer lobby into the main studio, where I stood looking
+about me with amused surprise. She looked at me inquiringly as I
+emitted an audible chuckle.
+“It is a queer-looking place,” said I; “something between a
+miracle-shrine hung with votive offerings from sufferers who have been
+cured of sore heads and arms and legs, and a meat emporium in a
+cannibal district.”
+“It is nothing of the kind!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I don’t mind
+the votive offerings, but I reject the cannibal meat-market as a gross
+and libellous fiction. But I suppose it does look rather queer to a
+stranger.”
+“To a what?” I demanded fiercely.
+“Oh, I only meant a stranger to the place, of course, and you know I
+did. So you needn’t be cantankerous.”
+She glanced smilingly round the studio, and for the first time,
+apparently, the oddity of its appearance dawned on her, for she
+laughed softly and then turned a mischievous eye on me as I gaped
+about me like a bumpkin at a fair. The studio was a very large and
+lofty room or hall, with a partially glazed roof and a single large
+window just below the skylight. The walls were fitted partly with rows
+of large shelves, and the remainder with ranks of pegs. From the
+latter hung row after row of casts of arms, hands, legs, and
+faces—especially faces—while the shelves supported a weird succession
+of heads, busts, and a few half-length but armless figures. The
+general effect was very strange and uncanny, and what made it more so
+was the fact that all the heads presented perfectly smooth, bare
+craniums.
+“Are artists’ models usually bald?” I inquired, as I noted this latter
+phenomenon.
+“Now you are being foolish,” she replied; “wilfully and deliberately
+foolish. You know very well that all these heads have got to be fitted
+with wigs; and you couldn’t fit a wig to a head that already had a
+fine covering of plaster curls. But I must admit that it rather
+detracts from the beauty of a girl’s head if you represent it without
+hair. The models used to hate it when they were shown with heads like
+old gentlemen’s, and so did poor Daddy; in fact, he usually rendered
+the hair in the clay, just sketchily, for the sake of the model’s
+feelings and his own, and took it off afterwards with a wire tool. But
+there is the kettle boiling over. I must make the tea.”
+While this ceremony was being performed I strolled round the studio
+and inspected the casts, more particularly the heads and faces. Of
+these latter the majority were obviously modelled, but I noticed a
+number with closed eyes, having very much the appearance of death
+masks. When we had taken our places at the little table near the great
+gas-ring I inquired what they were.
+“They do look rather cadaverous, don’t they?” she said, as she poured
+out the tea; “but they are not death masks. They are casts from living
+faces, mostly from the faces of models, but my father always used to
+take a cast from any one who would let him, They are quite useful to
+work from, though, of course, the eyes have to be put in from another
+cast or from life.”
+“It must be rather an unpleasant operation,” I said, “having the
+plaster poured over the face. How does the victim manage to breathe?”
+“The usual plan is to put little tubes or quills into the nostrils.
+But my father could keep the nostrils free without any tubes. He was a
+very skilful moulder; and then he always used the best plaster, which
+set very quickly, so that it only took a few minutes.”
+“And how are you getting on, and what were you doing when I came in?”
+“I am getting on quite well,” she replied. “My work has been passed as
+satisfactory, and I have three new commissions. When you came in I was
+just getting ready to make a mould for a head and shoulders. After tea
+I shall go on with it, and you shall help me. But tell me about
+yourself. You have finished with Dr. Cornish, haven’t you?”
+“Yes, I am a gentleman at large for the time being, but that won’t do.
+I shall have to look out for another job.”
+“I hope it will be a London job,” she said. “Arabella and I would feel
+quite lonely if you went away even for a week or two. We both look
+forward so much to our little family gathering on Sunday afternoon.”
+“You don’t look forward to it as much as I do,” I said warmly. “It is
+difficult for me to realize that there was ever a time when you were
+not a part of my life. And yet we are quite new friends.”
+“Yes,” she said; “only a few weeks old. But I have the same feeling. I
+seem to have known you for years, and as for Arabella, she speaks of
+you as if she had nursed you from infancy. You have a very insinuating
+way with you.”
+“Oh, don’t spoil it by calling me insinuating!” I protested.
+“No, I won’t,” she replied. “It was the wrong word. I meant
+sympathetic. You have the gift of entering into other people’s
+troubles and feeling them as if they were your own; which is a very
+precious gift—to the other people.”
+“Your troubles are my own,” said I, “since I have the privilege to be
+your friend. But I have been a happier man since I shared them.”
+“It is very nice of you to say that,” she murmured, with a quick
+glance at me and just a faint heightening of colour; and then for a
+while neither of us spoke.
+“Have you seen Dr. Thorndyke lately?” she asked, when she had refilled
+our cups, and thereby, as it were, punctuated our silence.
+“Yes,” I answered. “I saw him only a night or two ago. And that
+reminds me that I was commissioned to make some inquiries. Can you
+tell me if your father ever did any electrotype work for outsiders?”
+“I don’t know,” she answered. “He used latterly to electrotype most of
+his own work instead of sending it to the bronze-founders, but it is
+hardly likely that he would do electros for outsiders. There are firms
+who do nothing else, and I know that, when he was busy, he used to
+send his work to them. But why do you ask?”
+I related to her what Thorndyke had told me, and pointed out the
+importance of ascertaining the facts, which she saw at once.
+“As soon as we have finished tea,” she said, “we will go and look over
+the cupboard where the electro moulds were kept—that is, the permanent
+ones. The gelatine moulds for works in the round couldn’t be kept.
+They were melted down again. But the water-proofed plaster moulds were
+stored away in this cupboard, and the gutta-percha ones, too, until
+they were wanted to soften down to make new moulds. And even if the
+moulds were destroyed, Father usually kept a cast.”
+“Would you be able to tell by looking through the cupboard?” I asked.
+“Yes. I should know a strange mould, of course, as I saw all the
+original work that he did. Have we finished? Then let us go and settle
+the question now.”
+She produced a bunch of keys from her pocket and crossed the studio to
+a large, tall cupboard in a corner. Selecting a key, she inserted it
+and was trying vainly to turn it when the door came open. She looked
+at it in surprise and then turned to me with a somewhat puzzled
+expression.
+“This is really very curious,” she said. “When I came here this
+morning I found the outer door unlocked. Naturally I thought I must
+have forgotten to lock it, though that would have been an
+extraordinary oversight. And now I find this door unlocked. But I
+distinctly remember locking it before going away last night, when I
+had put back the box of modelling wax. What do you make of that?”
+“It looks as if some one had entered the studio last night with false
+keys or by picking the lock. But why should they? Perhaps the cupboard
+will tell. You will know if it has been disturbed.”
+She ran her eyes along the shelves and said at once: “It has been. The
+things are all in disorder and one of the moulds is broken. We had
+better take them all out and see if anything is missing—so far as I
+can judge, that is, for the moulds were just as my father left them.”
+We dragged a small work-table to the cupboard and emptied the shelves
+one by one. She examined each mould as we took it out, and I jotted
+down a rough list at her dictation. When we had been through the whole
+collection and re-arranged the moulds on the shelves—they were mostly
+plaques and medallions—she slowly read through the list and reflected
+for a few moments. At length she said:
+“I don’t miss anything that I can remember. But the question is, Were
+there any moulds or casts that I did not know about? I am thinking of
+Dr. Thorndyke’s question. If there were any, they have gone, so that
+question cannot be answered.”
+We looked at one another gravely, and in both our minds was the same
+unspoken question: “Who was it that had entered the studio last
+night?”
+We had just closed the cupboard and were moving away when my eye
+caught a small object half-hidden in the darkness under the cupboard
+itself—the bottom of which was raised by low feet about an inch and a
+half from the floor. I knelt down and passed my hand into the shallow
+space and was just able to hook it out. It proved to be a fragment of
+a small plaster mould, saturated with wax and black-leaded on the
+inside. Miss D’Arblay stooped over it eagerly and exclaimed: “I don’t
+know that one. What a pity it is such a small piece. But it is
+certainly part of a coin.”
+“It is part of _the_ coin,” said I. “There can be no doubt of that. I
+examined the cast that Dr. Thorndyke made and I recognize this as the
+same. There is the lower part of the bust, the letters C A—the first
+two letters of Carolus—and the tiny elephant and castle. That is
+conclusive. This is the mould from which that electrotype was made.
+But I had better hand it to Dr. Thorndyke to compare with the cast
+that he has.”
+I carefully bestowed the fragment in my tobacco-pouch, as the safest
+place for the time being, and meanwhile Miss D’Arblay looked fixedly
+at me with a very singular expression.
+“You realize,” she said in a hushed voice, “what this means. _He_ was
+in here last night.”
+I nodded. The same conclusion had instantly occurred to me, and a very
+uncomfortable one it was. There was something very sinister and horrid
+in the thought of that murderous villain quietly letting himself into
+this studio and ransacking its hiding-places in the dead of the night.
+So unpleasantly suggestive was it that for a time neither of us spoke
+a word, but stood looking blankly at one another in silent dismay. And
+in the midst of the tense silence there came a knock at the door.
+We both started as if we had been struck. Then Miss D’Arblay,
+recovering herself quickly, said: “I had better go,” and hurried down
+the studio to the lobby.
+I listened nervously, for I was a little unstrung. I heard her go into
+the lobby and open the outer door. I heard a low voice, apparently
+asking a question; the outer door closed, and then came a sudden
+scuffling sound and a piercing shriek. With a shout of alarm, I raced
+down the studio, knocking over a chair as I ran, and darted into the
+lobby just as the outer door slammed.
+For a moment I hesitated. Miss D’Arblay had shrunk into a corner, and
+stood in the semi-darkness with both her hands pressed tightly to her
+breast. But she called out excitedly: “Follow him! I am not hurt”; and
+on this I wrenched open the door and stepped out.
+But the first glance showed me that pursuit was hopeless. The fog had
+now become so dense that I could hardly see my own feet. I dared not
+leave the threshold for fear of not being able to find my way back.
+Then she would be alone—and _he_ was probably lurking close by even
+now.
+I stood irresolute, stock-still; listening intently. The silence was
+profound. All the natural noises of a populous neighbourhood seemed to
+be smothered by the dense blanket of dark yellow vapour. Not a sound
+came to my ear; no stealthy footfall, no rustle of movement. Nothing
+but stark silence.
+Uneasily I crept back until the open doorway showed as a dim rectangle
+of shadow; crept back and peered fearfully into the darkness of the
+lobby. She was still standing in the corner—an upright smudge of
+deeper darkness in the obscurity. But even as I looked, the shadowy
+figure collapsed and slid noiselessly to the floor.
+In an instant the pursuit was forgotten, and I darted into the lobby,
+shutting the outer door behind me, and dropped on my knees at her
+side. Where she had fallen a streak of light came in from the studio,
+and the sight that it revealed turned me sick with terror. The whole
+front of her smock, from the breast downwards, was saturated with
+blood; both her hands were crimson and gory, and her face was
+dead-white to the lips.
+For an instant I was paralyzed with horror. I could see no movement of
+breathing, and the white face with its parted lips and half-closed
+eyes, was as the face of the dead. But when I dared to search for the
+wound, I was a little reassured; for, closely as I scrutinized it, the
+gory smock showed no sign of a cut excepting on the bloodstained right
+sleeve. And now I noticed a deep gash on the left hand, which was
+still bleeding freely, and was probably the source of the blood which
+had soaked the smock. There seemed to be no vital wound.
+With a deep breath of relief, I hastily tore my handkerchief into
+strips and applied the improvised bandage tightly enough to control
+the bleeding. Then with the scissors from my pocket-case, which I now
+carried from habit, I laid open the blood-stained sleeve. The wound on
+the arm, just above the elbow, was quite shallow; a glancing wound,
+which tailed off upwards into a scratch. A turn of the remaining strip
+of bandage secured it for the time being, and this done I once more
+explored the front of the smock, pulling its folds tightly apart in
+search of the dreaded cut. But there was none; and now, the bleeding
+being controlled, it was safe to take measures of restoration.
+Tenderly—and not without effort—I lifted her and carried her into the
+studio, where was a shabby but roomy couch, on which poor D’Arblay had
+been accustomed to rest when he stayed for the night. On this I laid
+her, and fetching some water and a towel, dabbed her face and neck.
+Presently she opened her eyes and heaved a deep sigh, looking at me
+with a troubled, bewildered expression, and evidently only
+half-conscious. Suddenly her eye caught the great blood-stain on her
+smock, and her expression grew wild and terrified. For a few moments
+she gazed at me with eyes full of horror; then, as the memory of her
+dreadful experience rushed back on her, she uttered a little cry and
+burst into tears, moaning and sobbing almost hysterically.
+I rested her head on my shoulder and tried to comfort her; and she,
+poor girl, weak and shaken by the awful shock, clung to me trembling,
+and wept passionately with her face buried in my breast. As for me, I
+was almost ready to weep, too, if only from sheer relief and revulsion
+from my late terrors.
+“Marion, darling!” I murmured into her ear as I stroked her damp hair.
+“Poor dear little woman! It was horrible. But you mustn’t cry any more
+now. Try to forget it, dearest.”
+She shook her head passionately. “I can never do that,” she sobbed.
+“It will haunt me as long as I live. Oh! and I am so frightened, even
+now. What a coward I am!”
+“Indeed you are not!” I exclaimed. “You are just weak from loss of
+blood. Why did you let me leave you, Marion?”
+“I didn’t think I was hurt, and I wasn’t particularly frightened then;
+and I hoped that if you followed him he might be caught. Did you see
+him?”
+“No. There is a thick fog outside. I didn’t dare to leave the
+threshold. Were you able to see what he was like?”
+She shuddered and choked down a sob. “He is a dreadful-looking man,”
+she said. “I loathed him at the first glance: a beetle-browed,
+hook-nosed wretch, with a face like that of some horrible bird of
+prey. But I couldn’t see him very distinctly, for it is rather dark in
+the lobby, and he wore a wide-brimmed hat, pulled down over his
+brows.”
+“Would you know him again? And can you give a description of him that
+would be of use to the police?”
+“I am sure I should know him again,” she said with a shudder. “It was
+a face that one could never forget. A hideous face! The face of a
+demon. I can see it now, and it will haunt me, sleeping and waking,
+until I die.”
+Her words ended with a catch of the breath, and she looked piteously
+into my face with wide, terrified eyes. I took her trembling hand and
+once more drew her head to my shoulder.
+“You mustn’t think that, dear,” said I. “You are all unstrung now, but
+these terrors will pass. Try to tell me quietly just what this man was
+like. What was his height, for instance?”
+“He was not very tall. Not much taller than I. And he was rather
+slightly built.”
+“Could you see whether he was dark or fair?”
+“He was rather dark. I could see a shock of hair sticking out from
+under his hat, and he had a moustache with turned-up ends and a beard;
+a rather short beard.”
+“And now as to his face. You say he had a hooked nose?”
+“Yes; a great, high-bridged nose like the beak of some horrible bird.
+And his eyes seemed to be deep-set under heavy brows with bushy
+eyebrows. The face was rather thin, with high cheek-bones; a fierce,
+scowling, repulsive face.”
+“And the voice? Should you know that again?”
+“I don’t know,” she answered. “He spoke in quite a low tone, rather
+indistinctly. And he said only a few words—something about having come
+to make some inquiries about the cost of a wax model. Then he stepped
+into the lobby and shut the outer door, and immediately, without
+another word, he seized my right arm and struck at me. But I saw the
+knife in his hand, and as I called out I snatched at it with my left
+hand, so that it missed my body and I felt it cut my right arm. Then I
+got hold of his wrist. But he had heard you coming, and wrenched
+himself free. The next moment he had opened the door and rushed out,
+shutting it behind him.”
+She paused, and then added in a shaking voice: “If you had not been
+here—if I had been alone——”
+“We won’t think of that, Marion. You were not alone, and you will
+never be again in this place. I shall see to that.”
+At this she gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and looked into my
+face with the pallid ghost of a smile.
+“Then I shan’t be frightened any more,” she murmured; and, closing her
+eyes, she lay for a while, breathing quietly as if asleep. She looked
+very delicate and frail, with her waxen cheeks and the dark shadows
+under her eyes, but still I noted a faint tinge of colour stealing
+back into her lips. I gazed down at her with fond anxiety, as a mother
+might look at a sleeping child that had just passed the crisis of a
+dangerous illness. Of the bare chance that had snatched her from
+imminent death I would not allow myself to think. The horror of that
+moment was too fresh for the thought to be endurable. Instead I began
+to occupy myself with the practical question as to how she was to be
+got home. It was a long way to North Grove—some two miles I
+reckoned—too far for her to walk in her present weak state; and there
+was the fog. Unless it lifted it would be impossible for her to find
+her way; and I could give her no help, as I was a stranger to this
+locality. Nor was it by any means safe; for our enemy might still be
+lurking near, waiting for the opportunity that the fog would offer.
+I was still turning over these difficulties when she opened her eyes
+and looked up at me a little shyly.
+“I’m afraid I’ve been rather a baby,” she said, “but I am much better
+now. Hadn’t I better get up?”
+“No,” I answered. “Lie quiet and rest. I am trying to think how you
+are to be got home. Didn’t you say something about a caretaker?”
+“Yes; a woman in the little house next door, which really belongs to
+the studio. Daddy used to leave the key with her at night, so that she
+could clean up. But I just fetch her in when I want her help. Why do
+you ask?”
+“Do you think she could get a cab for us?”
+“I am afraid not. There is no cab-stand anywhere near here. But I
+think I could walk, unless the fog is too thick. Shall we go and see
+what it is like?”
+“I will go,” said I, rising. But she clung to my arm. “You are not to
+go alone,” she said, in sudden alarm. “_He_ may be there still.”
+I thought it best to humour her, and accordingly helped her to rise.
+For a few moments she seemed rather unsteady on her feet, but soon she
+was able to walk, supported by my arm, to the studio door, which I
+opened, and through which wreaths of vapour drifted in. But the fog
+was perceptibly thinner; and even as I was looking across the road at
+the now faintly visible houses, two spots of dull yellow light
+appeared up the road, and my ear caught the muffled sound of wheels.
+Gradually the lights grew brighter, and at length there stole out of
+the fog the shadowy form of a cab with a man leading the horse at a
+slow walk. Here seemed a chance of escape from our dilemma.
+“Go in and shut the door while I speak to the cabman,” said I. “He may
+be able to take us. I shall give four knocks when I come back.”
+She was unwilling to let me go, but I gently pushed her in and shut
+the door, and then advanced to meet the cab. A few words set my
+anxieties at rest, for it appeared that the cabman had to set down a
+fare a little way along the street, and was very willing to take a
+return fare, on suitable terms. As any terms would have been suitable
+to me under the circumstances the cabman was able to make a good
+bargain, and we parted with mutual satisfaction and a cordial au
+revoir. Then I steered back along the fence to the studio door, on
+which I struck four distinct knocks and announced myself vocally by
+name. Immediately, the door opened, and a hand drew me in by the
+sleeve.
+“I am so glad you have come back,” she whispered. “It was horrid to be
+alone in the lobby even for a few minutes. What did the cabman say?”
+I told her the joyful tidings, and we at once made ready for our
+departure. In a minute or two the welcome glare of the cab-lamps
+reappeared, and when I had locked up the studio and pocketed the key,
+I helped her into the rather ramshackle vehicle.
+I don’t mind admitting that the cabman’s charges were extortionate;
+but I grudged him never a penny. It was probably the slowest journey
+that I had ever made, but yet the funereal pace was all too swift.
+Half-ashamed as I was to admit it to myself, this horrible adventure
+was bearing sweet fruit to me in the unquestioned intimacy that had
+been born in the troubled hour. Little enough was said; but I sat
+happily by her side, holding her uninjured hand in mine (on the
+pretence of keeping it warm), blissfully conscious that our sympathy
+and friendship had grown to something sweeter and more precious.
+“What are we to say to Arabella?” I asked. “I suppose she will have to
+be told?”
+“Of course she will,” replied Marion; “you shall tell her. But,” she
+added, in a lower tone, “you needn’t tell her everything—I mean what a
+baby I was and how you had to comfort and soothe me. She is as brave
+as a lion, and she thinks I am, too. So you needn’t undeceive her too
+much.”
+“I needn’t undeceive her at all,” said I, “because you are”; and we
+were still arguing this weighty question when the cab drew up at Ivy
+Cottage. I sent the cabman off, rejoicing, and then escorted Marion up
+the path to the door, where Miss Boler was waiting, having apparently
+heard the cab arrive.
+“Thank goodness!” she exclaimed. “I was wondering how on earth you
+would manage to get home.” Then she suddenly observed Marion’s
+bandaged hand, and uttered an exclamation of alarm.
+“Miss Marion has cut her hand rather badly,” I explained. “We won’t
+talk about it just now. I will tell you everything presently when you
+have put her to bed. Now I want some stuff to make dressings and
+bandages.”
+Miss Boler looked at me suspiciously, but made no comment. With
+extraordinary promptitude she produced a supply of linen, warm water,
+and other necessaries, and then stood by to watch the operation and
+give assistance.
+“It is a nasty wound,” I said, as I removed the extemporized dressing,
+“but not so bad as I feared. There will be no lasting injury.”
+I put on the permanent dressing and then exposed the wound on the arm,
+at the sight of which Miss Boler’s eyebrows went up. But she made no
+remark; and when a dressing had been put on this, too, she took charge
+of the patient to conduct her up to the bedroom.
+“I shall come up and see that she is all right before I go,” said I,
+“and meanwhile, no questions, Arabella.”
+She cast a significant look at me over her shoulder and departed with
+her arm about the patient’s waist.
+The rites and ceremonies abovestairs were briefer than I had
+expected—perhaps the promised explanations had accelerated matters. At
+any rate, in a very few minutes Miss Boler bustled into the room and
+said: “You can go up now, but don’t stop to gossip. I am bursting with
+curiosity.”
+Thereupon I ascended to my lady’s chamber, which I entered as
+diffidently and reverentially as though such visits were not the
+commonplace of my professional life. As I approached the bed she
+heaved a little sigh of content and murmured:
+“What a fortunate girl I am! To be petted and cared for and pampered
+in this way! Arabella is a perfect angel, and you, Dr. Gray——”
+“Oh, Marion!” I protested. “Not Dr. Gray.”
+“Well, then, Stephen,” she corrected, with a faint blush.
+“That is better. And what am I?”
+“Never mind,” she replied, very pink and smiling. “I expect you know.
+If you don’t, ask Arabella when you go down.”
+“I expect she will do most of the asking,” said I. “And I have strict
+orders not to stop to gossip, so let me see the bandages, and then I
+must go.”
+I made my inspection without undue hurry, and, having seen that all
+was well, I took her hand.
+“You are to stay here until I have seen you to-morrow morning, and you
+are to be a good girl and try not to think of unpleasant things.”
+“Yes; I will do everything that you tell me.”
+“Then I can go away happy. Good night, Marion.”
+“Good night, Stephen.”
+I pressed her hand and felt her fingers close on mine. Then I turned
+away, and with only a moment’s pause at the door for a last look at
+the sweet, smiling face, descended the stairs to confront the
+formidable Arabella.
+Of my cautious statement and her keen cross-examination I will say
+nothing. I made the proceedings as short as was decent, for I wanted,
+if possible, to take counsel with Thorndyke. On my explaining this,
+the brevity of my account was condoned, and even my refusal of food.
+“But remember, Arabella,” I said, as she escorted me to the gate, “she
+has had a very severe shock. The less you say to her about the affair
+for the present the quicker will be her recovery.”
+With this warning I set forth through the rapidly thinning fog to
+catch the first conveyance that I could find to bear me southward.
+CHAPTER XI.
+Arms and the Man
+The fog had thinned to a mere haze when the porter admitted me at the
+Inner Temple Gate, so that, as I passed the Cloisters and looked
+through into Pump-court I could see the lighted windows of the
+residents’ chambers at the far end. The sight of them encouraged me to
+hope that the chambers in King’s Bench-walk might throw out a similar
+hopeful gleam. Nor was I disappointed; and the warm glow from the
+windows of No. 5a sent me tripping up the stairs profoundly relieved,
+though a trifle abashed at the untimely hour of my visit.
+The door was opened by Thorndyke himself, who instantly cut short my
+apologies.
+“Nonsense, Gray!” he exclaimed, shaking my hand. “It is no
+interruption at all. On the contrary, how beautiful upon the staircase
+are the feet of him that bringeth—well, what sort of tidings?”
+“Not good, I am afraid, sir.”
+“Well, let us have them. Come and sit by the fire.” He drew up an easy
+chair, and, having installed me in it and taken a critical look at me,
+invited me to proceed. I accordingly proceeded bluntly to inform him
+that an attempt had been made to murder Miss D’Arblay.
+“Ha!” he exclaimed. “These are bad tidings indeed! I hope she is not
+injured in any way.”
+I reassured him on this point, and gave him the details as to the
+patient’s condition, and he then asked:
+“When did the attempt occur, and how did you hear of it?”
+“It happened this evening, and I was present.”
+“You were present!” he repeated, gazing at me in the utmost
+astonishment. “And what became of the assailant?”
+“He vanished into the fog,” I replied.
+“Ah, yes. The fog. I had forgotten that. But now let us drop this
+question and answer method. Give me a narrative from the beginning,
+with the events in their proper sequence. And omit nothing, no matter
+how trivial.”
+I took him at his word—up to a certain point. I described my arrival
+at the studio, the search in the cupboard, the sinister interruption,
+the attack, and the unavailing attempt at pursuit. As to what befell
+thereafter I gave him a substantially complete account—with certain
+reservations—up to my departure from Ivy Cottage.
+“Then you never saw the man at all?”
+“No, but Miss D’Arblay did;” and here I gave him such details of the
+man’s appearance as I had been able to gather from Marion.
+“It is quite a vivid description,” he said, as he wrote down the
+details; “and now shall we have a look at that piece of the mould?”
+I disinterred it from my tobacco-pouch and handed it to him. He
+glanced at it and then went to a cabinet, from a drawer in which he
+produced the little case containing Polton’s casts of the guinea and a
+box, which he placed on the table and opened. From it he took a lump
+of moulding-wax and a bottle of powdered French chalk. Pinching off a
+piece of the wax, he rolled it into a ball, dusted it lightly with the
+chalk powder, and pressed it with his thumb into the mould. It came
+away on his thumb, bearing a perfect impression of the inside of the
+mould.
+“That settles it,” said he, taking the obverse cast from the case and
+laying it on the table beside the wax “squeeze.” “The squeeze and the
+cast are identical. There is now no possible doubt that the
+electrotype guinea that was found in the pond was made by Julius
+D’Arblay. Probably it had been delivered by him to the murderer on the
+very evening of his death. So we are undoubtedly dealing with that
+same man. It is a most alarming situation.”
+“It would be alarming if it were any other man,” I remarked.
+“No doubt,” he agreed. “But there is something very special about this
+man. He is a criminal of a type that is almost unknown here, but is
+not uncommon in South European and Slav countries. You find him, too,
+in the United States, principally among the foreign-born or alien
+population. He is not a normal human being. He is an inveterate
+murderer, to whom a human life does not count at all. And this type of
+man continually grows more and more dangerous for two reasons: first,
+the murder habit becomes more confirmed with each crime; second, there
+is virtually no penalty for the succeeding murders, for the first one
+entails the death sentence, and fifty murders can involve no more.
+This man killed Van Zellen as a mere incident of a robbery. Then he
+appears to have killed D’Arblay to secure his own safety, and he is
+now attempting to kill Miss D’Arblay, apparently for the same reason.
+And he will kill you and he will kill me if our existence is
+inconvenient or dangerous to him. We must bear that in mind, and take
+the necessary measures.”
+“I can’t imagine,” said I, “what motive he can have for wanting to
+kill Miss D’Arblay.”
+“Probably he believes that she knows something that would be dangerous
+to him; something connected with those moulds, or perhaps something
+else. We are rather in the dark. We don’t know for certain what it was
+he came to look for when he entered the studio, or whether or not he
+found what he wanted. But to return to the danger. It is obvious that
+he knows the Abbey-road district well, for he found his way to the
+studio in the fog. He may be living close by. There is no reason why
+he should not be. His identity is quite unknown.”
+“That is a horrid thought!” I exclaimed.
+“It is,” he agreed; “but it is the assumption that we have to act
+upon. We must not leave a loop-hole unwatched. He mustn’t get another
+chance.”
+“No,” I concurred warmly; “he certainly must not—if we can help it.
+But it is an awful position. We carry that poor girl’s life in our
+hands, and there is always the possibility that we may be caught off
+our guard, just for a moment.”
+He nodded gravely. “You are quite right, Gray. An awful responsibility
+rests on us. I am very unhappy about this poor young lady. Of course,
+there is the other side—but at present we are concerned with Miss
+D’Arblay’s safety.”
+“What other side is there?” I demanded.
+“I mean,” he replied, “that if we can hold out, this man is going to
+deliver himself into our hands.”
+“What makes you think that?” I asked eagerly.
+“I recognize a familiar phenomenon,” he replied. “My large experience
+and extensive study of crimes against the person have shown me that in
+the overwhelming majority of cases of obscure crimes the discovery has
+been brought about by the criminal’s own efforts to make himself safe.
+He is constantly trying to hide his tracks—and making fresh ones. Now
+this man is one of those criminals who won’t let well alone. He kills
+Van Zellen and disappears, leaving no trace. He seems to be quite
+safe. But he is not satisfied. He can’t keep quiet. He kills D’Arblay,
+he enters the studio, he tries to kill Miss D’Arblay; all to make
+himself more safe. And every time he moves he tells us something fresh
+about himself. If we can only wait and watch, we shall have him.”
+“What has he told us about himself this time?” I asked.
+“We won’t go into that now, Gray. We have other business on hand. But
+you know all that I know as to the facts. If you will turn over those
+facts at your leisure, you will find that they yield some very curious
+and striking inferences.”
+I was about to press the question when the door opened and Mr. Polton
+appeared on the threshold. Observing me, he crinkled benevolently, and
+then, in answer to Thorndyke’s inquiring glance, said: “I thought I
+had better remind you, sir, that you have not had any supper.”
+“Dear me, Polton!” Thorndyke exclaimed, “now you mention it, I believe
+you are right. And I suspect that Dr. Gray is in the same case. So we
+place ourselves in your hands. Supper and pistols are what we want.”
+“Pistols, sir!” exclaimed Polton, opening his eyes to an unusual
+extent and looking at us suspiciously.
+“Don’t be alarmed, Polton,” Thorndyke chuckled. “It isn’t a duel. I
+just want to go over our stock of pistols and ammunition.”
+At this I thought I detected a belligerent gleam in Polton’s eye, but
+even as I looked, he was gone. Not for long, however. In a couple of
+minutes he was back with a large hand-bag which he placed on the table
+and again retired. Thorndyke opened the bag and took out quite a
+considerable assortment of weapons—single pistols, revolvers, and
+automatics—which he laid out on the table, each with its box of
+appropriate cartridges.
+“I hate fire-arms!” he exclaimed as he viewed the collection
+distastefully. “They are dangerous things, and when it comes to
+business they are scurvy weapons. Any poltroon can pull a trigger. But
+we must put ourselves on equal terms with our opponent, who is certain
+to be provided. Which will you have? I recommend this Baby Browning
+for portability. Have you had any practice?”
+“Only target practice. But I am a fair shot with a revolver. I have
+never used an automatic.”
+“We will go over the mechanism after supper,” said he. “Meanwhile, I
+hear the approach of Polton and am conscious of a voracious interest
+in what he is bringing. When did you feed last?”
+“I had tea at the studio about half-past four.”
+“My poor Gray!” he exclaimed, “you must be starving. I ought to have
+asked you sooner. However, here comes relief.” He opened a folding
+table by the fire just as Polton entered with the tray, on which I was
+gratified to observe a good-sized dish-cover and a claret-jug. Polton
+rapidly laid the little table and then, whisking off the cover,
+retired with a triumphant crinkle.
+“You have a regular kitchen upstairs, I presume,” said I, as we took
+our seats at the table, “as well as a laboratory? And a pretty good
+cook, too, to judge by the results.”
+Thorndyke chuckled. “The kitchen and the laboratory are one,” he
+replied, “and Polton is the cook. An uncommonly good cook, as you
+suggest, but his methods are weird. These cutlets were probably
+grilled in the cupel furnace, but I have known him to do a steak with
+the brazing-jet. There is nothing conventional about Polton. But
+whatever he does, he does to a finish; which is fortunate, because I
+thought of calling in his aid in our present difficulty.”
+I looked at him inquiringly, and he continued: “If Miss D’Arblay is to
+go on with her work, which she ought to, as it is her livelihood, she
+must be guarded constantly. I had considered applying to Inspector
+Follett, and we may have to later; but for the present it will be
+better for us to keep our own counsel and play our own hand. We have
+two objects in view. First—and paramount—is the necessity of securing
+Miss D’Arblay’s safety. But, second, we want to lay our hands on this
+man, not to frighten him away, as we might do if we put the police on
+his track. When once we have him, her safety is secured for ever,
+whereas if he were merely scared away he would be an abiding menace.
+We have got to catch him, and at present he is catchable. Secure in
+his unknown identity, he is lurking within reach, ready to strike, but
+also ready to be pounced upon when we are ready to pounce. Let us keep
+him confident of his safety while we are gathering up the clues.”
+“H’m—yes,” I assented, without much enthusiasm. “What is it that you
+propose to do?”
+“Somebody,” he replied, “must keep watch over Miss D’Arblay from the
+moment when she leaves her house until she returns to it. How much
+time—if any—can you give up to this duty?”
+“My whole time,” I answered promptly. “I shall let everything else
+go.”
+“Then,” said he, “I propose that you and Polton relieve one another on
+duty. It will be better than for you to be there all the time.”
+I saw what he meant, and agreed at once. The conventions must be
+respected as far as possible.
+“But,” I suggested, “isn’t Polton rather a light-weight—if it should
+come to a scrap, I mean?”
+“Don’t undervalue small men, even physically,” he replied. “They are
+commonly better built than big men and more enduring and energetic.
+Polton is remarkably strong, and he has the pluck of a bulldog. But we
+must see how he is placed as regards work.”
+The question was put to him and the position of affairs explained when
+he came down to clear the table; whereupon it appeared (from his own
+account) that he was absolutely without occupation of any kind and
+pining for something to do. Thorndyke laughed incredulously but did
+not contest this outrageous and barefaced untruth, merely remarking:
+“I am afraid it will be rather an idle time for you.”
+“Oh, no, it won’t, sir,” Polton assured him emphatically. “I’ve always
+wanted to learn something about sculptor’s moulding and wax-casting,
+but I’ve never had a chance. Now I shall have. And that opportunity
+isn’t going to be wasted.”
+Thorndyke regarded his assistant with a twinkling eye. “So it was mere
+self-seeking that made you so enthusiastic,” he said. “But you are
+quite a good moulder already.”
+“Not a sculptor’s moulder, sir,” replied Polton; “and I know nothing
+about wax-work. But I shall, before I have been there many days.”
+“I am sure you will,” said Thorndyke. “Miss D’Arblay will have an
+apprentice and journeyman in one. You will be able to give her quite a
+lot of help; which will be valuable just now while her hand is
+disabled. When do you think she will be able to go back to work,
+Gray?”
+“I can’t say. Not to-morrow certainly. Shall I send you a report when
+I have seen her?”
+“Do,” he replied; “or, better still, come in to-morrow evening and
+give me the news. So, Polton, we sha’n’t want you for another day or
+so.”
+“Ah!” said Polton, “then I shall be able to finish that
+recording-clock before I go;” upon which Thorndyke and I laughed aloud
+and Polton, his mendacity thus unmasked, retired with the tray,
+crinkling but unabashed.
+The short remainder of the evening—or rather, of the night—was spent
+in the study of the mechanism and mode of use of automatic pistols.
+When I finally bestowed the “Baby,” fully loaded, in my hip-pocket,
+and rose to go, Thorndyke sped me on my way with a few words of
+warning and advice.
+“Be constantly on your guard, Gray. You are going to make a bitter
+enemy of a man who knows no scruples; indeed, you have done so
+already, and something tells me that he is aware of it. Avoid all
+solitary or unfrequented places. Keep to main thoroughfares and
+well-lighted streets, and maintain a diligent look-out for any
+suspicious appearances. You have said truly that we carry Miss
+D’Arblay’s life in our hands. But to preserve her life we must
+preserve our own; which we should probably prefer to do in any case.
+Don’t get jumpy—I don’t much think you will; but keep your attention
+alert and your weather eye-lid lifting.”
+With these encouraging words and a hearty hand-shake, he let me out
+and stood watching me as I descended the stairs.
+CHAPTER XII.
+A Dramatic Discovery
+About eleven o’clock in the forenoon of the third day after the
+terrible events of that unforgettable night of the great fog, Marion
+and I drew up on our bicycles opposite the studio door. She was now
+outwardly quite recovered, excepting as to her left hand, but I
+noticed that, as I inserted the key into the door, she cast a quick,
+nervous glance up and down the road; and as we passed through the
+lobby, she looked down for one moment at the great blood-stain on the
+floor and then hastily averted her face.
+“Now,” I said, assuming a brisk, cheerful tone, “we must get to work.
+Mr. Polton will be here in half an hour and we must be ready to put
+his nose on the grindstone at once.”
+“Then your nose will have to go on first,” she replied with a smile,
+“and so will mine, with two raw apprentices to teach and an important
+job waiting to be done. But, dear me! what a lot of trouble I am
+giving!”
+“Nothing of the kind, Marion,” I exclaimed; “you are a public
+benefactor. Polton is delighted at the chance to come here and enlarge
+his experience, and as for me——”
+“Well? As for you?” She looked at me half-shyly, half-mischievously.
+“Go on. You’ve stopped at the most interesting point.”
+“I think I had better not,” said I. “We don’t want the forewoman to
+get too uppish.”
+She laughed softly, and when I had helped her out of her overcoat and
+rolled up the sleeve of her one serviceable arm, I went out to the
+lobby to stow away the bicycles and lock the outer door. When I
+returned, she had got out from the cupboard a large box of flaked
+gelatine and a massive spouted bucket which she was filling at the
+sink.
+“Hadn’t you better explain to me what we are going to do?” I asked.
+“Oh, explanations are of no use,” she replied. “You just do as I tell
+you and then you will know all about it. This isn’t a school; it’s a
+workshop. When we have got the gelatine in to soak, I will show you
+how to make a plaster case.”
+“It seems to me,” I retorted, “that my instructress has graduated in
+the academy of Squeers. ‘W-i-n-d-e-r winder; now go and clean one.’
+Isn’t that the method?”
+“Apprentices are not allowed to waste time in wrangling,” she
+rejoined, severely. “Go and put on one of Daddy’s blouses and I will
+set you to work.”
+This practical method of instruction justified itself abundantly. The
+reasons for each process emerged at once as soon as the process was
+completed. And it was withal a pleasant method, for there is no
+comradeship so sympathetic as the comradeship of work; nor any which
+begets so wholesome and friendly an intimacy. But though there were
+playful and frivolous interludes—as when the forewoman’s working hand
+became encrusted with clay and had to be cleansed with a sponge by the
+apprentice—we worked to such purpose that by the time Mr. Polton was
+due, the plaster bust (of which a wax replica was to be made) was
+firmly fixed on the work-table on a clay foundation and surrounded by
+a carefully levelled platform of clay, in which it was embedded to
+half its thickness. I had just finished smoothing the surface when
+there came a knock at the outer door; on which Marion started
+violently and clutched my arm. But she recovered in a moment, and
+exclaimed in a tone of vexation:
+“How silly I am! Of course, it is Mr. Polton.”
+It was. I found him on the threshold in rapt contemplation of the
+knocker, and looking rather like an archdeacon on tour. He greeted me
+with a friendly crinkle and I then conducted him into the studio and
+presented him to Marion, who shook his hand warmly and thanked him so
+profusely for coming to her aid that he was quite abashed. However, he
+did not waste time in compliments, but, producing an apron from his
+hand-bag, took off his coat, donned the apron, rolled up so sleeves,
+and beamed inquiringly at the bust.
+“We are going to make a plaster case for the gelatine mould, Mr.
+Polton,” Marion explained, and proceeded to a few preliminary
+directions, to which the new apprentice listened with respectful
+attention. But she had hardly finished when he fell to work with a
+quiet, unhurried facility that filled me with envy. He seemed to know
+where to find everything. He discovered the waste-paper with which to
+cover the model to prevent the clay from sticking to it, he pounced on
+the clay bin at the first shot, and when he had built up the shape for
+the case, found the plaster-bin, mixing-bowl, and spoon as if he had
+been born and bred in the workshop, stopping only for a moment to test
+the condition of the gelatine in the bucket.
+“Mr. Polton,” Marion said, after watching him for a while, “you are an
+impostor—a dreadful impostor. You pretend to come here as an improver,
+but you really know all about gelatine moulding; now, don’t you?”
+Polton admitted apologetically that he “had done a little in that way.
+But,” he added, in extenuation, “I have never done any work in wax.
+And, talking of wax, the doctor will be here presently.”
+“Dr. Thorndyke?” Marion asked.
+“Yes, Miss. He had some business in Holloway, so he thought he would
+come on here to make your acquaintance and take a look at the
+premises.”
+“All the same, Mr. Polton,” said I, “I don’t quite see the connexion
+between Dr. Thorndyke and wax.”
+He crinkled with a slightly embarrassed air and explained that he must
+have been thinking of something that the doctor had said to him; but
+his explanations were cut short by a knock at the door.
+“That is his knock,” said Polton; and he and I together proceeded to
+open the door, when I inducted the distinguished visitor into the
+studio and presented him to the presiding goddess. I noticed that each
+of them inspected the other with some curiosity, and that the first
+impressions appeared to be mutually satisfactory, though Marion was at
+first a little overawed by Thorndyke’s impressive personality.
+“You mustn’t let me interrupt your work,” the latter said, when the
+preliminary politenesses had been exchanged. “I have just come to fill
+in Dr. Gray’s outline sketches with details of my own observing. I
+wanted to see you—to convert a name into an actual person, to see the
+studio for the same reason, and to get as precise a description as
+possible of the man whom we are trying to identify. Will it distress
+you to recall his appearance?”
+She had turned a little pale at the mention of her late assailant, but
+she answered stoutly enough: “Not at all; besides, it is necessary.”
+“Thank you,” said he; “then I will read out the description that I had
+from Dr. Gray, and we will see if you can add anything to it.”
+He produced a note-book, from which he read out the particulars that I
+had given him, at the conclusion of which he looked at her
+inquiringly.
+“I think that is all that I remember,” she said. “There was very
+little light, and I really only glanced at him.”
+Thorndyke looked at her reflectively. “It is a fairly full
+description,” said he. “Perhaps the nose is a little sketchy. You
+speak of a hooked nose with a high bridge. Was it a curved nose of the
+Jewish type, or a squarer, Roman nose?”
+“It was rather square in profile; a Wellington nose, but with a rather
+broad base. Like a vulture’s beak, and very large.”
+“Was it actually a hook-nose? I mean, had it a drooping tip?”
+“Yes, the tip projected downwards and it was rather sharp—not
+bulbous.”
+“And the chin? Should you call it a pronounced or a retreating chin?”
+“Oh, it was quite a projecting chin, rather of the Wellington type.”
+Thorndyke reflected once more; then, having jotted down the answers to
+his questions, he closed the book and returned it to his pocket.
+“It is a great thing to have a trained eye,” he remarked. “In your one
+glance you saw more than an ordinary person would have noted in a
+leisurely inspection in a good light. You have no doubt that you would
+know this man again if you should meet him?”
+“Not the slightest,” she replied, with a shudder. “I can see him now
+if I shut my eyes.”
+“Well,” he rejoined, with a smile, “I wouldn’t recall that unpleasant
+vision too often, if I were you. And now, may I, without disturbing
+you further, just take a look round the premises?”
+“But, of course, Dr. Thorndyke,” she replied. “Do exactly what you
+please.”
+With this permission, he drew away and stood for some moments letting
+a very reflective eye travel round the interior; and meanwhile I
+watched him curiously and wondered what he had really come for. His
+first proceeding was to walk slowly round the studio and examine
+closely, one by one, all the casts which hung on pegs. Next, in the
+same systematic manner, he inspected all the shelves, mounting a chair
+to examine the upper ones. It was after scrutinizing one of the latter
+that he turned towards Marion and asked:
+“Have you moved these casts lately, Miss D’Arblay?”
+“No,” she replied; “so far as I know, they have not been touched for
+months.”
+“Some one has moved them within the last day or two,” said he.
+“Apparently the nocturnal explorer went over the shelves as well as
+the cupboard.”
+“I wonder why,” said Marion. “There were no moulds on the shelves.”
+Thorndyke made no rejoinder, but as he stood on the chair he once more
+ran his eye round the studio. Suddenly he stepped down from the chair,
+picked it up, carried it over to the tall cupboard, and once more
+mounted it. His stature enabled him easily to look over the cornice on
+to the top of the cupboard, and it was evident that something there
+had attracted his attention.
+“Here is a derelict of some sort,” he announced, “which certainly has
+not been moved for some months.” As he spoke, he reached over the
+cornice into the enclosed space and lifted out an excessively grimy
+plaster mask, from which he blew the thick coating of dust, and then
+stood for a while looking at it thoughtfully.
+“A striking face this,” he remarked, “but not attractive. It rather
+suggests a Russian or Polish Jew; do you recognize the person, Miss
+D’Arblay?”
+He stepped down from the chair, and handed the mask to Marion, who had
+advanced to look at it, and who now held it in her hand regarding it
+with a frown of perplexity.
+“This is very curious,” she said. “I thought I knew all the casts that
+have been made here. But I have never seen this one before, and I
+don’t know the face. I wonder who he was. It doesn’t look like an
+English face, but I should hardly have taken it for the face of a Jew,
+with that rather small and nearly straight nose.”
+“The East-European Jews are not a very pure breed,” said Thorndyke.
+“You will see many a face of that type in Whitechapel High-street and
+the Jewish quarters hard by.”
+At this point, deserting the work-table, I came and looked over
+Marion’s shoulder at the mask which she was holding at arm’s length.
+And then I got a surprise of the most singular kind, for I recognized
+the face at a glance.
+“What is it, Gray?” asked Thorndyke, who had apparently observed my
+astonishment.
+“This is the most extraordinary coincidence!” I exclaimed. “Do you
+remember my speaking to you about a certain Mr. Morris?”
+“The dealer in antiques?” he queried.
+“Yes. Well, this is his face.”
+He regarded me for some moments with a strangely intent expression.
+Then he asked: “When you say that this is Morris’ face, do you mean
+that it resembles his face, or that you identify it positively?”
+“I identify it positively. I can swear to the identity. It isn’t a
+face that one would forget. And if any doubt were possible, there is
+this hare-lip scar, which you can see quite plainly on the cast.”
+“Yes, I noticed that. And Morris has a hare-lip scar, hasn’t he?”
+“Yes; and in the same position and of the same character. I think you
+can take it as a fact that this cast was undoubtedly taken from
+Morris’ face.”
+“Which,” said Thorndyke, “is a really important fact and one that is
+worth looking into.”
+“In what way is it important?” I asked.
+“In this respect,” he answered. “This man, Morris, is unknown to Miss
+D’Arblay; but he was not unknown to her father. Here we have evidence
+that Mr. D’Arblay had dealings with people of whom his daughter had no
+knowledge. The circumstances of the murder made it clear that there
+must be such people; but here we have proof of their existence, and we
+can give to one of them ‘a local habitation and a name.’ And you will
+notice that this particular person is a dealer in curios and possibly
+in more questionable things. There is just a hint that he may have had
+some rather queer acquaintances.”
+“He seemed to have had rather a fancy for plaster masks,” I remarked.
+“I remember that he had one in his shop window.”
+“Did your father make many life or death masks as commissions, Miss
+D’Arblay?” Thorndyke asked.
+“Only one or two, so far as I know,” she replied. “There is very
+little demand for portrait masks nowadays. Photography has superseded
+them.”
+“That is what I should have supposed,” said he. “This would be just a
+chance commission. However, as it establishes the fact that this man
+Morris was in some way connected with your father, I think I should
+like to have a record of his appearance. May I take this mask away
+with me to get a photograph of it made? I will take great care of it,
+and let you have it back safely.”
+“Certainly,” replied Marion; “but why not keep it, if it is of any
+interest to you? I have no use for it.”
+“That is very good of you,” said he; “and if you will give me some rag
+and paper to pack it in, I will take myself off, and leave you to
+finish your work in peace.”
+Marion took the cast from him, and, having procured some rag and
+paper, began very carefully to wrap it up. While she was thus engaged,
+Thorndyke stood, letting his eye travel once more round the studio.
+“I see,” he remarked, “that you have quite a number of masks moulded
+from life, or death. Do I understand that they were not commissions?”
+“Very few of them were,” Marion replied. “Most of them were taken from
+professional models, but some from acquaintances whom my father bribed
+with the gift of a duplicate mask.”
+“But why did he make them? They could not have been used for producing
+wax faces for the show figures; for you could hardly turn a shop
+window into a wax-work exhibition with lifelike portraits of real
+persons.”
+“No,” Marion agreed, “that wouldn’t do at all. These masks were
+principally used for reference as to details of features when my
+father was modelling a head in clay. But he did sometimes make moulds
+for the wax from these masks, only he obliterated the likeness, so
+that the wax face was not a portrait.”
+“By working on the wax, I suppose?”
+“Yes; or more usually by altering the mask before making the mould. It
+is quite easy to alter a face. Let me show you.”
+She lifted one of the masks from its peg and laid it on the table.
+“You see,” she said, “that this is the face of a young girl—one of my
+father’s models. It is a round, smooth, smiling face, with a very
+short, weak chin and a projecting upper lip. We can change all that in
+a moment.”
+She took up a lump of clay and, pinching off a pellet, laid it on the
+right cheek-bone and spread it out. Having treated the other side in
+the same manner, she rolled an elongated pellet, with which she built
+up the lower lip. Then, with a larger pellet, she enlarged the chin
+downwards and forwards, and, having added a small touch to each of the
+eyebrows, she dipped a sponge in thick clay-water, or “slip,” and
+dabbed the mask all over to bring it to a uniform colour.
+“There,” she said, “it is very rough, but you see what I mean.”
+The result was truly astonishing. The weak, chubby, girlish face had
+been changed by these few touches into the strong, coarse face of a
+middle-aged woman.
+“It really is amazing!” I exclaimed. “It is a perfectly different
+face. I wouldn’t have believed that such a thing was possible.”
+“It is a most striking and interesting demonstration,” said Thorndyke.
+“But yet I don’t know that we need be so surprised. If we consider
+that of all the millions of persons in this island alone each one has
+a face which is different from any other, and yet that all those faces
+are made up of the same anatomical parts, we realize that the
+differences which distinguish one face from another must be
+excessively subtle and minute.”
+“We do,” agreed Marion, “especially when we are modelling a portrait
+bust and the likeness won’t come although every part appears to be
+correct and all the measurements seem to agree. A true likeness is an
+extraordinarily subtle and exact piece of work.”
+“So I have always thought,” said Thorndyke. “But I mustn’t delay you
+any longer. May I have my precious parcel?”
+Marion handed him the not very presentable bundle with a smile and a
+bow. He then took his leave of her and I escorted him to the door,
+where he paused for a moment as we shook hands.
+“You are bearing my advice in mind, I hope, Gray,” he said.
+“As to keeping clear of unfrequented places? Yes, I have been very
+careful in that respect, and I never go abroad without the pistol. It
+is in my hip-pocket now. But I have seen no sign of anything to
+justify so much caution. I doubt if our friend is even aware of my
+existence, and in any case, I don’t see that he has anything against
+me, excepting as Miss D’Arblay’s watch-dog.”
+“Don’t be too sure, Gray,” he rejoined earnestly. “There may be
+certain little matters that you have overlooked. At any rate, don’t
+relax your caution. Give all unfrequented places a wide berth and keep
+a bright look-out.”
+With this final warning, he turned away and strode off down the road
+while I re-entered the studio just in time to see Polton mix the first
+bowl of plaster, as Marion, having washed the clay from the
+transformed mask, dried it and rehung it on its peg.
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A Narrow Escape
+The statement that I had made to Thorndyke was perfectly true in
+substance; but it was hardly as significant in fact as the words
+implied. I had, it is true, in my journeyings abroad, restricted
+myself to well-beaten thoroughfares. But then I had had no occasion to
+do otherwise. Until Polton’s arrival on the scene my time had been
+wholly taken up in keeping a watch on Marion; and so it would have
+continued if I had followed my own inclination. But at the end of the
+first day’s work she intervened resolutely.
+“I am perfectly ashamed,” she said, “to occupy the time of two men,
+both of whom have their own affairs to attend to, though I can’t tell
+you how grateful I am to you for sacrificing yourselves.”
+“We are acting under the doctor’s orders, Miss,” said Polton, thereby,
+in his opinion, closing the subject.
+“You mean Dr. Thorndyke’s?” said Marion, not realizing—or not choosing
+to realize—that, to Polton, there was no other doctor in the world who
+counted.
+“Yes, Miss. The doctor’s orders must be carried out.”
+“Of course they must,” she agreed warmly, “since he has been so very
+good as to take all this trouble about my safety. But there is no need
+for both of you to be here together. Couldn’t you arrange to take
+turns on duty—alternate days or a half-day each? I hate the thought
+that I am wasting the whole of both your times.”
+I did not look on the suggestion with favour, for I was reluctant to
+yield up to any man—even to Polton—the privilege of watching over the
+safety of one who was so infinitely dear to me. Nor was Polton much
+less unwilling to agree, for he loathed to leave a piece of work
+uncompleted. However, Marion refused to accept our denials (as is the
+way of women), and the end of it was that Polton and I had to arrange
+our duties in half-day shifts, changing over at the end of each week,
+the first spell allotting the mornings to me and the latter half of
+the day—with the duty of seeing Marion home—to him.
+Thus, during each of the following six working days, I found myself
+with the entire afternoon and evening free. The former I usually spent
+at the hospital, but in the evenings, feeling too unsettled for study,
+I occupied myself very pleasantly with long walks through the
+inexhaustible streets, extending my knowledge of the town and making
+systematic explorations of such distant regions as Mile End,
+Kingsland, Dalston, Wapping, and the Borough.
+One evening I bethought me of my promise to look in on Usher. I did
+not find myself yearning for his society, but a promise is a promise.
+Accordingly, when I had finished my solitary dinner, I set forth from
+my lodgings in Camden-square and made a bee-line for Clerkenwell: so
+far, that is to say, as was possible, while keeping to the wider
+streets. For in this respect, I followed Thorndyke’s instructions to
+the letter, though, as to the other matter—that of keeping a bright
+look-out—I was less attentive, my mind being much more occupied with
+thoughts of Marion (who would, just now, be on her way home under
+Polton’s escort) than with any considerations of my own personal
+safety. Indeed, to tell the truth, I was inclined to be more than a
+little sceptical as to the need for these extraordinary precautions.
+I found Usher in the act of bowing out the last of the “evening
+consultations,” and was welcomed by him with enthusiasm.
+“Delighted to see you, old chap!” he exclaimed, shaking my hand
+warmly. “It is good of you to drop in on an old fossil like me. Didn’t
+much think you would. I suppose you don’t often come this way?”
+“No,” I replied. “It is rather off my beat. I’ve finished with
+Hoxton—for the present, at any rate.”
+“So have I,” said Usher, “since poor old Crile went off to the better
+land.”
+“Crile?” I repeated. “Who was he?”
+“Don’t you remember my telling you about his funeral, when they had
+those Sunday-school kids yowling hymns round the grave? That was Mr.
+Crile—Christian name, Jonathan.”
+“I remember; but I didn’t realize that he was a Hoxton aristocrat.”
+“Well, he was. Fifty-two, Field-street was his earthly abode. I used
+to remember it by the number of weeks in the year. And glad enough I
+was when he hopped off his perch, for his confounded landlady, a Mrs.
+Pepper, would insist on fixing the times for my visits, and deuced
+inconvenient times, too. Between four and six on Tuesdays and Fridays.
+I hate patients who turn your visits into appointments. Upsets your
+whole visiting-list.”
+“It seems to be the fashion in Hoxton,” I remarked. “I had to make my
+visits at appointed times, too. It would have been frightfully
+inconvenient if I had been busy. Is it often done?”
+“They will always do it if you let ’em. Of course, it is a convenience
+to a woman who doesn’t keep a servant, to know what time the doctor is
+going to call; but it doesn’t do to give way to ’em.”
+I assented to this excellent principle, noting, however, that he
+seemed to have “given way to ’em,” all the same.
+As we had been talking, we had gradually drifted from the surgery up a
+flight of stairs to a shabby, cosy little room on the first floor,
+where a cheerful fire was burning and a copper kettle on a trivet
+purred contentedly and breathed forth little clouds of steam. Usher
+inducted me into a large easy chair, the depressed seat of which
+suggested its customary use by an elephant of sedentary habits, and
+produced from a cupboard a spirit decanter, a high-shouldered Dutch
+gin-bottle, a sugar-basin, and a couple of tumblers and
+sugar-crushers.
+“Whisky or Hollands?” he demanded; and, as curiosity led me to select
+the latter, he commented: “That’s right, Gray. Good stuff, Hollands.
+Touches up the cubical epithelium—what! I am rather partial to a drop
+of Hollands.”
+It was no empty profession. The initial dose made me open my eyes; and
+that was only a beginning. In a twinkling, as it seemed, his tumbler
+was empty and the collaboration of the bottle and the copper kettle
+was repeated. And so it went on for nearly an hour, until I began to
+grow quite uneasy, though without any visible cause, so far as Usher
+was concerned. He did not turn a hair (he hadn’t very many to turn,
+for that matter, but I speak figuratively). The only effect that I
+could observe was an increasing fluency of speech with a tendency to
+discursiveness; and I must admit that his conversation was highly
+entertaining. But his evident intention to “make a night of it” set me
+planning to make my escape without appearing to slight his
+hospitality. How I should have managed it, unaided by the direct
+interposition of Providence, I cannot guess: for his conversation had
+now taken the form of an interminable sentence punctuated by
+indistinguishable commas; but in the midst of this steadily flowing
+stream of eloquence the outer silence was rent by the sudden jangling
+of a bell.
+Usher stopped short, stared at me solemnly, deliberately emptied his
+tumbler, and stood up.
+“Night bell, ol’ chappie,” he explained. “Got to go out. But don’t you
+disturb yourself. Back in a few minutes. Soon polish ’em off.”
+“I’ll walk round with you as far as your patient’s house,” said I,
+“and then I shall have to get home. It is past ten and I have a
+longish walk to Camden-square.”
+He was disposed to argue the point, but another violent jangling cut
+his protests short and sent him hurrying down the stairs with me close
+at his heels. A couple of minutes later we were out in the street,
+following in the wake of a hurrying figure; and, looking at Usher as
+he walked sedately at my side, with his top-hat, his whiskers, and his
+inevitable umbrella, I had the feeling that all those jorums of
+Hollands had been consumed in vain. In appearance, in manner, in
+speech, and in gait, he was just his normal self, with never a hint of
+any change from the status quo ante bellum.
+Our course led us into the purlieus of St. John Street-road, where we
+presently turned into a narrow, winding, and curiously desolate little
+street, along which we proceeded for a few hundred yards, when our
+“fore-runner” halted at a door into which he inserted a latch-key.
+When we arrived at the open door, inside which a shadowy figure was
+lurking, Usher stopped and held out his hand.
+“Good night, old chap,” he said. “Sorry you can’t come back with me.
+If you keep straight on and turn to the left at the cross-roads you
+will come out presently into the King’s Cross-road. Then you’ll know
+your way. So long.”
+He turned into the dark passage, the door was closed, and I went on my
+way.
+The little meandering street was singularly silent and deserted; and
+its windings cut off the light from the scanty street-lamps so that
+stretches of it were in almost total darkness. As I strode forward,
+the echoes of my footfalls resounded with hollow reverberations which
+smote my ear—and ought to have smitten my conscience—causing me to
+wonder, with grim amusement, what Thorndyke would have said if he
+could have seen me thus setting his instructions at defiance. Indeed,
+I was so far sensible of the impropriety of my being in such a place
+at such an hour that I was about to turn to take a look back along the
+street; but at the very moment that I halted within a few feet of a
+street-lamp, something struck the brim of my hat with a sharp, weighty
+blow like the stroke of a hammer, and I heard a dull thud from the
+lamp-post.
+In an instant I spun round, mighty fierce, whipping out my pistol,
+cocking it, and pointing it down the street as I raced back towards
+the spot from whence the missile had appeared to come. There was not a
+soul in sight nor any sound of movement, and the shallow doorways
+seemed to offer no possible hiding place. But some thirty yards back I
+came suddenly on a narrow opening like an empty doorway, but actually
+the entrance to a covered alley not more than three feet wide and as
+dark as a pocket. This was evidently the ambush (which I had passed,
+like a fool, without observing it), and I halted beside it, with my
+pistol still pointed, listening intently and considering what I had
+better do. My first impulse had been to charge into the alley, but a
+moment’s reflection showed the futility of such a proceeding. Probably
+my assailant had made off by some well-known outlet; but in any case
+it would be sheer insanity for me to plunge into that pitch-dark
+passage. For if he were still lurking there he would be invisible to
+me, whereas I should be a clear silhouette against the dim light of
+the street. Moreover, I had seen no one, and I could not shoot at any
+chance stranger whom I might find there. Reluctantly I recognized that
+there was nothing for it but to retreat cautiously and be more careful
+in future.
+My retirement would have looked an odd proceeding to an observer, if
+there had been one, for I had to retreat crab-wise in order that I
+might keep the entrance of the alley covered with my pistol and yet
+see where I was going. When I reached the lamp-post I scanned the area
+of lighted ground beneath it, and, almost at the first glance,
+perceived an object like a largish marble lying in the road. It
+proved, when I picked it up, to be a leaden ball, like an
+old-fashioned musket-ball, with one flattened side, which had
+prevented it from rolling away from the spot where it had fallen. I
+dropped it into my pocket and resumed my masterly retreat until, at
+length, the cross-roads came into view. Then I quickened my pace, and
+as I reached the corner put away my pistol after slipping in the
+safety catch.
+Once more out in the lighted and frequented main streets, my thoughts
+were free to turn over this extraordinary experience. But I did not
+allow them to divert me from a very careful look-out. All my
+scepticism was gone now. I realized that Thorndyke had not been making
+mere vague guesses, but that he had clearly foreseen that something of
+this kind would probably happen. That was, to me, the most perplexing
+feature of this incomprehensible affair.
+I turned it over in my mind again and again, and could make nothing of
+it. I could see no adequate reason why this man should want to make
+away with me. True, I was Marion’s protector; but that—even if he were
+aware of it—did not seem an adequate reason. Indeed, I could not see
+why he was seeking to make away with her—nor, even, was it clear to me
+that there had been a reasonable motive for murdering her father. But
+as to myself, I seemed to be out of the picture altogether. The man
+had nothing to fear from me or to gain by my death.
+That was how it appeared to me; and yet I saw plainly that I must be
+mistaken. There must be something behind all this—something that was
+unknown to me but was known to Thorndyke. What could it be? I found
+myself unable to make any sort of guess. In the end, I decided to call
+on Thorndyke the following evening, report the incident, and see if I
+could get any enlightenment from him.
+The first part of this programme I carried out successfully enough,
+but the second presented more difficulties.
+Thorndyke was not a very communicative man, and a perfectly impossible
+one to pump. What he chose to tell he told freely; and beyond that, no
+amount of ingenuity could extract the faintest shadow of a hint.
+“I am afraid I am disturbing you, Sir,” I said in some alarm, as I
+noted a portentous heap of documents on the table.
+“No,” he replied. “I have nearly finished, and I shall treat you as a
+friend, and keep you waiting while I do the little that is left.” He
+turned to his papers and took up his pen, but paused to cast one of
+his quick, penetrating glances at me.
+“Has anything fresh happened?” he asked.
+“Our unknown friend has had a pot at me,” I answered. “That is all.”
+He laid down his pen, and leaning back in his chair, demanded
+particulars. I gave him an account of what had happened on the
+preceding night, and, taking the leaden ball from my pocket, laid it
+on the table. He picked it up, examined it curiously, and then placed
+it on the letter balance.
+“Just over half an ounce,” he said. “It is a mercy it missed your
+head. With that weight and the velocity indicated by the flattening,
+it would have dropped you insensible with a fractured skull.”
+“And then he would have come along and put the finishing touches, I
+suppose. But I wonder how he shot the thing. Could he have used an air
+gun?”
+Thorndyke shook his head. “An air gun that would discharge a ball of
+that weight would make quite a loud report, and you say you heard
+nothing. You are quite sure of that, by the way?”
+“Perfectly. The place was as silent as the grave.”
+“Then he must have used a catapult; and an uncommonly efficient weapon
+it is in skilful hands, and as portable as a pistol. You mustn’t give
+him another chance, Gray.”
+“I am not going to, if I can help it. But what the deuce does the
+fellow want to pot at me for? It is a most mysterious thing. Do you
+understand what it is all about, Sir?”
+“I do not,” he replied. “My knowledge of the facts of this case is
+nearly all second-hand knowledge, derived from you. You know all that
+I know and probably more.”
+“That is all very well, Sir,” said I; “but you foresaw that this was
+likely to happen. I didn’t. Therefore you must know more about the
+case than I do.”
+He chuckled softly. “You are confusing knowledge and inference,” said
+he. “We had the same facts, but our inferences were not the same. It
+is just a matter of experience. You haven’t squeezed out of the facts
+as much as they are capable of yielding. Come, now, Gray; while I am
+finishing my work you shall look over my notes of this case, and then
+you should take a sort of bird’s-eye view of the whole case, and see
+if anything new occurs to you. And you must add to those notes that
+this man has been at the enormous trouble of stalking you
+continuously, that he shadowed you to Usher’s, that he waited
+patiently for you to come out, that he followed you most skilfully,
+and took instant advantage of the first opportunity that you gave him.
+You might also note that he did not elect to overtake you and make a
+direct attack on you, as he did on Miss D’Arblay. Note those facts,
+and consider what their significance may be. And now just go through
+this little dossier. It won’t take you many minutes.”
+He took out of a drawer a small portfolio, on the cover of which was
+written, “J. D’Arblay, dec’d.,” and, passing it to me, returned to his
+documents. I opened it and found it to contain a number of separate
+abstracts, each duly headed with its descriptive title, and an
+envelope marked, “Photographs.” Glancing over the abstracts, I saw
+that they dealt respectively with J. D’Arblay, The Inquest, The Van
+Zellen Case, Miss D’Arblay, Dr. Gray, and Mr. Morris; the last
+containing, somewhat to my surprise, all the details that I had given
+Thorndyke respecting that rather mysterious person, together with an
+account of my dealings with him and cross-references to the abstract
+bearing my name. It was all very complete and methodical, but none of
+the abstracts contained any information that was new to me. If this
+represented all the facts that were known to Thorndyke, then he was no
+better informed than I was. But he had evidently got a great deal more
+out of the information than I had.
+Returning the abstracts with some disappointment to the portfolio, I
+turned to the photographs; and then I got a very thorough surprise.
+There were only three, and the first two were of no great interest,
+one representing the two casts of the guinea and the other the plaster
+mask of Morris. But the third fairly took away my breath. It was a
+very bad photograph, apparently an enlargement from a rather poor
+snap-shot portrait; but, bad as it was, it gave a very vivid
+presentment of one of the most evil-looking faces that I have ever
+looked on; a lean, bearded face, with high cheek-bones, with heavy,
+frowning brows that overhung deep-shadowed, hollow eye-sockets and an
+almost grotesquely large nose, thin, curved, and sharp, that jutted
+out like a great predatory beak.
+I stared at the photograph in speechless amazement. At the first
+glance I had been struck by the perfect way in which this crude
+portrait realized Marion’s description of the man who had tried to
+murder her. But that was not all. There was another resemblance which
+I now perceived with even more astonishment; indeed, it was so
+incredible that the perception of it reduced me to something like
+stupefaction. I sat for fully a minute with the portrait in my hand,
+and my thoughts surging confusedly in a vain effort to grasp the
+meaning of this extraordinary likeness; then, happening to glance up
+at Thorndyke, I found him quietly regarding me with undisguised
+interest.
+“Well,” he said, as he caught my eye.
+“Who is he?” I demanded, holding up the photograph.
+“That is what I want to know,” he replied. “The photograph came to me
+without any description. The identity of the subject is unknown. Who
+do you think he is?”
+“To begin with,” I answered, “he exactly corresponds in appearance
+with Miss D’Arblay’s description of her would-be murderer. Don’t you
+think so?’
+“I do,” he replied. “The correspondence seems complete in every
+detail, so far as I can judge. That was why I secured the photograph.
+But the actual resemblance will have to be settled by her. I suggest
+that you take the portrait and let her see it; but you had better not
+show it to her pointedly for identification. It would be better to put
+it in some place where she will see it without previous suggestion or
+preparation. But you said just now ‘to begin with.’ Was there anything
+else that struck you about this photograph?”
+“Yes,” I answered, “there was; a most amazing thing. You remember my
+telling you about the patient I attended in Morris’ house?”
+“The man who died of gastric cancer and was eventually cremated?”
+“Yes. His name was Bendelow. Well, this photograph might have been a
+portrait of Bendelow, taken with a beard and moustache before the
+disease got hold of him. Excepting for the emaciation and the
+beard—Bendelow was clean-shaved—I should think it would be quite an
+excellent likeness of him.”
+Thorndyke made no immediate reply or comment, but sat quite still,
+looking at me with a very singular expression. I could see that he was
+thinking rapidly and intensely, but I suspected that his thoughts were
+in a good deal less confusion than mine had been.
+“It is,” he remarked at length, “as you say, a most amazing affair.
+The face is no ordinary face. It would be difficult to mistake it, and
+one would have to go far to find another with which it could be
+confused. Still, one must not forget the possibility of a chance
+resemblance. Nature doesn’t take out letters-patent even for a human
+face. But I will ask you, Gray, to write down and send to me all that
+you know about the late Mr. Bendelow, including all the details of
+your attendance on him, dead and alive.”
+“I will,” said I, “though it is difficult to imagine what connexion he
+could have had with the D’Arblay case.”
+“It seems incredible that he could have had any,” Thorndyke agreed.
+“But at present we are collecting facts, and we must note everything
+impartially. It is a fatal mistake to select your facts in accordance
+with the apparent probabilities. By the way, if Bendelow was like this
+photograph he must have corresponded pretty exactly with Miss
+D’Arblay’s very complete and lucid description. I wonder why you did
+not realize that at the time.”
+“That is what I have been wondering. But I suppose it was the beard
+and the absence of any kind of association between Bendelow and the
+D’Arblays.”
+“Probably,” he agreed. “A beard and moustache alters very greatly even
+a striking face like this. Incidentally, it illustrates the
+superiority of a picture over a verbal description for purposes of
+identification. No mere description will enable you to visualize
+correctly a face which you have never seen. I shall be curious to hear
+what Miss D’Arblay has to say about this photograph.”
+“I will let you know without delay,” said I; and then, as he seemed to
+have completed his work, and put the documents aside, I made a final
+effort to extract some definite information from him.
+“It is evident,” I said, “that the body of facts in your notes has
+conveyed a good deal more to you than it has to me.”
+“Probably,” he agreed. “If it had not, I should seem to have profited
+little by years of professional practice.”
+“Then,” I said persuasively, “may I ask if you have formed a really
+satisfactory theory as to who this man is and why he murdered
+D’Arblay?”
+Thorndyke reflected for a few moments and then replied:
+“My position, Gray, is this: I have arrived at a very definite theory
+as to the motive of the murder, and a most extraordinary motive it is.
+But there are one or two points that I do not understand. There are
+some links missing from the chain of evidence. So with the identity of
+the man. We know pretty certainly that he is the murderer of Van
+Zellen, and we know what he is like to look at, but we can’t give him
+a name and a definite personality. There are links missing there, too.
+But I have great hopes of finding those missing links. If I find them
+I shall have a complete case against this man, and I shall forthwith
+set the law in motion. I can’t tell you more than that at present, but
+I repeat that you are in possession of all the facts, and that if you
+think over all that has happened and ask yourself what it can mean,
+though you will not arrive at a complete solution any more than I
+have, you will at least begin to see the light.”
+This was all that I could get out of him, and as it was now growing
+late I presently rose to take my departure. He walked with me as far
+as the Middle Temple Gate and stood outside the wicket watching me as
+I strode away westward.
+CHAPTER XIV.
+The Haunted Man
+When I arrived at the studio on the following afternoon I found the
+door open and Polton waiting just inside with his hat and overcoat on
+and his bag in his hand.
+“I am glad you are punctual, Sir,” he said, with his benevolent smile.
+“I wanted to get back to the chambers in good time to-day. It won’t
+matter to-morrow, which is fortunate, as you may be late.”
+“Why may I be late to-morrow?” I asked.
+“I have a message for you from the doctor,” he replied. “It is about
+what you were discussing last night. He told me to tell you that he is
+expecting a visit from an officer of the Criminal Investigation
+Department, and he would like you to be present, if it would be
+convenient. About half-past ten, Sir.”
+“I will certainly be there,” said I.
+“Thank you, Sir,” said he. “And the doctor told me to warn you, in
+case you should arrive after the officer, not to make any comment on
+anything that may be said, or to seem to know anything about the
+subject of the interview.”
+“This is very mysterious, Polton,” I remarked.
+“Why, not particularly, Sir,” he replied. “You see the officer is
+coming to give certain information, but he will try to get some for
+himself if he can. But he won’t get anything out of the doctor; and
+the only way for you to prevent his pumping you is to say nothing and
+appear to know nothing.”
+I laughed at his ingenuous wiliness. “Why,” I exclaimed, “you are as
+bad as the doctor, Polton. A regular Machiavelli.”
+“I never heard of him,” said Polton, “but most Scotsmen are pretty
+close. Oh, and there is another little matter that I wanted to speak
+to you about—on my own account this time. I gathered from the doctor,
+in confidence, that some one had been following you about. Now, Sir,
+don’t you think it would be very useful to be able to see behind you
+without turning your head?”
+“By Jove!” I exclaimed. “It would indeed! Capital! I never thought of
+it. I will have a supplementary eye fixed in the back of my head
+without delay.”
+Polton crinkled deprecatingly. “No need for that, Sir,” said he. “I
+have invented quite a lot of different appliances for enabling you to
+see behind you; reflecting spectacles and walking sticks with prisms
+in the handle, and so on. But for use at night I think this will
+answer your purpose best.”
+He produced from his pocket an object somewhat like a watchmaker’s
+eye-glass, and having fixed it in his eye to show me how it worked,
+handed it to me with the request that I would try it. I did so, and
+was considerably surprised at the efficiency of the appliance; for it
+gave me a perfectly clear view of the street almost directly behind
+me.
+“I am very much obliged to you, Polton,” I said, enthusiastically.
+“This is a most valuable gift, especially under the present
+circumstances.”
+He was profoundly gratified. “I think you will find it useful, Sir,”
+he said. “The doctor uses these things sometimes, and so do I if the
+occasion arises. You see, Sir, if you are being shadowed it is a fatal
+thing to turn round and look behind you. You never get a chance of
+seeing what the stalker is like, and you put him on his guard.”
+I saw this clearly enough and once more thanked him for his timely
+gift. Then, having shaken his hand and sped him on his way, I entered
+the lobby and shut the outer door, at the same time transferring
+Thorndyke’s photograph from my letter-case to my jacket pocket. When I
+passed through into the studio I found Marion putting the finishing
+touches to a plaster case. She greeted me with a smile as I entered
+and then plunged her hand once more into the bowl of rapidly
+thickening plaster; whereupon I took the opportunity to lay the
+photograph on a side-bench as I walked towards the table on which she
+was working.
+“Good afternoon, Marion,” said I.
+“Good afternoon, Stephen,” she responded, adding, “I cannot shake
+hands until I have washed,” and held out her emplastered hands in
+evidence.
+“That will be too late,” said I; and as she looked up at me
+inquiringly I stooped and kissed her.
+“You are very resourceful,” she remarked with a smile and a warm
+blush, as she scooped up another handful of plaster; and then, as if
+to cover her slight confusion, she asked: “What was all that solemn
+pow-wow about with Mr. Polton? And why did he wait for you at the door
+in that suspicious manner? Had he some secret message for you?”
+“I don’t know whether it was intended to be secret,” I answered; “but
+it isn’t going to be so far as you are concerned;” and I repeated to
+her the substance of Thorndyke’s message, to which she listened with
+an eagerness that rather surprised me, until her further inquiries
+explained it.
+“This sounds rather encouraging,” she said; “as if Dr. Thorndyke had
+been making some progress in his investigations. I wonder if he has.
+Do you think he really knows much more than we do?”
+“I am sure he does,” I replied; “but how much more, I cannot guess. He
+is extraordinarily close. But I have a feeling that the end is not so
+very far off. He seems to be quite hopeful of laying his hand on this
+villain.”
+“Oh! I hope you are right, Stephen,” she exclaimed. “I have been
+getting so anxious. There has seemed to be no end to this deadlock.
+And yet it can’t go on indefinitely.”
+“What do you mean, Marion?” I asked.
+“I mean,” she answered, “that you can’t go on wasting your time here
+and letting your career go. Of course, it is delightful to have you
+here. I don’t dare to think what the place will be like without you.
+But it makes me wretched to think how much you are sacrificing for
+me.”
+“I am not really sacrificing anything,” said I. “On the contrary, I am
+spending my time most profitably in the pursuit of knowledge and most
+happily in a sweet companionship which I wouldn’t exchange for
+anything in the world.”
+“It is very nice of you to say that,” she said, “but, still, I shall
+be very relieved when the danger is over and you are free.”
+“Free!” I exclaimed, “I don’t want to be free. When my apprenticeship
+has run out I am coming on as journeyman. And now I had better get my
+blouse on and start work.”
+I went to the further end of the studio, and, taking the blouse down
+from its peg, proceeded to exchange it for my coat. Suddenly I was
+startled by a sharp cry, and, turning round, beheld Marion stooping
+over the photograph with an expression of the utmost horror.
+“Where did this come from?” she demanded, turning a white,
+terror-stricken face on me.
+“I put it there, Marion,” I answered somewhat sheepishly, hurrying to
+her side. “But what is the matter? Do you know the man?”
+“Do I know him?” she repeated. “Of course I do. It is he—the man who
+came here that night.”
+“Are you quite sure?” I asked. “Are you certain that it is not just a
+chance resemblance?”
+She shook her head emphatically. “It is he, Stephen. I can swear to
+him. It is no mere resemblance. It is a likeness, and a perfect one,
+though it is such a bad photograph. But where did you get it? And why
+didn’t you show it to me when you came in?”
+I told her how I came by it and explained Thorndyke’s instructions.
+“Then,” she said, “Dr. Thorndyke knows who the man is.”
+“He says he doesn’t, and he was very close and rather obscure as to
+how the photograph came into his possession.”
+“It is very mysterious,” said she, with another terrified glance at
+the photograph. Then suddenly she snatched it up and with averted face
+held it out to me. Put it away, Stephen,” she entreated. “I can’t bear
+the sight of that horrible face. It brings back afresh all the terrors
+of that awful night.”
+I hastily returned the photograph to my letter-case, and, taking her
+arm, led her back to the work-table. “Now,” I said, “let us forget it
+and get on with our work;” and I proceeded to turn the case over and
+fix it in the new position with lumps of clay. For a little while she
+watched me in silence, and I could see by her pallor that she was
+still suffering from the shock of that unexpected encounter. But
+presently she picked up a scraper and joined me in trimming up the
+edges of the case, cutting out the “key-ways” and making ready for the
+second half; and by degrees her colour came back and the interest of
+the work banished her terrors.
+We were, in fact, extremely industrious. We not only finished the
+case—it was an arm from the shoulder which was to be made—cut the
+pouring-holes, and varnished the inside with knotting, but we filled
+one-half with the melted gelatine which was to form the actual mould
+in which the wax would be cast. This brought the day’s work to an end,
+for nothing more could be done until the gelatine had set—a matter of
+at least twelve hours.
+“It is too late to begin anything fresh,” said Marion. “You had better
+come and have supper with me and Arabella.”
+I agreed readily enough to this proposal, and when we had tidied up in
+readiness for the morning’s work we set forth at a brisk pace—for it
+was a cold evening—towards Highgate, gossiping cheerfully as we went.
+By the time we reached Ivy Cottage eight o’clock was striking, and
+“the village” was beginning to settle down for the night. The
+premature quiet reminded me that the adjacent town would presently be
+settling down, too, and that I should do well to start for home before
+the streets had become too deserted.
+Nevertheless, so pleasantly did the time slip away in the cosy
+sitting-room with my two companions that it was close upon half-past
+ten when I rose to take my departure. Marion escorted me to the door,
+and as I stood in the hall buttoning up my overcoat, she said:
+“You needn’t worry if you are detained to-morrow. We shall be making
+the wax cast of the bust, and I am certain Mr. Polton won’t leave the
+studio until it is finished, whether you are there or not. He is
+perfectly mad on wax-work. He wormed all the secrets of the trade out
+of me the very first time we were alone, and he is extraordinarily
+quick at learning. But I can’t imagine what use the knowledge will be
+to him.”
+“Perhaps he thinks of starting an opposition establishment,” I
+suggested, “or he may have an eye to a partnership. But if he has he
+will have a competitor, and one with a prior claim. Good-night, dear
+child. Save some of the wax-work for me to-morrow.”
+She promised to restrain Polton’s enthusiasm as far as possible, and
+wishing me “Good night,” held out her hand, but submitted without
+demur to being kissed; and I took my departure in high spirits, more
+engrossed with the pleasant leave-taking than with the necessity of
+keeping a bright look-out.
+I was nearing the bottom of the High-street when the prevailing quiet
+recalled me to the grim realities of my position, and I was on the
+point of stopping to take a look round when I bethought me of Polton’s
+appliance and also of that cunning artificer’s advice not to put a
+possible “stalker” on his guard. I accordingly felt in my pocket, and
+having found the appliance carefully fixed it in my eye without
+altering my pace. The first result was a collision with a lamp-post,
+which served to remind me of the necessity of keeping both eyes open.
+The instrument was, in fact, not very easy to use while walking, and
+it took me a minute or two to learn how to manage it. Presently,
+however, I found myself able to divide my attention between the
+pathway in front and the view behind, and then it was that I became
+aware of a man following me at a distance of about a hundred yards. Of
+course, there was nothing remarkable or suspicious in this, for it was
+a main thoroughfare and by no means deserted at this comparatively
+early hour. Nevertheless, I kept the man in view, noting that he wore
+a cloth cap and a monkey-jacket, that he carried no stick or umbrella,
+and that when I slightly slackened my pace he did not seem to overtake
+me. As this suggested that he was accommodating his pace to mine, I
+decided to put the matter to the test by giving him an opportunity to
+pass me at the next side turning.
+At this moment the Roman Catholic Church came into view and I recalled
+that at its side a narrow lane—Dartmouth Park Hill—ran down steeply
+between high fences towards Kentish Town. Instantly I decided to turn
+into the lane—which bent sharply to the left behind the church—walk a
+few yards down it and then return slowly. If my follower were a
+harmless stranger he would then have passed on down Highgate Hill,
+whereas if he were stalking me I should meet him at the entrance to
+the lane and could then see what he was like.
+But I was not very well satisfied with this plan, for the obvious
+manœuvre would show him that he was suspected; and as I approached the
+church, a better plan suggested itself. On one side by the entrance to
+the lane were some low railings and a gate with large brick piers. In
+a moment I had vaulted over the railings and taken up a position
+behind one of the piers, where I stood motionless, listening intently.
+Very soon I caught the sound of distinctly rapid footsteps, which
+suddenly grew louder as my follower came opposite the entrance to the
+lane, and louder still as, without a moment’s hesitation, he turned
+into it.
+From my hiding-place in the deep shadow of the pier I could safely
+peep out into the wide space at the entrance of the lane; and as this
+space was well lighted by a lamp I was able to get an excellent view
+of my follower. And very much puzzled I was therewith. Naturally I had
+expected to recognize the man whose photograph I had in my pocket. But
+this was quite a different type of man. It is true that he was
+shortish and rather slightly built, and that he had a beard: but there
+the resemblance ended. His face, which I could see plainly by the
+lamp-light, so far from being of an aquiline or vulturine cast, was
+rather of the blunt and bibulous type. The short, though rather
+bulbous nose, made up in colour what it lacked in size, and its florid
+tint extended into the cheek on either side in the form of what
+dermatologists call _acne rosacea_.
+I say that his appearance puzzled me; but it was not his appearance
+alone. For the latter showed that he was a stranger to me and
+suggested that he was going down the lane on his lawful occasions; but
+his movements did not support that suggestion. He had turned into the
+lane and passed my hiding-place at a very quick walk. But just as he
+reached the sharp turn he slackened his pace, stepping lightly, and
+then stopped for a moment, listening intently and peering forward into
+the darkness of the lane. At length he started again and disappeared
+round the corner, and by the sound of his retreating footsteps I could
+tell that he was once more putting on the pace.
+I listened until these sounds had nearly died away and was just about
+to emerge from my shelter when I became aware of footsteps approaching
+from the opposite direction, and as I did not choose to be seen in the
+act of climbing the railings I decided to remain perdu until this
+person had passed. These footsteps, too, had a distinctly hurried
+sound, a fact which I noted with some surprise; but I was a good deal
+more surprised when the newcomer turned sharply into the entrance,
+walked swiftly past my ambush, and then, as he approached the corner,
+suddenly slowed down, advancing cautiously on tip-toe, and finally
+halted to listen and stare into the obscurity of the lane.
+I peered out at this new arrival with an amazement that I cannot
+describe. Like the first man, he was a complete stranger to me: a
+tallish, athletic-looking man of about thirty-five, not ill-looking,
+and having something of a military air; fair-complexioned, with a
+sandy moustache, but otherwise clean-shaved and dressed in a suit of
+thick tweed, with no overcoat. I could see these details clearly by
+the light of the lamp; and even as I was noting them, he disappeared
+round the corner and I could hear him walking quickly but lightly down
+the lane.
+As soon as he was gone I looked out from my hiding-place and listened
+attentively. There was no one in sight, nor could I hear any one
+approaching. I accordingly came forth, and, quickly climbing over the
+railings, stood for a few moments irresolute. The obviously reasonable
+thing to do was to make off down Highgate Hill as fast as I could and
+take the first conveyance that I could get homeward. But the
+appearance of that second man had inflamed me with curiosity. What was
+he here for? Was he shadowing me or was he in pursuit of the other
+man? Either supposition was incredible, but one of them must be true.
+The end of it was that curiosity got the better of discretion and I,
+too, started down the lane, walking as fast as I could and treading as
+lightly as circumstances permitted.
+The second man was some considerable distance ahead, for his footsteps
+came to me but faintly, and I did not seem to be gaining on him; and I
+took it that his speed was a fair measure of that of the man in front.
+Keeping thus within hearing of my quarry, I sped on, turning over the
+amazing situation in my bewildered mind. The first man was a mystery
+to me, though apparently not to Thorndyke. Who could he be, and why on
+earth was he taking this prodigious amount of trouble to get rid of a
+harmless person like myself? For there could be no mistake as to the
+magnitude of the efforts that he was making. He must have waited
+outside the studio; followed Marion and me to her home, and there kept
+a patient vigil of over two hours, waiting for me to come out. It was
+a stupendous labour. And what was it all about? I could not form the
+most shadowy guess; while as to the other man, the very thought of him
+reduced me to a state of hopeless bewilderment.
+As my reflections petered out to this rather nebulous conclusion, I
+halted for a moment to listen for the footsteps ahead. They were still
+audible, though they sounded somewhat farther away. But now I caught
+the sound of other footsteps, approaching from behind. Some one else
+was coming down the lane. Of course, there was nothing surprising in
+that circumstance, for, after all, this was a public thoroughfare,
+little frequented as it was, especially after dark. Nevertheless,
+something in the character of those footsteps put me on the qui vive.
+For this man, too, was walking quickly—very quickly—and with a certain
+stealthiness, as if he had rubber-soled boots, and, like the rest of
+us, was making as little noise as possible.
+I walked on at my previous rapid pace, keeping my ears cocked now both
+fore and aft; and, as I went, my mind surged with wild speculations.
+Could it be that I had yet another follower? The thing was becoming
+grotesque. My bewilderment began to mingle with a spice of grim
+amusement; but still I listened, not without anxiety, to those
+footsteps from behind, which seemed to be growing rapidly more
+distinct. Whoever this newcomer might be, he was no mean walker, for
+he was overtaking me apace; and this fact gave a pretty broad hint as
+to his size and strength.
+I looked back from time to time, but without stopping or slackening my
+pace, trying to pierce the deep obscurity of the narrow, closed-in
+lane. But it was a dark winter’s night, and the high fences shut out
+even the glimmer from the murky sky. It was not until the approaching
+footfalls sounded quite near that I was able, at length, to make out a
+smear of deeper darkness on the general obscurity. Then I drew out my
+pistol and, withdrawing the safety catch, put my hand, grasping it,
+into my overcoat pocket. Having thus made ready for possible
+contingencies, I watched the black shape emerge from the darkness
+until it developed into a tall, portly man, bearing down on me with
+long, swinging strides, when I halted and drew back against the fence
+to let him pass.
+But he had no intention of passing. As he came up to me, he, too,
+halted, and, looking into my face with undissembled curiosity, he
+addressed me in a brusque though not uncivil tone.
+“Now, sir, I must ask you to explain what is going on.”
+“What do you mean?” I demanded.
+“I’ll tell you,” he replied. “I saw you, a little time ago, climb over
+the railings and hide behind a gate-post. Then I saw a man come up in
+a deuce of a hurry and turn into the lane. I saw him stop and listen
+for a moment and then bustle off down the hill. Close on this fellow’s
+heels comes another man, also in a devil of a hurry. _He_ turns into
+the lane, too, and suddenly he pulls up and creeps forward on tip-toe
+like a cat on hot bricks. _He_ stops and listens, too; and then off he
+goes down the lane like a lamplighter. Then out you come from behind
+the gate-post, over the railings you climb, and then _you_ creep up to
+the corner and listen, and then off _you_ go down the hill like
+another lamplighter. Now, sir, what’s it all about?”
+“I assume,” said I, repressing a strong tendency to giggle, “that you
+have some authority for making these inquiries?”
+“I have, sir,” he replied. “I am a police officer on plain-clothes
+duty. I happened to be at the corner of Hornsey-lane when I saw you
+coming down the High-street walking in a queer sort of way as if you
+couldn’t see where you were going. So I drew back into the shadow and
+had a look at you. Then I saw you nip into the lane and climb over the
+railings, so I waited to see what was going to happen next. And then
+those other two came along. Well, now, I ask you again, sir, what’s
+going on? What is it all about?”
+“The fact is,” I said a little sheepishly, “I thought the first man
+was following me, so I hid just to see what he was up to.”
+“What about the second man?”
+“I don’t know anything about him.”
+“What do you know about the first man?”
+“Nothing, except that he certainly was following me.”
+“Why should he be following you?”
+“I can’t imagine. He is a stranger to me, and so is the other man.”
+“Hm,” said the officer, regarding me with a distrustful eye. “Damn
+funny affair. I think you had better walk up to the station with me
+and give us a few particulars about yourself.”
+“I will with pleasure,” said I. “But I am not altogether a stranger
+there. Inspector Follett knows me quite well. My name is Gray—Dr.
+Gray.”
+The officer did not reply for a few moments. He seemed to be listening
+to something. And now my ear caught the sound of footsteps approaching
+hurriedly from down the lane. As they drew near, my friend peered into
+the darkness and muttered in an undertone:
+“Will that be one of ’em coming back?” He listened again for a moment
+or two, and then, resuming his inquiries, said aloud: “You say
+Inspector Follett knows you. Well, perhaps you had better come and see
+Inspector Follett.”
+As he finished speaking, he again listened intently, and his mouth
+opened slightly. I suspect my own did, too. For the footsteps had
+ceased. There was now a dead silence in the lane.
+“That chap has stopped to listen,” my new friend remarked in a low
+voice. “We had better see what his game is. Come along, sir;” and with
+this he strode off at a pace that taxed my powers to keep up with him.
+But at the very moment that he started, the footsteps became audible
+again, only now they were obviously retreating; and straining my ears
+I caught the faint sound of other and more distant footfalls, also
+retreating, so far as I could judge, and in the same hurried fashion.
+For a couple of minutes the officer swung along like a professional
+pedestrian, and I struggled on just behind him, perspiring freely, and
+wishing that I could shed my overcoat. Still, despite our efforts,
+there was no sign of our gaining on the men ahead. My friend evidently
+realized this, for he presently growled over his shoulder, “This won’t
+do,” and forthwith broke into a run.
+Instantly this acceleration communicated itself to the men in front.
+The rhythm of both sets of footfalls showed that our fore-runners were
+literally justifying that description of them; and as both had
+necessarily given up any attempt to move silently, the sounds of their
+retreat were borne to us quite distinctly. And from those sounds the
+unsatisfactory conclusion emerged that they were drawing ahead pretty
+rapidly. My friend, the officer, was, as I have said, an uncommonly
+fine walker. But he was no runner. His figure was against him. He was
+fully six feet in height and he had a “presence.” He could have walked
+me off my legs; but when it came to running I found myself ambling
+behind him with such ease that I was able to get out my pistol and,
+after replacing the safety-catch, stow the weapon in my hip pocket,
+out of harm’s way.
+However, if my friend was no sprinter he was certainly a stayer, for
+he lumbered on doggedly until the lane entered the new neighbourhood
+of Dartmouth Park; and here it was that the next act opened. We had
+just passed the end of the first of the streets when I saw a
+surprisingly agile policeman dart out from a shady corner and follow
+on in our wake in proper Lillie-bridge style. I immediately put on a
+spurt and shot past my companion, and a few moments later sounds of
+objurgation arose from behind. I stopped at once and turned back, just
+in time to hear an apologetic voice exclaim:
+“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Mr. Plonk. I didn’t reckernize you in the
+dark.”
+“No, of course you wouldn’t,” replied the plain-clothes officer. “Did
+you see two men run past here just now?”
+“I did,” answered the constable. “One after the other, and both
+running as if the devil was after them. I was half-way up the street,
+but I popped down to have a look at them, and when I got to the corner
+I heard you coming. So I just kept out of sight and waited for you.”
+“Quite right too,” said Mr. Plonk. “Well, I don’t see or hear anything
+of those chaps now.”
+“No,” agreed the constable, “and you are not likely to. There’s a
+regular maze of new streets about here. You can take it that they’ve
+got clear away.”
+“Yes, I’m afraid they have,” said Plonk. “Well, it can’t be helped,
+and there’s nothing much in it. Good night, constable.”
+He moved off briskly, not wishing, apparently, to discuss the affair,
+and in a few minutes we came to the wide cross-roads. Here he halted
+and looked me over by the light of a street lamp. Apparently the
+result was satisfactory, for he said: “It’s hardly worth while to take
+you all the way back to the station at this time of night. Where do
+you live?”
+I told him Camden-square and offered a card in corroboration.
+“Then you are pretty close home,” said he, inspecting my card. “Very
+well, Doctor. I’ll speak to Inspector Follett about this affair, and
+if you have any further trouble of this sort you had better let us
+know. And you had better let us have a description of the men in any
+case.”
+I promised to send him the particulars on the following day, and we
+then parted with mutual good wishes, he making his way towards
+Holloway-road and I setting my face homeward by way of the
+Brecknock-road and keeping an uncommonly sharp look-out as I went.
+CHAPTER XV.
+Thorndyke Proposes a New Move
+On the following morning, in order to make sure of arriving before the
+detective officer, I presented myself at King’s Bench-walk a good
+half-hour before I was due. The door was opened by Thorndyke himself,
+and as we shook hands he said: “I am glad you have come early, Gray.
+No doubt Polton explained the programme to you, but I should like to
+make our position quite clear. The officer who is coming here
+presently is Detective-Superintendent Miller, of the Criminal
+Investigation Department. He is quite an old friend, and he is coming
+at my request to give me certain information. But, of course, he is a
+detective officer, with his own duties to his department, and an
+exceedingly shrewd, capable man. Naturally, if he can pick up any
+crumbs of information from us, he will; and I don’t want him to learn
+more, at present, than I choose to tell him.”
+“Why do you want to keep him in the dark?” I asked.
+“Because,” he replied, “we are doing quite well, and I want to get the
+case complete before I call in the police. If I were to tell him all I
+know and all I think, he might get too busy, and scare our man away
+before we have enough evidence to justify an arrest. As soon as the
+investigation is finished, and we have such evidence as will secure a
+conviction, I shall turn the case over to him; meanwhile, we keep our
+own counsel. Your rôle this morning will be that of listener. Whatever
+happens, make no comment. Act as if you knew nothing that is not of
+public knowledge.”
+I promised to follow his directions to the letter, though I could not
+get rid of the feeling that all this secrecy was somewhat futile. Then
+I began to tell him of my experiences of the previous night, to which
+he listened at first with grave interest, but with growing amusement
+as the story developed. When I came to the final chase and the
+pursuing policeman, he leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily.
+“Why,” he exclaimed, wiping his eyes, “it was a regular procession! It
+only wanted a string of sausages and a harlequin to bring it up to
+pantomime form.”
+“Yes,” I admitted with a grin, “it was a ludicrous affair. But it was
+a mighty mysterious affair too. You see, neither of the men was the
+man I had expected. There must be more people in this business than we
+had supposed. Have you any idea who these men can be?”
+“It isn’t much use making vague guesses,” he replied. “The important
+point to note is that this incident, farcical as it turned out, might
+easily have taken a tragical turn; and the moral is that for the
+present you can’t be too careful in keeping out of harm’s way.”
+It was obvious to me that he was evading my question; that those two
+sinister strangers were not the mystery to him that they were to me,
+and I was about to return to the charge with a more definitely pointed
+question when an elaborate flourish on the little brass knocker of the
+inner door announced a visitor.
+The tall, military-looking man whom Thorndyke admitted was evidently
+the Superintendent, as I gathered from the mutual greetings. He looked
+rather hard at me until Thorndyke introduced me, which he did with
+characteristic reticence.
+“This is Dr. Gray, Miller; you may remember his name. It was he who
+discovered the body of Mr. D’Arblay.”
+“Yes, I remember,” said the Superintendent, shaking my hand
+unemotionally and still looking at me with a slightly dubious air.
+“He is a good deal interested in the case,” Thorndyke continued, “not
+only professionally, but as a friend of the family—since the
+catastrophe.”
+“I see,” said the Superintendent, taking a final inquisitive look at
+me and obviously wondering why the deuce I was there. “Well, there is
+nothing of a very secret nature in what I have to tell you, and I
+suppose you can rely on Dr. Gray to keep his own counsel and ours.”
+“Certainly,” replied Thorndyke. “He quite understands that our talk is
+confidential, even if it is not secret.”
+The officer nodded, and, having been inducted into an easy chair, by
+the side of which a decanter, a siphon, and a box of cigars had been
+placed, settled himself comfortably, lit a cigar, mixed himself a
+modest refresher, and drew from his pocket a bundle of papers secured
+with red tape.
+“You asked me, Doctor,” he began, “to get you all particulars up to
+date of the Van Zellen case. Well, I can do that without difficulty as
+the case—or at least what is left of it—is in my hands. The
+circumstances of the actual crime I think you know already, so I will
+take up the story from that point.
+“Van Zellen, as you know, was found dead in his room, poisoned with
+prussic acid, and a quantity of very valuable portable property was
+missing. It was not clear whether the murderer had let himself in with
+false keys or whether Van Zellen had let him in; but the place hadn’t
+been broken into. The job had been done with remarkable skill, so that
+not a trace of the murderer was left. Consequently, all that was left
+for the police to do was to consider whether they knew of any one
+whose methods agreed with those of this murderer.
+“Well, they did know of such a person, but they had nothing against
+him but suspicion. He had never been convicted of any serious crime,
+though he had been in chokee once or twice for receiving. But there
+had been a number of cases of robbery with murder—or rather murder
+with robbery, for this man seemed to have committed the murder as a
+preliminary precaution—and they were all of this kind; a solitary
+crime, very skilfully carried out by means of poison. There was never
+any trace of the criminal; but gradually the suspicions of the police
+settled down on a rather mysterious individual of the name of
+Bendelow; Simon Bendelow. Consequently, when the Van Zellen crime came
+to light, they were inclined to put it on this man Bendelow, and they
+began making fresh inquiries about him. But presently it transpired
+that some one had seen a man, on the morning of the crime, coming away
+from the neighbourhood of Van Zellen’s house just about the time when
+the murder must have been committed.”
+“Was there anything to connect him with the crime?” Thorndyke asked.
+“Well, there was the time—the small hours of the morning—and the man
+was carrying a good-sized hand-bag, which seemed to be pretty heavy
+and which would have held the stuff that was missing. But the most
+important point was the man’s appearance. He was described as a
+smallish man, clean-shaved, with a big hooked nose and very heavy
+eyebrows set close down over his eyes.
+“Now this put Bendelow out of it as the principal suspect, because the
+description didn’t fit him at all” (here I caught Thorndyke’s eye for
+an instant and was warned afresh, and not unnecessarily, to make no
+comment); “but,” continued the Superintendent, “it didn’t put him out
+altogether. For the man whom the description did fit—and it fitted him
+to a T—was a fellow named Crile—Jonathan Crile—who was a pal of
+Bendelow’s and was known to have worked with him as a confederate in
+the receiving business and had been in prison once or twice. So the
+police started to make inquiries about Crile, and before long they
+were able to run him to earth. But that didn’t do them much good; for
+it turned out that Crile wasn’t in New York at all. He was in
+Philadelphia; and it was clearly proved that he had been there on the
+day of the murder, on the day before and the day after. So they seemed
+to have drawn a blank; but they were still a bit suspicious of Mr.
+Crile, who seems to have been as downy a bird as his friend Bendelow,
+and of the other chappie, too. But they hadn’t a crumb of evidence
+against either.
+“So there the matter stuck. A complete deadlock. There was nothing to
+be done; for you can’t arrest a man on mere suspicion with not a
+single fact to support it. But the police kept their eye on both
+gents, so far as they could, and presently they got a chance. Bendelow
+made a slip—or, at any rate, they said he did. It was a little
+trumpery affair, something in the receiving line, and of no importance
+at all. Probably, a faked charge, too. But they thought that if they
+could get him arrested they might be able to squeeze something out of
+him—the police in America can do things that we aren’t allowed to. So
+they tried to pounce on him. But Mr. Bendelow was a slippery customer,
+and he got wind of their intentions just in time. When they got into
+his rooms they found that he had left—in a deuce of a hurry, too, and
+only a few minutes before they arrived. They searched the place, but
+found nothing incriminating, and they tried to get on Bendelow’s
+track, but they didn’t succeed. He had managed to get clear away, and
+Crile seemed to have disappeared, too.
+“Well, that seemed to be the end of the affair. Both of these crooks
+had made off without leaving a trace, and the police—having no
+evidence—didn’t worry any more about them. And so things went on for
+about a year, until the Van Zellen case had been given up and nearly
+forgotten. Then something happened quite recently that gave the police
+a fresh start.
+“It appears that there was a fire in the house in which Bendelow’s
+rooms were, and a good deal of damage was done, so that they had to do
+some rebuilding; and in the course of the repairs, the builder’s men
+found, hidden under the floor-boards, a small parcel containing part
+of the Van Zellen swag. There was nothing of real value; just coins
+and medals and seal-rings and truck of that kind. But the things were
+all identified by means of Van Zellen’s catalogue, and, of course, the
+finding of them in what had been Bendelow’s rooms put the murder
+pretty clearly on to him.
+“On this, as you can guess, the police and the detective agencies got
+busy. They searched high and low for the missing man, but for a long
+time they could pick up no traces of him. At last they discovered that
+he and Crile had taken a passage nearly a year ago on a tramp steamer
+bound for England. Thereupon they sent a very smart, experienced
+detective over to work at the case in conjunction with our own
+detective department.
+“But we didn’t have much to do with it. The American—Wilson was his
+name—had all the particulars, with the prison photographs and
+finger-prints of both the men, and he made most of the inquiries
+himself. However, there were two things that we did for him. We handed
+over to him the Van Zellen guinea and the particulars of the D’Arblay
+murder; and we were able to inform him that his friend, Bendelow, was
+dead.”
+“How did you find that out?” Thorndyke asked.
+“Oh, quite by chance. One of our men happened to be at Somerset House
+looking up some details of a will when in the list of wills he came
+across the name of Simon Bendelow, which he had heard from Wilson
+himself. He at once got out the will, copied out the address of the
+executrix and the names and addresses of the witnesses, and handed
+them over to Wilson, who was mightily taken aback, as you may suppose.
+However, he wasn’t taking anything for granted. He set off instantly
+to look up the executrix—a Mrs. Morris. But there he got another
+disappointment, for the Morrises had gone away and no one knew where
+they had gone.”
+“I take it,” said Thorndyke, “that probate of the will had been
+granted.”
+“Yes; everything in that way had been finished up. Well, on this,
+Wilson went off in search of the witnesses, and he had better luck
+this time. They were two elderly spinsters who lived together in a
+house in Turnpike-lane, Hornsey. They didn’t know much about Bendelow,
+for they had only made his acquaintance after he had taken to his bed.
+They were introduced to him by his friend and landlady, Mrs. Morris,
+who used to take them up to his room to talk to him and cheer him up a
+bit. However, they knew all about his death, for they had seen him in
+his coffin and they followed him to the Ilford Crematorium.”
+“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “So he was cremated.”
+“Yes,” chuckled the Superintendent, with a sly look at Thorndyke. “I
+thought that would make you prick up your ears, Doctor. Yes, there
+were no half measures for Mr. Bendelow. He had gone literally to
+ashes. But it was all right, you know. There couldn’t have been any
+hanky panky. These two ladies had not only seen him in his coffin;
+they actually had a last look at him through a little celluloid window
+in the coffin-lid, just before the coffin was passed through into the
+cremation furnace.”
+“And there was no doubt as to his identity?”
+“None whatever. Wilson showed the old ladies his photograph, and they
+recognized him instantly; picked his photograph out of a dozen
+others.”
+“Where was Bendelow living when they made his acquaintance?”
+“Not far from their house; in Abbey-road, Hornsey. But the Morrises
+moved afterwards to Market-street, Hoxton, and that is where he died
+and where the will was signed.”
+“I suppose Wilson ascertained the cause of death?”
+“Oh, yes. The old ladies told him that. But he went to Somerset House
+and got a copy of the death certificate. I haven’t got that, as he
+took it back with him; but the cause of death was cancer of the
+pylorus—that’s some part of the gizzard, I believe, but you’ll know
+all about it. At any rate, there was no doubt on the subject, as the
+two doctors made a post-mortem before they signed the death
+certificate. It was all perfectly plain and straightforward.
+“Well, so much for Mr. Bendelow. When Wilson had done with him, he
+turned his attention to Crile. And then he really did get a proper
+shake-up. When he was at Somerset House, looking up Bendelow’s death
+certificate, it occurred to him just to run his eye down the list and
+make sure that Crile was still in the land of the living. And there,
+to his astonishment, he found Crile’s name. He was dead, too! And not
+only was he dead: he, also, had died of cancer—it was the pancreas
+this time; another part of the gizzard—and he had died at Hoxton, too,
+and he had died just four days before Bendelow. The thing was
+ridiculous. It looked like a conspiracy. But here again everything was
+plain and above-board. Wilson got a copy of the certificate and called
+on the doctor who had signed it, a man named Usher. Of course, Dr.
+Usher remembered all about the case as it had occurred quite recently.
+There was not a shadow of doubt that Crile was dead. Usher had helped
+to put him in his coffin and had attended at his funeral; and he, too,
+had no difficulty in picking out Crile’s photograph, and he had no
+doubt at all as to what Crile died of. So there it was. Queer as it
+looked, there was no denying the plain facts. Those two crooks had
+slipped through the fingers of the law, so far as it was possible to
+see.
+“But I must admit that I was not quite satisfied; the circumstances
+were so remarkably odd. I told Wilson so, and I advised him to look
+further into the matter. I reminded him of the D’Arblay murder and the
+finding of that guinea, but he said that the murder was our affair,
+that the men he had come to look for were dead, and that was all that
+concerned him. So back he went to New York, taking with him the death
+certificates and the two photographs with the certificates of
+recognition on the backs of them. But he left the notes of the case
+with me, on the chance that they might be useful to me, and the two
+sets of finger-prints, which certainly don’t seem likely to be of much
+use under the circumstances.”
+“You never know,” said Thorndyke, with an enigmatical smile.
+The Superintendent gave him a quick, inquisitive look and agreed: “No,
+you don’t, especially when you are dealing with Dr. John Thorndyke.”
+He pulled out his watch, and, staring at it anxiously, exclaimed:
+“What a confounded nuisance! I’ve got an appointment at the Law Courts
+in five minutes. It is quite a small matter. Won’t take me more than
+half an hour. May I come back when I have finished? I should like to
+hear what you think of this extraordinary story.”
+“Come back, by all means,” said Thorndyke, “and I will turn over the
+facts in my mind while you are gone. Possibly some suggestion may
+present itself in the interval.”
+He let the officer out, and when the hurried footsteps had died away
+on the stairs he closed the door and turned to me with a smile.
+“Well, Gray,” he said, “what do you think of that? Isn’t it a very
+pretty puzzle for a medical jurist?”
+“It is a hopeless tangle to me,” I replied. “My brain is in a whirl.
+You can’t dispute the facts, and yet you can’t believe them. I don’t
+know what to make of the affair.”
+“You note the fact that, whoever may be dead, there is somebody
+alive—very much alive, and that that somebody is the murderer of
+Julius D’Arblay.”
+“Yes, I realize that. But obviously he can’t be either Crile or
+Bendelow. The question is: Who is he?”
+“You note the link between him and the Van Zellen murder; I mean the
+electrotype guinea?”
+“Yes, there is evidently some connexion, but I can’t imagine what it
+can be. By the way, you noticed that the American police had got
+muddled about the personal appearance of these two men. The
+description of that man who was seen coming away from Van Zellen’s
+house, and who was said to be quite unlike Bendelow, actually fitted
+him perfectly. They had evidently made a mistake of some kind.”
+“Yes, I noticed that. But the description may have fitted Crile
+better. We must get into touch with this man, Usher. I wonder if he
+will be the Usher who used to attend at St. Margaret’s.”
+“He is; and I am in touch with him already. In fact, he was telling me
+about this very patient, Jonathan Crile.”
+“Indeed! Can you remember the substance of what he told you?”
+“I think so. It wasn’t very thrilling.” And here I gave him, as well
+as I could remember them, the details with which Usher had entertained
+me of his attendance on the late Jonathan Crile, his dealings with the
+landlady, Mrs. Pepper, and the incidents of the funeral, including
+Usher’s triumphant return in the mourning coach. It seemed a dull and
+trivial story, but Thorndyke listened to it with the keenest interest,
+and when I had finished he asked: “He didn’t happen to mention where
+Crile lived, I suppose?”
+“Yes, curiously enough, he did. The address, I remember, was 52,
+Field-street, Hoxton.”
+“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “You are a mine of information, Gray.”
+He rose and, taking down from the bookshelves Phillip’s Atlas of
+London, opened it and pored over one of the maps. Then, replacing the
+Atlas, he got out his notes of the D’Arblay case and searched for a
+particular entry. It was evidently quite a short one, for when he had
+found it he gave it but a single glance and closed the portfolio.
+Then, returning to the bookshelves, he took out the Post Office
+Directory and opened it at the “streets” section. Here also his search
+was but a short one though it appeared to be concerned with two
+separate items; for, having examined one, he turned to a different
+part of the section to find the other. Finally he closed the unwieldy
+volume and, having replaced it on the shelf, turned and once more
+looked at me inquiringly.
+“Reflecting on what Miller has told us,” he said, “does anything
+suggest itself to you? Any sort of hypothesis as to what the real
+facts may be?”
+“Nothing whatever,” I replied. “The confusion that was already in my
+mind is only the worse confounded. But that is not your case, I take
+it.”
+“Not entirely,” he admitted. “The fact is that I had already formed a
+hypothesis as to the motives and circumstances which lay behind the
+murder of Julius D’Arblay, and I find this new matter not inconsistent
+with it. But that hypothesis may, nevertheless, turn out to be quite
+wrong when we put it to the test of further investigation.”
+“You have some further investigation in view, then.”
+“Yes. I am going to make a proposal to Superintendent Miller—and here
+he comes, before his time; by which I judge that he, also, is keen on
+the solution of this puzzle.”
+Thorndyke’s opinion seemed to be justified, for the Superintendent
+entered all agog, and opened the subject at once.
+“Well, Doctor, I suppose you have been thinking over Wilson’s story?
+How does it strike you? Have you come to any conclusion?”
+“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I have come to the conclusion that I can’t
+accept that story at its face value as representing the actual facts.”
+Miller laughed with an air of mingled amusement and vexation. “That is
+just my position,” said he. “The story seems incredible, but yet you
+can’t raise any objection. The evidence in support of it is absolutely
+conclusive at every point. There isn’t a single weak spot in it—at
+least, I haven’t found one. Perhaps you have?” And here he looked at
+Thorndyke with eager inquiry in his eyes.
+“I won’t say that,” Thorndyke replied. “But I put it to you, Miller,
+that the alleged facts that are offered are too abnormal to be
+entertained. We cannot accept that string of coincidences. It must be
+obvious to you that there is a fallacy somewhere and that the actual
+facts are not what they seem.”
+“Yes, I feel that, myself,” rejoined Miller. “But what are we to do?
+How are we to find the flaw in the evidence, if there is one? Can you
+see where to look for it? I believe you can.”
+“I think there is one point which ought to be verified,” said
+Thorndyke. “The identification of Crile doesn’t strike me as perfectly
+convincing.”
+“How does his case differ from Bendelow’s?” Miller demanded.
+“In two respects,” was the reply. “First, Bendelow was identified by
+two persons who had known him well for some time and who gave a most
+circumstantial account of his illness, his death, and the disposal of
+his body; and second, Bendelow’s remains have been cremated and are
+therefore, presumably, beyond our reach for purposes of
+identification.”
+“Well,” Miller objected, “Crile isn’t so very accessible, being some
+few feet under ground.”
+“Still, he is there; and he has been buried only a few weeks. It would
+be possible to exhume the body and settle the question of his identity
+once for all.”
+“Then you are not satisfied with Dr. Usher’s identification?”
+“No. Usher saw him only after a long, wasting illness, which must have
+altered his appearance very greatly; whereas the photograph was taken
+when Crile was in his normal health. It couldn’t have been so very
+like Usher’s patient.”
+“That’s true,” said Miller; “and I remember that Usher wasn’t so very
+positive, according to Wilson. But he agreed that it seemed to be the
+same man; and all the other facts seemed to point to the certainty
+that it was really Crile. Still, you are not satisfied? It’s a pity
+Wilson took the photograph back with him.”
+“The photograph is of no consequence,” said Thorndyke. “You have the
+finger-prints; properly authenticated finger-prints, actually taken
+from the man in the presence of witnesses. After this short time it
+will be possible to get perfectly recognizable finger-prints from the
+body, and those finger-prints will settle the identity of Usher’s
+patient beyond any possible doubt.”
+The Superintendent scratched his chin thoughtfully. “It’s a bit of a
+job to get an exhumation order,” said he. “Before I raise the question
+with the Commissioner, I should like to have a rather more definite
+opinion from you. Do you seriously doubt that the man in that coffin
+is Jonathan Crile?”
+“It is my opinion,” replied Thorndyke—“of course, I may be wrong—but
+it is my considered opinion that the Crile who is in that coffin is
+not the Crile whose finger-prints are in your possession.”
+“Very well, Doctor,” said Miller, rising and picking up his hat, “that
+is good enough for me. I won’t ask you for your reasons because I know
+you won’t give them. But I have known you long enough to feel sure
+that you wouldn’t give a definite opinion like that unless you had got
+something pretty solid to go on. And I don’t think we shall have any
+difficulty about the exhumation order after what you have said.”
+With this the Superintendent took his leave, and very shortly
+afterwards Thorndyke carried me off to lunch at his club before
+dismissing me to take up my duties at the studio.
+CHAPTER XVI.
+A Surprise for the Superintendent
+It appeared that Thorndyke was correct in his estimate of the
+Superintendent’s state of mind, for that officer managed to dispose in
+a very short space of time of the formalities necessary for the
+obtaining of an exhumation license from the Home Office. It was less
+than a week after the interview that I have recorded when I received a
+note from Thorndyke asking me to join him and Miller at King’s
+Bench-walk on the following morning at the unholy hour of half-past
+six. He offered to put me up for the night at his chambers, but I
+declined this hospitality, not wishing to trouble him unnecessarily;
+and after a perfunctory breakfast by gaslight, a ride on an early
+tram, and a walk through the dim, lamp-lit streets, I entered the
+Temple just as the subdued notes of an invisible clock bell announced
+a quarter past six. On my arrival at Thorndyke’s chambers I observed a
+roomy hired carriage drawn up at the entry, and, ascending the stairs,
+found “the Doctor” and Miller ready to start, each provided with a
+good-sized hand-bag.
+“This is a queer sort of function,” I remarked as we took our way down
+the stairs; “a sort of funeral the wrong way about.”
+“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed; “it is what Lewis Carroll would have called
+an unfuneral—and very appropriately, too. I didn’t give you any
+particulars in my note, but you understand the object of this
+expedition?”
+“I assume that we are going to resurrect the late Jonathan Crile,” I
+replied. “It isn’t very clear to me what I have to do with the
+business, as I never knew Mr. Crile, though I am delighted to have
+this rather uncommon experience. But I should have thought that Usher
+would be the proper person to accompany you.”
+“So the Superintendent thought,” said Thorndyke, “and quite rightly;
+so I have arranged to pick up Usher and take him with us. He will be
+able to identify the body as that of his late patient, and you and I
+will help the Superintendent to take the finger-prints.”
+“I am taking your word for it, Doctor,” said Miller, “that the
+finger-prints will be recognizable, and that they will be the wrong
+ones.”
+“I don’t guarantee that,” Thorndyke replied, “but still, I shall be
+surprised if you get the right ones.”
+Miller nodded with an air of satisfaction, and nothing more was said
+on the subject until we drew up before Dr. Usher’s surgery. That
+discreet practitioner was already waiting at the open door, and at
+once took his place in the carriage, watched curiously by observers
+from adjacent windows.
+“This is a rum go,” he remarked, diffusing a vinous aroma into the
+atmosphere of the carriage. “I really did think I had paid my last
+visit to Mr. Crile. But there’s no such thing as certainty in this
+world.” He chuckled softly and continued: “A bit different this
+journey from the last. No hatbands this time, and no Sunday-school
+children. Lord! When I think of those kids piping round the open
+grave, and that our dear departed brother was wanted by the police so
+badly that they were actually going to dig him up, it makes me smile,
+it does, indeed.”
+In effect, it made him cackle; and as Miller had not heard the account
+of the funeral, it was repeated for his benefit in great detail. Then
+the anecdotal ball was set rolling in a fresh direction by one or two
+questions from Thorndyke, with the result that the entire history of
+Usher’s attendance on the deceased, including the misdeeds of Mrs.
+Pepper, was retailed with such a wealth of circumstance that the
+narration lasted until we stopped at the cemetery gate.
+Our arrival was not unexpected, for as we got out of the carriage, two
+gentlemen approached the entrance, and one of them unlocked a gate to
+admit us. He appeared to be the official in charge of the cemetery,
+while the other, to whom he introduced us, was no less a person than
+Dr. Garroll, the Medical Officer of Health.
+“The Home Office license,” the latter explained, “directs that the
+removal shall be carried out under my supervision and to my
+satisfaction; very necessary in a populous neighbourhood like this.”
+“Very necessary,” Thorndyke agreed gravely.
+“I have provided a supply of fresh ground lime, according to the
+directions,” Dr. Garroll continued; “and as a further precaution, I
+have brought with me a large formalin spray. That, I think, should
+satisfy all sanitary requirements.”
+“It should certainly be sufficient,” Thorndyke agreed, “to meet the
+requirements of the present case. Has the excavation been commenced
+yet?”
+“Oh, yes,” replied the cemetery official. “It was started quite early,
+and has been carried down nearly to the full depth; but I thought that
+the coffin had better not be uncovered until you arrived. I have had a
+canvas screen put up round the grave so that the proceedings may be
+quite private. We can send the labourers outside before we unscrew the
+coffin-lid. You said, Superintendent, that you were anxious to avoid
+any kind of publicity; and I have warned the men to say nothing to any
+one about the affair.”
+“Quite right,” said Miller. “We don’t want this to get into the
+papers, in case—well, in any case.”
+“Exactly, sir,” agreed the official, who was evidently bursting with
+curiosity himself. “Exactly. Here is the screen. If you will step
+inside, the excavation can be proceeded with.”
+We passed inside the screen, where we found four men reposefully
+contemplating a coil of stout rope, a basket, attached to another
+rope, and a couple of spades. The grave yawned in the middle of the
+enclosure, flanked on one side by the mound of newly dug earth and on
+the other by a tub of lime and a Winchester quart bottle fitted with a
+spray nozzle and a large rubber bellows.
+“You can get on with the digging now,” said the official; whereupon
+one of the men was let down into the grave, together with a spade and
+the basket, and fell to work briskly. Then Dr. Garroll directed one of
+the other men to sprinkle in a little lime; which he did, with a
+pleased smile and so little discretion that the man below was seen to
+stop digging, and after looking up indignantly, take off his cap,
+shake it violently and ostentatiously dust his shoulders with it.
+When about a dozen basketfuls of earth had been hoisted up, a hollow,
+woody sound accompanying the thrusts of the spade announced that the
+coffin had been reached. Thereupon more lime was sprinkled in, and Dr.
+Garroll, picking up the formalin bottle, sprayed vigorously into the
+cavity until a plaintive voice from below—accompanied by an
+unnaturally loud sneeze—was heard to declare that “he’d ’ave brought
+his umbrella if he’d knowed he was goin’ to be squirted at.” A few
+minutes’ more work exposed the coffin and enabled us to read the
+confirmatory inscription on the plate. Then the rope slings were let
+down and with some difficulty worked into position by the excavator
+below; who, when he had completed his task, climbed to the surface and
+grasped one end of a sling in readiness to haul on it.
+“It’s a good deal easier letting ’em down than hoisting ‘em up,” Usher
+remarked, as the final shower of lime descended and the men began to
+haul; “but poor old Crile oughtn’t to take much lifting. There was
+nothing of him but skin and bone.”
+However this might be, it took the united efforts of the four men to
+draw the coffin up to the surface and slew it round clear of the
+yawning grave. But at last this was accomplished, and it was lifted,
+for convenience of inspection, on to one of the mounds of newly dug
+earth.
+“Now,” said the presiding official, “you men had better go outside and
+wait down at the end of the path until you are wanted again:” an order
+that was received with evident disfavour and complied with rather
+sulkily. As soon as they were gone, our friend produced a couple of
+screw-drivers, with which he and Miller proceeded in a very
+workmanlike manner to extract the screws, while Dr. Garroll enveloped
+them in a cloud of spray, and Thorndyke, Usher, and I stood apart to
+keep out of range. It was not a long process; indeed, it came to an
+end sooner than I had expected, for the first intimation that I
+received of its completion was a loud exclamation (consisting of the
+single word “Snakes!”) in the voice of Superintendent Miller. I turned
+quickly and saw that officer standing with the raised coffin-lid in
+his hand, staring into the interior with a look of perfectly
+indescribable amazement. Instantly I rushed forward and looked into
+the coffin; and then I was no less amazed. For in place of the mortal
+remains of the late Jonathan Crile, was a portly sack oozing sawdust
+from a hole in its side, through which coyly peeped a length of thick
+lead pipe.
+For a sensible time we all stood in breathless silence gazing down at
+that incredible sack. Suddenly Miller looked up eagerly at Thorndyke,
+whose sphinx-like countenance showed the faintest shadow of a smile.
+“You knew this coffin was empty, Doctor?” said he.
+Thorndyke shook his head. “If I had known,” he replied, “I should have
+told you.”
+“Well, you suspected that it was empty.”
+“Yes,” Thorndyke admitted, “I don’t deny that.”
+“I wonder why you did, and why it never occurred to me.”
+“It did not occur to you, perhaps, because you were not in possession
+of certain suggestive facts which are known to me. Still, if you
+consider that the circumstances surrounding the alleged deaths of
+these two men were so incredible as to make us both feel certain that
+there was some fallacy or deception in regard to the apparent facts,
+you will see that this was a very obvious possibility. Two men were
+alleged to have died, and one of them was certainly cremated. It
+followed that either the other man had died, as alleged, or that his
+funeral was a mock funeral. There was no other alternative. You must
+admit that, Miller.”
+“I do, I do,” the Superintendent replied ruefully. “It is always like
+this. Your explanations are so obvious when you have given them, and
+yet no one thinks of them but yourself. All the same, this isn’t so
+very obvious, even now. There are some extraordinary discrepancies
+that have yet to be explained. But we can discuss them on the way
+back. The question now is, what is to be done with this coffin?”
+“The first thing to be done,” replied Thorndyke, “is to screw on the
+lid. Then we can leave the cemetery authorities to deal with it. But
+those men must be sworn to absolute secrecy. That is vitally
+important, for if this exhumation should get reported in the Press, we
+should probably lose the whole advantage of this discovery.”
+“Yes, by Jove!” the Superintendent agreed, emphatically. “It would be
+a disaster. At present, the late Mr. Crile is at large, perfectly
+happy and secure and entirely off his guard. We can just follow him up
+at our leisure and take him unawares. But if he got wind of this, he
+would be out of reach in a twinkling—that is, if he is alive, which I
+suppose——” and here the Superintendent suddenly paused, with knitted
+brows.
+“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “The advantage of surprise is with us, and
+we must keep it at all costs. You realize the position,” he added,
+addressing the cemetery official and the Medical Officer.
+“Perfectly,” the latter replied, a little glumly, I thought, “and you
+may rely on us both to do everything that we can to keep the affair
+secret.”
+With this we all emerged from the screen and walked back slowly
+towards the gate; and as we went, I strove vainly to get my ideas into
+some kind of order. But the more I considered the astonishing event
+which had just happened the more incomprehensible did it appear. And
+yet I saw plainly that it could not really be incomprehensible since
+Thorndyke had actually arrived at its probability in advance. The
+glaring discrepancies and inconsistencies which chased one another
+through my mind could not be real. They must be susceptible of
+reconciliation with the observed facts. But by no effort was I able to
+reconcile them.
+Nor, evidently, was I alone the subject of these difficulties and
+bewilderments. The Superintendent walked with corrugated brows and an
+air of profound cogitation, and even Usher—when he could detach his
+thoughts from the juvenile choir at the funeral—was obviously puzzled.
+In fact, it was he who opened the discussion as the carriage moved
+off.
+“This job,” he observed with conviction, “is what the sporting men
+would call a fair knock-out. I can’t make head nor tail of it. You
+talk of the late Mr. Crile being at large and perfectly happy. But the
+late Mr. Crile died of cancer of the pancreas. I attended him in his
+illness. There was no doubt about the cancer, though I wouldn’t swear
+to the pancreas. But he died of cancer all right. I saw him dead; and,
+what is more, I helped to put him into that coffin. What do you say to
+that, Dr. Thorndyke?”
+“What is there to say?” was the elusive reply. “You are a competent
+observer, and your facts are beyond dispute. But inasmuch as Mr. Crile
+was not in that coffin when we opened it, the unavoidable inference is
+that after you had put him in, somebody else must have taken him out.”
+“Yes, that is clear enough,” rejoined Usher. “But what has become of
+him? The man was dead; that I am ready to swear to. But where is he?”
+“Yes,” said Miller. “That is what is bothering me. There has evidently
+been some hanky-panky. But I can’t follow it. It isn’t as though we
+were dealing with a supposititious body. There was a real dead man.
+That isn’t disputed—at least, I take it that it isn’t.”
+“It certainly is not disputed by me,” said Thorndyke.
+“Then what the deuce became of him? And why, in the name of blazes,
+was he taken out of the coffin? That’s what I want to know. Can you
+tell me, Doctor? But there! What is the good of asking you? Of course
+you know all about it! You always do. But it is the same old story.
+You have got the ace of trumps up your sleeve, but you won’t bring it
+out until it is time to take the trick. Now isn’t that the position,
+Doctor?”
+Thorndyke’s impassive face softened with a faint, inscrutable smile.
+“We hold a promising hand, Miller,” he replied quietly; “but if the
+ace is there, it is you who will have the satisfaction of playing it.
+And I hope to see you put it down quite soon.”
+Miller grunted. “Very well,” said he. “I can see that I am not going
+to get any more out of you than that; so I must wait for you to
+develop your plans. Meanwhile I am going to ask Dr. Usher for a signed
+statement.”
+“Yes, that is very necessary,” said Thorndyke. “You two had better go
+on together and set down Gray and me in the Kingsland-road, where he
+and I have some other business to transact.”
+I glanced at him quickly as he made this astonishing statement—for we
+had no business there, or anywhere else that I knew of. But I said
+nothing. My recent training had not been in vain.
+A few minutes later, near to Dalston Junction, he stopped the
+carriage, and, having made our adieux, we got out. Then Thorndyke
+strode off down the Kingsland-road but presently struck off westward
+through a bewildering maze of seedy suburban streets and shabby
+squares in which I was as completely lost as if I had been dropped
+into the midst of the Sahara.
+“What is the nature of the business that we are going to transact?” I
+ventured to ask as we turned yet another corner.
+“In the first place,” he replied, “I wanted to hear what conclusions
+you had reached in view of this discovery at the cemetery.”
+“Well, that won’t take long,” I said, with a grin. “They can be summed
+up in half a dozen words: I have come to the conclusion that I am a
+fool.”
+He laughed good-humouredly. “There is no harm in thinking that,” he
+said, “provided you are not right—which you are not. But did that
+empty coffin suggest no new ideas to you?”
+“On the contrary,” I replied, “it scattered the few ideas that I had.
+I am in the same condition as Superintendent Miller: an inextricable
+muddle.”
+“But,” he objected, “you are not in the same position as the
+Superintendent. If he knew all that you and I know, he wouldn’t be in
+a muddle at all. What is your difficulty?”
+“Primarily the discrepancies about this man Crile. There seems to be
+no possible doubt that he died. But apparently he was never buried;
+and you and Miller seem to believe that he is still alive. Further, I
+don’t see what business Crile is of ours at all.”
+“You will see that presently,” said he, “and meanwhile you must not
+confuse Miller’s beliefs with mine. However,” he added, as we crossed
+a bridge over a canal—presumably the Regent’s Canal—“we will adjourn
+the discussion for the moment. Do you know what street that is ahead
+of us?”
+“No,” I answered; “I have never been here before, so far as I know.”
+“That is Field-street,” said he.
+“The street that the late Mr. Crile lived in?”
+“Yes,” he answered; and as we passed on into the street from the foot
+of the bridge, he added, pointing to a house on our left hand: “And
+that is the residence of the late Mr. Crile—empty, and to let, as you
+observe.”
+As we walked past I looked curiously at the house, with its shabby
+front and its blank, sightless windows, its desolate condition
+emphasized by the bills which announced it; but I made no remark until
+we came to the bottom of the street, when I recognized the cross road
+as the one along which I used to pass on my way to the Morrises’
+house. I mentioned the fact to Thorndyke, and he replied: “Yes. That
+is where we are going now. We are going to take a look over the
+premises. That house also is empty, and I have got a permit from the
+agent to view it and have been entrusted with the keys.”
+In a few minutes we turned into the familiar little thoroughfare, and
+as we took our way past its multitudinous stalls and barrows I
+speculated on the object of this exploration. But it was futile to ask
+questions, seeing that I had but to wait a matter of minutes for the
+answer to declare itself. Soon we reached the house and halted for a
+moment to look through the glazed door into the empty shop. Then
+Thorndyke inserted the key into the side door and pushed it open.
+There is always something a little melancholy in the sight of an empty
+house which one has known in its occupied state. Nothing, indeed,
+could be more cheerless than the Morris household; yet it was with a
+certain feeling of depression that I looked down the long passage
+(where Cropper had bumped his head in the dark) and heard the clang of
+the closing door. This was a dead house—a mere empty shell. The feeble
+life that I had known in it was no more. So I reflected as I walked
+slowly down the passage at Thorndyke’s side, recalling the ungracious
+personalities of Mrs. Morris and her husband and the pathetic figure
+of poor Mr. Bendelow.
+When from the passage we came out into the hall, the sense of
+desolation was intensified, for here not only the bare floor and
+vacant walls proclaimed the untenanted state of the house. The big
+curtain that had closed in the end of the hall, and to a great extent
+furnished it, was gone, leaving the place very naked and chill.
+Incidentally, its disappearance revealed a feature of whose existence
+I had been unaware.
+“Why,” I exclaimed, “they had a second street door. I never saw that.
+It was hidden by a curtain. But it can’t open into Market-street.”
+“It doesn’t,” replied Thorndyke. “It opens on Field-street.”
+“On Field-street!” I repeated in surprise. “I wonder why they didn’t
+let me in that way. It is really the front of the house.”
+“I think,” answered Thorndyke, “that if you open the door and look
+out, you will understand why you were admitted at the back.”
+I unbolted the door, and, opening it, stepped out on the wide
+threshold and looked up and down the street. Thorndyke was right. The
+thoroughfare was undoubtedly Field-street, down which we had passed
+only a few minutes ago, and close by, on the right hand, was the canal
+bridge. Strongly impressed with the oddity of the affair, I turned to
+re-enter, and as I turned I glanced up at the number on the door. As
+my eye lighted on it I uttered a cry of astonishment. For the number
+was fifty-two!
+“But this is amazing!” I exclaimed, re-entering the hall—where
+Thorndyke stood watching me with quiet amusement—and shutting the
+door. “It seems that Usher and I were actually visiting at the same
+house.”
+“Evidently,” said he.
+“But it almost looks as if we were visiting the same patient!”
+“There can be practically no doubt that you were,” he agreed. “It was
+on that assumption that I induced Miller to apply for the exhumation
+order, and the empty coffin seems to confirm it completely.”
+I was thunderstruck, not only by the incredible thing that had
+happened, but by Thorndyke’s uncanny knowledge of all the
+circumstances.
+“Then,” I said, after a pause, “if Usher and I were attending the same
+man, we were both attending Bendelow.”
+“That is certainly what the appearances suggest,” he agreed.
+“It was undoubtedly Bendelow who was cremated,” said I.
+“All the circumstances seem to point to that conclusion,” he admitted,
+“unless you can think of any that point in the opposite direction.”
+“I cannot,” I replied. “Everything points in the same direction. The
+dead man was seen and identified as Bendelow by those two ladies, Miss
+Dewsnep and Miss Bonington, and they not only saw him here, but they
+actually saw him in his coffin just before it was passed through into
+the crematorium. And there is no doubt that they knew Bendelow by
+sight, for you remember that they recognized the photograph of him
+that the American detective showed them.”
+“Yes,” he admitted, “that is so. But their identification is a point
+that requires further investigation. And it is a vitally important
+point. I have my own hypothesis as to what took place, but that
+hypothesis will have to be tested; and that test will be what the
+logicians would call the Experimentum Crucis. It will settle one way
+or the other whether my theory of this case is correct. If my
+hypothesis as to their identification is true, there will be nothing
+left to investigate. The case will be complete and ready to turn over
+to Miller.”
+I listened to this statement in complete bewilderment. Thorndyke’s
+reference to “the case” conveyed nothing definite to me. It was all so
+involved that I had almost lost count of the subject of our
+investigation.
+“When you speak of ‘the case,’” said I, “what case are you referring
+to?”
+“My dear Gray!” he protested. “Do you not realize that we are trying
+to discover who murdered Julius D’Arblay?”
+“I thought you were,” I answered; “but I can’t connect this new
+mystery with his death in any way.”
+“Never mind,” said he. “When the case is completed we will have a
+general elucidation. Meanwhile there is something else that I have to
+show you before we go. It is through this side door.”
+He led me out into a large neglected garden and along a wide path that
+was all overgrown with weeds. As we went, I tried to collect and
+arrange my confused ideas, and suddenly a new discrepancy occurred to
+me. I proceeded to propound it.
+“By the way, you are not forgetting that the two alleged deaths were
+some days apart? I saw Bendelow dead on a Monday. He had died on the
+preceding afternoon. But Crile’s funeral had already taken place a day
+or two previously.”
+“I see no difficulty in that,” Thorndyke replied. “Crile’s funeral
+occurred, as I have ascertained, on a Saturday. You saw Bendelow alive
+for the last time on Thursday morning. Usher was sent for, and saw
+Crile dead on Thursday evening, he having evidently died—with or
+without assistance—soon after you left. Of course, the date of death
+given to you was false; and you mention in your notes of the case that
+both you and Cropper were surprised at the condition of the body. The
+previous funeral offers no difficulty, seeing that we know that the
+coffin was empty. This is what I thought you might be interested to
+see.”
+He pointed to a flight of stone steps, at the bottom of which was a
+wooden gate set in the wall that enclosed the garden. I looked at the
+steps—a little vacantly, I am afraid—and inquired what there was about
+them that I was expected to find of interest.
+“Perhaps,” he replied, “you will see better if we open the gate.”
+We descended the steps, and he inserted a key into the gate, drawing
+my attention to the fact that the lock had been oiled at no very
+distant date and was in quite good condition. Then he threw the gate
+open, and we both stepped out on to the tow-path of the canal. I
+looked about me in considerable surprise, for we were within a few
+yards of the hut with the derrick and the little wharf from which I
+had been flung into the canal.
+“I remember this gate,” said I; “in fact, I think I mentioned it to
+you in my account of my adventure here. But I little imagined that it
+belonged to the Morris’ house. It would have been a short way in, if I
+had known. But I expect it was locked at the time.”
+“I expect it was,” Thorndyke agreed, and thereupon turned and
+re-entered. We passed once more down the long passage, and came out
+into Market-street, when Thorndyke locked the door and pocketed the
+key.
+“That is an extraordinary arrangement,” I remarked; “one house having
+two frontages on separate streets.”
+“It is not a very uncommon one,” Thorndyke replied. “You see how it
+comes about. A house fronting on one street has a long back garden
+extending to another street which is not yet fully built on. As the
+new street fills up, a shop is built at the end of the garden. A small
+house may be built in connexion with it and cut off from the garden,
+or the shop may be connected with the original house, as in this
+instance. But in either case the shop belongs to the new street and
+has its own number. What are you going to do now?”
+“I am going straight on to the studio,” I replied.
+“You had better come and have an early lunch with me first,” said he.
+“There is no occasion to hurry. Polton is there and you won’t easily
+get rid of him, for I understand that Miss D’Arblay is doing the
+finishing work on a wax bust.”
+“I ought to see that, too,” said I.
+He looked at me with a mischievous smile. “I expect you will have
+plenty of opportunities in the future,” said he, “whereas Polton must
+make hay while the sun shines. And, by the way, he may have something
+to tell you. I have instructed him to make arrangements with those two
+ladies, Miss Dewsnep and her friend, to go into the question of their
+identification of Bendelow. I want you to be present at the interview,
+but I have left him to fix the date. Possibly he has made the
+arrangement by now. You had better ask him.”
+At this moment, an eligible omnibus making its appearance, we both
+climbed on board and were duly conveyed to King’s Cross, where we
+alighted and lunched at a modest restaurant, thereafter separating to
+go our respective ways north and south.
+CHAPTER XVII.
+A Chapter of Surprises
+In answer to my knock the studio door was opened by Polton; and as I
+met his eyes for a moment I was conscious of something unusual in his
+appearance. I had scanty opportunity to examine him, for he seemed to
+be in a hurry, bustling away after a few hasty words of apology and
+returning whence he had come. Following close on his heels, I saw what
+was the occasion of his hurry. He was engaged with a brush and a pot
+of melted wax in painting a layer of the latter on the insides of the
+moulds of a pair of arms, while Marion, seated on a high stool, was
+working at a wax bust, which was placed on a revolving
+modelling-stand, obliterating the seams and other irregularities with
+a steel tool which she heated from time to time at a small spirit
+lamp.
+When I had made my salutations, I offered my help to Polton, which he
+declined—without looking up from his work—saying that he wanted to
+carry the job through by himself. I sympathized with this natural
+desire, but it left me without occupation; for the work which Marion
+was doing was essentially a one-person job, and in any case was far
+beyond the capabilities of either of the apprentices. For a minute or
+two I stood idly looking on at Polton’s proceedings, but, noticing
+that my presence seemed to worry him, I presently moved away—again
+with a vague impression that there was something unusual in his
+appearance—and, drawing up another high stool beside Marion’s, settled
+myself to take a lesson in the delicate and difficult technique of
+surface finishing.
+We were all very silent. My two companions were engrossed by their
+respective occupations, and I must needs refrain from distracting them
+by untimely conversation; so I sat, well content to watch the magical
+tool stealing caressingly over the wax surface, causing the
+disfiguring seams to vanish miraculously into an unbroken contour. But
+my own attention was somewhat divided; for even as I watched the
+growing perfection of the bust there would float into my mind now and
+again an idle speculation as to the change in Polton’s appearance.
+What could it be? It was something that seemed to have altered, to
+some extent, his facial expression. It couldn’t be that he had shaved
+off his moustache or whiskers, for he had none to shave. Could he have
+parted his hair in a new way? It seemed hardly sufficient to account
+for the change; and looking round at him cautiously I could detect
+nothing unfamiliar about his hair.
+At this point he picked up his wax-pot and carried it away to the
+farther end of the studio to exchange it for another which was heating
+in a water-bath. I took the opportunity to lean towards Marion and ask
+in a whisper:
+“Have you noticed anything unusual about Polton?”
+She nodded emphatically, and cast a furtive glance over her shoulder
+in his direction.
+“What is it?” I asked in the same low tone.
+She took another precautionary glance, and then leaning towards me
+with an expression of exaggerated mystery, whispered:
+“He has cut his eyelashes off.”
+I gazed at her in amazement, and was about to put a further question,
+but she held up a warning forefinger and turned again to her work.
+However, my curiosity was now at boiling-point. As soon as Polton
+returned to his bench, I slipped off my stool and sauntered over to it
+on the pretence of seeing how his wax cast was progressing.
+Marion’s report was perfectly correct. His eyelids were as bare of
+lashes as those of a marble bust. And this was not all. Now that I
+came to look at him critically, his eyebrows had a distinctly
+moth-eaten appearance. He had been doing something to them, too.
+It was an amazing affair. For one moment I was on the point of
+demanding an explanation, but good sense and good manners conquered
+the inquisitive impulse in time. Returning to my stool I cast an
+enquiring glance at Marion, from whom, however, I got no enlightenment
+but such as I could gather from a most alluring dimple that hovered
+about the corner of her mouth and that speedily diverted my thoughts
+into other channels.
+My two companions continued for some time to work silently, leaving me
+to my meditations—which concerned themselves alternately with Polton’s
+eyelashes and the dimple aforesaid. Suddenly Marion turned to me and
+asked:
+“Has Mr. Polton told you that we are all to have a holiday to-morrow?”
+“No,” I answered; “but Dr. Thorndyke mentioned that Mr. Polton might
+have something to tell us. Why are we all to have a holiday?”
+“Why, you see, sir,” said Polton, standing up and forgetting all about
+his eyelashes, “the Doctor instructed me to make an appointment with
+those two ladies, Miss Dewsnep and Miss Bonington, to come to our
+chambers on a matter of identification. I have made the appointment
+for ten o’clock to-morrow morning; and as the Doctor wants you to be
+present at the interview and wants me to be in attendance, and we
+can’t leave Miss D’Arblay here alone, we have arranged to shut up the
+studio for to-morrow.”
+“Yes,” said Marion; “and Arabella and I are going to spend the morning
+looking at the shops in Regent-street, and then we are coming to lunch
+with you and Dr. Thorndyke. It will be quite a red-letter day.”
+“I don’t quite see what these ladies are coming to the chambers for,”
+said I.
+“You will see, all in good time, sir,” replied Polton; and, as if to
+head me off from any further questions, he added: “I forgot to ask how
+your little party went off this morning.”
+“It went off with a bang,” I answered. “We got the coffin up all
+right, but Mr. Fox wasn’t at home. The coffin was empty.”
+“I rather think that was what the Doctor expected,” said Polton.
+Marion looked at me with eager curiosity. “This sounds rather
+thrilling,” she said. “May one ask who it was that you expected to
+find in that coffin?”
+“My impression is,” I replied, “that the missing tenant was a person
+who bore a strong resemblance to that photograph that I showed you.”
+“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “What a pity! I wish that coffin hadn’t
+been empty. But, of course, it could hardly have been occupied, under
+the circumstances. I suppose I mustn’t ask for fuller details?”
+“I don’t imagine that there is any secrecy about the affair, so far as
+you are concerned,” I answered; “but I would rather that you had the
+details from Dr. Thorndyke, or, at least, with his express authority.
+He is conducting the investigations, and what I know has been imparted
+to me in confidence.”
+This view was warmly endorsed by Polton (who had by now either
+forgotten his eyelashes or abandoned concealment as hopeless). The
+subject was accordingly dropped, and the two workers resumed their
+occupations. When Polton had painted a complete skin of wax over the
+interior of both pairs of moulds, I helped him to put the latter
+together and fasten them with cords. Then into each completed mould we
+poured enough melted wax to fill it, and after a few seconds poured it
+out again, leaving a solid layer to thicken the skin and unite the two
+halves of the wax cast. This finished Polton’s job, and shortly
+afterwards he took his departure. Nor did we remain very much longer,
+for the final stages of the surface finishing were too subtle to be
+carried out by artificial light, and had to be postponed until
+daylight was available.
+As we walked homewards we discussed the situation so far as was
+possible without infringing Thorndyke’s confidences.
+“I am very confused and puzzled about it all,” she said. “It seems
+that Dr. Thorndyke is trying to get on the track of the man who
+murdered my father. But whenever I hear any details of his
+investigations they always seem to be concerned with somebody else or
+with something that has no apparent connexion with the crime.”
+“That is exactly my condition,” said I. “He seems to be busily working
+at problems that are totally irrelevant. As far as I can make out, the
+murderer has never once come into sight, excepting when he appeared at
+the studio that terrible night. The people in whom Thorndyke has
+interested himself are mere outsiders—suspicious characters, no doubt,
+but not suspected of the murder. This man, Crile, for instance, whose
+empty coffin we dug up, was certainly a shady character. But he was
+not the murderer, though he seems to have been associated with the
+murderer at one time. Then there is that fellow Morris, whose mask we
+found at the studio. He is another queer customer. But he is certainly
+not the murderer, though he was also probably an associate. Thorndyke
+has taken an immense interest in him. But I can’t see why. He doesn’t
+seem to me to be in the picture, or, at any rate, not in the
+foreground of it. Of the actual murderer we seem to know nothing at
+all—at least, that is my position.”
+“Do you think Dr. Thorndyke has really got anything to go on?” she
+asked.
+“My dear Marion,” I exclaimed, “I am confident that he has the whole
+case cut and dried and perfectly clear in his mind. What I was saying
+referred only to myself. _My_ ideas are all in confusion, but _his_
+are not. He can see quite clearly who is in the picture and in what
+part of it. The blindness is mine. But let us wait and see what
+to-morrow brings forth. I have a sort of feeling—in fact, he
+hinted—that this interview is the final move. He may have something to
+tell you when you arrive.”
+“I do hope he may,” she said earnestly; and with this we dismissed the
+subject. A few minutes later we parted at the gate of Ivy Cottage, and
+I took my way (by the main thoroughfares) home to my lodgings.
+On the following morning I made a point of presenting myself at
+Thorndyke’s chambers well in advance of the appointed time in order
+that I might have a few words with him before the two ladies arrived.
+With the same purpose, no doubt, Superintendent Miller took a similar
+course, the result being that we converged simultaneously at the entry
+and ascended the stairs together. The “oak” was already open, and the
+inner door was opened by Thorndyke, who smilingly remarked that he
+seemed thereby to have killed two early birds with one stone.
+“So you have, Doctor,” assented the Superintendent—“two early birds
+who have come betimes to catch the elusive worm—and I suspect they
+won’t catch him.”
+“Don’t be pessimistic, Miller,” said Thorndyke with a quiet chuckle.
+“He isn’t such a slippery worm as that. I suppose you want to know
+something of the programme?”
+“Naturally, I do, and so, I suppose, does Dr. Gray.”
+“Well,” said Thorndyke, “I am not going to tell you much——”
+“I knew it,” groaned Miller.
+“Because it will be better for every one to have an open mind——”
+“Well,” interposed Miller, “mine is open enough. Wide open, and
+nothing inside.”
+“And then,” pursued Thorndyke, “there is the possibility that we shall
+not get the result we hoped for, and in that case the less you expect
+the less you will be disappointed.”
+“But,” persisted Miller, “in general terms, what are we here for? I
+understand that those two ladies, the witnesses to Bendelow’s will,
+are coming presently. What are they coming for? Do you expect to get
+any information out of them?”
+“I have some hopes,” he replied, “of learning something from them. In
+particular, I want to test them in respect of their identification of
+Bendelow.”
+“Ha! Then you have got a photograph of him?”
+Thorndyke shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I have not been able to
+get a photograph of him.”
+“Then you have an exact description of him?”
+“No,” was the reply. “I have no description of him at all.”
+The Superintendent banged his hat on the table. “Then what the deuce
+have you got, sir?” he demanded distractedly. “You must have
+something, you know, if you are going to test these witnesses on the
+question of identification. You haven’t got a photograph, you haven’t
+got a description, and you can’t have the man himself because he is at
+present reposing in a little terra-cotta pot in the form of bone-ash.
+Now, what have you got?”
+Thorndyke regarded the exasperated Superintendent with an inscrutable
+smile and then glanced at Polton, who had just stolen into the room
+and was now listening with an expression of such excessive crinkliness
+that I wrote him down an accomplice on the spot.
+“You had better ask Polton,” said Thorndyke. “He is the stage manager
+on this occasion.”
+The Superintendent turned sharply to confront my fellow apprentice,
+whose eyes thereupon disappeared into a labyrinth of crow’s-feet.
+“It’s no use asking me, sir,” said he. “I’m only an accessory before
+the fact, so to speak. But you’ll know all about it when the ladies
+arrive—and I rather think I hear ’em coming now.”
+In corroboration, light footsteps and feminine voices became audible,
+apparently ascending our stairs. We hastily seated ourselves while
+Polton took his station by the door and Thorndyke said to me in a low
+voice:
+“Remember, Gray, no comments of any kind. These witnesses must act
+without any sort of suggestion from anybody.”
+I gave a quick assent, and at that moment Polton threw open the door
+with a flourish and announced majestically:
+“Miss Dewsnep, Miss Bonington.”
+We all rose, and Thorndyke advanced to receive his visitors, while
+Polton placed chairs for them.
+“It is exceedingly good of you to take all this trouble to help us,”
+said Thorndyke. “I hope it was not in any way inconvenient to you to
+come here this morning.”
+“Oh, not at all,” replied Miss Dewsnep; “only we are not quite clear
+as to what it is that you want us to do.”
+“We will go into that question presently,” said Thorndyke. “Meanwhile,
+may I introduce to you these two gentlemen, who are interested in our
+little business—Mr. Miller and Dr. Gray?”
+The two ladies bowed; and Miss Dewsnep remarked:
+“We are already acquainted with Dr. Gray. We had the melancholy
+pleasure of meeting him at Mrs. Morris’ house on the sad occasion when
+he came to examine the mortal remains of poor Mr. Bendelow, who is now
+with the angels.”
+“And no doubt,” added Miss Bonington, “in extremely congenial
+society.”
+At this statement of Miss Dewsnep’s the Superintendent turned and
+looked at me sharply with an expression of enlightenment; but he made
+no remark, and the latter lady returned to her original inquiry.
+“You were going to tell us what it is that you want us to do.”
+“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “It is quite a simple matter. We want you to
+look at the face of a certain person who will be shown to you, and to
+tell us if you recognize and can give a name to that person.”
+“Not an insane person, I hope!” exclaimed Miss Dewsnep.
+“No,” Thorndyke assured her, “not an insane person.”
+“Nor a criminal person in custody, I trust,” added Miss Bonington.
+“Certainly not,” replied Thorndyke. “In short, let me assure you that
+the inspection of this person need not cause you the slightest
+embarrassment. It will be a perfectly simple affair, as you will see.
+But perhaps we had better proceed at once. If you two gentlemen will
+follow Polton, I will conduct the ladies upstairs myself.”
+On this we rose, and Miller and I followed Polton out on to the
+landing, where he turned and began to ascend the stairs at a slow and
+solemn pace, as if he were conducting a funeral. The Superintendent
+walked at my side and muttered as he went, being evidently in a state
+of bewilderment fully equal to my own.
+“Now, what the blazes,” he growled, “can the Doctor be up to now? I
+never saw such a man for springing surprises on one. But who the deuce
+can he have up there?”
+At the top of the second flight we came on to a landing and,
+proceeding along it, reached a door which Polton unlocked and opened.
+“You understand, gentlemen,” he said, halting in the doorway, “that no
+remarks or comments are to be made until the witnesses have gone.
+Those were my instructions.”
+With this he entered the room, closely followed by Miller, who, as he
+crossed the threshold, set at naught Polton’s instructions by
+exclaiming in a startled voice: “Snakes!”
+I followed quickly, all agog with curiosity, but whatever I had
+expected to see—if I had expected anything—I was totally unprepared
+for what I did see.
+The room was a smallish room, completely bare and empty of furniture
+save for four chairs—on two of which Polton firmly seated us; and in
+the middle of the floor, raised on a pair of trestles, was a coffin
+covered with a black linen cloth. At this gruesome object Miller and I
+gazed in speechless astonishment, but, apart from Polton’s injunction,
+there was no opportunity for an exchange of sentiments; for we had
+hardly taken our seats when we heard the sound of ascending footsteps
+mingled with Thorndyke’s bland and persuasive accents. A few moments
+later the party reached the door; and as the two ladies came in sight
+of the coffin, both started back with a cry of alarm.
+“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Miss Dewsnep, “it’s a dead person! Who is it,
+sir? Is it any one we know?”
+“That is what we want you to tell us,” Thorndyke replied.
+“How mysterious!” exclaimed Miss Bonington, in a hushed voice. “How
+dreadful! Some poor creature who has been found dead, I suppose? I
+hope it won’t be very—er—you know what I mean, sir—when the coffin is
+opened.”
+“There will be no need to open the coffin,” Thorndyke reassured her.
+“There is an inspection window in the coffin-lid through which you can
+see the face. All you have to do is to look through the window and
+tell us if the face that you see is the face of any one who is known
+to you. Are you ready, Polton?”
+Polton replied that he was, having taken up his position at the head
+of the coffin with an air of profound gravity, approaching to gloom.
+The two ladies shuddered audibly, but their nervousness being now
+overcome by a devouring curiosity, they advanced, one on either side
+of the coffin, and, taking up a position close to Polton, gazed
+eagerly at the covered coffin. There was a solemn pause as Polton
+carefully gathered up the two corners of the linen pall. Then, with a
+quick movement, he threw it back. The two witnesses simultaneously
+stooped and peered in at the window. Simultaneously their mouths
+opened, and they sprang back with a shriek.
+“Why, it’s Mr. Bendelow!”
+“You are quite sure it is Mr. Bendelow?” Thorndyke asked.
+“Perfectly,” replied Miss Dewsnep. “And yet,” she continued with a
+mystified look, “it can’t be; for I saw him passed through the bronze
+doors into the cremation furnace. I saw him with my own eyes,” she
+added, somewhat unnecessarily. “And what’s more, I saw his ashes in
+the casket.”
+She gazed with wide-open eyes at Thorndyke, and then at her friend,
+and the two women tiptoed forward and once more stared in at the
+window with starting eyes and dropped chins.
+“It is Mr. Bendelow,” said Miss Bonington, in an awe-stricken voice.
+“But it can’t be,” Miss Dewsnep protested in tremulous tones. “You saw
+him put through those doors yourself, Susan, and you saw his ashes
+afterwards.”
+“I can’t help that, Sarah,” the other lady retorted. “This is Mr.
+Bendelow. You can’t deny that it is.”
+“Our eyes must be deceived,” said Miss Dewsnep, the said eyes being
+still riveted on the face within the window. “It can’t be—and yet it
+is—but yet it is impossible——”
+She paused suddenly, and raised a distinctly alarmed face to her
+friend.
+“Susan,” she said, in a low, rather shaky voice, “there is something
+here with which we, as Christian women, are better not concerned.
+Something against nature. The dead has been recalled from a burning
+fiery furnace by some means which we may not inquire into. It were
+better, Susan, that we should now depart from this place.”
+This was evidently Susan’s opinion, too, for she assented with
+uncommon alacrity and with a distinctly uncomfortable air; and the
+pair moved with one accord towards the door. But Thorndyke gently
+detained them.
+“Do we understand,” he asked, “that, apart from the apparently
+impossible circumstances, the body in that coffin is, in your opinion,
+the body of the late Simon Bendelow?”
+“You do,” Miss Dewsnep replied in a resentfully nervous tone and
+regarding Thorndyke with very evident alarm. “If it were possible that
+it could be, I would swear that those unnatural remains were those of
+my poor friend, Mr. Bendelow. As it’s not possible, it cannot be.”
+“Thank you,” said Thorndyke with the most extreme suavity of manner.
+“You have done us a great service by coming here to-day, and a great
+service to humanity—how great a service you will learn later. I am
+afraid it has been a disagreeable experience to both of you, for which
+I am sincerely sorry; but you must let me assure you that there is
+nothing unlawful or supernatural in what you have seen. Later, I hope
+you will be able to realize that. And now I trust that you will allow
+Mr. Polton to accompany you to the dining-room and offer you a little
+refreshment.”
+As neither of the ladies raised any objection to this programme, we
+all took our leave of them, and they departed down the stairs,
+escorted by Polton. When they had gone, Miller stepped across to the
+coffin and cast a curious glance in at the window.
+“So that is Mr. Bendelow,” said he. “I don’t think much of him, and I
+don’t see how he is going to help us. But you have given those two old
+girls a rare shake-up, and I don’t wonder. Of course, this can’t be a
+dead body that you have got in this coffin, but it is a most lifelike
+representation of one, and it took in those poor old Judies properly.
+What have you got to tell us about this affair, Doctor? I can see that
+your scheme, whatever it was, has come off. They always do. But what
+about it? What has this experiment proved?”
+“It has turned a mere name into an actual person,” was the reply.
+“Yes, I know,” rejoined Miller. “Very interesting, too. Now we know
+exactly what he looked like. But what about it? And what is the next
+move?”
+“The next move on my part is to lay a sworn information against him as
+the murderer of Julius D’Arblay; which I will do now, if you will
+administer the oath and witness my signature.” As he spoke Thorndyke
+produced a paper from his pocket and laid it on the coffin.
+The Superintendent looked at the paper with a surprised grin.
+“A little late, isn’t it,” he said, “to be swearing an information? Of
+course you can if you like; but when you’ve done it, what then?”
+“Then,” replied Thorndyke, “it will be for you to arrest him and bring
+him to trial.”
+At this reply the Superintendent’s eyes opened until his face might
+have been a symbolic mask of astonishment. Grasping his hair with both
+hands, he rose slowly from his chair, staring at Thorndyke as if at
+some alarming apparition.
+“You’ll be the death of me, Doctor!” he exclaimed. “You really will. I
+am not fit for these shocks at my time of life. What is it you ask me
+to do? I am to arrest this man! What man? Here is a wax-work gentleman
+in a coffin—at least, I suppose that is what he is—that might have
+come straight from Madame Tussaud’s. Am I to arrest him? And there is
+a casket full of ashes somewhere. Am I to arrest those? Or am I off my
+head or dreaming?”
+Thorndyke smiled at him indulgently. “Now, Miller,” said he, “don’t
+pretend to be foolish, because you are not. The man whom you are to
+arrest is a live man, and what is more, he is easily accessible
+whenever you choose to lay your hands on him.”
+“Do you know where to find him?”
+“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I, myself, will conduct you to his house,
+which is in Abbey-road, Hornsey, nearly opposite Miss D’Arblay’s
+studio.”
+I gave a gasp of amazement on hearing this, which directed the
+Superintendent’s attention to me.
+“Very well, Doctor,” he said, “I will take your information, but you
+needn’t swear to it: just sign your name. I must be off now, but I
+will look in to-night about nine, if that will do, to get the
+necessary particulars and settle the arrangements with you. Probably
+to-morrow afternoon will be a good time to make the arrest. What do
+you think?”
+“I should think it would be an excellent time,” Thorndyke replied;
+“but we can settle definitely to-night.”
+With this, the Superintendent, having taken the signed paper from
+Thorndyke, shook both our hands and bustled away with the traces of
+his late surprise still visible on his countenance.
+The recognition of the tenant of the coffin as Simon Bendelow had come
+on me with almost as great a shock as it had on the two witnesses, but
+for a different reason. My late experiences enabled me to guess at
+once that the mysterious tenant was a wax-work figure, presumably of
+Polton’s creation. But what I found utterly inexplicable was that such
+a wax-work should have been produced in the likeness of a man whom
+neither Polton nor Thorndyke had ever seen. The astonishing
+conversation between the latter and Miller had, for the moment, driven
+this mystery out of my mind; but as soon as the Superintendent had
+gone, I stepped over to the coffin and looked in at the window. And
+then I was more amazed than ever. For the face that I saw was not the
+face that I had expected to see. There, it is true, was the old
+familiar skull-cap, which Bendelow had worn, pulled down over the
+temples above the jaw-bandage. But it was the wrong face (incidentally
+I now understood what had become of Polton’s eyelashes. That
+conscientious realist had evidently taken no risks.).
+“But,” I protested, “this is not Bendelow. This is Morris.”
+Thorndyke nodded. “You have just heard two competent witnesses declare
+with complete conviction and certainty that this is Simon Bendelow;
+and, as you, yourself, pointed out, there can be no doubt as to their
+knowledge of Bendelow since they recognized the photograph of him that
+was shown to them by the American detective.”
+“That is perfectly true,” I admitted. “But it is a most
+incomprehensible affair. This is not the man who was cremated.”
+“Evidently not, since he is still alive.”
+“But these two women saw Bendelow cremated—at least they saw him
+passed through into the crematorium, which is near enough. And they
+had seen him in the coffin a few minutes before I saw him in the
+coffin, and they saw him again a few minutes after Cropper and Morris
+and I had put him back in the coffin. And the man whom we put into the
+coffin was certainly not this man.”
+“Obviously not, since he helped you to put the corpse in.”
+“And again,” I urged; “if the body that we put into the coffin was not
+the body that was cremated, what has become of it? It wasn’t buried,
+for the other coffin was empty. Those women must have made some
+mistake.”
+He shook his head. “The solution of the mystery is staring you in the
+face,” said he. “It is perfectly obvious, and I am not going to give
+you any further hints now. When we have made the arrest you shall have
+a full exposition of the case. But tell me, now; did those two women
+ever meet Morris?”
+I considered for a few moments and then replied: “I have no evidence
+that they ever met him. They certainly never did in my presence. But
+even if they had, they would hardly have recognized him as the person
+whom they have identified to-day. He had grown a beard and moustache,
+you will remember, and his appearance was very much altered from what
+it was when I first saw him.”
+Thorndyke nodded. “It would be,” he agreed. Then, turning to another
+subject, he said: “I am afraid it will be necessary for you to be
+present at the arrest. I would much rather that you were not, for he
+is a dangerous brute and will probably fight like a wild cat; but you
+are the only one of us who really knows him by sight in his present
+state.”
+“I should like to be in at the death,” I said eagerly.
+“That is well enough,” said he, “so long as it is his death. You must
+bring your pistol, and don’t be afraid to use it.”
+“And how shall I know when I am wanted?” I asked.
+“You had better go to the studio to-morrow morning,” he replied. “I
+will send a note by Polton giving you particulars of the time when we
+shall call for you. And now we may as well help Polton to prepare for
+our other visitors; and I think, Gray, we will say as little as
+possible about this morning’s proceedings or those of to-morrow.
+Explanations will come better after the event.”
+With this, we went down to the dining-room, where we found Polton
+sedately laying the table, having just got rid of the two ladies. We
+made a show of assisting him, and I ventured to inquire:
+“Who is doing the cooking to-day, Polton? Or is it to be a cold
+lunch?”
+He looked at me almost reproachfully as he replied:
+“It is to be a hot lunch, and I am doing the cooking, of course.”
+“But,” I protested, “you have been up to your eyes in other affairs
+all the morning.”
+He regarded me with a patronizing crinkle. “You can do a good deal,”
+said he, “with one or two casseroles, a hay-box, and a four-story
+cooker on a gas stove. Things don’t cook any better for your standing
+and staring at them.”
+Events went to prove the soundness of Polton’s culinary principles;
+and the brilliant success of their application in practice gave a
+direction to the conversation which led it comfortably away from other
+and less discussable topics.
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+The Last Act
+Shortly before leaving Thorndyke’s chambers with Marion and Miss Boler
+I managed to secure his permission to confide to them, in general
+terms, what was to happen on the morrow; and very relieved I was
+thereat, for I had little doubt that questions would be asked which it
+would seem ungracious to evade. Events proved that I was not mistaken;
+indeed, we were hardly clear of the precincts of the Temple when
+Marion opened the inquisition.
+“You said yesterday,” she began, “that Dr. Thorndyke might have
+something to tell us to-day, and I hoped that he might. I even tried
+to pluck up courage to ask him, but then I was afraid that it might
+seem intrusive. He isn’t the sort of man that you can take liberties
+with. So I suppose that whatever it was that happened this morning is
+a dead secret?”
+“Not entirely,” I replied. “I mustn’t go into details at present, but
+I am allowed to give you the most important item of information. There
+is going to be an arrest to-morrow.”
+“Do you mean that Dr. Thorndyke has discovered the man?” Marion
+demanded incredulously.
+“He says that he has, and I take it that he knows. What is more, he
+offered to conduct the police to the house. He has actually given them
+the address.”
+“I would give all that I possess,” exclaimed Miss Boler, “to be there
+and see the villain taken.”
+“Well,” I said, “you won’t be far away, for the man lives in
+Abbey-road, nearly opposite the studio.”
+Marion stopped and looked at me aghast. “What a horrible thing to
+think of,” she gasped. “Oh, I am glad I didn’t know! I could never
+have gone to the studio if I had. But now we can understand how he
+managed to find his way to the place that foggy night, and to escape
+so easily.”
+“Oh, but it is not that man,” I interposed, with a sudden sense of
+hopeless bewilderment. For I had forgotten this absolute discrepancy
+when I was talking to Thorndyke about the identification.
+“Not that man!” she repeated, gazing at me in wild astonishment. “But
+that man was my father’s murderer. I feel certain of it.”
+“So do I,” was my rather lame rejoinder.
+“Besides,” she persisted; “if he was not the murderer, who was he, and
+why should he want to kill me?”
+“Exactly,” I agreed, “it seems conclusive. But apparently it isn’t. At
+any rate, the man they are going to arrest is the man whose mask
+Thorndyke found at the studio.”
+“Then they are going to arrest the wrong man,” said she, looking at me
+with a deeply troubled face. I was uncomfortable, too, for I saw what
+was in her mind. The memory of the ruffian who had made that murderous
+attack on her still lingered in her mind as a thing of horror. The
+thought that he was still at large and might at any moment reappear,
+made it impossible for her ever to work alone in the studio, or even
+to walk abroad without protection. She had looked, as I had, to the
+discovery of the murderer to rid her of this abiding menace. But now
+it seemed that even alter the arrest of the murderer, this terrible
+menace would remain.
+“I can’t understand it,” she said dejectedly. “When you showed me that
+photograph of the man who tried to kill me, I naturally hoped that Dr.
+Thorndyke had discovered who he was. But now it appears that he is at
+large and still untraced, yet I am convinced that he is the man who
+ought to have been followed.”
+“Never mind, my dear,” I said cheerfully. “Let us see the affair out.
+You don’t understand it and neither do I. But Thorndyke does. I have
+absolute faith in him, and so, I can see, have the police.”
+She assented without much conviction, and then Miss Boler began to
+press for further particulars. I mentioned the probable time of the
+arrest and the part that I was required to play in identifying the
+accused.
+“You don’t mean that you are asked to be present when the actual
+arrest is made, do you?” Marion asked anxiously.
+“Yes,” I answered. “You see I am the only person who really knows the
+man by sight.”
+“But,” she urged, “you are not a policeman. Suppose this man should be
+violent, like that other man; and he probably will be.”
+“Oh,” I answered airily, “that will be provided for. Besides, I am not
+asked to arrest him; only to point him out to the police.”
+“I wish,” she said, “you would stay in the studio until they have
+secured him. Then you could go and identify him. That would be much
+safer.”
+“No doubt,” I agreed. “But it might lead to their arresting the wrong
+man and letting the right one slip. No, Marion, we must make sure of
+him if we can. Surely you are at least as anxious as any of us that he
+should be caught and made to pay the penalty?”
+“Yes,” she answered, “if he is really the right man—which I can hardly
+believe. But still, punishing him will not bring poor Daddy back,
+whereas if anything were to happen to you, Stephen—— Oh! I don’t dare
+to think of it!”
+“You needn’t think of it, Marion,” I rejoined, cheerfully. “I shall be
+all right. And you wouldn’t have your apprentice hang back when these
+Bobbies are taking the affair as a mere every-day job.”
+She made no reply beyond another anxious glance; and I was glad enough
+to let the subject drop, bearing in mind Thorndyke’s words with regard
+to the pistol. As a diversion, I suggested a visit to the National
+Gallery, which we were now approaching, and the suggestion being
+adopted, without acclamation, we drifted in and rather listlessly
+perambulated the galleries, gazing vacantly at the exhibits and
+exchanging tepid comments. It was a spiritless proceeding, of which I
+remember very little but some rather severe observations by Miss Boler
+concerning a certain “hussy” (by one, Bronzino) in the great room. But
+we soon gave up this hollow pretence, and went forth to board a yellow
+’bus which was bound for the Archway Tavern; and so home to an early
+supper.
+On the following morning I made my appearance betimes at Ivy Cottage,
+but it was later than usual when Marion and I started to walk in
+leisurely fashion to the studio.
+“I don’t know why we are going at all,” said she. “I don’t feel like
+doing any work.”
+“Let us forget the arrest for the moment,” said I. “There is plenty to
+do. Those arms of Polton’s have got to be taken out of the moulds and
+worked. It will be much better to keep ourselves occupied.”
+“I suppose it will,” she agreed; and then, as we turned a corner and
+came in sight of the studio, she exclaimed: “Why, what on earth is
+this? There are some painters at work on the studio! I wonder who sent
+them. I haven’t given any orders. There must be some extraordinary
+mistake.”
+There was not, however. As we came up, one of the two linen-coated
+operators advanced, brush in hand, to meet us, and briefly explained
+that he and his mate had been instructed by Superintendent Miller to
+wash down the paint-work and keep an eye on the premises opposite.
+They were, in fact, “plain-clothes” men on special duty.
+“We have been here since seven o’clock,” our friend informed us, as we
+made a pretence of examining the window-sashes, “and we took over from
+a man who had been watching the house all night. My nabs is there all
+right. He came home early yesterday evening, and he hasn’t come out
+since.”
+“Then you know the man by sight?” Marion asked eagerly.
+“Well, Miss,” was the reply, “we have a description of him, and the
+man who went into the house seemed to agree with it; and, as far as we
+know, there isn’t any other man living there. But I understand that we
+are relying on Dr. Gray to establish the identity. Could I have a look
+at the inside woodwork?”
+Marion unlocked the door and we entered, followed by the detective,
+whose interest seemed to be concerned exclusively with the woodwork of
+windows; and from windows in general finally became concentrated on a
+small window in the lobby which commanded a view of the houses
+opposite. Having examined the sashes of this, with his eye cocked on
+one of the houses aforesaid, he proceeded to operate on it with his
+brush, which, being wet and dirty and used with a singular lack of
+care, soon covered the glass so completely with a mass of opaque
+smears that it was impossible to see through it at all. Then he
+cautiously raised the sash about an inch, and, whipping out a prism
+binocular from under his apron, stood back a couple of feet and took a
+leisurely survey through the narrow opening of one of the opposite
+houses.
+“Hallo!” said he. “There is a woman visible at the first-floor window.
+Just have a look at her, sir. She can’t see us through this narrow
+crack.”
+He handed me the glass, indicating the house, and I put the instrument
+to my eyes. It was a powerful glass, and seemed to bring the window
+and the figure of the woman within a dozen feet of me. But at the
+moment she had turned her head away, apparently to speak to some one
+inside the room, and all that I could see was that she seemed to be an
+elderly woman who wore what looked like an old-fashioned widow’s cap.
+Suddenly she turned and looked out over the half-curtain, giving me a
+perfectly clear view of her face, and then I felt myself lapsing into
+the old sense of confusion and bewilderment.
+I had, of course, expected to recognize Mrs. Morris. But this was
+evidently not she, although not such a very different-looking woman:
+an elderly, white-haired widow in a crape cap and spectacles—reading
+spectacles they must be, since she was looking over and not through
+them. She seemed to be a stranger—and not yet quite a stranger, for as
+I looked at her some chord of memory stirred. But the cup of my
+confusion was not yet full. As I stared at her, trying vainly to sound
+a clearer note on that chord of memory, a man slowly emerged from the
+darkness of the room behind and stood beside her, and him I recognized
+instantly as the bottle-nosed person whom I had watched from my ambush
+at the top of Dartmouth-Park-Hill.
+“Well, sir,” said the detective, as the man and woman turned away from
+the window and vanished, “what do you make of ’em? Do you recognize
+’em?”
+“I recognize the man,” I replied, “and I believe I have seen the woman
+before, but they aren’t the people I expected to see.”
+“Oh, dear!” said he. “That’s a bad look-out. Because I don’t think
+there is anybody else there.”
+“Then,” I said, “we have made a false shot—and yet—well, I don’t know.
+I had better think this over and see if I can make anything of it.”
+I turned into the studio, where I found Marion—who had been listening
+attentively to this dialogue—in markedly better spirits.
+“It seems a regular muddle,” she remarked cheerfully. “They have come
+to arrest the wrong man and now it appears that he isn’t there.”
+“Don’t talk to me for a few minutes, Marion, dear,” said I. “There is
+something behind this and I want to think what it can be. I have seen
+that woman somewhere, I feel certain. Now where was it?”
+I cudgelled my brains for some time without succeeding in recovering
+the recollections connected with her. I re-visualized the face that I
+had seen through the glass, with its deep-set, hollow eyes and strong,
+sharply-sloping eyebrows, and tried to connect it with some person
+whom I had seen, but in vain. And then in a flash it came to me. She
+was the widow whom I had noticed at the inquest. The identification,
+indeed, was not very complete, for the veil that she had worn on that
+occasion had considerably obscured her features. But I had no doubt
+that I was right, for her present appearance agreed in all that I
+could see with that of the woman at the inquest.
+The next question was, Who could she be? Her association with the
+bottle-nosed man connected her in some way with what Thorndyke would
+have called “the case”; for that man, whoever he was, had certainly
+been shadowing me. Then her presence at the inquest had now a sinister
+suggestiveness. She would seem to have been there to watch
+developments on behalf of others. Could she be a relative of Mrs.
+Morris? A certain faint resemblance seemed to support this idea. As to
+the man, I gave him up. Evidently there were several persons concerned
+in this crime, but I knew too little about the circumstances to be
+able to make even a profitable guess. Having reached this
+unsatisfactory conclusion, I turned, a little irritably, to Marion,
+exclaiming:
+“I can make nothing of it. Let us get on with some work to pass the
+time.”
+Accordingly we began, in a half-hearted way, upon Polton’s two moulds.
+But the presence of the two detectives was disturbing, especially
+when, having finished the exterior, they brought their pails and
+ladders inside and took up their station at the lobby window. We
+struggled on for a time; but when, about noon, Miss Boler made her
+appearance with a basket of provisions and a couple of bottles of
+wine, we abandoned the attempt, and occupied ourselves in tidying up
+and laying a table.
+“Don’t you think, Marion,” I said, as we sat down to lunch (having
+provided for the needs of the two “painters,” who lunched in the
+lobby), “that it would be best for you and Arabella to go home before
+any fuss begins?”
+“Whatever Miss Marion thinks,” Arabella interposed firmly, “I am not
+going home. I came down expressly to see this villain captured, and
+here I stay until he is safely in custody.”
+“And I,” said Marion, “am going to stay with Arabella. You know why,
+Stephen. I couldn’t bear to go away and leave you here after what you
+have told me. We shall be quite safe in here.”
+“Well,” I temporized, seeing plainly that they had made up their
+minds, “you must keep the door bolted until the business is over.”
+“As to that,” said Miss Boler, “we shall be guided by circumstances;”
+and from this ambiguous position neither she nor Marion would budge.
+Shortly after lunch I received a further shock of surprise. In answer
+to a loud single knock, I hurried out to open the door. A tradesman’s
+van had drawn up at the kerb, and two men stood on the threshold, one
+of them holding a good-sized parcel. I stared at the latter in
+astonishment, for I recognized him instantly as the second shadower of
+the Dartmouth Park Hill adventure; but before I could make any comment
+both men entered—with the curt explanation “police business”—and the
+last-comer shut the door, when I heard the van drive off.
+“I am Detective-sergeant Porter,” the stranger explained. “You know
+what I am here for, of course.”
+“Yes,” I replied, and, turning to the other man, I said: “I think I
+have seen you before. Are you a police-officer, too?”
+My acquaintance grinned. “Retired Detective-sergeant,” he explained,
+“name of Barber. At present employed by Dr. Thorndyke. I think I have
+seen you before, Sir,” and he grinned again, somewhat more broadly.
+“I should like to know how you were employed when I saw you last,”
+said I. But here Sergeant Porter interposed: “Better leave
+explanations till later, Sir. You’ve got a back gate, I think.”
+“Yes,” said one of the “painters.” “At the bottom of the garden. It
+opens on an alley that leads into the next road—Chilton-road.”
+“Can we get into the garden through the studio?” the Sergeant asked;
+and on my answering in the affirmative, he requested permission to
+inspect the rear premises. I conducted both men to the back door and
+let them out into the garden, where they passed out at the back gate
+to reconnoitre the alley. In a minute or two they returned; and they
+had hardly re-entered the studio when another knock at the door
+announced more visitors. They turned out to be Thorndyke and
+Superintendent Miller: of whom the latter inquired of the senior
+painter:
+“Is everything in going order, Jenks?”
+“Yes, Sir,” was the reply. “The man is there all right. Dr. Gray saw
+him; but I should mention, Sir, that he doesn’t think it’s the right
+man.”
+“The devil he doesn’t!” exclaimed Miller, looking at me uneasily, and
+then glancing at Thorndyke.
+“That man isn’t Morris,” said I. “He is that red-nosed man whom I told
+you about. You remember.”
+“I remember,” Thorndyke replied calmly. “Well, I suppose we shall have
+to content ourselves with the red-nosed man;” upon which ex-Sergeant
+Barber’s countenance became wreathed in smiles and the Superintendent
+looked relieved.
+“Are all the arrangements complete, Sergeant?” Miller inquired,
+turning to Sergeant Porter.
+“Yes, sir,” the latter replied. “Inspector Follett has got some local
+men, who know the neighbourhood well, posted in the rear watching the
+back garden, and there are some uniformed men waiting round both the
+corners to stop him, in case he slips past us. Everything is ready,
+sir.”
+“Then,” said the Superintendent, “we may as well open the ball at
+once. I hope it will go off quietly. It ought to. We have got enough
+men on the job.”
+He nodded to Sergeant Porter, who at once picked up his parcel and
+went out into the garden, accompanied by Barber. Miller, Thorndyke,
+and I now adjourned to the lobby window, where, with the two
+painter-detectives, we established a look-out. Presently we saw the
+Sergeant and Barber advancing separately on the opposite side of the
+road, the latter leading and carrying the parcel. Arrived at the
+house, he entered the front garden and knocked a loud single knock.
+Immediately the mysterious woman appeared at the ground-floor
+window—it was a bay-window—and took a long, inquisitive look at
+ex-Sergeant Barber. There ensued a longish pause, during which
+Sergeant Porter walked slowly past the house. Then the door opened a
+very short distance—being evidently chained—and the woman appeared in
+the narrow opening. Barber offered the parcel, which was much too
+large to go through the opening without unchaining the door, and
+appeared to be giving explanations. But the woman evidently denied all
+knowledge of it, and, having refused to receive it, tried to shut the
+door, into the opening of which Barber had inserted his foot; but he
+withdrew it somewhat hastily as a coal-hammer descended, and before he
+could recover himself the door shut with a bang and was immediately
+bolted.
+The ball was opened, as Miller had expressed it, and the developments
+followed with a bewildering rapidity that far outpaced any possible
+description.
+The Sergeant returning, and joining Barber, the two men were about to
+force the ground-floor window, when pistol shots and police whistles
+from the rear announced a new field of operations. At once, Miller
+opened the studio door and sallied forth, with the two detectives and
+Thorndyke; and when I had called out to Marion to bolt the door, I
+followed, shutting it after me. Meanwhile, from the rear of the
+opposite houses came a confused noise of police-whistles, barking dogs
+and women’s voices, with an occasional report. Following three rapid
+pistol-shots there came a brief interval; then, suddenly, the door of
+a house farther down the street burst open and the fugitive rushed
+out, wild-eyed and terrified, his white face contrasting most
+singularly with his vividly-red nose. Instantly, the two detectives
+and Miller started in pursuit, followed by the Sergeant and Barber;
+but the man ran like a hare and was speedily drawing ahead when
+suddenly a party of constables appeared from a side turning and
+blocked the road. The fugitive zigzagged and made as if he would try
+to dodge between them, flinging away his empty pistol and drawing out
+another. The detectives and Miller were close on him, when in an
+instant he turned, and with extraordinary agility, avoided them. Then,
+as the two Sergeants bore down on him, he fired at them at close
+range, stopping them both, though neither actually fell. Again he
+outran his pursuers, racing down the road towards us, yelling like a
+maniac and firing his pistol wildly at Thorndyke and me. And suddenly
+my left leg doubled up and I fell heavily to the ground nearly
+opposite the studio door.
+The fall confused me for a moment and as I lay, half-dazed, I was
+horrified to see Marion dart out of the studio. In an instant she was
+kneeling by my side with her arm around my neck. “Stephen! Oh,
+Stephen, darling!” she sobbed, and gazed into my face with eyes full
+of terror and affection, oblivious of everything but my peril. I
+besought her to go back, and struggled to get out my pistol, for the
+man, still gaining on his pursuers, was now rapidly approaching. He
+had flung away his second pistol and had drawn a large knife; and as
+he bore down on us, mad with rage and terror, he gibbered and grinned
+like a wild cat.
+When he was but a couple of dozen paces away, I saw Thorndyke raise
+his pistol and take a careful aim. But before he had time to fire, a
+most singular diversion occurred. From the open door of the studio,
+Miss Boler emerged, swinging a massive stool with amazing ease. The
+man, whose eyes were fixed on me and Marion, did not observe her until
+she was within a few paces of him; when, gathering all her strength,
+she hurled the heavy stool with almost incredible force. It struck him
+below the knees, knocking his feet from under him, and he fell with a
+sort of dive or half-somersault, falling with the hand that grasped
+the knife under him.
+He made no attempt to rise, but lay with slightly twitching limbs but
+otherwise motionless. Miss Boler stalked up to him and stood looking
+down on him with grim interest until Thorndyke, still holding his
+pistol, stooped, and, grasping one arm, gently turned him over. Then
+we could see the handle of the knife sticking out from his chest near
+the right shoulder.
+“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “Bad luck to the last. It must have gone through
+the arch of the aorta. But perhaps it is just as well.”
+He rose, and stepping across to where I sat, supported by Marion and
+still nursing my pistol, bent over me with an anxious face.
+“What is it, Gray?” he asked. “Not a fracture, I hope?”
+“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Damaged muscle and perhaps nerve. It
+is all numb at present, but it doesn’t seem to be bleeding much. I
+think I could hobble if you would help me up.”
+He shook his head and beckoned to a couple of constables, with whose
+aid he carried me into the studio and deposited me on the sofa.
+Immediately afterwards the two wounded officers were brought in, and I
+was relieved to hear that neither of them was dangerously hurt, though
+the Sergeant had a fractured arm and Barber a flesh wound of the chest
+and a cracked rib. The ladies having been politely ejected into the
+garden, Thorndyke examined the various injuries and applied temporary
+dressings, producing the materials from a very business-like-looking
+bag which he had providently brought with him. While he was thus
+engaged three constables entered carrying the corpse, which, with a
+few words of apology, they deposited on the floor by the side of the
+sofa.
+I looked down at the ill-omened figure with lively curiosity, and
+especially was I impressed and puzzled by the very singular appearance
+of the face. Its general colour was of that waxen pallor
+characteristic of the faces of the dead, particularly of those who
+have died from hemorrhage. But the nose and the acne patches remained
+unchanged. Indeed, their colour seemed intensified, for their vivid
+red “stared” from the surrounding white like the painted patches on a
+clown’s face.
+The mystery was solved when, the surgical business being concluded,
+Barber came and seated himself on the edge of the sofa.
+“Masterly make-up, that,” said he, nodding at the corpse. “Looks queer
+enough now, but when he was alive you couldn’t spot it even in
+daylight.”
+“Make-up!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could make-up off the
+stage.”
+“You can’t wear a celluloid nose off the stage, or a tie-on beard,” he
+replied. “But when it is done as well as this—a touch or two of
+nose-paste or toupée-paste, tinted carefully with grease-paint and
+finished up with powder—it’s hard to spot. These experts in make-up
+are a holy terror to the police.”
+“Did you know that he was made-up?” I asked, looking at Thorndyke.
+“I inferred that he was,” the latter replied, “and so did Sergeant
+Barber. But now we had better see what his natural appearance is.”
+He stooped over the corpse, and with a small ivory paper-knife scraped
+from the end of the nose and the parts adjacent a layer of coloured
+plastic material about the consistency of modelling-wax. Then with
+vaseline and cotton-wool he cleaned away the red pigment until the
+pallid skin showed unsullied.
+“Why, it _is_ Morris after all!” I exclaimed. “It is perfectly
+incredible; and you seemed to remove such a very small quantity of
+paste, too! I wouldn’t have believed that it would make such a
+change.”
+“Not after that very instructive demonstration that Miss D’Arblay gave
+us with the clay and the plaster mask?” he asked with a smile.
+I smiled sheepishly in return. “I told you I was a fool, Sir;” and
+then, as a new idea burst upon me, I asked: “And that other man—the
+hook-nosed man?”
+“Morris—that is to say, Bendelow,” he replied, “with a different, more
+exaggerated, make-up.”
+I was pondering with profound relief on this answer when one of the
+painter-detectives entered in search of the Superintendent.
+“We got into the house from the back, Sir,” he reported. “The woman is
+dead. We found her lying on the bed in the first-floor front; and we
+found a tumbler half-full of water and this by the bedside.”
+He exhibited a small, wide-mouthed bottle labelled “Potassium
+Cyanide,” which the Superintendent took from him.
+“I will come and look over the house presently,” the latter said.
+“Don’t let anybody in, and let me know when the cabs are here.”
+“There are two here now, sir,” the detective announced, “and they have
+sent down three wheeled stretchers.”
+“One cab will carry our two casualties, and I expect the doctor will
+want the other. The bodies can be put on two of the stretchers, but
+you had better send the woman here for Dr. Gray to see.”
+The detective saluted and retired, and in a few minutes a stretcher
+dismounted from its carriage was borne in by two constables and placed
+on the floor beside Morris’ corpse. But even now, prepared as I was,
+and knowing who the new arrival must be, I looked doubtfully at the
+pitiful effigy that lay before me so limp and passive that but an hour
+since had been a strong, courageous, resourceful woman. Not until the
+white wig, the cap, and the spectacles had been removed, the heavy
+eyebrows detached with spirit, and the dark pigment cleaned away from
+the eyelids, could I say with certainty that this was the corpse of
+Mrs. Morris.
+“Well, Doctor,” said the Superintendent, when the wounded and the dead
+had been borne away and we were alone in the studio, “you have done
+your part to a finish, as usual, but ours is a bit of a failure. I
+_should_ have liked to bring that fellow to trial.”
+“I sympathize with you,” replied Thorndyke. “The gallows ought to have
+had him. But yet I am not sure that what has happened is not all for
+the best. The evidence in both cases—the D’Arblay and the Van Zellen
+murders—is entirely circumstantial and extremely intricate. That is
+not good evidence for a jury. A conviction would not have been a
+certainty either here or in America, and an acquittal would have been
+a disaster that I don’t dare to think of. No, Miller, I think that, on
+the whole, I am satisfied, and I think that you ought to be, too.”
+“I suppose I ought,” Miller conceded, “but it _would_ have been a
+triumph to put him in the dock, after he had been written off as dead
+and cremated. However, we must take things as we find them; and now I
+had better go and look over that house.”
+With a friendly nod to me, he took himself off, and Thorndyke went off
+to notify the ladies that the intruders had departed.
+As he returned with them I heard Marion cross-examining him with
+regard to my injuries and listened anxiously for his report.
+“So far as I can see, Miss D’Arblay,” he answered, “the damage is
+confined to one or two muscles. If so, there will be no permanent
+disablement and he should soon be quite well again. But he will want
+proper surgical treatment without delay. I propose to take him
+straight to our hospital if he agrees.”
+“Miss Boler and I were hoping,” said Marion, “that we might have the
+privilege of nursing him at our house.”
+“That is very good of you,” said Thorndyke, “and perhaps you might
+look after him during his convalescence. But for the present he needs
+skilled surgical treatment. If it should not be necessary for him to
+stay in the hospital after the wound has been attended to, it would be
+best for him to occupy one of the spare bedrooms at my chambers, where
+he can be seen daily by the surgeon, and I can keep an eye on him.
+Come,” he added coaxingly, “let us make a compromise. You or Miss
+Boler shall come to the Temple every day for as long as you please and
+do what nursing is necessary. There is a spare room, of which you can
+take possession; and as to your work here, Polton will give you any
+help that he can. How will that do?”
+Marion accepted the offer gratefully (with my concurrence), but begged
+to be allowed to accompany me to the hospital.
+“That was what I was going to suggest,” said Thorndyke. “The cab will
+hold the four of us, and the sooner we start the better.”
+Our preparations were very soon made. Then the door was opened, I was
+assisted out through a lane of hungry-eyed spectators, held at bay by
+two constables, and deposited in the cab; and when the studio had been
+locked up, we drove off, leaving the neighbourhood to settle down to
+its normal condition.
+CHAPTER XIX.
+Thorndyke Disentangles the Threads
+The days of my captivity at No. 5a, King’s Bench-walk passed with a
+tranquillity that made me realize the weight of the incubus that had
+been lifted. Now, in the mornings, when Polton ministered to me—until
+Arabella arrived and was ungrudgingly installed in office—I could let
+my untroubled thoughts stray to Marion, working alone in the studio
+with restored security, free for ever from the hideous menace which
+had hung over her. And later, when she, herself, released by her
+faithful apprentice, came to take her spell of nursing, what a joy it
+was to see her looking so fresh and rosy, so youthful and buoyant!
+Of Thorndyke—the giver of these gifts—I saw little in the first few
+days, for he had heavy arrears of work to make up. However, he paid me
+brief visits from time to time, especially in the mornings and at
+night, when I was alone, and very delightful those visits were. For he
+had now dropped the investigator, and there had come into his manner
+something new—something fatherly or elder-brotherly; and he managed to
+convey to me that my presence in his chambers was a source of pleasure
+to him: a refinement of hospitality that filled up the cup of my
+gratitude to him.
+It was on the fifth day, when I was allowed to sit up in bed—for my
+injury was no more than a perforating wound of the outer side of the
+calf, which had missed every important structure—that I sat watching
+Marion making somewhat premature preparations for tea, and observed
+with interest that a third cup had been placed on the tray.
+“Yes,” Marion replied to my inquiry, “‘the Doctor’ is coming to tea
+with us to-day. Mr. Polton gave me the message when he arrived.” She
+gave a few further touches to the tea-set, and continued: “How sweet
+Dr. Thorndyke has been to us, Stephen! He treats me as if I were his
+daughter, and, however busy he is, he always walks with me to the
+Temple gate and puts me into a cab. I am infinitely grateful to
+him—almost as grateful as I am to you.”
+“I don’t see what you have got to be grateful to me for,” I remarked.
+“Don’t you?” said she. “Is it nothing to me, do you suppose, that in
+the moment of my terrible grief and desolation, I found a noble,
+chivalrous friend whom I trusted instantly? That I have been guarded
+through all the dangers that threatened me, and that at last I have
+been rescued from them and set free to go my ways in peace and
+security? Surely, Stephen, dear, all this is abundant matter for
+gratitude. And I owe it all to you.”
+“To me!” I exclaimed in astonishment, recalling secretly what a
+consummate donkey I had been. “But there, I suppose it is the way of a
+woman to imagine that her particular gander is a swan.”
+She smiled a superior smile. “Women,” said she, “are very intelligent
+creatures. They are able to distinguish between swans and ganders,
+whereas the swans themselves are apt to be muddle-headed and
+self-depreciatory.”
+“I agree to the muddle-headed factor,” I rejoined, “and I won’t be
+unduly ostentatious as to the ganderism. But to return to Thorndyke,
+it is extraordinarily good of him to allow himself to be burdened with
+me.”
+“With us,” she corrected.
+“It is the same thing, sweetheart. Do you know if he is going to give
+us a long visit?”
+“I hope so,” she replied. “Mr. Polton said that he had got through his
+arrears of work and had this afternoon free.”
+“Then,” said I, “perhaps he will give us the elucidation that he
+promised me some time ago. I am devoured by curiosity as to how he
+unravelled the web of mystification that the villain, Bendelow, spun
+round himself.”
+“So am I,” said she; “and I believe I can hear his footsteps on the
+stair.”
+A few moments later Thorndyke entered the room, and having greeted us
+with quiet geniality, seated himself in the easy chair by the table
+and regarded us with a benevolent smile.
+“We were just saying, Sir,” said I, “how very kind it is of you to
+allow your chambers to be invaded by a stray cripple and his—his
+belongings.”
+“I believe you were going to say ‘baggage,’” Marion murmured.
+“Well,” said Thorndyke, smiling at the interpolation, “I may tell you
+both in confidence that you were talking nonsense. It is I who am the
+beneficiary.”
+“It is a part of your goodness to say so, Sir,” I said.
+“But,” he rejoined, “it is the simple truth. You enable me to combine
+the undoubted economic advantages of bachelordom with the satisfaction
+of having a family under my roof; and you even allow me to participate
+in a way, as a sort of supercargo, in a certain voyage of discovery
+which is to be undertaken by two young adventurers, in the near
+future—in the very near future, as I hope.”
+“As I hope, too,” said I, glancing at Marion, who had become a little
+more rosy than usual and who now adroitly diverted the current of the
+conversation.
+“We were also wondering,” said she, “if we might hope for some
+enlightenment on things which have puzzled us so much lately.”
+“That,” he replied, “was in my mind when I arranged to keep this
+afternoon and evening free. I wanted to give Stephen—who is my
+professional offspring, so to speak—a full exposition of this very
+intricate and remarkable case. If you, my dear, will keep my cup
+charged as occasion arises, I will begin forthwith. I will address
+myself to Stephen, who has all the facts first-hand; and if, in my
+exposition, I should seem somewhat callously to ignore the human
+aspects of this tragic story—aspects which have meant so much in
+irreparable loss and bereavement to you, poor child—remember that it
+is an exposition of evidence, and necessarily passionless and
+impersonal.”
+“I quite realize that,” said Marion, “and you may trust me to
+understand.”
+He bowed gravely, and, after a brief pause, began:
+“I propose to treat the subject historically, so to speak; to take you
+over the ground that I traversed myself, recounting my observations
+and inferences in the order in which they occurred. The inquiry falls
+naturally into certain successive stages, corresponding to the
+emergence of new facts, of which the first was concerned with the data
+elicited at the inquest. Let us begin with them.
+“First, as to the crime itself. It was a murder of a very distinctive
+type. There was evidence, not only of premeditation in the bare legal
+sense, but of careful preparation and planning. It was a considered
+act, and not a crime of impulse or passion. What could be the motive
+for such a crime? There appeared to be only two alternative
+possibilities; either it was a crime of revenge or a crime of
+expediency. The hypothesis of revenge could not be explored, because
+there were no data excepting the evidence of the victim’s daughter,
+which was to the effect that deceased had no enemies, actual or
+potential; and this evidence was supported by the very deliberate
+character of the crime.
+“We were therefore thrown back on the hypothesis of expediency, which
+was, in fact, the more probable one, and which became still more
+probable as the circumstances were further examined. But having
+assumed, as a working hypothesis, that this crime had been committed
+in pursuit of a definite purpose which was not revenge, the next
+question was: What could that purpose have been? And that question
+could be answered only by a careful consideration of all that was
+known of the parties to the crime: the criminal and the victim and
+their possible relations to one another.
+“As to the former, the circumstances indicated that he was a person of
+some education, that he had an unusual acquaintance with poisons, and
+such social position and personal qualities as would enable him to get
+possession of them; that he was subtle, ingenious, and resourceful,
+but not far-sighted, since he took risks that could have been avoided.
+His mentality appeared to be that of the gambler, whose attention
+tends to be riveted on the winning chances, and who makes insufficient
+provision for possible failure. He staked everything on the chance of
+the needle-puncture being overlooked and the presence of the poison
+being undiscovered.
+“But the outstanding and most significant quality was his profound
+criminality. Premeditated murder is the most atrocious of crimes, and
+murder for expediency is the most atrocious form of murder. This man,
+then, was of a profoundly criminal type, and was most probably a
+practicing criminal.
+“Turning now to the victim, the evidence showed that he was a man of
+high moral qualities: honest, industrious, thrifty, kindly and
+amiable, and of good reputation—the exact reverse of the other. Any
+illicit association between these two men was, therefore, excluded,
+and yet there must have been an association of some kind. Of what kind
+could it have been?
+“Now, in the case of this man, as in that of the other, there was one
+outstanding fact. He was a sculptor. And not only a sculptor, but an
+artist in the highest class of wax-work. And not only this. He was
+probably the only artist of this kind practicing in this country. For
+wax-work is almost exclusively a French art. So far as I know, all the
+wax figures and high-class lay figures that are made are produced in
+France. This man, therefore, appeared to be the unique English
+practitioner of this very curious art.
+“The fact impressed me profoundly. To realize its significance we must
+realize the unique character of the art. Wax-work is a fine art; but
+it differs from all other fine arts in that its main purpose is one
+that is expressly rejected by all those other arts. An ordinary work
+of sculpture, no matter how realistic, is frankly an object of metal,
+stone, or pottery. Its realism is restricted to truth of form. No
+deception is aimed at but, on the contrary, is expressly avoided. But
+the aim of wax-work is complete deception; and its perfection is
+measured by the completeness of the deception achieved. How complete
+that may be can be judged by incidents that have occurred at Madame
+Tussaud’s. When that exhibition was at the old Baker-street Bazaar,
+the snuff-taker—whose arms, head, and eyes were moved by
+clock-work—used to be seated on an open bench; and it is recorded
+that, quite frequently, visitors would sit down by him on the bench
+and try to open conversation with him. So, too, the wax-work policeman
+near the outer door was occasionally accosted with questions by
+arriving visitors.
+“Bearing this fact in mind, it is obvious that this art is peculiarly
+adapted to employment in certain kinds of fraud, such as personation,
+false alibi, and the like; and it is probable that the only reason why
+it is not so employed is the great difficulty of obtaining first-class
+wax-works.
+“Naturally, then, when I observed this connexion of a criminal with a
+wax-work artist, I asked myself whether the motive of the murder was
+not to be sought in that artist’s unique powers. Could it be that an
+attempt had been made to employ the deceased on some work designed for
+a fraudulent purpose? If such an attempt had been made, whether it had
+or had not been successful, the deceased would be in possession of
+knowledge which would be highly dangerous to the criminal; but
+especially if a work had actually been executed and used as an
+instrument of fraud.
+“But there were other possibilities in the case of a sculptor who was
+also a medallist. He might have been employed to produce—quite
+innocently—copies of valuable works which were intended for fraudulent
+use; and the second stage of the investigation was concerned with
+these possibilities. That stage was ushered in by Follett’s discovery
+of the guinea; the additional facts that we obtained at the Museum,
+and later, when we learned that the guinea that had been found was an
+electrotype copy, and that deceased was an expert electrotyper, all
+seemed to point to the production of forgeries as the crime in which
+Julius D’Arblay had been implicated. That was the view to which we
+seemed to be committed; but it did not seem to me satisfactory, for
+several reasons. First, the motive was insufficient—there was really
+nothing to conceal. When the forgeries were offered for sale, it would
+be obvious that some one had made them, and that some one could be
+traced by the purchaser through the vendor. The killing of the actual
+maker would give no security to the man who sold the forgeries, and
+who would have to appear in the transaction. And then, although
+deceased was unique as a wax-worker, he was not as a copyist or
+electrotyper. For those purposes, much more suitable accomplices might
+have been found. The execution of copies by deceased appeared to be a
+fact; but my own feeling was that they had been a mere by-product—that
+they had been used as a means of introduction to deceased for some
+other purpose connected with wax-work.
+“At the end of this stage we had made some progress. We had identified
+this unknown man with another unknown man, who was undoubtedly a
+professional criminal. We had found, in the forged guinea, a possible
+motive for the murder. But, as I have said, that explanation did not
+satisfy me, and I still kept a look-out for new evidence connected
+with the wax-works.
+“The next stage opened on that night when you arrived at Cornishes’,
+looking like a resuscitated ‘found drowned.’ Your account of your fall
+into the canal and the immediately antecedent events made a deep
+impression on me, though I did not, at the time, connect them with the
+crime that we were investigating. But the whole affair was so abnormal
+that it seemed to call for very careful consideration; and the more I
+considered it the more abnormal did it appear.
+“The theory of an accident could not be entertained, nor could the
+dropping of that derrick have been a practical joke. Your objection
+that no one was in sight had no weight, since there was a gate in the
+wall by which a person could have made his escape. Some one had
+attempted to murder you: and that attempt had been made immediately
+after you had signed a cremation certificate. That was a very
+impressive fact. As you know, it is my habit to look very narrowly at
+cremation cases, for the reason that cremation offers great facilities
+for certain kinds of crime. Poisoners—and particularly arsenic and
+antimony poisoners—have repeatedly been convicted on evidence
+furnished by an exhumed body. If such poisoners can get the corpse of
+the victim cremated, they are virtually safe; for whatever suspicions
+may thereafter arise, no conviction is possible, since the means of
+proving the administration have been destroyed.
+“Accordingly, I considered very carefully your account of the
+proceedings, and as I did so strong suggestions of fraud arose in all
+directions. There was, for instance, the inspection window in the
+coffin. What was its object? Inspection windows are usually provided
+only in cases where the condition of the body is such that it has to
+be enclosed in a hermetically sealed coffin. But no such condition
+existed in this case. There was no reason why the friends should not
+have viewed the body in the usual manner in an open coffin. Again,
+there was the curious alternation of you and the two witnesses. First
+they went up and viewed deceased—through the window. Then, after a
+considerable interval, you and Cropper went up and viewed deceased
+through the window. Then you took out the body, examined it, and put
+it back. Again, after a considerable interval, the witnesses went up a
+second time and viewed the deceased—through the window.
+“It was all rather queer and suspicious, especially when considered in
+conjunction with the attempt on your life. Reflecting on the latter,
+the question of the gate in the wall by the canal arose in my mind,
+and I examined the map to see if I could locate it. It was not marked,
+but the wharf was, and from this and your description it appeared
+certain that the gate must be in the wall of the garden of Morris’
+house. Here was another suspicious fact. For Morris—who could have let
+you out by this side gate—sent you by a long, round-about route to the
+tow-path. He knew which way you must be going—westward—and could have
+slipped out of the gate and waited for you in the hut by the wharf. It
+was possible, and there seemed to be no other explanation of what had
+happened to you. Incidentally, I made another discovery. This map
+showed that Morris’ house had two frontages, one on Field-street and
+one on Market-street, and that you appeared to have been admitted by
+the back entrance. Which was another slightly abnormal circumstance.
+“I was very much puzzled by the affair. There was a distinct
+suggestion that some fraud—some deception—had been practiced; that
+what the spinsters saw through the coffin window was not the same
+thing as that which you saw. And yet, what could the deception have
+been? There was no question about the body. It was a real body. The
+disease was undoubtedly genuine, and was, at least, the effective
+cause of death. And the cremation was necessarily genuine; for though
+you can bury an empty coffin, you can’t cremate one. The absence of
+calcined bone would expose the fraud instantly.
+“I considered the possibility of a second body; that of a murdered
+person, for instance. But that would not do. For if a substitution had
+been effected, there would still have been a redundant body to dispose
+of and account for. Nothing would have been gained by the
+substitution.
+“But there was another possibility to which no such objection applied.
+Assuming a fraud to have been perpetrated, here was a case adapted in
+the most perfect manner to the use of a wax-work. Of course, a
+full-length figure would have been impossible, because it would have
+left no calcined bones. But the inspection window would have made it
+unnecessary. A wax head would have done; or, better still, a wax mask,
+which could have been simply placed over the face of the real corpse.
+The more I thought about it the more was I impressed by the singular
+suitability of the arrangements to the use of a wax mask. The
+inspection window seemed to be designed for the very purpose—to
+restrict the view to a mere face and to prevent the mask from being
+touched and the fraud thus discovered—and the alternate inspections by
+you and the spinsters were quite in keeping with a deception of that
+kind.
+“There was another very queer feature in the case. These people,
+living at Hoxton, elected to employ a doctor who lived miles away at
+Bloomsbury. Why did they not call in a neighbouring practitioner?
+Also, they arranged the days and even the hours at which the visits
+were to be made. Why? There was an evident suggestion of something
+that the doctor was not to know—something or somebody that he was not
+desired to see; that some preparations had to be made for his visits.
+“Again, the note was addressed to Dr. Stephen Gray, not to Dr.
+Cornish. They knew your name and address, although you had only just
+come there, and they did not know Dr. Cornish, who was an old
+resident. How was this? The only explanation seemed to be that they
+had read the report of the inquest, or even been present at it. You
+there stated publicly that your temporary address was at 61,
+Mecklenburgh-square; that you were, in fact, a bird of passage; and
+you gave your full name and your age. Now if any fraud was being
+carried out, a bird of passage, who might be difficult to find later,
+and a young one at that, was just the most suitable kind of doctor.
+“To sum up the evidence at this stage: The circumstances, taken as a
+whole, suggested in the strongest possible manner that there was
+something fraudulent about this cremation. That fraud must be some
+kind of substitution or personation with the purpose of obtaining a
+certificate that some person had been cremated who had, in fact, not
+been cremated. In that case it was nearly certain that the dead man
+was not Simon Bendelow; for the certificates would be required to
+agree with the false appearances, not with the true. There was a
+suggestion—but only a speculative one—that the deception might have
+been effected by means of a wax mask.
+“There were, however, two objections. As to the wax mask, there was
+the great difficulty of obtaining one. A perfect portrait mask could
+have been obtained only either from an artist in Paris or from Julius
+D’Arblay. The objection to the substitution theory was that there was
+a real body—the body of a real person. If the cremation was in a name
+which was not the name of that person, then the disappearance of that
+person would remain unaccounted for.
+“So you see that the whole theory of the fraud was purely conjectural.
+There was not a single particle of direct evidence. You also see that
+at two points there was a faint hint of a connexion between this case
+and the murder of Mr. D’Arblay. These people seemed to have read of,
+or attended at the inquest; and if a wax mask existed, it was quite
+probably made by him.
+“The next stage opens with the discovery of the mask at the studio.
+But there are certain antecedent matters that must first be glanced
+at. When the attempt was made to murder Marion, I asked myself four
+questions: ‘1. Why did this man want to kill Marion? 2. What did he
+come to the studio on the preceding night to search for? 3. Did he
+find it, whatever it was? 4. Why did he delay so long to make the
+search?’
+“Let us begin with the second question. What had he come to look for?
+The obvious suggestion was that he had come to get possession of some
+incriminating object. But what was that object? Could it be the mould
+of some forged coin or medal? I did not believe that it was. For since
+the forgery or forgeries were extant, the moulds had no particular
+significance; and what little significance they had applied to Mr.
+D’Arblay, who was, technically, the forger. My feeling was that the
+object was in some way connected with wax-work, and in all probability
+with a wax portrait mask, as the most likely thing to be used for a
+fraudulent purpose. And I need hardly say that the cremation case
+lurked in the back of my mind.
+“This view was supported by consideration of the third question. Did
+he find what he came to seek? If he came for moulds of coins or
+medals, he must have found them; for none remained. But the fact that
+he came the next night and attempted to murder Marion—believing her to
+be alone—suggested that his search had failed. And consideration of
+the fourth question led—less decisively—to the same conclusion as to
+the nature of the object sought.
+“Why had he waited all this time to make the search? Why had he not
+entered the studio immediately after the murder, when the place was
+mostly unoccupied? The most probable explanation appeared to me to be
+that he had only recently become aware that there was any
+incriminating object in existence. Proceeding on the hypothesis that
+he had commissioned Mr. D’Arblay to make a wax portrait mask, I
+further assumed that he knew little of the process, and—perhaps
+misunderstanding Mr. D’Arblay—confused the technique of wax with that
+of plaster. In making a plaster mask from life—as you probably know by
+this time—you have to destroy the mould to get the mask out. So when
+the mask has been delivered to the client, there is nothing left.
+“But to make a wax mask, you must first make one of plaster to serve
+as a matrix from which to make the gelatine mould for the wax. Then,
+when the wax mask has been delivered to the client, the plaster matrix
+remains in the possession of the artist.
+“The suggestion, then, was that this man had supposed that the mould
+had been destroyed in making the mask, and that only some time after
+the murder had he, in some way, discovered his mistake. When he did
+discover it, he would see what an appalling blunder he had made; for
+the plaster matrix was the likeness of his own face.
+“You see that all this was highly speculative. It was all
+hypothetical, and it might all have been totally fallacious. We still
+had not a single solid fact; but all the hypothetical matter was
+consistent, and each inference seemed to support the others.”
+“And what,” I asked, “did you suppose was his motive for trying to
+make away with Marion?”
+“In the first place,” he replied, “I inferred that he looked on her as
+a dangerous person who might have some knowledge of his transactions
+with her father. This was probably the explanation of his attempt when
+he cut the brake-wire of her bicycle. But the second, more desperate
+attack, was made, I assume, when he had realized the existence of the
+plaster mask, and supposed that she knew of it, too. If he had killed
+her, he would probably have made another search with the studio fully
+lighted up.
+“To return to our inquiry. You see that I had a mass of hypothesis but
+not a single real fact. But I still had a firm belief that a wax mask
+had been made and that—if it had not been destroyed—there must be a
+plaster mask somewhere in the studio. That was what I came to look for
+that morning; and as it happens that I am some six inches taller than
+Bendelow was, I was able to see what had been invisible to him. When I
+discovered that mask, and when Marion had disclaimed all knowledge of
+it, my hopes began to rise. But when you identified the face as that
+of Morris, I felt that our problem was solved. In an instant, my
+card-house of speculative hypothesis was changed into a solid edifice.
+What had been but bare possibilities had now become so highly probable
+that they were almost certainties.
+“Let us consider what the finding of this mask proved—subject, of
+course, to verification. It proved that a wax mask of Morris had been
+made—for here was the matrix, varnished, as you will remember, in
+readiness for the gelatine mould; and that mask was obviously obtained
+for the purpose of a fraudulent cremation. And that mask was made by
+Julius D’Arblay.
+“What was the purpose of the fraud? It was perfectly obvious. Morris
+was clearly the real Simon Bendelow, and the purpose of the fraud was
+to create undeniable evidence that he was dead. But why did he want to
+prove that he was dead? Well, we knew that he was the murderer of Van
+Zellen, for whom the American police were searching, and he might be
+in more danger than we knew. At any rate, a death certificate would
+make him absolutely secure—on one condition—that the body was
+cremated. Mere burial would not be enough; for an exhumation would
+discover the fraud. But perfect security could be secured only by
+destruction of all evidence of the fraud. Julius D’Arblay held such
+evidence. Therefore Julius D’Arblay must be got rid of. Here, then,
+was an amply sufficient motive for the murder. The only point which
+remained obscure was the identity of your patient, and the means by
+which his disappearance had been accounted for.
+“My hypothesis, then, had been changed into highly probable theory.
+The next stage was the necessary verification. I began with a rather
+curious experiment. The man who tried to murder Marion could have been
+no other than her father’s murderer. Then he must have been Morris.
+But it seemed that he was totally unlike Morris, and the mask
+evidently suggested to her no resemblance. But yet it was probable
+that the man was Morris, for the striking features—the hook nose and
+the heavy brows—would be easily ‘made up,’ especially at night. The
+question was whether the face was Morris’s with these additions. I
+determined to put that question to the test. And here Polton’s new
+accomplishment came to our aid.
+“First, with a pinch of clay, we built up on Morris’s mask a nose of
+the shape described and slightly thickened the brows. Then Polton made
+a gelatine mould, and from this produced a wax mask. He fitted it with
+glass eyes and attached it to a rough plaster head, with ears which
+were casts of my own painted. We then fixed on a moustache, beard, and
+wig, and put on a shirt, collar, and jacket. It was an extraordinarily
+crude affair, suggestive of the fifth of November. But it answered the
+purpose, which was to produce a photograph; for we made the photograph
+so bad—so confused and ill-focussed—that the crudities disappeared,
+while the essential likeness remained. As you know, that photograph
+was instantly recognized, without any sort of suggestion. So the first
+test gave a positive result. Marion’s assailant was pretty certainly
+Morris.”
+“I should like to have seen Mr. Polton’s ’prentice effort,” said
+Marion, who had been listening, enthralled by this description.
+“You shall see it now,” Thorndyke replied with a smile. “It is in the
+next room, concealed in a cupboard.”
+He went out, and presently returned, carrying what looked like an
+excessively crude hairdresser’s dummy, but a most extraordinarily
+horrible and repulsive one. As he turned the face towards us, Marion
+gave a little cry of horror and then tried to laugh—without very
+striking success.
+“It is a dreadful-looking thing!” she exclaimed; “and so hideously
+like that fiend.” She gazed at it with the most extreme repugnance for
+a while, and then said, apologetically: “I hope you won’t think me
+very silly, but——”
+“Of course I don’t,” Thorndyke interrupted. “It is going back to its
+cupboard at once;” and with this he bore it away, returning in a few
+moments with a smaller object, wrapped in a cloth, which he laid on
+the table. “Another ‘exhibit,’ as they say in the courts,” he
+explained, “which we shall want presently. Meanwhile we resume the
+thread of our argument.
+“The photograph of this wax-work, then, furnished corroboration of the
+theory that Morris was the man whom we were seeking. My next move was
+to inquire at Scotland Yard if there were any fresh developments of
+the Van Zellen case. The answer was that there were; and
+Superintendent Miller arranged to come and tell me all about them. You
+were present at the interview and will remember what passed. His
+information was highly important, not only by confirming my inference
+that Bendelow was the murderer, but especially by disposing of the
+difficulty connected with the disappearance of your patient. For now
+there came into view a second man—Crile—who had died at Hoxton of an
+abdominal cancer and had been duly buried; and when you were able to
+give me this man’s address, a glance at the map and at the Post Office
+Directory showed that the two men had died in the same house. This
+fact, with the further facts that they had died of virtually the same
+disease and within a day or two of the same date, left no reasonable
+doubt that we were really dealing with one man, who had died and for
+whom two death certificates, in different names, and two corresponding
+burial orders, had been obtained. There was only one body, and that
+was cremated in the name of Bendelow. It followed that the coffin
+which was buried at Mr. Crile’s funeral must have been an empty
+coffin. I was so confident that this must be so that I induced Miller
+to apply for an exhumation, with the results that you know.
+“There now remained only a single point requiring verification: the
+question as to what face it was that those two ladies saw when they
+looked into the coffin of Simon Bendelow. Here again Polton’s new
+accomplishments came to our aid. From the plaster mask your apprentice
+made a most realistic wax mask, which I offer for your critical
+inspection.”
+He unfolded the cloth and produced a mask of thin, yellowish wax and
+of a most cadaverous aspect, which he handed to Marion.
+“Yes,” she said approvingly, “it is an excellent piece of work; and
+what beautiful eyelashes. They look exactly like real ones.”
+“They are real ones,” Thorndyke explained with a chuckle.
+She looked up at him inquiringly, and then, breaking into a ripple of
+laughter, exclaimed: “Of course! They are his own! Oh! How like Mr.
+Polton. But he was quite right, you know. He couldn’t have got the
+effect any other way.”
+“So he declared,” said Thorndyke. “Well, we hired a coffin and had an
+inspection window put in the lid, and we got a black skull cap. We put
+a dummy head in the coffin with a wig on it; we laid the mask where
+the face should have been, and we adjusted the jaw-bandage and the
+skull cap so as to cover up the edges of the mask, and we got the two
+ladies here and showed them the coffin. When they had identified the
+tenant as Mr. Bendelow, the verification was complete. The hypothesis
+was now converted into ascertained fact, and all that remained to be
+done was to lay hands on the murderer.”
+“How did you find out where Morris was living?” I asked.
+“Barber did that,” he replied. “When I learned that you were being
+stalked, I employed Barber to shadow you. He, of course, observed
+Morris on your track and followed him home.”
+“That was what I supposed,” said I; and for a while we were all
+silent. Presently Marion said: “It is all very involved and confusing.
+Would you mind telling us exactly what happened?”
+“In a direct narrative, you mean?” said he. “Yes, I will try to
+reconstruct the events in the order of their occurrence. They began
+with the murder of Van Zellen by Bendelow. There was no evidence
+against him at the time, but he had to fly from America for other
+reasons, and he left behind him incriminating traces which he knew
+must presently be discovered, and which would fix the murder on him.
+His friend, Crile, who fled with him, developed gastric cancer, and
+had only a month or two to live. Then Bendelow decided that when Crile
+should die, he would make believe to die at the same time. To this
+end, he commissioned your father to make a wax mask—a portrait mask of
+himself with the eyes closed. His wife must then have persuaded the
+two spinsters to visit him—he, of course, taking to his bed when they
+called, and being represented as a mortally sick man. Then he moved
+from Hornsey to Hoxton, taking Crile with him. There he engaged two
+doctors—Usher and Gray, both of whom lived at a distance—to attend
+Crile, and to visit him on alternate days. Crile seems to have been
+deaf, or, at least, hard of hearing, and was kept continuously under
+the influence of morphia. Usher, who was employed by Mrs. Bendelow,
+whom he knew as Mrs. Pepper, came to the front of the house, in
+Field-street, to visit Mr. Crile, while Stephen—who was employed by
+the Bendelows, whom he knew by the name of Morris—entered at the rear
+of the house in Market-street, to visit the same man under the name of
+Bendelow. About the time of the move Bendelow committed the murder in
+order to destroy all evidence of the making of the wax mask.
+“Eventually Crile died—or was finished off with an extra dose of
+morphia—on a Thursday. Usher gave the certificate, and the funeral
+took place on the Saturday. But previously—probably on the Friday
+night—the coffin-lid was unscrewed by Bendelow, the body taken out and
+replaced by a sack of sawdust with some lead pipe in it.
+“On the Monday the body was again produced: this time as that of Simon
+Bendelow, who was represented as having died on the Sunday afternoon.
+It was put in a cremation coffin with a celluloid window in the lid.
+The wax mask was placed over the face; the jaw-bandage and the skull
+cap adjusted to hide the place where the wax face joined the real
+face; and the two spinsters were brought up to see Mr. Bendelow in his
+coffin. They looked in through the window, and, of course, saw the wax
+mask of Bendelow. They then retired. The coffin-lid was taken off, the
+wax mask removed, the coffin-lid screwed on again, and then the two
+doctors were brought up. They removed the body from the coffin,
+examined it, and put it back; and Bendelow—or Morris—put on the
+coffin-lid.
+“As soon as the doctors were gone, the coffin-lid was taken off again,
+the wax mask was put back and adjusted, and the coffin-lid replaced
+and screwed down finally. Then the two ladies were brought up again to
+take a last look at poor Mr. Bendelow; not actually the last look,
+for, at the funeral they peeped in at the window and saw the wax face
+just before the coffin was passed through into the crematorium.”
+“It was a diabolically clever scheme,” said I.
+“It was,” he agreed. “It was perfectly convincing and consistent. If
+you and those two ladies had been put in the witness-box, your
+testimony and theirs would have been in complete agreement. They had
+seen Simon Bendelow (whom they knew quite well) in his coffin. A few
+minutes later, you had seen Simon Bendelow in his coffin, had taken
+the body out, examined it thoroughly, and put it back, and had seen
+the coffin-lid screwed down, and again a few minutes later, they had
+looked in through the coffin-window and had again seen Simon Bendelow.
+The evidence would appear to be beyond the possibility of a doubt.
+Simon Bendelow was proved conclusively to be dead and cremated and was
+doubly certified to have died from natural causes. Nothing could be
+more complete.
+“And yet,” he continued, after a pause, “while we are impressed by the
+astonishing subtlety and ingenuity displayed, we are almost more
+impressed by the fundamental stupidity exhibited along with it; a
+stupidity that seems to be characteristic of this type of criminal.
+For all the security that was gained by one part of the scheme was
+destroyed by the idiotic efforts to guard against dangers that had no
+existence. The murder was not only a foul crime; it was a technical
+blunder of the most elementary kind. But for that murder, Bendelow
+would now be alive and in unchallenged security. The cremation scheme
+was completely successful. It deceived everybody. Even the two
+detectives, though they felt vague suspicions, saw no loophole. They
+had to accept the appearances at their face value.
+“But it was the old story. The wrongdoer could not keep quiet. He must
+be for ever making himself safer and yet more safe. And at each move,
+he laid down fresh tracks. And so, in the end, he delivered himself
+into our hands.”
+He paused and for a while seemed to be absorbed in reflection on what
+he had been telling us. Presently he looked up, and addressing Marion,
+said in grave, quiet tones:
+“We have ended our quest and we have secured retribution. Justice was
+beyond our reach, for complete justice implies restitution; and to
+attain that, the dead must have been recalled from the grave. But, at
+least sometimes, out of evil cometh good. Surely it will seem to you,
+when, in the happy years which I trust and confidently believe lie
+before you, your thoughts turn back to the days of your mourning and
+grief, that the beloved father, who, when living, made your happiness
+his chief concern, even in dying, bequeathed to you a blessing.”
+THE END
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+This transcription follows the text of the 1926 edition published by
+A. L. Burt Company in 1927. However, the following alterations have
+been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the
+text:
+* Four missing quotation marks have been restored.
+* The word “addess” has been corrected to “address” (Ch. I).
+* The word “precints” has been corrected to “precincts” (Ch. II).
+* The word “herb-side” has been corrected to “kerb-side” (Ch. IV).
+* The word “elphant” has been corrected to “elephant” (Ch. XIII).",The D'Arblay Mystery,Dorothy L. Sayers,250,"['Simon Bendelow', 'Morris']"
+"
+
+
+      We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small
+      stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more
+      sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft
+      Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. His card, which seemed too small to
+      carry the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him by a
+      few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous,
+      and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of
+      self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the
+      door had closed behind him, was to stagger against the table,
+      whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that
+      majestic figure prostrate and insensible upon our bearskin
+      hearth-rug.
+
+      We had sprung to our feet, and for a few moments we stared in
+      silent amazement at this ponderous piece of wreckage, which told
+      of some sudden and fatal storm far out on the ocean of life. Then
+      Holmes hurried with a cushion for his head, and I with brandy for
+      his lips. The heavy, white face was seamed with lines of trouble,
+      the hanging pouches under the closed eyes were leaden in colour,
+      the loose mouth drooped dolorously at the corners, the rolling
+      chins were unshaven. Collar and shirt bore the grime of a long
+      journey, and the hair bristled unkempt from the well-shaped head.
+      It was a sorely stricken man who lay before us.
+
+      “What is it, Watson?” asked Holmes.
+
+      “Absolute exhaustion—possibly mere hunger and fatigue,” said I,
+      with my finger on the thready pulse, where the stream of life
+      trickled thin and small.
+
+      “Return ticket from Mackleton, in the north of England,” said
+      Holmes, drawing it from the watch-pocket. “It is not twelve
+      o’clock yet. He has certainly been an early starter.”
+
+      The puckered eyelids had begun to quiver, and now a pair of
+      vacant grey eyes looked up at us. An instant later the man had
+      scrambled on to his feet, his face crimson with shame.
+
+      “Forgive this weakness, Mr. Holmes, I have been a little
+      overwrought. Thank you, if I might have a glass of milk and a
+      biscuit, I have no doubt that I should be better. I came
+      personally, Mr. Holmes, in order to insure that you would return
+      with me. I feared that no telegram would convince you of the
+      absolute urgency of the case.”
+
+      “When you are quite restored——”
+
+      “I am quite well again. I cannot imagine how I came to be so
+      weak. I wish you, Mr. Holmes, to come to Mackleton with me by the
+      next train.”
+
+      My friend shook his head.
+
+      “My colleague, Dr. Watson, could tell you that we are very busy
+      at present. I am retained in this case of the Ferrers Documents,
+      and the Abergavenny murder is coming up for trial. Only a very
+      important issue could call me from London at present.”
+
+      “Important!” Our visitor threw up his hands. “Have you heard
+      nothing of the abduction of the only son of the Duke of
+      Holdernesse?”
+
+      “What! the late Cabinet Minister?”
+
+      “Exactly. We had tried to keep it out of the papers, but there
+      was some rumour in the _Globe_ last night. I thought it might
+      have reached your ears.”
+
+      Holmes shot out his long, thin arm and picked out Volume “H” in
+      his encyclopædia of reference.
+
+      “‘Holdernesse, 6th Duke, K.G., P.C.’—half the alphabet! ‘Baron
+      Beverley, Earl of Carston’—dear me, what a list! ‘Lord Lieutenant
+      of Hallamshire since 1900. Married Edith, daughter of Sir Charles
+      Appledore, 1888. Heir and only child, Lord Saltire. Owns about
+      two hundred and fifty thousand acres. Minerals in Lancashire and
+      Wales. Address: Carlton House Terrace; Holdernesse Hall,
+      Hallamshire; Carston Castle, Bangor, Wales. Lord of the
+      Admiralty, 1872; Chief Secretary of State for——’ Well, well, this
+      man is certainly one of the greatest subjects of the Crown!”
+
+      “The greatest and perhaps the wealthiest. I am aware, Mr. Holmes,
+      that you take a very high line in professional matters, and that
+      you are prepared to work for the work’s sake. I may tell you,
+      however, that his Grace has already intimated that a check for
+      five thousand pounds will be handed over to the person who can
+      tell him where his son is, and another thousand to him who can
+      name the man or men who have taken him.”
+
+      “It is a princely offer,” said Holmes. “Watson, I think that we
+      shall accompany Dr. Huxtable back to the north of England. And
+      now, Dr. Huxtable, when you have consumed that milk, you will
+      kindly tell me what has happened, when it happened, how it
+      happened, and, finally, what Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, of the
+      Priory School, near Mackleton, has to do with the matter, and why
+      he comes three days after an event—the state of your chin gives
+      the date—to ask for my humble services.”
+
+      Our visitor had consumed his milk and biscuits. The light had
+      come back to his eyes and the colour to his cheeks, as he set
+      himself with great vigour and lucidity to explain the situation.
+
+      “I must inform you, gentlemen, that the Priory is a preparatory
+      school, of which I am the founder and principal. _Huxtable’s
+      Sidelights on Horace_ may possibly recall my name to your
+      memories. The Priory is, without exception, the best and most
+      select preparatory school in England. Lord Leverstoke, the Earl
+      of Blackwater, Sir Cathcart Soames—they all have intrusted their
+      sons to me. But I felt that my school had reached its zenith
+      when, weeks ago, the Duke of Holdernesse sent Mr. James Wilder,
+      his secretary, with intimation that young Lord Saltire, ten years
+      old, his only son and heir, was about to be committed to my
+      charge. Little did I think that this would be the prelude to the
+      most crushing misfortune of my life.
+
+      “On May 1st the boy arrived, that being the beginning of the
+      summer term. He was a charming youth, and he soon fell into our
+      ways. I may tell you—I trust that I am not indiscreet, but
+      half-confidences are absurd in such a case—that he was not
+      entirely happy at home. It is an open secret that the Duke’s
+      married life had not been a peaceful one, and the matter had
+      ended in a separation by mutual consent, the Duchess taking up
+      her residence in the south of France. This had occurred very
+      shortly before, and the boy’s sympathies are known to have been
+      strongly with his mother. He moped after her departure from
+      Holdernesse Hall, and it was for this reason that the Duke
+      desired to send him to my establishment. In a fortnight the boy
+      was quite at home with us and was apparently absolutely happy.
+
+      “He was last seen on the night of May 13th—that is, the night of
+      last Monday. His room was on the second floor and was approached
+      through another larger room, in which two boys were sleeping.
+      These boys saw and heard nothing, so that it is certain that
+      young Saltire did not pass out that way. His window was open, and
+      there is a stout ivy plant leading to the ground. We could trace
+      no footmarks below, but it is sure that this is the only possible
+      exit.
+
+      “His absence was discovered at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning.
+      His bed had been slept in. He had dressed himself fully, before
+      going off, in his usual school suit of black Eton jacket and dark
+      grey trousers. There were no signs that anyone had entered the
+      room, and it is quite certain that anything in the nature of
+      cries or a struggle would have been heard, since Caunter, the
+      elder boy in the inner room, is a very light sleeper.
+
+      “When Lord Saltire’s disappearance was discovered, I at once
+      called a roll of the whole establishment—boys, masters, and
+      servants. It was then that we ascertained that Lord Saltire had
+      not been alone in his flight. Heidegger, the German master, was
+      missing. His room was on the second floor, at the farther end of
+      the building, facing the same way as Lord Saltire’s. His bed had
+      also been slept in, but he had apparently gone away partly
+      dressed, since his shirt and socks were lying on the floor. He
+      had undoubtedly let himself down by the ivy, for we could see the
+      marks of his feet where he had landed on the lawn. His bicycle
+      was kept in a small shed beside this lawn, and it also was gone.
+
+      “He had been with me for two years, and came with the best
+      references, but he was a silent, morose man, not very popular
+      either with masters or boys. No trace could be found of the
+      fugitives, and now, on Thursday morning, we are as ignorant as we
+      were on Tuesday. Inquiry was, of course, made at once at
+      Holdernesse Hall. It is only a few miles away, and we imagined
+      that, in some sudden attack of homesickness, he had gone back to
+      his father, but nothing had been heard of him. The Duke is
+      greatly agitated, and, as to me, you have seen yourselves the
+      state of nervous prostration to which the suspense and the
+      responsibility have reduced me. Mr. Holmes, if ever you put
+      forward your full powers, I implore you to do so now, for never
+      in your life could you have a case which is more worthy of them.”
+
+      Sherlock Holmes had listened with the utmost intentness to the
+      statement of the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the
+      deep furrow between them showed that he needed no exhortation to
+      concentrate all his attention upon a problem which, apart from
+      the tremendous interests involved must appeal so directly to his
+      love of the complex and the unusual. He now drew out his notebook
+      and jotted down one or two memoranda.
+
+      “You have been very remiss in not coming to me sooner,” said he,
+      severely. “You start me on my investigation with a very serious
+      handicap. It is inconceivable, for example, that this ivy and
+      this lawn would have yielded nothing to an expert observer.”
+
+      “I am not to blame, Mr. Holmes. His Grace was extremely desirous
+      to avoid all public scandal. He was afraid of his family
+      unhappiness being dragged before the world. He has a deep horror
+      of anything of the kind.”
+
+      “But there has been some official investigation?”
+
+      “Yes, sir, and it has proved most disappointing. An apparent clue
+      was at once obtained, since a boy and a young man were reported
+      to have been seen leaving a neighbouring station by an early
+      train. Only last night we had news that the couple had been
+      hunted down in Liverpool, and they prove to have no connection
+      whatever with the matter in hand. Then it was that in my despair
+      and disappointment, after a sleepless night, I came straight to
+      you by the early train.”
+
+      “I suppose the local investigation was relaxed while this false
+      clue was being followed up?”
+
+      “It was entirely dropped.”
+
+      “So that three days have been wasted. The affair has been most
+      deplorably handled.”
+
+      “I feel it and admit it.”
+
+      “And yet the problem should be capable of ultimate solution. I
+      shall be very happy to look into it. Have you been able to trace
+      any connection between the missing boy and this German master?”
+
+      “None at all.”
+
+      “Was he in the master’s class?”
+
+      “No, he never exchanged a word with him, so far as I know.”
+
+      “That is certainly very singular. Had the boy a bicycle?”
+
+      “No.”
+
+      “Was any other bicycle missing?”
+
+      “No.”
+
+      “Is that certain?”
+
+      “Quite.”
+
+      “Well, now, you do not mean to seriously suggest that this German
+      rode off upon a bicycle in the dead of the night, bearing the boy
+      in his arms?”
+
+      “Certainly not.”
+
+      “Then what is the theory in your mind?”
+
+      “The bicycle may have been a blind. It may have been hidden
+      somewhere, and the pair gone off on foot.”
+
+      “Quite so, but it seems rather an absurd blind, does it not? Were
+      there other bicycles in this shed?”
+
+      “Several.”
+
+      “Would he not have hidden _a couple_, had he desired to give the
+      idea that they had gone off upon them?”
+
+      “I suppose he would.”
+
+      “Of course he would. The blind theory won’t do. But the incident
+      is an admirable starting-point for an investigation. After all, a
+      bicycle is not an easy thing to conceal or to destroy. One other
+      question. Did anyone call to see the boy on the day before he
+      disappeared?”
+
+      “No.”
+
+      “Did he get any letters?”
+
+      “Yes, one letter.”
+
+      “From whom?”
+
+      “From his father.”
+
+      “Do you open the boys’ letters?”
+
+      “No.”
+
+      “How do you know it was from the father?”
+
+      “The coat of arms was on the envelope, and it was addressed in
+      the Duke’s peculiar stiff hand. Besides, the Duke remembers
+      having written.”
+
+      “When had he a letter before that?”
+
+      “Not for several days.”
+
+      “Had he ever one from France?”
+
+      “No, never.
+
+      “You see the point of my questions, of course. Either the boy was
+      carried off by force or he went of his own free will. In the
+      latter case, you would expect that some prompting from outside
+      would be needed to make so young a lad do such a thing. If he has
+      had no visitors, that prompting must have come in letters; hence
+      I try to find out who were his correspondents.”
+
+      “I fear I cannot help you much. His only correspondent, so far as
+      I know, was his own father.”
+
+      “Who wrote to him on the very day of his disappearance. Were the
+      relations between father and son very friendly?”
+
+      “His Grace is never very friendly with anyone. He is completely
+      immersed in large public questions, and is rather inaccessible to
+      all ordinary emotions. But he was always kind to the boy in his
+      own way.”
+
+      “But the sympathies of the latter were with the mother?”
+
+      “Yes.”
+
+      “Did he say so?”
+
+      “No.”
+
+      “The Duke, then?”
+
+      “Good Heavens, no!”
+
+      “Then how could you know?”
+
+      “I have had some confidential talks with Mr. James Wilder, his
+      Grace’s secretary. It was he who gave me the information about
+      Lord Saltire’s feelings.”
+
+      “I see. By the way, that last letter of the Duke’s—was it found
+      in the boy’s room after he was gone?”
+
+      “No, he had taken it with him. I think, Mr. Holmes, it is time
+      that we were leaving for Euston.”
+
+      “I will order a four-wheeler. In a quarter of an hour, we shall
+      be at your service. If you are telegraphing home, Mr. Huxtable,
+      it would be well to allow the people in your neighbourhood to
+      imagine that the inquiry is still going on in Liverpool, or
+      wherever else that red herring led your pack. In the meantime I
+      will do a little quiet work at your own doors, and perhaps the
+      scent is not so cold but that two old hounds like Watson and
+      myself may get a sniff of it.”
+
+      That evening found us in the cold, bracing atmosphere of the Peak
+      country, in which Dr. Huxtable’s famous school is situated. It
+      was already dark when we reached it. A card was lying on the hall
+      table, and the butler whispered something to his master, who
+      turned to us with agitation in every heavy feature.
+
+      “The Duke is here,” said he. “The Duke and Mr. Wilder are in the
+      study. Come, gentlemen, and I will introduce you.”
+
+      I was, of course, familiar with the pictures of the famous
+      statesman, but the man himself was very different from his
+      representation. He was a tall and stately person, scrupulously
+      dressed, with a drawn, thin face, and a nose which was
+      grotesquely curved and long. His complexion was of a dead pallor,
+      which was more startling by contrast with a long, dwindling beard
+      of vivid red, which flowed down over his white waistcoat with his
+      watch-chain gleaming through its fringe. Such was the stately
+      presence who looked stonily at us from the centre of Dr.
+      Huxtable’s hearthrug. Beside him stood a very young man, whom I
+      understood to be Wilder, the private secretary. He was small,
+      nervous, alert with intelligent light-blue eyes and mobile
+      features. It was he who at once, in an incisive and positive
+      tone, opened the conversation.
+
+      “I called this morning, Dr. Huxtable, too late to prevent you
+      from starting for London. I learned that your object was to
+      invite Mr. Sherlock Holmes to undertake the conduct of this case.
+      His Grace is surprised, Dr. Huxtable, that you should have taken
+      such a step without consulting him.”
+
+      “When I learned that the police had failed——”
+
+      “His Grace is by no means convinced that the police have failed.”
+
+      “But surely, Mr. Wilder——”
+
+      “You are well aware, Dr. Huxtable, that his Grace is particularly
+      anxious to avoid all public scandal. He prefers to take as few
+      people as possible into his confidence.”
+
+      “The matter can be easily remedied,” said the brow-beaten doctor;
+      “Mr. Sherlock Holmes can return to London by the morning train.”
+
+      “Hardly that, Doctor, hardly that,” said Holmes, in his blandest
+      voice. “This northern air is invigorating and pleasant, so I
+      propose to spend a few days upon your moors, and to occupy my
+      mind as best I may. Whether I have the shelter of your roof or of
+      the village inn is, of course, for you to decide.”
+
+      I could see that the unfortunate doctor was in the last stage of
+      indecision, from which he was rescued by the deep, sonorous voice
+      of the red-bearded Duke, which boomed out like a dinner-gong.
+
+      “I agree with Mr. Wilder, Dr. Huxtable, that you would have done
+      wisely to consult me. But since Mr. Holmes has already been taken
+      into your confidence, it would indeed be absurd that we should
+      not avail ourselves of his services. Far from going to the inn,
+      Mr. Holmes, I should be pleased if you would come and stay with
+      me at Holdernesse Hall.”
+
+      “I thank your Grace. For the purposes of my investigation, I
+      think that it would be wiser for me to remain at the scene of the
+      mystery.”
+
+      “Just as you like, Mr. Holmes. Any information which Mr. Wilder
+      or I can give you is, of course, at your disposal.”
+
+      “It will probably be necessary for me to see you at the Hall,”
+      said Holmes. “I would only ask you now, sir, whether you have
+      formed any explanation in your own mind as to the mysterious
+      disappearance of your son?”
+
+      “No, sir, I have not.”
+
+      “Excuse me if I allude to that which is painful to you, but I
+      have no alternative. Do you think that the Duchess had anything
+      to do with the matter?”
+
+      The great minister showed perceptible hesitation.
+
+      “I do not think so,” he said, at last.
+
+      “The other most obvious explanation is that the child has been
+      kidnapped for the purpose of levying ransom. You have not had any
+      demand of the sort?”
+
+      “No, sir.”
+
+      “One more question, your Grace. I understand that you wrote to
+      your son upon the day when this incident occurred.”
+
+      “No, I wrote upon the day before.”
+
+      “Exactly. But he received it on that day?”
+
+      “Yes.”
+
+      “Was there anything in your letter which might have unbalanced
+      him or induced him to take such a step?”
+
+      “No, sir, certainly not.”
+
+      “Did you post that letter yourself?”
+
+      The nobleman’s reply was interrupted by his secretary, who broke
+      in with some heat.
+
+      “His Grace is not in the habit of posting letters himself,” said
+      he. “This letter was laid with others upon the study table, and I
+      myself put them in the post-bag.”
+
+      “You are sure this one was among them?”
+
+      “Yes, I observed it.”
+
+      “How many letters did your Grace write that day?”
+
+      “Twenty or thirty. I have a large correspondence. But surely this
+      is somewhat irrelevant?”
+
+      “Not entirely,” said Holmes.
+
+      “For my own part,” the Duke continued, “I have advised the police
+      to turn their attention to the south of France. I have already
+      said that I do not believe that the Duchess would encourage so
+      monstrous an action, but the lad had the most wrong-headed
+      opinions, and it is possible that he may have fled to her, aided
+      and abetted by this German. I think, Dr. Huxtable, that we will
+      now return to the Hall.”
+
+      I could see that there were other questions which Holmes would
+      have wished to put, but the nobleman’s abrupt manner showed that
+      the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely
+      aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family
+      affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared
+      lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the
+      discreetly shadowed corners of his ducal history.
+
+      When the nobleman and his secretary had left, my friend flung
+      himself at once with characteristic eagerness into the
+      investigation.
+
+      The boy’s chamber was carefully examined, and yielded nothing
+      save the absolute conviction that it was only through the window
+      that he could have escaped. The German master’s room and effects
+      gave no further clue. In his case a trailer of ivy had given way
+      under his weight, and we saw by the light of a lantern the mark
+      on the lawn where his heels had come down. That one dint in the
+      short, green grass was the only material witness left of this
+      inexplicable nocturnal flight.
+
+      Sherlock Holmes left the house alone, and only returned after
+      eleven. He had obtained a large ordnance map of the
+      neighbourhood, and this he brought into my room, where he laid it
+      out on the bed, and, having balanced the lamp in the middle of
+      it, he began to smoke over it, and occasionally to point out
+      objects of interest with the reeking amber of his pipe.
+
+      “This case grows upon me, Watson,” said he. “There are decidedly
+      some points of interest in connection with it. In this early
+      stage, I want you to realize those geographical features which
+      may have a good deal to do with our investigation.
+
+      Holmes'-map
+
+      HOLMES’ MAP OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE SCHOOL.
+
+      “Look at this map. This dark square is the Priory School. I’ll
+      put a pin in it. Now, this line is the main road. You see that it
+      runs east and west past the school, and you see also that there
+      is no side road for a mile either way. If these two folk passed
+      away by road, it was _this_ road.”
+
+      “Exactly.”
+
+      “By a singular and happy chance, we are able to some extent to
+      check what passed along this road during the night in question.
+      At this point, where my pipe is now resting, a county constable
+      was on duty from twelve to six. It is, as you perceive, the first
+      cross-road on the east side. This man declares that he was not
+      absent from his post for an instant, and he is positive that
+      neither boy nor man could have gone that way unseen. I have
+      spoken with this policeman to-night and he appears to me to be a
+      perfectly reliable person. That blocks this end. We have now to
+      deal with the other. There is an inn here, the Red Bull, the
+      landlady of which was ill. She had sent to Mackleton for a
+      doctor, but he did not arrive until morning, being absent at
+      another case. The people at the inn were alert all night,
+      awaiting his coming, and one or other of them seems to have
+      continually had an eye upon the road. They declare that no one
+      passed. If their evidence is good, then we are fortunate enough
+      to be able to block the west, and also to be able to say that the
+      fugitives did _not_ use the road at all.”
+
+      “But the bicycle?” I objected.
+
+      “Quite so. We will come to the bicycle presently. To continue our
+      reasoning: if these people did not go by the road, they must have
+      traversed the country to the north of the house or to the south
+      of the house. That is certain. Let us weigh the one against the
+      other. On the south of the house is, as you perceive, a large
+      district of arable land, cut up into small fields, with stone
+      walls between them. There, I admit that a bicycle is impossible.
+      We can dismiss the idea. We turn to the country on the north.
+      Here there lies a grove of trees, marked as the ‘Ragged Shaw,’
+      and on the farther side stretches a great rolling moor, Lower
+      Gill Moor, extending for ten miles and sloping gradually upward.
+      Here, at one side of this wilderness, is Holdernesse Hall, ten
+      miles by road, but only six across the moor. It is a peculiarly
+      desolate plain. A few moor farmers have small holdings, where
+      they rear sheep and cattle. Except these, the plover and the
+      curlew are the only inhabitants until you come to the
+      Chesterfield high road. There is a church there, you see, a few
+      cottages, and an inn. Beyond that the hills become precipitous.
+      Surely it is here to the north that our quest must lie.”
+
+      “But the bicycle?” I persisted.
+
+      “Well, well!” said Holmes, impatiently. “A good cyclist does not
+      need a high road. The moor is intersected with paths, and the
+      moon was at the full. Halloa! what is this?”
+
+      There was an agitated knock at the door, and an instant
+      afterwards Dr. Huxtable was in the room. In his hand he held a
+      blue cricket-cap with a white chevron on the peak.
+
+      “At last we have a clue!” he cried. “Thank heaven! at last we are
+      on the dear boy’s track! It is his cap.”
+
+      “Where was it found?”
+
+      “In the van of the gipsies who camped on the moor. They left on
+      Tuesday. To-day the police traced them down and examined their
+      caravan. This was found.”
+
+      “How do they account for it?”
+
+      “They shuffled and lied—said that they found it on the moor on
+      Tuesday morning. They know where he is, the rascals! Thank
+      goodness, they are all safe under lock and key. Either the fear
+      of the law or the Duke’s purse will certainly get out of them all
+      that they know.”
+
+      “So far, so good,” said Holmes, when the doctor had at last left
+      the room. “It at least bears out the theory that it is on the
+      side of the Lower Gill Moor that we must hope for results. The
+      police have really done nothing locally, save the arrest of these
+      gipsies. Look here, Watson! There is a watercourse across the
+      moor. You see it marked here in the map. In some parts it widens
+      into a morass. This is particularly so in the region between
+      Holdernesse Hall and the school. It is vain to look elsewhere for
+      tracks in this dry weather, but at _that_ point there is
+      certainly a chance of some record being left. I will call you
+      early to-morrow morning, and you and I will try if we can throw
+      some little light upon the mystery.”
+
+      The day was just breaking when I woke to find the long, thin form
+      of Holmes by my bedside. He was fully dressed, and had apparently
+      already been out.
+
+      “I have done the lawn and the bicycle shed,” said he. “I have
+      also had a rumble through the Ragged Shaw. Now, Watson, there is
+      cocoa ready in the next room. I must beg you to hurry, for we
+      have a great day before us.”
+
+      His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration
+      of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him. A
+      very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the
+      introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I
+      looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that
+      it was indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.
+
+      And yet it opened in the blackest disappointment. With high hopes
+      we struck across the peaty, russet moor, intersected with a
+      thousand sheep paths, until we came to the broad, light-green
+      belt which marked the morass between us and Holdernesse.
+      Certainly, if the lad had gone homeward, he must have passed
+      this, and he could not pass it without leaving his traces. But no
+      sign of him or the German could be seen. With a darkening face my
+      friend strode along the margin, eagerly observant of every muddy
+      stain upon the mossy surface. Sheep-marks there were in
+      profusion, and at one place, some miles down, cows had left their
+      tracks. Nothing more.
+
+      “Check number one,” said Holmes, looking gloomily over the
+      rolling expanse of the moor. “There is another morass down
+      yonder, and a narrow neck between. Halloa! halloa! halloa! what
+      have we here?”
+
+      We had come on a small black ribbon of pathway. In the middle of
+      it, clearly marked on the sodden soil, was the track of a
+      bicycle.
+
+      “Hurrah!” I cried. “We have it.”
+
+      But Holmes was shaking his head, and his face was puzzled and
+      expectant rather than joyous.
+
+      “A bicycle, certainly, but not _the_ bicycle,” said he. “I am
+      familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tires.
+      This, as you perceive, is a Dunlop, with a patch upon the outer
+      cover. Heidegger’s tires were Palmer’s, leaving longitudinal
+      stripes. Aveling, the mathematical master, was sure upon the
+      point. Therefore, it is not Heidegger’s track.”
+
+      “The boy’s, then?”
+
+      “Possibly, if we could prove a bicycle to have been in his
+      possession. But this we have utterly failed to do. This track, as
+      you perceive, was made by a rider who was going from the
+      direction of the school.”
+
+      “Or towards it?”
+
+      “No, no, my dear Watson. The more deeply sunk impression is, of
+      course, the hind wheel, upon which the weight rests. You perceive
+      several places where it has passed across and obliterated the
+      more shallow mark of the front one. It was undoubtedly heading
+      away from the school. It may or may not be connected with our
+      inquiry, but we will follow it backwards before we go any
+      farther.”
+
+      We did so, and at the end of a few hundred yards lost the tracks
+      as we emerged from the boggy portion of the moor. Following the
+      path backwards, we picked out another spot, where a spring
+      trickled across it. Here, once again, was the mark of the
+      bicycle, though nearly obliterated by the hoofs of cows. After
+      that there was no sign, but the path ran right on into Ragged
+      Shaw, the wood which backed on to the school. From this wood the
+      cycle must have emerged. Holmes sat down on a boulder and rested
+      his chin in his hands. I had smoked two cigarettes before he
+      moved.
+
+      “Well, well,” said he, at last. “It is, of course, possible that
+      a cunning man might change the tires of his bicycle in order to
+      leave unfamiliar tracks. A criminal who was capable of such a
+      thought is a man whom I should be proud to do business with. We
+      will leave this question undecided and hark back to our morass
+      again, for we have left a good deal unexplored.”
+
+      We continued our systematic survey of the edge of the sodden
+      portion of the moor, and soon our perseverance was gloriously
+      rewarded. Right across the lower part of the bog lay a miry path.
+      Holmes gave a cry of delight as he approached it. An impression
+      like a fine bundle of telegraph wires ran down the centre of it.
+      It was the Palmer tires.
+
+      “Here is Herr Heidegger, sure enough!” cried Holmes, exultantly.
+      “My reasoning seems to have been pretty sound, Watson.”
+
+      “I congratulate you.”
+
+      “But we have a long way still to go. Kindly walk clear of the
+      path. Now let us follow the trail. I fear that it will not lead
+      very far.”
+
+      We found, however, as we advanced that this portion of the moor
+      is intersected with soft patches, and, though we frequently lost
+      sight of the track, we always succeeded in picking it up once
+      more.
+
+      “Do you observe,” said Holmes, “that the rider is now undoubtedly
+      forcing the pace? There can be no doubt of it. Look at this
+      impression, where you get both tires clear. The one is as deep as
+      the other. That can only mean that the rider is throwing his
+      weight on to the handle-bar, as a man does when he is sprinting.
+      By Jove! he has had a fall.”
+
+      There was a broad, irregular smudge covering some yards of the
+      track. Then there were a few footmarks, and the tire reappeared
+      once more.
+
+      “A side-slip,” I suggested.
+
+      Holmes held up a crumpled branch of flowering gorse. To my horror
+      I perceived that the yellow blossoms were all dabbled with
+      crimson. On the path, too, and among the heather were dark stains
+      of clotted blood.
+
+      “Bad!” said Holmes. “Bad! Stand clear, Watson! Not an unnecessary
+      footstep! What do I read here? He fell wounded—he stood up—he
+      remounted—he proceeded. But there is no other track. Cattle on
+      this side path. He was surely not gored by a bull? Impossible!
+      But I see no traces of anyone else. We must push on, Watson.
+      Surely, with stains as well as the track to guide us, he cannot
+      escape us now.”
+
+      Our search was not a very long one. The tracks of the tire began
+      to curve fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly,
+      as I looked ahead, the gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the
+      thick gorse-bushes. Out of them we dragged a bicycle,
+      Palmer-tired, one pedal bent, and the whole front of it horribly
+      smeared and slobbered with blood. On the other side of the bushes
+      a shoe was projecting. We ran round, and there lay the
+      unfortunate rider. He was a tall man, full-bearded, with
+      spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked out. The cause of
+      his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which had crushed
+      in part of his skull. That he could have gone on after receiving
+      such an injury said much for the vitality and courage of the man.
+      He wore shoes, but no socks, and his open coat disclosed a
+      nightshirt beneath it. It was undoubtedly the German master.
+
+      Holmes turned the body over reverently, and examined it with
+      great attention. He then sat in deep thought for a time, and I
+      could see by his ruffled brow that this grim discovery had not,
+      in his opinion, advanced us much in our inquiry.
+
+      “It is a little difficult to know what to do, Watson,” said he,
+      at last. “My own inclinations are to push this inquiry on, for we
+      have already lost so much time that we cannot afford to waste
+      another hour. On the other hand, we are bound to inform the
+      police of the discovery, and to see that this poor fellow’s body
+      is looked after.”
+
+      “I could take a note back.”
+
+      “But I need your company and assistance. Wait a bit! There is a
+      fellow cutting peat up yonder. Bring him over here, and he will
+      guide the police.”
+
+      I brought the peasant across, and Holmes dispatched the
+      frightened man with a note to Dr. Huxtable.
+
+      “Now, Watson,” said he, “we have picked up two clues this
+      morning. One is the bicycle with the Palmer tire, and we see what
+      that has led to. The other is the bicycle with the patched
+      Dunlop. Before we start to investigate that, let us try to
+      realize what we _do_ know, so as to make the most of it, and to
+      separate the essential from the accidental.”
+
+      “First of all, I wish to impress upon you that the boy certainly
+      left of his own free-will. He got down from his window and he
+      went off, either alone or with someone. That is sure.”
+
+      I assented.
+
+      “Well, now, let us turn to this unfortunate German master. The
+      boy was fully dressed when he fled. Therefore, he foresaw what he
+      would do. But the German went without his socks. He certainly
+      acted on very short notice.”
+
+      “Undoubtedly.”
+
+      “Why did he go? Because, from his bedroom window, he saw the
+      flight of the boy, because he wished to overtake him and bring
+      him back. He seized his bicycle, pursued the lad, and in pursuing
+      him met his death.”
+
+      “So it would seem.”
+
+      “Now I come to the critical part of my argument. The natural
+      action of a man in pursuing a little boy would be to run after
+      him. He would know that he could overtake him. But the German
+      does not do so. He turns to his bicycle. I am told that he was an
+      excellent cyclist. He would not do this, if he did not see that
+      the boy had some swift means of escape.”
+
+      “The other bicycle.”
+
+      “Let us continue our reconstruction. He meets his death five
+      miles from the school—not by a bullet, mark you, which even a lad
+      might conceivably discharge, but by a savage blow dealt by a
+      vigorous arm. The lad, then, _had_ a companion in his flight. And
+      the flight was a swift one, since it took five miles before an
+      expert cyclist could overtake them. Yet we survey the ground
+      round the scene of the tragedy. What do we find? A few
+      cattle-tracks, nothing more. I took a wide sweep round, and there
+      is no path within fifty yards. Another cyclist could have had
+      nothing to do with the actual murder, nor were there any human
+      foot-marks.”
+
+      “Holmes,” I cried, “this is impossible.”
+
+      “Admirable!” he said. “A most illuminating remark. It _is_
+      impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect
+      have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest
+      any fallacy?”
+
+      “He could not have fractured his skull in a fall?”
+
+      “In a morass, Watson?”
+
+      “I am at my wits’ end.”
+
+      “Tut, tut, we have solved some worse problems. At least we have
+      plenty of material, if we can only use it. Come, then, and,
+      having exhausted the Palmer, let us see what the Dunlop with the
+      patched cover has to offer us.”
+
+      We picked up the track and followed it onward for some distance,
+      but soon the moor rose into a long, heather-tufted curve, and we
+      left the watercourse behind us. No further help from tracks could
+      be hoped for. At the spot where we saw the last of the Dunlop
+      tire it might equally have led to Holdernesse Hall, the stately
+      towers of which rose some miles to our left, or to a low, grey
+      village which lay in front of us and marked the position of the
+      Chesterfield high road.
+
+      As we approached the forbidding and squalid inn, with the sign of
+      a game-cock above the door, Holmes gave a sudden groan, and
+      clutched me by the shoulder to save himself from falling. He had
+      had one of those violent strains of the ankle which leave a man
+      helpless. With difficulty he limped up to the door, where a
+      squat, dark, elderly man was smoking a black clay pipe.
+
+      “How are you, Mr. Reuben Hayes?” said Holmes.
+
+      “Who are you, and how do you get my name so pat?” the countryman
+      answered, with a suspicious flash of a pair of cunning eyes.
+
+      “Well, it’s printed on the board above your head. It’s easy to
+      see a man who is master of his own house. I suppose you haven’t
+      such a thing as a carriage in your stables?”
+
+      “No, I have not.”
+
+      “I can hardly put my foot to the ground.”
+
+      “Don’t put it to the ground.”
+
+      “But I can’t walk.”
+
+      “Well, then hop.”
+
+      Mr. Reuben Hayes’s manner was far from gracious, but Holmes took
+      it with admirable good-humour.
+
+      “Look here, my man,” said he. “This is really rather an awkward
+      fix for me. I don’t mind how I get on.”
+
+      “Neither do I,” said the morose landlord.
+
+      “The matter is very important. I would offer you a sovereign for
+      the use of a bicycle.”
+
+      The landlord pricked up his ears.
+
+      “Where do you want to go?”
+
+      “To Holdernesse Hall.”
+
+      “Pals of the Dook, I suppose?” said the landlord, surveying our
+      mud-stained garments with ironical eyes.
+
+      Holmes laughed good-naturedly.
+
+      “He’ll be glad to see us, anyhow.”
+
+      “Why?”
+
+      “Because we bring him news of his lost son.”
+
+      The landlord gave a very visible start.
+
+      “What, you’re on his track?”
+
+      “He has been heard of in Liverpool. They expect to get him every
+      hour.”
+
+      Again a swift change passed over the heavy, unshaven face. His
+      manner was suddenly genial.
+
+      “I’ve less reason to wish the Dook well than most men,” said he,
+      “for I was head coachman once, and cruel bad he treated me. It
+      was him that sacked me without a character on the word of a lying
+      corn-chandler. But I’m glad to hear that the young lord was heard
+      of in Liverpool, and I’ll help you to take the news to the Hall.”
+
+      “Thank you,” said Holmes. “We’ll have some food first. Then you
+      can bring round the bicycle.”
+
+      “I haven’t got a bicycle.”
+
+      Holmes held up a sovereign.
+
+      “I tell you, man, that I haven’t got one. I’ll let you have two
+      horses as far as the Hall.”
+
+      “Well, well,” said Holmes, “we’ll talk about it when we’ve had
+      something to eat.”
+
+      When we were left alone in the stone-flagged kitchen, it was
+      astonishing how rapidly that sprained ankle recovered. It was
+      nearly nightfall, and we had eaten nothing since early morning,
+      so that we spent some time over our meal. Holmes was lost in
+      thought, and once or twice he walked over to the window and
+      stared earnestly out. It opened on to a squalid courtyard. In the
+      far corner was a smithy, where a grimy lad was at work. On the
+      other side were the stables. Holmes had sat down again after one
+      of these excursions, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair
+      with a loud exclamation.
+
+      “By heaven, Watson, I believe that I’ve got it!” he cried. “Yes,
+      yes, it must be so. Watson, do you remember seeing any cow-tracks
+      to-day?”
+
+      “Yes, several.”
+
+      “Where?”
+
+      “Well, everywhere. They were at the morass, and again on the
+      path, and again near where poor Heidegger met his death.”
+
+      “Exactly. Well, now, Watson, how many cows did you see on the
+      moor?”
+
+      “I don’t remember seeing any.”
+
+      “Strange, Watson, that we should see tracks all along our line,
+      but never a cow on the whole moor. Very strange, Watson, eh?”
+
+      “Yes, it is strange.”
+
+      “Now, Watson, make an effort, throw your mind back. Can you see
+      those tracks upon the path?”
+
+      “Yes, I can.”
+
+      “Can you recall that the tracks were sometimes like that,
+      Watson,”—he arranged a number of breadcrumbs in this fashion—: :
+      : : :—“and sometimes like this”—: . : . : . : .—“and occasionally
+      like this”—.・.・.・. “Can you remember that?”
+
+      “No, I cannot.”
+
+      “But I can. I could swear to it. However, we will go back at our
+      leisure and verify it. What a blind beetle I have been, not to
+      draw my conclusion.”
+
+      “And what is your conclusion?”
+
+      “Only that it is a remarkable cow which walks, canters, and
+      gallops. By George! Watson, it was no brain of a country publican
+      that thought out such a blind as that. The coast seems to be
+      clear, save for that lad in the smithy. Let us slip out and see
+      what we can see.”
+
+      There were two rough-haired, unkempt horses in the tumble-down
+      stable. Holmes raised the hind leg of one of them and laughed
+      aloud.
+
+      “Old shoes, but newly shod—old shoes, but new nails. This case
+      deserves to be a classic. Let us go across to the smithy.”
+
+      The lad continued his work without regarding us. I saw Holmes’s
+      eye darting to right and left among the litter of iron and wood
+      which was scattered about the floor. Suddenly, however, we heard
+      a step behind us, and there was the landlord, his heavy eyebrows
+      drawn over his savage eyes, his swarthy features convulsed with
+      passion. He held a short, metal-headed stick in his hand, and he
+      advanced in so menacing a fashion that I was right glad to feel
+      the revolver in my pocket.
+
+      “You infernal spies!” the man cried. “What are you doing there?”
+
+      “Why, Mr. Reuben Hayes,” said Holmes, coolly, “one might think
+      that you were afraid of our finding something out.”
+
+      The man mastered himself with a violent effort, and his grim
+      mouth loosened into a false laugh, which was more menacing than
+      his frown.
+
+      “You’re welcome to all you can find out in my smithy,” said he.
+      “But look here, mister, I don’t care for folk poking about my
+      place without my leave, so the sooner you pay your score and get
+      out of this the better I shall be pleased.”
+
+      “All right, Mr. Hayes, no harm meant,” said Holmes. “We have been
+      having a look at your horses, but I think I’ll walk, after all.
+      It’s not far, I believe.”
+
+      “Not more than two miles to the Hall gates. That’s the road to
+      the left.” He watched us with sullen eyes until we had left his
+      premises.
+
+      We did not go very far along the road, for Holmes stopped the
+      instant that the curve hid us from the landlord’s view.
+
+      “We were warm, as the children say, at that inn,” said he. “I
+      seem to grow colder every step that I take away from it. No, no,
+      I can’t possibly leave it.”
+
+      “I am convinced,” said I, “that this Reuben Hayes knows all about
+      it. A more self-evident villain I never saw.”
+
+      “Oh! he impressed you in that way, did he? There are the horses,
+      there is the smithy. Yes, it is an interesting place, this
+      Fighting Cock. I think we shall have another look at it in an
+      unobtrusive way.”
+
+      A long, sloping hillside, dotted with grey limestone boulders,
+      stretched behind us. We had turned off the road, and were making
+      our way up the hill, when, looking in the direction of
+      Holdernesse Hall, I saw a cyclist coming swiftly along.
+
+      “Get down, Watson!” cried Holmes, with a heavy hand upon my
+      shoulder. We had hardly sunk from view when the man flew past us
+      on the road. Amid a rolling cloud of dust, I caught a glimpse of
+      a pale, agitated face—a face with horror in every lineament, the
+      mouth open, the eyes staring wildly in front. It was like some
+      strange caricature of the dapper James Wilder whom we had seen
+      the night before.
+
+      “The Duke’s secretary!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson, let us see
+      what he does.”
+
+      We scrambled from rock to rock, until in a few moments we had
+      made our way to a point from which we could see the front door of
+      the inn. Wilder’s bicycle was leaning against the wall beside it.
+      No one was moving about the house, nor could we catch a glimpse
+      of any faces at the windows. Slowly the twilight crept down as
+      the sun sank behind the high towers of Holdernesse Hall. Then, in
+      the gloom, we saw the two side-lamps of a trap light up in the
+      stable-yard of the inn, and shortly afterwards heard the rattle
+      of hoofs, as it wheeled out into the road and tore off at a
+      furious pace in the direction of Chesterfield.
+
+      “What do you make of that, Watson?” Holmes whispered.
+
+      “It looks like a flight.”
+
+      “A single man in a dog-cart, so far as I could see. Well, it
+      certainly was not Mr. James Wilder, for there he is at the door.”
+
+      A red square of light had sprung out of the darkness. In the
+      middle of it was the black figure of the secretary, his head
+      advanced, peering out into the night. It was evident that he was
+      expecting someone. Then at last there were steps in the road, a
+      second figure was visible for an instant against the light, the
+      door shut, and all was black once more. Five minutes later a lamp
+      was lit in a room upon the first floor.
+
+      “It seems to be a curious class of custom that is done by the
+      Fighting Cock,” said Holmes.
+
+      “The bar is on the other side.”
+
+      “Quite so. These are what one may call the private guests. Now,
+      what in the world is Mr. James Wilder doing in that den at this
+      hour of night, and who is the companion who comes to meet him
+      there? Come, Watson, we must really take a risk and try to
+      investigate this a little more closely.”
+
+      Together we stole down to the road and crept across to the door
+      of the inn. The bicycle still leaned against the wall. Holmes
+      struck a match and held it to the back wheel, and I heard him
+      chuckle as the light fell upon a patched Dunlop tire. Up above us
+      was the lighted window.
+
+      “I must have a peep through that, Watson. If you bend your back
+      and support yourself upon the wall, I think that I can manage.”
+
+      An instant later, his feet were on my shoulders, but he was
+      hardly up before he was down again.
+
+      “Come, my friend,” said he, “our day’s work has been quite long
+      enough. I think that we have gathered all that we can. It’s a
+      long walk to the school, and the sooner we get started the
+      better.”
+
+      He hardly opened his lips during that weary trudge across the
+      moor, nor would he enter the school when he reached it, but went
+      on to Mackleton Station, whence he could send some telegrams.
+      Late at night I heard him consoling Dr. Huxtable, prostrated by
+      the tragedy of his master’s death, and later still he entered my
+      room as alert and vigorous as he had been when he started in the
+      morning. “All goes well, my friend,” said he. “I promise that
+      before to-morrow evening we shall have reached the solution of
+      the mystery.”
+
+      At eleven o’clock next morning my friend and I were walking up
+      the famous yew avenue of Holdernesse Hall. We were ushered
+      through the magnificent Elizabethan doorway and into his Grace’s
+      study. There we found Mr. James Wilder, demure and courtly, but
+      with some trace of that wild terror of the night before still
+      lurking in his furtive eyes and in his twitching features.
+
+      “You have come to see his Grace? I am sorry, but the fact is that
+      the Duke is far from well. He has been very much upset by the
+      tragic news. We received a telegram from Dr. Huxtable yesterday
+      afternoon, which told us of your discovery.”
+
+      “I must see the Duke, Mr. Wilder.”
+
+      “But he is in his room.”
+
+      “Then I must go to his room.”
+
+      “I believe he is in his bed.”
+
+      “I will see him there.”
+
+      Holmes’s cold and inexorable manner showed the secretary that it
+      was useless to argue with him.
+
+      “Very good, Mr. Holmes, I will tell him that you are here.”
+
+      After an hour’s delay, the great nobleman appeared. His face was
+      more cadaverous than ever, his shoulders had rounded, and he
+      seemed to me to be an altogether older man than he had been the
+      morning before. He greeted us with a stately courtesy and seated
+      himself at his desk, his red beard streaming down on the table.
+
+      “Well, Mr. Holmes?” said he.
+
+      But my friend’s eyes were fixed upon the secretary, who stood by
+      his master’s chair.
+
+      “I think, your Grace, that I could speak more freely in Mr.
+      Wilder’s absence.”
+
+      The man turned a shade paler and cast a malignant glance at
+      Holmes.
+
+      “If your Grace wishes——”
+
+      “Yes, yes, you had better go. Now, Mr. Holmes, what have you to
+      say?”
+
+      My friend waited until the door had closed behind the retreating
+      secretary.
+
+      “The fact is, your Grace,” said he, “that my colleague, Dr.
+      Watson, and myself had an assurance from Dr. Huxtable that a
+      reward had been offered in this case. I should like to have this
+      confirmed from your own lips.”
+
+      “Certainly, Mr. Holmes.”
+
+      “It amounted, if I am correctly informed, to five thousand pounds
+      to anyone who will tell you where your son is?”
+
+      “Exactly.”
+
+      “And another thousand to the man who will name the person or
+      persons who keep him in custody?”
+
+      “Exactly.”
+
+      “Under the latter heading is included, no doubt, not only those
+      who may have taken him away, but also those who conspire to keep
+      him in his present position?”
+
+      “Yes, yes,” cried the Duke, impatiently. “If you do your work
+      well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you will have no reason to complain of
+      niggardly treatment.”
+
+      My friend rubbed his thin hands together with an appearance of
+      avidity which was a surprise to me, who knew his frugal tastes.
+
+      “I fancy that I see your Grace’s check-book upon the table,” said
+      he. “I should be glad if you would make me out a check for six
+      thousand pounds. It would be as well, perhaps, for you to cross
+      it. The Capital and Counties Bank, Oxford Street branch are my
+      agents.”
+
+      His Grace sat very stern and upright in his chair and looked
+      stonily at my friend.
+
+      “Is this a joke, Mr. Holmes? It is hardly a subject for
+      pleasantry.”
+
+      “Not at all, your Grace. I was never more earnest in my life.”
+
+      “What do you mean, then?”
+
+      “I mean that I have earned the reward. I know where your son is,
+      and I know some, at least, of those who are holding him.”
+
+      The Duke’s beard had turned more aggressively red than ever
+      against his ghastly white face.
+
+      “Where is he?” he gasped.
+
+      “He is, or was last night, at the Fighting Cock Inn, about two
+      miles from your park gate.”
+
+      The Duke fell back in his chair.
+
+      “And whom do you accuse?”
+
+      Sherlock Holmes’s answer was an astounding one. He stepped
+      swiftly forward and touched the Duke upon the shoulder.
+
+      “I accuse _you_,” said he. “And now, your Grace, I’ll trouble you
+      for that check.”
+
+      Never shall I forget the Duke’s appearance as he sprang up and
+      clawed with his hands, like one who is sinking into an abyss.
+      Then, with an extraordinary effort of aristocratic self-command,
+      he sat down and sank his face in his hands. It was some minutes
+      before he spoke.
+
+      “How much do you know?” he asked at last, without raising his
+      head.
+
+      “I saw you together last night.”
+
+      “Does anyone else beside your friend know?”
+
+      “I have spoken to no one.”
+
+      The Duke took a pen in his quivering fingers and opened his
+      check-book.
+
+      “I shall be as good as my word, Mr. Holmes. I am about to write
+      your check, however unwelcome the information which you have
+      gained may be to me. When the offer was first made, I little
+      thought the turn which events might take. But you and your friend
+      are men of discretion, Mr. Holmes?”
+
+      “I hardly understand your Grace.”
+
+      “I must put it plainly, Mr. Holmes. If only you two know of this
+      incident, there is no reason why it should go any farther. I
+      think twelve thousand pounds is the sum that I owe you, is it
+      not?”
+
+      But Holmes smiled and shook his head.
+
+      “I fear, your Grace, that matters can hardly be arranged so
+      easily. There is the death of this schoolmaster to be accounted
+      for.”
+
+      “But James knew nothing of that. You cannot hold him responsible
+      for that. It was the work of this brutal ruffian whom he had the
+      misfortune to employ.”
+
+      “I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a
+      crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring
+      from it.”
+
+      “Morally, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right. But surely not in
+      the eyes of the law. A man cannot be condemned for a murder at
+      which he was not present, and which he loathes and abhors as much
+      as you do. The instant that he heard of it he made a complete
+      confession to me, so filled was he with horror and remorse. He
+      lost not an hour in breaking entirely with the murderer. Oh, Mr.
+      Holmes, you must save him—you must save him! I tell you that you
+      must save him!” The Duke had dropped the last attempt at
+      self-command, and was pacing the room with a convulsed face and
+      with his clenched hands raving in the air. At last he mastered
+      himself and sat down once more at his desk. “I appreciate your
+      conduct in coming here before you spoke to anyone else,” said he.
+      “At least, we may take counsel how far we can minimize this
+      hideous scandal.”
+
+      “Exactly,” said Holmes. “I think, your Grace, that this can only
+      be done by absolute frankness between us. I am disposed to help
+      your Grace to the best of my ability, but, in order to do so, I
+      must understand to the last detail how the matter stands. I
+      realize that your words applied to Mr. James Wilder, and that he
+      is not the murderer.”
+
+      “No, the murderer has escaped.”
+
+      Sherlock Holmes smiled demurely.
+
+      “Your Grace can hardly have heard of any small reputation which I
+      possess, or you would not imagine that it is so easy to escape
+      me. Mr. Reuben Hayes was arrested at Chesterfield, on my
+      information, at eleven o’clock last night. I had a telegram from
+      the head of the local police before I left the school this
+      morning.”
+
+      The Duke leaned back in his chair and stared with amazement at my
+      friend.
+
+      “You seem to have powers that are hardly human,” said he. “So
+      Reuben Hayes is taken? I am right glad to hear it, if it will not
+      react upon the fate of James.”
+
+      “Your secretary?”
+
+      “No, sir, my son.”
+
+      It was Holmes’s turn to look astonished.
+
+      “I confess that this is entirely new to me, your Grace. I must
+      beg you to be more explicit.”
+
+      “I will conceal nothing from you. I agree with you that complete
+      frankness, however painful it may be to me, is the best policy in
+      this desperate situation to which James’s folly and jealousy have
+      reduced us. When I was a very young man, Mr. Holmes, I loved with
+      such a love as comes only once in a lifetime. I offered the lady
+      marriage, but she refused it on the grounds that such a match
+      might mar my career. Had she lived, I would certainly never have
+      married anyone else. She died, and left this one child, whom for
+      her sake I have cherished and cared for. I could not acknowledge
+      the paternity to the world, but I gave him the best of
+      educations, and since he came to manhood I have kept him near my
+      person. He surmised my secret, and has presumed ever since upon
+      the claim which he has upon me, and upon his power of provoking a
+      scandal which would be abhorrent to me. His presence had
+      something to do with the unhappy issue of my marriage. Above all,
+      he hated my young legitimate heir from the first with a
+      persistent hatred. You may well ask me why, under these
+      circumstances, I still kept James under my roof. I answer that it
+      was because I could see his mother’s face in his, and that for
+      her dear sake there was no end to my long-suffering. All her
+      pretty ways too—there was not one of them which he could not
+      suggest and bring back to my memory. I _could_ not send him away.
+      But I feared so much lest he should do Arthur—that is, Lord
+      Saltire—a mischief, that I dispatched him for safety to Dr.
+      Huxtable’s school.
+
+      “James came into contact with this fellow Hayes, because the man
+      was a tenant of mine, and James acted as agent. The fellow was a
+      rascal from the beginning, but, in some extraordinary way, James
+      became intimate with him. He had always a taste for low company.
+      When James determined to kidnap Lord Saltire, it was of this
+      man’s service that he availed himself. You remember that I wrote
+      to Arthur upon that last day. Well, James opened the letter and
+      inserted a note asking Arthur to meet him in a little wood called
+      the Ragged Shaw, which is near to the school. He used the
+      Duchess’s name, and in that way got the boy to come. That evening
+      James bicycled over—I am telling you what he has himself
+      confessed to me—and he told Arthur, whom he met in the wood, that
+      his mother longed to see him, that she was awaiting him on the
+      moor, and that if he would come back into the wood at midnight he
+      would find a man with a horse, who would take him to her. Poor
+      Arthur fell into the trap. He came to the appointment, and found
+      this fellow Hayes with a led pony. Arthur mounted, and they set
+      off together. It appears—though this James only heard
+      yesterday—that they were pursued, that Hayes struck the pursuer
+      with his stick, and that the man died of his injuries. Hayes
+      brought Arthur to his public-house, the Fighting Cock, where he
+      was confined in an upper room, under the care of Mrs. Hayes, who
+      is a kindly woman, but entirely under the control of her brutal
+      husband.
+
+      “Well, Mr. Holmes, that was the state of affairs when I first saw
+      you two days ago. I had no more idea of the truth than you. You
+      will ask me what was James’s motive in doing such a deed. I
+      answer that there was a great deal which was unreasoning and
+      fanatical in the hatred which he bore my heir. In his view he
+      should himself have been heir of all my estates, and he deeply
+      resented those social laws which made it impossible. At the same
+      time, he had a definite motive also. He was eager that I should
+      break the entail, and he was of opinion that it lay in my power
+      to do so. He intended to make a bargain with me—to restore Arthur
+      if I would break the entail, and so make it possible for the
+      estate to be left to him by will. He knew well that I should
+      never willingly invoke the aid of the police against him. I say
+      that he would have proposed such a bargain to me, but he did not
+      actually do so, for events moved too quickly for him, and he had
+      not time to put his plans into practice.
+
+      “What brought all his wicked scheme to wreck was your discovery
+      of this man Heidegger’s dead body. James was seized with horror
+      at the news. It came to us yesterday, as we sat together in this
+      study. Dr. Huxtable had sent a telegram. James was so overwhelmed
+      with grief and agitation that my suspicions, which had never been
+      entirely absent, rose instantly to a certainty, and I taxed him
+      with the deed. He made a complete voluntary confession. Then he
+      implored me to keep his secret for three days longer, so as to
+      give his wretched accomplice a chance of saving his guilty life.
+      I yielded—as I have always yielded—to his prayers, and instantly
+      James hurried off to the Fighting Cock to warn Hayes and give him
+      the means of flight. I could not go there by daylight without
+      provoking comment, but as soon as night fell I hurried off to see
+      my dear Arthur. I found him safe and well, but horrified beyond
+      expression by the dreadful deed he had witnessed. In deference to
+      my promise, and much against my will, I consented to leave him
+      there for three days, under the charge of Mrs. Hayes, since it
+      was evident that it was impossible to inform the police where he
+      was without telling them also who was the murderer, and I could
+      not see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my
+      unfortunate James. You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I
+      have taken you at your word, for I have now told you everything
+      without an attempt at circumlocution or concealment. Do you in
+      turn be as frank with me.”
+
+      “I will,” said Holmes. “In the first place, your Grace, I am
+      bound to tell you that you have placed yourself in a most serious
+      position in the eyes of the law. You have condoned a felony, and
+      you have aided the escape of a murderer, for I cannot doubt that
+      any money which was taken by James Wilder to aid his accomplice
+      in his flight came from your Grace’s purse.”
+
+      The Duke bowed his assent.
+
+      “This is, indeed, a most serious matter. Even more culpable in my
+      opinion, your Grace, is your attitude towards your younger son.
+      You leave him in this den for three days.”
+
+      “Under solemn promises——”
+
+      “What are promises to such people as these? You have no guarantee
+      that he will not be spirited away again. To humour your guilty
+      elder son, you have exposed your innocent younger son to imminent
+      and unnecessary danger. It was a most unjustifiable action.”
+
+      The proud lord of Holdernesse was not accustomed to be so rated
+      in his own ducal hall. The blood flushed into his high forehead,
+      but his conscience held him dumb.
+
+      “I will help you, but on one condition only. It is that you ring
+      for the footman and let me give such orders as I like.”
+
+      Without a word, the Duke pressed the electric bell. A servant
+      entered.
+
+      “You will be glad to hear,” said Holmes, “that your young master
+      is found. It is the Duke’s desire that the carriage shall go at
+      once to the Fighting Cock Inn to bring Lord Saltire home.
+
+      “Now,” said Holmes, when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared,
+      “having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with
+      the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no
+      reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should
+      disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, I say nothing. The gallows
+      awaits him, and I would do nothing to save him from it. What he
+      will divulge I cannot tell, but I have no doubt that your Grace
+      could make him understand that it is to his interest to be
+      silent. From the police point of view he will have kidnapped the
+      boy for the purpose of ransom. If they do not themselves find it
+      out, I see no reason why I should prompt them to take a broader
+      point of view. I would warn your Grace, however, that the
+      continued presence of Mr. James Wilder in your household can only
+      lead to misfortune.”
+
+      “I understand that, Mr. Holmes, and it is already settled that he
+      shall leave me forever, and go to seek his fortune in Australia.”
+
+      “In that case, your Grace, since you have yourself stated that
+      any unhappiness in your married life was caused by his presence, I
+      would suggest that you make such amends as you can to the
+      Duchess, and that you try to resume those relations which have
+      been so unhappily interrupted.”
+
+      “That also I have arranged, Mr. Holmes. I wrote to the Duchess
+      this morning.”
+
+      “In that case,” said Holmes, rising, “I think that my friend and
+      I can congratulate ourselves upon several most happy results from
+      our little visit to the North. There is one other small point
+      upon which I desire some light. This fellow Hayes had shod his
+      horses with shoes which counterfeited the tracks of cows. Was it
+      from Mr. Wilder that he learned so extraordinary a device?”
+
+      The Duke stood in thought for a moment, with a look of intense
+      surprise on his face. Then he opened a door and showed us into a
+      large room furnished as a museum. He led the way to a glass case
+      in a corner, and pointed to the inscription.
+
+      “These shoes,” it ran, “were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse
+      Hall. They are for the use of horses, but they are shaped below
+      with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the
+      track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the
+      marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages.”
+
+      Holmes opened the case, and moistening his finger he passed it
+      along the shoe. A thin film of recent mud was left upon his skin.
+
+      “Thank you,” said he, as he replaced the glass. “It is the second
+      most interesting object that I have seen in the North.”
+
+      “And the first?”
+
+      Holmes folded up his check and placed it carefully in his
+      notebook. “I am a poor man,” said he, as he patted it
+      affectionately, and thrust it into the depths of his inner
+      pocket.
+
+
+
+
+
+",The Adventure of the Priory School,Arthur Conan Doyle,20,['James Wilder']
+"[Cover Illustration]
+────────────────────────────────
+POPULAR NOVELS
+BY
+EDGAR WALLACE
+PUBLISHED BY
+WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
+_In various editions_
+———
+SANDERS OF THE RIVER
+BONES
+BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
+BONES IN LONDON
+THE KEEPERS OF THE KING’S PEACE
+THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE
+THE DUKE IN THE SUBURBS
+THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER
+DOWN UNDER DONOVAN
+PRIVATE SELBY
+THE ADMIRABLE CARFEW
+THE MAN WHO BOUGHT LONDON
+THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
+THE SECRET HOUSE
+KATE, PLUS TEN
+LIEUTENANT BONES
+THE GREEN RUST
+THE ADVENTURES OF HEINE
+JACK O’ JUDGMENT
+THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
+THE NINE BEARS
+THE BOOK OF ALL POWER
+MR. JUSTICE MAXELL
+THE BOOKS OF BART
+THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
+CHICK
+SANDI THE KING-MAKER
+THOSE FOLK OF BULBORO’
+THE THREE OAK MYSTERY
+THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG
+BLUE HAND
+────────────────────────────────
+THE  FELLOWSHIP
+OF  THE  FROG
+BY
+EDGAR  WALLACE
+WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
+LONDON  AND  MELBOURNE
+1926
+Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
+CONTENTS
+CHAP.                                           PAGE
+FOREWORD: THE FROGS- - - - - - - - - - -     7
+I AT MAYTREE COTTAGE- - - - - - - - - - -     11
+II A TALK ABOUT FROGS- - - - - - - - - - -     17
+III THE FROG- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -     20
+IV ELK- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    25
+V MR. MAITLAND GOES HOME- - - - - - - - -     31
+VI MR. MAITLAND GOES SHOPPING- - - - - - -     41
+VII A CALL ON MR. MAITLAND- - - - - - - - -     49
+VIII THE OFFENSIVE RAY- - - - - - - - - - - -    58
+IX THE MAN WHO WAS WRECKED- - - - - - - - -    67
+X ON HARLEY TERRACE- - - - - - - - - - - -    72
+XI MR. BROAD EXPLAINS- - - - - - - - - - -     79
+XII THE EMBELLISHMENT OF MR. MAITLAND- - - -    83
+XIII A RAID ON ELDOR STREET- - - - - - - - -     91
+XIV “ALL BULLS HEAR!”- - - - - - - - - - - -    99
+XV THE MORNING AFTER- - - - - - - - - - - -   103
+XVI RAY LEARNS THE TRUTH- - - - - - - - - -    107
+XVII THE COMING OF MILLS- - - - - - - - - - -   114
+XVIII THE BROADCAST- - - - - - - - - - - - - -   118
+XIX IN ELSHAM WOOD- - - - - - - - - - - - -    127
+XX HAGN- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    133
+XXI MR. JOHNSON’S VISITOR- - - - - - - - - -   143
+XXII THE INQUIRY- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   148
+XXIII A MEETING- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   154
+XXIV WHY MAITLAND CAME- - - - - - - - - - - -   158
+XXV IN REGARD TO SAUL MORRIS- - - - - - - -    166
+XXVI PROMOTION FOR BALDER- - - - - - - - - -    172
+XXVII MR. BROAD IS INTERESTING- - - - - - - -    184
+XXVIII MURDER- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    190
+XXIX THE FOOTMAN- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   196
+XXX THE TRAMPS- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    204
+XXXI THE CHEMICAL CORPORATION- - - - - - - -    215
+XXXII IN GLOUCESTER PRISON- - - - - - - - - -    220
+XXXIII THE FROG OF THE NIGHT- - - - - - - - - -   223
+XXXIV THE PHOTO-PLAY- - - - - - - - - - - - -    233
+XXXV GETTING THROUGH- - - - - - - - - - - - -   242
+XXXVI THE POWER CABLE- - - - - - - - - - - - -   247
+XXXVII THE GET-AWAY- - - - - - - - - - - - - -    254
+XXXVIII THE MYSTERY MAN- - - - - - - - - - - - -   258
+XXXIX THE AWAKENING- - - - - - - - - - - - - -   261
+XL FROG- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    266
+XLI IN QUARRY HOUSE- - - - - - - - - - - - -   273
+XLII JOSHUA BROAD EXPLAINS- - - - - - - - - -   279
+FOREWORD
+THE FROGS
+IT was of interest to those who study the psychology of the mass that,
+until the prosperous but otherwise insignificant James G. Bliss became
+the object of their attention, the doings and growth of the Frogs were
+almost unnoticed. There were strong references in some of the country
+newspapers to the lawless character of the association; one Sunday
+journal had an amusing article headed
+“TRAMPS’ TRADE UNION TAKES FROG FOR
+SYMBOL OF MYSTIC ORDER”
+and gave a humorous and quite fanciful extract from its rules and
+ritual. The average man made casual references:
+“I say, have you seen this story about the tramps’ Union—every member a
+walking delegate? . . .”
+There was a more serious leading article on the growth of trade
+unionism, in which the Frogs were cited, and although from time to time
+came accounts of mysterious outrages which had been put to the discredit
+of the Frogs, the generality of citizens regarded the society, order, or
+whatever it was, as something benevolent in its intentions and
+necessarily eccentric in its constitution, and, believing this, were in
+their turn benevolently tolerant.
+In some such manner as the mass may learn with mild interest of a
+distant outbreak of epidemic disease, which slays its few, and wake one
+morning to find the sinister malady tapping at their front doors, so did
+the world become alive and alarmed at the terror-growth which suddenly
+loomed from the mists.
+James G. Bliss was a hardware merchant, and a man well known on
+exchange, where he augmented the steady profits of the Bliss General
+Hardware Corporation with occasional windfalls from legitimate
+speculation. A somewhat pompous and, in argument, aggressive person, he
+had the advantage which mediocrity, blended with a certain expansive
+generosity, gives to a man, in that he had no enemies; and since his
+generosity was run on sane business principles, it could not even be
+said of him, as is so often said of others, that his worst enemy was
+himself. He held, and still holds, the bulk of the stock in the B.G.H.
+Corporation—a fact which should be noted because it was a practice of
+Mr. Bliss to manipulate from time to time the price of his shares by
+judicious operations.
+It was at a time coincident with the little boom in industrials which
+brought Bliss Hardware stock at a jump from 12.50 to 23.75, that the
+strange happening occurred which focussed for the moment all eyes upon
+the Frogs.
+Mr. Bliss has a country place at Long Beach, Hampshire. It is referred
+to as “The Hut,” but is the sort of hut that King Solomon might have
+built for the Queen of Sheba, had that adventurous man been sufficiently
+well acquainted with modern plumbing, the newest systems of heating and
+lighting, and the exigent requirements of up-to-date chauffeurs. In
+these respects Mr. Bliss was wiser than Solomon.
+He had returned to his country home after a strenuous day in the City,
+and was walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. He was (and
+is) married, but his wife and two daughters were spending the spring in
+Paris—a wise course, since the spring is the only season when Paris has
+the slightest pretensions to being a beautiful city.
+He had come from his kennels, and was seen walking across the home park
+toward a covert which bordered his property. Hearing a scream, his
+kennel man and a groom ran toward the wood, to discover Bliss lying on
+the ground unconscious, his face and shoulders covered with blood. He
+had been struck down by some heavy weapon; there were a slight fracture
+of the parietal bone and several very ugly scalp wounds.
+For three weeks this unfortunate man hovered between life and death,
+unconscious except at intervals, and unable during his lucid moments to
+throw any light on, or make any coherent statement concerning, the
+assault, except to murmur, “Frog . . . frog . . . left arm . . . frog.”
+It was the first of many similar outrages, seemingly purposeless and
+wanton, in no case to be connected with robbery, and invariably (except
+once) committed upon people who occupied fairly unimportant positions in
+the social hierarchy.
+The Frogs advanced instantly to a first-class topic. The disease was
+found to be widespread, and men who had read, light-heartedly, of minor
+victimizations, began to bolt their own doors and carry lethal weapons
+when they went abroad at nights.
+And they were wise, for there was a force in being that had been born in
+fear and had matured in obscurity (to the wonder of its creator) so that
+it wielded the tyrannical power of governments.
+In the centre of many ramifications sat the Frog, drunk with authority,
+merciless, terrible. One who lived two lives and took full pleasure from
+both, and all the time nursing the terror that Saul Morris had inspired
+one foggy night in London, when the grimy streets were filled with armed
+policemen looking for the man who cleaned the strong-room of the S.S.
+_Mantania_ of three million pounds between the port of Southampton and
+the port of Cherbourg.
+THE  FELLOWSHIP  OF  THE  FROG
+CHAPTER I
+AT MAYTREE COTTAGE
+A DRY radiator coincided with a burst tyre. The second coincidence was
+the proximity of Maytree Cottage on the Horsham Road. The cottage was
+larger than most, with a timbered front and a thatched roof. Standing at
+the gate, Richard Gordon stopped to admire. The house dated back to the
+days of Elizabeth, but his interest and admiration were not those of the
+antiquary.
+Nor, though he loved flowers, of the horticulturist, though the broad
+garden was a patchwork of colour and the fragrance of cabbage roses came
+to delight his senses. Nor was it the air of comfort and cleanliness
+that pervaded the place, the scrubbed red-brick pathway that led to the
+door, the spotless curtains behind leaded panes.
+It was the girl, in the red-lined basket chair, that arrested his gaze.
+She sat on a little lawn in the shade of a mulberry tree, with her
+shapely young limbs stiffly extended, a book in her hand, a large box of
+chocolates by her side. Her hair, the colour of old gold, an old gold
+that held life and sheen; a flawless complexion, and, when she turned
+her head in his direction, a pair of grave, questioning eyes, deeper
+than grey, yet greyer than blue. . . .
+She drew up her feet hurriedly and rose.
+“I’m so sorry to disturb you,”—Dick, hat in hand, smiled his
+apology—“but I want water for my poor little Lizzie. She’s developed a
+prodigious thirst.”
+She frowned for a second, and then laughed.
+“Lizzie—you mean a car? If you’ll come to the back of the cottage I’ll
+show you where the well is.”
+He followed, wondering who she was. The tiny hint of patronage in her
+tone he understood. It was the tone of matured girlhood addressing a boy
+of her own age. Dick, who was thirty and looked eighteen, with his
+smooth, boyish face, had been greeted in that “little boy” tone before,
+and was inwardly amused.
+“Here is the bucket and that is the well,” she pointed. “I would send a
+maid to help you, only we haven’t a maid, and never had a maid, and I
+don’t think ever shall have a maid!”
+“Then some maid has missed a very good job,” said Dick, “for this garden
+is delightful.”
+She neither agreed nor dissented. Perhaps she regretted the familiarity
+she had shown. She conveyed to him an impression of aloofness, as she
+watched the process of filling the buckets, and when he carried them to
+the car on the road outside, she followed.
+“I thought it was a—a—what did you call it—Lizzie?”
+“She is Lizzie to me,” said Dick stoutly as he filled the radiator of
+the big Rolls, “and she will never be anything else. There are people
+who think she should be called ‘Diana,’ but those high-flown names never
+had any attraction for me. She is Liz—and will always be Liz.”
+She walked round the machine, examining it curiously.
+“Aren’t you afraid to be driving a big car like that?” she asked. “I
+should be scared to death. It is so tremendous and . . . and
+unmanageable.”
+Dick paused with a bucket in hand.
+“Fear,” he boasted, “is a word which I have expunged from the bright
+lexicon of my youth.”
+For a second puzzled, she began to laugh softly.
+“Did you come by way of Welford?” she asked.
+He nodded.
+“I wonder if you saw my father on the road?”
+“I saw nobody on the road except a sour-looking gentleman of middle age
+who was breaking the Sabbath by carrying a large brown box on his back.”
+“Where did you pass him?” she asked, interested.
+“Two miles away—less than that.” And then, a doubt intruding: “I hope
+that I wasn’t describing your parent?”
+“It sounds rather like him,” she said without annoyance. “Daddy is a
+naturalist photographer. He takes moving pictures of birds and
+things—he is an amateur, of course.”
+“Of course,” agreed Dick.
+He brought the buckets back to where he had found them and lingered.
+Searching for an excuse, he found it in the garden. How far he might
+have exploited this subject is a matter for conjecture. Interruption
+came in the shape of a young man who emerged from the front door of the
+cottage. He was tall and athletic, good-looking. . . . Dick put his age
+at twenty.
+“Hello, Ella! Father back?” he began, and then saw the visitor.
+“This is my brother,” said the girl, and Dick Gordon nodded. He was
+conscious that this free-and-easy method of getting acquainted was due
+largely, if not entirely, to his youthful appearance. To be treated as
+an inconsiderable boy had its advantages. And so it appeared.
+“I was telling him that boys ought not to be allowed to drive big cars,”
+she said. “You remember the awful smash there was at the Shoreham
+cross-roads?”
+Ray Bennett chuckled.
+“This is all part of a conspiracy to keep me from getting a
+motor-bicycle. Father thinks I’ll kill somebody, and Ella thinks I’ll
+kill myself.”
+Perhaps there was something in Dick Gordon’s quick smile that warned the
+girl that she had been premature in her appraisement of his age, for
+suddenly, almost abruptly, she nodded an emphatic dismissal and turned
+away. Dick was at the gate when a further respite arrived. It was the
+man he had passed on the road. Tall, loose-framed, grey and gaunt of
+face, he regarded the stranger with suspicion in his deep-set eyes.
+“Good morning,” he said curtly. “Car broken down?”
+“No, thank you. I ran out of water, and Miss—er——”
+“Bennett,” said the man. “She gave you the water, eh? Well, good
+morning.”
+He stood aside to let Gordon pass, but Dick opened the gate and waited
+till the owner of Maytree Cottage had entered.
+“My name is Gordon,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ella
+had turned back and stood with her brother within earshot. “I am greatly
+obliged to you for your kindness.”
+The old man, with a nod, went on carrying his heavy burden into the
+house, and Dick in desperation turned to the girl.
+“You are wrong when you think this is a difficult car to drive—won’t
+you experiment? Or perhaps your brother?”
+The girl hesitated, but not so young Bennett.
+“I’d like to try,” he said eagerly. “I’ve never handled a big machine.”
+That he could handle one if the opportunity came, he showed. They
+watched the car gliding round the corner, the girl with a little frown
+gathering between her eyes, Dick Gordon oblivious to everything except
+that he had snatched a few minutes’ closer association with the girl. He
+was behaving absurdly, he told himself. He, a public official, an
+experienced lawyer, was carrying on like an irresponsible, love-smitten
+youth of nineteen. The girl’s words emphasized his folly.
+“I wish you hadn’t let Ray drive,” she said. “It doesn’t help a boy who
+is always wanting something better, to put him in charge of a beautiful
+car . . . perhaps you don’t understand me. Ray is very ambitious and
+dreams in millions. A thing like this unsettles him.”
+The older man came out at that moment, a black pipe between his teeth,
+and, seeing the two at the gate, a cloud passed over his face.
+“Let him drive your car, have you?” he said grimly. “I wish you
+hadn’t—it was very kind of you, Mr. Gordon, but in Ray’s case a
+mistaken kindness.”
+“I’m very sorry,” said the penitent Dick. “Here he comes!”
+The big car spun toward them and halted before the gate.
+“She’s a beauty!”
+Ray Bennett jumped out and looked at the machine with admiration and
+regret.
+“My word, if she were mine!”
+“She isn’t,” snapped the old man, and then, as though regretting his
+petulance: “Some day perhaps you’ll own a fleet, Ray—are you going to
+London, Mr. Gordon?”
+Dick nodded.
+“Maybe you wouldn’t care to stop and eat a very frugal meal with us?”
+asked the elder Bennett, to his surprise and joy. “And you’ll be able to
+tell this foolish son of mine that owning a big car isn’t all
+joy-riding.”
+Dick’s first impression was of the girl’s astonishment. Apparently he
+was unusually honoured, and this was confirmed after John Bennett had
+left them.
+“You’re the first boy that has ever been asked to dinner,” she said when
+they were alone. “Isn’t he, Ray?”
+Ray smiled.
+“Dad doesn’t go in for the social life, and that’s a fact,” he said. “I
+asked him to have Philo Johnson down for a week-end, and he killed the
+idea before it was born. And the old philosopher is a good fellow and
+the boss’s confidential secretary. You’ve heard of Maitlands
+Consolidated, I suppose?”
+Dick nodded. The marble palace on the Strand Embankment in which the
+fabulously rich Mr. Maitland operated, was one of the show buildings of
+London.
+“I’m in his office—exchange clerk,” said the young man, “and Philo
+could do a whole lot for me if dad would pull out an invitation. As it
+is, I seem doomed to be a clerk for the rest of my life.”
+The white hand of the girl touched his lips.
+“You’ll be rich some day, Ray dear, and it is foolish to blame daddy.”
+The young man growled something under the hand, and then laughed a
+little bitterly.
+“Dad has tried every get-rich-quick scheme that the mind and ingenuity
+of man——”
+“And why?”
+The voice was harsh, tremulous with anger. None of them had noticed the
+reappearance of John Bennett.
+“You’re doing work you don’t like. My God! What of me? I’ve been trying
+for twenty years to get out. I’ve tried every silly scheme—that’s true.
+But it was for you——”
+He stopped abruptly at the sight of Gordon’s embarrassment.
+“I invited you to dinner, and I’m pulling out the family skeleton,” he
+said with rough good-humour.
+He took Dick’s arm and led him down the garden path between the serried
+ranks of rose bushes.
+“I don’t know why I asked you to stay, young man,” he said. “An impulse,
+I suppose . . . maybe a bad conscience. I don’t give these young people
+all the company they ought to have at home, and I’m not much of a
+companion for them. It’s too bad that you should be the witness of the
+first family jar we’ve had for years.”
+His voice and manner were those of an educated man. Dick wondered what
+occupation he followed, and why it should be so particularly obnoxious
+that he should be seeking some escape.
+The girl was quiet throughout the meal. She sat at Dick’s left hand and
+she spoke very seldom. Stealing an occasional glance at her, he thought
+she looked preoccupied and troubled, and blamed his presence as the
+cause.
+Apparently no servant was kept at the cottage. She did the waiting
+herself, and she had replaced the plates when the old man asked:
+“I shouldn’t think you were as young as you look, Mr. Gordon—what do
+you do for a living?”
+“I’m quite old,” smiled Dick. “Thirty-one.”
+“Thirty-one?” gasped Ella, going red. “And I’ve been talking to you as
+though you were a child!”
+“Think of me as a child at heart,” he said gravely. “As to my
+occupation—I’m a persecutor of thieves and murderers and bad characters
+generally. My name is Richard Gordon——”
+The knife fell with a clatter from John Bennett’s hand and his face went
+white.
+“Gordon—Richard Gordon?” he said hollowly.
+For a second their eyes met, the clear blue and the faded blue.
+“Yes—I am the Assistant Director of Prosecutions,” said Gordon quietly.
+“And I have an idea that you and I have met before.”
+The pale eyes did not waver. John Bennett’s face was a mask.
+“Not professionally, I hope,” he said, and there was a challenge in his
+voice.
+Dick laughed again as at the absurdity of the question.
+“Not professionally,” he said with mock gravity.
+On his way back to London that night his memory worked overtime, but he
+failed to place John Bennett of Horsham.
+CHAPTER II
+A TALK ABOUT FROGS
+MAITLANDS Consolidated had grown from one small office to its present
+palatial proportions in a comparatively short space of time. Maitland
+was a man advanced in years, patriarchal in appearance, sparing of
+speech. He had arrived in London unheralded, and had arrived, in the
+less accurate sense of the word, before London was aware of his
+existence.
+Dick Gordon saw the speculator for the first time as he was waiting in
+the marble-walled vestibule. A man of middle height, bearded to his
+waist; his eyes almost hidden under heavy white brows; stout and
+laborious of gait, he came slowly through the outer office, where a
+score of clerks sat working under their green-shaded lamps, and, looking
+neither to the right nor left, walked into the elevator and was lost to
+view.
+“That is the old man: have you seen him before?” asked Ray Bennett, who
+had come out to meet the caller a second before. “He’s a venerable old
+cuss, but as tight as a soundproof door. You couldn’t pry money from
+him, not if you used dynamite! He pays Philo a salary that the average
+secretary wouldn’t look at, and if Philo wasn’t such an easygoing devil,
+he’d have left years ago.”
+Dick Gordon was feeling a little uncomfortable. His presence at
+Maitlands was freakish, his excuse for calling as feeble as any weak
+brain could conceive. If he had spoken the truth to the flattered young
+man on whom he called in business hours, he would have said: “I have
+idiotically fallen in love with your sister. I am not especially
+interested in you, but I regard you as a line that will lead me to
+another meeting, therefore I have made my being in the neighbourhood an
+excuse for calling. And because of this insane love I have for your
+sister, I am willing to meet even Philo, who will surely bore me.”
+Instead he said:
+“You are a friend of Philo—why do you call him that?”
+“Because he’s a philosophical old horse—his other name is Philip,” said
+the other with a twinkle in his eye. “Everybody is a friend of
+Philo’s—he’s the kind of man that makes friendship easy.”
+The elevator door opened at that moment and a man came out.
+Instinctively Dick Gordon knew that this bald and middle-aged man with
+the good-humoured face was the subject of their discussion. His round,
+fat face creased in a smile as he recognized Ray, and after he had
+handed a bundle of documents to one of the clerks, he came over to where
+they were standing.
+“Meet Mr. Gordon,” said Ray. “This is my friend Johnson.”
+Philo grasped the extended hand warmly.
+“Warm” was a word which had a special significance in relation to Mr.
+Johnson. He seemed to radiate a warming and quickening influence. Even
+Dick Gordon, who was not too ready to respond, came under the immediate
+influence of his geniality.
+“You’re Mr. Gordon of the Public Prosecution Department—Ray was telling
+me,” he said. “I should like you to come one day and prosecute old man
+Maitland! He is certainly the most prosecutable gentleman I’ve met for
+years!”
+The jest tickled Mr. Johnson. He was, thought Dick, inclined to laugh at
+himself.
+“I’ve got to get back: he’s in a tantrum this morning. Anyone would
+think the Frogs were after him.”
+Philo Johnson, with a cheery nod, hurried back to the lift. Was it
+imagination on Dick’s part? He could have sworn the face of Ray Bennett
+was a deeper shade of red, and that there was a look of anxiety in his
+eyes.
+“It’s very good of you to keep your promise and call . . . yes, I’ll be
+glad to lunch with you, Gordon. And my sister will also, I’m sure. She
+is often in town.”
+His adieux were hurried and somewhat confused. Dick Gordon went out into
+the street puzzled. Of one thing he was certain: that behind the young
+man’s distress lay that joking reference to the Frogs.
+When he returned to his office, still sore with himself that he had
+acted rather like a moon-calf or a farm hand making his awkward advances
+to the village belle, he found a troubled-looking chief of police
+waiting for him, and at the sight of him Dick’s eyes narrowed.
+“Well?” he asked. “What of Genter?”
+The police chief made a grimace like one who was swallowing an
+unpleasant potion.
+“They slipped me,” he said. “The Frog arrived in a car—I wasn’t
+prepared for that. Genter got in, and they were gone before I realized
+what had happened. Not that I’m worried. Genter has a gun, and he’s a
+pretty tough fellow in a rough house.”
+Dick Gordon stared at and through the man, and then:
+“I think you should have been prepared for the car,” he said. “If
+Genter’s message was well founded, and he is on the track of the Frog,
+you should have expected a car. Sit down, Wellingdale.”
+The grey-haired man obeyed.
+“I’m not excusing myself,” he growled. “The Frogs have got me rattled. I
+treated them as a joke once.”
+“Maybe we’d be wiser if we treated them as a joke now,” suggested Dick,
+biting off the end of a cigar. “They may be nothing but a foolish secret
+society. Even tramps are entitled to their lodges and pass-words, grips
+and signs.”
+Wellingdale shook his head.
+“You can’t get away from the record of the past seven years,” he said.
+“It isn’t the fact that every other bad road-criminal we pull in has the
+frog tattooed on his wrist. That might be sheer imitation—and, in any
+case, all crooks of low mentality have tattoo marks. But in that seven
+years we’ve had a series of very unpleasant crimes. First there was the
+attack upon the _chargé d’affaires_ of the United States
+Embassy—bludgeoned to sleep in Hyde Park. Then there was the case of
+the President of the Northern Trading Company—clubbed as he was
+stepping out of his car in Park Lane. Then the big fire which destroyed
+the Mersey Rubber Stores, where four million pounds’ worth of raw rubber
+went up in smoke. Obviously the work of a dozen fire bugs, for the
+stores consist of six big warehouses and each was fired simultaneously
+and in two places. And the Frogs were in it. We caught two of the men
+for the Rubber job; they were both ‘Frogs’ and bore the totem of the
+tribe—they were both ex-convicts, and one of them admitted that he had
+had instructions to carry out the job, but took back his words next day.
+I never saw a man more scared than he was. And I can’t blame him. If
+half that is said about the Frog is true, his admission cost him
+something. There it is, Mr. Gordon. I can give you a dozen cases. Genter
+has been two years on their track. He has been tramping the country,
+sleeping under hedges, hogging in with all sorts of tramps, stealing
+rides with them and thieving with them; and when he wrote me and said he
+had got into touch with the organization and expected to be initiated, I
+thought we were near to getting them. I’ve had Genter shadowed since he
+struck town. I’m sick about this morning.”
+Dick Gordon opened a drawer of his desk, took out a leather folder and
+turned the leaves of its contents. They consisted of pages of
+photographs of men’s wrists. He studied them carefully, as though he
+were looking at them for the first time, though, in truth, he had
+examined these records of captured men almost every day for years. Then
+he closed the portfolio thoughtfully and put it away in the drawer. For
+a few minutes he sat, drumming his fingers on the edge of the
+writing-table, a frown on his youthful face.
+“The frog is always on the left wrist, always a little lob-sided, and
+there is always one small blob tattooed underneath,” he said. “Does that
+strike you as being remarkable?”
+The Superintendent, who was not a brilliant man, saw nothing remarkable
+in the fact.
+CHAPTER III
+THE FROG
+IT was growing dark when the two tramps, skirting the village of Morby,
+came again to the post road. The circumvention of Morby had been a
+painful and tiring business, for the rain which had been falling all day
+had transformed the ploughed fields into glutinous brown seas that made
+walking a test of patience.
+One was tall, unshaven, shabby, his faded brown coat was buttoned to his
+chin, his sagged and battered hat rested on the back of his head. His
+companion seemed short by comparison, though he was a well-made,
+broad-shouldered man, above the average height.
+They spoke no word as they plodded along the muddy road. Twice the
+shorter man stopped and peered backward in the gathering darkness, as
+though searching for a pursuer, and once he clutched the big man’s arm
+and drew him to hiding behind the bushes that fringed the road. This was
+when a car tore past with a roar and a splattering of liquid mud.
+After a while they turned off the road, and crossing a field, came to
+the edge of a wild waste of land traversed by an ancient cart track.
+“We’re nearly there,” growled the smaller man, and the other grunted.
+But for all his seeming indifference, his keen eyes were taking in every
+detail of the scene. Solitary building on the horizon . . . looked like
+a barn. Essex County (he guessed this from the indicator number on the
+car that had passed); waste land probably led to a disused clay pit
+. . . or was it quarry? There was an old notice-board fixed to a groggy
+post near the gate through which the cart track passed. It was too dark
+to read the faded lettering, but he saw the word “lime.” Limestone? It
+would be easy to locate.
+The only danger was if the Frogs were present in force. Under cover of
+his overcoat, he felt for the Browning and slipped it into his overcoat
+pocket.
+If the Frogs were in strength, there might be a tough fight. Help there
+was none. He never expected there would be. Carlo had picked him up on
+the outskirts of the city in his disreputable car, and had driven him
+through the rain, tacking and turning, following secondary roads,
+avoiding towns and hamlets, so that, had he been sitting by the driver’s
+side, he might have grown confused. But he was not. He was sitting in
+the darkness of the little van, and saw nothing. Wellingdale, with the
+shadows who had been watching him, had not been prepared for the car. A
+tramp with a motor-car was a monstrosity. Even Genter himself was taken
+aback when the car drew up to the pavement where he was waiting, and the
+voice of Carlo hissed, “Jump in!”
+They crossed the crest of a weed-grown ridge. Below, Genter saw a
+stretch of ground littered with rusting trollies, twisted Decourville
+rails, and pitted with deep, rain-filled holes. Beyond, on the sharp
+line of the quarry’s edge, was a small wooden hut, and towards this
+Carlo led the way.
+“Not nervous, are you?” he asked, and there was a sneer in his voice.
+“Not very,” said the other coolly. “I suppose the fellows are in that
+shack?”
+Carlo laughed softly.
+“There are no others,” he said, “only the Frog himself. He comes up the
+quarry face—there’s a flight of steps that come up under the hut. Good
+idea, eh? The hut hangs over the edge, and you can’t even see the steps,
+not if you hang over. I tried once. They’d never catch him, not if they
+brought forty million cops.”
+“Suppose they surrounded the quarry?” suggested Genter, but the man
+scoffed.
+“Wouldn’t he know it was being surrounded before he came in? He knows
+everything, does the Frog.”
+He looked down at the other’s hand.
+“It won’t hurt,” he said, “and it’s worth it if it does! You’ll never be
+without a friend again, Harry. If you get into trouble, there’s always
+the best lawyer to defend you. And you’re the kind of chap we’re looking
+for—there is plenty of trash. Poor fools that want to get in for the
+sake of the pickings. But you’ll get big work, and if you do a special
+job for him, there’s hundreds and hundreds of money for you! If you’re
+hungry or ill, the Frogs will find you out and help you. That’s pretty
+good, ain’t it?”
+Genter said nothing. They were within a dozen yards of the hut now, a
+strong structure built of stout timber bulks, with one door and a
+shuttered window.
+Motioning Genter to remain where he was, the man called Carlo went
+forward and tapped on the door. Genter heard a voice, and then he saw
+the man step to the window, and the shutter open an inch. There followed
+a long conversation in an undertone, and then Carlo came back.
+“He says he has a job for you that will bring in a thousand—you’re
+lucky! Do you know Rochmore?”
+Genter nodded. He knew that aristocratic suburb.
+“There’s a man there that has got to be coshed. He comes home from his
+club every night by the eleven-five. Walks to his house. It is up a dark
+road, and a fellow could get him with a club without trouble. Just one
+smack and he’s finished. It’s not killing, you understand.”
+“Why does he want me to do it?” asked the tall tramp curiously.
+The explanation was logical.
+“All new fellows have to do something to show their pluck and
+straightness. What do you say?”
+Genter had not hesitated.
+“I’ll do it,” he said.
+Carlo returned to the window, and presently he called his companion.
+“Stand here and put your left arm through the window,” he ordered.
+Genter pulled back the cuff of his soddened coat and thrust his bare arm
+through the opening. His hand was caught in a firm grip, and immediately
+he felt something soft and wet pressed against his wrist. A rubber
+stamp, he noted mentally, and braced himself for the pain which would
+follow. It came, the rapid pricking of a thousand needles, and he
+winced. Then the grip on his hand relaxed and he withdrew it, to look
+wonderingly on the blurred design of ink and blood that the tattooer had
+left.
+“Don’t wipe it,” said a muffled voice from the darkness of the hut. “Now
+you may come in.”
+The shutter closed and was bolted. Then came the snick of a lock turning
+and the door opened. Genter went into the pitch-black darkness of the
+hut and heard the door locked by the unseen occupant.
+“Your number is K 971,” said the hollow voice. “When you see that in the
+personal column of _The Times_, you report here, wherever you are. Take
+that. . . .”
+Genter put out his hand and an envelope was placed in his outstretched
+palm. It was as though the mysterious Frog could see, even in that
+blackness.
+“There is journey money and a map of the district. If you spend the
+journey money, or if you fail to come when you are wanted, you will be
+killed. Is that clear?”
+“Yes.”
+“You will find other money—that you can use for your expenses. Now
+listen. At Rochmore, 17 Park Avenue, lives Hallwell Jones, the
+banker——”
+He must have sensed the start of surprise which the recruit gave.
+“You know him?”
+“Yes—worked for him years ago,” said Genter.
+Stealthily, he drew his Browning from his pocket and thumbed down the
+safety catch.
+“Between now and Friday he has to be clubbed. You need not kill him. If
+you do, it doesn’t matter. I expect his head’s too hard——”
+Genter located the man now, and, growing accustomed to the darkness,
+guessed rather than saw the bulk of him. Suddenly his hand shot out and
+grasped the arm of the Frog.
+“I’ve got a gun and I’ll shoot,” he said between his teeth. “I want you,
+Frog! I am Inspector Genter from police headquarters, and if you resist
+I’ll kill you!”
+For a second there was a deathly silence. Then Genter felt his pistol
+wrist seized in a vice-like grip. He struck out with his other hand, but
+the man stooped and the blow fell in the air, and then with a wrench the
+pistol was forced out of the big man’s hand and he closed with his
+prisoner. So doing, his face touched the Frog’s. Was it a mask he was
+wearing? . . . The cold mica goggles came against his cheek. That
+accounted for the muffled voice. . . .
+Powerful as he was, he could not break away from the arms which
+encircled him, and they struggled backward and forward in the darkness.
+Suddenly the Frog lifted his foot, and Genter, anticipating the kick,
+swerved round. There was a crash of broken glass, and then something
+came to the detective—a faint but pungent odour. He tried to breathe,
+but found himself strangling, and his arms fell feebly by his side.
+The Frog held him for a minute, and then let the limp figure fall with a
+thud to the ground. In the morning a London police patrol found the body
+of Inspector Genter lying in the garden of an empty house, and rang for
+an ambulance. But a man who has been gassed by the concentrated fumes of
+hydrocyanic acid dies very quickly, and Genter had been dead ten seconds
+after the Frog smashed the thin glass cylinder which he kept in the hut
+for such emergencies as these.
+CHAPTER IV
+ELK
+THERE was no detective in the world who looked less like a police
+officer, and a clever police officer, than Elk. He was tall and thin,
+and a slight stoop accentuated his weediness. His clothes seemed
+ill-fitting, and hung upon rather than fitted him. His dark, cadaverous
+face was set permanently in an expression of the deepest gloom, and few
+had ever seen him smile. His superiors found him generally a depressing
+influence, for his outlook on life was prejudiced and apparently
+embittered by his failure to secure promotion. Faulty education stood in
+his way here. Ten times he had come up for examination, and ten times he
+had failed, invariably in the same subject—history.
+Dick, who knew him better than his immediate chiefs, guessed that these
+failures did not worry Mr. Elk as much as people thought. Indeed, he
+often detected a glum pride in his inability to remember historical
+dates, and once, in a moment of astonishing confidence, Elk had
+confessed that promotion would be an embarrassment to a man of his
+limited educational attainments. For Elk’s everyday English was one of
+his weaknesses.
+“There’s no rest for the wicked, Mr. Gordon,” he sighed as he sat down.
+“I thought I’d get a holiday after my trip to the U.S.A.”
+“I want to know all about Lola Bassano—who are her friends, why she has
+suddenly attached herself to Raymond Bennett, a clerk in the employ of
+Maitlands Consolidated. Particularly why she picked him up at the corner
+of St. James’s Square and drove him to Horsham last night. I saw them by
+accident as I was coming out of my club, and followed. They sat in her
+coupé for the greater part of two hours within a hundred yards of
+Bennett’s house, and they were talking. I know, because I stood in the
+rain behind the car, listening. If he had been making love to her I
+should have understood—a little. But they were talking, and talking
+money. I heard certain sums mentioned. At four o’clock he got out of the
+car and went into his house, and Lola drove off.”
+Elk, puffing, sadly shook his head.
+“Lola wouldn’t talk about anything but money anyway,” he said. “She’s
+like Queen What’s-her-name who died in 1077, or maybe it was 1573. She
+married King Henry, or it may have been Charles, because she wanted a
+gold snuff-box he had. I’m not sure whether it was a gold snuff-box or a
+silver bed. Anyway, she got it an’ was be’eaded in . . . I don’t
+remember the date.”
+“Thank you for the parallel,” smiled Dick. “But Lola is not after
+snuff-boxes of gold or silver. Young Bennett hasn’t twopence of his own.
+There is something particularly interesting to me about this
+acquaintance.”
+Elk smoked thoughtfully, watching the smoke rings rise to the ceiling.
+“Bennett’s got a sister,” he said, to the other’s amazement. “Pretty, as
+far as looks go. Old man Bennett’s a crook of some kind. Doesn’t do any
+regular work, but goes away for days at a time and comes back looking
+ill.”
+“You know them?”
+Elk nodded.
+“Old man Bennett attracted me. Somebody reported his movements as
+suspicious—the local police. They’ve got nothing to do except guard
+chickens, and naturally they look on anybody who doesn’t keep chickens
+as bein’ a suspicious character. I kept old Bennett under observation,
+but I never got to the bottom of his movements. He has run lots of queer
+stunts. He wrote a play once and put it on. It went dead on the fourth
+night. Then he took to playing the races on a system. That nearly broke
+him. Then he started a correspondence school at Horsham—‘How to write
+good English’—and he lost money. Now he’s taking pictures.”
+“How long has he been trying those methods of getting a living?”
+“Years. I traced a typewriting agency to him seventeen years ago. They
+haven’t all been failures. He made money out of some. But I’d give my
+head to know what his regular game is. Once a month regular, sometimes
+twice, sometimes more often, he disappears and you can’t find him or
+trail him. I’ve sounded every crook in town, but they’re as much puzzled
+as I am. Lew Brady—that’s the big sporting fellow who worked with
+Lola—he’s interested too. He hates Bennett. Years ago he tackled the
+old man and tried to bully him into telling him what his lay was, and
+Bennett handled him rough.”
+“The old man?” asked Dick incredulously.
+“The old man. He’s as strong as an ox. Don’t forget it. I’ll see Lola.
+She’s not a bad girl—up to a point. Personally, vamps never appeal to
+me. Genter’s dead, they tell me? The Frog’s in that too?”
+“There’s no doubt about it,” said Dick, rising. “And here, Elk, is one
+of the men who killed him.”
+He walked to the window and looked out, Elk behind him. The man who had
+stood on the sidewalk had disappeared.
+“Where?” asked Elk.
+“He’s gone now. I——”
+At that moment the window shattered inward, and splinters of glass stung
+his face. Another second, and Elk was dragged violently to cover.
+“From the roof of Onslow Gardens,” said Richard Gordon calmly. “I
+wondered where the devils would shoot from—that’s twice they’ve tried
+to get me since daylight.”
+A spent cartridge on the flat roof of 94, Onslow Gardens, and the print
+of feet, were all the evidence that the assassin left behind. No. 94 was
+empty except for a caretaker, who admitted that he was in the habit of
+going out every morning to buy provisions for the day. Admission had
+been gained by the front door; there was a tradesman who saw a man let
+himself into the house, carrying what looked to be a fishing-rod under
+his arm, but which undoubtedly was a rifle in a cloth case.
+“Very simple,” said Dick; “and, of course, from the Frog’s point of
+view, effective. The shooter had half-a-dozen ways of escape, including
+the fire-escape.”
+Elk was silent and glum. Dick Gordon as silent, but cheerful, until the
+two men were back in his office.
+“It was my inquiry at the garage that annoyed them,” he said, “and I’ll
+give them this credit, that they are rapid! I was returning to my house
+when the first attempt was made. The most ingenious effort to run me
+down with a light car—the darned thing even mounted the pavement after
+me.”
+“Number?”
+“XL.19741,” said Dick, “but fake. There is no such number on the
+register. The driver was gone before I could stop him.”
+Elk scratched his chin, surveying the youthful Public Prosecutor with a
+dubious eye.
+“Almost sounds interesting to me,” he said. “Of course I’ve heard of the
+Frogs, but I didn’t give much attention. Nowadays secret societies are
+so common that every time a man shakes hands with me, he looks sort of
+disappointed if I don’t pull my ear or flap my feet. And gang work on a
+large scale I’ve always looked upon as something you only hear about in
+exciting novels by my old friend Shylock——”
+“Sherlock—and he didn’t write them,” murmured Dick.
+Again Elk fingered his cheek.
+“I don’t believe in it, anyway,” he said after thought. “It’s not
+natural that tramps should do anything systematic. It’s too much like
+work. I’ll bet there’s nothing in it, only a lot of wild coincidences
+stickin’ together. I’ll bet that the Frogs are just a silly society
+without any plan or reason. And I’ll bet that Lola knows all about ’em,”
+he added inconsistently.
+Elk walked back to “The Yard” by the most circuitous route. With his
+furled and ancient umbrella hanging on his arm, he had the appearance of
+an out-of-work clerk. His steel-rimmed spectacles, clipped at a groggy
+angle, assisted the illusion. Winter and summer he wore a soiled fawn
+top-coat, which was invariably unbuttoned, and he had worn the same
+yellowish-brown suit for as long as anybody could remember. The rain
+came down, not in any great quantities, but incessantly. His hard derby
+hat glistened with moisture, but he did not put up his umbrella. Nobody
+had ever seen that article opened.
+He walked to Trafalgar Square and then stopped, stood in thought for
+some time, and retraced his steps. Opposite the Public Prosecutor’s
+office stood a tall street-seller with a little tray of matches,
+key-rings, pencils and the odds and ends that such men sell. His wares,
+for the moment, were covered by a shining oil-cloth. Elk had not noticed
+him before, and wondered why the man had taken up so unfavourable a
+stand, for the end of Onslow Gardens, the windiest and least comfortable
+position in Whitehall, is not a place where the hurrying pedestrian
+would stop to buy, even on a fine day. The hawker was dressed in a
+shabby raincoat that reached to his heels; a soft felt hat was pulled
+down over his eyes, but Elk saw the hawk-like face and stopped.
+“Busy?”
+“Naw.”
+Elk was immediately interested. This man was American, and was trying to
+disguise his voice so that it appeared Cockney—the most impossible task
+that any American had ever undertaken, for the whine and intonation of
+the Cockney are inimitable.
+“You’re American—what state?”
+“Georgia,” was the reply, and this time the hawker made no attempt at
+disguise. “Came over on a cattle-boat during the war.”
+Elk held out his hand.
+“Let me see that licence of yours, brother,” he said.
+Without hesitation the man produced the written police permit to sell on
+the streets. It was made out in the name of “Joshua Broad,” and was in
+order.
+“You’re not from Georgia,” said Elk, “but that doesn’t matter. You’re
+from Hampshire or Massachusetts.”
+“Connecticut, to be exact,” said the man coolly, “but I’ve lived in
+Georgia. Want a key-ring?”
+There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes—the merest flash.
+“No. Never had a key. Never had anything worth locking up,” said Elk,
+fingering the articles on the tray. “Not a good pitch, this.”
+“No,” said the other; “too near to Scotland Yard, Mr. Elk.”
+Elk cast a swift glance at the man.
+“Know me, do you?”
+“Most people do, don’t they?” asked the other innocently.
+Elk took the pedlar in from the soles of his stout shoes to his soddened
+hat, and, with a nod, went on. The hawker looked after the detective
+until he was out of sight, and then, fixing a cover over his tray,
+strapped it tight and walked in the direction Elk had taken.
+Coming out of Maitlands to lunch, Ray Bennett saw a shabby and saturnine
+man standing on the edge of the pavement, but gave him no more than a
+passing glance. He, at any rate, did not know Elk and was quite
+unconscious of the fact that he was being followed to the little
+chop-house where Philo Johnson and he took their modest luncheon.
+In any circumstances Ray would not have observed the shadow, but to-day,
+in his condition of mind, he had no thought for anybody but himself, or
+any offence but the bearded and ancient Maitland’s outrageous behaviour.
+“The old devil!” he said as he walked by Johnson’s side. “To make a ten
+per cent cut in salaries and to start on me! And this morning the papers
+say that he has given five thousand to the Northern Hospitals!”
+“He’s a charitable cuss, and as to the cut, it was either that or
+standing you off,” said Johnson cheerfully. “What’s the use of kicking?
+Trade has been bad, and the stock market is as dead as Ptolemy. The old
+man wanted to put you off—said that you were superfluous anyway. If
+you’d only look on the bright side of things, Ray——”
+“Bright!” snorted the young man, his face going pink with anger. “I’m
+getting a boy’s salary, and I want money mighty badly, Philo.”
+Philo sighed, and for once his good-humoured face was clouded. Then it
+relaxed into a broad grin.
+“If I thought the same way as you, I’d go mad or turn into a first-class
+crook. I only earn about fifty per cent more than you, and yet the old
+man allows me to handle hundreds of thousands. It’s too bad.”
+Nevertheless, the “badness” of the parsimonious Maitland did not
+interfere with his appetite.
+“The art of being happy,” he said as he pushed back his plate and lit a
+cigarette, “is to want nothing. Then you’re always getting more than you
+need. How is your sister?”
+“She’s all right,” said Ray indifferently. “Ella’s the same mind as you.
+It’s easy to be a philosopher over other people’s worries. Who’s that
+disreputable bird?” he added, as a man seated himself at a table
+opposite to them.
+Philo fixed his glasses—he was a little near-sighted.
+“That’s Elk—a Scotland Yard man,” he said, and grinned at the
+new-comer, a recognition which, to Ray’s annoyance—and his annoyance
+was tinged with uneasiness—brought the seedy man to their table.
+“This is my friend, Mr. Bennett—Inspector Elk, Ray.”
+“Sergeant,” suggested Elk dourly. “Fate has always been against me in
+the matter of promotion. Can’t remember dates.”
+So far from making a secret of his failure, Mr. Elk was never tired of
+discussing the cause.
+“Though why a man is a better thief-taker for knowin’ when George
+Washington was born and when Napoleon Bonaparte died, is a mystery to
+me. Dine here every day, Mr. Bennett?”
+Ray nodded.
+“Know your father, I think—John Bennett of Horsham, isn’t it? Thought
+so.”
+In desperation Ray got up with an excuse and left them alone.
+“Nice boy, that,” said Elk.
+CHAPTER V
+MR. MAITLAND GOES HOME
+THEY were nearing the imposing home of Maitlands Consolidated, when Mr.
+Johnson suddenly broke off in the middle of an interesting exposition of
+his philosophy and quickened his pace. On the pavement ahead of them he
+saw Ray Bennett, and by his side the slim figure of a girl. Their backs
+were toward the two men, but Elk guessed rightly when he decided that
+the girl was Ella Bennett. He had seen her twice before, and he had a
+wonderful memory for backs.
+Turning as the stout man came up to her, hat in hand, she greeted him
+with a quick and friendly smile.
+“This is an unexpected pleasure, Miss Bennett.”
+There was a pink tinge to Johnson’s homely face (“Sweet on her,” thought
+Elk, interested), and his handshake was warm and something more than
+cordial.
+“I didn’t intend coming to town, but father has gone off on one of his
+mysterious excursions,” she said with a little laugh, “this time to the
+West. And, curiously enough, I am absolutely sure I saw him on a ’bus
+just now, though his train left two hours ago.”
+She glanced at Elk hovering in the background, and the sight of his glum
+countenance seemed to arouse some unpleasant memory, for the brightness
+went out of her face.
+“My friend, Mr. Elk,” said Johnson a little awkwardly, and Elk nodded.
+“Glad to meet you, Miss Bennett,” he said, and noted Ray’s annoyance
+with inward satisfaction which, in a more cheerful man, would have been
+mirth.
+She bowed slightly and then said something in a low tone to her brother.
+Elk saw the boy frown.
+“I shan’t be very late,” he said, loudly enough for the detective to
+hear.
+She put out her hand to Johnson, Elk she favoured with a distant
+inclination of her head, and was gone, leaving the three men looking
+after her. Two, for when Mr. Elk looked around, the boy had disappeared
+into the building.
+“You know Miss Bennett?”
+“Slightly,” said Elk grudgingly. “I know almost everybody slightly. Good
+people and bad people. The gooder they are, the slighter I know ’em.
+Queer devil.”
+“Who?” asked the startled Johnson. “You mean her father? I wish he
+wasn’t so chilly with me.”
+Elk’s lips twitched.
+“I guess you do,” he said drily. “So long.”
+He strolled aimlessly away as Johnson walked up the steps into
+Maitlands, but he did not go far. Crossing the road, he retraced his
+steps and took up his station in the doorway.
+At four o’clock a taxicab drew up before the imposing door of Maitlands
+Consolidated, and a few minutes later the old man shuffled out, looking
+neither to the right nor to the left. Elk regarded him with more than
+ordinary interest. He knew the financier by sight, and had paid two or
+three visits to the office in connection with certain petty thefts
+committed by cleaners. In this way he had become acquainted with Philo
+Johnson, for old Maitland had delegated the interview to his
+subordinate.
+Elk judged the old man to be in the region of seventy, and wondered for
+the first time where he lived, and in what state. Had he relations? It
+was a curious fact that he knew nothing whatever about the financier,
+the least paragraphed of any of the big City forces.
+The detective had no business with the head of this flourishing firm.
+His task was to discover the association between Lola Bassano and this
+impecunious clerk. He knew inside him that Dick Gordon’s interest in the
+young man was not altogether disinterested, and suspected rightly that
+the pretty sister of Ray Bennett lay behind it.
+But the itch for knowledge about Maitland, suddenly aroused by the
+realization that the old man’s home life was an unknown quantity, was
+too strong to be resisted. As the taxicab moved off, Elk beckoned
+another.
+“Follow that cab,” he said, and the driver nodded his agreement without
+question, for there was no taximan on the streets who did not know this
+melancholy policeman.
+The first of the cabs drove rapidly in the direction of North London,
+and halted at a busy junction of streets in Finsbury Park. This is a
+part of the town which great financiers do not as a rule choose for
+their habitations. It is a working-class district, full of small houses,
+usually occupied by two or more families; and when the cab stopped and
+the old man nimbly descended, Elk’s mouth opened in an ‘O’ of surprise.
+Maitland did not pay the cabman, but hurried round the corner into the
+busy thoroughfare, with Elk at his heels. He walked a hundred yards, and
+then boarded a street car. Elk sprinted, and swung himself on board as
+the car was moving. The old man found a seat, took a battered newspaper
+from his pocket, and began reading.
+The car ran down Seven Sisters Road into Tottenham, and here Mr.
+Maitland descended. He turned into a side street of apparently
+interminable length, crossed the road, and came into a narrow and even
+meaner street than that which he had traversed; and then, to Elk’s
+amazement, pushed open the iron gate of a dark and dirty little house,
+opened the door and went in, closing it behind him.
+The detective looked up and down the street. It was crowded with poor
+children. Elk looked at the house again, scarcely believing his eyes.
+The windows were unclean, the soiled curtains visible were ragged, and
+the tiny forecourt bore an appearance of neglect. And this was the home
+of Ezra Maitland, a master of millions, the man who gave £5,000 to the
+London hospitals! It was incredible.
+He made up his mind, and, walking to the door, knocked. For some time
+there was no reply, and then he heard the shuffle of slippered feet in
+the passage, and an old woman with a yellow face opened the door.
+“Excuse me,” said Elk; “I think the gentleman who just came in dropped
+this.” He produced a handkerchief from his pocket, and she glared at it
+for a moment, and then, reaching out her hand, took it from him and
+slammed the door in his face.
+“And that’s the last of my good handkerchief,” thought Elk bitterly.
+He had caught one glimpse of the interior. A grimy-looking passage with
+a strip of faded carpet, and a flight of uncovered stairs. He proceeded
+to make a few local inquiries.
+“Maitland or Mainland, I don’t know which,” said a tradesman who kept a
+general store at the corner. “The old gentleman goes out every morning
+at nine, and comes home just about this hour. I don’t know who or what
+he is. I can tell you this, though; he doesn’t eat much! He buys all his
+goods here. What those two people live on, an ordinary healthy child
+would eat at one meal!”
+Elk went back to the west, a little mystified. The miser was a common
+figure of fiction, and not uncommonly met with in real life. But old
+Maitland must be a super-miser, he thought, and decided to give the
+matter a little further attention. For the moment, he was concentrating
+his efforts upon Miss Lola Bassano, that interesting lady.
+In one of the fashionable thoroughfares leading from Cavendish Square is
+a block of flats, occupied by wealthy tenants. Its rents are remarkably
+high, even for that exclusive quarter, and even Elk, who was not easily
+surprised, was a little staggered when he learnt that Lola Bassano
+occupied a suite in this expensive building.
+It was to Caverley House that he made his way after returning to
+Maitland’s office, to find the premises closed. There was no indicator
+on the wall, but the lift-man, who regarded Elk with some suspicion, as
+he was entitled to do, announced that Miss Bassano lived on the third
+floor.
+“How long has she been here?” asked Elk.
+“That’s no business of yours,” said the lift-man; “and I think what you
+want, my friend, is the tradesmen’s entrance.”
+“I’ve often wondered,” ruminated Elk, “what people like you do their
+thinking with.”
+“Now look here——!” began the lift-man indignantly.
+“Look here,” retorted Elk, and at the sight of his badge the man grew
+more polite and more informative.
+“She’s been here two months,” he said. “And, to tell you the truth, Mr.
+Elk, I’ve often wondered how she got a suite in Caverley House. They
+tell me she used to run a gambling joint on Jermyn Street. You haven’t
+come to raid her, have you?” he asked anxiously. “That’d get Caverley
+House a pretty bad name.”
+“I’ve come to make a friendly call,” said Elk carefully.
+“That’s the door.” The man stepped out of the lift and pointed to one of
+the two sober mahogany doors on the landing. “This other flat belongs to
+an American millionaire.”
+“Is there such a thing?” asked Elk.
+He was about to say something more when the lift-man walked to the door
+and peered at one of its polished panels.
+“That’s queer,” he said. “What do you make of this?”
+Elk joined him, and at a glance saw and understood.
+On the panel had been stamped a small white frog—an exact replica of
+those he had seen that morning on the photographs that Dick Gordon had
+shown him. A squatting frog, slightly askew.
+He touched it. The ink was still wet and showed on his finger. And then
+the strangest thing of all happened. The door opened suddenly, and a man
+of middle age appeared in the doorway. In his hand was a long-barrelled
+Browning, and it covered the detective’s heart.
+“Put up your hands!” he said sharply. Then he stopped and stared at the
+detective.
+Elk returned the gaze, speechless; for the elegantly dressed man who
+stood there was the hawk-faced pedlar he had seen in Whitehall!
+The American was the first to recover. Not a muscle of his face moved,
+but Elk saw again that light of amusement in his eyes as he stepped back
+and opened the door still wider.
+“Come right in, Mr. Elk,” he said, and, to the amazed lift-man; “It’s
+all right, Worth. I was practising a little joke on Mr. Elk.”
+He closed the door behind him, and with a gesture beckoned the detective
+into a prettily furnished drawing-room. Elk went in, leaving the matter
+of the frog on the door for discussion later.
+“We’re quite alone, Mr. Elk, so you needn’t lower your voice when you
+talk of my indiscretions. Will you smoke a cigar?”
+Elk stretched out his fingers mechanically and selected a big Cabana.
+“Unless I’m greatly mistaken, I saw you this morning,” he began.
+“You weren’t mistaken at all,” interrupted the other coolly. “You saw me
+on Whitehall. I was peddling key-rings. My name is Joshua Broad. You
+haven’t anything on me for trading in a false name.”
+The detective lit his cigar before he spoke.
+“This apartment must cost you a whole lot to keep up,” he said slowly,
+“and I don’t blame you for trying to earn something on the side. But it
+seems to me that peddling key-rings is a very poor proposition for a
+first-class business man.”
+Joshua Broad nodded.
+“I haven’t made a million out of that business,” he said, “but it amuses
+me, Mr. Elk. I am something of a philosopher.”
+He lit a cigar and settled himself comfortably in a deep, chintz-covered
+arm-chair, his legs crossed, the picture of contentment.
+“As an American, I am interested in social problems, and I have found
+that the best way to understand the very poor of any country is to get
+right down amongst them.”
+His tone was easy, apologetic, but quite self-possessed.
+“I think I forestalled any question on your part as to whether I had a
+licence in my own name, by telling you that I had.”
+Elk settled his glasses more firmly on his nose, and his eyes strayed to
+Mr. Broad’s pocket, whither the pistol had returned.
+“This is a pretty free country,” he said in his deliberate way, “and a
+man can peddle key-rings, even if he’s a member of the House of Lords.
+But one thing he mustn’t do, Mr. Broad, is to stick fire-arms under the
+noses of respectable policemen.”
+Broad chuckled.
+“I’m afraid I was a little rattled,” he said. “But the truth is, I’ve
+been waiting for the greater part of an hour, expecting somebody to come
+to my door, and when I heard your stealthy footsteps”—he shrugged—“it
+was a fool mistake for a grown man to make,” he said, “and I guess I’m
+feeling as badly about it as you would have me feel.”
+The unwavering eyes of Mr. Elk did not leave his face.
+“I won’t insult your intelligence by asking you if you were expecting a
+friend,” he said. “But I should like to know the name of the other
+guest.”
+“So should I,” said the other, “and so would a whole lot of people.”
+He reached out his hand to flick the ash from his cigar, looking at Elk
+thoughtfully the while.
+“I was expecting a man who has every reason to be very much afraid of
+me,” he said. “His name is—well, it doesn’t matter, and I’ve only met
+him once in my life, and then I didn’t see his face.”
+“And you beat him up?” suggested Elk.
+The other man laughed.
+“I didn’t even beat him up. In fact, I behaved most generously to him,”
+he said quietly. “I was not with him more than five minutes, in a
+darkened room, the only light being a lantern which was on the table.
+And I guess that’s about all I can tell you, Inspector.”
+“Sergeant,” murmured Elk. “It’s curious the number of people who think
+I’m an Inspector.”
+There was an awkward pause. Elk could think of no other questions he
+wanted to ask, and his host displayed as little inclination to advance
+any further statement.
+“Neighbour friends of yours?” asked Elk, and jerked his head toward the
+passage.
+“Who—Bassano and her friend? No. Are you after them?” he asked quickly.
+Elk shook his head.
+“Making a friendly call,” he said. “Just that. I’ve just come back from
+your country, Mr. Broad. A good country, but too full of distances.”
+He ruminated, looking down at the carpet for a long time, and presently
+he said:
+“I’d like to meet that friend of yours, Mr. Broad—American?”
+Broad shook his head. Not a word was spoken as they went up the passage
+to the front door, and it almost seemed as if Elk was going without
+saying good-bye, for he walked out absent-mindedly, and only turned as
+though the question of any farewell had occurred to him.
+“Shall be glad to meet you again, Mr. Broad,” he said. “Perhaps I shall
+see you in Whitehall——”
+And then his eyes strayed to the grotesque white frog on the door. Broad
+said nothing. He put his finger on the imprint and it smudged under his
+touch.
+“Recently stamped,” he drawled. “Well, now, what do you think of that,
+Mr. Elk?”
+Elk was examining the mat before the door. There was a little spot of
+white, and he stooped and smeared his finger over it.
+“Yes, quite recent. It must have been done just before I came in,” he
+said. And there his interest in the Frog seemed to evaporate. “I’ll be
+going along now,” he said with a nod.
+In the exquisitely appointed drawing-room of Suite No. 6, Lola Bassano
+sat cuddled up in a deep, over-cushioned chair, her feet tucked under
+her, a thin cigarette between her lips, a scowl upon her pretty face.
+From time to time she glanced at the man who stood by the window, hands
+in pockets, staring down into the square. He was tall, heavily built,
+heavily jowled, unprepossessing. All the help that tailor and valet gave
+to him could not disguise his origin. He was pugilist, run to fat. For a
+time, a very short time, Lew Brady had been welter-weight champion of
+Europe, a terrific fighter with just that yellow thread in his
+composition which makes all the difference between greatness and
+mediocrity in the ring. A harder man had discovered his weakness, and
+the glory of Lew Brady faded with remarkable rapidity. He had one
+advantage over his fellows which saved him from utter extinction. A
+philanthropist had found him in the gutter as a child, and had given him
+an education. He had gone to a good school and associated with boys who
+spoke good English. The benefit of that association he had never lost,
+and his voice was so curiously cultured that people who for the first
+time heard this brute-man speak, listened open-mouthed.
+“What time do you expect that rat of yours?” he asked.
+Lola lifted her silk-clad shoulders, took out her cigarette to yawn, and
+settled herself more cosily.
+“I don’t know. He leaves his office at five.”
+The man turned from the window and began to pace the room slowly.
+“Why Frog worries about him I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Lola, I’m
+surely getting tired of old man Frog.”
+Lola smiled and blew out a ring of smoke.
+“Perhaps you’re tired of getting money for nothing, Brady,” she said.
+“Personally speaking, that kind of weariness never comes to me. There is
+one thing sure; Frog wouldn’t bother with young Bennett if there wasn’t
+something in it.”
+He pulled out a watch and glanced at its jewelled face.
+“Five o’clock. I suppose that fellow doesn’t know you’re married to me?”
+“Don’t be a fool,” said Lola wearily. “Am I likely to boast about it?”
+He grinned and resumed his pacings. Presently he heard the faint tinkle
+of the bell and glanced at the girl. She got up, shook the cushions and
+nodded.
+“Open the door,” she said, and the man went out of the room obediently.
+Ray Bennett crossed the room with quick strides and caught the girl’s
+hand in both of his.
+“I’m late. Old Johnson kept me running round after the clerks had gone.
+Moses, this is a fine room, Lola! I hadn’t any idea you lived in such
+style.”
+“You know Lew Brady?”
+Ray nodded smilingly. He was a picture of happiness, and the presence of
+Lew Brady made no difference to him. He had met Lola at a supper club,
+and knew that she and Brady had some business association. Moreover, Ray
+prided himself upon that confusion of standards which is called
+“broad-mindedness.” He visualized a new social condition which was
+superior to the bondage which old-fashioned rules of conduct imposed
+upon men and women in their relationship one to the other. He was young,
+clean-minded, saw things as he would have them be. Breadth of mind not
+infrequently accompanies limitation of knowledge.
+“Now for your wonderful scheme,” he said as, at a gesture from her, he
+settled himself by the girl’s side. “Does Brady know?”
+“It is Lew’s idea,” she said lightly. “He is always looking out for
+opportunities—not for himself but for other people.”
+“It’s a weakness of mine,” said Lew apologetically. “And anyway, I don’t
+know if you’ll like the scheme. I’d have taken it on myself, but I’m too
+busy. Did Lola tell you anything about it?”
+Ray nodded.
+“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I always thought such things belonged to
+magazine stories! Lola says that the Government of Japan wants a secret
+agent in London. Somebody they can disown, if necessary. But what is the
+work?”
+“There you’ve got me,” said Lew, shaking his head. “So far as I can
+discover, you’ve nothing to do but live! Perhaps they’ll want you to
+keep track of what is going on in the political world. The thing I don’t
+like about it is that you’ll have to live a double life. Nobody must
+know that you’re a clerk at Maitlands. You can call yourself by any name
+you like, and you’ll have to make your domestic arrangements as best you
+know.”
+“That will be easy,” interrupted the boy. “My father says I ought to
+have a room in town—he thinks the journey to and from Horsham every day
+is too expensive. I fixed that with him on Sunday. I shall have to go
+down to the cottage some week-ends—but what am I to do, and to whom do
+I report?”
+Lola laughed softly.
+“Poor boy,” she mocked. “The prospect of owning a beautiful flat and
+seeing me every day is worrying him.”
+CHAPTER VI
+MR. MAITLAND GOES SHOPPING
+ELDOR STREET, Tottenham, was one of thousands of drab and ugly
+thoroughfares that make up the central suburbs of London. Imagine two
+rows of houses set on either side of a straight street, lighted at
+economic intervals by yellow lamps. Each house has a protuberance,
+called a bay window; each house is separated from the road by iron
+railings pierced by an iron gate. There is a tiny forecourt in which the
+hardiest of shrubs battle desperately for existence; there is one
+recessed door, and on the floor above two windows exactly alike.
+Elk found himself in Eldor Street at nine o’clock that night. The rain
+was pelting down, and the street in consequence was a desert. Most of
+the houses were dark, for Eldor Street lives in its kitchens, which are
+back of the houses. In the front window of No. 47 one crack of light
+showed past the edge of the lowered blind, and, creeping up to the
+window, he heard, at long intervals, the mumble of conversation.
+It was difficult to believe that he was standing at the door of Ezra
+Maitland’s home. That morning the newspapers had given prominence to the
+newest speculation of Maitlands Consolidated—a deal involving something
+over a million. And the master-mind of the concern lived in this
+squalor!
+Whilst he was standing there, the light was extinguished and there came
+to him the sound of feet in the uncarpeted passage. He had time to reach
+the obscurity of the other side of the street, when the door opened and
+two people came out: Maitland and the old woman he had seen. By the
+light of a street-lamp he saw that Maitland wore an overcoat buttoned to
+his chin. The old woman had on a long ulster, and in her hand she
+carried a string bag. They were going marketing! It was Saturday night,
+and the main street, through which Elk had passed, had been thronged
+with late shoppers—Tottenham leaves its buying to the last, when food
+can be had at bargain prices.
+Waiting until they were out of sight, Elk walked down the street to the
+end and turned to the left. He followed a wall covered with posters
+until he reached a narrow opening. This was the passage between the
+gardens—a dark, unlighted alleyway, three feet wide and running between
+tar-coated wooden fences. He counted the gates on his left with the help
+of his flash-lamp, and after a while stopped before one of them and
+pushed gently. The gate was locked—it was not bolted. There was a
+keyhole that had the appearance of use. Elk grunted his satisfaction,
+and, taking from his pocket a wallet, extracted a small wooden handle,
+into which he fitted a steel hook, chosen with care from a dozen others.
+This he inserted into the lock and turned. Evidently the lock was more
+complicated than he had expected. He tried another hook of a different
+shape, and yet another. At the fourth trial the lock turned and he
+pushed open the door gently.
+The back of the house was in darkness, the yard singularly free from the
+obstructions which he had anticipated. He crossed to the door leading
+into the house. To his surprise it was unfastened, and he replaced his
+tools in his pocket. He found himself in a small scullery. Passing
+through a door into the bare passage, he came to the room in which he
+had seen the light. It was meanly and shabbily furnished. The arm-chair
+near the fireplace had broken springs, there was an untidy bed in one
+corner, and in the centre of the room a table covered with a patched
+cloth. On this were two or three books and a few sheets of paper covered
+with the awkward writing of a child. Elk read curiously.
+“Look at the dog,” it ran. “The man goes up to the dog and the dog barks
+at the man.”
+There was more in similar strain. The books were children’s primers of
+an elementary kind. Looking round, he saw a cheap gramophone and on the
+sideboard half a dozen scratched and chipped records.
+The child must be in the house. Turning on the gas, he lit it, after
+slipping a bolt in the front door to guard against surprise. In the more
+brilliant light, the poverty of the room staggered him. The carpet was
+worn and full of holes; there was not one article of furniture which had
+not been repaired at some time or other. On the dingy sideboard was a
+child’s abacus—a frame holding wires on which beads were strung, and by
+means of which the young are taught to count. A paper on the mantelpiece
+attracted him. It was a copy of the million pound contract which
+Maitland had signed that morning. His neat signature, with the
+characteristic flourish beneath, was at the foot.
+Elk replaced the paper and began a search of the apartment. In a
+cupboard by the side of the fireplace he found an iron money-box, which
+he judged was half-full of coins. In addition, there were nearly a
+hundred letters addressed to E. Maitland, 47 Eldor Street, Tottenham.
+Elk, glancing through them, recognized their unimportance. Every one was
+either a tradesman’s circular or those political pamphlets with which
+candidates flood their constituencies. And they were all unopened. Mr.
+Maitland evidently knew what they were also, and had not troubled to
+examine their contents. Probably the hoarding instincts of age had made
+him keep them. There was nothing else in the room of interest. He was
+certain that this was where the old man slept—where was the child?
+Turning out the light, he went upstairs. One door was locked, and here
+his instruments were of no avail, for the lock was a patent one and was
+recently fixed. Possibly the child was there, he thought. The second
+room, obviously the old woman’s, was as meanly furnished as the parlour.
+Coming back to the landing, his foot was poised to reach the first stair
+when he heard a faint “click.” It came from below, and was the sound of
+a door closing. Elk waited, listening. The sound was not repeated, and
+he descended softly. At first he thought that the old man had returned,
+and was trying his key on the bolted door, but when he crept to the door
+to listen, he heard no sound, and slipping back the bolt, he went to the
+second of the rooms on the ground floor and put his light on the door.
+Elk was a man of keen observation; very little escaped him, and he was
+perfectly certain that this door had been ajar when he had passed it on
+entering the house. It was closed now and fastened from the inside, the
+key being in the lock.
+Was it the child, frightened by his presence? Elk was wise enough a man
+not to investigate too closely. He made the best of his way back to the
+garden passage and into the street. Here he waited, taking up a position
+which enabled him to see the length of Eldor Street and the passage
+opening in the wall. Presently he saw Maitland returning. The old man
+was carrying the string bag, which now bulged. Elk saw the green of a
+cabbage as they passed under the light. He watched them until the
+darkness swallowed them up, and heard the sound of their closing door.
+Five minutes later, a dark figure came from the passage behind the
+houses. It was a man, and Elk, alert and watchful, swung off in pursuit.
+The stranger plunged into a labyrinth of little streets with the
+detective at his heels. He was walking quickly, but not too quickly for
+Elk, who was something of a pedestrian. Into the glare of the main road
+the stranger turned, Elk a dozen paces behind him. He could not see his
+face, nor did he until his quarry stopped by the side of a waiting car,
+opened the door and jumped in. Then it was that Elk came abreast and
+raised his hand in cheery salutation.
+For a second the man in the closed limousine was taken aback, and then
+he opened the door.
+“Come right in out of the rain, Elk,” he said, and Elk obeyed.
+“Been doing your Sunday shopping?” he asked innocently.
+The man’s hawk-like face relaxed into a smile.
+“I never eat on Sundays,” he said.
+It was Joshua Broad, that rich American who peddled key-rings in
+Whitehall, lived in the most expensive flats in London, and found time
+to be intensely interested in Ezra Maitland.
+He turned abruptly as Elk seated himself.
+“Say, Elk, did you see the child?”
+Elk shook his head.
+“No,” he said, and heard the chuckle of his companion as the car moved
+toward the civilized west.
+“Yes, I saw that baby,” said Mr. Broad, puffing gently at the cigar he
+had lit; “and, believe me, Elk, I’ve stopped loving children. Yes, sir.
+The education of the young means less than nothing to me for evermore.”
+“Where was she?”
+“It’s a ‘he,’” replied Broad calmly, “and I hope I’ll be excused
+answering your question. I had been in the house an hour when you
+arrived—I was in the back room, which is empty, by the way. You scared
+me. I heard you come in and thought it was old St. Nicholas of the
+Whiskers. Especially when I saw the light go on. I’d had it on when you
+opened the scullery door—I left that unfastened, by the way. Didn’t
+want to stop my bolt hole. Well, what do you think?”
+“About Maitland?”
+“Eccentric, eh? You don’t know how eccentric!”
+As the car stopped before the door of Caverley House, Elk broke a long
+silence.
+“What are you, Mr. Broad?”
+“I’ll give you ten guesses,” said the other cheerfully as they got out.
+“Secret Service man,” suggested Elk promptly.
+“Wrong—you mean U.S.? No, you’re wrong. I’m a private detective who
+makes a hobby of studying the criminal classes—will you come up and
+have a drink?”
+“I will come up, but I won’t drink,” said Elk virtuously, “not if you
+offer gin and orange. That visit to the United States has spoilt my
+digestion.”
+Broad was fitting a key in the lock of his flat, when a strange cold
+sensation ran down the spine of the detective, and he laid his hand on
+the American’s arm.
+“Don’t open that door,” he said huskily.
+Broad looked round in surprise. The yard man’s face was tense and drawn.
+“Why not?”
+“I don’t know . . . just a feeling, that’s all. I’m Scot by birth . . .
+we’ve got a word ‘fey,’ which means something supernatural. And it says
+inside me, ‘don’t open that door.’”
+Broad put down his hand.
+“Are you being fey or funny?” he asked.
+“If I look funny,” said Elk, “I’m entitled to sue my face for libel.
+There’s something at the other side of that door that isn’t good. I’ll
+take an oath on it! Give me that!”
+He took the key from the unwilling hand of Joshua Broad, thrust it in
+the lock and turned it. Then, with a quick push, he threw open the door,
+pushing Broad to the cover of the wall.
+Nothing happened for a second, and then:
+“Run!” cried Elk, and leapt for the stairs.
+The American saw the first large billow of greenish-yellowy mist that
+rolled from the open door, and followed.
+The hall-porter was closing his office for the night when Elk appeared,
+hatless and breathless.
+“Can you ’phone the flats?—good! Get on at once to every one on and
+below the third floor, and tell them on no account to open their doors.
+Tell ’em to close all cracks with paper, to stop up their letter-boxes,
+and open all windows. Don’t argue—do it! The building is full of poison
+gas!”
+He himself ’phoned the fire station, and in a few seconds the jangle of
+bells sounded in the street outside, and men in gas-masks were
+clattering up the stairs.
+Fortunately, every tenant except Broad and his neighbour was out of town
+for the week-end.
+“And Miss Bassano doesn’t come in till early morning,” said the porter.
+It was daylight before the building was cleared by the aid of
+high-pressure air-hoses and chemical precipitants. Except that his
+silver was tarnished black, and every window glass and mirror covered
+with a yellow deposit, little harm had been done. A musty odour pervaded
+the flat in spite of the open windows, but later came the morning breeze
+to dispel the last trace of this malodorous souvenir of the attempt.
+Together the two men made a search of the rooms to discover the manner
+in which the gas was introduced.
+“Through that open fireplace,” Elk pointed. “The gas is heavier than
+air, and could be poured down the chimney as easily as pouring water.”
+A search of the flat roof satisfied him that his theory was right. They
+found ten large glass cylinders and a long rope, to which a wicker
+cradle was attached. Moreover, one of the chimney-pots (easily reached
+from the roof) was scratched and discoloured.
+“The operator came into the building when the porter was busy—working
+the lift probably. He made his way to the roof, carrying the rope and
+the basket. Somebody in the street fixed the cylinders in the basket,
+which the man hauled to the roof one by one. It was dead easy, but
+ingenious. They must have made a pretty careful survey beforehand, or
+they wouldn’t have known which chimney led to your room.”
+They returned to the flat, and for once Joshua Broad was serious.
+“Fortunately, my servant is on a holiday,” he said, “or he would have
+been in heaven!”
+“I hope so,” responded Elk piously.
+The sun was tipping the roofs of the houses when he finally left, a
+sleepy and a baffled man. He heard the sound of boisterous voices before
+he reached the vestibule. A big car stood at the entrance of the flats,
+and, seated at the wheel, was a young man in evening dress. By him sat
+Lew Brady, and on the pavement was a girl in evening finery.
+“A jolly evening, eh, Lola! When I get going, I’m a mover, eh?”
+Ray Bennett’s voice was thick and unsteady. He had been drinking—was
+within measurable distance of being drunk.
+With a yell he recognized the detective as he came into the street.
+“Why, it’s old Elk—the Elk of Elks! Greetings, most noble copper! Lola,
+meet Elky of Elksburg, the Sherlock of Fact, the Sleuth——”
+“Shut up!” hissed the savage-voiced Lew Brady in his ear, but Ray was in
+too exalted a mood to be silenced.
+“Where’s the priceless Gordon?—say, Elk, watch Gordon! Look after poor
+old Gordon—my sister’s very much attached to Gordon.”
+“Fine car, Mr. Bennett,” said Elk, regarding the machine thoughtfully.
+“Present from your father?”
+The mention of his father’s name seemed to sober the young man.
+“No, it isn’t,” he snapped, “it belongs to a friend. ’Night, Lola.” He
+pumped at the starter, missed picking up, and stamped again. “S’long,
+Elk!”
+With a jerk the car started, and Elk watched it out of sight.
+“That young fellow is certainly in danger of knocking his nut against
+the moon,” he said. “Had a good time, Lola?”
+“Yes—why?”
+She fixed her suspicious eyes upon him expectantly.
+“Didn’t forget to turn off the gas when you went out, did you? If I was
+Shylock Holmes, maybe I’d tell from the stain on your glove that you
+didn’t.”
+“What do you mean about gas? I never use the cooker.”
+“Somebody does, and he nearly cooked me and a friend of mine—nearly
+cooked us good!”
+He saw her frown. Since she was a woman he expected her to be an
+actress, but somehow he was ready to believe in her sincerity.
+“There’s been a gas attack on Caverley House,” he explained, “and not
+cooking gas either. I guess you’ll smell it as you go up.”
+“What kind of gas—poison?”
+Elk nodded.
+“But who put it there—emptied it, or whatever is done with gas?”
+Elk looked at her with that wounded expression which so justly irritated
+his victims.
+“If I knew, Lola, would I be standing here discussing the matter? Maybe
+my old friend Shylock Holmes would, but I wouldn’t. I don’t know. It was
+upset in Mr. Broad’s flat.”
+“That is the American who lives opposite to us—to me,” she said. “I’ve
+only seen him once. He seems a nice man.”
+“Somebody didn’t think so,” said Elk. “I say, Lola, what’s that boy
+doing—young Bennett?”
+“Why do you ask me? He is making a lot of money just now, and I suppose
+he is running a little wild. They all do.”
+“I didn’t,” said Elk; “but if I’d made money and started something, I’d
+have chosen a better pacemaker than a dud fighting man.”
+The angry colour rose to her pretty face, and the glance she shot at him
+was as venomous as the gas he had fought all night.
+“And I think I’d have put through a few enquiries to central office
+about my female acquaintances,” Elk went on remorselessly. “I can
+understand why you’re glued to the game, because money naturally
+attracts you. But what gets me is where the money comes from.”
+“That won’t be the only thing that will get you,” she said between her
+teeth as she flounced into the half-opened door of Caverley House.
+Elk stood where she had left him, his melancholy face expressionless.
+For five minutes he stood so, and then walked slowly in the direction of
+his modest bachelor home.
+He lived over a lock-up shop, a cigar store, and he was the sole
+occupant of the building. As he crossed Gray’s Inn Road, he glanced idly
+up at the windows of his rooms and noted that they were closed. He
+noticed something more. Every pane of glass was misty with some yellow,
+opalescent substance.
+Elk looked up and down the silent street, and at a short distance away
+saw where road repairers had been at work. The night watchman dozed
+before his fire, and did not hear Elk’s approach or remark his unusual
+action. The detective found in a heap of gravel, three rounded pebbles,
+and these he took back with him. Standing in the centre of the road, he
+threw one of the pebbles unerringly.
+There was a crash of glass as the window splintered. Elk waited, and
+presently he saw a yellow wraith of poison-vapour curl out and downward
+through the broken pane.
+“This is getting monotonous,” said Elk wearily, and walked to the
+nearest fire alarm.
+CHAPTER VII
+A CALL ON MR. MAITLAND
+OUTWARDLY, John Bennett accepted his son’s new life as a very natural
+development which might be expected in a young man. Inwardly he was
+uneasy, fearful. Ray was his only son; the pride of his life, though
+this he never showed. None knew better than John Bennett the snares that
+await the feet of independent youth in a great city. Worst of all, for
+his peace of mind, he knew Ray.
+Ella did not discuss the matter with her father, but she guessed his
+trouble and made up her mind as to what action she would take.
+The Sunday before, Ray had complained bitterly about the new cut to his
+salary. He had been desperate and had talked wildly of throwing up his
+work and finding a new place. And that possibility filled Ella with
+dismay. The Bennetts lived frugally on a very limited income. Apparently
+her father had few resources, though he always gave her the impression
+that from one of these he received a fairly comfortable income.
+The cottage was Bennett’s own property, and the cost of living was
+ridiculously cheap. A woman from the village came in every morning to do
+heavy work, and once a week to assist with the wash. That was the only
+luxury which her father’s meagre allowance provided for. So that she
+faced the prospect of an out-of-work Ray with alarm and decided upon her
+line of action.
+One morning Johnson, crossing the marble floor of Maitland’s main
+office, saw a delicious figure come through the swing doors, and almost
+ran to meet it.
+“My dear Miss Bennett, this is a wonderful surprise—Ray is out, but if
+you’ll wait——”
+“I’m glad he is out,” she said, relieved. “I want to see Mr. Maitland.
+Is it possible?”
+The cheery face of the philosopher clouded.
+“I’m afraid that will be difficult,” he said. “The old man never sees
+people—even the biggest men in the City. He hates women and strangers,
+and although I’ve been with him all these years, I’m not so sure that he
+has got used to me! What is it about?”
+She hesitated.
+“It’s about Ray’s salary,” and then, as he shook his head, she went on
+urgently: “It is so important, Mr. Johnson. Ray has extravagant tastes,
+and if they cut his salary it means—well, you know Ray so well!”
+He nodded.
+“I don’t know whether I can do anything,” he said dubiously. “I’ll go up
+and ask Mr. Maitland, but I’m afraid that it is a million to one chance
+against his seeing you.”
+When he came back, the jovial face of Mr. Johnson was one broad smile.
+“Come up before he changes his mind,” he said, and led her to the lift.
+“You’ll have to do all the talking, Miss Bennett—he’s an eccentric old
+cuss and as hard as flint.”
+He showed her into a small and comfortably furnished room, and waved his
+hand to a writing-table littered with papers.
+“My little den,” he explained.
+From the “den” a large rosewood door opened upon Mr. Maitland’s office.
+Johnson knocked softly, and, with a heart that beat a little faster,
+Ella was ushered into the presence of the strange old man who at that
+moment was dominating the money market.
+The room was large, and the luxury of the fittings took her breath away.
+The walls were of rosewood inlaid with exquisite silver inlay. Light
+came from concealed lamps in the cornice as well as from the long
+stained-glass windows. Each article of furniture in the room was worth a
+fortune, and she guessed that the carpet, into which her feet sank,
+equalled in costliness the whole contents of an average house.
+Behind a vast ormolu writing-table sat the great Maitland, bolt upright,
+watching her from under his shaggy white brows. A few stray hairs of his
+spotless beard rested on the desk, and as he raised his hand to sweep
+them into place, she saw he wore fingerless woollen gloves. His head was
+completely bald . . . she looked at his big ears, standing away from his
+head, fascinated. Patriarchal, yet repulsive. There was something gross,
+obscene, about him that hurt her. It was not the untidiness of his
+dress, it was not his years. Age brings refinement, that beauty of decay
+that the purists call caducity. This old man had grown old coarsely.
+His scrutiny lacked the assurance she expected. It almost seemed that he
+was nervous, ill at ease. His gaze shifted from the girl to his
+secretary, and then to the rich colouring of the windows, and then
+furtively back to Ella again.
+“This is Miss Bennett, sir. You remember that Bennett is our exchange
+clerk, and a very smart fellow indeed. Miss Bennett wants you to
+reconsider your decision about that salary cut.”
+“You see, Mr. Maitland,” Ella broke in, “we’re not particularly well
+off, and the reduction makes a whole lot of difference to us.”
+Mr. Maitland wagged his bald head impatiently.
+“I don’t care whether you’re well off or not well off,” he said loudly.
+“When I reduces salaries I reduces ’um, see?”
+She stared at him in amazement. The voice was harsh and common. The
+language and tone were of the gutter. In that sentence he confirmed all
+her first impressions.
+“If he don’t like it he can go, and if you don’t like it”—he fixed his
+dull eyes on the uncomfortable-looking Johnson—“you can go too. There’s
+lots of fellers I can get—pick ’um up on the streets! Millions of ’um!
+That’s all.” Johnson tiptoed from the presence and closed the door
+behind her.
+“He’s a horror!” she gasped. “How can you endure contact with him, Mr.
+Johnson?”
+The stout man smiled quietly.
+“‘Millions of ’um,’” he repeated, “and he’s right. With a million and a
+half unemployed on the streets, I can’t throw up a good job——”
+“I’m sorry,” she said, impulsively putting her hand on his arm. “I
+didn’t know he was like that,” she went on more mildly.
+“He’s—terrible!”
+“He’s a self-made man, and perhaps he would have been well advised to
+have got an artisan to do the job,” smiled Johnson, “but he’s not really
+bad. I wonder why he saw you?”
+“Doesn’t he see people?”
+He shook his head.
+“Not unless it is absolutely necessary, and that only happens about
+twice a year. I don’t think there is anybody in this building that he’s
+ever spoken to—not even the managers.”
+He took her down to the general office. Ray had not come back.
+“The truth is,” confessed Johnson when she asked him, “that Ray hasn’t
+been to the office this morning. He sent word to say that he wasn’t
+feeling any too good, and I fixed it so that he has a day off.”
+“He’s not ill?” she asked in alarm, but Johnson reassured her.
+“No. I got on the telephone to him—he has a telephone at his new flat.”
+“I thought he had an ordinary apartment!” she said, aghast, the
+housewife in her perturbed. “A flat—where is it?”
+“In Knightsbridge,” replied Johnson quietly. “Yes, it sounds expensive,
+but I believe he has a bargain. A man who was going abroad sub-let it to
+him for a song. I suppose he wrote to you from the lodgings in
+Bloomsbury where he intended going. May I be candid, Miss Bennett?”
+“If it is about Ray, I wish you would,” she answered quickly.
+“Ray is rather worrying me,” said Johnson. “Naturally I want to do all
+that I can for him, for I am fond of him. At present my job is covering
+up his rather frequent absences from the office—you need not mention
+this fact to him—but it is rather a strain, for the old man has an
+uncanny instinct for a shirker. He is living in better style than he
+ought to be able to afford, and I’ve seen him dressed to kill with some
+of the swellest people in town—at least, they looked swell.”
+The girl felt herself go cold, and the vague unrest in her mind became
+instantly a panic.
+“There isn’t . . . anything wrong at the office?” she asked anxiously.
+“No. I took the liberty of going through his books. They’re square. His
+cash account is right to a centimo. Crudely stated, he isn’t
+stealing—at least, not from us. There’s another thing. He calls himself
+Raymond Lester at Knightsbridge. I found this out by accident, and asked
+him why he had taken another name. His explanation was fairly plausible.
+He didn’t want Mr. Bennett to hear that he was cutting a shine. He has
+some profitable outside work, but he won’t tell me what it is.”
+Ella was glad to get away, glad to reach the seclusion which the wide
+spaces of the park afforded. She must think and decide upon the course
+she would take. Ray was not the kind of boy to accept the draconic
+attitude, either in her or in John Bennett. His father must not
+know—she must appeal to Ray. Perhaps it was true that he had found a
+remunerative sideline. Lots of young men ran spare time work with profit
+to themselves—only Ray was not a worker.
+She sat down on a park chair to wrestle with the problem, and so intent
+was she upon its solution that she did not realize that somebody had
+stopped before her.
+“This is a miracle!” said a laughing voice, and she looked up into the
+blue eyes of Dick Gordon. “And now you can tell me what is the
+difficulty?” he asked as he pulled another chair toward her and sat
+down.
+“Difficulty . . . who . . . who said I was in difficulties?” she
+countered.
+“Your face is the traitor,” he smiled. “Forgive this attire. I have been
+to make an official call at the United States Embassy.”
+She noticed for the first time that he wore the punctilious costume of
+officialdom, the well-fitting tail-coat, the polished top-hat and
+regulation cravat. She observed first of all that he looked very well in
+them, and that he seemed even younger.
+“I have an idea it is your brother,” he said. “I saw him a few minutes
+ago—there he is now.”
+She followed the direction of his eyes, and half rose from her chair in
+her astonishment. Riding on the tan track which ran parallel to the park
+road, were a man and a girl. The man was Ray. He was smartly dressed,
+and from the toes of his polished riding-boots to the crown of his grey
+hat, was all that was creditable to expensive tailoring. The girl at his
+side was young, pretty, petite.
+The riders passed without Ray noticing the interested spectators. He was
+in his gayest mood, and the sound of his laughter came back to the
+dumbfounded girl.
+“But . . . I don’t understand—do you know the lady, Mr. Gordon?”
+“Very well by repute,” said Dick drily. “Her name is Lola Bassano.”
+“Is she—a lady?”
+Dick’s eyes twinkled.
+“Elk says she’s not, but Elk is prejudiced. She has money and education
+and breed. Whether or not these three assets are sufficient to
+constitute a lady, I don’t know. Elk says not, but, as I say, Elk is
+considerably prejudiced.”
+She sat silent, her mind in a whirl.
+“I have an idea that you want help . . . about your brother,” said Dick
+quietly. “He is frightening you, isn’t he?”
+She nodded.
+“I thought so. He is puzzling _me_. I know all about him, his salary and
+prospects and his queer masquerade under an _alias_. I’m not troubling
+about that, because boys love those kinds of mysteries. Unfortunately,
+they are expensive mysteries, and I want to know how he can afford to
+keep up this suddenly acquired position.”
+He mentioned a sum and she gasped.
+“It costs all that,” said Dick. “Elk, who has a passion for exact
+detail, and who knows to a penny what the riding suit costs, supplied me
+with particulars.”
+She interrupted him with such a gesture of despair that he felt a brute.
+“What can I do . . . what can I do?” she asked. “Everybody wants to
+help—you, Mr. Johnson, and, I’m sure, Mr. Elk. But he is
+impossible—Ray, I mean. It will be fighting a feather bed. It may seem
+absurd to you, so much fuss over Ray’s foolish escapade, but it means,
+oh, so much to us, father and me!”
+Dick said nothing. It was too delicate a matter for an outsider to
+intrude upon. But the real delicacy of the situation was comprised in
+the boy’s riding companion. As though guessing his thoughts, she asked
+suddenly:
+“Is she a nice girl—Miss Bassano? I mean, is she one whom Ray should
+know?”
+“She is very charming,” he answered after a pause, and she noted the
+evasion and carried the subject no farther. Presently she turned the
+talk to her call on Ezra Maitland, and he heard her description without
+expressing surprise.
+“He’s a rough diamond,” he said. “Elk knows something about him which he
+refuses to tell. Elk enjoys mystifying his chiefs even more than
+detecting criminals. But I’ve heard about Maitland from other sources.”
+“Why does he wear gloves in the office?” she asked unexpectedly.
+“Gloves—I didn’t know that,” he said, surprised. “Why shouldn’t he?”
+She shook her head.
+“I don’t know . . . it was a silly idea, but I thought—it has only
+occurred to me since . . .”
+He waited.
+“When he put up his hand to smooth his beard, I’m almost sure I saw a
+tattoo mark on his left wrist—just the edge of it showing above the end
+of the glove—the head and eyes of a frog.”
+Dick Gordon listened, thunderstruck.
+“Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination, Miss Bennett?” he asked. “I am
+afraid the Frog is getting on all our nerves.”
+“It may have been,” she nodded; “but I was within a few feet of him, and
+a patch of light, reflected from his blotter, caught the wrist for a
+second.”
+“Did you speak to Johnson about it?”
+She shook her head.
+“I thought afterwards that even he, with all his long years of service,
+might not have observed the tattoo mark. I remember now that Ray told me
+Mr. Maitland always wore gloves, summer or winter.”
+Dick was puzzled. It was unlikely that this man, the head of a great
+financial corporation, should be associated with a gang of tramps. And
+yet——
+“When is your brother going to Horsham?” he asked.
+“On Sunday,” said the girl. “He has promised father to come to lunch.”
+“I suppose,” said the cunning young man, “that it isn’t possible to ask
+me to be a fourth?”
+“You will be a fifth,” she smiled. “Mr. Johnson is coming down too. Poor
+Mr. Johnson is scared of father, and I think the fear is mutual. Father
+resembles Maitland in that respect, that he does not like strangers.
+I’ll invite you anyway,” she said, and the prospect of the Sunday
+meeting cheered her.
+Elk came to see him that night, just as he was going out to a theatre,
+and Dick related the girl’s suspicion. To his surprise, Elk took the
+startling theory very coolly.
+“It’s possible,” he said, “but it’s more likely that the tattoo mark
+isn’t a frog at all. Old Maitland was a seaman as a boy—at least, that
+is what the only biography of him in existence says. It’s a half-column
+that appeared in a London newspaper about twelve years ago, when he
+bought up Lord Meister’s place on the Embankment and began to enlarge
+his offices. I’ll tell you this, Mr. Gordon, that I’m quite prepared to
+believe anything of old Maitland.”
+“Why?” asked Dick in astonishment. He knew nothing of the discoveries
+which the detective had made.
+“Because I just should,” said Elk. “Men who make millions are not
+ordinary. If they were ordinary they wouldn’t be millionaires. I’ll
+inquire about that tattoo mark.”
+Dick’s attention was diverted from the Frogs that week by an unusual
+circumstance. On the Tuesday he was sent for by the Foreign Minister’s
+secretary, and, to his surprise, he was received personally by the
+august head of that department. The reason for this signal honour was
+disclosed.
+“Captain Gordon,” said the Minister, “I am expecting from France the
+draft commercial treaty that is to be signed as between ourselves and
+the French and Italian Governments. It is very important that this
+document should be well guarded because—and I tell you this in
+confidence—it deals with a revision of tariff rates. I won’t compromise
+you by telling you in what manner the revisions are applied, but it is
+essential that the King’s Messenger who is bringing the treaty should be
+well guarded, and I wish to supplement the ordinary police protection by
+sending you to Dover to meet him. It is a little outside your duties,
+but your Intelligence work during the war must be my excuse for saddling
+you with this responsibility. Three members of the French and Italian
+secret police will accompany him to Dover, when you and your men will
+take on the guard duty, and remain until you personally see the document
+deposited in my own safe.”
+Like many other important duties, this proved to be wholly unexciting.
+The Messenger was picked up on the quay at Dover, shepherded into a
+Pullman coupé which had been reserved for him, and the passage-way
+outside the coupé was patrolled by two men from Scotland Yard. At
+Victoria a car, driven by a chauffeur-policeman and guarded by armed
+men, picked up the Messenger and Dick, and drove them to Calden Gardens.
+In his library the Foreign Secretary examined the seals carefully, and
+then, in the presence of Dick and the Detective-Inspector who had
+commanded the escort, placed the envelope in the safe.
+“I don’t suppose for one moment,” said the Foreign Minister with a
+smile, after all the visitors but Dick had departed, “that our friends
+the Frogs are greatly interested. Yet, curiously enough, I had them in
+my mind, and this was responsible for the extraordinary precautions we
+have taken. There is, I suppose, no further clue in the Genter murder?”
+“None, sir—so far as I know. Domestic crime isn’t really in my
+department. And any kind of crime does not come to the Public Prosecutor
+until the case against an accused person is ready to be presented.”
+“It is a pity,” said Lord Farmley. “I could wish that the matter of the
+Frogs was not entirely in the hands of Scotland Yard. It is so out of
+the ordinary, and such a menace to society, that I should feel more
+happy if some extra department were controlling the investigations.”
+Dick Gordon might have said that he was itching to assume that control,
+but he refrained. His lordship fingered his shaven chin thoughtfully. He
+was an austere man of sixty, delicately featured, as delicately
+wrinkled, the product of that subtle school of diplomacy which is at
+once urbane and ruthless, which slays with a bow, and is never quite so
+dangerous as when it is most polite.
+“I will speak to the Prime Minister,” he said. “Will you dine with me,
+Captain Gordon?”
+Early in the next afternoon, Dick Gordon was summoned to Downing Street,
+and was informed that a special department had been created to deal
+exclusively with this social menace.
+“You have _carte blanche_, Captain Gordon. I may be criticized for
+giving you this appointment, but I am perfectly satisfied that I have
+the right man,” said the Prime Minister; “and you may employ any officer
+from Scotland Yard you wish.”
+“I’ll take Sergeant Elk,” said Dick promptly, and the Prime Minister
+looked dubious.
+“That is not a very high rank,” he demurred.
+“He is a man with thirty years’ service,” said Dick; “and I believe that
+only his failure in the educational test has stopped his further
+promotion. Let me have him, sir, and give him the temporary rank of
+Inspector.”
+The older man laughed.
+“Have it your own way,” he said.
+Sergeant Elk, lounging in to report progress that afternoon, was greeted
+by a new title. For a while he was dazed, and then a slow smile dawned
+on his homely face.
+“I’ll bet I’m the only inspector in England who doesn’t know where Queen
+Elizabeth is buried!” he said, not without pride.
+CHAPTER VIII
+THE OFFENSIVE RAY
+IT was perfectly absurd, Dick told himself a dozen times during the days
+which followed, that a grown man of his experience should punctiliously
+and solemnly strike from the calendar, one by one, the days which
+separated him from Sunday. A schoolboy might so behave, but it would
+have to be a very callow schoolboy. And a schoolboy might sit at his
+desk and dream away the time that might have been devoted to official
+correspondence.
+A pretty face . . . ? Dick had admired many. A graciousness of carriage,
+an inspiring refinement of manner . . . ? He gave up the attempt to
+analyse the attraction which Ella Bennett held. All that he knew was,
+that he was waiting impatiently for Sunday.
+When Dick opened the garden gate, he saw the plump figure of
+philosophical Johnson ensconced cosily in a garden chair. The secretary
+rose with a beaming smile and held out his hand. Dick liked the man. He
+stood for that patient class which, struggling under the stifling
+handicap of its own mediocrity, has its superlative virtue in loyalty
+and unremitting application to the task it finds at hand.
+“Ray told me you were coming, Mr. Gordon—he is with Miss Bennett in the
+orchard, and from a casual view of him just now, he is hearing a few
+home truths. What do you make of it?”
+“Has he given up coming to the office?” asked Dick, as he stripped his
+dust-coat.
+“I am afraid he is out for good.” Johnson’s face was sad. “I had to tell
+him to go. The old man found out that he’d been staying away, and by
+some uncanny and underground system of intelligence he has learnt that
+Ray was going the pace. He had an accountant in to see the books, but
+thank heaven they were O.K.! I was very nearly fired myself.”
+This was an opportunity not to be missed.
+“Do you know where Maitland lives—in what state? Has he a town house?”
+Johnson smiled.
+“Oh yes, he has a town house all right,” he said sarcastically. “I only
+discovered where it was a year ago, and I’ve never told a single soul
+until now. And even now I won’t give details. But old Maitland is living
+in some place that is nearly a slum—living meanly and horribly like an
+unemployed labourer! And he is worth millions! He has a cheap house in
+one of the suburbs, a place I wouldn’t use to stable a cow! He and his
+sister live there; she looks after the place and does the housekeeping.
+I guess she has a soft job. I’ve never known Maitland to spend a penny
+on himself. I’m sure that he is wearing the suit he wore when I first
+came to him. He has a penny glass of milk and a penny roll for lunch,
+and tries to swindle me into paying for that, some days!”
+“Tell me, Mr. Johnson, why does the old man wear gloves in the office?”
+Johnson shook his head.
+“I don’t know. I used to think it was to hide the scar on the back of
+his hand, but he’s not the kind of man to wear gloves for that. He is
+tattooed with crowns and anchors and dolphins all up his arms. . . .”
+“And frogs?” asked Dick quietly, and the question seemed to surprise the
+other.
+“No, I’ve never seen a frog. There’s a bunch of snakes on one
+wrist—I’ve seen that. Why, old man Maitland wouldn’t be a Frog, would
+he?” he asked, and Dick smiled at the anxiety in his tone.
+“I wondered,” he said.
+Johnson’s usually cheerful countenance was glum.
+“I reckon he is mean enough to be a Frog or ’most anything,” he said,
+and at that minute Ray and his sister came into view. On Ray’s forehead
+sat a thundercloud, which deepened at the sight of Dick Gordon. The girl
+was flushed and obviously on the verge of tears.
+“Hallo, Gordon!” the boy began without preliminary. “I fancy you’re the
+fellow that has been carrying yarns to my sister. You set Elk to spy on
+me—I know, because I found Elk in the act——”
+“Ray, you’re not to speak like that to Mr. Gordon,” interrupted the girl
+hotly. “He has never told me anything to your discredit. All I know I
+have seen. You seem to forget that Mr. Gordon is father’s guest.”
+“Everybody is fussing over me,” Ray grumbled. “Even old Johnson!” He
+grinned sheepishly at the bald man, but Johnson did not return the
+smile.
+“Somebody has got to worry about you, boy,” he said.
+The strained situation was only relieved when John Bennett, camera on
+back, came up the red path to greet his visitors.
+“Why, Mr. Johnson, I owe you many apologies for putting you off, but I’m
+glad to see you here at last. How is Ray doing at the office?”
+Johnson shot a helpless and pathetic glance at Dick.
+“Er—fine, Mr. Bennett,” he blurted.
+So John Bennett was not to be told that his son had launched forth on a
+new career? The fact that he was fathering this deception made Dick
+Gordon a little uncomfortable. Apparently it reduced Mr. Johnson to
+despair, for when a somewhat tense luncheon had ended and they were
+alone again in the garden, that worthy man unburdened himself of his
+trouble.
+“I feel that I’m playing it low on old Bennett,” he said. “Ray should
+have told him.”
+Dick could only agree. He was in no mood to discuss Ray at the moment.
+The boy’s annoyance and self-assurance irritated him, and it did not
+help matters to recognize the sudden and frank hostility which the
+brother of Ella Bennett was showing toward him. That was disconcerting,
+and emphasized his anomalous position in relation to the Bennetts. He
+was discovering what many young men in love have to discover: that the
+glamour which surrounds their dears does not extend to the relations and
+friends of their dears. He made yet another discovery. The plump Mr.
+Johnson was in love with the girl. He was nervous and incoherent in her
+presence; miserable when she went away. More miserable still when Dick
+boldly took her arm and led her into the rose-garden behind the house.
+“I don’t know why that fellow comes here,” said Ray savagely as the two
+disappeared. “He isn’t a man of our class, and he loathes me.”
+“I don’t know that he loathes you, Ray,” said Johnson, waking from the
+unhappy daydream into which he seemed to have fallen. “He’s an extremely
+nice man——”
+“Fiddlesticks!” said the other scornfully. “He’s a snob! Anyway, he’s a
+policemen, and I hate cops! If you imagine the he doesn’t look good on
+you and me, you’re wrong. I’m as good as he is, and I bet I’ll make more
+money before I’m finished!”
+“Money isn’t everything,” said Johnson tritely. “What work are you
+doing, Ray?”
+It required a great effort on his part to bring his mind back to his
+friend’s affairs.
+“I can’t tell you. It’s very confidential,” said Ray mysteriously. “I
+couldn’t even tell Ella, though she’s been jawing at me for hours. There
+are some jobs that a man can’t speak about without betraying secrets
+that aren’t his to tell. This is one of them.”
+Mr. Johnson said nothing. He was thinking of Ella and wondering how long
+it would be before her good-looking companion brought her back.
+Good-looking and young. Mr. Johnson was not good-looking, and only just
+on the right side of fifty. And he was bald. But, worst of all, in her
+presence he was tongue-tied. He was rather amazed with himself.
+In the seclusion of the rose-garden another member of the Bennett family
+was relating her fears to a more sympathetic audience.
+“I feel that father guesses,” she said. “He was out most of last night.
+I was awake when he came in, and he looked terrible. He said he had been
+walking about half the night, and by the mud on his boots I think he
+must have been.”
+Dick did not agree.
+“Knowing very little about Mr. Bennett, I should hardly think he is the
+kind of man to suffer in silence where your brother is concerned,” he
+said. “I could better imagine a most unholy row. Why has your brother
+become so unpleasant to me?”
+She shook her head.
+“I don’t know. Ray has changed suddenly. This morning when he kissed me,
+his breath smelt of whisky—he never used to drink. This new life is
+ruining him—why should he take a false name if . . . if the work he is
+doing is quite straight?”
+She had ceased addressing him as “Mr. Gordon.” The compromise of calling
+him by no name at all was very pleasant to Dick Gordon, because he
+recognized that it _was_ a compromise. The day was hot and the sky
+cloudless. Ella had made arrangements to serve tea on the lawn, and she
+found two eager helpers in Dick and Johnson, galvanized to radiant
+activity by the opportunity of assisting. The boy’s attitude remained
+antagonistic, and after a few futile attempts to overcome this, Dick
+gave it up.
+Even the presence of his father, who had kept aloof from the party all
+afternoon, brought no change for the better.
+“The worst of being a policeman is that you’re always on duty,” he said
+during the meal. “I suppose you’re storing every scrap of talk in your
+mind, in case you have to use it.”
+Dick folded a thin slice of bread and butter very deliberately before he
+replied.
+“I have certainly a good memory,” he said. “It helps me to forget. It
+also helps me keep silent in circumstances which are very difficult and
+trying.”
+Suddenly Ray spun round in his chair.
+“I told you he was on duty!” he cried triumphantly. “Look! There’s the
+chief of the spy corps! The faithful Elk!”
+Dick looked in astonishment. He had left Elk on the point of going north
+to follow up a new Frog clue that had come to light. And there he was,
+his hands resting on the gate, his chin on his chest, gazing mournfully
+over his glasses at the group.
+“Can I come in, Mr. Bennett?”
+John Bennett, alert and watchful, beckoned.
+“Happened to be round about here, so I thought I’d call. Good afternoon,
+miss—good afternoon, Mr. Johnson.”
+“Give Sergeant Elk your chair,” growled John Bennett, and his son rose
+with a scowl.
+“Inspector,” said Elk. “No, I’d rather stand, mister. Stand and grow
+good, eh? Yes, I’m Inspector. I don’t realize it myself sometimes,
+especially when the men salute me—forget to salute ’em back. Now, in
+America I believe patrol men salute sergeants. That’s as it should be.”
+His sad eyes moved from one to the other.
+“I suppose your promotion has made a lot of crooks very scared, Elk?”
+sneered Ray.
+“Why, yes. I believe it has. Especially the amatchoors,” said Elk. “The
+crooks that are only fly-nuts. The fancy crooks, who think they know it
+all, and will go on thinking so till one day somebody says, ‘Get your
+hat—the chief wants you!’ Otherwise,” confessed Elk modestly, “the news
+has created no sensation, and London is just as full as ever of
+tale-pitchers who’ll let you distribute their money amongst the poor if
+you’ll only loan ’em a hundred to prove your confidence. And,” Elk
+continued after a moment’s cogitation, “there’s nearly as many dud
+prize-fighters living on blackmail an’ robbery, an’ almost as many
+beautiful young ladies running faro parlours and dance emporiums.”
+Ray’s face went a dull red, and if looks could blast, Inspector Elk’s
+friends would have been speaking of him in hushed tones.
+Only then did he turn his attention to Dick Gordon.
+“I was wondering, Captain, if I could have a day off next week—I’ve a
+little family trouble.”
+Dick, who did not even know that his friend had a family was startled.
+“I’m sorry to hear that, Elk,” he said sympathetically.
+Elk sighed.
+“It’s hard on me,” he said, “but I feel I ought to tell you, if you’ll
+excuse me, Miss Bennett?”
+Dick rose and followed the detective to the gate, and then Elk spoke in
+a low tone.
+“Lord Farmley’s house was burgled at one o’clock this morning, and the
+Frogs have got away with the draft treaty!”
+Watching the two furtively, the girl saw nothing in Dick Gordon’s
+demeanour to indicate that he had received any news which was of
+consequence to himself. He came slowly back to the table.
+“I am afraid I must go,” he said. “Elk’s trouble is sufficiently
+important to take me back to town.”
+He saw the regret in Ella’s eyes and was satisfied. The leave-taking was
+short, for it was very necessary that he should get back to town as
+quickly as his car could carry him.
+On the journey Elk told all that he knew. Lord Farmley had spent the
+week-end in his town house. He was working on two new clauses which had
+been inserted on the private representation of the American ambassador,
+who, as usual, held a watching brief in the matter, but managed (also as
+usual) to secure the amendment of a clause dealing with transshipments
+that, had it remained unamended, would have proved detrimental to his
+country. All this Dick learnt later. He was unaware at the time that the
+embassy knew of the treaty’s existence.
+Lord Farmley had replaced the document in the safe, which was a “Cham”
+of the latest make, and built into the wall of his study, locked and
+double-locked the steel doors, switched on the burglar alarm, and went
+to bed.
+He had no occasion to go to the safe until after lunch. To all
+appearances, the safe-doors had not been touched. After lunch, intending
+to work again on the treaty, he put his key in the lock, to discover
+that, when it turned, the wards met no resistance. He pulled at the
+handle. It came away in his hand. The safe was open in the sense that it
+was not locked, and the treaty, together with his notes and amendments,
+had gone.
+“How did they get in?” asked Dick as the car whizzed furiously along the
+country road.
+“Pantry window—butlers’ pantries were invented by a burglar-architect,”
+said Elk. “It’s a real job—the finest bit of work I’ve seen in twenty
+years, and there are only two men in the world who could have done it.
+No finger-prints, no ugly holes blown into the safe, everything neat and
+beautifully done. It’s a pleasure to see.”
+“I hope Lord Farmley has got as much satisfaction out of the workmanship
+as you have,” said Dick grimly, and Elk sniffed.
+“He wasn’t laughing,” he said, “at least, not when I came away.”
+His lordship was not laughing when Elk returned.
+“This is terrible, Gordon—terrible! We’re holding a Cabinet on the
+matter this evening; the Prime Minister has returned to town. This means
+political ruin for me.”
+“You think the Frogs are responsible?”
+Lord Farmley’s answer was to pull open the door of the safe. On the
+inside panel was a white imprint, an exact replica of that which Elk had
+seen on the door of Mr. Broad’s flat. It was almost impossible for the
+non-expert to discover how the safe had been opened. It was Elk who
+showed the fine work that had extracted the handle and had enabled the
+thieves to shatter the lock by some powerful explosive which nobody in
+the house had heard.
+“They used a silencer,” said Elk. “It’s just as easy to prevent gases
+escaping too quickly from a lock as it is from a gun barrel. I tell you,
+there are only two men who could have done this.”
+“Who are they?”
+“Young Harry Lyme is one—he’s been dead for years. And Saul Morris is
+the other—and Saul’s dead too.”
+“As the work is obviously not that of two dead men, you would be well
+advised to think of a third,” said his lordship, pardonably annoyed.
+Elk shook his head slowly.
+“There must be a third, and he’s the cleverest of the lot,” he said,
+speaking his thoughts aloud. “I know the lot—Wal Cormon, George the
+Rat, Billy Harp, Ike Velleco, Pheeny Moore—and I’ll take an oath that
+it wasn’t any of them. This is master work, my lord. It’s the work of a
+great artist such as we seldom meet nowadays. And I fancy I know who he
+is.”
+Lord Farmley, who had listened as patiently as he could to this
+rhapsody, stalked from the library soon after, leaving the men alone.
+“Captain,” said Elk, walking after the peer and closing the door, “do
+you happen to know where old Bennett was last night?”
+Elk’s tone was careless, but Dick Gordon felt the underlying
+significance of the question, and for a moment, realizing all that lay
+behind the question, all that it meant to the girl, who was dearer to
+him than he had guessed, his breath came more quickly.
+“He was out most of the night,” he said. “Miss Bennett told me that he
+went away on Friday and did not return until this morning at daybreak.
+Why?”
+Elk took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it slowly and adjusted his
+glasses.
+“I’ve had a man keeping tag of Bennett’s absences from home,” he said
+slowly. “It was easy, because the woman who goes every morning to clean
+his house has a wonderful memory. He has been away fifteen times this
+past year, and every time he has gone there’s been a first-class
+burglary committed somewhere!”
+Dick drew a long breath.
+“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
+“I’m suggesting,” replied Elk deliberately, “that if Bennett can’t
+account for his movements on Saturday night, I’m going to pull him in.
+Saul Morris I’ve never met, nor young Wal Cormon either—they were
+before I did big work. But if my idea is right, Saul Morris isn’t as
+dead as he ought to be. I’m going down to see Brother Bennett, and I
+think perhaps I’ll be doing a bit of resurrecting!”
+CHAPTER IX
+THE MAN WHO WAS WRECKED
+JOHN BENNETT was working in his garden in the early morning when Elk
+called, and the inspector came straight to the point.
+“There was a burglary committed at the residence of Lord Farmley on
+Saturday night and Sunday morning. Probably between midnight and three
+o’clock. The safe was blown and important documents stolen. I’m asking
+you to account for your movements on Saturday night and Sunday morning.”
+Bennett looked the detective straight in the eyes.
+“I was on the London road—I walked from town. At two o’clock I was
+speaking with a policeman in Dorking. At midnight I was in Kingbridge,
+and again I spoke to a policeman. Both these men know me because I
+frequently walk to Dorking and Kingbridge. The man at Dorking is an
+amateur photographer like myself.”
+Elk considered.
+“I’ve a car here; suppose you come along and see these policemen?” he
+suggested, and to his surprise Bennett agreed at once.
+At Dorking they discovered their man; he was just going off duty.
+“Yes, Inspector, I remember Mr. Bennett speaking to me. We were
+discussing animal photography.”
+“You’re sure of the time?”
+“Absolutely. At two o’clock the patrol sergeant visits me, and he came
+up whilst we were talking.”
+The patrol sergeant, wakened from his morning sleep, confirmed this
+statement. The result of the Kingbridge inquiries produced the same
+results.
+Elk ordered the driver of his car to return to Horsham.
+“I’m not going to apologize to you, Bennett,” he said, “and you know
+enough about my work to appreciate my position.”
+“I’m not complaining,” said Bennett gruffly. “Duty is duty. But I’m
+entitled to know why you suspect me of all men in the world.”
+Elk tapped the window of the car and it stopped.
+“Walk along the road: I can talk better,” he said.
+They got out and went some distance without speaking.
+“Bennett, you’re under suspicion for two reasons. You’re a mystery man
+in the sense that nobody knows how you get a living. You haven’t an
+income of your own. You haven’t an occupation, and at odd intervals you
+disappear from home and nobody knows where you go. If you were a younger
+man I’d suspect a double life in the usual sense. But you’re not that
+kind. That is suspicious circumstance Number One. Here is Number Two.
+Every time you disappear there’s a big burglary somewhere. And I’ve an
+idea it’s a Frog steal. I’ll give you my theory. These Frogs are mostly
+dirt. There isn’t enough brain in the whole outfit to fill an average
+nut—I’m talking about the mass of ’em. There are clever men higher up,
+I grant. But they don’t include the regular fellows who make a living
+from crime. These boys haven’t any time for such nonsense. They plan a
+job and pull it off, or they get pinched. If they make a getaway, they
+divide up the stuff and sit around in cafés with girls till all the
+stuff is gone, and then they go out for some more. But the Frogs are
+willing to pay good men who are outside the organization for extra
+work.”
+“And you suggest that I may be one of the ‘good men’?” said Bennett.
+“That’s just what I am suggesting. This Frog job at Lord Farmley’s was
+done by an expert—it looks like Saul Morris.”
+His keen eyes were focused upon Bennett’s face, but not by so much as a
+flicker of an eyelash did he betray his thoughts.
+“I remember Saul Morris,” said Bennett slowly. “I’ve never seen him, but
+I’ve heard of his work. Was he—anything like me?”
+Elk pursed his lips, his chin went nearer to his chest, and his gaze
+became more and more intensified.
+“If you know anything about Saul Morris,” he said slowly, “you also know
+that he was never in the hands of the police, that nobody except his own
+gang ever saw him, so as to be able to recognize him again.”
+Another silence.
+“I wasn’t aware of that,” said Bennett.
+On the way back to the car, Bennett spoke again.
+“I bear no malice. My movements are suspicious, but there is a good
+reason. As to the burglaries—I know nothing about them. I should say
+that in any case, whether I knew or not. I ask you not to mention this
+matter to my daughter, because—well, you don’t want me to tell you
+why.”
+Ella was standing at the garden gate when the car came up, and at the
+sight of Elk the smile left her face. Elk knew instinctively that the
+thought of her brother, and the possibility of his being in trouble,
+were the causes of her apprehension.
+“Mr. Elk came down to ask me a few questions about the attack on Mr.
+Gordon,” said her father briefly.
+Whatever else he was, thought Elk, he was a poor and unconvincing liar.
+That the girl was not convinced, he was sure. When they were alone she
+asked:
+“Is anything wrong, Mr. Elk?”
+“Nothing, miss. Just come down to refresh my memory—which was never a
+good one, especially in the matter of dates. The only date I really
+remember is the landing of William the Conqueror—1140 or thereabouts.
+Brother gone back to town?”
+“He went last night,” she said, and then, almost defiantly: “He is in a
+good position now, Mr. Elk.”
+“So they tell me,” said Elk. “I wish he wasn’t working in the same shop
+as the bunch who are with him. I’m not letting him out of my sight. Miss
+Bennett,” he said in a kinder tone. “Perhaps I’ll be able to slip in the
+right word one of these days. He wouldn’t listen now if I said
+‘get!’—he’s naturally in the condition of mind when he’s making up
+press cuttings about himself. And in a way he’s right. If you don’t know
+it all at twenty-one you never will. What’s that word that begins with a
+‘z’?—‘zenith,’ that’s it. He’s at the zenith of his
+sure-and-certainness. From now on he’ll start unloading his cargo of
+dreams an’ take in ballast. But he’ll hate to hear the derricks at
+work.”
+“You talk like a sailor,” she smiled in spite of her trouble.
+“I was that once,” said Elk, “the same as old man Maitland—though I’ve
+never sailed with him—I guess he left the sea years before I was born.
+Like him?”
+“Mr. Maitland? No!” she shivered. “I think he is a terrible man.”
+Elk did not disagree.
+To Dick Gordon that morning he confessed his error.
+“I don’t know why I jumped at Bennett,” he said. “I’m getting young! I
+see the evening newspapers have got the burglary.”
+“But they do not know what was stolen,” said Dick in a low voice. “That
+must be kept secret.”
+They were in the inner bureau, which Dick occupied temporarily. Two men
+were at work in his larger office replacing a panel which had been
+shattered by the bullet which had been fired at him on the morning Elk
+came into the case, and it was symptomatic of the effect that the Frogs
+had had upon headquarters that both men had almost mechanically
+scrutinized the left arms of the workmen. The sight of the damaged panel
+switched Elk’s thoughts to a matter which he had intended raising
+before—the identity of the tramp Carlo. In spite of the precautions
+Gordon had taken, and although the man was under observation, Carlo had
+vanished, and the combined efforts of headquarters and the country
+offices had failed to locate him. It was a sore point with Gordon, as
+Elk had reason to know.
+For Carlo was the reputable “Number Seven,” the most important man in
+the organization after the Frog himself.
+“I’d like to see this Carlo,” he said thoughtfully. “There’s not much
+use in putting another man out on the road to follow up Genter’s work.
+That system doesn’t work twice. I wonder how much Lola knows?”
+“Of the Frogs? They wouldn’t trust a woman,” said Dick. “She may work
+for them, but, as you said, it is likely they bring in outsiders for
+special jobs and pay them well.”
+Elk did not carry the matter any further, and spent the rest of the day
+in making fruitless inquiries. Returning to his room at headquarters
+that night, he sat for a long time hunched up in his chair, his hands
+thrust into his trousers pockets, staring down at the blotting-pad. Then
+he pressed a bell, and his clerk, Balder, came.
+“Go to Records, get me all that is known about every safe-breaker known
+in this country. You needn’t worry about the German and French, but
+there’s a Swede or two who are mighty clever with the lamp, and of
+course there are the Americans.”
+They came after a long interval—a considerable pile of papers,
+photographs and finger-prints.
+“You can go, Balder—the night man can take them back.” He settled
+himself down to an enjoyable night’s reading.
+He was nearing the end of the pile when he came to the portrait of a
+young man with a drooping moustache and a bush of curly hair. It was one
+of those sharp positives that unromantic police officials take, and
+showed whatever imperfections of skin there were. Beneath the photograph
+was the name, carefully printed: “Henry John Lyme, R.V.”
+“R.V.” was the prison code. Every year from 1874 to 1899 was indicated
+by a capital letter in the alphabet. Thereafter ran the small letters.
+The “R” meant that Henry J. Lyme had been sentenced to penal servitude
+in 1891. The “V” that he had suffered a further term of convict
+imprisonment in 1895.
+Elk read the short and terrible record. Born in Guernsey in 1873, the
+man had been six times convicted before he was twenty (the minor
+convictions are not designated by letters in the code). In the space at
+the foot of the blank in which particulars were given of his crime, were
+the words:
+“Dangerous; carries firearms.” In another hand, and in the red ink which
+is used to close a criminal career, was written: “Died at sea. _Channel
+Queen_. Black Rock. Feb. 1, 1898.”
+Elk remembered the wreck of the Guernsey mail packet on the Black Rocks.
+He turned back the page to read particulars of the dead man’s crimes,
+and the comments of those who from time to time had been brought into
+official contact with him. In these scraps of description was the real
+biography. “Works alone,” was one comment, and another; “No women
+clue—women never seen with him.” A third scrawl was difficult to
+decipher, but when Elk mastered the evil writing, he half rose from the
+chair in his excitement. It was:
+“Add to body marks in general D.C.P. 14 frog tattooed left
+wrist.  New.  J. J. M.”
+The date against which this was written was the date of the man’s last
+conviction. Elk turned up the printed blank “D.C.P.14” and found it to
+be a form headed “Description of Convicted Person.” The number was the
+classification. There was no mention of tattooed frogs: somebody had
+been careless. Word by word he read the description:
+“Henry John Lyme, _a._ Young Harry, _a._ Thomas Martin, _a._ Boy
+Peace, _a._ Boy Harry (there were five lines of aliases).
+Burglar (dangerous; carries firearms). Height 5 ft. 6 in. Chest
+dimple in chin. Nose straight. Hair brown, wavy, worn long. Face
+round. Moustache drooping; wears side-whiskers. Feet and hands
+normal. Little toe left foot amputated first joint owing to
+accident, H.M. Prison, Portland. Speaks well, writes good hand.
+Hobbies none. Smokes cigarettes. Poses as public official, tax
+collector, sanitary inspector, gas or water man. Speaks French
+and Italian fluently. Never drinks; plays cards but no gambler.
+Favourite hiding place, Rome or Milan. No conviction abroad. No
+relations. Excellent organizer. Immediately after crime, look
+for him at good hotel in Midlands or working to Hull for the
+Dutch or Scandinavian boats. Has been known to visit
+Guernsey. . . .”
+Here followed the Bertillon measurements and body marks—this was in the
+days before the introduction of the finger-print system. But there was
+no mention of the Frog on the left wrist. Elk dropped his pen in the ink
+and wrote in the missing data. Underneath he added:
+“This man may still be alive,” and signed his initials.
+CHAPTER X
+ON HARLEY TERRACE
+SO writing, the telephone buzzed, and in his unflurried way he finished
+his entry and blotted it before he took up the instrument.
+“Captain Gordon wishes you to take the first taxi you can find and come
+to his house—the matter is very urgent,” said a voice. “I am speaking
+from Harley Terrace.”
+“All right.” Elk found his hat and umbrella, stopped long enough to
+return the records to their home, and went out into the dark courtyard.
+There are two entrances to Scotland Yard: one that opens into Whitehall
+and was by far the best route for him, since Whitehall is filled with
+cabs; the other on to the Thames Embankment, which, in addition to
+offering the longest way round, would bring him to a thoroughfare where,
+at this hour of the night, taxis would be few and far between. So
+engrossed was Elk with his thoughts that he was on the Embankment before
+he realized where he was going. He turned toward the Houses of
+Parliament into Bridge Street, found an ancient cab and gave the
+address. The driver was elderly and probably a little fuddled, for,
+instead of stopping at No. 273, he overshot the mark by a dozen houses,
+and only stopped at all on the vitriolic representations of his fare.
+“What’s the matter with you, Noah?—this ain’t Mount Ararat!” snapped
+Elk as he descended. “You’re boozed, you poor fish.”
+“Wish I was,” murmured the driver, holding out his hand for the fare.
+Elk would have argued the matter but for the urgency of the summons.
+Whilst he was waiting for the driver to unbutton his many coats to find
+change, he glanced back along the street. A car was standing near the
+door of Dick Gordon’s house, its headlights dimmed to the least possible
+degree. That in itself was not remarkable. The two men who waited on the
+pavement were. They stood with their backs to the railings, one (as he
+guessed) on either side of the door. To him came the soft purring of the
+motor-car’s engine. He took a step back and brought the opposite
+pavement into his range of vision. There were two other men, also
+lounging idly, and they were exactly opposite 273.
+Elk looked round. The cab had stopped before a doctor’s house, and the
+detective did not take a long time to make up his mind.
+“Wait till I come out.”
+“Don’t be long,” pleaded the aged driver. “The bars will be shut in a
+quarter of an hour.”
+“Wait, Batchus,” said Elk, who had a nodding acquaintance with ancient
+mythology, but only a hazy idea of pronunciation. Bacchus growled, but
+waited.
+Fortunately, the doctor was at home, and to him Elk revealed his
+identity. In a few seconds he was connected with Mary Lane Police
+Station.
+“Elk, Central Office, speaking,” he said rapidly, and gave his code
+number. “Send every man you can put your hand on, to close Harley
+Terrace north and south of 273. Stop all cars from the moment you get my
+signal—two long two short flashes. How soon can your men be in place?”
+“In five minutes, Mr. Elk. The night reliefs are parading, and I have a
+couple of motor-trucks here—just pinched the drivers for being drunk.”
+He replaced the receiver and went into the hall.
+“Anything wrong?” asked the startled doctor as Elk slid back the jacket
+of his automatic and pushed the safety catch into place.
+“I hope so, sir,” said Elk truthfully. “If I’ve turned out the division
+because a few innocent fellows are leaning against the railings of
+Harley Terrace, I’m going to get myself into trouble.”
+He waited five minutes, then opened the door and went out. The men were
+still in their positions, and as he stood there two motor-trucks drove
+into the thoroughfare from either end, turned broadside in the middle of
+the road and stopped.
+Elk’s pocket lamp flashed to left and right, and he jumped for the
+pavement.
+And now he saw that his suspicions were justified. The men on the
+opposite pavement came across the road at the double, and leapt to the
+running-board of the car with the dim lights as it moved. Simultaneously
+the two who had been guarding the entrance of 273 sprang into the
+machine. But the fugitives were too late. The car swerved to avoid the
+blocking motor-truck, but even as it turned, the truck ran backwards.
+There was a crash, a sound of splintering glass, and by the time Elk
+arrived, the five occupants of the car were in the hands of the
+uniformed policemen who swarmed at the end of the street.
+The prisoners accepted their capture without resistance. One (the
+chauffeur) who tried to throw away a revolver unobtrusively, was
+detected in the act and handcuffed, but the remainder gave no trouble.
+At the police-station Elk had a view of his prisoners. Four very fine
+specimens of the genus tramp, wearing their new ready-to-wear suits
+awkwardly. The fifth, who gave a Russian name, and was obviously the
+driver, a little man with small, sharp eyes that glanced uneasily from
+face to face.
+Two of the prisoners carried loaded revolvers; in the car they found
+four walking-sticks heavily weighted.
+“Take off your coats and roll up your sleeves,” commanded the inspector.
+“You needn’t trouble, Elk.” It was the little chauffeur speaking. “All
+us boys are good Frogs.”
+“There ain’t any good Frogs,” said Elk. “There’s only bad Frogs and
+worse Frogs and the worst Frog of all. But we won’t argue. Let these men
+into their cells, sergeant, and keep them separate. I’ll take Litnov to
+headquarters.”
+The chauffeur looked uneasily from Elk to the station sergeant.
+“What’s the great idea?” he asked. “You’re not allowed to use the third
+degree in England.”
+“The law has been altered,” said Elk ominously, and re-snapped the
+handcuffs on the man’s wrists.
+The law had not been altered, but this the little Russian did not know.
+Throughout the journey to headquarters he communed with himself, and
+when he was pushed into Elk’s bare-looking room, he was prepared to
+talk. . . .
+Dick was waiting for the detective when he came back to Harley Terrace,
+and heard the story.
+“I never dreamt that it was a plant until I spotted the lads waiting for
+me,” said Elk. “Of course you didn’t telephone; they caught me napping
+there. Thorough! The Frogs are all that! They expected me to leave
+headquarters by the Whitehall entrance, and had a taxi waiting to pick
+me up, but in case they missed me that way, they told off a party to
+meet me in Harley Terrace. Thorough!”
+“Who gave them their orders?”
+Elk shrugged.
+“Mr. Nobody. Litnov had his by post. It was signed ‘Seven,’ and gave him
+the rendezvous, and that was all. He says he has never seen a Frog since
+he was initiated. Where he was sworn in he doesn’t remember. The car
+belongs to Frogs, and he receives so much a week for looking after it.
+Ordinarily he is employed by Heron’s Club—drives a truck for them. He
+tells me that there are twenty other cars cached in London somewhere,
+just standing in their garages, and each has its own driver, who goes
+once a week to give it a clean up.”
+“Heron’s Club—that is the dance club which Lola and Lew Brady are
+interested in!” said Dick thoughtfully, and Elk considered.
+“I never thought of that. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the management
+of Heron’s know anything about Litnov’s evening work. I’ll look up that
+club.”
+He was saved the trouble, for the next morning, when he reached the
+office, he found a man waiting to see him.
+“I’m Mr. Hagn, the manager of the Heron’s Club,” he introduced himself.
+“I understand one of my men has been in trouble.”
+Hagn was a tall, good-looking Swede who spoke without any trace of a
+foreign accent.
+“How have you heard that, Mr. Hagn?” asked Elk suspiciously. “The man
+has been under lock and key since last night, and he hasn’t held any
+communication with anybody.”
+Mr. Hagn smiled.
+“You can’t arrest people and take them to a police-station without
+somebody knowing all about it,” he said with truth. “One of my waiters
+saw Litnov being taken to Mary Lane handcuffed, and as Litnov hasn’t
+reported for duty this morning, there was only one conclusion to be
+drawn. What is the trouble, Mr. Elk?”
+Elk shook his head.
+“I can’t give you any information on the matter,” he said.
+“Can I see him?”
+“You can’t even see him,” said Elk. “He has slept well, and sends his
+love to all kind friends.”
+Mr. Hagn seemed distressed.
+“Is it possible to discover where he put the key of the coal cellar?” he
+urged. “This is rather important to me. This man usually keeps it.”
+The detective hesitated.
+“I can find out,” he said, and, leaving Mr. Hagn under the watchful eyes
+of his secretary, he crossed the yard to the cells where the Russian was
+held.
+Litnov rose from his plank bed as the cell door opened.
+“Friend of yours called,” said Elk. “Wants to know where you put the key
+of the coal cellar.”
+It was only the merest flicker of light and understanding that came to
+the little man’s eyes, but Elk saw it.
+“Tell him I believe I left it with the Wandsworth man,” he said.
+“Um!” said Elk, and went back to the waiting Hagn.
+“He said he left it in the Pentonville Road,” said Elk untruthfully, but
+Mr. Hagn seemed satisfied.
+Returning to the cells, Elk saw the gaoler.
+“Has this man asked you where he was to be taken from here?”
+“Yes, sir,” said the officer. “I told him he was going to Wandsworth
+Prison—we usually tell prisoners where they are going on remand, in
+case they wish to let their relatives know.”
+Elk had guessed right. The inquiry about the key was prearranged. A
+telephone message to Mary Lane, where the remainder of the gang were
+held, produced the curious information that a woman, reputedly the wife
+of one of the men, had called that morning, and, on being refused an
+interview, begged for news about the missing key of the coal cellar, and
+had been told that it was in the possession of “the Brixton man.”
+“The men are to be remitted to Wormwood Scrubbs Prison, and they are not
+to be told where they are going,” ordered Elk.
+That afternoon a horse-driven prison-van drew out of Cannon Row and
+rumbled along Whitehall. At the juncture of St. Martin’s Lane and
+Shaftesbury Avenue, a carelessly-driven motor lorry smashed into its
+side, slicing off the near wheel. Instantly there came from nowhere a
+crowd of remarkable appearance. It seemed as if all the tramps in the
+world had been lying in wait to crowd about the crippled van. The door
+was wrenched open, and the gaoler on duty hauled forth. Before he could
+be handled, the van disgorged twenty Central Office men, and from the
+side streets came a score of mounted policemen, clubs in hand. The riot
+lasted less then three minutes. Some of the wild-looking men succeeded
+in making their escape, but the majority, chained in twos, went, meekly
+enough, between their mounted escorts.
+Dick Gordon, who was also something of an organizer, watched the fight
+from the top of an omnibus, which, laden with policemen, had shadowed
+the van. He joined Elk after the excitement had subsided.
+“Have you arrested anybody of importance?” he asked.
+“It’s too early to say,” said Elk. “They look like ordinary tadpoles to
+me. I guess Litnov is in Wandsworth by now—I sent him in a closed
+police car before the van left.”
+Arrived at Scotland Yard, he paraded the Frogs in two open ranks,
+watched, at a distance, by the curious crowd which packed both
+entrances. One by one he examined their wrists, and in every case the
+tattoo mark was present.
+He finished his scrutiny at last, and his captives were herded into an
+inner yard under an armed guard.
+“One man wants to speak to you, sir.”
+The last file had disappeared when the officer in charge reported, and
+Elk exchanged a glance with his chief.
+“See him,” said Dick. “We can’t afford to miss any information.”
+A policeman brought the Frog to them—a tall man with a week’s growth of
+beard, poorly dressed and grimy. His battered hat was pulled down over
+his eyes, his powerful wrists visible beneath the sleeves of a jacket
+that was made for a smaller man.
+“Well, Frog?” said Elk, glowering at him. “What’s your croak?”
+“Croak is a good word,” said the man, and at the sound of his voice Elk
+stared. “You don’t think that old police car of yours is going to reach
+Wandsworth, do you?”
+“Who are you?” asked Elk, peering forward.
+“They want Litnov badly,” said the Frog. “They want to settle with him,
+and if the poor fish thinks it’s brotherly love that makes old man Frog
+go to all this trouble, he’s reserved a big jar for himself.”
+“Broad! What . . . !”
+The American licked his finger and wiped away the frog from his wrist.
+“I’ll explain after, Mr. Elk, but take a friend’s advice and call up
+Wandsworth.”
+Elk’s telephone was buzzing furiously when he reached his office.
+It was Wandsworth station calling.
+“Your police car was held up on the Common, two of your men were
+wounded, and the prisoner was shot dead,” was the report.
+“Thank you!” said Elk bitterly.
+CHAPTER XI
+MR. BROAD EXPLAINS
+DETAINED under police supervision, Mr. Broad did not seem in any way
+surprised or disconcerted. Dick Gordon and his assistant reached
+Wandsworth Common ten minutes after the news came through, and found the
+wreckage of the police car surrounded by a large crowd, kept at a
+distance by police.
+The dead prisoner had been taken into the prison, together with one of
+the attackers, who had been captured by a party of warders, returning to
+the gaol after their luncheon hour.
+A brief examination of Litnov told them no more than they knew. He had
+been shot through the heart, and death, must have been instantaneous.
+The prisoner, brought from a cell, was a man of thirty and better
+educated than the average run of Frogs. No weapon had been found upon
+him and he protested his innocence of any complicity in the plot.
+According to his story, he was an out-of-work clerk who had been
+strolling across the Common when the ambush occurred. He had seen the
+fight, seen the second motor-car which carried the attackers away, and
+had been arrested whilst running in pursuit of the murderers.
+His captors told a different story. The warder responsible for his
+arrest said that the man was on the point of boarding the car when the
+officer had thrown his truncheon at him and brought him down. The car
+was moving at the time, and the remainder of the party had not dared to
+stop and pick up their comrade. Most damning evidence of all was the
+tattoo mark on his wrist.
+“Frog, you’re a dead man,” said Elk in his most sepulchral voice. “Where
+did you live when you were alive?”
+The captive confessed that his home was in North London.
+“North Londoners don’t come to Wandsworth to walk on the Common,” said
+Elk.
+He had a conference with the chief warder, and, taking the prisoner into
+the courtyard, Elk spoke his mind.
+“What happens to you if you spill the beans, Frog?” he asked.
+The man showed his teeth in an unpleasant smile.
+“The beans aren’t grown that I can spill,” he said.
+Elk looked around. The courtyard was a small, stone-paved quadrangle,
+surrounded by high, discoloured walls. Against one of these was a little
+shed with grey sliding doors.
+“Come here,” said Elk.
+He took the key that the chief warder had given him, unlocked the doors
+and slid them back. They were looking into a bare, clean apartment with
+whitewashed walls. Across the ceiling ran two stout oak beams, and
+between them three stubby steel bars.
+The prisoner frowned as Elk walked to a long steel lever near one of the
+walls.
+“Watch, Frog!” he said.
+He pulled at the lever, and the centre of the floor divided and fell
+with a crash, revealing a deep, brick-lined pit.
+“See that trap . . . see that ‘T’ mark in chalk? That’s where a man puts
+his feet when the hangman straps his legs. The rope hangs from that
+beam, Frog!”
+The man’s face was livid as he shrank back.
+“You . . . can’t . . . hang—me,” he breathed. “I’ve done nothing!”
+“You’ve killed a man,” said Elk as he pulled the doors to and locked
+them. “You’re the only fellow we’ve got, and you’ll have to suffer for
+the lot. Are them beans growin’?”
+The prisoner raised his shaking hand to his lips.
+“I’ll tell you all I know,” he said huskily.
+Elk led him back to his cell.
+An hour later, Dick was speeding back to his headquarters with
+considerable information. His first act was to send for Joshua Broad,
+and the eagle-faced “tramp” came cheerfully.
+“Now, Mr. Broad, I’ll have your story,” said Dick, and motioned the
+other to be seated.
+Joshua seated himself slowly.
+“There’s nothing much to tell,” he said. “For a week I’ve been getting
+acquainted with the Frogs. I guessed that it was unlikely that the bulk
+of them would be unknown to one another, and I just froze on to the
+first I found. Met him in a Deptford lodging-house. Then I heard there
+was a hurry-up call for a big job to-day and joined. The Frogs knew that
+the real attack might be somewhere else, and on the way to Scotland Yard
+I heard that a party had been told off to watch for Litnov at
+Wandsworth.”
+“Did you see any of the big men?”
+Broad shook his head.
+“They looked all alike, but undoubtedly there were two or three section
+leaders in charge. There was never any question of rescuing. They were
+out to kill. They knew that Litnov had told all that he knew, and he was
+doomed—they got him, I suppose?”
+“Yes—they got him!” said Dick, and then: “What is your interest in the
+Frogs?”
+“Purely adventitious,” replied the other lazily. “I’m a rich man with a
+whole lot of time on my hands, and I have a big interest in criminology.
+A few years ago I heard about the Frogs, and they seized on my
+imagination. Since then I’ve been trailing them.”
+His gaze did not waver under Dick Gordon’s scrutiny.
+“Now will you tell me,” said Dick quietly, “how you became a rich man?
+In the latter days of the war you arrived in this country on a
+cattle-boat—with about twenty dollars in your pocket. You told Elk you
+had arrived by that method, and you spoke the truth. I’ve been almost as
+much interested in you as you have been in the Frogs,” he said with a
+half-smile, “and I have been putting through a few inquiries. You came
+to England 1917 and deserted your ship. In May, 1917, you negotiated for
+the hire of an old tumbledown shack near Eastleigh, Hampshire. There you
+lived, patching up this crazy cottage and living, so far as I can
+discover, on the few dollars you brought from the ship. Then suddenly
+you disappeared, and were next seen in Paris on Christmas Eve of that
+year. You were conspicuous in rescuing a family that had been buried in
+a house bombed in an air raid, and your name was taken by the police
+with the idea of giving you some reward. The French police report is
+that you were ‘very poorly dressed’—they thought you might be a
+deserter from the American Army. Yet in February you were staying at the
+Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, with plenty of money and an extensive
+wardrobe!”
+Joshua Broad sat through the recital unmoved, except for the ghost of a
+smile which showed at the corner of his unshaven mouth.
+“Surely, Captain, Monte Carlo is the place where a man _would_ have
+money?”
+“If he brought it there,” said Dick, and went on: “I’m not suggesting
+that you are a bad character, or that your money came in any other way
+than honestly. I merely state the facts that your sudden rise from
+poverty to riches was, to say the least, remarkable.”
+“It surely was,” agreed the other; “and, judging by appearances, my
+change from riches to poverty is as sudden.”
+Dick looked at the dirty-looking tramp who sat on the other side of the
+table and laughed silently.
+“You mean, if it is possible for you to masquerade now, it was possible
+then, and that, even though you were apparently broke in 1917, you might
+very well have been a rich man?”
+“Exactly,” said Mr. Joshua Broad.
+Gordon was serious again.
+“I would prefer that you remained your more presentable self,” he said.
+“I hate telling an American that I may have to deport him, because that
+sounds as if it is a punishment to return to the United States. But I
+may find myself with no other alternative.”
+Joshua Broad rose.
+“That, Captain Gordon, is too broad for a hint and too kindly for a
+threat—henceforth, Joshua Broad is a respectable member of society.
+Maybe I’ll take the Prince of Caux’s house and entertain bims and be a
+modern Harun al Raschid. I’ve got to meet them somehow.”
+At the mention of that show house that had cost a king’s ransom to build
+and a queen’s dowry to furnish, Dick smiled.
+“It isn’t necessary you should advertise your respectability that way,”
+he said. But Broad was not smiling.
+“The only thing I ask is that you do not advise the police to withdraw
+my permits,” he said.
+Dick’s eyebrows rose.
+“Permits?”
+“I carry two guns, and the time is coming when two won’t be enough,”
+said Mr. Broad. “And it is coming soon.”
+CHAPTER XII
+THE EMBELLISHMENT OF MR. MAITLAND
+THERE was a concert that night at the Queen’s Hall, and the spacious
+auditorium was crowded to hear the summer recital of a great violinist.
+Dick Gordon, in the midst of an evening’s work, remembered that he had
+reserved a seat. He felt fagged, baffled, inclined to hopelessness. A
+note from Lord Farmley had come to him, urging instant action to recover
+the lost commercial treaty. It was such a letter as a man, himself
+worried, would write without realizing that in so doing he was passing
+on his panic to those who it was very necessary should not be stampeded
+into precipitate action. It was a human letter, but not statesmanlike.
+Dick decided upon the concert.
+He had finished dressing when he remembered that it was more than likely
+that the omniscient Frogs would know of his reservation. He must take
+the risk, if risk there was. He ’phoned to the garage where his own
+machine was housed and hired a closed car, and in ten minutes was one of
+two thousand people who were listening, entranced, to the master. In the
+interval he strolled out to the lobby to smoke, and almost the first
+person he saw was a Central Office man who avoided his eye. Another
+detective stood by the stairway leading to the bar, a third was smoking
+on the steps of the hall outside. But the sensation of the evening was
+not this evidence of Elk’s foresight. The warning bell had sounded, and
+Dick was in the act of throwing away his cigarette, when a magnificent
+limousine drew up before the building, a smart footman alighted to open
+the door, and there stepped heavily to the pavement—Mr. Ezra Maitland!
+Dick heard a gasp behind him, and turned his head to see Elk in the one
+and only dress suit he had ever possessed.
+“Mother of Moses!” he said in an awed voice.
+And there was reason for his astonishment. Not only was Mr. Maitland’s
+equipage worthy of a reigning monarch, with its silver fittings,
+lacquered body and expensively uniformed servants, but the old man was
+wearing a dress suit of the latest fashion. His beard had been shortened
+a few inches, and across the spotless white waistcoat was stretched a
+heavy gold chain. On his hand many rings blazed and flashed in the light
+of the street standard. There was a camellia in his perfect lapel, and
+on his head the glossiest of silk hats. Leaning on a stick of ebony and
+ivory, he strutted across the pavement.
+“Silk socks . . . patent leather shoes. My God! Look at his _rings_,”
+hissed Elk.
+His profanity was almost excusable. The vision of splendour passed
+through the doors into the hall.
+“He’s gone gay!” said Elk hollowly, and followed like a man in a dream.
+From where he was placed, Dick had a good view of the millionaire. He
+sat throughout the second part of the programme with closed eyes, and so
+slow was he to start applauding after each item, that Dick was certain
+that he had been asleep and the clapping had awakened him.
+Once he detected the old man stifling a yawn in the very midst of the
+second movement of Elgar’s violin concerto, which held the audience
+spellbound by its delicate beauty. With his big hands, now enshrined in
+white kid gloves, crossed on his stomach, the head of Mr. Maitland
+nodded and jerked.
+When at last the concert was over, he looked round fearfully, as though
+to make absolutely certain that it _was_ over, then rose and made his
+way out of the hall, his silk hat held clumsily in his hand.
+A manager came in haste to meet him.
+“I hope, Mr. Maitland, you enjoyed yourself?” Dick heard him say.
+“Very pooty—very pooty,” replied Maitland hoarsely. “That fiddler ought
+to play a few toons, though—nothing like a hornpipe on a fiddle.”
+The manager looked after him open-mouthed, then hurried out to help the
+old man into his car.
+“Gay—he’s gay!” said Elk, as bewildered as the manager. “Jumping
+snakes! Who was that?”
+He addressed the unnecessary question to the manager, who had returned
+from his duty.
+“That is Maitland, the millionaire, Mr. Elk,” said the other. “First
+time we’ve had him here, but now that he’s come to live in town——”
+“Where is he living?” asked Elk.
+“He has taken the Prince of Caux’s house in Berkeley Square,” said the
+manager.
+Elk blinked at him.
+“Say that again?”
+“He has taken the Prince of Caux’s house,” said the manager. “And what
+is more, has bought it—the agent told me this afternoon.”
+Elk was incapable of comment, and the manager continued his surprising
+narrative.
+“I don’t think he knows much about music, but he has booked seats for
+every big musical event next season—his secretary came in this
+afternoon. He seemed a bit dazed.”
+Poor Johnson! thought Dick.
+“He wanted me to fix dancing lessons for the old boy——”
+Elk clapped his hand to his mouth—he had an insane desire to scream.
+“And as a matter of fact, I fixed them. He’s a bit old, but Socrates or
+somebody learnt Greek at eighty, and maybe Mr. Maitland’s regretting the
+wasted years of his life. I admit it is a bit late to start night
+clubs——”
+Elk laid a chiding hand upon the managerial shoulder.
+“You certainly deceived me, brother,” he said. “And here was I, drinking
+it all in, and you with a face as serious as the dial of a poorhouse
+clock! You’ve put it all over Elk, and I’m man enough to admit you
+fooled me.”
+“I don’t think our friend is trying to fool you,” said Dick quietly.
+“You really mean what you say—old Maitland has started dancing and
+night clubs?”
+“Certainly!” said the other. “He hasn’t started dancing, but that is
+where he has gone to-night—to the Heron’s. I heard him tell the
+chauffeur.”
+It was incredible, but a little amusing—most amusing of all to see
+Elk’s face.
+The detective was frankly dumbfounded by the news.
+“Heron’s is my idea of a good finish to a happy evening,” said Elk at
+last, drawing a long breath. He beckoned one of his escort. “How many
+man do you want to cover Heron’s Club?” he asked.
+“Six,” was the prompt reply. “Ten to raid it, and twenty for a rough
+house.”
+“Get thirty!” said Elk emphatically.
+Heron’s from the exterior was an unpretentious building. But once under
+the curtained doors, and the character of its exterior was forgotten. A
+luxurious lounge, softly lit and heavily carpeted, led to the large
+saloon, which was at once restaurant and dance-hall.
+Dick stood in the doorway awaiting the arrival of the manager, and
+admired the richness and subtle suggestion of cosiness which the room
+conveyed. The tables were set about an oblong square of polished
+flooring; from a gallery at the far end came the strain of a coloured
+orchestra; and on the floor itself a dozen couples swayed and glided in
+rhythm to the staccato melody.
+“Gilded vice,” said Elk disparagingly. “A regular haunt of sin and
+self-indulgence. I wonder what they charge for the food—there’s
+Mathusalem.”
+“Mathusalem” was sitting, a conspicuous figure, at the most prominent
+table in the room. His polished head glistened in the light from the
+crystal candelabras, and in the shadow that it cast, his patriarchal
+beard so melted into the white of his snowy shirt front that for a
+moment Dick did not recognize him.
+Before him was set a large glass mug filled with beer.
+“He’s human anyway,” said Elk.
+Hagn came at that moment, smiling, affable, willing to oblige.
+“This is an unexpected pleasure, Captain,” he said. “You want me to pass
+you in? Gentlemen, there is no necessity! Every police officer of rank
+is an honorary member of the club.”
+He bustled in, threading his way between the tables, and found them a
+vacant sofa in one of the alcoves. There were revellers whose faces
+showed alarm at the arrival of the new guests—one at least stole forth
+and did not come back.
+“We have many notable people here to-night,” said Hagn, rubbing his
+hands. “There are Lord and Lady Belfin” . . . he mentioned others; “and
+that gentleman with the beard is the great Maitland . . . his secretary
+is here somewhere. Poor gentleman, I fear he is not happy. But I invited
+him myself—it is sometimes desirable that we should elect the . . .
+what shall I say? . . . higher servants of important people?”
+“Johnson?” asked Dick in surprise. “Where?”
+Presently he saw that plump and philosophical man. He sat in a remote
+corner, looking awkward and miserable in his old-fashioned dress
+clothes. Before him was a glass which, Dick guessed, contained an orange
+squash.
+A solemn, frightened figure he made, sitting on the edge of his chair,
+his big red hands resting on the table. Dick Gordon laughed softly and
+whispered to Elk:
+“Go and get him!”
+Elk, who was never self-conscious, walked through the dancers and
+reached Mr. Johnson, who looked up startled and shook hands with the
+vigour of one rescued from a desert island.
+“It was good of you to ask me to come over,” said Johnson, as he greeted
+Dick. “This is new to me, and I’m feeling about as much at home as a
+chicken in a pie.”
+“Your first visit?”
+“And my last,” said Johnson emphatically. “This isn’t the kind of life
+that I care for. It interferes with my reading, and it—well, it’s sad.”
+His eyes were fixed on a noisy little party in the opposite alcove.
+Gordon had seen them almost as soon as he had sat down. Ray, in his most
+hectic mood, Lola Bassano, beautifully and daringly gowned, and the
+heavy-looking ex-pugilist, Lew Brady.
+Presently, with a sigh, Johnson’s eyes roved toward the old man and
+remained fixed on him, fascinated.
+“Isn’t it a miracle?” he asked in a hushed voice. “He changes his habits
+in a day! Bought the house in Berkeley Square, called in an army of
+tailors, sent me rushing round to fix theatre seats, bought jewellery
+. . .”
+He shook his head.
+“I can’t understand it,” he confessed, “because it has made no
+difference to him in the office. He’s the same old hog. He wanted me to
+become his resident secretary, but I struck at that. I must have some
+sort of life worth living. What scares me is that he may fire me if I
+don’t agree. He’s been very unpleasant this week. I wonder if Ray has
+seen him?”
+Ray Bennett had not seen his late employer. He was too completely
+engrossed in the joy of being with Lola, too inspired and stimulated
+from more material sources, to take an interest in anything but himself
+and the immediate object of his affections.
+“You are making a fool of yourself, Ray. Everybody is looking at you,”
+warned Lola.
+He glanced round, and for the first time began to notice who was in the
+room. Presently his eyes fell upon the shining pate of Mr. Maitland, and
+his jaw dropped. He could not believe the evidence of his vision, and,
+rising, walked unsteadily across the floor, shouldering the other
+guests, stumbling against chairs and tables, until he stood by the table
+of his late employer.
+“Gosh!” he gasped. “It _is_ you!”
+The old man raised his eyes slowly from the cloth which he had been
+contemplating steadily for ten minutes, and his steely eyes met the gaze
+steadily.
+“You hoary old sinner!” breathed Ray.
+“Go away,” snarled Mr. Maitland.
+“‘Go away,’ is it? I’m going to talk to you and give you a few words of
+advice and warning, Moses!”
+Ray sat down suddenly in a chair, and faced his glaring victim with
+drunken solemnity. His words of warning remained unuttered. Somebody
+gripped his arm and jerked him to his feet, and he looked into the dark
+face of Lew Brady.
+“Here, what——” he began. But Brady led him and pushed him back to his
+own table.
+“You fool!” he hissed. “Why do you want to advertise yourself in this
+way? You’re a hell of a Secret Service man!”
+“I don’t want any of that stuff from you,” said Ray roughly as he jerked
+his arm free.
+“Sit down, Ray,” said Lola in a low voice. “Half Scotland Yard is in the
+club, watching you.”
+He followed the direction of her eyes and saw Dick Gordon regarding him
+gravely, and the sight and knowledge of that surveillance maddened him.
+Leaping to his feet, he crossed the room to where they sat.
+“Looking for me?” he asked loudly. “Want me for anything?”
+Dick shook his head.
+“You damned police spy!” stormed the youth, white with unreasoning
+passion. “Bringing your bloodhounds after me! What are you doing with
+this gang, Johnson? Are you turned policeman too?”
+“My dear Ray,” murmured Johnson.
+“My dear Ray!” sneered the other. “You’re jealous, you poor
+worm—jealous because I’ve got away from the bloodsucker’s clutches! As
+to you”—he waved a threatening finger in Dick’s face—“you leave me
+alone—see? You’ve got a whole lot of work to do without carrying tales
+to my sister.”
+“I think you had better go back to your friends,” said Dick coolly. “Or,
+better still, go home and sleep.”
+All this had occurred between the dances, and now the band struck up,
+but if the attention of the crowded clubroom was in no wise relaxed,
+there was this change, that Ray’s high voice now did not rise above the
+efforts of the trap drummer.
+Dick looked round for the watchful Hagn. He knew that the manager, or
+one of the officials of the club, would interfere instantly. It was not
+Hagn, but a head waiter, who came up and pushed the young man back.
+So intent was everybody on that little scene that followed, in the
+spectacle of that flushed youth struggling against the steady pressure
+which the head waiter and his fellows asserted, that nobody saw the man
+who for a while stood in the doorway surveying the scene, before pushing
+aside the attendants he strode into the centre of the room.
+Ray, looking round, was almost sobered by the sight of his father.
+The rugged, grey-haired man, in his worn, tweed suit, made a striking
+contrast to that gaily-dressed throng. He stood, his hands behind him,
+his face white and set, surveying his son, and the boy’s eyes dropped
+before him.
+“I want you, Ray,” he said simply.
+The floor was deserted; the music ceased, as though the leader of the
+orchestra had been signalled that something was wrong.
+“Come back with me to Horsham, boy.”
+“I’m not going,” said Ray sullenly.
+“He is not with you, Mr. Gordon?”
+Dick shook his head, and at this intervention the fury of Ray Bennett
+flamed again.
+“With him!” he said scornfully. “Would I be with a sneaking policeman?”
+“Go with your father, Ray.” It was Johnson’s urgent advice, and his hand
+lay for a second on the boy’s shoulder.
+Ray shook him off.
+“I’ll stay here,” he said, and his voice was loud and defiant. “I’m not
+a baby, that I can’t be trusted out alone. You’ve no right to come here,
+making me look a fool.” He glowered at his father. “You’ve kept me down
+all these years, denied me money that I ought to have had—and who are
+you that you should pretend to be shocked because I’m in a decent club,
+wearing decent clothes? I’m straight: can you say the same? If I wasn’t
+straight, could you blame me? You’re not going to put any of that kind
+father stuff over——”
+“Come away.” John Bennett’s voice was hoarse.
+“I’m staying here,” said Ray violently. “And in future you can leave me
+alone. The break had to come some time, and it might as well come now.”
+They stood facing one another, father and son, and in the tired eyes of
+John Bennett was a look of infinite sadness.
+“You’re a silly boy, Ray. Perhaps I haven’t done all I could——”
+“Perhaps!��� sneered the other. “Why, you know it! You get out!”
+And then, as he turned his head, he saw the suppressed smiles on the
+face of the audience, and the hurt to his vanity drove him mad.
+“Come,” said John gently, and laid his hand on the boy’s arm.
+With a roar of fury Ray broke loose . . . in a second the thing was
+done. The blow that struck John Bennett staggered him, but he did not
+fall.
+And then, through the guests who thronged about the two, came Ella. She
+realized instantly what had happened. Elk had slipped from his seat and
+was standing behind the boy, ready to pin him if he raised his hand
+again. But Ray Bennett stood, frozen with horror, speechless, incapable
+of movement.
+“Father!” The white-faced girl whispered the word.
+The head of John Bennett dropped, and he suffered himself to be led
+away.
+Dick Gordon wanted to follow and comfort, but he saw Johnson going after
+them and went back to his table. Again the music started, and they took
+Ray Bennett back to his table, where he sat, head on hand, till Lola
+signalled a waiter to bring more wine.
+“There are times,” said Elk, “when the prodigal son and the fatted calf
+look so like one another that you can’t tell ’em apart.”
+Dick said nothing, but his heart bled for the mystery man of Horsham.
+For he had seen in John Bennett’s face the agony of the damned.
+CHAPTER XIII
+A RAID ON ELDOR STREET
+JOHNSON did not come back, and in many respects the two men were glad.
+Elk had been on the point of telling the secretary to clear, and he
+hoped that Mr. Maitland would follow his example. As if reading his
+thoughts, the old man rose soon after the room had quietened down. He
+had sat through the scene which had followed Ray’s meeting with his
+father, and had apparently displayed not the slightest interest in the
+proceedings. It was as though his mind were so far away that he could
+not bring himself to a realization of actualities.
+“He’s going, and he hasn’t paid his bill,” whispered Elk.
+In spite of his remissness, the aged millionaire was escorted to the
+door by the three chief waiters, his top-coat, silk hat and
+walking-stick were brought to him, and he was out of Dick Gordon’s sight
+before the bowing servants had straightened themselves.
+Elk looked at his watch: it wanted five minutes of one. Hagn had not
+returned—a circumstance which irritated the detective and was a source
+of uneasiness to Dick Gordon. The merriment again worked up to its
+highest point, when the two men rose from the table and strolled toward
+the door. A waiter came after them hurriedly.
+“Monsieur has not paid his bill.”
+“We will pay that later,” said Dick, and at that moment the hands of the
+clock pointed to the hour.
+Precisely five minutes later the club was in the hands of the police. By
+1.15 it was empty, save for the thirty raiding detectives and the staff.
+“Where is Hagn?” Dick asked the chief waiter.
+“He has gone home, monsieur,” said the man sullenly. “He always goes
+home early.”
+“That’s a lie,” said Elk. “Show me to his room.”
+Hagn’s office was in the basement, a part of the old mission hall that
+had remained untouched. They were shown to a large, windowless cubicle,
+comfortably furnished, which was Hagn’s private bureau, but the man had
+disappeared. Whilst his subordinates were searching for the books and
+examining, sheet by sheet, the documents in the clerk’s office, Elk made
+an examination of the room. In one corner was a small safe, upon which
+he put the police seal; and lying on a sofa in some disorder was a suit
+of clothes, evidently discarded in a hurry. Elk looked at them, carried
+them under the ceiling light, and examined them. It was the suit Hagn
+had been wearing when he had shown them to their seats.
+“Bring in that head waiter,” said Elk.
+The head waiter either wouldn’t or couldn’t give information.
+“Mr. Hagn always changes his clothes before he goes home,” he said.
+“Why did he go before the club was closed?”
+The man shrugged his shoulders.
+“I don’t know anything about his private affairs,” he said, and Elk
+dismissed him.
+Against the wall was a dressing-table and a mirror, and on each side of
+the mirror stood a small table-lamp, which differed from other
+table-lamps in that it was not shaded. Elk turned the switch, and in the
+glaring light scrutinized the table. Presently he found two wisps of
+hair, and held them against the sleeve of his black coat. In the drawer
+he found a small bottle of spirit gum, and examined the brush. Then he
+picked up a little wastepaper basket and turned its contents upon the
+table. He found a few torn bills, business letters, a tradesman’s
+advertisement, three charred cigarette ends, and some odd scraps of
+paper. One of these was covered with gum and stuck together.
+“I reckon he wiped the brush on this,” said Elk, and with some
+difficulty pulled the folded slip apart.
+It was typewritten, and consisted of three lines:
+“Urgent.  See Seven at E.S.2.  No raid.  Get M.’s
+statement.  Urgent.  F.1.”
+Dick took the paper from his subordinate’s hand and read it.
+“He’s wrong about the no raid,” he said. “E. S., of course, is Eldor
+Street, and two is either the number two or two o’clock.”
+“Who’s ‘M.’?” asked Elk, frowning.
+“Obviously Mills—the man we caught at Wandsworth. He made a written
+statement, didn’t he?”
+“He has signed one,” said Elk thoughtfully.
+He turned the papers over, and after a while found what he was looking
+for—a small envelope. It was addressed in typewritten characters to “G.
+V. Hagn,” and bore on the back the stamp of the District Messenger
+service.
+The staff were still held by the police, and Elk sent for the
+doorkeeper.
+“What time was this delivered?” he asked.
+The man was an ex-soldier, the only one of the prisoners who seemed to
+feel his position.
+“It came at about nine o’clock, sir,” he said readily, and produced the
+letter-book in confirmation. “It was brought by a District Messenger
+boy,” he explained unnecessarily.
+“Does Mr. Hagn get many notes by District Messenger?”
+“Very few, sir,” said the doorkeeper, and added an anxious inquiry as to
+his own fate.
+“You can go,” said Elk. “Under escort,” he added, “to your own home.
+You’re not to communicate with anybody, or tell any of the servants here
+that I have made inquiries about this letter. Do you understand?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+To make assurance doubly sure, Elk had called up exchange and placed a
+ban upon all ’phone communications. It was now a quarter to two, and,
+leaving half-a-dozen detectives in charge of the club, he got the
+remainder on to the car that had brought them, and, accompanied by Dick,
+went full speed for Tottenham.
+Within a hundred yards of Eldor Street the car stopped and unloaded. The
+first essential was that whoever was meeting No. 7 in Eldor Street
+should not be warned of their approach. It was more than possible that
+Frog scouts would be watching at each end of the street.
+“I don’t know why they should,” said Elk, when Dick put this possibility
+forward.
+“I can give you one very excellent reason,” said Dick quietly. “It is
+this: that the Frogs know all about your previous visit to Maitland’s
+slum residence.”
+“What makes you think that?” asked Elk in surprise, but Dick did not
+enlighten him.
+Sending the men round by circuitous routes, he went forward with Elk,
+and at the very corner of Eldor Street, Elk found that his chief’s
+surmise was well founded. Under a lamp-post Elk saw the dim figure of a
+man standing, and instantly began an animated and raucous conversation
+concerning a mythical Mr. Brown. Realizing that this was intended for
+the watcher, Gordon joined in. The man under the lamp-post hesitated
+just a little too long. As they came abreast of him, Elk turned.
+“Have you got a match?” he asked.
+“No,” growled the other, and the next instant was on the ground, with
+Elk’s knee on his chest and the detective’s bony hand around his throat.
+“Shout, Frog, and I’ll throttle you,” hissed the detective ferociously.
+There was no scuffle, no sound. The thing was done so quickly that, if
+there were other watchers in the street, they could not have known what
+had happened, or have received any warning from their comrade’s fate.
+The man was in the hands of the following detective, gagged and
+handcuffed, and on his way to the police car, before he knew exactly
+what tornado had struck him.
+“Do you mind if I sing?” said Elk as they turned into the street on the
+opposite side to that where Mr. Maitland’s late residence was situated.
+Without waiting permission Elk broke into song. His voice was thin and
+flat. As a singer, he was a miserable failure, and Dick Gordon had never
+in his life listened with so much patience to sounds more hideous. But
+there would be watchers at each end of the street, he thought, and soon
+saw that Elk’s precautions were necessary.
+Again it was in the shadow of a street-lamp that the sentinel stood—a
+tall, thickset man, more conscientious in the discharge of his duties
+than his friend, for Dick saw something glittering in his mouth, and
+knew that it was a whistle.
+“Give me the woild for a wishing well,” wailed Elk, staggering slightly,
+“Say that my dre-em will come true . . .”
+And as he sang he made appropriate gestures. His outflung hand caught
+the whistle and knocked it from the man’s mouth, and in a second the two
+sprang at him and flung him face downward on the pavement. Elk pulled
+his prisoner’s cap over his mouth; something black and shiny flashed
+before the sentry’s eyes, and a cold, circular instrument was thrust
+against the back of his ear.
+“If you make a sound, you’re a dead Frog,” said Elk; and that portion of
+his party which had made the circuit coming up at that moment, he handed
+his prisoner over and replaced his fountain-pen in his pocket.
+“Everything now depends upon whether the gentleman who is patrolling the
+passage between the gardens has witnessed this disgusting fracas,” said
+Elk, dusting himself. “If he was standing at the entrance to the passage
+he has seen it, and there’s going to be trouble.”
+Apparently the patrol was in the alleyway itself and had heard no sound.
+Creeping to the entrance, Elk listened and presently heard the soft pad
+of footsteps. He signalled to Dick to remain where he was, and slipped
+into the passage, walking softly, but not so softly that the man on
+guard at the back gate of Mr. Maitland’s house did not hear him.
+“Who’s that?” he demanded in a gruff voice.
+“It’s me,” whispered Elk. “Don’t make so much noise.”
+“You’re not supposed to be here,” said the other in a tone of authority.
+“I told you to stay under the lamp-post——”
+Elk’s eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and now he saw his man.
+“There are two queer-looking people in the street: I wanted you to see
+them,” he whispered.
+All turned now upon the discipline which the Frogs maintained.
+“Who are they?” asked the unknown in a low voice.
+“A man and a woman,” whispered Elk.
+“I don’t suppose they’re anybody important,” grumbled the other.
+In his youth Elk had played football; and, measuring the distance as
+best he could, he dropped suddenly and tackled low. The man struck the
+earth with a jerk which knocked all the breath out of his body and made
+him incapable of any other sound than the involuntary gasp which
+followed his knock-out. In a second Elk was on him, his bony knee on the
+man’s throat.
+“Pray, Frog,” he whispered in the man’s ear, “but don’t shout!”
+The stricken man was incapable of shouting, and was still breathless
+when willing hands threw him into the patrol wagon.
+“We’ll have to go the back way, boys,” said Elk in a whisper.
+This time his task was facilitated by the fact that the garden gate was
+not locked. The door into the scullery was, however, but there was a
+window, the catch of which Elk forced noiselessly. He had pulled off his
+boots and was in his stockinged feet, and he sidled along the darkened
+passage. Apparently none of the dilapidated furniture had been removed
+from the house, for he felt the small table that had stood in the hall
+on his last visit. Gently turning the handle of Maitland’s room, he
+pushed.
+The door was open, the room in darkness and empty. Elk came back to the
+scullery.
+“There’s nobody here on the ground floor,” he said. “We’ll try
+upstairs.”
+He was half-way up when he heard the murmur of voices and stopped.
+Raising his eyes to the level of the floor, he saw a crack of light
+under the doorway of the front room—the apartment which had been
+occupied by Maitland’s housekeeper. He listened, but could distinguish
+no consecutive words. Then, with a bound, he took the remaining stairs
+in three strides, flew along the landing, and flung himself upon the
+door. It was locked. At the sound of his footsteps the light inside went
+out. Twice he threw himself with all his weight at the frail door, and
+at the third attempt it crashed in.
+“Hands up, everybody!” he shouted.
+The room was in darkness, and there was a complete silence. Crouching
+down in the doorway, he flung the gleam of his electric torch into the
+room. It was empty!
+His officers came crowding in at his heels, the lamp on the table was
+relit—the glass chimney was hot—and a search was made of the room. It
+was too small to require a great deal of investigation. There was a bed,
+under which it was possible to hide, but they drew blank in this
+respect. At one end of the room near the bed was a wardrobe, which was
+filled with old dresses suspended from hangers.
+“Throw out those clothes,” ordered Elk. “There must be a door there into
+the next house.”
+A glance at the window showed him that it was impossible for the inmates
+of the room to have escaped that way. Presently the clothes were heaped
+on the floor, and the detectives were attacking the wooden back of the
+wardrobe, which did, in fact, prove to be a door leading into the next
+house. Whilst they were so engaged, Dick made a scrutiny of the table,
+which was littered with papers. He saw something and called Elk.
+“What is this, Elk?”
+The detective took the four closely-typed sheets of paper from his hand.
+“Mills’ confession,” he said in amazement. “There are only two copies,
+one of which I have, and the other is in the possession of your
+department, Captain Gordon.”
+At this moment the wardrobe backing was smashed in, and the detectives
+were pouring through to the next house.
+And then it was that they made the interesting discovery that, to all
+intents and purposes, communication was continuous between a block of
+ten houses that ran to the end of the street. And they were not
+untenanted. Three typical Frogs occupied the first room into which they
+burst. They found others on the lower floor; and it soon became clear
+that the whole of the houses comprising the end block had been turned
+into a sleeping-place for the recruits of Frogdom. Since any one of
+these might have been No. 7, they were placed under arrest.
+All the communicating doors were now opened. Except in the case of
+Maitland’s house, no attempt had been made to camouflage the entrances,
+which in the other houses consisted of oblong apertures, roughly cut
+through the brick party walls.
+“We may have got him, but I doubt it,” said Elk, coming back, breathless
+and grimy, to where Dick was examining the remainder of the documents
+which he had found. “I haven’t seen any man who looks like owning
+brains.”
+“Nobody has escaped from the block?”
+Elk shook his head.
+“My men are in the passage and the street. In addition, the uniformed
+police are here. Didn’t you hear the whistle?”
+Elk’s assistant reported at that moment.
+“A man has been found in one of the back yards, sir,” he said. “I’ve
+taken the liberty of relieving the constable of his prisoner. Would you
+like to see him?”
+“Bring him up,” said Elk, and a few minutes later a handcuffed man was
+pushed into the room.
+He was above medium height; his hair was fair and long, his yellow beard
+was trimmed to a point.
+For a moment Dick looked at him wonderingly, and then:
+“Carlo, I think?” he said.
+“Hagn, I’m sure!” said Elk. “Get those whiskers off, you Frog, and we’ll
+talk numbers, beginning with seven!”
+Hagn! Even now Dick could not believe his eyes. The wig was so perfectly
+made, the beard so cunningly fixed, that he could not believe it was the
+manager of Heron’s Club. But when he heard the voice, he knew that Elk
+was right.
+“Number Seven, eh?” drawled Hagn. “I guess Number Seven will get through
+your cordon without being challenged, Mr. Elk. He’s friendly with the
+police. What do you want me for?”
+“I want you for the part you played in the murder of Chief Inspector
+Genter on the night of the fourteenth of May,” said Elk.
+Hagn’s lips curled.
+“Why don’t you take Broad?—he was there. Perhaps he’ll come as witness
+for me.”
+“When I see him——” began Elk.
+“Look out of the window,” interrupted Hagn. “He’s there!”
+Dick walked to the window and, throwing up the sash, leant out. A crowd
+of locals in shawls and overcoats were watching the transference of the
+prisoners. Dick caught the sheen of a silk hat and the unmistakable
+voice of Broad hailed him.
+“Good morning, Captain Gordon—Frog stock kind of slumped, hasn’t it? By
+the way, did you see the baby?”
+CHAPTER XIV
+“ALL BULLS HEAR!”
+ELK went out on the street to see the American. Mr. Broad was in
+faultless evening dress, and the gleaming head-lamps of his car
+illuminated the mean street.
+“You’ve certainly a nose for trouble,” said Elk with respect; “and
+whilst you’re telling me how you came to know about this raid, which
+hadn’t been decided on until half-an-hour ago, I’ll do some quiet
+wondering.”
+“I didn’t know there was a raid,” confessed Joshua Broad, “but when I
+saw twenty Central Office men dash out of Heron’s Club and drive
+furiously away, I am entitled to guess that their haste doesn’t indicate
+their anxiety to get to bed before the clock strikes two. I usually call
+at Heron’s Club in the early hours. In many ways its members are less
+desirable acquaintances than the general run of Frogs, but they amuse
+me. And they are mildly instructive. That is my explanation—I saw you
+leave in a hurry and I followed you. And I repeat my question. Did you
+see the dear little baby who is learning to spell R-A-T, Rat?”
+“No,” said Elk shortly. He had a feeling that the suave and
+self-possessed American was laughing at him. “Come in and see the
+chief.”
+Broad followed the inspector to the bedroom, where Dick was assembling
+the papers which in his hurried departure No. 7 had left behind. The
+capture was the most important that had been made since the campaign
+against the Frogs was seriously undertaken.
+In addition to the copy of the secret report on Mills, there was a
+bundle of notes, many of them cryptic and unintelligible to the reader.
+Some, however, were in plain English. They were typewritten, and
+obviously they corresponded to the General Orders of an army. They were,
+in fact, the Frog’s own instructions, issued under the name of his chief
+of staff, for each bore the signature “Seven.”
+One ran:
+“Raymond Bennett must go faster. L. to tell him that he is a
+Frog. Whatever is done with him must be carried out with
+somebody unknown as Frog.”
+Another slip:
+“Gordon has an engagement to dine American Embassy Thursday.
+Settle. Elk has fixed new alarm under fourth tread of stairs.
+Elk goes to Wandsworth 4.15 to-morrow for interview with Mills.”
+There were other notes dealing with people of whom Dick had never heard.
+He was reading again the reference to himself, and smiling over the
+laconic instruction “settle,” when the American came in.
+“Sit down, Mr. Broad—by the sad look on Elk’s face I guess you have
+explained your presence satisfactorily?”
+Broad nodded smilingly.
+“And Mr. Elk takes quite a lot of convincing,” he said. His eyes fell
+upon the papers on the table. “Would it be indiscreet to ask if that is
+Frog stuff?” he asked.
+“Very,” said Dick, “In fact, any reference to the Frogs would be the
+height of indiscretion, unless you’re prepared to add to the sum of our
+knowledge.”
+“I can tell you, without committing myself, that Frog Seven has made a
+getaway,” said the American calmly.
+“How do you know?”
+“I heard the Frogs jubilating as they passed down the street in
+custody,” said Broad. “Frog Seven’s disguise was perfect—he wore the
+uniform of a policeman.”
+Elk swore softly but savagely.
+“That was it!” he said. “He was the ‘policeman’ who was spiriting Hagn
+away under the pretence of arresting him! And if one of my men had not
+taken his prisoner from him they would both have escaped. Wait!”
+He went in search of the detective who had brought in Hagn.
+“I don’t know the constable,” said that officer. “This is a strange
+division to me. He was a tallish man with a heavy black moustache. If it
+was a disguise, it was perfect, sir.”
+Elk returned to report and question. But again Mr. Broad’s explanation
+was a simple one.
+“I tell you that the Frogs were openly enjoying the joke. I heard one
+say that the ‘rozzer’ got away—and another refer to the escaped man as
+a ‘flattie’—both, I believe, are cant terms for policemen?”
+Elk nodded.
+“What is your interest in the Frogs, Broad?” he asked bluntly. “Forget
+for the minute that you’re a parlour-criminologist and imagine that
+you’re writin’ the true story of your life.”
+Broad considered for a while, examining the cigar he had been smoking.
+“The Frogs mean nothing to me—the Frog everything.” The American puffed
+a ring of smoke into the air and watched it dissolve.
+“I’m mighty curious to know what game he is playing with Ray Bennett,”
+he said. “That is certainly the most intriguing feature of Frog
+strategy.”
+He rose and took up his hat.
+“I envy you your search of this fine old mansion,” he said, and, with a
+twinkle in his eye: “Don’t forget the kindergarten, Mr. Elk.”
+When he had gone, Elk made a close scrutiny of the house. He found two
+children’s books, both well-thumbed, and an elementary copybook, in
+which a childish hand had followed, shakily, the excellent copperplate
+examples. The _abacus_ was gone, however. In the cupboard where he had
+seen the unopened circulars, he made a discovery. It was a complete
+outfit, as far as he could judge, for a boy of six or seven. Every
+article was new—not one had been worn. Elk carried his find to where
+Dick was still puzzling over some of the more obscure notes which “No.
+7” had left in his flight.
+“What do you make of these?” he asked.
+The Prosecutor turned over the articles one by one, then leant back in
+his chair and stared into vacancy.
+“All new,” he said absently, and then a slow smile dawned on his face.
+Elk, who saw nothing funny in the little bundle, wondered what was
+amusing him.
+“I think these clothes supply a very valuable clue; does this?” He
+passed a paper across the table, and Elk read:
+“All bulls hear on Wednesday 3.1.A. L.V.M.B. Important.”
+“There are twenty-five copies of that simple but moving message,” said
+Dick; “and as there are no envelopes for any of the instructions, I can
+only suppose that they are despatched by Hagn either from the club or
+his home. This is how far I have got in figuring the organization of the
+Frogs. Frog Number One works through ‘Seven,’ who may or may not be
+aware of his chief’s identity. Hagn—whose number is thirteen, by the
+way, and mighty unlucky it will be for him—is the executive chief of
+Number Seven’s bureau, and actually communicates with the section
+chiefs. He may or may not know ‘Seven’—probably he does. Seven takes
+orders from the Frog, but may act without consultation if emergencies
+arise. There is here,” he tapped the paper, “an apology for employing
+Mills, which bears this out.”
+“No handwriting?”
+“None—nor finger-prints.”
+Elk took up one of the slips on which the messages were written, and
+held it to the light.
+“Watermark Three Lion Bond,” he read. “Typewriter new, written by
+somebody who was taught and has a weak little finger of the left
+hand—the ‘q’ and ‘a’ are faint. That shows he’s a touch typist—uses
+the same finger every time. Self-taught typists seldom use their little
+fingers. Especially the little finger of the left hand. I once caught a
+bank thief through knowing this.” He read the message again.
+“‘All bulls hear on Wednesday . . .’ Bulls are the big men, the bull
+frogs, eh? Where do they hear? ‘3.1.A.’? That certainly leaves me
+guessing, Captain. Why, what do you think?”
+Dick was regarding him oddly.
+“It doesn’t get me guessing,” he said slowly. “At 3.1 a.m. on Wednesday
+morning, I shall be listening in for the code signal L.V.M.B.—we are
+going to hear that great Frog talk!”
+“Will he talk about the durned treaty?” growled Elk.
+CHAPTER XV
+THE MORNING AFTER
+RAY BENNETT woke with a groan. His temples were splitting, his tongue
+was parched and dry. When he tried to lift his aching head from the
+pillow he groaned again, but with an effort of will succeeded in
+dragging himself from the bed and staggering to the window. He pushed
+open a leaded casement and looked out upon the green of Hyde Park, and
+all the time his temples throbbed painfully.
+Pouring a glass of water from a carafe, he drank greedily, and, sitting
+down on the edge of the bed, his head between his hands, he tried to
+think. Only dimly did he recall the events of the night before, but he
+was conscious that something dreadful had happened. Slowly his mind
+started to sort out his experiences, and with a sinking heart he
+remembered he had struck his father! He shuddered at the recollection,
+and then began a frantic mental search for justification. The vanity of
+youth does not readily reject excuses for its own excesses, and Ray was
+no exception. By the time he had had his bath and was in the first
+stages of dressing, he had come to the conclusion that he had been very
+badly treated. It was unpardonable in him to strike his father—he must
+write to him expressing his sorrow and urging his condition as a reason
+for the act. It would not be a crawling letter (he told himself) but
+something dignified and a little distant. After all, these quarrels
+occurred in every family. Parents were temporarily estranged from their
+children, and were eventually reconciled. Some day he would go to his
+father a rich man. . . .
+He pursed his lips uneasily. A rich man? He was well off now. He had an
+expensive flat. Every week crisp new banknotes came by registered post.
+He had the loan of a car—how long would this state of affairs continue?
+He was no fool. Not perhaps as clever as he thought he was, but no fool.
+Why should the Japanese or any other Government pay him for information
+they could get from any handbook available to all and purchasable for a
+few shillings at most booksellers?
+He dismissed the thought—he had the gift of putting out of his mind
+those matters which troubled him. Opening the door which led into his
+dining-room, he stood stock-still, paralysed with astonishment.
+Ella was sitting at the open window, her elbow on the ledge, her chin in
+her hand. She looked pale, and there were heavy shadows under her eyes.
+“Why, Ella, what on earth are you doing here?” he asked. “How did you
+get in?”
+“The porter opened the door with his pass-key when I told him I was your
+sister,” she said listlessly. “I came early this morning. Oh,
+Ray—aren’t you . . . aren’t you ashamed?”
+He scowled.
+“Why should I be?” he asked loudly. “Father ought to have known better
+than tackle me when I was lit up! Of course, it was an awful thing to
+do, but I wasn’t responsible for my actions at the time. What did he
+say?” he asked uncomfortably.
+“Nothing—he said nothing. I wish he had. Won’t you go to Horsham and
+see him, Ray?”
+“No—let it blow over for a day or two,” he said hastily. He most
+assuredly had no anxiety to meet his father. “If . . . if he forgives me
+he’ll only want me to come back and chuck this life. He had no right to
+make me look little before all those people. I suppose you’ve been to
+see your friend Gordon?” he sneered.
+“No,” she said simply, “I have been nowhere but here. I came up by the
+workmen’s train. Would it be a dreadful sacrifice, Ray, to give up
+this?”
+He made an impatient gesture.
+“It isn’t—this, my dear Ella, if by ‘this’ you mean the flat. It is my
+work that you and father want me to give up. I have to live up to my
+position.”
+“What is your work?” she asked.
+“You wouldn’t understand,” he said loftily, and her lips twitched.
+“It would have to be very extraordinary if I could not understand it,”
+she said. “Is it Secret Service work?”
+Ray went red.
+“I suppose Gordon has been talking to you,” he complained bitterly. “If
+that fellow sticks his nose into my affairs he is going to have it
+pulled!”
+“Why shouldn’t he?” she asked.
+This was a new tone in her, and one that made him stare at her. Ella had
+always been the indulgent, approving, excusing sister. The buffer who
+stood between him and his father’s reproof.
+“Why shouldn’t he?” she repeated. “Mr. Gordon should know something of
+Secret Service work—he himself is an officer of the law. You are either
+working lawfully, in which case it doesn’t matter what he knows, or
+unlawfully, and the fact that he knows should make a difference to you.”
+He looked at her searchingly.
+“Why are you so interested in Gordon—are you in love with him?” he
+asked.
+Her steady eyes did not waver, and only the faintest tinge of pink came
+to the skin that sleeplessness had paled.
+“That is the kind of question that a gentleman does not ask in such a
+tone,” she said quietly, “not even of his sister. Ray, you are coming
+back to daddy, aren’t you—to-day?”
+He shook his head.
+“No. I’m not. I’m going to write to him. I admit I did wrong. I shall
+tell him so in my letter. I can’t do more than that.”
+There came a discreet knock on the door.
+“Come in,” growled Ray. It was his servant, a man who came by the day.
+“Will you see Miss Bassano and Mr. Brady, sir?” he asked in a hoarse
+whisper, and glanced significantly at Ella.
+“Of course he’ll see me,” said a voice outside. “Why all this
+formality—oh, I see.”
+Lola Bassano’s eyes fell upon the girl seated by the window.
+“This is my sister—Ella, this is Miss Bassano and Mr. Brady.”
+Ella looked at the petite figure in the doorway, and, looking, could
+only admire. It was the first time they had met face to face, and she
+thought Lola was lovely.
+“Glad to meet you, Miss Bennett. I suppose you’ve come up to roast this
+brother of yours for his disgraceful conduct last night. Boy, you were
+certainly mad! It _was_ your father, Miss Bennett?”
+Ella nodded, and heard with gratitude the sympathetic click of Lew
+Brady’s lips.
+“If I’d been near you, Ray, I’d have beaten you. Too bad, Miss Bennett.”
+A strange coldness came suddenly to the girl—and a second before she
+had glowed to their sympathy. It was the suspicion of their insincerity
+that chilled her. Their kindness was just a little too glib and too
+ready. Brady’s just a little too overpowering.
+“Do you like your brother’s flat?” asked Lola, sitting down and
+stretching her silk-covered legs to a patch of sunlight.
+“It is very—handsome,” said Ella. “He will find Horsham rather dull
+when he comes back.”
+“Will he go back?” Lola flashed a smile at the youth as she asked the
+question.
+“Not much I won’t,” said Ray energetically. “I’ve been trying to make
+Ella understand that my business is too important to leave.”
+Lola nodded, and now the antagonism which Ella in her charity was
+holding back came with a rush.
+“What is the business?” she asked.
+He went on to give her a vague and cautious exposition of his work, and
+she listened without comment.
+“So if you think that I’m doing anything crooked, or have friends that
+aren’t as straight as you and father are, get the idea out of your head.
+I’m not afraid of Gordon or Elk or any of that lot. Don’t think I am.
+Nor is Brady, nor Miss Bassano. Gordon is one of those cheap detectives
+who has got his ideas out of books.”
+“That’s perfectly true, Miss Bennett,” said Lew virtuously. “Gordon is
+just a bit too clever. He’s got the idea that everybody but himself is
+crook. Why, he sent Elk down to cross-examine your own father! Believe
+me, I’m not scared of Gordon, or any——”
+_Tap . . . tap . . . tappity . . . tap._
+The taps were on the door, slow, deliberate, unmistakable. The effect on
+Lew Brady was remarkable. His big body seemed to shrink, his puffed face
+grew suddenly hollow.
+_Tap . . . tap . . . tappity . . . tap._
+The hand that went up to Brady’s mouth was trembling. Ella looked from
+the man to Lola, and she saw, to her amazement, that Lola had grown pale
+under her rouge. Brady stumbled to the door, and the sound of his heavy
+breathing sounded loud in the silence.
+“Come in,” he muttered, and flung the door wide open.
+It was Dick Gordon who entered.
+He looked from one to the other, laughter in his eyes.
+“The old Frog tap seems to frighten some of you,” he said pleasantly.
+CHAPTER XVI
+RAY LEARNS THE TRUTH
+LOLA was the quickest to recover.
+“What do you mean . . . Frog tap? Got that Frog stuff roaming loose in
+your head, haven’t you?”
+“It is a new accomplishment,” said Dick with mock gravity. “A
+thirty-third degree Frog taught me. It’s the signal the old Grand Master
+Frog gives when he enters the presence of his inferiors.”
+“Your thirty-third degree Frog is probably lying,” said Lola, her colour
+returning. “Anyway, Mills——”
+“I never mentioned Mills,” said Dick.
+“I know it was he. His arrest was in the newspapers.”
+“It hasn’t even appeared in the newspapers,” said Dick, “unless it was
+splashed in _The Frog Gazette_—probably on the personality page.”
+He inclined his head toward the girl. Ray, for the moment, he would have
+ignored if the young man had not taken a step toward him.
+“Do you want anything, Gordon?” he asked.
+“I want a private talk with you, Bennett,” said Dick.
+“There’s nothing you can’t say before my friends,” said Ray, his ready
+temper rising.
+“The only person I recognize by that title is your sister,” replied
+Gordon.
+“Let us go, Lew,” said Lola with a shrug, but Ray Bennett stopped them.
+“Wait a minute! Is this my house, or isn’t it?” he demanded furiously.
+“You can clear out, Gordon! I’ve had just about as much of your
+interference as I want. You push your way in here, you’re offensive to
+my friends—you practically tell them to get out—I like your nerve!
+There’s the door���you can go.”
+“I’ll go if you feel that way,” said Dick, “but I want to warn you——”
+“Pshaw! I’m sick of your warnings.”
+“I want to warn you that the Frog has decided that you’ve got to earn
+your money! That is all.”
+There was a dead silence, which Ella broke.
+“The Frog?” she repeated, open-eyed. “But . . . but, Mr. Gordon, Ray
+isn’t . . . with the Frogs?”
+“Perhaps it will be news to him—but he is,” said Dick. “These two
+people are faithful servants of the reptile,” he pointed. “Lola is
+financed by him—her husband is financed by him——”
+“You’re a liar!” screamed Ray. “Lola isn’t married! You’re a sneaking
+liar—get out before I throw you out! You poor Frog-chaser—you think
+everything that’s green lives in a pond! Get out and stay out!”
+It was Ella’s appealing glance that made Dick Gordon walk to the door.
+Turning, his cold gaze rested on Lew Brady.
+“There is a big question-mark against your name in the Frog-book, Brady.
+You watch out!”
+Lew shrank under the blow, for blow it was. Had he dared, he would have
+followed Gordon into the corridor and sought further information. But
+here his moral courage failed him, and he stood, a pathetic figure,
+looking wistfully at the door that the visitor had closed behind him.
+“For God’s sake let us get some air in the room!” snarled Ray, thrusting
+open the windows. “That fellow is a pestilence! Married! Trying to get
+me to believe that!”
+Ella had taken up her handbag from the sideboard where she had placed
+it.
+“Going, Ella?”
+She nodded.
+“Tell father . . . I’ll write anyway. Talk to him, Ella, and show him
+where he was wrong.”
+She held out her hand.
+“Good-bye, Ray,” she said. “Perhaps one day you will come back to us.
+Please God this madness will end soon. Oh, Ray, it isn’t true about the
+Frogs, is it? You aren’t with those people?”
+His laugh reassured her for the moment.
+“Of course I’m not—it’s about as true as the yarn that Lola is married!
+Gordon was trying to make a sensation; that’s the worst of these
+third-rate detectives, they live on sensation.”
+She nodded to Lola as he escorted her to the lift. Lew Brady watched her
+with hungry eyes.
+“What did he mean, Lola?” asked Brady as the door closed behind the two.
+“That fellow knows something! There’s a mark against my name in the
+Frog-book! That sounds bad to me. Lola, I’m finished with these Frogs!
+They’re getting on my nerves.”
+“You’re a fool,” she said calmly. “Gordon has got just the effect he
+wanted—he has scared you!”
+“Scared?” he answered savagely. “Nothing scares me. You’re not scared
+because you’ve no imagination. I’m . . . not scared, but worried,
+because I’m beginning to see that the Frogs are bigger than I dreamt.
+They killed that Scotsman Maclean the other day, and they’re not going
+to think twice about settling with me. I’ve talked to these Frogs,
+Lola—they’d do anything from murder upwards. They look on the Frog as a
+god—he’s a religion with them! A question-mark against my name! I
+believe it too—I’ve talked flip about ’em, and they won’t forgive
+that——”
+“Hush!” she warned him in a low voice as the door handle turned and Ray
+came back.
+“Phew!” he said. “Thank God she’s gone! What a morning!
+Frogs—Frogs—Frogs! The poor fool!”
+Lola opened a small jewelled case and took out a cigarette and lit it,
+extinguishing the match with a snick of her fingers. Then she turned her
+beautiful eyes upon Ray.
+“What is the matter with the Frogs anyway?” she asked coolly. “They pay
+well and they ask for little.”
+Ray gaped at her.
+“You’re not working for them, are you?” he asked astonished. “Why,
+they’re just low tramps who murder people!”
+She shook her head.
+“Not all of them,” she corrected. “They are only the body—the big Frogs
+are different. I am one and Lew is one.”
+“What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Lew, half in fear, half
+in wrath.
+“He ought to know—and he has got to know sooner or later,” said Lola,
+unperturbed. “He’s too sensible a boy to imagine that the Japanese or
+any other embassy is paying his overhead charges. He’s a Frog.”
+Ray collapsed into a chair, incapable of speech.
+“A Frog?” he repeated mechanically. “What . . . what do you mean?”
+Lola laughed.
+“I don’t see that it is any worse being a Frog than an agent of another
+country, selling your own country’s secrets,” she said. “Don’t be silly,
+Ray! You ought to be pleased and honoured. They chose you from thousands
+because they wanted the right kind of intelligence . . .”
+And so she flattered and soothed him, until his plastic mind, wax in her
+hands, took another shape.
+“I suppose it is all right,” he said at last. “Of course, I wouldn’t do
+anything really bad, and I don’t approve of all this clubbing, but, as
+you say, the Frog can’t be responsible for all that his people do. But
+on one thing I’m firm, Lola! I’ll have no tattooing!”
+She laughed and extended her white arm.
+“Am I marked?” she asked. “Is Lew marked? No; the big people aren’t
+marked at all. Boy, you’ve a great future.”
+Ray took her hand and fondled it.
+“Lola . . . about that story that Gordon told . . . your being married:
+it isn’t true?”
+She laughed again and patted the hand on hers.
+“Gordon is jealous,” she said. “I can’t tell you why—now. But he has
+good reasons.” Suddenly her mood grew gay, and she slipped away.
+“Listen, I’m going to ’phone for a table for lunch, and you will join
+us, and we’ll drink to the great little Frog who feeds us!”
+The telephone was on the sideboard, and as she lifted the receiver she
+saw the square black metal box clamped to its base.
+“Something new in ’phones, Ray?” she asked.
+“They fixed it yesterday. It’s a resistance. The man told me that
+somebody who was talking into a ’phone during a thunderstorm had a bad
+shock, so they’re fitting these things as an experiment. It makes the
+instrument heavier, and it’s ugly, but——”
+Slowly she put the receiver down and stooped to look at the attachment.
+“It’s a detectaphone,” she said quietly. “And all the time we’ve been
+talking somebody has been making a note of our conversation.”
+She walked to the fireplace, took up a poker and brought it down with a
+crash on the little box. . . .
+Inspector Elk, with a pair of receivers clamped to his head, sat in a
+tiny office on the Thames Embankment, and put down his pencil with a
+sigh. Then he took up his telephone and called Headquarters Exchange.
+“You can switch off that detectaphone to Knightsbridge 93718,” he said.
+“I don’t think we shall want it any more.”
+“Did I put you through in time, sir?” asked the operator’s voice. “They
+had only just started talking when I called you.”
+“Plenty of time, Angus,” said Elk, “plenty of time.”
+He gathered up his notes and went to his desk and placed them tidily by
+the side of his blotting-pad.
+Strolling to the window, he looked out upon the sunlit river, and there
+was peace and comfort in his heart, for overnight the prisoner Mills had
+decided to tell all he knew about the Frogs on the promise of a free
+pardon and a passage to Canada. And Mills knew more than he had, as yet,
+told.
+“I can give you a line to Number 7 that will put him into your
+hands,” his note had run.
+Number Seven! Elk caught a long breath. No. 7 was the hub on which the
+wheel turned.
+He rubbed his hands cheerfully, for it seemed that the mystery of the
+Frog was at last to be solved. Perhaps “the line” would lead to the
+missing treaty—and at the thought of the lost document Elk’s face
+clouded. Two ministers, a great state department and innumerable
+under-secretaries spent their time in writing frantic notes of inquiry
+to headquarters concerning Lord Farmley’s loss.
+“They want miracles,” said Elk, and wondered if the day would produce
+one.
+He went to his overcoat pocket to find a cigar, and his hand touched a
+thick roll of papers. He pulled them out and threw them upon the desk,
+and as he did so the first words on the first sheet caught his eye.
+“_By the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in Council_——”
+Elk tried to yell, but his voice failed him, and then he snatched up the
+paper from the desk and turned the leaves with trembling hands.
+It was the lost treaty!
+Elk held the precious document in his hand, and his mind went back
+quickly over the night’s adventures. When had he taken off his top-coat?
+When had he last put his hand in his pocket? He had taken off the coat
+at Heron’s Club, and he could not remember having used the pockets
+since. It was a light coat that he either carried or wore, summer or
+winter. He had brought it to the office that morning on his arm.
+At the club! Probably when he had parted with the garment to the
+cloak-room attendant. Then the Frog must have been there. One of the
+waiters probably—an admirable disguise for the chief of the gang. Elk
+sat down to think.
+To question anybody in the building would be futile. Nobody had touched
+the coat but himself.
+“Dear me!” said Elk, as he hung up the coat again.
+At the touch of his bell, Balder came.
+“Balder, do you remember seeing me pass your room?”
+“Yes, sir.”
+“I had my coat on my arm, didn’t I?”
+“I never looked,” said Balder with satisfaction.
+He invariably gave Elk the impression that he derived a great deal of
+satisfaction out of not being able to help.
+“It’s queer,” said Elk.
+“Anything wrong, sir?”
+“No, not exactly. You understand what has to be done with Mills? He is
+to see nobody. Immediately he arrives he is to be put into the
+waiting-room—alone. There is to be no conversation of any kind, and, if
+he speaks, he is not to be answered.”
+In the privacy of his office he inspected his find again. Everything was
+there—the treaty and Lord Farmley’s notes. Elk called up his lordship
+and told the good news. Later came a small deputation from the Foreign
+Office to collect the precious document, and to offer, in the name of
+the Ministry, their thanks for his services in recovering the lost
+papers. All of which Elk accepted graciously. He would have been cursed
+with as great heartiness if he had failed, and would have been equally
+innocent of responsibility.
+He had arranged for Mills to be brought to Headquarters at noon. There
+remained an hour to be filled, and he spent that hour unprofitably in a
+rough interrogation of Hagn, who, stripped of his beard, occupied a
+special cell segregated from the ordinary places of confinement in
+Cannon Row Station—which is virtually Scotland Yard itself.
+Hagn refused to make any statement—even when formally charged with the
+murder of Inspector Genter. He did, however, make a comment on the
+charge when Elk saw him this morning.
+“You have no proof, Elk,” he said, “and you know that I am innocent.”
+“You were the last man seen in Genter’s company,” said Elk sternly. “It
+is established that you brought his body back to town. In addition to
+which, Mills has spilt everything.”
+“I’m aware what Mills has said,” remarked the other.
+“You’re not so aware either,” suggested Elk. “And now I’ll tell you
+something: we’ve had Number Seven under lock and key since morning—now
+laugh!”
+To his amazement the man’s face relaxed in a broad grin.
+“Bluff!” he said. “And cheap bluff. It might deceive a poor little
+thief, but it doesn’t get past with me. If you’d caught ‘Seven,’ you
+wouldn’t be talking fresh to me. Go and find him, Elk,” he mocked, “and
+when you’ve got him, hold him tight. Don’t let him get away—as Mills
+will.”
+Elk returned from the interview feeling that it had not gone as well as
+it might—but as he was leaving the station he beckoned the chief
+inspector.
+“I’m planting a pigeon on Hagn this afternoon. Put ’um together and
+leave ’um alone,” he said.
+The inspector nodded understandingly.
+CHAPTER XVII
+THE COMING OF MILLS
+ON the morning that Elk waited for the arrival of the informer,
+elaborate precautions were being made to transfer the man to
+headquarters. All night the prison had been surrounded by a cordon of
+armed guards, whilst patrols had remained on duty in the yard where he
+was confined.
+The captured Frog was a well-educated man who had fallen on evil times
+and had been recruited when “on the road” through the agency of two
+tramping members of the fraternity. From the first statement he made, it
+appeared that he had acted as section leader, his duty being to pass on
+instructions and “calls” to the rank and file, to report casualties and
+to assist in the attacks which were made from time to time upon those
+people who had earned the Frog’s enmity. Apparently only section leaders
+and trustees were given this type of work.
+They brought him from his cell at eleven o’clock, and the man, despite
+his assurance, was nervous and apprehensive. Moreover, he had a cold and
+was coughing. This may have been a symptom of nerves also.
+At eleven-fifteen the gates of the prison were opened, and three
+motor-cyclists came out abreast. A closed car followed, the curtains
+drawn. On either side of the car rode other armed men on motor-cycles,
+and a second car, containing Central Office men, followed.
+The cortège reached Scotland Yard without mishap; the gates at both ends
+were closed, and the prisoner was rushed into the building.
+Balder, Elk’s clerk, and a detective-sergeant, took charge of the man,
+who was now white and shaking, and he was put into a small room
+adjoining Elk’s office, a room the windows of which were heavily barred
+(it had been used for the safe holding of spies during the war). Two men
+were put on duty outside the door, and the discontented Balder reported.
+“We’ve put that fellow in the waiting-room, Mr. Elk.”
+“Did he say anything?” asked Dick, who had arrived for the
+interrogation.
+“No, sir—except to ask if the window could be shut. I shut it.”
+“Bring the prisoner,” said Elk.
+They waited a while, heard the clash of keys, and then an excited buzz
+of talk. Then Balder rushed in.
+“He’s ill . . . fainted or something,” he gasped, and Elk sprang past
+him, along the corridor into the guard-room.
+Mills half sat, half lay, against the wall. His eyes were closed, his
+face was ashen.
+Dick bent over the prisoner and laid him flat on the ground. Then he
+stooped and smelt.
+“Cyanide of potassium,” he said. “The man is dead.”
+That morning Mills had been stripped to the skin and every article of
+clothing searched thoroughly and well. As an additional precaution his
+pockets had been sewn up. To the two detectives who accompanied him in
+the car he had spoken hopefully of his forthcoming departure to Canada.
+None but police officers had touched him, and he had had no
+communication with any outsider.
+The first thing that Dick Gordon noticed was the window, which Balder
+said he had shut. It was open some six inches at the bottom.
+“Yes, sir, I’m sure I shut it,” said the clerk emphatically. “Sergeant
+Jeller saw me.”
+The sergeant was also under that impression. Dick lifted the window
+higher and looked out. Four horizontal bars traversed the brickwork,
+but, by craning his head, he saw that, a foot away from the window and
+attached to the wall, was a long steel ladder running from the roof (as
+he guessed) to the ground. The room was on the third floor, and beneath
+was a patch of shrub-filled gardens. Beyond that, high railings.
+“What are those gardens?” he asked, pointing to the space on the other
+side of the railings.
+“They belong to Onslow Gardens,” said Elk.
+“Onslow Gardens?” said Dick thoughtfully. “Wasn’t it from Onslow Gardens
+that the Frogs tried to shoot me?”
+Elk shook his head helplessly.
+“What do you suggest. Captain Gordon?”
+“I don’t know what to suggest,” admitted Dick. “It doesn’t seem an
+intelligent theory that somebody climbed the ladder and handed poison to
+Mills—less acceptable, that he would be willing to take the dose. There
+is the fact. Balder swears that the window was shut, and now the window
+is open. You can trust Balder?”
+Elk nodded.
+The divisional surgeon came soon after, and, as Dick had expected,
+pronounced life extinct, and supported the view that cyanide was the
+cause.
+“Cyanide has a peculiar odour,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any
+doubt at all that the man was killed, either by poison administered from
+outside, or by poison taken voluntarily by himself.”
+After the body had been removed. Elk accompanied Dick Gordon to his
+Whitehall office.
+“I have never been frightened in my life,” said Elk, “but these Frogs
+are now on top of me! Here is a man killed practically under our eyes!
+He was guarded, he was never let out of our sight, except for the few
+minutes he was in that room, and yet the Frog can reach him—it’s
+frightening, Captain Gordon.”
+Dick unlocked the door of his office and ushered Elk into the cosy
+interior.
+“I know of no better cure for shaken nerves than a _Cabana Cesare_,” he
+said cheerfully. “And without desiring to indulge in a boastful gesture,
+I can only tell you, Elk, that they don’t frighten me, any more than
+they frighten you. Frog is human, and has very human fears. Where is
+friend Broad?”
+“The American?”
+Dick nodded, and Elk, without a second’s hesitation, pulled the
+telephone toward him and gave a number.
+After a little delay, Broad’s voice answered him.
+“That you, Mr. Broad? What are you doing now?” asked Elk, in that
+caressing tone he adopted for telephone conversation.
+“Is that Elk? I’m just going out.”
+“Thought I saw you in Whitehall about five minutes ago,” said Elk.
+“Then you must have seen my double,” replied the other, “for I haven’t
+been out of my bath ten minutes. Do you want me?”
+“No, no,” cooed Elk. “Just wanted to know you were all right.”
+“Why, is anything wrong?” came the sharp question.
+“Everything’s fine,” said Elk untruthfully. “Perhaps you’ll call round
+and see me at my office one of these days—good-bye!”
+He pushed the telephone back, and raising his eyes to the ceiling, made
+a quick calculation.
+“From Whitehall to Cavendish Square takes four minutes in a good car,”
+he said. “So his being in the flat means nothing.”
+He pulled the telephone toward him again, and this time called
+Headquarters.
+“I want a man to shadow Mr. Joshua Broad, of Caverley House; not to
+leave him until eight o’clock to-night; to report to me.”
+When he had finished, he sat back in his chair and lit the long cigar
+that Dick had pressed upon him.
+“To-day is Tuesday,” he ruminated, “to-morrow’s Wednesday. Where do you
+propose to listen in, Captain Gordon?
+“At the Admiralty,” said Dick. “I have arranged with the First Lord to
+be in the instrument room at a quarter to three.”
+He bought the early editions of the evening newspapers, and was relieved
+to find that no reference had been made to the murder—as murder he
+believed it to be. Once, in the course of the day, looking out from his
+window on to Whitehall, he saw Elk walking along on the other side of
+the road, his umbrella hanging on his arm, his ancient derby hat at the
+back of his head, an untidy and unimposing figure. Then, an hour later,
+he saw him again, coming from the opposite direction. He wondered what
+particular business the detective was engaged in. He learnt, quite by
+accident, that Elk had made two visits to the Admiralty that day, but he
+did not discover the reason until they met later in the evening.
+“Don’t know much about wireless,” said Elk, “though I’m not one of those
+people who believe that, if God had intended us to use wireless,
+telegraph poles would have been born without wires. But it seems to me
+that I remember reading something about ‘directional.’ If you want to
+know where a wireless message is coming from, you listen in at two or
+three different points——���
+“Of course! What a fool I am!” said Dick, annoyed with himself. “It
+never occurred to me that we might pick up the broadcasting station.”
+“I get these ideas,” explained Elk modestly. “The Admiralty have sent
+messages to Milford Haven, Harwich, Portsmouth and Plymouth, telling
+ships to listen in and give us the direction. The evening papers haven’t
+got that story.”
+“You mean about Mills? No, thank heaven! It is certain to come out at
+the inquest, but I’ve arranged for that to be postponed for a week or
+two; and somehow I feel that within the next few weeks things will
+happen.”
+“To us,” said Elk ominously. “I dare not eat a grilled sausage since
+that fellow was killed! And I’m partial to sausages.”
+CHAPTER XVIII
+THE BROADCAST
+HIS jaundiced clerk was, as usual, in a complaining mood. “Records have
+been making a fuss and have been blaming me,” he said bitterly. “Records
+give themselves more airs than the whole darned office.”
+The war between Balder and “Records”—which was a short title for that
+section of Headquarters which kept exact data of criminals’ pasts,—was
+of long standing. “Records” was aloof, detached, sublimely superior to
+everything except tabulated facts. It was no respecter of persons; would
+as soon snap at a Chief Commissioner who broke its inflexible rules, as
+it would at the latest joined constable.
+“What’s the trouble?” asked Elk.
+“You remember you had a lot of stuff out the other day about a man
+called—I can’t remember his name now.”
+“Lyme?” suggested Elk.
+“That’s the fellow. Well, it appears that one of the portraits is
+missing. The morning after you were looking at them, I went to Records
+and got the documents again for you, thinking you wanted to see them in
+the morning. When you didn’t turn up, I returned them, and now they say
+the portrait and measurements are short.”
+“Do you mean to say they’re lost?”
+“If they’re lost,” said the morose Balder, “then Records have lost ’em!
+I suppose they think I’m a Frog or somethin’. They’re always accusing me
+of mislaying their finger-print cards.”
+“I’ve promised you a chance to make a big noise, Balder, and now I’m
+going to give it to you. You’ve been passed over for promotion, son,
+because the men upstairs think you were one of the leaders of the last
+strike. I know that ‘passed over’ feeling—it turns you sour. Will you
+take a big chance?”
+Balder nodded, holding his breath.
+“Hagn’s in the special cell,” said Elk. “Change into your civilian kit,
+roughen yourself up a bit, and I’ll put you in with him. If you’re
+scared I’ll let you carry a gun and fix it so that you won’t be
+searched. Get Hagn to talk. Tell him that you were pulled in over the
+Dundee murder. He won’t know you. Get that story, Balder, and I’ll have
+the stripes on your arm in a week.”
+Balder nodded. The querulous character of his voice had changed when he
+spoke again.
+“It’s a chance,” he said; “and thank you, Mr. Elk, for giving it to me.”
+An hour later, a detective brought a grimy-looking prisoner into Cannon
+Row and pushed him into the steel pen, and the only man who recognized
+the prisoner was the chief inspector who had waited for the arrival of
+the pigeon.
+It was that high official himself who conducted Balder to the separate
+cell and pushed him in.
+“Good night, Frog!” he said.
+Balder’s reply was unprintable.
+After seeing his subordinate safely caged, Elk went back to his room,
+locked the door, cut off his telephone and lay down to snatch a few
+hours’ sleep. It was a practice of his, when he was engaged in any work
+which kept him up at night, to take these intermediate siestas, and he
+had trained himself to sleep as and when the opportunity presented
+itself. It was unusual in him, however, to avail himself of the office
+sofa, a piece of furniture to which he was not entitled, and which, as
+his superiors had often pointed out, occupied space which might better
+be employed.
+For once, however, he could not sleep. His mind ranged from Balder to
+Dick Gordon, from Lola Bassano to the dead man Mills. His own position
+had been seriously jeopardized, but that worried him not at all. He was
+a bachelor, had a snug sum invested. His mind went to the puzzling
+Maitland. His association with the Frogs had been proved almost up to
+the hilt. And Maitland was in a position to benefit by these many
+inexplicable attacks which had been made upon seemingly inoffensive
+people.
+The old man lived a double life. By day the business martinet, before
+whom his staff trembled, the cutter of salaries, the shrewd manipulator
+of properties; by night the associate of thieves and worse than thieves.
+Who was the child? That was another snag.
+“Nothing but snags!” growled Elk, his hands under his head, looking
+resentfully at the ceiling. “Nothing but snags.”
+Finding he could not sleep, he got up and went across to Cannon Row. The
+gaoler told him that the new prisoner had been talking a lot to Hagn,
+and Elk grinned. He only hoped that the “new prisoner” would not be
+tempted to discuss his grievances against the police administration.
+At a quarter to three he joined Dick Gordon in the instrument room at
+the Admiralty. An operator had been placed at their disposal; and after
+the preliminary instructions they took their place at the table where he
+manipulated his keys. Dick listened, fascinated, hearing the calls of
+far-off ships and the chatter of transmitting stations. Once he heard a
+faint squeak of sound, so faint that he wasn’t sure that he had not been
+mistaken.
+“Cape Race,” said the operator. “You’ll hear Chicago in a minute. He
+usually gets talkative round about now.”
+As the hands of the clock approached three, the operator began varying
+his wave lengths, reaching out into the ether for the message which was
+coming. Exactly at one minute after three he said suddenly:
+“There is your L.V.M.B.”
+Dick listened to the staccato sounds, and then:
+“_All Frogs listen. Mills is dead. Number Seven finished him this
+morning. Number Seven receives a bonus of a hundred pounds._”
+The voice was clear and singularly sweet. It was a woman’s.
+“_Twenty-third district will arrange to receive Number Seven’s
+instructions at the usual place._”
+Dick’s heart was beating thunderously. He recognized the speaker, knew
+the soft cadences, the gentle intonations.
+There could be no doubt at all: it was Ella Bennett’s voice! Dick felt a
+sudden sensation of sickness, but, looking across the table and seeing
+Elk’s eyes fixed upon him, he made an effort to control his emotions.
+“There doesn’t seem to be any more coming through,” said the operator
+after a few minutes’ wait.
+Dick took off the headpiece and rose.
+“We must wait for the direction signals to come through,” he said as
+steadily as he could.
+Presently they began to arrive, and were worked out by a naval officer
+on a large scale map.
+“The broadcasting station is in London,” he said. “All the lines meet
+somewhere in the West End, I should imagine; possibly in the very heart
+of town. Did you find any difficulty in picking up the Frog call?” he
+asked the operator.
+“Yes, sir,” said the man. “I think they were sending from very close at
+hand.”
+“In what part of town would you say it would be?” asked Elk.
+The officer indicated a pencil mark that he had ruled across the page.
+“It is somewhere on this mark,” he said, and Elk, peering over, saw that
+the line passed through Cavendish Square and Cavendish Place and that,
+whilst the Portsmouth line missed Cavendish Place only by a block, the
+Harwich line crossed the Plymouth line a little to the south of the
+square.
+“Caverley House, obviously,” said Dick.
+He wanted to get out in the open, he wanted to talk, to discuss this
+monstrous thing with Elk. Had the detective also recognized the voice,
+he wondered? Any doubt he had on that point was set at rest. He had
+hardly reached Whitehall before Elk said:
+“Sounded very like a friend of ours, Captain Gordon?”
+Dick made no reply.
+“Very like,” said Elk as if he were speaking half to himself. “In fact,
+I’ll take any number of oaths that I know the young lady who was talking
+for old man Frog.”
+“Why should she do it?” groaned Dick. “Why, for the love of heaven,
+should she do it?”
+“I remember years ago hearing her,” said Elk reminiscently.
+Dick Gordon stopped, and, turning, glared at the other.
+“You remember . . . what do you mean?” he demanded.
+“She was on the stage at the time—quite a kid,” continued Elk. “They
+called her ‘The Child Mimic.’ There’s another thing I’ve noticed,
+Captain: if you take a magnifying glass and look at your skin, you see
+its defects, don’t you? That wireless telephone acts as a sort of
+magnifying glass to the voice. She always had a little lisp that I
+jumped at straight away. You may not have noticed it, but I’ve got
+pretty sharp ears. She can’t pronounce her ‘S’s’ properly, there’s a
+sort of faint ‘th’ sound in ’um. You heard that?”
+Dick had heard, and nodded.
+“I never knew that she was ever on the stage,” he said more calmly. “You
+are sure, Elk?”
+“Sure. In some things I’m . . . what’s the word?—infall-i-able. I’m a
+bit shaky on dates, such as when Henry the First an’ all that bunch got
+born—I never was struck on birthdays anyway—but I know voices an’
+noses. Never forget ’um.”
+They were turning into the dark entrance of Scotland Yard when Dick said
+in a tone of despair:
+“It was her voice, of course. I had no idea she had been on the
+stage—is her father in this business?”
+“She hasn’t a father so far as I know,” was the staggering reply, and
+again Gordon halted.
+“Are you mad?” he asked. “Ella Bennett has a father——”
+“I’m not talking about Ella Bennett,” said the calm Elk. “I’m talking
+about Lola Bassano.”
+There was a silence.
+“Was it her voice?” asked Gordon a little breathlessly.
+���Sure it was Lola. It was a pretty good imitation of Miss Bennett, but
+any mimic will tell you that these soft voices are easy. It’s the pace
+of a voice that makes it . . .”
+“You villain!” said Dick Gordon, as a weight rolled from his heart. “You
+knew I meant Ella Bennett when I was talking, and you strung me along!”
+“Blame me,” said Elk. “What’s the time?”
+It was half-past three. He gathered his reserves, and ten minutes later
+the police cars dropped a party at the closed door of Caverley House.
+The bell brought the night porter, who recognized Elk.
+“More gas trouble?” he asked.
+“Want to see the house plan,” said Elk, and listened as the porter
+detailed the names, occupations and peculiarities of the tenants.
+“Who owns this block?” asked the detective.
+“This is one of Maitland’s properties—Maitlands Consolidated. He’s got
+the Prince of Caux’s house in Berkeley Square and——”
+“Don’t worry about giving me his family history. What time did Miss
+Bassano come in?”
+“She’s been in all the evening—since eleven.”
+“Anybody with her?”
+The man hesitated.
+“Mr. Maitland came in with her, but he went soon after.”
+“Nobody else?”
+“Nobody except Mr. Maitland.”
+“Give me your master-key.”
+The porter demurred.
+“I’ll lose my job,” he pleaded. “Can’t you knock?”
+“Knocking is my speciality—I don’t pass a day without knocking
+somebody,” replied Elk, “but I want that key.”
+He did not doubt that Lola would have bolted her door, and his surmise
+proved sound. He had both to knock and ring before the light showed
+behind the transom, and Lola in a kimono and boudoir cap appeared.
+“What is the meaning of this, Mr. Elk?” she demanded. She did not even
+attempt to appear surprised.
+“A friendly call—can I come in?”
+She opened the door wider, and Elk went in, followed by Gordon and two
+detectives. Dick she ignored.
+“I’m seeing the Commissioner to-morrow,” she said, “and if he doesn’t
+give me satisfaction I’ll get on to the newspapers. This persecution is
+disgraceful. To break into a single girl’s flat in the middle of the
+night, when she is alone and unprotected——”
+“If there is any time when a single girl should be alone and
+unprotected, it is in the middle of the night,” said Elk primly. “I’m
+just going to have a look at your little home, Lola. We’ve got
+information that you’ve been burgled, Lola. Perhaps at this very minute
+there’s a sinister man hidden under your bed. The idea of leaving you
+alone, so to speak, at the mercy of unlawful characters, is repugnant to
+our feelin’s. Try the dining-room, Williams; I’ll search the
+parlour—_and_ the bedroom.”
+“You’ll keep out of my room if you’ve any sense of decency,” said the
+girl.
+“I haven’t,” admitted Elk, “no false sense, anyway. Besides, Lola, I’m a
+family man. One of ten. And when there’s anything I shouldn’t see, just
+say ‘Shut your eyes’ and I’ll shut ’um.”
+To all appearances there was nothing that looked in the slightest degree
+suspicious. A bathroom led from the bedroom, and the bathroom window was
+open. Flashing his lamp along the wall outside, Elk saw a small glass
+spool attached to the wall.
+“Looks to me like an insulator,” he said.
+Returning to the bedroom, he began to search for the instrument. There
+was a tall mahogany wardrobe against one of the walls. Opening the door,
+he saw row upon row of dresses and thrust in his hand.
+It was the shallowest wardrobe he had ever seen, and the backing was
+warm to the touch.
+“Hot cupboard, Lola?” he asked.
+She did not reply, but stood watching him, a scowl on her pretty face,
+her arms folded.
+Elk closed the door and his sensitive fingers searched the surface for a
+spring. It took him a long time to discover it, but at last he found a
+slip of wood that yielded to the pressure of his hand.
+There was a “click” and the front of the wardrobe began to fall.
+“A wardrobe bed, eh? Grand little things for a flat.”
+But it was no sleeping-place that was revealed (and he would have been
+disappointed if it had been) as he eased down the “bed.” Set on a frame
+were row upon row of valve lamps, transformers—all the apparatus
+requisite for broadcasting.
+Elk looked, and, looking, admired.
+“You’ve got a licence, I suppose?” asked Elk. He supposed nothing of the
+kind, for licences to transmit are jealously issued in England. He was
+surprised when she went to a bureau and produced the document. Elk read
+and nodded.
+“You’ve got _some_ pull,” he said with respect. “Now I’ll see your Frog
+licence.”
+“Don’t get funny, Elk,” she said tartly. “I’d like to know whether
+you’re in the habit of waking people to ask for their permits.”
+“You’ve been using this to-night to broadcast the Frogs,” Elk nodded
+accusingly; “and perhaps you’ll explain to Captain Gordon why?”
+She turned to Dick for the first time.
+“I’ve not used the instrument for weeks,” she said. “But the sister of a
+friend of mine—perhaps you know her—asked if she might use it. She
+left here an hour ago.”
+“You mean Miss Bennett, of course,” said Gordon, and she raised her
+eyebrows in simulated astonishment.
+“Why, how did you guess that?”
+“I guessed it,” said Elk, “the moment I heard you giving one of your
+famous imitations. I guessed she was around, teaching you how to talk
+like her. Lola, you’re cooked! Miss Bennett was standing right alongside
+me when you started talking Frog-language. She was right at my very
+side, and she said ‘Now, Mr. Elk, isn’t she the artfullest thing!’
+You’re cooked, Lola, and you can’t do better than sit right down and
+tell us the truth. I’ll make it right for you. We caught ‘Seven’ last
+night and he’s told us everything. Frog will be in irons to-day, and I
+came here to give you the last final chance of getting out of all your
+trouble.”
+“Isn’t that wonderful of you?” she mocked him. “So you’ve caught ‘Seven’
+and you’re catching the Frog! Put a pinch of salt on his tail!”
+“Yes,” said the imperturbable Elk, untruthfully, “we caught Seven and
+Hagn’s split. But I like you, Lol—always did. There’s something about
+you that reminds me of a girl I used to be crazy about—I never married
+her; it was a tragedy.”
+“Not for her,” said Lola. “Now I’ll tell _you_ something, Elk! You
+haven’t caught anybody and you won’t. You’ve put a flat-footed stool
+pigeon named Balder into the same cell as Hagn, with the idea of getting
+information, and you’re going to have a jar.”
+In other circumstances Dick Gordon would have been amused by the effect
+of this revelation upon Elk. The jaw of the unhappy detective dropped as
+he glared helplessly over his glasses at the girl, smiling her triumph.
+Then the smile vanished.
+“Hagn wouldn’t talk, because Frog could reach him, as he reached Mills
+and Litnov. As he will reach you when he decides you’re worth while. And
+now you can take me if you want. I’m a Frog—I never pretend I’m not.
+You heard all the tale that I told Ray Bennett—heard it over the
+detectaphone you planted. Take me and charge me!”
+Elk knew that there was no charge upon which he could hold her. And she
+knew that he knew.
+“Do you think you’ll get away with it, Bassano?”
+It was Gordon who spoke, and she turned her wrathful eyes upon him.
+“I’ve got a Miss to my name, Gordon,” she rapped at him.
+“Sooner or later you’ll have a number,” said Dick calmly. “You and your
+crowd are having the time of your young lives—perhaps because I’m
+incompetent, or because I’m unfortunate. But some day we shall get you,
+either I or my successor. You can’t fight the law and win because the
+law is everlasting and constant.”
+“A search of my flat I don’t mind—but a sermon I will not have,” she
+said contemptuously. “And now, if you men have finished, I should like
+to get a little beauty sleep.”
+“That is the one thing you don’t require,” said the gallant Elk, and she
+laughed.
+“You’re not a bad man, Elk,” she said. “You’re a bad detective, but
+you’ve a heart of gold.”
+“If I had, I shouldn’t trust myself alone with you,” was Elk’s parting
+shot.
+CHAPTER XIX
+IN ELSHAM WOOD
+DICK GORDON, in the sudden lightening of his heart which had come to him
+when he realized that his horrible fears were without foundation, was
+inclined to regard the night as having been well spent. This was not
+Elk’s view. He was genuinely grave as they drove back to headquarters.
+“I’m frightened of these Frogs, and I admit it,” he confessed. “There’s
+a bad leakage somewhere—how should she know that I put Balder in with
+Hagn? That has staggered me. Nobody but two men, in addition to
+ourselves, is in the secret; and if the Frogs are capable of getting
+that kind of news, it is any odds on Hagn knowing that he is being
+drawn. They frighten me, I tell you, Captain Gordon. If they only knew a
+little, and hadn’t got that quite right, I should be worried. But they
+know everything!”
+Dick nodded.
+“The whole trouble, Elk, is that the Frogs are not an illegal
+association. It may be necessary to ask the Prime Minister to proclaim
+the society.”
+“Perhaps he’s a Frog too,” said Elk gloomily. “Don’t laugh, Captain
+Gordon! There are big people behind these Frogs. I’m beginning to
+suspect everybody.”
+“Start by suspecting me,” said Gordon good-humouredly.
+“I have,” was the frank reply. “Then it occurred to me that possibly I
+walk in my sleep—I used to as a boy. Likely I lead a double life, and I
+am a detective by day and a Frog by night—you never know. It is clear
+that there is a genius at the back of the Frogs,” he went on, with
+unconscious immodesty.
+“Lola Bassano?” suggested Dick.
+“I’ve thought of her, but she’s no organizer. She had a company on the
+road when she was nineteen, and it died the death from bad organization.
+I suppose you think that that doesn’t mean she couldn’t run the
+Frogs—but it does. You want exactly the same type of intelligence to
+control the Frogs as you want to control a bank. Maitland is the man. I
+narrowed the circle down to him after I had a talk with Johnson. Johnson
+says he’s never seen the old man’s pass-book, and although he is his
+private secretary, knows nothing whatever of his business transactions
+except that he buys property and sells it. The money old Maitland makes
+on the side never appears in the books, and Johnson was a very surprised
+man when I suggested that Maitland transacted any business at all
+outside the general routine of the company. And it’s not a company at
+all—not an incorporated company. It’s a one man show. Would you like to
+make sure, Captain Gordon?”
+“Sure of what?” asked Dick, startled.
+“That Miss Bennett isn’t in this at all.”
+“You don’t think for one moment she is?” asked Dick, aghast at the
+thought.
+“I’m prepared to believe anything,” said Elk. “We’ve got a clear road;
+we could be at Horsham in an hour, and it is our business to make sure.
+In my mind I’m perfectly satisfied that it was not Miss Bennett’s voice.
+But when we come down to writing out reports for the people upstairs to
+read” (‘the people upstairs’ was Elk’s invariable symbol for his
+superiors) “we are going to look silly if we say that we heard Miss
+Bennett’s voice and didn’t trouble to find out where Miss Bennett was.”
+“That is true,” said Dick thoughtfully, and, leaning out to the driver,
+Elk gave new directions.
+The grey of dawn was in the sky as the car ran through the deserted
+streets of Horsham and began the steady climb toward Maytree Cottage,
+which lay on the slope of the Shoreham Road.
+The cottage showed no signs of life. The blinds were drawn; there was no
+light of any kind. Dick hesitated, with his hand on the gate.
+“I don’t like waking these people,” he confessed. “Old Bennett will
+probably think that I’ve brought some bad news about his son.”
+“I have no conscience,” said Elk, and walked up the brick path.
+But John Bennett required no waking. Elk was hailed from one of the
+windows above, and, looking up, saw the mystery man leaning with his
+elbows on the window-sill.
+“What’s the trouble, Elk?” he asked in a low voice, as though he did not
+wish to awaken his daughter.
+“No trouble at all,” said Elk cheerfully. “We picked up a wireless
+telephone message in the night, and I’m under the impression that it was
+your daughter’s voice I heard.”
+John Bennett frowned, and Dick saw that he doubted the truth of this
+explanation.
+“It is perfectly true, Mr. Bennett,” he said. “I heard the voice too. We
+were listening in for a rather important message, and we heard Miss
+Bennett in circumstances which make it necessary for us to assure
+ourselves that it was not she who was speaking.”
+The cloud passed from John Bennett’s face.
+“That’s a queer sort of story, Captain Gordon, but I believe you. I’ll
+come down and let you in.”
+Wearing an old dressing-gown, he opened the door and ushered them into
+the darkened sitting-room.
+“I’ll call Ella, and perhaps she’ll be able to satisfy you that she was
+in bed at ten o’clock last night.”
+He went out of the room, after drawing the curtains to let in the light,
+and Dick waited with a certain amount of pleasurable anticipation. He
+had been only too glad of the excuse to come to Horsham, if the truth be
+told. This girl had so gripped his heart that the days between their
+meetings seemed like eternity. They heard the feet of Bennett on the
+stairs, and presently the old man came in, and distress was written
+largely on his face.
+“I can’t understand it,” he said. “Ella is not in her room! The bed has
+been slept in, but she has evidently dressed and gone out.”
+Elk scratched his chin, avoiding Dick’s eyes.
+“A lot of young people like getting up early,” he said. “When I was a
+young man, nothing gave me greater pleasure than to see the sun
+rise—before I went to bed. Is she in the habit of taking a morning
+stroll?”
+John Bennett shook his head.
+“I’ve never known her to do that before. It’s curious I did not hear
+her, because I slept very badly last night. Will you excuse me,
+gentlemen?”
+He went upstairs and came down in a few minutes, dressed. Together they
+passed out into the garden. It was now quite light, though the sun had
+not yet tipped the horizon. John Bennett made a brief but fruitless
+search of the ground behind the cottage, and came back to them with a
+confession of failure. He was no more troubled than Dick Gordon. It was
+impossible that it could have been she, that Elk was mistaken. Yet Lola
+had been emphatic. Against that, the hall-porter at Caverley House had
+been equally certain that the only visitor to Lola’s flat that night was
+the aged Mr. Maitland; and so far as he knew, or Elk had been able to
+discover, there was no other entrance into the building.
+“I see you have a car here. You came down by road. Did you pass
+anybody?”
+Dick shook his head.
+“Do you mind if we take the car in the opposite direction toward
+Shoreham?”
+“I was going to suggest that,” said Gordon. “Isn’t it rather dangerous
+for her, walking at this hour? The roads are thronged with tramps.”
+The older man made no reply. He sat with the driver, his eyes fixed
+anxiously upon the road ahead. The car went ten miles at express speed,
+then turned, and began a search of the side roads. Nearing the cottage
+again, Dick pointed.
+“What is that wood?” he asked pointing to a dense wood to which a narrow
+road led.
+“That is Elsham Wood; she wouldn’t go there,” he hesitated.
+“Let us try it,” said Dick, and the bonnet of the car was turned on to a
+narrow road. In a few minutes they were running through a glade of high
+trees, the entwining tops of which made the road a place of gloom.
+“There are car tracks here,” said Dick suddenly, but John Bennett shook
+his head.
+“People come here for picnics,” he said, but Dick was not satisfied.
+These marks were new, and presently he saw them turn off the road to a
+‘ride’ between the trees. He caught no glimpse of a car, however. The
+direction of the tracks supported the old man’s theory. The road ended a
+mile farther along, and beyond that was a waste of bracken and tree
+stumps, for the wood had been extensively thinned during the war.
+With some difficulty the car was turned and headed back again. They came
+through the glade into the open, and then Dick uttered a cry.
+John Bennett had already seen the girl. She was walking quickly in the
+centre of the road, and stepped on to the grassy border without looking
+round as the car came abreast of her. Then, looking up, she saw her
+father, and went pale.
+He was in the road in a moment.
+“My dear,” he said reproachfully, “where have you been at this hour?”
+She looked frightened, Dick thought. The eyes of Elk narrowed as he
+surveyed her.
+“I couldn’t sleep, so I dressed and went out, father,” she said, and
+nodded to Dick. “You’re a surprising person, Captain Gordon. Why are you
+here at this hour?”
+“I came to interview you,” said Dick, forcing a smile.
+“Me!” She was genuinely astonished. “Why me?”
+“Captain Gordon heard your voice on a wireless telephone in the middle
+of the night, and wanted to know all about it,” said her father.
+If he was relieved, he was also troubled. Looking at him, Elk suddenly
+saw the relief intensified, and with his quick intuition guessed the
+cause before John Bennett put the question.
+“Was it Ray?” he asked eagerly. “Did he come down?”
+She shook her head.
+“No, father,” she said quietly. “And as to the wireless telephone, I
+have never spoken into a wireless telephone, and I don’t think I’ve ever
+seen one,” she said.
+“Of course you haven’t,” said Dick. “Only we were rather worried when we
+heard your voice, but Mr. Elk’s explanation, that it was somebody
+speaking whose voice was very much like yours, is obviously correct.”
+“Tell me this, Miss Bennett,” said Elk quietly. “Were you in town last
+night?”
+She did not reply.
+“My daughter went to bed at ten,” said John Bennett roughly. “What is
+the sense of asking her whether she was in London last night?”
+“Were you in town in the early hours of this morning, Miss Bennett?”
+persisted Elk, and to Dick’s amazement she nodded.
+“Were you at Caverley House?”
+“No,” she answered instantly.
+“But, Ella, what were you doing in town?” asked John Bennett. “Did you
+go to see that wretched brother of yours?”
+Again the hesitation, and then:
+“No.”
+“Did you go by yourself?”
+“No,” said Ella, and her lip trembled. “I wish you wouldn’t ask me any
+further questions. I’m not a free agent in the matter. Daddy, you’ve
+always trusted me: you’ll trust me now, won’t you?”
+He took her hand and held it in both of his.
+“I’ll trust you always, girlie,” he said; “and these gentlemen must do
+the same.”
+Her challenging eyes met Dick’s, and he nodded.
+“I am one who will share that trust,” he said, and something in her look
+rewarded him.
+Elk rubbed his chin fiercely.
+“Being naturally of a trusting nature, I should no more think of
+doubting your word, Miss Bennett, than I should of believing myself.” He
+looked at his watch. “I think we’ll go along and fetch poor old Balder
+from the house of sin,” he said.
+“You’ll stop and have some breakfast?”
+Dick looked pleadingly at Elk, and the detective, with an air of
+resignation, agreed.
+“Anyway, Balder won’t mind an hour more or less,” he said.
+Whilst Ella was preparing the breakfast, Dick and Elk paced the road
+outside.
+“Well, what do you think of it, Captain?”
+“I don’t understand, but I have every confidence that Miss Bennett has
+not lied,” said Dick.
+“Faith is a wonderful thing,” murmured Elk, and Dick turned on him
+sharply.
+“What do you mean?”
+“I mean what I say. I have got faith in Miss Bennett,” he said
+soothingly; “and, after all, she’s only another little bit of the jigsaw
+puzzle that will fall into place when we fix the piece that’s shaped
+like a Frog. And John Bennett’s another,” he said after a moment’s
+thought.
+From where they stood they could see, looking toward Shoreham, the
+opening of the narrow Elsham Wood road.
+“The thing that puzzles me,” Elk was saying, “is why she should go into
+that wood in the middle of the night——” He stopped, lowering his head.
+There came to them the soft purr of a motor-car. “Where is that?” he
+asked.
+The question was answered instantly. Slowly there came into view from
+the wood road the bonnet of a car, followed immediately by the remainder
+of a large limousine, which turned toward them, gathering speed as it
+came. A moment later it flashed past them, and they saw the solitary
+occupant.
+“Well, I’m damned!” said Elk, who very infrequently indulged in
+profanity, but Dick felt that on this occasion at least he was
+justified. For the man in the limousine was the bearded Ezra Maitland;
+and he knew that it was to see Maitland that the girl had gone to Elsham
+Wood.
+CHAPTER XX
+HAGN
+A MINUTE later Ella came to the door to call them.
+“Was that a car went past?” she asked, and they detected a note of
+anxiety in her tone.
+“Yes,” said Elk, “it was a big car. Didn’t see who was in it, but it was
+a big car.”
+Dick heard her sigh of relief.
+“Will you come in, please?” she said. “Breakfast is waiting for you.”
+They left half an hour later, and each man was so busy with his own
+thoughts that Dick did not speak until they were passing the villas
+where the body of Genter had been found. It was near Horsham that Genter
+was killed, he remembered with a little shudder. Outside of Horsham he
+himself had seen the dead man’s feet extended beyond the back of a
+motor-van. Hagn should die for that; whether he was Frog or not, he was
+party to that murder. As if reading his thoughts, Elk turned to him and
+said:
+“Do you think your evidence is strong enough to hang Hagn?”
+“I was wondering,” said Dick. “There is no supporting evidence,
+unfortunately, but the car which you have under lock and key, and the
+fact that the garage keeper may be able to identify him.”
+“With his beard?” asked Elk significantly. “There is going to be some
+difficulty in securing a conviction against this Frog, believe me,
+Captain Gordon. And unless old Balder induces him to make a statement,
+we shall have all the difficulty in the world in convincing a jury.
+Personally,” he added, “if I was condemned to spend a night with Balder,
+I should tell the truth, if it was only to get rid of him. He’s a pretty
+clever fellow, is Balder. People don’t realize that—he has the makings
+of a first-class detective, if we could only get him to take a happier
+view of life.”
+He directed the driver to go straight to the door of Cannon Row.
+Dick’s mind was on another matter.
+“What did she want with Maitland?” he asked.
+Elk shook his head.
+“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Of course, she might have been persuading
+him to take back her brother, but old Maitland isn’t the kind of
+adventurer who’d get up in the middle of the night to discuss giving Ray
+Bennett his job back. If he was a younger man, yes. But he’s not young.
+He’s darned old. And he’s a wicked old man, who doesn’t care two cents
+whether Ray Bennett is working at his desk for so much per, or whether
+he’s breaking stones on Dartmoor. I tell you, that’s one of the minor
+mysteries which will be cleared up when we get the Frog piece in its
+place.”
+The car stopped at the entrance of Cannon Row police-station, and the
+men jumped down. The desk sergeant stood up as they came in, and eyed
+them wonderingly.
+“I’m going to take Balder out, sergeant.”
+“Balder?” said the man in surprise. “I didn’t know Balder was in.”
+“I put him in with Hagn.”
+A light dawned upon the station official.
+“That’s queer. I didn’t know it was Balder,” he said. “I wasn’t on duty
+when he came in, but the other sergeant told me that a man had been put
+in with Hagn. Here is the gaoler.”
+That official came in at that moment, and was as astonished as the
+sergeant to learn the identity of the second prisoner.
+“I had no idea it was Balder, sir,” he said. “That accounts for the long
+talk they had—they were talking up till one o’clock.”
+“Are they still talking?” asked Elk.
+“No, sir, they’re sleeping now. I had a look at them a little time
+ago—you remember you gave me orders to leave them alone and not to go
+near them.”
+Dick Gordon and his subordinate followed the gaoler down a long passage
+faced with glazed brick, the wall of which was studded at intervals by
+narrow black doors. Reaching the end of the corridor, they turned at
+right angles. The second passage had only one door, and that was at the
+end. Snapping back the lock, the gaoler threw open the door, and Elk
+went in.
+Elk went to the first of the figures and pulled aside the blanket which
+covered the face. Then, with an oath, he drew the blanket clear.
+It was Balder, and he was lying on his back, covered from head to foot
+with a blanket. A silk scarf was twisted round his mouth; his wrists
+were not only handcuffed but strapped, as were his legs.
+Elk dashed at the second figure, but as he touched the blanket, it sank
+under his hands. A folded coat, to give resemblance to a human figure, a
+pair of battered shoes, placed artificially at the end of the
+blanket—these were all. Hagn had disappeared!
+When they got the man into Elk’s office, and had given him brandy, and
+Elk, by sheer bullying, had reduced him to coherence, Balder told his
+story.
+“I think it was round about two o’clock when it happened,” he said. “I’d
+been talking all the evening to this Hagn, though it was very clear to
+me, with my experience, that he spotted me the moment I came in, as a
+police officer, and was kidding me along all the evening. Still, I
+persevered, Mr. Elk. I’m the sort of man that never says die. That’s the
+peculiar thing about me——”
+“The peculiar thing about you,” said Elk wearily, “is your passionate
+admiration of Balder. Get on!”
+“Anyway, I did try,” said Balder in an injured voice; “and I thought I’d
+got over his suspicion, because he began talking about Frogs, and
+telling me that there was going to be a wireless call to all the heads
+to-night—that is, last night. He told me that Number Seven would never
+be captured, because he was too clever. He asked me how Mills had been
+killed, but I’m perfectly sure, the way he put the question, that he
+knew. We didn’t talk very much after one, and at a quarter-past one I
+lay down, and I must have gone to sleep almost at once. The first thing
+I knew was that they were putting a gag in my mouth. I tried to
+struggle, but they held me——”
+“They?” said Elk. “How many were there?”
+“There may have been two or three—I’m not certain,” said Balder. “If it
+had been only two, I think I could have managed, for I am naturally
+strong. There must have been more. I only saw two besides Hagn.”
+“Was the cell door open?”
+“Yes, sir, it was ajar,” said Balder after he had considered a moment.
+“What did they look like?”
+“They were wearing long black overcoats, but they made no attempt to
+hide their faces. I should know them anywhere. They were young men—at
+least, one was. What happened after that I don’t know. They put a strap
+round my legs, pulled the blanket over me, and that’s all I saw or heard
+until the cell door closed. I have been lying there all night, sir,
+thinking of my wife and children . . .”
+Elk cut him short, and, leaving the man in charge of another police
+clerk, he went across to make a more careful examination of the cell.
+The two passages were shaped like a capital L, the special cell being at
+the end of the shorter branch. At the elbow was a barred door leading
+into the courtyard, where men waiting trial were loaded into the
+prison-van and distributed to various places of detention. The warder
+sat at the top of the L, in a small glass-panelled cubby-hole, where the
+cell indicators were. Each cell was equipped with a bell-push in case of
+illness, and the signals showed in this tiny office. From where he sat,
+the warder commanded, not only a view of the passage, but a side view of
+the door. Questioned, he admitted that he had been twice into the
+charge-room for a few minutes at a time; once when a man arrested for
+drunkenness had demanded to see a doctor, and another time, about
+half-past two in the morning, to take over a burglar who had been
+captured in the course of the night.
+“And, of course, it was during that time that the men got away,” said
+Elk.
+The door into the courtyard was locked but not bolted. It could be
+opened from either side. The cell door could also open from both sides.
+In this respect it differed from every other cell in the station; but
+the explanation was that it was frequently used for important prisoners,
+whom it was necessary to subject to lengthy interrogations; and the lock
+had been chosen to give the police officers who were inside an
+opportunity of leaving the cell when they desired, without calling for
+the gaoler. The lock had not been picked, neither had the lock of the
+yard door.
+Elk sent immediately for the policemen who were on duty at either
+entrance of Scotland Yard. The officer who was on guard at the
+Embankment entrance had seen nobody. The man at the Whitehall opening
+remembered seeing an inspector of police pass out at half-past two. He
+was perfectly sure the officer was an inspector, because he wore the
+hanging sword-belt, and the policeman had seen the star on his shoulder
+and had saluted him—a salute which the officer had returned.
+“This may or may not be one of them,” said Elk. “If it is, what happened
+to the other two?”
+But here evidence failed. The men had disappeared as though they had
+dissipated into air.
+“We’re going to get a roasting for this, Captain Gordon,” said Elk; “and
+if we escape without being scorched, we’re lucky. Fortunately, nobody
+but ourselves knows that Hagn has been arrested; and when I say
+‘ourselves,’ I wish I meant it! You had better go home and go to bed; I
+had some sleep in the night. If you’ll wait while I send this bleating
+clerk of mine home to his well-advertised wife and family, I’ll walk
+home with you.”
+Dick was waiting on the edge of Whitehall when Elk joined him.
+“There will be a departmental inquiry, of course. We can’t help that,”
+he said. “The only thing that worries me is that I’ve got poor old
+Balder into bad odour, and I was trying to put him right. I don’t know
+what the experience of the Boy Scouts is,” he went off at a tangent,
+“but my own is that the worst service you can render to any man is to
+try to do him a good turn.”
+It was now nearly ten o’clock, and Dick was feeling faint with hunger
+and lack of sleep, for he had eaten nothing at Horsham. Once or twice,
+as they walked toward Harley Terrace, Elk looked back over his shoulder.
+“Expecting anybody?” asked Dick, suddenly alive to the possibility of
+danger.
+“No-o, not exactly,” said Elk. “But I’ve got a hunch that we’re being
+followed.”
+“I saw a man just now who I thought was following us,” said Dick, “a man
+in a fawn raincoat.”
+“Oh, him?” said Elk, indifferent alike to the rules of grammar and the
+presence of his shadow. “That is one of my men. There’s another on the
+other side of the road. I’m not thinking of them, my mind for the moment
+being fixed on Frogs. Do you mind if we cross the road?” he asked
+hurriedly, and, without waiting for a reply, caught Gordon’s arm and led
+him across the broad thoroughfare. “I always object to walking on the
+same side of a street as the traffic runs. I like to meet traffic; it’s
+not good to be overtaken. I thought so!”
+A small Ford van, painted with the name of a laundry, which had been
+crawling along behind them, suddenly spurted and went ahead at top
+speed. Elk followed the car with his eyes until it reached the Trafalgar
+Square end of Whitehall. Instead of branching left toward Pall Mall or
+right to the Strand, the van swung round in a half-circle and came back
+to meet them. Elk half turned and made a signal.
+“This is where we follow the example of the chicken,” said Elk, and made
+another hurried crossing.
+When they reached the pavement he looked round. The detectives who were
+following him had understood his signal, and one had leaped on the
+running-board of the van, which was pulled up to the pavement. There was
+a few minutes’ talk between the driver and the officer, and then they
+all drove off together.
+“Pinched,” said Elk laconically. “He’ll take him to the station on some
+charge or other and hold him. I guessed he’d see what I was after—my
+man, I mean. The easiest way to shadow is to shadow in a trade truck,”
+said Elk. “A trade van can do anything it likes; it can loiter by the
+pavement, it can turn round and go back, it can go fast or slow, and
+nobody takes the slightest notice. If that had been a limousine, it
+would have attracted the attention of every policeman by drawling along
+by the pavement, so as to overtake us just at the right minute. Probably
+it wasn’t any more than a shadow, but to me,” he said with a quiver of
+his shoulder, “it felt rather like sudden death!”
+Whether Elk’s cheerfulness was assumed or natural, he succeeded in
+impressing his companion.
+“Let’s take a cab,” said Dick, and such was his doubt that he waited for
+three empty taxis to pass before he hailed the fourth. “Come in,” said
+Dick when the cab dropped them at Harley Terrace. “I’ve got a spare room
+if you want to sleep.”
+Elk shook his head to the latter suggestion, but accompanied Gordon into
+the house. The man who opened the door had evidently something to say.
+“There’s a gentleman waiting to see you, sir. He’s been here for half an
+hour.”
+“What is his name?”
+“Mr. Johnson, sir.”
+“Johnson?” said Dick in surprise, and hurried to the dining-room, into
+which the visitor had been ushered.
+It was, indeed, “the philosopher,” though Mr. Johnson lacked for the
+moment evidence of that equilibrium which is the chiefest of his
+possessions. The stout man was worried; his face was unusually long; and
+when Dick went into the room, he was sitting uncomfortably on the edge
+of a chair, as he had seen him sitting at Heron’s Club, his gloomy eyes
+fixed upon the carpet.
+“I hope you’ll forgive me for coming to see you, Captain Gordon,” he
+said. “I’ve really no right to bring my troubles to you.”
+“I hope your troubles aren’t as pressing as mine,” smiled Dick as he
+shook hands. “You know Mr. Elk?”
+“Mr. Elk is an old friend,” said Johnson, almost cheerful for a second.
+“Well, what is your kick?—sit down, won’t you?” said Dick. “I’m going
+to have a real breakfast. Will you join me?”
+“With pleasure, sir. I’ve eaten nothing this morning. I usually have a
+little lunch about eleven, but I can’t say that I feel very hungry. The
+fact is, Captain Gordon, I’m fired.”
+Dick raised his eyebrows.
+“What—has Maitland fired you?”
+Johnson nodded.
+“And to think that I’ve served the old devil all these years faithfully,
+on a clerk’s salary! I’ve never given him any cause for complaint, I’ve
+handled hundreds of thousands—yes, and millions! And although it’s not
+for me to blow my own trumpet, I’ve never once been a penny out in my
+accounts. Of course, if I had been, he would have found it out in less
+than no time, for he is the greatest mathematician I’ve ever met. And as
+sharp as a needle! He can write twice as fast as any other man I’ve
+known,” he added with reluctant admiration.
+“It’s rather curious that a man of his uncouth appearance and speech
+should have those attainments,” said Dick.
+“It’s a wonder to me,” confessed Johnson. “In fact, it has been a
+standing wonder to me ever since I’ve known him. You’d think he was a
+dustman or a tramp, to hear him talk, yet he’s a very well-read man, of
+extraordinary educational qualities.”
+“Can he remember dates?” asked Elk.
+“He can even remember dates,” replied Johnson seriously. “A queer old
+man, and in many ways an unpleasant old man. I’m not saying this because
+he’s fired me; I’ve always had the same view. He’s without a single
+spark of kindness; I think the only human thing about him is his love
+for this little boy.”
+“What little boy?” asked Elk, immediately interested.
+“I’ve never seen him,” said Johnson. “The child has never been brought
+to the office. I don’t know who he is or whose he is; I’ve an idea he’s
+a grandchild of Maitland’s.”
+There was a pause.
+“I see,” said Dick softly, and well he did see, for in that second began
+his understanding of the Frog and the secret of the Frog.
+“Why were you fired?” he asked.
+Johnson shrugged his shoulders.
+“Over a stupid thing; in fact, it’s hardly worth talking about. It
+appears the old man saw me at Heron’s Club the other night, and ever
+since then he’s been going carefully into my petty cash account,
+probably under the impression that I was living a fast life! Beyond the
+usual grousing, there was nothing in his manner to suggest that he
+intended getting rid of me; but this morning, when I came, I found that
+he had already arrived, which was an unusual circumstance. He doesn’t as
+a rule get to the office until about an hour after we start work.
+‘Johnson,’ he said, ‘I understand that you know a Miss Ella Bennett.’ I
+replied that I was fortunate enough to know the lady. ‘And I
+understand,’ he went on, ’that you’ve been down there to lunch on one or
+two occasions.’ ‘That is perfectly true, Mr. Maitland,’ I replied. ‘Very
+well, Johnson,’ said Maitland, ‘you’re fired.’”
+“And that was all?” asked Dick in amazement.
+“That was all,” said Johnson in a hushed voice. “Can you understand it?”
+Dick could have said yes, but he did not. Elk, more curious, and
+passionately anxious to extend his knowledge of the mysterious Maitland,
+had something to ask.
+“Johnson, you’ve been right close to this man Maitland for years. Have
+you noticed anything about him that’s particularly suspicious?”
+“Like what, Mr. Elk?”
+“Has he had any visitors for whom you couldn’t account? Have you known
+him, for example, to do anything which would suggest to you that he had
+something to do with the Frogs?”
+“The Frogs?” Johnson opened his eyes wide, and his voice emphasized his
+incredulity. “Bless you, no! I shouldn’t imagine he knows anything about
+these people. You mean the tramps who have committed so many crimes? No,
+Mr. Elk, I’ve never heard or seen or read anything which gave me that
+impression.”
+“You’ve seen the records of most of his transactions; are there any that
+he has made which would lead you to believe that he had benefited, say,
+by the death of Mr. Maclean in Dundee, or by the attack which was made
+upon the woollen merchant at Derby? For example, do you know whether he
+has been engaged in the buying or selling of French brandies or
+perfumes?”
+Johnson shook his head.
+“No, sir, he deals only in real estate. He has properties in this
+country and in the South of France and in America. He has done a little
+business in exchanges; in fact, we did a very large exchange business
+until the mark broke.”
+“What are you going to do now, Mr. Johnson?” asked Dick.
+The other made a gesture of helplessness.
+“What can I do, sir?” he asked. “I am nearly fifty; I’ve spent most of
+my working life in one job, and it is very unlikely that I can get
+another. Fortunately for me, I’ve not only saved money, but I have had
+one or two lucky investments, and for those I must be grateful to the
+old man. I don’t think he was particularly pleased when he found that
+I’d followed his advice, but that’s beside the question. I do owe him
+that. I’ve just about enough money to keep me for the rest of my life if
+I go quietly and do not engage in any extraordinary speculations. Why I
+came to see you was to ask you, Captain Gordon, if you had any kind of
+opening. I should like a little spare time work, and I’d be most happy
+to work with you.”
+Dick was rather embarrassed, because the opportunities for employing Mr.
+Johnson were few and far between. Nevertheless, he was anxious to help
+the man.
+“Let me give the matter a day or two’s thought,” he said. “What is
+Maitland doing for a secretary?”
+“I don’t know. That is my chief worry. I saw a letter lying on his desk,
+addressed to Miss Ella Bennett, and I have got an idea that he intends
+offering her the job.”
+Dick could hardly believe his ears.
+“What makes you think that?”
+“I don’t know, sir, only once or twice the old man has inquired whether
+Ray has a sister. He took quite an interest in her for two or three
+days, and then let the matter drop. It is as astonishing as anything he
+has ever done.”
+Elk for some reason felt immensely sorry for the man. He was so
+obviously and patently unfitted for the rough and tumble of competition.
+And the opportunities which awaited a man of fifty worn to one groove
+were practically non-existent.
+“I don’t know that I can help you either, Mr. Johnson,” he said. “As far
+as Miss Bennett is concerned, I imagine that there is no possibility of
+her accepting any such offer, supposing Maitland made it. I’ll have your
+address in case I want to communicate with you.”
+“431, Fitzroy Square,” replied Johnson, and produced a somewhat soiled
+card with an apology. “I haven’t much use for cards,” he said.
+He walked to the door and hesitated with his hand on its edge.
+“I’m—I’m very fond of Miss Bennett,” he said, “and I’d like her to know
+that Maitland isn’t as bad as he looks. I’ve got to be fair to him!”
+“Poor devil!” said Elk, watching the man through the window as he walked
+dejectedly along Harley Terrace. “It’s tough on him. You nearly told him
+about seeing Maitland this morning! I saw that, and was ready to jump
+in. It’s the young lady’s secret.”
+“I wish to heaven it wasn’t,” said Dick sincerely, and remembered that
+he had asked Johnson to stay to breakfast.
+CHAPTER XXI
+MR. JOHNSON’S VISITOR
+THERE is a certain murky likeness between the houses in Fitzroy Square,
+London, and Gramercy Park, New York. Fitzroy Square belongs to the
+Georgian days, when Soho was a fashionable suburb, and St.
+Martins-in-the-Fields was really in the fields, and was not tucked away
+between a Vaudeville house and a picture gallery.
+No. 431 had been subdivided by its owner into three self-contained
+flats, Johnson’s being situated on the ground floor. There was a fourth
+basement flat, which was occupied by a man and his wife who acted for
+the owners, and, incidentally, were responsible, in the case of Johnson,
+for keeping his apartments clean and supplying him with the very few
+meals that he had on the premises.
+It was nearly ten o’clock when philosopher Johnson arrived home that
+evening, and he was a very tired man. He had spent the greater part of
+the day in making a series of calls upon financial and real estate
+houses. To his inevitable inquiries he received an inevitable answer.
+There were no vacancies, and certainly no openings for a stoutish man of
+fifty, who looked, to the discerning eyes of the merchants concerned or
+their managing clerks, past his best years of work. Patient Mr. Johnson
+accepted each rebuff and moved on to another field, only to find his
+experience repeated.
+He let himself in with a latchkey, walked wearily into a little
+sitting-room, and dropped with a sigh to the Chesterfield, for he was
+not given to violent exercise.
+The room in which he sat was prettily, but not expensively furnished. A
+large green carpet covered the floor; the walls were hidden by
+book-shelves; and there was about the place a certain cosiness which
+money cannot buy. Rising after some little time, he walked to his
+book-shelf, took down a volume and spent the next two hours in reading.
+It was nearly midnight when he turned out the light and went to bed.
+His bedroom was at the farther end of the short corridor, and in five
+minutes he was undressed and asleep.
+Mr. Johnson was usually a light but consistent sleeper, but to-night he
+had not been asleep an hour before he was awake again. And wider awake
+than he had been at any portion of the day. Softly he got out of bed,
+put on his slippers and pulled a dressing-gown round him; then, taking
+something from a drawer in his bureau, he opened the door and crept
+softly along the carpeted passage toward his sitting-room.
+He had heard no sound; it was sheer premonition of a pressing danger
+which had wakened him. His hand was on the door-knob, and he had turned
+it, when he heard a faint click. It was the sound of a light being
+turned off, and the sound came from the sitting-room.
+With a quick jerk he threw open the door and reached out his hand for
+the switch; and then, from the blackness of the room, came a warning
+voice.
+“Touch that light and you die! I’ve got you covered. Put your gun on the
+floor at your feet—quick!”
+Johnson stooped and laid down the revolver he had taken from his bureau.
+“Now step inside, and step lively,” said the voice.
+“Who are you?” asked Johnson steadily.
+He strained his eyes to pierce the darkness, and saw the figure now. It
+was standing by his desk, and the shine of something in its hand warned
+him that the threat was no idle one.
+“Never met me?” There was a chuckle of laughter in the voice of the
+Unknown. “I’ll bet you haven’t! Friend—meet the Frog!”
+“The Frog?” Johnson repeated the words mechanically.
+“One name’s as good as another. That will do for mine,” said the
+stranger. “Throw over the key of your desk.”
+There was a silence.
+“I haven’t my key here,” said Johnson. “It is in the bedroom.”
+“Stay where you are,” warned the voice.
+Johnson had kicked off his slippers softly, and was feeling with his
+feet for the pistol he had laid so obediently on the floor in the first
+shock of surprise. Presently he found it and drew it toward him with his
+bare toes.
+“What do you want?” he asked, temporizing.
+“I want to see your office papers—all the papers you’ve brought from
+Maitlands.”
+“There is nothing here of any value,” said Johnson.
+The revolver was now at his feet and a little ahead of him. He kept his
+toes upon the butt, ready to drop just as soon as he could locate with
+any certainty the position of the burglar. But now, though his eyes were
+growing accustomed to the darkness, he could no longer see the owner of
+the voice.
+“Come nearer,” said the stranger, “and hold out your hands.”
+Johnson made as though to obey, but dropped suddenly to his knees. The
+explosion deafened him. He heard a cry, saw, in the flash of his pistol,
+a dark figure, and then something struck him.
+He came to consciousness ten minutes later, to find the room empty.
+Staggering to his feet, he put on the light and walked unsteadily back
+to his bedroom, to examine the extent of his injuries. He felt the bump
+on his head gingerly, and grinned. Somebody was knocking at the outer
+door, a peremptory, authoritative knocking. With a wet towel to his
+injured head he went out into the passage and opened the front door. He
+found two policemen at the step and a small crowd gathered on the
+pavement.
+“Has there been shooting here?”
+“Yes, constable,” said Johnson, “I did a little shooting, but I don’t
+think I hit anything.”
+“Have you been hurt, sir? Was it burglars?”
+“I can’t tell you. Come in,” said Johnson, and led the way back to the
+disordered library.
+The blind was flapping in the draught, for the window, which looked out
+upon a side street, was open.
+“Have you missed anything?”
+“No, I don’t think so,” said Johnson. “I think it was rather more
+important than an ordinary burglary. I am going to call Inspector Elk of
+Scotland Yard, and I think you had better leave the room as it is until
+he arrives.”
+Elk was in his office, laboriously preparing a report on the escape of
+Hagn, when the call came through. He listened attentively, and then:
+“I’ll come down, Johnson. Tell the constable to leave things—ask him to
+speak to me.”
+By the time Elk had arrived, the philosopher was dressed.
+“He gave you a pretty hefty one,” said Elk, examining the contusion with
+a professional eye.
+“I wasn’t prepared for it. I expected him to shoot, and he must have
+struck at me as I fired.”
+“You say it was the Frog himself?” said the sceptical Elk. “I doubt it.
+The Frog has never undertaken a job on his own, so far as I can
+remember.”
+“It was either the Frog or one of his trusted emissaries,” said Johnson
+with a good-humoured smile. “Look at this.”
+On the centre of his pink blotting-pad was stamped the inevitable Frog.
+It appeared also on the panel of the door.
+“That is supposed to be a warning, isn’t it?” said Johnson. “Well, I
+hadn’t time to get acquainted with the warning before I got mine!”
+“There are worse things than a clubbing,” said Elk cheerfully. “You’ve
+missed nothing?”
+Johnson shook his head.
+“No, nothing.”
+Elk’s inspection of the room was short but thorough. It was near the
+open window, blown by the breeze into the folds of the curtain, that he
+found the parcel-room ticket. It was a green slip acknowledging the
+reception of a handbag, and it was issued at the terminus of the Great
+Northern Railway.
+“Is this yours?” he asked.
+Johnson took the slip from him, examined it and shook his head.
+“No,” he said, “I’ve never seen it before.”
+“Anybody else in your flat likely to have left a bag at King’s Cross
+station?”
+Again Johnson shook his head and smiled.
+“There is nobody else in this flat,” he said, ���except myself.”
+Elk took the paper under the light and scrutinized the date-stamp. The
+luggage had been deposited a fortnight before, and, as is usual in such
+tickets, the name of the depositor was not given.
+“It may have blown in from the garden,” he said. “There is a stiff
+breeze to-night, but I should not imagine that anybody who had got an
+important piece of luggage would leave the ticket to fly around. I’ll
+investigate this,” he said, and put the ticket carefully away in his
+pocket-book. “You didn’t see the man?”
+“I caught a glimpse of him as I fired, and I am under the impression
+that he was masked.”
+“Did you recognize his voice?”
+“No,” said Johnson, shaking his head.
+Elk examined the window. The catch had been cleverly forced—“cleverly”
+because it was a new type of patent fastening familiar to him, and which
+he did not remember ever having seen forced from the outside before.
+Instinctively his mind went back to the burglary at Lord Farmley’s, to
+that beautifully cut handle and blown lock; and though, by no stretch of
+imagination, could the two jobs be compared, yet there was a similarity
+in finish and workmanship which immediately struck him.
+What made this burglary all the more remarkable was that, for the first
+time, there had appeared somebody who claimed to be the Frog himself.
+Never before had the Frog given tangible proof of his existence. He
+understood the organization well enough to know that none of the Frog’s
+willing slaves would have dared to use his name. And why did he consider
+that Johnson was worthy of his personal attention?
+“No,” said Johnson in answer to his question, “there are no documents
+here of the slightest value. I used to bring home a great deal of work
+from Maitlands; in fact, I have often worked into the middle of the
+night. That is why my dismissal is such a scandalous piece of
+ingratitude.”
+“You have never had any private papers of Maitland’s here, which perhaps
+you might have forgotten to return?” asked Elk thoughtfully, and
+Johnson’s ready smile and twinkling eyes supplied an answer.
+“That’s rather a graceful way of putting the matter,” he said. “No, I
+have none of Maitland’s documents here. If you care, you can see the
+contents of all my cupboards, drawers and boxes, but I can assure you
+that I’m a very methodical man; I know practically every paper in my
+possession.”
+Walking home, Elk reviewed the matter of this surprising appearance. If
+the truth be told, he was very glad to have some additional problem to
+keep his mind off the very unpleasant interview which was promised for
+the morning. Captain Dick Gordon would assume all responsibility, and
+probably the Commissioners would exonerate Elk from any blame; but to
+the detective, the “people upstairs” were almost as formidable as the
+Frog himself.
+CHAPTER XXII
+THE INQUIRY
+HE intended making an early call at King’s Cross to examine the contents
+of the bag, but awoke the next morning, his mind filled with the coming
+inquiry to the exclusion of all other matters; and although he entered
+Johnson’s burglary in his report book very carefully, and locked away
+the cloak-room ticket in his safe, he was much too absorbed and worried
+to make immediate inquiries.
+Dick arrived for the inquiry, and his assistant gave him a brief sketch
+of the burglary in Fitzroy Square.
+“Let me see that ticket,” he asked.
+Elk, unlocking the safe, produced the green slip.
+“The ticket has been attached to something,” said Dick, carrying the
+slip to the window. “There is the mark of a paper-fastener, and the mark
+is recent. This may produce a little information,” he said as he handed
+it back.
+“It’s very unlikely,” said Elk despondently as he locked the door of the
+safe. “Those people upstairs are going to give us hell.”
+“Don’t worry,” said Dick. “I tell you, our friends above are so tickled
+to death at recovering the Treaty that they’re not going to worry much
+about Hagn.”
+It was a remarkable prophecy, remarkably fulfilled. Elk was gratified
+and surprised when he was called into the presence of the great—every
+Commissioner and Chief Constable sat round the green board of
+judgment—to discover that the attitude of his superiors was rather one
+of benevolent interest than of disapproval.
+“With an organization of this character we are prepared for very
+unexpected developments,” said the Chief Commissioner. “In ordinary
+circumstances, the escape of Hagn would be a matter calling for severe
+measures against those responsible. But I really cannot apportion the
+blame in this particular case. Balder seems to have behaved with perfect
+propriety; I quite approve of your having put him into the cell with
+Hagn; and I do not see what I can do with the gaoler. The truth is, that
+the Frogs are immensely powerful—more powerful than the agents of an
+enemy Government, because they are working with inside knowledge, and in
+addition, of course, they are our own people. You think it is possible,
+Captain Gordon, to round up the Frogs?—I know it will be a tremendous
+business. Is it worth while?”
+Dick shook his head.
+“No, sir,” he replied. “They are too numerous, and the really dangerous
+men are going to be difficult to identify. It has come to our knowledge
+that the chiefs of this organization—at least, some of them—are not so
+marked.”
+Not all the members of the Board of Inquiry were as pleasant as the
+Chief Commissioner.
+“It comes to this,” said a white-haired Chief Constable, “that in the
+space of a week we have had two prisoners killed under the eyes of the
+police, and one who has practically walked out of the cell in which he
+was guarded by a police officer, without being arrested or any clue
+being furnished as to the method the Frogs employed.” He shook his head.
+“That’s bad, Captain Gordon.”
+“Perhaps you would like to take charge of the inquiry, sir,” said Dick.
+“This is not the ordinary petty larceny type of crime, and I seem to
+remember having dealt with a case of yours whilst I was in the
+Prosecutor’s Department, presenting less complicated features, in which
+you were no more successful than I and my officers have been in dealing
+with the Frogs. You must allow me the greatest latitude and exercise
+patience beyond the ordinary. I know the Frog,” he said simply.
+For some time they did not realize what he had said.
+“You know him?” asked the Chief Commissioner incredulously.
+Dick nodded.
+“If I were to tell you who it was,” he said, “you would probably laugh
+at me. And obviously, whilst it is quite possible for me to secure an
+arrest this morning, it is not as easy a matter to produce overwhelming
+evidence that will convict. You must give me rope if I am to succeed.”
+“But how did you discover him, Captain Gordon?” asked the Chief, and
+Elk, who had listened, dumbfounded, to this claim of his superior,
+waited breathlessly for the reply.
+“It was clear to me,” said Dick, speaking slowly and deliberately, “when
+I learnt from Mr. Johnson, who was Maitland’s secretary, that somewhere
+concealed in the old man’s house was a mysterious child.” He smiled as
+he looked at the blank faces of the Board. “That doesn’t sound very
+convincing, I’m afraid,” he said, “but nevertheless, you will learn in
+due course why, when I discovered this, I was perfectly satisfied that I
+could take the Frog whenever I wished. It is not necessary to say that,
+knowing as I do, or as I am convinced I do, the identity of this
+individual, events from now on will take a more interesting and a more
+satisfactory course. I do not profess to be able to explain how Hagn
+came to make his escape. I have a suspicion—it is no more than a
+suspicion—but even that event is soluble if my other theory is right,
+as I am sure it is.”
+Until the meeting was over and the two men were again in Elk’s office,
+the detective spoke no word. Then, closing the door carefully, he said:
+“If that was a bluff of yours, Captain Gordon, it was the finest bluff I
+have ever heard, and I’ve an idea it wasn’t a bluff.”
+“It was no bluff,” said Dick quietly. “I tell you I am satisfied that I
+know the Frog.”
+“Who is it?”
+Dick shook his head.
+“This isn’t the time to tell you. I don’t think any useful purpose would
+be served if I made my views known—even to you. Now what about your
+cloak-room ticket?”
+Dick did not accompany him to King’s Cross, for he had some work to do
+in his office, and Elk went alone to the cloak-room. Producing the
+ticket, he paid the extra fees for the additional period of storage, and
+received from the attendant a locked brown leather bag.
+“Now, son,” said Elk, having revealed his identity, “perhaps you will
+tell me if you remember who brought this bag?”
+The attendant grinned.
+“I haven’t that kind of memory,” he said.
+“I sympathize with you,” said Elk, “but possibly if you concentrated
+your mind, you might be able to recall something. Faces aren’t dates.”
+The attendant turned over the leaves of his book to make sure.
+“Yes, I was on duty that day.”
+“What time was it handed in?”
+He examined the counterfoils.
+“About eleven o’clock in the morning,” he said. He shook his head. “I
+can’t remember who brought it. We get so much luggage entered at that
+time in the morning that it’s almost impossible for me to recall any
+particular person. I know one thing, that there wasn’t anything peculiar
+about him, or I should have remembered.”
+“You mean that the person who handed this in was very ordinary. Was he
+an American?”
+Again the attendant thought.
+“No, I don’t think he was an American, sir,” he said. “I should have
+remembered that. I don’t think we have had an American here for weeks.”
+Elk took the bag to the office of the station police inspector, and with
+the aid of his key unlocked and pulled it wide open. Its contents were
+unusual. A suit of clothes, a shirt, collar and tie, a brand-new shaving
+outfit, a small bottle of Annatto, a colouring material used by
+dairymen, a passport made out in the name of “John Henry Smith,” but
+with the photograph missing, a Browning pistol, fully loaded, an
+envelope containing 5,000 francs and five one-hundred-dollar bills;
+these comprised the contents.
+Elk surveyed the articles as they were spread on the inspector’s table.
+“What do you make of that?”
+The railwayman shook his head.
+“It’s a fairly complete outfit,” he said.
+“You mean a get-away outfit? That’s what I think,” said Elk; “and I’d
+like to bet that one of these bags is stored at every railway terminus
+in London!”
+The clothing bore no marks, the Browning was of Belgian manufacture,
+whilst the passport might, or might not, have been forged, though the
+blank on which it was written was obviously genuine. (A later inquiry
+put through to the Foreign Office revealed the fact that it had not been
+officially issued.)
+Elk packed away the outfit into the bag.
+“I shall take these to the Yard. Perhaps they’ll be called for—but more
+likely they won’t.”
+Elk came out of the Inspector’s office on to the broad platform,
+wondering what it would be best to do. Should he leave the bag in the
+cloak-room and set a man to watch? . . . That would be a little futile,
+for nobody could call unless he had the ticket, and it would mean
+employing a good officer for nothing. He decided in the end to take the
+bag to the Yard and hand it over for a more thorough inspection.
+One of the Northern expresses had just pulled into the station, two
+hours late, due to a breakdown on the line. Elk stood looking idly at
+the stream of passengers passing out through the barrier, and, so
+watching, he saw a familiar face. His mind being occupied with this, the
+familiarity did not force itself upon his attention until the man he had
+recognized had passed out of view. It was John Bennett—a furtive,
+hurrying figure, with his battered suit-case in his hand, a dark felt
+hat pulled over his eyes.
+Elk strolled across to the barrier where a station official was
+standing.
+“Where does this train come from?”
+“Aberdeen, sir.”
+“Last stop?” asked Elk.
+“Last stop Doncaster,” said the official.
+Whilst he was speaking, Elk saw Bennett returning. Apparently he had
+forgotten something, for there was a frown of annoyance on his face. He
+pushed his way through the stream of people that were coming from the
+barriers, and Elk wondered what was the cause of his return. He had not
+long to wait before he learnt.
+When Bennett appeared again, he was carrying a heavy brown box, fastened
+with a strap, and Elk recognized the motion picture camera with which
+this strange man pursued his paying hobby.
+“Queer bird!” said Elk to himself and, calling a cab, carried his find
+back to headquarters.
+He put the bag in his safe, and sent for two of his best men.
+“I want the cloak-rooms of every London terminus inspected for bags of
+this kind,” he said, showing the bag. “It has probably been left for
+weeks. Push the usual inquiries as to the party who made the deposit,
+select all likely bags, and, to make sure, have them opened on the spot.
+If they contained a complete shaving kit, a gun, a passport and money,
+they are to be brought to Scotland Yard and held for me.”
+Gordon, whom he afterwards saw, agreed with his explanation for the
+presence of this interesting find.
+“At any hour of the day or night he’s ready to jump for safety,” said
+Elk admiringly; “and at any terminus we shall find money, a change of
+kit and the necessary passport to carry him abroad, Annatto to stain his
+face and hands—I expect he carries his own photograph. And by the way,
+I saw John Bennett.”
+“At the station?” asked Dick.
+Elk nodded.
+“He was returning from the north, from one of five towns—Aberdeen,
+Arbroath, Edinburgh, York or Doncaster. He didn’t see me, and I didn’t
+push myself forward. Captain, what do you think of this man Bennett?”
+Dick did not reply.
+“Is he your Frog?” challenged Elk, and Dick Gordon chuckled.
+“You’re not going to get my Frog by a process of elimination. Elk, and
+you can save yourself a whole lot of trouble if you cut out the idea
+that cross-examining me will produce good results.”
+“I never thought anything so silly,” said Elk. “But John Bennett gets me
+guessing. If he were the Frog, he couldn’t have been in Johnson’s
+sitting-room last night.”
+“Not unless he motored to Doncaster to catch an alibi train,” said Dick,
+and then: “I wonder if the Doncaster police are going to call in
+headquarters, or whether they’ll rely upon their own intelligence
+department.”
+“About what?” asked Elk surprised.
+“Mabberley Hall, which is just outside Doncaster, was burgled last
+night,” said Dick, “and Lady FitzHerman’s diamond tiara was
+stolen—rather supports your theory, doesn’t it, Elk?”
+Elk said nothing, but he wished most fervently that he had some excuse
+or other for searching John Bennett’s bag.
+CHAPTER XXIII
+A MEETING
+HERON’S CLUB had been temporarily closed by order of the police, but now
+was allowed to open its doors again. Ray invariably lunched at Heron’s
+unless he was taking the meal with Lola, who preferred a brighter
+atmosphere than the club offered at midday.
+Only a few tables were occupied when he arrived. The stigma of the
+police raid lay upon Heron’s, and its more cautious clients had not yet
+begun to drift back. It was fairly well known that something had
+happened to Hagn, the manager, for the man had not appeared since the
+night of the raid. There were unconfirmed rumours of his arrest. Ray had
+not troubled to call for letters as he passed through the hall, for very
+little correspondence came to him at the club. He was therefore
+surprised when the waiter, having taken his order, returned, accompanied
+by the clerk carrying in his hand two letters, one heavily sealed and
+weighty, the other smaller.
+He opened the big envelope first, and was putting in his fingers to
+extract the contents when he realized that the envelope contained
+nothing but money. He did not care to draw out the contents, even before
+the limited public. Peeping, he was gratified to observe the number and
+denomination of the bills. There was no message, but the other letter
+was addressed in the same handwriting. He tore this open. It was
+innocent of address or date, and the typewritten message ran:
+“On Friday morning you will assume a dress which will be sent to
+you, and you will make your way towards Nottingham by road. You
+will take the name of Jim Carter, and papers of identification
+in that name will be found in the pockets of the clothes which
+will reach you by special messenger to-morrow. From now onward
+you are not to appear in public, you are not to shave, receive
+visitors or pay visits. Your business at Nottingham will be
+communicated to you. Remember that you are to travel by road,
+sleeping in such lodging-houses, casual wards or Salvation Army
+shelters as tramps usually patronize. At Barnet, on the Great
+North Road, near the ninth milestone, you will meet another whom
+you know, and will accompany him for the remainder of the
+journey. At Nottingham you will receive further orders. It is
+very likely that you will not be required, and certainly, the
+work you will be asked to do will not compromise you in any way.
+Remember your name is Carter. Remember you are not to shave.
+Remember also the ninth milestone on Friday morning. When these
+facts are impressed upon you, take this letter, the envelope,
+and the envelope containing the money, to the club fireplace,
+and burn them. I shall see you.”
+The letter was signed “Frog.”
+So the hour had come when the Frogs had need of him. He had dreaded the
+day, and yet in a way had looked forward to it as one who wished to know
+the worst.
+He faithfully carried out the instructions, and, under the curious eyes
+of the guests, carried the letter and the envelopes to the empty brick
+fireplace, lit a match and burnt them, putting his foot upon the ashes.
+His pulse beat a little quicker, the thump of his heart was a little
+more pronounced, as he went back to his untouched lunch. So the Frog
+would see him—was here! He looked round the sparsely filled tables, and
+presently he met the gaze of a man whose eyes had been fixed upon him
+ever since he had sat down. The face was familiar, and yet unfamiliar.
+He beckoned the waiter.
+“Don’t look immediately,” he said in a low voice, “but tell me who is
+that gentleman sitting in the second alcove.”
+The waiter looked carelessly round.
+“That is Mr. Joshua Broad, sir,” he said.
+Almost as the waiter spoke, Joshua Broad rose from his seat, walked
+across the room to where Ray was sitting.
+“Good morning, Mr. Bennett. I don’t think we have met before, though we
+are fellow-members of Heron’s and I’ve seen you a lot of times here. My
+name is Broad.”
+“Won’t you sit down?” Ray had some difficulty in controlling his voice.
+“Glad to meet you, Mr. Broad. Have you finished your lunch? If not,
+perhaps you’ll take it with me.”
+“No,” he said, “I’ve finished lunch. I eat very little. But if it
+doesn’t annoy you, I’ll smoke a cigarette.”
+Ray offered his case.
+“I’m a neighbour of a friend of yours,” said Broad, choosing a
+cigarette, “Miss Lola Bassano. She has an apartment facing mine in
+Caverley House—I guess that’s where I’ve seen you most often.”
+Now Ray remembered. This was the strange American who lived opposite to
+Lola, and about whose business he had so often heard Lola and Lew Brady
+speculate.
+“And I think we have a mutual friend in—Captain Gordon,” suggested the
+other, his keen eyes fixed upon the boy.
+“Captain Gordon is not a friend of mine,” said Ray quickly. “I’m not
+particularly keen on police folk as friends.”
+“They can be mighty interesting,” said Broad, “but I can quite
+understand your feeling in the matter. Have you known Brady long?”
+“Lew? No, I can’t say that I have. He’s a very nice fellow,” said Ray
+unenthusiastically. “He’s not exactly the kind of friend I’d have
+chosen, but it happens that he is a particularly close friend of a
+friend of mine.”
+“Of Miss Bassano,” said Broad. “You used to be at Maitlands?”
+“I was there once,” said Ray indifferently, and from his tone one might
+have imagined that he had merely been a visitor attracted by morbid
+curiosity to that establishment.
+“Queer cuss, old Maitland.”
+“I know very little of him,” said Ray.
+“A very queer fellow. He’s got a smart secretary, though.”
+“You mean Johnson?” Ray smiled. “Poor old philosopher, he’s lost his
+job!”
+“You don’t say? When did this happen?” Mr. Broad’s voice was urgent,
+eager.
+“The other day—I don’t know when. I met Johnson this morning and he
+told me. I don’t know how the old boy will get on without Philo.”
+“I was wondering the same thing,” said Broad softly. “You surprise me. I
+wonder he has the nerve, though I don’t think he’s lacking in that
+quality.”
+“The nerve?” said the puzzled Ray. “I don’t think it requires much nerve
+to fire a secretary.”
+A fleeting smile played on the hard face of the American.
+“By that I meant that it requires nerve for a man of Maitland’s
+character to dismiss a man who must share a fair number of his secrets.
+Not that I should imagine there would be any great confidence between
+these two. What is Johnson doing?”
+“He’s looking for a job, I think,” said Ray. He was getting a little
+irritated by the persistence of the stranger’s questions. He had a
+feeling that he was being “pumped.” Possibly Mr. Broad sensed this
+suspicion, for he dropped his flow of interrogations and switched to the
+police raid, a prolific source of discussion amongst the members of
+Heron’s.
+Ray looked after him as he walked out a little later and was puzzled.
+Why was he so keen on knowing all these things? Was he testing him? He
+was glad to be alone to consider this extraordinary commission which had
+come to him. The adventure of it, the disguise of it, all were
+particularly appealing to a romantic young man; and Ray Bennett lacked
+nothing in the matter of romance. There was a certain delightful
+suggestion of danger, a hint almost as thrilling of lawlessness, in
+these instructions. What might be the end of the adventure, he did not
+trouble to consider. It was well for his peace of mind that he was no
+seer; for, if he had been, he would have flown that very moment, seeking
+for some desolate place, some hole in the ground where he could lie and
+shiver and hide.
+CHAPTER XXIV
+WHY MAITLAND CAME
+ELLA BENNETT was cooking the dinner when her father came in, depositing
+his heavy camera on the floor of the sitting-room, but carrying, as was
+usual, his grip to the bedroom. She heard the closing of the cupboard
+door and the turning of the lock, but had long ceased to wonder why he
+invariably kept his bag locked in that cupboard. He was looking very
+tired and old; there were deeper lines under his eyes, and the pallor of
+his cheeks was even more pronounced.
+“Did you have a good time, father?” she asked. It was the invariable
+question, and invariably John Bennett made no other reply than a nod.
+“I nearly lost my camera this morning—forgot it,” he said. “It was
+quite a success—taking the camera away with me—but I must get used to
+remembering that I have it. I found a stretch of country full of wild
+fowl, and got some really good pictures. Round about Horsham my
+opportunities are limited, and I think I shall take the machine with me
+wherever I go.”
+He seated himself in the old chair by the fireplace and was filling his
+pipe slowly.
+“I saw Elk on the platform at King’s Cross,” he said. “I suppose he was
+looking for somebody.”
+“What time did you leave where you were?” she asked.
+“Last night,” he replied briefly, but did not volunteer any further
+information about his movements.
+She was in and out of the kitchen, laying the table, and she did not
+speak to him on the matter which was near her heart, until he had drawn
+up his chair, and then:
+“I had a letter from Ray this morning, father,” she said. It was the
+first time she had mentioned the boy’s name since that night of horrible
+memories at Heron’s Club.
+“Yes?” he answered, without looking up from his plate.
+“He wanted to know if you had his letter.”
+“Yes, I had his letter,” said John Bennett, “but I didn’t answer it. If
+Ray wants to see me, he knows where I am. Did you hear from anybody
+else?” he asked, with surprising calm.
+She had been dreading what might follow the mention of Ray’s name.
+“I heard from Mr. Johnson. He has left Maitlands.”
+Bennett finished his glass of water and set it down before he replied.
+“He had a good job, too. I’m sorry. I suppose he couldn’t get on with
+the old man.”
+Should she tell him? she wondered again. She had been debating the
+advisability of taking her father into her confidence ever since——
+“Father, I’ve met Mr. Maitland,” she said.
+“I know. You saw him at his office; you told me.”
+“I’ve met him since. You remember the morning I was out, when Captain
+Gordon came—the morning I went to the wood? I went to see Mr.
+Maitland.”
+He put down his knife and fork and stared at her incredulously.
+“But why on earth did you see him at that hour of the morning? Had you
+made arrangements to meet him?”
+She shook her head.
+“I hadn’t any idea that I was going to see him,” she said, “but that
+night I was wakened by somebody throwing a stone at the window. I
+thought it was Ray, who had come back late. That was his habit; I never
+told you, but sometimes he was very late indeed, and he used to wake me
+that way. It was just dawn, and when I looked out, to my astonishment, I
+saw Mr. Maitland. He asked me to come down in that queerly abrupt way of
+his, and, thinking it had something to do with Ray, I dressed and went
+out into the garden, not daring to wake you. We walked up the road to
+where his car was. It was the queerest interview you could imagine,
+because he said—nothing.”
+“Nothing?”
+“Well, he asked me if I’d be his friend. If it had been anybody else but
+Mr. Maitland, I should have been frightened. But he was so pathetic, so
+very old, so appealing. He kept saying ‘I’ll tell you something, miss,’
+but every time he spoke he looked round with a frightened air. ‘Let’s go
+where we can’t be seen,’ he said, and begged me to step into the car. Of
+course I refused, until I discovered that the chauffeur was a woman—a
+very old woman, his sister. It was a most extraordinary experience. I
+think she must be nearly seventy, but during the war she learnt to drive
+a motor-car, and apparently she was wearing one of the chauffeur’s
+coats, and a more ludicrous sight you could not imagine, once you
+realized that she was a woman.
+“I let him drive me down to the wood, and then: ‘Is it about Ray?’ I
+asked. But it wasn’t about Ray at all that he wanted to speak. He was so
+incoherent, so strange, that I really did get nervous. And then, when he
+had begun to compose himself and had even made a few connected remarks,
+you came along in Mr. Elk’s car. He was terrified and was shaking from
+head to foot! He begged me to go away, and almost went on his knees to
+implore me not to say that I had seen him.”
+“Phew!” John Bennett pushed back his chair. “And you learnt nothing?”
+She shook her head.
+“He came again last night,” she said, “but this time I did not go out,
+and he refused to come in. He struck me as a man who was expecting to be
+trapped.”
+“Did he give you any idea of what he wanted to say?”
+“No, but it was something which was vitally important to him, I think. I
+couldn’t understand half that he said. He spoke in loud whispers, and
+I’ve told you how harsh his voice is.”
+Bennett relit his pipe, and sat for a while with downcast eyes,
+revolving the matter in his mind.
+“The next time he comes you’d better let me see him,” he said.
+“I don’t think so, daddy,” she answered quietly. “If he has anything
+very important to say, I think I ought to know what it is. I have a
+feeling that he is asking for help.”
+John Bennett looked up.
+“A millionaire asking for help? Ella, that sounds queer to me.”
+“And it _is_ queer,” she insisted. “He didn’t seem half so terrible as
+he appeared when I first saw him. There was something tragic about him,
+something very sad. He will come to-night, and I’ve promised to see him.
+May I?”
+Her father considered.
+“Yes, you may see him, provided you do not go outside this garden. I
+promise that I will not appear, but I shall be on hand. Do you think it
+is about Ray—that Ray has committed some act of folly that he wants to
+tell you about?” he asked with a note of anxiety.
+“I don’t think so, daddy. Maitland was quite indifferent to Ray or what
+becomes of him. I’ve been wondering whether I ought to tell somebody.”
+“Captain Gordon or Mr. Elk,” suggested her father dryly, and the girl
+flushed. “You like that young man, Ella? No, I’m not referring to Elk,
+who is anything but young; I mean Dick Gordon.”
+“Yes,” she said after a pause, “I like him very much.”
+“I hope you aren’t going to like him too much, darling,” said John
+Bennett, and their eyes met.
+“Why not, daddy?” It almost hurt her to ask.
+“Because”—he seemed at a loss as to how he should proceed—“because
+it’s not desirable. He occupies a different position from ourselves, but
+that isn’t the only reason. I don’t want you to have a heartache, and I
+say this, knowing that, if that heartache comes, I shall be the cause.”
+He saw her face change, and then:
+“What do you wish me to do?” she asked.
+He rose slowly, and, walking to her, put his arm about her shoulder.
+“Do whatever you like, Ella,” he said gently. “There is a curse upon me,
+and you must suffer for my sin. Perhaps he will never know—but I am
+tired of expecting miracles.”
+“Father, what do you mean?” she asked anxiously.
+“I don’t know what I mean,” he said as he patted her shoulder. “Things
+may work out as they do in stories. Perhaps . . .” He ruminated for a
+while. “Those pictures I took yesterday may be the making of me, Ella.
+But I’ve thought that of so many things. Always there seems to be a
+great possibility opening out, and always I have been disappointed. But
+I’m getting the knack of this picture taking. The apparatus is working
+splendidly, and the man who buys them—he has a shop in Wardour
+Street—told me that the quality of the films is improving with every
+new ‘shot.’ I took a mother duck on the nest, just as the youngsters
+were hatching out. I’m not quite sure how the picture will develop,
+because I had to be at some distance from the nest. As it was, I nearly
+scared the poor lady when I fixed the camera.”
+Very wisely she did not pursue a subject which was painful to her.
+That afternoon she saw a strange man standing in the roadway opposite
+the gate, looking toward the house. He was a gentleman, well dressed,
+and he was smoking a long cigar. She thought, by his shell glasses, that
+he might be an American, and when he spoke to her, his New England
+accent left no doubt. He came toward the gate, hat in hand.
+“Am I right in thinking that I’m speaking to Miss Bennett?” he asked,
+and when she nodded: “My name is Broad. I was just taking a look round,
+and I seemed to remember that you lived somewhere in the neighbourhood.
+In fact, I think your brother told me to-day.”
+“Are you a friend of Ray?” she asked.
+“Why, no,” said Broad with a smile. “I can’t say that I’m a friend of
+Mr. Bennett; I’m what you might call a club acquaintance.”
+He made no attempt to approach her any closer, and apparently he did not
+expect to be invited into the house on the strength of his acquaintance
+with Ray Bennett. Presently, with a commonplace remark about the weather
+(he had caught the English habit perfectly) he moved off, and from the
+gate she saw him walking up towards the wood road. That long
+_cul-de-sac_ was a favourite parking place of motorists who came to the
+neighbourhood, and she was not surprised when, a few minutes later, she
+saw the car come out. Mr. Broad raised his hat as he passed, and waved a
+little greeting to some person who was invisible to her. Her curiosity
+whetted, she opened the gate and walked on to the road. A little way
+down, a man was sitting on a tree trunk, reading a newspaper and smoking
+a large-bowled pipe. An hour later, when she came out, he was still
+there, but this time he was standing; a tall, soldier-like-looking man,
+who turned his head away when she looked in his direction. A detective,
+she thought, in dismay.
+Her instinct was not at fault: of that she was sure. For some reason or
+other, Maytree Cottage was under observation. At first she was
+frightened, then indignant. She had half a mind to go into the village
+and telephone to Elk, to demand an explanation. Somehow it never
+occurred to her to be angry with Dick, though he was solely responsible
+for placing the men who were guarding her day and night.
+She went to bed early, setting her alarm for three o’clock. She woke
+before the bell roused her, and, dressing quickly, went down to make
+some coffee. As she passed her father’s door, he called her.
+“I’m up, if you want me, Ella.”
+“Thank you, daddy,” she said gratefully. She was glad to know that he
+was around. It gave her a feeling of confidence which she had never
+before possessed in the presence of this old man.
+The first light was showing in the sky when she saw the silhouette of
+Mr. Maitland against the dawn, and heard the soft click of the latch as
+he opened the garden gate. She had not heard the car nor seen it. This
+time Maitland had alighted some distance short of the house.
+He was, as usual, nervous and for the time being speechless. A heavy
+overcoat, which had seen its best days, was buttoned up to his neck, and
+a big cap covered his hairless head.
+“That you, miss?” he asked in a husky whisper.
+“Yes, Mr. Maitland.”
+“You coming along for a little walk? . . . Got something to tell
+you. . . . Very important, miss.”
+“We will walk in the garden,” she said, lowering her voice.
+He demurred.
+“Suppose anybody sees us, eh? That’d be a fine lookout for me! Just a
+little way up the road, miss,” he pleaded. “Nobody will hear us.”
+“We can go on to the lawn. There are some chairs there.”
+“Is everybody asleep? All your servant gels?”
+“We have no servant girls,” she smiled.
+He shook his head.
+“I don’t blame you. I hate ’um. Got six fellows in uniform at my house.
+They frighten me stiff!”
+She led him across the lawn, carrying a cushion, and, settling him in a
+chair, waited. The beginnings of these interviews had always seemed as
+promising, but after a while Mr. Maitland had a trick of rambling off at
+a tangent into depths which she could not plumb.
+“You’re a nice gel,” said Maitland huskily. “I thought so the first time
+I saw you . . . you wouldn’t do a poor old man any ’arm, would you,
+miss?”
+“Why, of course not, Mr. Maitland.”
+“I know you wouldn’t. I told Matilda you wouldn’t. She says you’re all
+right. . . . Ever been in the workhouse, miss?”
+“In the poorhouse?” she said, smiling in spite of herself. “Why, no,
+I’ve never been in a poorhouse.”
+He looked round fearfully from side to side, peering under his white
+eyebrows at a clump of bushes which might conceal an eavesdropper.
+“Ever been in quod?”
+She did not recognize the word.
+“I have,” he went on. “Quod’s prison, miss. Naturally you wouldn’t
+understand them words.”
+Again he looked round.
+“Suppose you was me. . . . It all comes to that question—suppose you
+was me!”
+“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Maitland.”
+She watched his frightened scrutiny of the grounds, and then he bent
+over toward her.
+“Them fellows will get me,” he said slowly and impressively. “They’ll
+get me, _and_ Matilda. And I’ve left all my money to a certain person.
+That’s the joke. That’s the whole joke of it, miss.” He chuckled
+wheezily. “And then they’ll get him.”
+He slapped his knee, convulsed with silent laughter, and the girl
+honestly thought he was mad and edged away from him.
+“But I’ve got a great idea—got it when I saw you. It’s one of the
+greatest ideas I’ve ever had, miss. Are you a typewriter?”
+“A typist?” she smiled. “No, I can type, but I’m not a very good
+typist.”
+His voice sank until it was almost unintelligible.
+“You come up to my office one day, and we’ll have a great joke. Wouldn’t
+think I was a joker, would you? Eighty-seven I am, miss. You come up to
+my office and I’ll make you laugh!”
+Suddenly he became more serious.
+“They’ll get me—I know it. I haven’t told Matilda, because she’d start
+screaming. But _I_ know. _And_ the baby!”
+This seemed to afford the saturnine old man the greatest possible
+enjoyment. He rocked from side to side with mirth, until a fit of
+coughing attacked him.
+“That’s all, miss. You come up to my office. Old Johnson isn’t there.
+You come up and see me. Never had a letter from me, have you?” he
+suddenly asked, as he rose.
+“No, Mr. Maitland,” she said in surprise.
+“There was one wrote,” said he. “Maybe I didn’t post it. Maybe I thought
+better. I dunno.”
+He started and drew back as a figure appeared before the house.
+“Who’s that?” he asked, and she felt a hand on her arm that trembled.
+“That is my father, Mr. Maitland,” she said. “I expect he got a little
+nervous about my being out.”
+“Your father, eh?” He was more relieved than resentful. “Mr. John
+Bennett, his name is, by all accounts. Don’t tell him I’ve been in the
+workhouse,” he urged, “or in quod. And I have been in quod, miss. Met
+all the big men, every one of ’um. And met a few of ’um out, too. I bet
+I’m the only man in this country that’s ever seen Saul Morris, the
+grandest feller in the business. Only met him once, but I shall never
+forget him.”
+John Bennett saw them pacing toward him, and stood undecided as to
+whether he should join them or whether Ella would be embarrassed by such
+a move. Maitland decided the matter by hobbling over to him.
+“Morning, mister,” he said. “Just having a talk to your gel. Rather
+early in the morning, eh? Hope you don’t mind, Mr. Bennett.”
+“I don’t mind,” said John Bennett. “Won’t you come inside, Mr.
+Maitland?”
+“No, no, no,” said the other fearfully. “I’ve got to get on. Matilda
+will be waiting for me. Don’t forget, miss: come up to my office and
+have that joke!”
+He did not offer to shake hands, nor did he take off his hat. In fact,
+his manners were deplorable. A curt nod to the girl, and then:
+“Well, so long, mister——” he began, and at that moment John Bennett
+moved out from the shadow of the house.
+“Good-bye, Mr. Maitland,” he said.
+Maitland did not speak. His eyes were open wide with terror, his face
+blanched to the colour of death.
+“You . . . you!” he croaked. “Oh, my God!”
+He seemed to totter, and the girl sprang to catch him, but he recovered
+himself, and, turning, ran down the path with an agility which was
+surprising in one of his age, tore open the gate and flew along the
+road. They heard his dry sobs coming back to them.
+“Father,” whispered the girl in fear, “did he know you? Did he recognize
+you?”
+“I wonder,” said John Bennett of Horsham.
+CHAPTER XXV
+IN REGARD TO SAUL MORRIS
+DICK GORDON ’phoned across to headquarters, and Elk reported
+immediately.
+“I’ve discovered six good get-away bags, and each one is equipped as
+completely and exactly as the one we found at King’s Cross.”
+“No clue as to the gentleman who deposited them?”
+“No, sir, not so much as a clue. We’ve tested them all for
+finger-prints, and we’ve got a few results; but as they have been
+handled by half a dozen attendants, I don���t think we shall get much out
+of it. Still, we can but try.”
+“Elk, I would give a few years of my life to get to the inside of this
+Frog mystery. I’m having Lola shadowed, though I shouldn’t think she’d
+be in that lot. I know of nobody who looks less like a tramp than Lola
+Bassano! Lew has disappeared, and when I sent a man round this morning
+to discover what had happened to that young man about town, Mr. Raymond
+Bennett, he was not visible. He refused to see the caller on the plea
+that he was ill, and is staying in his room all day. Elk, who’s the
+Frog?”
+Elk paced up and down the apartment, his hands in his pockets, his
+steel-rimmed spectacles sliding lower and lower down his long nose.
+“There are only two possibilities,” he said. “One is Harry Lyme—an
+ex-convict who was supposed to have been drowned in the _Channel Queen_
+some years ago. I put him amongst them, because all the records we have
+of him show that he was a brilliant organizer, a super-crook, and one of
+the two men capable of opening Lord Farmley’s safe and slipping that
+patent catch on Johnson’s window. And believe me, Captain Gordon, it was
+an artist who burgled Johnson!”
+“The other man?” said Dick.
+“He’s also comfortably dead,” said Elk grimly. “Saul Morris, the
+cleverest of all. He’s got Lyme skinned to death—an expression I picked
+up in my recent travels, Captain. And Morris is American; and although
+I’m as patriotic as any man in this country, I hand it to the Americans
+when it comes to smashing safes. I’ve examined two thousand records of
+known criminals, and I’ve fined it down to these two fellows—and
+they’re both dead! They say that dead men leave no trails, and if Frog
+is Morris or Lyme, they’re about right. Lyme’s dead—drowned. Morris was
+killed in a railway accident in the United States. The question is,
+which of the ghosts we can charge.”
+Dick Gordon pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out an envelope
+that bore the inscription of the Western Union. He threw it across the
+table.
+“What’s this. Captain Gordon?”
+“It’s an answer to a question. You mentioned Saul Morris before, and I
+have been making inquiries in New York. Here’s the reply.”
+The cablegram was from the Chief of Police, New York City.
+“Answering your inquiry. Saul Morris is alive, and is believed
+to be in England at this moment. No charges pending against him
+here, but generally supposed to be the man who cleared out
+strong room of ss. _Mantania_, February 17, 1898, Southampton,
+England, and got away with 55,000,000 francs. Acknowledge.”
+Elk read and re-read the cablegram, then he folded it carefully, put it
+back in its envelope and passed it across the table.
+“Saul Morris is in England,” he said mechanically. “That seems to
+explain a whole lot.”
+The search which detectives had conducted at the railway termini had
+produced nine bags, all of which contained identical outfits. In every
+case there was a spare suit, a clean shirt, two collars, one tie, a
+Browning pistol with cartridges, a forged passport without photograph,
+the Annatio and money. Only in one respect did the grips differ. At
+Paddington the police had recovered one which was a little larger than
+its fellows, all of which were of the same pattern and size. This held
+the same outfit as the remainder, with the exception that, in addition,
+there was a thick pad of cheque forms, every cheque representing a
+different branch of a different bank. There were cheques upon the Credit
+Lyonnais, upon the Ninth National Bank of New York, upon the Burrowstown
+Trust, upon the Bank of Spain, the Banks of Italy and Roumania, in
+addition to about fifty branches of the five principal banks of England.
+Occupied as he had been, Elk had not had time to make a very close
+inspection, but in the morning he determined to deal seriously with the
+cheques. He was satisfied that inquiries made at the banks and branches
+would reveal different depositors; but the numbers might enable him to
+bring the ownership home to one man or one group of men.
+As the bags were brought in, they had been examined superficially and
+placed in Elk’s safe, and to accommodate them, the ordinary contents of
+the safe had been taken out and placed in other repositories. Each bag
+had been numbered and labelled with the name of the station from whence
+it was taken, the name of the officer who had brought it in, and
+particulars of its contents. These facts are important, as having a
+bearing upon what subsequently happened.
+Elk arrived at his office soon after ten o’clock, having enjoyed the
+first full night’s sleep he had had for weeks. He had, as his
+assistants, Balder and a detective-sergeant named Fayre, a promising
+young man, in whom Elk placed considerable trust. Dick Gordon arrived
+almost simultaneously with the detective chief, and they went into the
+building together.
+“There isn’t the ghost of a chance that we shall be rewarded for the
+trouble we’ve taken to trace these cheques,” said Elk, “and I am
+inclined to place more hope upon the possibility of the handbags
+yielding a few items which were not apparent at first examination. All
+these bags are lined, and there is a possibility that they have false
+bottoms. I am going to cut them up thoroughly, and if there’s anything
+left after I’m through, the Frogs are welcome to their secret.”
+In the office, Balder and the detective-sergeant were waiting, and Elk
+searched for his key. The production of the key of the safe was
+invariably something of a ritual where Elk was concerned. He gave Dick
+Gordon the impression that he was preparing to disrobe, for the key
+reposed in some mysterious region which involved the loosening of coat,
+waistcoat, and the diving into a pocket where no pocket should be.
+Presently the ceremony was through, Elk solemnly inserted the key and
+swung back the door.
+The safe was so packed with bags that they began to slide toward him,
+when the restraining pressure of the door was removed. One by one he
+handed them out, and Fayre put them on the table.
+“We’ll take that Paddington one first,” said Elk, pointing to the
+largest of the bags. “And get me that other knife, Balder.”
+The two men walked out into the passage, leaving Fayre alone.
+“Can you see the end of this, Captain Gordon?” asked Elk.
+“The end of the Frogs? Why, yes, I think I can. I could almost say I was
+sure.”
+They had reached the door of the clerk’s office and found Balder holding
+a murderous looking weapon in his hand.
+“Here it is——” he began, and the next instant Dick was flung violently
+to the floor, with Elk on top of him.
+There was the shrill shriek of smashed glass, a pressure of wind, and,
+through all this violence, the deafening thunder of an explosion.
+Elk was first to his feet and flew back to his room. The door hung on
+its hinges; every pane of glass was gone, and the sashes with them. From
+his room poured a dense volume of smoke, into which he plunged. He had
+hardly taken a step before he tripped on the prostrate figure of Fayre,
+and, stooping, he half-lifted and half-dragged him into the corridor.
+One glance was sufficient to show that, if the man was not dead, there
+seemed little hope of his recovery. The fire-bells were ringing
+throughout the building. A swift rush of feet on the stairs, and the
+fire squad came pelting down the corridor, dragging their hose behind
+them.
+What fire there was, was soon extinguished, but Elk’s office was a
+wreck. Even the door of the safe had been blown from its hinges. There
+was not a single article of furniture left, and a big hole gaped in the
+floor.
+“Save those bags,” said Elk and went back to look after the injured man,
+and not until he had seen his assistant placed in the ambulance did he
+return to a contemplation of the ruin which the bomb had made.
+“Oh, yes, it was a bomb, sir,” said Elk.
+A group of senior officers stood in the corridor, looking at the havoc.
+“And something particularly heavy in the shape of bombs. The wonder is
+that Captain Gordon and I were not there. I told Fayre to open the bag,
+but I thought he’d wait until we returned with the knife—we intended
+examining the lining. Fayre must have opened the bag and the bomb
+exploded.”
+“But weren’t the bags examined before?” asked the Commissioner
+wrathfully.
+Elk nodded.
+“They were examined by me yesterday—every one. The Paddington bag was
+turned inside out, every article it contained was placed on my table,
+and catalogued. I myself returned them. There was no bomb.”
+“But how could they be got at?” asked the other.
+Elk shook his head.
+“I don’t know, sir. The only other person who has a key to this safe is
+the Assistant Commissioner of my department, Colonel McClintock, who is
+on his holidays. We might all have been killed.”
+“What was the explosive?”
+“Dynamite,” said Elk promptly. “It blew down.” He pointed to the hole in
+the floor. “Nitro-glycerine blows up and sideways,” he sniffed. “There’s
+no doubt about it being dynamite.”
+In his search of the office he found a twisted coil of thin steel, later
+the blackened and crumpled face of a cheap alarm dock.
+“Both time and contact,” he said. “Those Frogs are taking no chances.”
+He shifted such of his belongings as he could discover into Balder’s
+office.
+There was little chance that this outrage would be kept from the
+newspapers. The explosion had blown out the window and a portion of the
+brickwork and had attracted a crowd on the Embankment outside. Indeed,
+when Elk left headquarters, he was confronted by newspaper bills telling
+of the event.
+His first call was at the near-by hospital, to where the unfortunate
+Fayre had been taken, and the news he received was encouraging. The
+doctors thought that, with any kind of luck, they would not only save
+the man’s life, but also save him from any serious mutilation.
+“He may lose a finger or two, and he’s had a most amazing escape,” said
+the house surgeon. “I can’t understand why he wasn’t blown to pieces.”
+“What I can’t understand,” said Elk emphatically, “is why _I_ wasn’t
+blown to pieces.”
+The surgeon nodded.
+“These high explosives play curious tricks,” said the surgeon. “I
+understand that the force of the explosion blew off the door of the
+safe, and yet this paper, which must also have been within range, is
+scarcely singed.”
+He took a square of paper out of his pocket; the edges were blackened;
+one corner had been burnt off.
+“I found this in his clothing. It must have been driven there when the
+bomb detonated,” said the surgeon.
+Elk smoothed out the paper and read:
+“_With the compliments of Number Seven._”
+Carefully he folded the paper.
+“I’ll take this,” he said, and put it tenderly away in the interior of
+his spectacle case. “Do you believe in hunches, doctor?”
+“Do you mean premonitions?” smiled the surgeon. “To an extent I do.”
+Elk nodded.
+“I have a hunch that I’m going to meet Number Seven—very shortly,” he
+said.
+CHAPTER XXVI
+PROMOTION FOR BALDER
+A WEEK had passed, and the explosion at headquarters was ancient
+history. The injured detective was making fair progress toward recovery,
+and in some respects the situation was stagnant.
+Elk apparently accepted failure as an inevitability, and seemed, even to
+his greatest admirer, to be hypnotized into a fatalistic acceptance of
+the situation. His attitude was a little deceptive. On the sixth day
+following the explosion, headquarters made a raid upon the cloak-rooms,
+and again, as Elk had expected, produced from every single terminus
+parcels office, a brand-new bag with exactly the same equipment as the
+others had had, except that the Paddington find differed from none of
+its fellows.
+The bags were opened by an Inspector of Explosives, after very careful
+preliminary tests; but they contained nothing more deadly than the
+Belgian pistols and the self-same passports, this time made out in the
+name of “Clarence Fielding.”
+“These fellows are certainly thorough,” said Elk with reluctant
+admiration, surveying his haul.
+“Are you keeping the bags in your office?” asked Dick, but Elk shook his
+melancholy head.
+“I think not,” said he.
+He had had the bags immediately emptied, their contents sent to the
+Research Department; the bags themselves were now stripped of leather
+and steel frames, for they had been scientifically sliced, inch by inch.
+“My own opinion,” said Balder oracularly, “is that there’s somebody at
+police headquarters who is working against us. I’ve been considering it
+for a long time, and after consulting my wife——”
+“You haven’t consulted your children, too, have you?” asked Elk
+unpleasantly. “The less you talk about headquarters’ affairs in your
+domestic circle, the better will be your chance of promotion.”
+Mr. Balder sniffed.
+“There’s no fear of that, anyway,” he said sourly. “I’ve got myself in
+their bad books. And I did think there was a chance for me—it all comes
+of your putting me in with Hagn.”
+“You’re an ungrateful devil,” said Elk.
+“Who’s this Number Seven, sir?” asked Balder. “Thinking the matter over,
+and having discussed it with my wife, I’ve come to the conclusion that
+he’s one of the most important Frogs, and if we could only get him, we’d
+be a long way towards catching the big fellow.”
+Elk put down his pen—he was writing his report at the time—and
+favoured his subordinate with a patient and weary smile.
+“You ought to have gone into politics,” he said, and waved his
+subordinate from the room with the end of his penholder.
+He had finished his report and was reading it over with a critical eye,
+when the service ’phone announced a visitor.
+“Send him up,” said Elk when he had heard the name. He rang his bell for
+Balder. “This report goes to Captain Gordon to initial,” he said, and as
+he put down the envelope, Joshua Broad stood in the doorway.
+“Good morning, Mr. Elk.” He nodded to Balder, although he had never met
+him. “Good morning,” he said.
+“Good morning,” said Elk. “Come right in and sit down, Mr. Broad. To
+what do I owe the pleasure of this call?—excuse my politeness, but in
+the early morning I’m that way. All right, Balder, you can go.”
+Broad offered his cigar-case to the detective. “I’ve come on a curious
+errand,” he said.
+“Nobody ever comes to headquarters on any other,” replied Elk.
+“It concerns a neighbour of mine.”
+“Lola Bassano?”
+“Her husband,” said the other, “Lew Brady.”
+Elk pushed up his spectacles.
+“You don’t tell me that she’s properly married to Lew Brady?” he asked
+in surprise.
+“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” said Broad, “though I’m
+perfectly certain that her young friend Bennett is not aware of the
+fact. Brady has been staying at Caverley House for a week, and during
+that time he has not gone out of doors. What is more, the boy hasn’t
+called; I don’t think there’s a quarrel—I have a notion there’s
+something much deeper than that. I saw Brady by accident as I was coming
+out of my door. Bassano’s door also happened to be open: the maid was
+taking in the milk: and I caught a glimpse of him. He has the finest
+crop of whiskers I’ve seen on a retired pugilist and their ambitions do
+not as a rule run to hair! That made me pretty curious,” he said,
+carefully knocking the ash of his cigar into a tray that was on the
+table, “and I wondered if there was any connection between this sudden
+defiance of the barber and Ray Bennett’s actions. I made a call on
+him—I met him the other day at the club and had, as an excuse, the fact
+that I have also managed to meet Miss Ella Bennett. His servant—he has
+a man in by the day to brush his clothes and tidy up the place—told me
+that he was not well and was not visible.”
+Mr. Broad blew out a ring of smoke and watched it thoughtfully.
+“If you want a servant to be faithful, he must live on the premises,” he
+said. “These occasional men aren’t with you long enough to get
+trustworthy. It cost me, at the present rate of exchange, two dollars
+and thirty-five cents to discover that Mr. Ray Bennett is also in the
+hair-restoring business. If there were an election on, these two fellows
+might be political cranks who had vowed a vow that they wouldn’t touch
+their razors until their party was returned to power. And if Lew Brady
+were a real sportsman, I should guess that they were doing this for a
+bet. As it is, I’m rather intrigued.”
+Elk rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.
+“I’m not well acquainted with the Statute Book,” he said, “but I’m under
+the impression there is no law preventing people from cultivating
+undergrowth. The—what’s the word?—psych——”
+“Psychology,” suggested Mr. Broad.
+“That’s it. The psychology of whiskers has never quite reached me.
+You’re American, aren’t you, Mr. Broad?”
+“I have the distinction,” said the other with that half-smile that came
+so readily to his eyes.
+“Ah!” said Elk absently, as he stared through the window. “Ever heard of
+a man called Saul Morris?”
+He brought his eyes back to the other’s face. Mr. Joshua Broad was
+frowning in an effort of thought.
+“I seem to remember the name. He was a criminal of sorts, wasn’t he—an
+American criminal, if I remember rightly? Yes, I’ve heard of him. I seem
+to remember that he was killed a few years ago.”
+Elk scratched his chin irritably.
+“I’d like to meet somebody who was at his funeral,” he said, “somebody I
+could believe on oath.”
+“You’re not suggesting that Lew Brady——”
+“No. I’m not suggesting anything about Lew Brady, except that he’s a
+very poor boxer. I’ll look into this distressing whisker competition,
+Mr. Broad, and thank you for telling me.”
+He wasn’t especially interested in the eccentric toilet of Ray Bennett.
+At five o’clock Balder came to him and asked if he might go home.
+“I promised my wife——” he began.
+“Keep it,” said Elk.
+After his subordinate’s departure there came an official letter to
+Inspector Elk, and, reading its contents, Mr. Elk beamed. It was a
+letter from the Superintendent who controlled the official careers of
+police officers at headquarters.
+“Sir,” it ran, “I am directed by the Chief Commissioner of
+Police to inform you that the promotion of Police-Constable J.
+J. Balder to the rank of Acting-Sergeant has been approved. The
+appointment will date as from the 1st May.”
+Elk folded up the paper and was genuinely pleased. He rang the bell for
+Balder before he remembered that he had sent his assistant home. Elk’s
+evening was free, and in the kindness of his heart he decided upon
+conveying the news personally.
+“I’d like to see this wife of his,” said Elk, addressing nobody, “and
+the children!”
+Elk turned up the official pass register, and found that Balder lived at
+93, Leaford Road, Uxbridge. The names of his wife and children were not
+entered, to Elk’s disappointment. He would like to have addressed the
+latter personally, but no new entry had been made on the sheet since
+Balder’s enlistment.
+His police car took him to Leaford Road; 93 was a respectable little
+house—such a house as Elk always imagined his assistant would live in.
+His knock was answered by an elderly woman who was dressed for going
+out, and Elk was surprised to see that she wore the uniform of a nurse.
+“Yes, Mr. Balder lives here,” she said, apparently surprised to see the
+visitor. “That is to say, he has two rooms here, though he very seldom
+stays here the night. He usually comes here to change, and then I think
+he goes on to his friends.”
+“Does his wife live here?”
+“His wife?” said the woman in surprise. “I didn’t know that he was
+married.”
+Elk had brought Balder’s official record with him, to procure some dates
+which it was necessary he should certify for pension purposes. In the
+space against Balder’s address, he noticed for the first time that there
+were two addresses given, and that Leaford Road had been crossed out
+with ink so pale that he only noticed it now that he saw the paper in
+daylight. The second address was one in Stepney.
+“I seem to have made a mistake,” he said. “His address here is Orchard
+Street, Stepney.” But the nurse smiled.
+“He was with me many years ago,” she said, “then he went to Stepney, but
+during the war he came here, because the air raids were rather bad in
+the East End of London. I am under the impression he has still a room in
+Stepney.”
+“Oh?” said Elk thoughtfully.
+He was at the gate when the nurse called him back.
+“I don’t think he goes to Stepney, though I don’t know whether I ought
+to talk about his business to a stranger; but if you want him
+particularly, I should imagine you would find him at Slough. I’m a
+monthly nurse,” she said, “and I’ve seen his car twice going into Seven
+Gables on the Slough Road. I think he must have a friend there.”
+“Whose car?” asked the startled Elk.
+“It may be his or his friend’s car,” said the nurse. “Is he a friend of
+yours?”
+“He is in a way,” said Elk cautiously.
+She stood for a moment thinking.
+“Will you come in, please?”
+He followed her into the clean and tidy little parlour.
+“I don’t know why I told you, or why I’ve been talking so freely to
+you,” she said, “but the truth is, I’ve given Mr. Balder notice. He
+makes so many complaints, and he’s so difficult to please, that I can’t
+satisfy him. It isn’t as though he paid me a lot of money—he doesn’t. I
+make very little profit out of his rooms, and I’ve a chance of letting
+them at a better rent. And then he’s so particular about his letters.
+I’ve had a letter-box put on the door, but even that is not big enough
+to hold them some days. What his other business is, I don’t know. The
+letters that come here are for the Didcot Chemical Works. You probably
+think that I am a very difficult woman to please, because, after all,
+he’s out all day and seldom sleeps here at night.”
+Elk drew a long breath.
+“I think you’re nearly the finest woman I’ve ever met,” he said. “Are
+you going out now?”
+She nodded.
+“I’ve an all night case, and I shan’t be back till eleven to-morrow. You
+were very fortunate in finding anybody at home.”
+“I think you said ‘his car’; what sort of a car is it?” asked Elk.
+“It’s a black machine—I don’t know the make; I think it is an American
+make. And he must have something to do with the ownership because once I
+found a lot of tyre catalogues in his bedroom, and some of the tyres he
+had marked with a pencil, so I suppose he’s responsible to an extent.”
+One last question Elk asked.
+“Does he come back here at night after you’ve gone?”
+“Very rarely, I imagine,” replied the woman. “He has his own key, and as
+I’m very often out at night I’m not sure whether he returns or not.”
+Elk stood with one foot on the running-board of his car.
+“Perhaps I can drop you somewhere, madam?” he said, and the elderly
+woman gratefully accepted.
+Elk went back to headquarters, opened a drawer of his desk and took out
+a few implements of his profession, and, after filing a number of urgent
+instructions, returned to the waiting car, driving to Harley Terrace.
+Dick Gordon had an engagement that night to join a theatre party with
+the members of the American Embassy, and he was in one of the boxes at
+the Hilarity Theatre when Elk opened the door quietly, tapped him on the
+shoulder, and brought him out into the corridor, without the remainder
+of the party being aware that their guest had retired.
+“Anything wrong, Elk?” asked Gordon.
+“Balder’s got his promotion,” said Elk solemnly, and Dick stared at him.
+“He’s an Acting-Sergeant,” Elk went on, “and I don’t know a better rank
+for Balder. When this news comes to him and his wife and children,
+there’ll be some happy hearts, believe me.”
+Elk never drank: this was the first thought that came to Dick Gordon’s
+mind; but there was a possibility that the anxieties and worries of the
+past few weeks might have got on top of him.
+“I’m very glad for Balder,” he said gently, “and I’m glad for you too,
+Elk, because I know you tried hard to get this miserable devil a step in
+the right direction.”
+“Go on with what you were thinking,” said Elk.
+“I don’t know that I was thinking anything,” laughed Dick.
+“You were thinking that I must be suffering from sunstroke, or I
+shouldn’t take you out of your comfortable theatre to announce Balder’s
+promotion. Now will you get your coat, Captain Gordon, and come along
+with me? I want to break the news to Balder.”
+Mystified, but asking no further questions, Gordon went to the
+cloak-room, got his coat, and joined the detective in the vestibule.
+“We’re going to Slough—to the Seven Gables,” he added. “It’s a fine
+house. I haven’t seen it, but I know it’s a fine house, with a carriage
+drive and grand furniture, electric light, telephone and a modern
+bathroom. That’s deduction. I’ll tell you something else—also
+deduction. There are trip wires on the lawn, burglar alarms in the
+windows, about a hundred servants——”
+“What the devil are you talking about?” asked Dick, and Elk chuckled
+hysterically.
+They were running through Uxbridge when a long-bodied motor-car whizzed
+past them at full speed. It was crowded with men who were jammed into
+the seats or sat upon one another’s knees.
+“That’s a merry little party,” said Dick.
+“Very,” replied Elk laconically.
+A few seconds later, a second car flashed past, going much faster than
+they.
+“That looks to me like one of your police cars,” said Dick.
+This, too, was crowded.
+“It certainly looks like one of my police cars,” agreed Elk. “In America
+they’ve got a better stunt. As you probably know, they’ve a fine patrol
+wagon system. I’d like to introduce it into this country; it’s very
+handy.”
+As the car slowed to pass through the narrow, crooked street of
+Colnebrook, a third of the big machines squeezed past, and this time
+there was no mistaking its character. The man who sat with the driver,
+Dick knew as a detective inspector. He winked at Elk as he passed, and
+Elk winked back with great solemnity.
+“What is the idea?” asked Dick, his curiosity now thoroughly piqued.
+“We’re having a smoking concert,” said Elk, “to celebrate Balder’s
+promotion. And it will be one of the greatest successes that we’ve had
+in the history of the Force. There will be the brothers Mick and Mac,
+the trick cyclists, in their unrivalled act . . .” He babbled on
+foolishly.
+At Langley the fourth and fifth police cars came past. Dick had long
+since realized that the slow pace at which his own car was moving was
+designed to allow these laden machines to overtake them. Beyond Langley,
+the Windsor road turned abruptly to the left, and, leaning over the
+driver, Elk gave new instructions. There was no sign of the police cars:
+they had apparently gone on to Slough. A solitary country policeman
+stood at the cross-roads and watched them as they disappeared in the
+dusk with a certain languid interest.
+“We’ll stop here,” said Elk, and the car was pulled from the road on to
+the green sidewalk.
+Elk got down.
+“Walk a little up the road while I talk to Captain Gordon,” he said to
+the chauffeur, and then he talked, and Dick listened in amazement and
+unbelief.
+“Now,” said Elk, “we’ve got about five minutes’ walk, as far as I can
+remember. I haven’t been to Windsor races for so long that I’ve almost
+forgotten where the houses are.”
+They found the entrance to the Seven Gables between two stiff yew
+hedges. There was no gateway; a broad, gravelled path ran between a
+thick belt of pine trees, behind which the house was hidden. Elk went a
+little ahead. Presently he stopped and raised his hand warningly. Dick
+came a little nearer, and, looking over the shoulder of the detective,
+had his first view of Seven Gables.
+It was a large house, with timbered walls and high, twisted
+chimney-stacks.
+“Pseudo-Elizabethan,” said Dick admiringly.
+“1066,” murmured Elk, “or was it 1599? That’s _some_ house!”
+It was growing dusk, and lights were showing from a broad window at the
+farther end of the building. The arched doorway was facing them.
+“Let us go back,” whispered Elk, and they retraced their steps.
+It was not until darkness had fallen that he led the way up the carriage
+drive to the point they had reached on their earlier excursion. The
+light still showed in the window, but the cream-coloured blinds were
+drawn down.
+“It is safe up as far as the door,” whispered Elk; “but right and left
+of that, watch out!”
+He had pulled a pair of thick stockings over his shoes, and handed
+another pair to Dick; and then, with an electric torch in his hand, he
+began to move along the path which ran parallel with the building.
+Presently he stopped.
+“Step over,” he whispered.
+Dick, looking down, saw the black thread traversing the path, and very
+cautiously avoided the obstacle.
+A few more paces, and again Elk stopped and warned Dick to step high,
+turning to show his light upon the second of the threads, almost
+invisible even in the powerful glare of the electric lamp. He did not
+move from where he stood until he had made a careful examination of the
+path ahead; and it was well that he did so, for the third trip wire was
+less than two feet from the second.
+They were half-an-hour covering the twenty yards which separated them
+from the window. The night was warm, and one of the casements was open.
+Elk crept close under the window-sill, his sensitive fingers feeling for
+the alarm which he expected to find protecting the broad sill. This he
+discovered and avoided, and, raising his hand, he gently drew aside the
+window blind.
+He saw a large, oaken-panelled room, luxuriously furnished. The wide,
+open stone fireplace was banked with flowers, and before it, at a small
+table, sat two men. The first was Balder—unmistakably Balder, and
+strangely good-looking. Balder’s red nose was no longer red. He was in
+evening dress and between his teeth was a long amber cigarette-holder.
+Dick saw it all, his cheek against Elk’s head, heard the quick intake of
+the detective’s breath, and then noticed the second man. It was Mr.
+Maitland.
+Mr. Maitland sat, his face in his hands, and Balder was looking at him
+with a cynical smile.
+They were too far away to hear what the men were saying, but apparently
+Maitland was being made the object of reproof. He looked up after a
+while, and got on to his feet and began talking. They heard the rumble
+of his excited voice, but again no word was intelligible. Then they saw
+him raise his fist and shake it at the smiling man, who watched him with
+a calm, detached interest, as though he were some strange insect which
+had come into his ken. With this parting gesture of defiance, old
+Maitland shuffled from the room and the door closed behind him. In a few
+minutes he came out of the house, not through the doorway, as they
+expected, but apparently through a gateway on the other side of the
+hedge, for they saw the gleam of the headlights of his car as it passed.
+Left alone, Balder poured himself a drink and apparently rang for one of
+the servants. The man who came in arrested Dick’s attention instantly.
+He wore the conventional uniform of a footman, the dark trousers and the
+striped waistcoat, but it was easy to see, from the way he moved, that
+he was not an ordinary type of servant. A big man, powerfully built, his
+every action was slow and curiously deliberate. Balder said something to
+him, and the footman nodded, and, taking up the tray, went out with the
+same leisurely, almost pompous, step that had distinguished his entry.
+And then it flashed upon Dick, and he whispered into the detective’s ear
+one word.
+“Blind!”
+Elk nodded. Again the door opened, and this time three footmen came in,
+carrying a heavy-looking table with a canvas cover. At first Gordon
+thought that it was Balder’s meal that was being brought, but he was
+soon to discover the truth. Above the fireplace, hanging on a single
+wire, was a large electric lamp, which was not alight. Standing on a
+chair, one of the footmen took out the lamp and inserted a plug from the
+end of which ran a wire connecting with the table.
+“They’re all blind,” said Elk in a whisper. “And that is Balder’s own
+broadcasting apparatus, and the aerial is attached to the lamp.”
+The three servants went out, and, rising, Balder walked to the door and
+locked it.
+There were another set of windows in the room, looking out upon the side
+of the house, and one by one Balder closed and shuttered them. He was
+busy with the second of the three, when Elk put his foot upon a ledge of
+brick, and, tearing aside the curtain, leapt into the room.
+At the sound, Balder spun round.
+“Evening, Balder,” said Elk.
+The man made no reply. He stood, watching his sometime chief, with eyes
+that did not waver.
+“Thought I’d come along and tell you that you’ve got your promotion,”
+said Elk, “as Acting-Sergeant from the 1st of May, in recognition of the
+services you’ve rendered to the State by poisoning Frog Mills, loosing
+Frog Hagn, and blowing up my office with a bomb that you planted
+overnight.”
+Still the man did not speak, nor did he move; and here he was discreet,
+for the long-barrelled Browning in Elk’s hand covered the lower button
+of his white piqué waistcoat.
+“And now,” said Elk—there was a ring of triumph in his voice—“you’ll
+take a little walk with me—I want you, _Number Seven_!”
+“Haven’t you made a mistake?” drawled Balder, so unlike his usual voice
+that Elk was for a moment taken aback.
+“I never have made a mistake except about the date when Henry the Eighth
+married,” said Elk.
+“Who do you imagine I am?” asked this debonair man of the world.
+“I’ve ceased imagining anything about you, Balder—I know!”
+Elk walked with a quick movement toward him and thrust the muzzle of the
+pistol in his prisoner’s diaphragm.
+“Put up your hands and turn round,” he said.
+Balder obeyed. Slipping a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, Elk snapped
+them on to the wrists. Deftly the detective strapped the arms from
+behind, drawing them tight, so that the manacled hands had no play.
+“This is very uncomfortable,” said Balder. “Is it usual for you to make
+mistakes of this character, Mr. Elk? My name is Collett-Banson.”
+“Your name is Mud,” said Elk, “but I’m willing to listen to anything you
+like to say. I’d rather have your views on cyanide of potassium than
+anything. You can sit down.”
+Dick saw a gleam come to the man’s eye; it flashed for a second and was
+gone. Evidently Elk saw it too.
+“Don’t let your hopes rest upon any monkey tricks that might be played
+by your attendants,” he said, “because fifty C.I.D. men, most of whom
+are known personally to you, are disposed round this house.”
+Balder laughed.
+“If they were round the house and on top of the house, they wouldn’t
+worry me,” he said. “I tell you, inspector, you’ve made a very grave
+error, and one which will cost you dear. If a gentleman cannot sit in
+his own drawing-room”—he glanced at the table—“listening to a wireless
+concert at The Hague without interfering policemen—then it is about
+time the police force was disbanded.”
+He walked across to the fireplace carelessly and stood with his back to
+it; then, lifting his foot, he kicked back one of the steel fire-dogs
+which stood on either side of the wide hearth, and the “dog” fell over
+on its side. It was a nervous act of a man who was greatly worried and
+was not quite conscious of what he was doing. Even Elk, who was all
+suspicion, saw nothing to excite his apprehension.
+“You think my name is Balder, do you?” the man went on. “Well, all I can
+say is——”
+Suddenly he flung himself sideways on to the hearthrug, but Elk was
+quicker. As an oblong slip of the floor gave way beneath the man’s
+weight, Elk gripped him by the collar and together they dragged him back
+to the room.
+In a second the three were struggling on the floor together, and in his
+desperation Balder’s strength was unbelievable. His roaring cry for help
+was heard. There came a heavy blow on the door, the babble of angry
+voices without, and then, from the ground outside, a series of sharp
+explosions, as the army of detectives raced across the lawn, oblivious
+to the presence of the alarm-guns.
+The fight was short and sharp. The six blind men who comprised the
+household of No. 7 were hustled away, and in the last car travelled
+Acting-Sergeant Balder, that redoubtable No. 7, who was the right hand
+and the left hand of the terrible Frog.
+CHAPTER XXVII
+MR. BROAD IS INTERESTING
+DICK GORDON ended his interview with Mr. Ezra Maitland at three o’clock
+in the morning, and went to Headquarters, to find the charge-room at
+Cannon Row singularly empty. When he had left, it was impossible to get
+in or out for the crowd of detectives which filled or surrounded the
+place.
+“On the whole, Pentonville is safest, and I’ve got him there. I asked
+the Governor to put him in the condemned cell, but it is not etiquette.
+Anyway, Pentonville is the safest spot I know, and I think that, unless
+Frogs eat stones, he’ll stay. What has Maitland got to say, Captain?”
+“Maitland’s story, so far as one can get a story from him, is that he
+went to see Balder by invitation. ‘When you’re sent for by the police,
+what can you do?’ he asked, and the question is unanswerable.”
+“There is no doubt at all,” said Elk, “that Maitland knew Balder’s
+character, and it was not in his capacity as policeman that the old man
+visited him. There is less doubt that this man is hand in glove with the
+Frog, but it is going to be very difficult to prove.”
+“Maitland puzzles me,” said Dick. “He’s such a bully, and yet such a
+frightened old man. I thought he was going to drop through the floor
+when I told him who I was, and why I had come. And when I mentioned the
+fact that Balder had been arrested, he almost collapsed.”
+“That line has to be followed,” said Elk thoughtfully. “I have sent for
+Johnson. He ought to be here by now. Johnson must know something about
+the old man’s business, and he will be a very valuable witness if we can
+connect the two.”
+The philosopher arrived half-an-hour later, having been aroused from his
+sleep to learn that his presence was required at Headquarters.
+“Mr. Elk will tell you something which will be public property in a day
+or two,” said Gordon. “Balder has been arrested in connection with the
+explosion which occurred in Mr. Elk’s office.”
+It was necessary to explain to Johnson exactly who Balder was, and Dick
+went on to tell him of the old man’s visit to Slough. Johnson shook his
+head.
+“I didn’t know that Maitland had a friend of that name,” he said.
+“Balder? What other name had he?”
+“He called himself Collett-Banson,” said Dick, and a look of
+understanding came to the face of Johnson.
+“I know that name very well. Mr. Banson used frequently to call at the
+office, generally late in the evenings—Maitland spends three nights a
+week working after the clerks have gone, as I know to my cost,” he said.
+“A rather tall, good-looking fellow of about forty?”
+“Yes, that is the man.”
+“He has a house near Windsor. I have never been there, but I know
+because I have posted letters to him.”
+“What sort of business did Collett-Banson have with Maitland?”
+“I’ve never been able to discover. I always thought of him as a man who
+had property to sell, for that was the only type of outsider who was
+ever admitted to Maitland’s presence. I remember that he had the child
+staying with him for about a week——”
+“That is, the child in Maitland’s house?”
+Johnson nodded.
+“You don’t know what association there is between the child and these
+two men?”
+“No, sir, except that I am certain that Mr. Collett-Banson had the
+little boy with him, because I sent toys—mechanical engines or
+something of the sort—by Mr. Maitland’s directions. It was the day that
+Mr. Maitland made his will, about eighteen months ago. I remember the
+day particularly for a peculiar reason. I had expected Mr. Maitland to
+ask me to witness the will and was piqued, for no cause, because he
+brought two clerks up from the office to sign. These little things
+impress themselves upon one,” he added.
+“Was the will made in favour of the child?”
+Johnson shook his head.
+“I haven’t the slightest knowledge of how the property goes,” he said.
+“He never discussed the matter with me; he wouldn’t even employ a
+lawyer. In fact, I don’t remember his ever employing a lawyer all the
+time I was with him, except for conveyancing work. He told me he had
+copied the form of will from a book, but beyond feeling hurt that I, an
+old and faithful servant of his, hadn’t been taken a little into his
+confidence, I wasn’t greatly interested in the matter. But I do remember
+that that morning I went down to a store and bought a whole lot of toys,
+had them packed and brought them back to the office. The old man played
+with them all the afternoon!”
+Early in the morning Dick Gordon interviewed the prisoners at
+Pentonville, and found them in a very obstinate mood.
+“I know nothing about babies or children; and if Johnson says he sent
+toys, he is lying,” said Balder defiantly. “I refuse to make any
+statement about Maitland or my association with Maitland. I am the
+victim of police persecution, and I defy you to bring any proof that I
+have committed a single act in my life—unless it is a crime to live
+like a gentleman—for which you can imprison me.”
+“Have you any message for your wife and children?” asked Dick
+sarcastically, and the sullen features of the man relaxed for a second.
+“No, Elk will look after them,” he said humorously.
+The most stringent precautions had been taken to prevent a rescue, and
+the greatest care was exercised that no communication passed between No.
+7 and the outside world. He was charged at Bow Street an hour before the
+court usually sat. Evidence of arrest was taken, and he was remanded,
+being removed to Pentonville in a motor-van under armed guard.
+On the third night of his imprisonment, romance came into the life of
+the second chief warder of Pentonville Prison. He was comparatively
+young and single, not without good looks, and lived, with his widowed
+mother, at Shepherd’s Bush. It was his practice to return home after his
+day’s duty by omnibus, and he was alighting on this day when a lady, who
+had got off before him, stumbled and fell. Instantly he was by her side,
+and had lifted her to her feet. She was young and astonishingly pretty
+and he helped her gain the pavement.
+“It was nothing,” she said smilingly, but with a grimace of pain. “It
+was very foolish of me to come by ’bus; I was visiting an old servant of
+mine who is ill. Will you call me a taxi, please?”
+“Certainly, madam,” said the gallant chief warder.
+The taxi which was passing was beckoned to the kerb. The girl looked
+round helplessly.
+“I wish I could see somebody I know. I don’t want to go home alone; I’m
+so afraid of fainting.”
+“If you would not object to my escort,” said the man, with all the
+warm-hearted earnestness which the sight of a woman in distress awakens
+in the bosom of impressionable man, “I will see you home.”
+She shot a glance at him which was full of gratitude and accepted his
+escort, murmuring her regret for the trouble she was giving him.
+It was a beautiful apartment she occupied. The chief warder thought he
+had never met so gracious and beautiful a lady before, so appropriately
+housed, and he was right. He would have attended to her injury, but she
+felt so much better, and her maid was coming in soon, and would he have
+a whisky-and-soda, and would he please smoke? She indicated where the
+cigarettes were to be found, and for an hour the chief warder spoke
+about himself, and had an enjoyable evening.
+“I’m very much obliged to you, Mr. Bron,” she said at parting. “I feel
+I’ve wasted your evening.”
+“I can assure you,” said Mr. Bron earnestly, “that if this is a waste of
+time, then time has no use!”
+She laughed.
+“That is a pretty speech,” she said, “and I will let you call to-morrow
+and see me.”
+He took a careful note of the address; it was an exclusive maisonette in
+Bloomsbury Square; and the next evening found him ringing the bell, but
+this time he was not in uniform.
+He left at ten o’clock, an ecstatic man who held his head high and
+dreamt golden dreams, for the fragrance of her charm (as he wrote her)
+“permeated his very being.” Ten minutes after he had gone, the girl came
+out, closed the door behind her and went out into the street, and the
+idler who had been promenading the pavement threw away his cigar.
+“Good evening. Miss Bassano,” he said.
+She drew herself up.
+“I am afraid you have made a mistake,” she said stiffly.
+“Not at all. You’re Miss Bassano, and my only excuse for addressing you
+is that I am a neighbour of yours.”
+She looked more closely at him.
+“Oh, Mr. Broad!” she said in a more gracious tone. “I’ve been visiting a
+friend of mine who is rather ill.”
+“So I’m told, and a nice flat your friend occupies,” he said as he fell
+in by her side. “I was thinking of hiring it a few days ago. These
+furnished apartments are difficult to find. Maybe it was a week
+ago—yes, it was a week ago,” he said carefully; “it was the day before
+you had your lamentable accident in Shepherd’s Bush.”
+“I don’t quite understand you,” she said, on her guard at once.
+“The truth is,” said Mr. Broad apologetically, “that I’ve been trying to
+get at Bron too. I’ve been making a very careful study of the prison
+staff for the past two months, and I’ve a list of the easy boys that has
+cost me a lot of money to compile. I suppose you didn’t reach the stage
+where you persuaded him to talk about his interesting prisoner? I tried
+him last week,” he went on reminiscently. “He goes to a dance club at
+Hammersmith, and I got acquainted with him through a girl he’s keen
+about—you’re not the only young love of his life, by the way.”
+She laughed softly.
+“What a clever man you are, Mr. Broad!” she said. “No, I’m not very
+interested in prisoners. By the way, who is this person you were
+referring to?”
+“I was referring to Number Seven, who is in Pentonville Gaol,” said Mr.
+Broad coolly, “and I’ve got an idea he is a friend of yours.”
+“Number Seven?” Her perplexity would have convinced a less hardened man
+than Joshua Broad. “I have an idea that that is something to do with the
+Frogs.”
+“That is something to do with the Frogs,” agreed the other gravely,
+“about whom I daresay you have read. Miss Bassano, I’ll make you an
+offer.”
+“Offer me a taxi, for I’m tired of walking,” she said, and when they
+were seated side by side she asked: “What is your offer?”
+“I offer you all that you require to get out of this country and to keep
+you out for a few years, until this old Frog busts—as he will bust!
+I’ve been watching you for a long time, and, if you won’t consider it an
+impertinence, I like you. There’s something about you that is very
+attractive—don’t stop me, because I’m not going to get fresh with you,
+or suggest that you’re the only girl that ever made tobacco taste like
+molasses—I like you in a kind of pitying way, and you needn’t get
+offended at that either. And I don’t want to see you hurt.”
+He was very serious; she recognized his sincerity, and the word of
+sarcasm that rose to her lips remained unuttered.
+“Are you wholly disinterested?” she asked.
+“So far as you are concerned, I am,” he replied. “There is going to be
+an almighty smash, and it is more than likely that you’ll get in the way
+of some of the flying pieces.”
+She did not answer him at once. What he had said merely intensified her
+own uneasiness.
+“I suppose you know I’m married?”
+“I guessed that,” he answered. “Take your husband with you. What are you
+going to do with that boy?”
+“You mean Ray Bennett?”
+It was curious that she made no attempt to disguise either her position
+or the part that she was playing. She wondered at herself after she was
+home. But Joshua Broad had a compelling way, and she never dreamt of
+deceiving him.
+“I don’t know,” she said. “I wish he wasn’t in it. He is on my
+conscience. Are you smiling?”
+“At your having a conscience? No, I fancied that was how you stood. And
+the growing beard?”
+She did not laugh.
+“I don’t know about that. All I know is that we’ve had—why am I telling
+you this? Who are you, Mr. Broad?”
+He chuckled.
+“Some day I’ll tell you,” he said; “and I promise you that, if you’re
+handy, you shall be the first to know. Go easy with that boy, Lola.”
+She did not resent the employment of her first name, but rather it
+warmed her towards this mystery man.
+“And write to Mr. Bron, Assistant Chief Warder of Pentonville Gaol, and
+tell him that you’ve been called out of town and won’t be able to see
+him again for ten years.”
+To this she made no rejoinder. He left her at the door of her flat and
+took her little hand in his.
+“If you want money to get away, I’ll send you a blank cheque,” he said.
+“There is no one else on the face of the earth that I’d give a blank
+cheque to, believe me.”
+She nodded, most unusual tears in her eyes. Lola was breaking under the
+strain, and nobody knew it better than the hawk-faced man who watched
+her as she passed into her flat.
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+MURDER
+THE stone which woke Ella Bennett was aimed with such force that the
+pane cracked. She slipped quickly from bed and pulled aside the
+curtains. There had been a thunderstorm in the night, and the skies were
+so grey and heavy, and the light so bad, that she could only distinguish
+the shape of the man that stood under her window. John Bennett heard her
+go from her room and came to his door.
+“Is it Maitland?” he asked.
+“I think so,” she said.
+He frowned.
+“I can’t understand these visits,” he said. “Do you think he’s mad?”
+She shook her head. After the precipitate flight of the old man on his
+last visit, she had not expected that he would come again, and guessed
+that only some matter of the greatest urgency would bring him. She heard
+her father moving about his room as she went through the darkened
+dining-room into the passage which opened directly on to the garden.
+“Is that you, miss?” quavered a voice in the darkness.
+“Yes, Mr. Maitland.”
+“Is _he_ up?” he asked in an awe-stricken whisper.
+“You mean my father? Yes, he’s awake.”
+“I’ve got to see you,” the old man almost wailed. “They’ve took him.”
+“Taken whom?” she asked with a catch in her voice.
+“That fellow Balder. I knew they would.”
+She remembered having heard Elk mention Balder.
+“The policeman?” she asked. “Mr. Elk’s man?”
+But he was off on another tack.
+“It’s you he’s after.” He came nearer to her and clutched her arm. “I
+warned you—don’t forget I warned you. Tell him that I warned you. He’ll
+make it good for me, won’t he?” he almost pleaded, and she began to
+understand dimly that the “he” to whom the old man was referring was
+Dick Gordon. “He’s been with me most of the night, prying and asking
+questions. I’ve had a terrible night, miss, terrible,” he almost sobbed.
+“First Balder and then him. He’ll get you—not that police gentleman I
+don’t mean, but Frog. That’s why I wrote you the letter, telling you to
+come up. You didn’t get no letter, did you, miss?”
+She could not make head or tail of what he was saying or to whom he was
+referring, as he went on babbling his story of fear, a story
+interspersed with wild imprecations against “him.”
+“Tell your father, dearie, what I said to you.” He became suddenly
+calmer. “Matilda said I ought to have told your father, but I’m afraid
+of him, my dear, I’m afraid of him!”
+He took one of her hands in his and fondled it.
+“You’ll speak a word for me, won’t you?” She knew he was weeping, though
+she could not see his face.
+“Of course I’ll speak a word for you, Mr. Maitland. Oughtn’t you to see
+a doctor?” she asked anxiously.
+“No, no, no doctors for me. But tell him, won’t you—not your father, I
+mean, the other feller—that I did all I could for you. That’s what I’ve
+come to see you about. They’ve got Balder——” He stopped short suddenly
+and craned his head forward. “Is that your father?” he asked in a husky
+whisper.
+She had heard the footsteps of John Bennett on the stairs.
+“Yes, I think it is, Mr. Maitland,” and at her words he pulled his hand
+from hers with a jerk and went shuffling down the pathway into the road
+and out of sight.
+“What did he want?”
+“I really don’t know, father,” she said. “I don’t think he can be very
+well.”
+“Do you mean mad?”
+“Yes, and yet he was quite sensible for a little time. He said they’ve
+got Balder.”
+He did not reply to her, and she thought he had not heard her.
+“They’ve taken Balder, Mr. Elk’s assistant. I suppose that means he has
+been arrested?”
+“I suppose so,” said John Bennett, and then: “My dear, you ought to be
+in bed. Which way did he go?”
+“He went toward Shoreham,” said the girl. “Are you going after him,
+father?” she asked in surprise.
+“I’ll walk up the road. I’d like to see him,” said John Bennett. “You go
+to bed, my dear.”
+But she stood waiting by the door, long after his footsteps had ceased
+to sound on the road. Five minutes, ten minutes passed, a quarter of an
+hour, and then she heard the whine of a car and the big limousine flew
+past the gate, spattering mud, and then came John Bennett.
+“Aren’t you in bed?” he asked almost roughly.
+“No, father, I don’t feel sleepy. It is late now, so I think I’ll do
+some work. Did you see him?”
+“Who, the old man? Yes, I saw him for a minute or two.”
+“Did you speak to him?”
+“Yes, I spoke to him.” The man did not seem inclined to pursue the
+subject, but this time Ella persisted.
+“Father, why is he frightened of you?”
+“Will you make me some coffee?” said Bennett.
+“Why is he frightened of you?”
+“How do I know? My dear, don’t ask so many questions. You worry me. He
+knows me, he’s seen me—that is all. Balder is held for murder. I think
+he is a very bad man.”
+Later in the day she revived the subject of Maitland’s visit.
+“I wish he would not come,” she said. “He frightens me.”
+“He will not come again,” said John Bennett prophetically.
+*    *    *    *    *    *
+The house in Berkeley Square which had passed into the possession of
+Ezra Maitland had been built by a nobleman to whom money had no
+significance. Loosely described as one of the show places of the
+Metropolis, very few outsiders had ever marvelled at the beauty of its
+interior. It was a palace, though none could guess as much from viewing
+its conventional exterior. In the gorgeous saloon, with its lapis-lazuli
+columns, its fireplaces of onyx and silver, its delicately panelled
+walls and silken hangings, Mr. Ezra Maitland sat huddled in a large
+Louis Quinze chair, a glass of beer before him, a blackened clay pipe
+between his gums. The muddy marks of his feet showed on the priceless
+Persian carpet; his hat half eclipsed a golden Venus of Marrionnet,
+which stood on a pedestal by his side. His hands clasped across his
+stomach, he glared from under his white eyebrows at the floor. One
+shaded lamp relieved the gloom, for the silken curtains were drawn and
+the light of day did not enter.
+Presently, with an effort, he reached out, took the mug of beer, which
+had gone flat, and drained its contents. This done and the mug replaced,
+he sank back into his former condition of torpor. There was a gentle
+knock at the door and a footman came in, a man of powder and calves.
+“Three gentlemen to see you, sir. Captain Gordon, Mr. Elk, and Mr.
+Johnson.”
+The old man suddenly sat up.
+“Johnson?” he said. “What does he want?”
+“They are in the little drawing-room, sir.”
+“Push them in,” growled the old man.
+He seemed indifferent to the presence of the two police officers, and it
+was Johnson he addressed.
+“What do you want?” he asked violently. “What do you mean by coming
+here?”
+“It was my suggestion that Mr. Johnson should come,” said Dick.
+“Oh, your suggestion, was it?” said the old man, and his attitude was
+strangely insolent compared with his dejection of the early morning.
+Elk’s eyes fell upon the empty beer-mug, and he wondered how often that
+had been filled since Ezra Maitland had returned to the house. He
+guessed it had been employed fairly often, for there was a truculence in
+the ancient man’s tone, a defiance in his eye, which suggested something
+more than spiritual exaltation.
+“I’m not going to answer any questions,” he said loudly. “I’m not going
+to tell any truth, and I’m not going to tell any lies.”
+“Mr. Maitland,” said Johnson hesitatingly, “these gentlemen are anxious
+to know about the child.”
+The old man closed his eyes.
+“I’m not going to tell no truth and I’m not going to tell no lies,” he
+repeated monotonously.
+“Now, Mr. Maitland,” said the good-humoured Elk, “forget your good
+resolution and tell us just why you lived in that slum of Eldor Street.”
+“No truth and no lies,” murmured the old man. “You can lock me up but I
+won’t tell you anything. Lock me up. My name’s Ezra Maitland; I am a
+millionaire. I’ve got millions and millions and millions! I could buy
+you up and I could buy up mostly anybody! Old Ezra Maitland! I’ve been
+in the workhouse and I’ve been in quod.”
+Dick and his companion exchanged glances, and Elk shook his head to
+signify the futility of further questioning the old man. Nevertheless,
+Dick tried again.
+“Why did you go to Horsham this morning?” he asked, and could have
+bitten his tongue when he realized his blunder.
+Instantly the old man was wide awake.
+“I never went to Horsham,” he roared. “Don’t know what you’re talking
+about. I’m not going to tell you anything. Throw ’em out, Johnson.”
+When they were in the street again, Elk asked a question.
+“No, I’ve never known him to drink before,” said Johnson. “He has always
+been very abstemious so long as I’ve known him. I never thought I could
+persuade him to talk.”
+“Nor did I,” said Dick Gordon—a statement which more than a little
+surprised the detective.
+Dick signalled to the other to get rid of Johnson, and when that
+philosophical gentleman had been thanked and sent away, Dick Gordon
+spoke urgently.
+“We must have two men in this house at once. What excuse can we offer
+for planting detectives on Maitland?”
+Elk pursed his lips.
+“I don’t know,” he confessed. “We shall have to get a warrant before we
+arrest him; we could easily get another warrant to search the house; but
+beyond that I fear we can’t go, unless he asks for protection.”
+“Then put him under arrest,” said Dick promptly.
+“What is the charge?”
+“Hold him on suspicion of being associated with the Frogs, and if
+necessary move him to the nearest police-station. But it has to be done
+at once.”
+Elk was perturbed.
+“It isn’t a small matter to arrest a millionaire, you know, Captain
+Gordon. I daresay in America it is simple, and I am told you could pinch
+the President if you found him with a flask in his pocket. But here it
+is a little different.”
+How very different it was, Dick discovered when he made application in
+private for the necessary warrants. At four o’clock they were delivered
+to him by the clerk of a reluctant magistrate, and, accompanied by
+police officers, he went back to Maitland’s palatial home.
+The footman who admitted them said that Mr. Maitland was lying down and
+that he did not care to disturb him. In proof, he sent for a second
+footman, who confirmed the statement.
+“Which is his room?” said Dick Gordon. “I am a police officer and I want
+to see him.”
+“On the second floor, sir.”
+He showed them to an electric lift, which carried the five to the second
+floor. Opposite the lift grille was a large double door, heavily
+burnished and elaborately gilded.
+“Looks more like the entrance to a theatre,” said Elk in an undertone.
+Dick knocked. There was no answer. He knocked louder. Still there was no
+answer. And then, to Elk’s surprise, the young man launched himself at
+the door with all his strength. There was a sound of splitting wood and
+the door parted. Dick stood in the entrance, rooted to the ground.
+Ezra Maitland lay half on the bed, his legs dragging over the side. At
+his feet was the prostrate figure of the old woman whom he called
+Matilda. They were both dead, and the pungent fumes of cordite still
+hung in a blue cloud beneath the ceiling.
+CHAPTER XXIX
+THE FOOTMAN
+DICK ran to the bedside, and one glance at the still figures told him
+all he wanted to know.
+“Both shot,” he said, and looked up at the filmy cloud under the
+ceiling. “May have happened any time—a quarter of an hour ago. This
+stuff hangs about for hours.”
+“Hold every servant in the house,” said Elk in an undertone to the men
+who were with him.
+A doorway led to a smaller bedroom, which was evidently that occupied by
+Maitland’s sister.
+“The shot was fired from this entrance,” said Dick. “Probably a silencer
+was used, but we shall hear about that later.”
+He searched the floor and found two spent cartridges of a heavy calibre
+automatic.
+“They killed the woman, of course,” he said, speaking his thoughts
+aloud. “I was afraid of this. If I could only have got our men in!”
+“You expected him to be murdered?” said Elk in astonishment.
+Dick nodded. He was trying the window of the woman’s room. It was
+unfastened, and led on to a narrow parapet, protected by a low
+balustrade. From there, access could be had into another room on the
+same floor, and no attempt had been made by the murderer to conceal the
+fact that this was the way he had passed. The window was wide open, and
+there were wet footmarks on the floor. It was a guest room, slightly
+overcrowded with surplus furniture, which had been put there apparently
+by the housekeeper instead of in a lumber-room.
+The door opened again into the corridor, and faced a narrow flight of
+stairs leading to the servants’ quarters above. Elk went down on his
+knees and examined the tread of the carpet carefully.
+“Up here, I think,” he said, and ran ahead of his chief.
+The third floor consisted entirely of servants’ rooms, and it was some
+time before Elk could pick up the footprints which led directly to No.
+his foot and kicked open the door. He found himself in a servant’s
+bedroom, which was empty. An attic window opened on to the sloping roof
+of another parapet, and without a second’s hesitation Dick went out,
+following the course of that very precarious alleyway. Farther along,
+iron rails protected the walker, and this was evidently one of the ways
+of escape in case of fire. He followed the “path” across three roofs
+until he came to a short flight of iron stairs, which reached down to
+the flat roof of another house, and a guard fire-escape. Guarded it had
+been, but now the iron gate which barred progress was open, and Dick ran
+down the narrow stairs into a concrete yard surrounded on three sides by
+high walls and on the fourth by the back of a house, which was
+apparently unoccupied, for the blinds were all drawn.
+There was a gate in the third wall, and it was ajar. Passing through, he
+was in a mews. A man was washing a motor-car a dozen paces from where he
+stood, and they hurried toward him.
+“Yes, sir,” said the cleaner, wiping his streaming forehead with the
+back of his hand, “I saw a man come out of there about five minutes ago.
+He was a servant—a footman or something—I didn’t recognize him, but he
+seemed in a hurry.”
+“Did he wear a hat?”
+The man considered.
+“Yes, sir, I think he did,” he said. “He went out that way,” and he
+pointed.
+The two men hurried along, turned into Berkeley Street, and as they did
+so, the car-washer turned to the closed doors of his garage and whistled
+softly. The door opened slowly and Mr. Joshua Broad came out.
+“Thank you,” he said, and a piece of crisp and crackling paper went into
+the washer’s hand.
+He was out of sight before Dick and the detective came back from their
+vain quest.
+No doubt existed in Dick’s mind as to who the murderer was. One of the
+footmen was missing. The remaining servants were respectable individuals
+of unimpeachable character. The seventh had come at the same time as Mr.
+Maitland; and although he wore a footman’s livery, he had apparently no
+previous experience of the duties which he was expected to perform. He
+was an ill-favoured man, who spoke very little, and “kept himself to
+himself,” as they described it; took part in none of their pleasures or
+gossip; was never in the servants’ hall a second longer than was
+necessary.
+“Obviously a Frog,” said Elk, and was overjoyed to learn that there was
+a photograph of the man in existence.
+The photograph had its origin in an elaborate and somewhat pointless
+joke which had been played on the cook by the youngest of the footmen.
+The joke consisted of finding in the cook’s workbasket a photograph of
+the ugly footman, and for this purpose the young servant had taken a
+snap of the man.
+“Do you know him?” asked Dick, looking at the picture.
+Elk nodded.
+“He has been through my hands, and I don’t think I shall have any
+difficulty in placing him, although for the moment his name escapes me.”
+A search of the records, however, revealed the identity of the missing
+man, and by the evening an enlargement of the photograph, and his name,
+aliases and general characteristics, were locked into the form of every
+newspaper in the metropolis.
+One of the servants had heard the shot, but thought it was the door
+being slammed—a pardonable mistake, because Mr. Maitland was in the
+habit of banging doors.
+“Maitland was a Frog all right,” reported Elk after he had seen the body
+removed to the mortuary. “He’s well decorated on the left wrist—yes,
+slightly askew. That is one of the points that you’ve never cleared up
+to me, Captain Gordon. Why they should be tattooed on the left wrist I
+can understand, but why the frog shouldn’t be stamped square I’ve never
+understood.”
+“That is one of the little mysteries that can’t be cleared up until we
+are through with the big ones,” said Dick.
+A telegram had been received that afternoon by the missing footman. This
+fact was not remembered until after Elk had returned to headquarters. A
+’phone message through to the district post-office brought a copy of the
+message. It was very simple.
+“Finish and clear,” were the three words. The message was unsigned. It
+had been handed in at the Temple Post Office at two o’clock, and the
+murderer had lost no time in carrying out his instructions.
+Maitland’s office was in the hands of the police, and a systematic
+search had already begun of its documents and books. At seven o’clock
+that night Elk went to Fitzroy Square, and Johnson opened the door to
+him. Looking past him, Elk saw that the passage was filled with
+furniture and packing cases, and remembered that early in the morning
+Johnson had mentioned that he was moving, and had taken two cheaper
+rooms in South London.
+“You’ve packed?”
+Johnson nodded.
+“I hate leaving this place,” he said, “but it’s much too expensive. It
+seems as though I shall never get another job, and I’d better face that
+fact sensibly. If I live at Balham, I can live comfortably. I’ve very
+few expensive tastes.”
+“If you have, you can indulge them,” said Elk. “We found the old man’s
+will. He has left you everything!”
+Johnson’s jaw dropped, his eyes opened wide.
+“Are you joking?” he said.
+“I was never more serious in my life. The old man has left you every
+penny he had. Here is a copy of the will: I thought you’d like to see
+it.”
+He opened his pocket-case, producing a sheet of foolscap, and Johnson
+read:
+“I, Ezra Maitland, of 193, Eldor Road, in the County of
+Middlesex, declare this to be my last will and testament, and I
+formally revoke all other wills and codicils to such wills. I
+bequeath all my property, movable or immovable, all lands,
+houses, deeds, shares in stock companies whatsoever, and all
+jewellery, reversions, carriages, motor-cars, and all other
+possessions absolutely, to Philip Johnson, of 471, Fitzroy
+Square, in the County of London, clerk. I declare him to be the
+only honest man I have ever met with in my long and sorrowful
+life, and I direct him to devote himself with unremitting care
+to the destruction of that society or organization which is
+known as the Frogs, and which for four and twenty years has
+extracted large sums of blackmail from me.”
+It was signed in a clerkly hand familiar to Johnson, and was witnessed
+by two men whose names he knew.
+He sat down and did not attempt to speak for a long time.
+“I read of the murder in the evening paper,” he said after a while. “In
+fact, I’ve been up to the house, but the policemen referred me to you,
+and I knew you were too busy to be bothered. How was he killed?”
+“Shot,” said Elk.
+“Have they caught the man?”
+“We shall have him by the morning,” said Elk with confidence. “Now that
+we’ve taken Balder, there’ll be nobody to warn the men we want.”
+“It is very dreadful,” said Johnson after a while. “But this”—he looked
+at the paper—“this has quite knocked me out. I don’t know what to say.
+Where was it found?”
+“In one of his deed boxes.”
+“I wish he hadn’t,” said Johnson with emphasis. “I mean, left me his
+money. I hate responsibility. I’m temperamentally unfitted to run a big
+business . . . I wish he hadn’t!”
+“How did he take it?” asked Dick when Elk had returned.
+“He’s absolutely hazed. Poor devil, I felt sorry for him, and I never
+thought I should feel sorry for any man who came into money. He was just
+getting ready to move into a cheaper house when I arrived. I suppose he
+won’t go to the Prince of Caux’s mansion. The change in Johnson’s
+prospects might make a difference to Ray Bennett: does that strike you,
+Captain Gordon?”
+“I thought of that possibility,” said Dick shortly.
+He had an interview in the afternoon with the Director of Public
+Prosecutions in regard to Balder. And that learned gentleman echoed his
+own fears.
+“I can’t see how we’re going to get a verdict of murder against this
+man, although it is as plain as daylight that he poisoned Mills and was
+responsible for the bomb outrage. But you can’t hang a man on suspicion,
+even though the suspicion is not open to doubt. How did he kill Mills,
+do you think?”
+“Mills had a cold,” said Dick. “He had been coughing all the way up in
+the car, and had asked Balder to close the window of the room. Balder
+obviously closed, or nearly closed the window, and probably slipped a
+cyanide tablet to the man, telling him it was good for his cold. It was
+a fairly natural thing for Mills to take and swallow the tablet, and
+that, I am sure, is what happened. We made a search of Balder’s house at
+Slough, and found a duplicate set of keys, including one to Elk’s safe.
+Balder got there early in the morning and planted the bomb, knowing that
+Elk and I would be opening the bags that morning.”
+“And helped Hagn to escape,” said the Public Prosecutor.
+“That was much more simple,” explained Dick. “I gather that the
+inspector who was seen walking out at half-past-two was Hagn. When
+Balder went into the cell to keep the man company, he must have been
+dressed underneath in the police uniform, and have carried the necessary
+handcuffs and pass-keys with him. He was not searched—a fact for which
+I am as much responsible as Elk. The chief danger we had to fear from
+Balder came from his closeness to us, and his ability to communicate
+immediately to his chief every movement which we made. His name is
+Kramer, and he is by birth a Lithuanian. He was expelled from Germany at
+the age of eighteen for his revolutionary activities, and came to this
+country two years later, where he joined the police. At what time he
+came into contact with the Frogs I do not know, but it is fairly clear,
+from evidence we have obtained, that the man has been engaged in various
+illegal operations for many years past. I’m afraid you are right about
+Balder: it will be immensely difficult to get a conviction until we have
+caught Frog himself.”
+“And will you catch the Frog, do you think?”
+Dick Gordon smiled cryptically.
+No fresh news had come about the murder of Maitland and his sister, and
+he seized the opportunity which the lull gave to him. Ella Bennett was
+in the vegetable garden, engaged in the prosaic task of digging potatoes
+when he appeared, and she came running toward him, stripping her leather
+gloves.
+“This is a splendid surprise,” she said, and flushed at the
+consciousness of her own enthusiasm. “Poor man, you must be having a
+terrible time! I saw the newspaper this morning. Isn’t it dreadful about
+poor Mr. Maitland? He was here yesterday morning.”
+He nodded.
+“Is it true that Mr. Johnson has been left the whole of Maitland’s
+money? Isn’t that splendid!”
+“Do you like Johnson?” he asked.
+“Yes, he’s a nice man,” she nodded. “I don’t know a great deal about
+him; indeed, I’ve only met him once or twice, but he was very kind to
+Ray, and saved him from getting into trouble. I am wondering whether,
+now that he is rich, he will induce Ray to go back to Maitlands.”
+“I wonder if he will induce you——” He stopped.
+“Induce me to what?” she asked in astonishment.
+“Johnson is rather fond of you—he’s never made any disguise of the
+fact, and he’s a very rich man. Not that I think that would make any
+difference to you,” he added hastily. “I’m not a very rich man, but I’m
+comfortably off.”
+The fingers in his hand stole round his, and pressed them tightly, and
+then suddenly they relaxed.
+“I don’t know,” she said, and drew herself free.
+“Father said——” She hesitated. “I don’t think father would like it. He
+thinks there is such a difference between our social positions.”
+“Rats!” said Dick inelegantly.
+“And there’s something else.” She found it an effort to tell him what
+that something was. “I don’t know what father does for a living, but it
+is . . . work that he never wishes to speak about; something that he
+looks upon as disgraceful.”
+The last words were spoken so low that he hardly caught them.
+“Suppose I know the worst about your father?” he asked quietly, and she
+stood back, looking at him from under knit brows.
+“Do you mean that? What is it, Dick?”
+He shook his head.
+“I may know or I may not. It is only a wild guess. And you’re not to
+tell him that I know, or that I’m in any way suspicious. Will you please
+do that for me?”
+“And knowing this, would it make any difference to you?”
+“None.”
+She had plucked a flower, and was pulling it petal from petal in her
+abstraction.
+“Is it very dreadful?” she asked. “Has he committed a crime? No, no,
+don’t tell me.”
+Once more he was near her, his arm about her trembling shoulders, his
+hand beneath her chin.
+“My dear!” murmured the youthful Public Prosecutor, and forgot there was
+such a thing as murder in the world.
+John Bennett was glad to see him, eager to tell the news of his triumph.
+He had a drawer full of press cuttings, headed “Wonderful Nature
+Studies. Remarkable Pictures by an Amateur,” and others equally
+flattering. And there had come to him a cheque which had left him
+gasping.
+“This means—you don’t know what it means to me, Mr. Gordon,” he said,
+“or Captain Gordon—I always forget you’ve got a military title. When
+that boy of mine recovers his senses and returns home, he’s going to
+have just the good time he wants. He’s at the age when most boys are
+fools—what I call the showing-off age. Sometimes it runs to pimples and
+introspection, sometimes to the kind of life that a man doesn’t like to
+look back on. Ray has probably taken the less vicious course.”
+It was a relief to hear the man speak so. Dick always thought of Ray
+Bennett as one who had committed the unforgiveable sin.
+“This time next year I’m going to be an artist of leisure,” said John
+Bennett, who looked ten years younger.
+Dick offered to drive him to town, but this he would not hear of. He had
+to make a call at Dorking. Apparently he had letters addressed to him in
+that town (Dick learnt of this from the girl) concerning his mysterious
+errands. Dick left Horsham with a heart lighter than he had brought to
+that little country town, and was in the mood to rally Inspector Elk for
+the profound gloom which had settled on him since he had discovered that
+there was not sufficient evidence to try Balder for his life.
+CHAPTER XXX
+THE TRAMPS
+LEW BRADY sat disconsolately in Lola Bassano’s pretty drawing-room, and
+a more incongruous figure in that delicate setting it was impossible to
+imagine. A week’s growth of beard had transfigured him into the most
+unsavoury looking ruffian, and the soiled old clothes he wore, the
+broken and discoloured boots, the grimy shirt, no less than his own
+personal uncleanliness of appearance made him a revolting object.
+So Lola thought, eyeing him anxiously, a foreboding of trouble in her
+heart.
+“I’m finished with the Frog,” growled Brady. “He pays—of course he
+pays! But how long is it going on, Lola? You brought me into this!” He
+glowered at her.
+“I brought you in, when you wanted to be brought into something,” she
+said calmly. “You can’t live on my savings all your life, Lew, and it
+was nearly time you made a little on the side.”
+He played with a silver seal, twiddling it between his fingers, his eyes
+gloomily downcast.
+“Balder’s caught, and the old man’s dead,” he said. “They’re the big
+people. What chance have I got?”
+“What were your instructions, Lew?” she asked for the twentieth time
+that day.
+He shook his head.
+“I’m taking no risks, Lola. I don’t trust anybody, not even you.”
+He took a small bottle from his pocket and examined it.
+“What is that?” she asked curiously.
+“Dope of some kind.”
+“Is that part of the instructions too?”
+He nodded.
+“Are you going in your own name?”
+“No, I’m not,” he snapped. “Don’t ask questions. I’m not going to tell
+you anything, see? This trip’s going to last a fortnight, and when it’s
+finished, I’m finished with Frog.”
+“The boy—is he going with you?”
+“How do I know? I’m to meet somebody somewhere, and that’s all about
+it.” He looked at the clock and rose with a grunt. “It’s the last time I
+shall sit in a decent parlour for a fortnight.” He gave a curt nod and
+walked to the door.
+There was a servants’ entrance, a gallery which was reached through the
+kitchen, and he passed down the stairs unobserved, into the night.
+It was dark by the time he reached Barnet; his feet were aching; he was
+hot and wretched. He had suffered the indignity of being chased off the
+pavement by a policeman he could have licked with one hand, and he
+cursed the Frog with every step he took. There was still a long walk
+ahead of him once he was clear of Barnet; and it was not until a village
+clock was striking the hour of eleven that he ambled up to a figure that
+was sitting on the side of the road, just visible in the pale moonlight,
+but only recognizable when he spoke.
+“Is that you?” said a voice.
+“Yes, it’s me. You’re Carter, aren’t you?”
+“Good Lord!” gasped Ray as he recognized the voice. “It’s Lew Brady!”
+“It’s nothing of the kind!” snarled the other man. “My name���s Phenan.
+Yours is Carter. Sit down for a bit. I’m dead beat.”
+“What is the idea?” asked the youth as they sat side by side.
+“How the devil do I know?” said the other savagely as, with a tender
+movement, he slipped off his boots and rubbed his bruised feet.
+“I had no idea it was you,” said Ray.
+“I knew it was you, all right,” said the other. “And why I should be
+called upon to take a mug around this country, God knows!”
+After a while he was rested sufficiently to continue the tramp.
+“There’s a barn belonging to a shopkeeper in the next village. He’ll let
+us sleep there for a few pence.”
+“Why not try to get a room?”
+“Don’t be a fool,” snapped Lew. “Who’s going to take in a couple of
+tramps, do you think? We know we’re clean, but they don’t. No, we’ve got
+to go the way the tramps go.”
+“Where? To Nottingham?”
+“I don’t know. If they told you Nottingham, I should say that’s the last
+place in the world we shall go to. I’ve got a sealed envelope in my
+pocket. When we reach Baldock I shall open it.”
+They slept that night in the accommodating barn—a draughty shed,
+populated, it seemed, by chickens and rats, and Ray had a restless night
+and thought longingly of his own little bed at Maytree Cottage.
+Strangely enough, he did not dwell on the more palatial establishment in
+Knightsbridge.
+The next day it rained, and they did not reach Baldock until late in the
+afternoon, and, sitting down under the cover of a hedge, Brady opened
+the envelope and read its contents, his companion watching him
+expectantly.
+“You will branch from Baldock and take the nearest G.W. train
+for Bath. Then by road to Gloucester. At the village of
+Laverstock you will reveal to Carter the fact that you are
+married to Lola Bassano. You should take him to the _Red Lion_
+for this purpose, and tell him as offensively as possible in
+order to force a quarrel, but in no circumstances are you to
+allow him to part company from you. Go on to Ibbley Copse. You
+will find an open space near where three dead trees stand, and
+there you will stop, take back the statement you made that you
+are married to Lola, and make an apology. You are carrying with
+you a whisky flask; you must have the dope and the whisky
+together at this point. After he is asleep, you will make your
+way to Gloucester, to 289 Hendry Street, where you will find a
+complete change of clothing. Here you will shave and return to
+town by the 2.19.”
+Every word, every syllable, he read over and over again, until he had
+mastered the details. Then, striking a match, he set fire to the paper
+and watched it burn.
+“What are the orders?” asked Ray.
+“The same as yours, I suppose. What did you do with yours?”
+“Burnt them,” said Ray. “Did he tell you where we’re going?”
+“We are going to take the Gloucester Road; I thought we should. That
+means striking across country till we reach the Bath Road. We can take a
+train to Bath.”
+“Thank goodness for that!” said Ray fervently. “I don’t feel I can walk
+another step.”
+At seven o’clock that night, two tramps turned out of a third-class
+carriage on Bath station. One, the younger, was limping slightly, and
+sat down on a station seat.
+“Come on, you can’t stay here,” said the other gruffly. “We’ll get a bed
+in the town. There’s a Salvation Army shelter somewhere in Bath.”
+“Wait a bit,” said the other. “I’m so cramped with sitting in that
+infernal carriage that I can hardly move.”
+They had joined the London train at Reading, and the passengers were
+pouring down the steps to the subway. Ray looked at them enviously. They
+had homes to go to, clean and comfortable beds to sleep in. The thought
+of it gave him a pain. And then he saw a figure and shrank back. A tall,
+angular man, who carried a heavy box in one hand and a bag in the other.
+It was his father.
+John Bennett went down the steps, with a casual glance at the two
+unsavoury tramps on the seat, never dreaming that one was the son whose
+future he was at that moment planning.
+John Bennett spent an ugly night, and an even more ugly early morning.
+He collected the camera where he had left it, at a beerhouse on the
+outskirts of the town, and, fixing the improvised carrier, he slipped
+the big box on his back, and, with his bag in his hand, took the road. A
+policeman eyed him disapprovingly as he passed, and seemed in two minds
+as to whether or not he should stop him, but refrained. The strength and
+stamina of this grey man were remarkable. He breasted a hill and,
+without slackening his pace, reached the top, and strode steadily along
+the white road that was cut in the face of the hill. Below him stretched
+the meadow lands of Somerset, vast fields speckled with herds,
+glittering streaks of light where the river wound; above his head a blue
+sky, flecked white here and there. As he walked, the load on his heart
+was absorbed. All that was bright and happy in life came to him. His
+hand strayed to his waistcoat pocket mechanically. There were the
+precious press cuttings that he had brought from town and had read and
+re-read in the sleepless hours of the night.
+He thought of Ella, and all that Ella meant to him, and of Dick
+Gordon—but that made him wince, and he came back to the comfort of his
+pictures. Somebody had told him that there were badgers to be seen; a
+man in the train had carefully located a veritable paradise for the
+lover of Nature; and it was toward this beauty spot that he was making
+his way with the aid of a survey map which he had bought overnight at a
+stationer’s shop.
+Another hour’s tramp brought him to a wooden hollow, and, consulting his
+map, he found he had reached his objective. There was ample evidence of
+the truth that his chance-found friend had told him. He saw a stoat,
+flying on the heels of a terrified rabbit; a hawk wheeled ceaselessly on
+stiff pinions above him; and presently he found the “run” he was looking
+for, the artfully concealed entrance to a badger’s lair.
+In the years he had been following his hobby he had overcome many
+difficulties, learnt much. To-day, failure had taught him something of
+the art of concealment. It took him time to poise and hide the camera in
+a bush of wild laurel, and even then it was necessary that he should
+take a long shot, for the badger is the shyest of its kind. There were
+young ones in the lair: he saw evidence of that; and a badger who has
+young is doubly shy.
+He had replaced the pneumatic attachment which set the camera moving, by
+an electrical contrivance, and this enabled him to work with greater
+surety. He unwound the long flex and laid it to its fullest extent,
+taking a position on the slope of the hill eighty yards away, making
+himself comfortable. Taking off his coat, which acted as a pillow on
+which his arms rested, he put his field-glasses near at hand.
+He had been waiting half an hour when he thought he saw a movement at
+the mouth of the burrow, and slowly focussed his glasses. It was the tip
+of a black nose he saw, and he took the switch of the starter in his
+hand, ready to set the camera revolving. Minutes followed minutes;
+five—ten—fifteen—but there was no further movement in the burrow, and
+in a dull way John Bennett was glad, because the warmth of the day,
+combined with his own weariness and his relaxed position, brought to him
+a rare sensation of bodily comfort and well-being. Deeper and deeper
+grew the languorous haze of comfort that fell on him like a fog, until
+it obscured all that was visible and audible. John Bennett slept, and,
+sleeping, dreamed of success and of peace and of freedom from all that
+had broken his heart, and had dried up the sweet waters of life within
+him. In his dream he heard voices and a sharp sound, like a shot. But he
+knew it was not a shot, and shivered. He knew that “crack,” and in his
+sleep clenched his hands convulsively. The electric starter was still in
+his hand.
+*    *    *    *    *    *
+At nine o’clock that morning there had come into Laverstock two limping
+tramps, though one limped more than the other. The bigger of the two
+stopped at the door of the _Red Lion_, and an unfriendly landlord
+surveyed the men over the top of the curtain which gave the habitués of
+the bar a semi-privacy.
+“Come in,” growled Lew Brady.
+Ray was glad to follow. The landlord’s bulk blocked the entrance to the
+bar.
+“What do you want?” he asked.
+“I want a drink.”
+“There’s no free drinks going in this parish,” said the landlord,
+looking at the unpromising customer.
+“Where did you get that ‘free drink’ stuff from?” snarled Lew. “My
+money’s as good as anybody else’s, isn’t it?”
+“If it’s honestly come by,” said the landlord. “Let us have a look at
+it.”
+Lew pulled out a handful of silver, and the master of the _Red Lion_
+stood back.
+“Come in,” he said, “but don’t make a home of my bar. You can have your
+drink and go.”
+Lew growled the order, and the landlord poured out the two portions of
+whisky.
+“Here’s yours, Carter,” said Lew, and Ray swallowed the fiery dram and
+choked.
+“I’ll be glad to get back,” said Lew in a low voice. “It’s all right for
+you single men, but this tramping is pretty tough on us fellows who’ve
+got wives—even though the wives aren’t all they might be.”
+“I didn’t know you were married,” said Ray, faintly interested.
+“There’s a lot you don’t know,” sneered the other. “Of course I’m
+married. You were told once, and you hadn’t the brains to believe it.”
+Ray looked at the man open-mouthed.
+“Do you mean—what Gordon said?”
+The other nodded.
+“You mean that Lola is your wife?”
+“Why, certainly she’s my wife,” said Lew coolly. “I don’t know how many
+husbands she’s had, but I’m her present one.”
+“Oh, my God!”
+Ray whispered the words.
+“What’s the matter with you? And take that look off your face,” said Lew
+Brady viciously. “I’m not blaming you for being sweet on her. I like to
+see people admire my wife, even such kids as you.”
+“Your wife!” said Ray again. He could not believe the man was speaking
+the truth. “Is she—is she a Frog?”
+“Why shouldn’t she be?” said Brady. “And keep your voice down, can’t
+you? That fat old devil behind the counter is trying hard to listen. Of
+course she’s Frog, and she’s crook. We’re all crooks. You’re crook too.
+That’s the way with Lola, she likes the crooks best. Perhaps you’ll have
+a chance, after you’ve done a job or two——”
+“You beast!” hissed Ray, and struck the man full in the face.
+Before Lew Brady could come to his feet, the landlord was between them.
+“Outside, both of you!” he shouted, and, dashing to the door, roared
+half a dozen names. He was back in time to see Lew Brady on his feet,
+glaring at the other.
+“You’ll know all about that, Mr. Carter, one of these days,” he said.
+“I’ll settle with you!”
+“And, by God, I’ll settle with you!” said Ray furiously, and at that
+moment a brawny ostler caught him by the arm and flung him into the road
+outside.
+He waited for Brady to come out.
+“I’ve finished with you,” he said. His face was white, his voice was
+quivering. “Finished with the whole rotten shoot of you! I’m going
+back.”
+“You’re not going back,” said Lew. “Oh, listen, boy, what’s making you
+mad? We’ve got to go on to Gloucester, and we might as well finish our
+job. And if you don’t want to be with me after that—well, you can go
+ahead just as you like.”
+“I’m going alone,” said Ray.
+“Don’t be a fool.” Lew Brady came after him and seized his arm.
+For a second the situation looked ugly to the onlookers, and then, with
+a shrug, Ray Bennett suffered the arm to remain.
+“I don’t believe you,” he said—the first words he spoke for half an
+hour after they had left the _Red Lion_. “Why should you have lied?”
+“I’ve got sick of your good temper, that’s the whole truth, Ray—just
+sick to death of it. I had to make you mad, or I’d have gone mad
+myself.”
+“But is it true about Lola?”
+“Of course it’s not true,” lied Brady contemptuously. “Do you think
+she’d have anything to do with a chap like me? Not likely! Lola’s a good
+girl. Forget all I said, Ray.”
+“I shall ask her myself. She wouldn’t lie to me,” said the boy.
+“Of course she wouldn’t lie to you,” agreed the other.
+They were nearing their rendezvous now—the tree-furred cut in the
+hills—and his eyes were searching for the three white trunks that the
+lightning had struck. Presently he saw them.
+“Come on in, and I’ll tell you all about it,” he said. “I’m not going to
+walk much farther to-day. My feet are so raw you couldn’t cook ’em!”
+He led the way between the trees, over the age-old carpet of pine
+needles, and presently he stopped.
+“Sit down here, boy,” he said, “and let us have a drink and a smoke.”
+Ray sat with his head on his hands, a figure so supremely miserable that
+any other man than Lew Brady would have felt sorry for him.
+“The whole truth is,” began Lew slowly, “that Lola’s very strong for
+you, boy.”
+“Then why did you tell me the other thing? Who was that?” He looked
+round.
+“What is it?” asked Lew. His own nerves were on edge.
+“I thought I heard somebody moving.”
+“A twig broke. Rabbits, it may be; there are thousands of ’em round
+here,” said Lew. “No, Lola’s a good girl.” He fished from his pocket a
+flask, pulled off the cup at the bottom and unscrewed the stopper,
+holding the flask to the light. “She’s a good girl,” he repeated, “and
+may she never be anything else.”
+He poured out a cupful, looked at the remainder in the bottle.
+“I’m going to drink her health. No, you drink first.”
+Ray shook his head.
+“I don’t like the stuff,” he said.
+The other man laughed.
+“For a fellow who’s been pickled night after night, that’s certainly an
+amusing view to take,” he said. “If you can’t hold a dram of whisky for
+the sake of drinking Lola’s health, well, you’re a poor——”
+“Give it to me.” Ray snatched the cup, but spilt a portion, and,
+drinking down the contents at a draught, he threw the metal holder to
+his companion.
+“Ugh! I don’t care for that whisky. I don’t think I care for any whisky
+at all. There’s nothing harder to pretend you like than drinking, if you
+don’t happen to like it.”
+“I don’t think anybody likes it at first,” said Lew. “It’s like
+tomatoes—a cultivated taste.”
+He was watching his companion keenly.
+“Where do we go from Gloucester?” asked Ray.
+“We don’t go anywhere from Gloucester. We just stop there for a day, and
+then we change and come back.”
+“It’s a stupid idea,” said Ray Bennett, screwing up his eyes and
+yawning. “Who is this Frog, Lew?” He yawned again, lay back on the
+grass, his hands under his head.
+Lew Brady emptied the remainder of the flask’s contents upon the grass,
+screwed up the stopper and shook the cup before he rose and walked
+across to the sleeping boy.
+“Hi, get up!” he said.
+There was no answer.
+“Get up, you!”
+With a groan, Ray turned over, his head on his arms, and did not move
+again. A sudden misgiving came to Lew Brady. Suppose he was dead? He
+went livid at the thought. That quarrel, so cleverly engineered by the
+Frog, would be enough to convict him. He whipped the flask from his
+pocket and slipped it into the coat pocket of the sleeper. And then he
+heard a sound, and, turning, saw a man watching him. Lew stared, opened
+his mouth to speak, and:
+“_Plop!_”
+He saw the flash of the flame before the bullet struck him. He tried to
+open his mouth to speak, and:
+“_Plop!_”
+Lew Brady was dead before he touched the ground.
+The man removed the silencer of the pistol, walked leisurely across to
+where Ray Bennett was sleeping, and put the pistol by his hand. Then he
+came back and turned over the body of the dead man, looking down into
+the face. Taking one of three cigars from his waistcoat pocket, he lit
+it, being careful to put the match in the box whence he had taken it. He
+liked smoking cigars—especially other men’s cigars. Then, without
+haste, he walked back the way he had come, gained the main road after a
+careful reconnaissance, and reached the car he had left by the roadside.
+Inside the car a youth was sitting in the shelter of the curtained hood,
+loose-mouthed, glassy-eyed, staring at nothing. He wore an ill-fitting
+suit and one end of his collar was unfastened.
+“You know this place, Bill?”
+“Yes, sir.” The voice was guttural and hoarse. “Ibbley Copse.”
+“You have just killed a man: you shot him, just as you said you did in
+your confession.”
+The half-witted youth nodded.
+“I killed him because I hated him,” he said.
+The Frog nodded obediently and got into the driver’s seat. . . .
+John Bennett woke with a start. He looked at the damp bell-push in his
+hand with a rueful smile, and began winding up the flex. Presently he
+reached the bush where the camera was concealed, and, to his dismay,
+found that the indicator showed the loss—for loss it was—of five
+hundred feet. He looked at the badger hole resentfully, and there, as in
+mockery, he saw again the tip of a black nose, and shook his fist at it.
+Beyond, he saw two men lying, both asleep, and both, apparently, tramps.
+He carried the camera back to where he had left his coat, put it on,
+hoisted the box into position and set off for Laverstock village, where,
+if his watch was right, he could catch the local that would connect him
+with Bath in time for the London express; and as he walked, he
+calculated his loss.
+CHAPTER XXXI
+THE CHEMICAL CORPORATION
+ELK had promised to dine at Gordon’s club. Dick waited for him until
+twenty minutes past the hour of appointment, and Elk had neither
+telephoned nor put in an appearance. At twenty-five minutes past he
+arrived in a hurry.
+“Good Lord!” he gasped, looking at the clock. “I had no idea it was so
+late, Captain. I must buy a watch.”
+They went into the dining-hall together, and Elk felt that he was
+entering a church, there was such solemn dignity about the stately room,
+with its prim and silent diners.
+“It certainly has Heron’s beat in the matter of Dicky-Orum.”
+“I don’t know the gentleman,” said the puzzled Dick. “Oh, do you mean
+decorum? Yes, this is a little more sedate. What kept you, Elk? I’m not
+complaining, but when you’re not on time, I worry as to what has
+happened to you.”
+“Nothing has happened to me,” said Elk, nodding pleasantly to an
+embarrassed club waiter. “Only we had an inquiry in Gloucester. I
+thought we’d struck another Frog case, but the two men involved had no
+Frog marks.”
+“Who are they?”
+“Phenan is one—he’s the man that’s dead.”
+“A murder?”
+“I think so,” said Elk, spearing a sardine. “I think he was thoroughly
+dead when they found him at Ibbley Copse. They pinched the man who was
+with him; he was drunk. Apparently they’d been to Laverstock and had
+quarrelled and fought in the bar of the _Red Lion_. The police were
+informed later, and telephoned through to the next village, to tell the
+constable to keep his eye on these two fellows, but they hadn’t passed
+through, so they sent a bicycle patrol to look for them—there’s been
+one or two housebreakings in that neighbourhood.”
+“And they found them?”
+Elk nodded.
+“One man dead and the other man bottled. Apparently they’d quarrelled,
+and the drunken gentleman shot the other. They’re both tramps or of that
+class. Identification marks on them show they’ve come from Wales. They
+slept at Bath last night, at Rooney’s lodging-house, and that’s all
+that’s known of ’em. Carter is the murderer—they’ve taken him to
+Gloucester Gaol. It’s a very simple case, and the Gloucester police gave
+a haughty smile at the idea of calling in Headquarters. It is a crime,
+anyway, that is up to the intellectual level of the country police.”
+Dick’s lips twitched.
+“Just now, the country police are passing unpleasant comments on our
+intelligence,” he said.
+“Let ’um,” scoffed Elk. “Those people are certainly entitled to their
+simple pleasures, and I’d be the last to deny them the right. I saw John
+Bennett in town to-night, at Paddington this time. I’m always knocking
+against him at railway stations. That man is certainly a traveller. He
+had his old camera with him too. I spoke to him this time, and he’s full
+of trouble: went to sleep, pushed the gadget in his dreams and wasted a
+fortune in film. But he’s pleased with himself, and I don’t wonder. I
+saw a note about his pictures the other day in one of the newspapers. He
+looks like turning into a first-class success.”
+“I sincerely hope so,” said Dick quietly, and something in his tone made
+his guest look up.
+“Which reminds me,” he said, “that I had a note from friend Johnson
+asking me whether I knew Ray Bennett’s address. He said he called up
+Heron’s Club, but Ray hadn’t been there for days. He wants to give him a
+job. Quite a big position, too. There’s a lot that’s very fine in
+Johnson.”
+“Did you give the address?”
+Elk nodded.
+“I gave him the address, and I called on the boy, but he’s out of
+town—went out a few days ago, and is not likely to be back for a
+fortnight. It will be too bad if he loses this job. I think Johnson was
+sore with the side young Bennett put on, but he doesn’t seem to bear any
+malice. Perhaps there’s another influence at work,” he said
+significantly.
+Dick knew that he meant Ella, but did not accept the opening.
+They adjourned to the smoke-room after dinner, and whilst Elk puffed
+luxuriously at one of his host’s best cigars, Dick wrote a brief note to
+the girl, who had been in his thoughts all that day. It was an
+unnecessary note, as such epistles are liable to be; but it might have
+had, as its excuse, the news that he had heard from Elk, only, for some
+reason, he never thought of that until after the letter was finished and
+sealed. When he turned to his companion, Elk propounded a theory.
+“I sent a man up to look at some chemical works. It’s a fake
+company—less than a dozen hands employed, and those only occasionally.
+But it has a very powerful electrical installation. It is an old poison
+gas factory. The present company bought it for a song, and two fellows
+we are holding were the nominal purchasers.”
+“Where is it?” asked Dick.
+“Between Newbury and Didcot. I found out a great deal about them for a
+curious reason. It appears there was some arrangement between the
+factory, when it was under Government control, that it should make an
+annual contribution to the Newbury Fire Brigade, and, in taking over the
+property, the company also took over that contract, which they’re now
+trying to get out of, for the charge is a stiff one. They told the
+Newbury Brigade, in so many words, to disconnect the factory from their
+alarm service, but the Newbury Brigade, being on a good thing and having
+lost money by the arrangement during the war, refused to cancel the
+contract, which has still three years to run.”
+Dick was not interested in the slightest degree in the quarrel between
+the chemical factory and the fire brigade. Later, he had cause to be
+thankful that conversation had drifted into such a prosaic channel; but
+this he could not foresee.
+“Yes, very remarkable,” he said absent-mindedly.
+*    *    *    *    *    *
+A fortnight after the disappearance from town of Ray Bennett, Elk
+accepted the invitation of the American to lunch. It was an invitation
+often given, and only accepted now because there had arisen in Elk’s
+mind a certain doubt about Joshua Broad—a doubt which he wished to
+mould into assurance.
+Broad was waiting for the detective when he arrived, and Elk, to whom
+time had no particular significance, arrived ten minutes late.
+“Ten minutes after one,” said Elk. “I can’t keep on time anyhow. There’s
+been a lot of trouble at the office over the new safe they’ve got me.
+Somethin’s wrong with it, and even the lock-maker doesn’t know what it
+is.”
+“Can’t you open it?”
+“That’s just it, I can’t, and I’ve got to get some papers out to-day
+that are mighty important,” said Elk. “I was wondering, as I came along,
+whether, having such a wide experience of the criminal classes, you’ve
+ever heard any way by which it could be opened—it needs a proper
+engineer, and, if I remember rightly, you told me you were an engineer
+once, Mr. Broad?”
+“Your memory is at fault,” said the other calmly as he unfolded his
+napkin and regarded the detective with a twinkle in his eye.
+“Safe-opening is not my profession.”
+“And I never dreamt it was,” said Elk heartily. “But it has always
+struck me that the Americans are much more clever with their hands than
+the people in this country, and I thought that you might be able to give
+me a word of advice.”
+“Maybe I’ll introduce you to my pet burglar,” said Broad gravely, and
+they laughed together. “What do you think of me?” asked the American
+unexpectedly. “I’m not expecting you to give your view of my character
+or personal appearance, but what do you think I am doing in London,
+dodging around, doing nothing but a whole lot of amateur police work?”
+“I’ve never given you much thought,” said Elk untruthfully. “Being an
+American, I expect you to be out of the ordinary——”
+“Flatterer,” murmured Mr. Broad.
+“I wouldn’t go so far as to flatter you,” protested Elk. “Flattery is
+repugnant to me anyway.”
+He unfolded an evening newspaper he had brought.
+“Looking for those tailless amphibians?”
+“Eh?” Elk looked up puzzled.
+“Frogs,” explained the other.
+“No, I’m not exactly looking for Frogs, though I understand a few of ’em
+are looking for me. As a matter of fact, there’s very little in the
+newspaper about those interesting animals, but there’s going to be!”
+“When?”
+The question was a challenge.
+“When we get Frog Number One.”
+Mr. Broad crumpled a roll in his hand, and broke it.
+“Do you think you’ll get Number One before I get him?” he asked quietly,
+and Elk looked across the table over his spectacles.
+“I’ve been wondering that for a long time,” he said, and for a second
+their eyes met.
+“Do you think I shall get him?” asked Broad.
+“If all my speculations and surmises are what they ought to be, I think
+you will,” said Elk, and suddenly his attention was focussed upon a
+paragraph. “Quick work,” he said. “We beat you Americans in that
+respect.”
+“In what respect is that?” asked Broad. “I’m sufficient of a
+cosmopolitan to agree that there are many things in England which you do
+better than we in America.”
+Elk looked up at the ceiling.
+“Fifteen days?” he said. “Of course, he just managed to catch the
+Assizes.”
+“Who’s that?”
+“That man Carter, who shot a tramp near Gloucester,” said Elk.
+“What has happened to him?” asked the other.
+“He was sentenced to death this morning,” said the detective.
+Joshua Broad frowned.
+“Sentenced to death this morning? Carter, you say? I didn’t read the
+story of the murder.”
+“There was nothing complicated about it,” said Elk. “Two tramps had a
+quarrel—I think they got drinking—and one shot the other and was found
+lying in a drunken sleep by the dead man’s side. There’s practically no
+evidence; the prisoner refused to make any statement, or to instruct a
+lawyer—it must have been one of the shortest murder trials on record.”
+“Where did this happen?” asked Broad, arousing himself from the reverie
+into which he had fallen.
+“Near Gloucester. There was little in the paper; it wasn’t a really
+interesting murder. There was no woman in it, so far as the evidence
+went, and who cared a cent about two tramps?”
+He folded the paper and put it down, and for the rest of the meal was
+engaged in a much more fascinating discussion, the police methods of the
+United States, on which matter Mr. Broad was, apparently, something of
+an authority.
+The object of the American’s invitation was very apparent. Again and
+again he attempted to turn the conversation to the man under arrest; and
+as skilfully as he introduced the subject of Balder, did Elk turn the
+discussion back to the merits of the third degree as a method of crime
+detection.
+“Elk, you’re as close as an oyster,” said Broad, beckoning a waiter to
+bring his bill. “And yet I could tell you almost as much about this man
+Balder as you know.”
+“Tell me the prison he’s in?” demanded Elk.
+“He’s in Pentonville, Ward Seven, Cell Eighty-four,” said the other
+immediately, and Elk sat bolt upright. “And you needn’t trouble to shift
+him to somewhere else, just because I happen to know his exact location;
+I should be just as well informed if he was at Brixton, Wandsworth,
+Holloway, Wormwood Scrubbs, Maidstone, or Chelmsford.”
+CHAPTER XXXII
+IN GLOUCESTER PRISON
+THERE is a cell in Gloucester Prison; the end cell in a long corridor of
+the old building. Next door is another cell, which is never occupied,
+for an excellent reason. That in which Ray Bennett sat was furnished
+more expensively than any other in the prison. There was an iron
+bedstead, a plain deal table, a comfortable Windsor chair and two other
+chairs, on one of which, night and day, sat a warder.
+The walls were distempered pink. One big window, near the ceiling,
+heavily barred, covered with toughened opaque glass, admitted light,
+which was augmented all the time by an electric globe in the arched
+ceiling.
+Three doors led from the cell: one into the corridor, the other into a
+little annexe fitted with a washing-bowl and a bath; the third into the
+unoccupied cell, which had a wooden floor, and in the centre of the
+floor a square trap. Ray Bennett did not know then how close he was to
+the death house, and if he had known he would not have cared. For death
+was the least of the terrors which oppressed him.
+He had awakened from his drugged sleep, to find himself in the cell of a
+country lock-up, and had heard, bemused, the charge of murder that had
+been made against him. He had no clear recollection of what had
+happened. All that he knew was that he had hated Lew Brady and that he
+had wanted to kill him. After that, he had a recollection of walking
+with him and of sitting down somewhere.
+They told him that Brady was dead, and that the weapon with which the
+murder was committed had been found in his hand. Ray had racked his
+brains in an effort to remember whether he had a revolver or not. He
+must have had. And of course he had been drugged. They had had whisky at
+the _Red Lion_, and Lew must have said something about Lola and he had
+shot him. It was strange that he did not think longingly of Lola. His
+love for her had gone. He thought of her as he thought of Lew Brady, as
+something unimportant that belonged to the past. All that mattered now
+was that his father and Ella should not know. At all costs the disgrace
+must be kept from them. He had waited in a fever of impatience for the
+trial to end, so that he might get away from the public gaze.
+Fortunately, the murder was not of sufficient interest even for the
+ubiquitous press photographers. He wanted to be done with it all, to go
+out of life unknown. The greatest tragedy that could occur to him was
+that he should be identified.
+He dared not think of Ella or of his father. He was Jim Carter, without
+parents or friends; and if he died as Jim Carter, he must spend his last
+days of life as Jim Carter. He was not frightened; he had no fear, his
+only nightmare was that he should be recognized.
+The warder who was with him, and who was not supposed to speak to him,
+had told him that, by the law, three clear Sundays must elapse between
+his sentence and execution. The chaplain visited him every day, and the
+Governor. A tap at the cell door told him it was the Governor’s hour,
+and he rose as the grey-haired official came in.
+“Any complaints, Carter?”
+“None, sir.”
+“Is there anything you want?”
+“No, sir.”
+The Governor looked at the table. The writing-pad, which had been placed
+for the condemned prisoner’s use, had not been touched.
+“You have no letters to write? I suppose you can write?”
+“Yes, sir. I’ve no letters to write.”
+“What are you, Carter? You’re not an ordinary tramp. You’re better
+educated than that class.”
+“I’m an ordinary tramp, sir,” said Ray quietly.
+“Have you all the books you need?”
+Ray nodded, and the Governor went out. Every day came these inevitable
+inquiries. Sometimes the Governor made reference to his friends, but he
+grew tired of asking questions about the unused blotting-pad.
+Ray Bennett had reached the stage of sane understanding where he did not
+even regret. It was inevitable. He had been caught up in the machinery
+of circumstance, and must go slowly round to the crashing-place. Every
+morning and afternoon he paced the square exercise yard, watched by
+three men in uniform, and jealously screened from the observation of
+other prisoners; and his serenity amazed all who saw him. He was caught
+up in the wheel and must go the full round. He could even smile at
+himself, observe his own vanity with the eye of an outsider. And he
+could not weep, because there was nothing left to weep about. He was
+already a dead man. Nobody troubled to organize a reprieve for him; he
+was too uninteresting a murderer. The newspapers did not flame into
+headlines, demanding a new trial. Fashionable lawyers would not
+foregather to discuss an appeal. He had murdered; he must die.
+Once, when he was washing, and was about to put his hand in the water,
+he saw the reflection of his face staring back at him, and he did not
+recognize himself, for his beard had grown weedily. He laughed, and when
+the wondering warders looked at him, he said:
+“I’m only now beginning to cultivate a sense of humour—I’ve left it
+rather late, haven’t I?”
+He could have had visitors, could have seen anybody he wished, but
+derived a strange satisfaction from his isolation. He had done with all
+that was artificial and emotional in life. Lola? He thought of her again
+and shook his head. She was very pretty. He wondered what she would do
+now that Lew was dead; what she was doing at that moment. He thought,
+too, of Dick Gordon, remembered that he liked him that day when Dick had
+given him a ride in his big Rolls. How queerly far off that seemed! And
+yet it could have only been a few months ago.
+One day the Governor came in a more ceremonial style, and with him was a
+gentleman whom Ray remembered having seen in the court-house on the day
+of the trial. It was the Under Sheriff, and there was an important
+communication to be made. The Governor had to clear his throat twice.
+“Carter,” he said a little unsteadily, “the Secretary of State has
+informed me that he sees no reason for interfering with the course of
+the law. The High Sheriff has fixed next Wednesday morning at eight
+o’clock as the date and hour of your execution.”
+Ray inclined his head.
+“Thank you, sir,” he said.
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+THE FROG OF THE NIGHT
+JOHN BENNETT emerged from the wood-shed, which he had converted into a
+dark room, bearing a flat square box in either hand.
+“Don’t talk to me for a minute, Ella,” he said as she rose from her
+knees—she was weeding her own pet garden—“or I shall get these blamed
+things mixed. This one”—he shook his right hand—“is a picture of
+trout, and it is a great picture,” he said enthusiastically. “The man
+who runs the trout farm, let me take it through the glass side of the
+trench, and it was a beautifully sunny day.”
+“What is the other one, daddy?” she asked, and John Bennett pulled a
+face.
+“That is the dud,” he said regretfully. “Five hundred feet of good film
+gone west! I may have got a picture by accident, but I can’t afford to
+have it developed on the off-chance. I’ll keep it by, and one day, when
+I’m rolling in money, I’ll go to the expense of satisfying my
+curiosity.”
+He took the boxes into the house, and turned round to his stationery
+rack to find two adhesive labels, and had finished writing them, when
+Dick Gordon’s cheery voice came through the open window. He rose eagerly
+and went out to him.
+“Well, Captain Gordon, did you get it?” he asked.
+“I got it,” said Dick solemnly, waving an envelope. “You’re the first
+cinematographer that has been allowed in the Zoological Gardens, and I
+had to _crawl_ to the powers that be to secure the permission!”
+The pale face of John Bennett flushed with pleasure.
+“It is a tremendous thing,” he said. “The Zoo has never been put on the
+pictures, and Selinski has promised me a fabulous sum for the film if I
+can take it.”
+“The fabulous sum is in your pocket, Mr. Bennett,” said Dick, “and I am
+glad that you mentioned it.”
+“I am under the impression you mentioned it first,” said John Bennett.
+Ella did not remember having seen her father smile before.
+“Perhaps I did,” said Dick cheerfully. “I knew you were interested in
+animal photography.”
+He did not tell John Bennett that it was Ella who had first spoken about
+the difficulties of securing Zoo photographs and her father’s inability
+to obtain the necessary permission.
+John Bennett went back to his labelling with a lighter heart than he had
+borne for many a day. He wrote the two slips, wetted the gum and
+hesitated. Then he laid down the papers and went into the garden.
+“Ella, do you remember which of those boxes had the trout in?”
+“The one in your right hand, daddy,” she said.
+“I thought so,” he said, and went to finish his work.
+It was only after the boxes were labelled that he had any misgivings.
+Where had he stood when he put them down? On which side of the table?
+Then, with a shrug, he began to wrap the trout picture, and they saw him
+carrying it under his arm to the village post-office.
+“No news of Ray?” asked Dick.
+The girl shook her head.
+“What does your father think?”
+“He doesn’t talk about Ray, and I haven’t emphasized the fact that it is
+such a long time since I had a letter.”
+They were strolling through the garden toward the little summer-house
+that John Bennett had built in the days when Ray was a schoolboy.
+“You have not heard?” she asked. “I credit you with an omniscience which
+perhaps isn’t deserved. You have not found the man who killed Mr.
+Maitland?”
+“No,” said Dick. “I don’t expect we shall until we catch Frog himself.”
+“Will you?” she asked quietly.
+He nodded.
+“Yes, he can’t go on for ever. Even Elk is taking a cheerful view.
+Ella,” he asked suddenly, “are you the kind of person who keeps a
+promise?”
+“Yes,” she said in surprise.
+“In all circumstances, if you make a promise, do you keep it?”
+“Why, of course. If I do not think I can keep it, I do not make a
+promise. Why?”
+“Well, I want you to make me a promise—and to keep it,” he said.
+She looked past him, and then:
+“It depends what the promise is.”
+“I want you to promise to be my wife,” said Dick Gordon.
+Her hand lay in his, and she did not draw it from him.
+“It is . . . very . . . businesslike, isn’t it?” she said, biting her
+unruly underlip.
+“Will you promise?”
+She looked round at him, tears in her eyes, though her lips were
+smiling, and he caught her in his arms.
+John Bennett waited a long time for his lunch that day. Going out to see
+where his daughter was, he met Dick, and in a few words Dick Gordon told
+him all. He saw the pain in the man’s face, and dropped his hand upon
+the broad shoulder.
+“Ella has promised me, and she will not go back on her promise. Whatever
+happens, whatever she learns.”
+The man raised his eyes to the other’s face.
+“Will you go back on your promise?” he asked huskily. “Whatever you
+learn?”
+“I know,” said Dick simply.
+Ella Bennett walked on air that day. A new and splendid colour had come
+into her life; a tremendous certainty which banished all the fears and
+doubts she had felt; a light which revealed delightful vistas.
+Her father went over to Dorking that afternoon, and came back hurriedly,
+wearing that strained look which it hurt her to see.
+“I shall have to go to town, dearie,” he said. “There’s been a letter
+waiting for me for two days. I’ve been so absorbed in my picture work
+that I’d forgotten I had any other responsibility.”
+He did not look for her in the garden to kiss her good-bye, and when she
+came back to the house he was gone, and in such a hurry that he had not
+taken his camera with him.
+Ella did not mind being alone; in the days when Ray was at home, she had
+spent many nights in the cottage by herself, and the house was on the
+main road. She made some tea and sat down to write to Dick, though she
+told herself reprovingly that he hadn’t been gone more than two or three
+hours. Nevertheless, she wrote, for the spirit of logic avoids the
+lover.
+There was a postal box a hundred yards up the road; it was a bright
+night and people were standing at their cottage gates, gossipping, as
+she passed. The letter dropped in the box, she came back to the cottage,
+went inside, locked and bolted the door, and sat down with a workbasket
+by her side to fill in the hour which separated her from bedtime.
+So working, her mind was completely occupied, to the exclusion of all
+other thoughts, by Dick Gordon. Once or twice the thought of her father
+and Ray strayed across her mind, but it was to Dick she returned.
+The only illumination in the cosy dining-room was a shaded kerosene lamp
+which stood on the table by her side and gave her sufficient light for
+her work. All outside the range of the lamp was shadow. She had finished
+darning a pair of her father’s socks, and had laid down the needle with
+a happy sigh, when her eyes went to the door leading to the kitchen. It
+was ajar, and it was opening slowly.
+For a moment she sat paralysed with terror, and then leapt to her feet.
+“Who’s there?” she called.
+There came into the shadowy doorway a figure, the very sight of which
+choked the scream in her throat. It looked tall, by reason of the
+tightly-fitting black coat it wore. The face and head were hidden behind
+a hideous mask of rubber and mica. The reflection of the lamp shone on
+the big goggles and filled them with a baleful fire.
+“Don’t scream, don’t move!” said the masked man, and his voice sounded
+hollow and far away. “I will not hurt you.”
+“Who are you?” she managed to gasp.
+“I am The Frog,” said the stranger.
+For an eternity, as it seemed, she stood helpless, incapable of
+movement, and it was he who spoke.
+“How many men love you, Ella Bennett?” he asked. “Gordon and
+Johnson—and The Frog, who loves you most of all!”
+He paused, as though he expected her to speak, but she was incapable of
+answering him.
+“Men work for women, and they murder for women, and behind all that they
+do, respectably or unrespectably, there is a woman,” said the Frog. “And
+you are that woman for me, Ella.”
+“Who are you?” she managed to say.
+“I am The Frog,” he replied again, “and you shall know my name when I
+have given it to you. I want you! Not now”—he raised his hand as he saw
+the terror rising in her face. “You shall come to me willingly.”
+“You’re mad!” she cried. “I do not know you. How can I—oh, it’s too
+wicked to suggest . . . please go away.”
+“I will go presently,” said the Frog. “Will you marry me, Ella?”
+She shook her head.
+“Will you marry me, Ella?” he asked again.
+“No.” She had recovered her calm and something of her self-possession.
+“I will give you——”
+“If you gave me all the money there was in the world, I would not many
+you,” she said.
+“I will give you something more precious.” His voice was softer,
+scarcely audible. “I will give you a life!”
+She thought he was speaking of Dick Gordon.
+“I will give you the life of your brother.”
+For a second the room spun round and she clutched a chair to keep her
+feet.
+“What do you mean?” she asked.
+“I will give you the life of your brother, who is lying in Gloucester
+Gaol under sentence of death!” said the Frog.
+With a supreme effort Ella guided herself to a chair and sat down.
+“My brother?” she said dully. “Under sentence of death?”
+“To-day is Monday,” said the Frog. “On Wednesday he dies. Give me your
+word that when I send for you, you will come, and I will save him.”
+“How can you save him?” The question came mechanically.
+“A man has made a confession—a man named Gill, a half-witted fellow who
+thinks he killed Lew Brady.”
+“Brady?” she gasped.
+The Frog nodded.
+“It isn’t true,” she breathed. “You’re lying! You’re telling me this to
+frighten me.”
+“Will you marry me?” he asked.
+“Never, never!” she cried. “I would rather die. You are lying to me.”
+“When you want me, send for me,” said the Frog. “Put in your window a
+white card, and I will save your brother.”
+She half lay on the table, her head upon her folded arms.
+“It’s not true, it’s not true,” she muttered.
+There was no reply, and, looking up, she saw that the room was empty.
+Staggering to her feet, she went out into the kitchen. The kitchen door
+was open; and, peering into the dark garden, she saw no sign of the man.
+She had strength to bolt the door, and dragged herself up to her room
+and to her bed, and then she fainted.
+Daylight showed in the windows when she sat up. She was painfully weary,
+her eyes were red with weeping, her head was in a whirl. It had been a
+night of horror—and it was not true, it could not be true. She had
+heard of no murder; and if there had been, it could not be Ray. She
+would have known; Ray would have sent for her father.
+She dragged her aching limbs to the bathroom and turned the cold-water
+tap. Half an hour later she was sane, and looking at her experience
+dispassionately. Ray was alive. The man had tried to frighten her. Who
+was he? She shivered.
+She saw only one solution to her terrible problem, and after she had
+made herself a cup of tea, she dressed and walked down into the town, in
+time to catch an early train. What other thought came to her, she never
+dreamt for one moment of surrender, never so much as glanced at the
+window where a white card could be placed, might save the life of her
+brother. In her heart of hearts, she knew that this man would not have
+come to her with such a story unless it was well founded. That was not
+the Frog’s way. What advantage would he gain if he had invented this
+tragedy? Nevertheless, she did not even look for a white card, or think
+of its possible use.
+Dick was at breakfast when she arrived, and a glance at her face told
+him that she brought bad news.
+“Don’t go, Mr. Elk,” she said as the inspector pushed back his chair.
+“You must know this.”
+As briefly as she could, she narrated the events of the night before,
+and Dick listened with rising wrath until she came to the climax of the
+story.
+“Ray under sentence?” he said incredulously. “Of course it isn’t true.”
+“Where did he say the boy was?” asked Elk.
+“In Gloucester Prison.”
+In their presence her reserve had melted and she was near to tears.
+“Gloucester Prison?” repeated Elk slowly. “There _is_ a man there under
+sentence of death, a man named”—he strove to remember—“Carter,” he
+said at last. “That is it—Carter, a tramp. He killed another tramp
+named Phenan.”
+“Of course it isn’t Ray,” said Dick, laying his hand on hers. “This
+brute tried to frighten you. When did he say the execution had been
+fixed for?”
+“To-morrow.” She was weeping; now that the tension had relaxed, it
+seemed that she had reached the reserve of her strength.
+“Ray is probably on the Continent,” Dick soothed her, and here Elk
+thought it expedient and delicate to steal silently forth.
+He was not as convinced as Gordon that the Frog had made a bluff. No
+sooner was he in his office than he rang for his new clerk.
+“Records,” he said briefly. “I want particulars of a man named Carter,
+now lying under sentence of death in Gloucester Prison—photograph,
+finger-prints, and record of the crime.”
+The man was gone ten minutes, and returned with a small portfolio.
+“No photograph has been received yet, sir,” he said. “In murder cases we
+do not get the full records from the County police until after the
+execution.”
+Elk cursed the County police fluently, and addressed himself to the
+examination of the dossier. That told him little or nothing. The height
+and weight of the man tallied, he guessed, with Ray’s. There were no
+body marks and the description “Slight beard——”
+He sat bolt upright. Slight beard! Ray Bennett had been growing a beard
+for some reason. He remembered that Broad had told him this.
+“Pshaw!” he said, throwing down the finger-print card. “It is
+impossible!”
+It was impossible, and yet——
+He drew a telegraph pad toward him and wrote a wire.
+“Governor, H.M. Prison, Gloucester. Very urgent. Send by special
+messenger prison photograph of James Carter under sentence of
+death in your prison to Headquarters Records. Messenger must
+leave by first train.  Very urgent.”
+He took the liberty of signing it with the name of the Chief
+Commissioner. The telegram despatched, he returned to a scrutiny of the
+description sheet, and presently he saw a remark which he had
+overlooked.
+“Vaccination marks on right forearm.”
+That was unusual. People are usually vaccinated on the left arm, a
+little below the shoulder. He made a note of this fact, and turned to
+the work that was waiting for him. At noon a wire arrived from
+Gloucester, saying that the photograph was on its way. That, at least,
+was satisfactory; though, even if it proved to be Ray, what could be
+done? In his heart Elk prayed most fervently that the Frog had bluffed.
+Just before one, Dick telephoned him and asked him to lunch with them at
+the Auto Club, an invitation which, in any circumstances, was not to be
+refused, for Elk had a passion for visiting other people’s clubs.
+When he arrived—on this occasion strictly on time—he found the girl in
+a calm, even a cheerful mood, and his quick eye detected upon her finger
+a ring of surprising brilliance that he had not seen before. Dick Gordon
+had made very good use of his spare time that morning.
+“I feel I’m neglecting my business, Elk,” he said after he had led them
+into the palatial dining-room of the Auto, and had found a cushion for
+the girl’s back, and had placed her chair exactly where it was least
+comfortable, “but I guess you’ve got through the morning without feeling
+my loss.”
+“I certainly have,” said Elk. “A very interesting morning. There is a
+smallpox scare in the East End,” he went on, “and I’ve heard some talk
+at Headquarters of having the whole staff vaccinated. If there’s one
+thing that I do not approve of, it is vaccination. At my time of life I
+ought to be immune from any germ that happens to be going round.”
+The girl laughed.
+“Poor Mr. Elk! I sympathize with you. Ray and I had a dreadful time when
+we were vaccinated about five years ago during the big epidemic,
+although I didn’t have so bad a time as Ray. And neither of us had such
+an experience as the majority of victims, because we had an excellent
+doctor, with unique views on vaccination.”
+She pulled back the sleeve of her blouse and showed three tiny scars on
+the underside of the right forearm.
+“The doctor said he would put it where it wouldn’t show. Isn’t that a
+good idea?”
+“Yes,” said Elk slowly. “And did he vaccinate your brother the same
+way?”
+She nodded, and then:
+“What is the matter, Mr. Elk?”
+“I swallowed an olive stone,” said Elk. “I wonder somebody doesn’t start
+cultivating olives without stones.” He looked out of the window. “You’ve
+got a pretty fine day for your visit, Miss Bennett,” he said, and
+launched forth into a rambling condemnation of the English climate.
+It seemed hours to Elk before the meal was finished. The girl was going
+back to Gordon’s house to look at catalogues which Dick had ordered to
+be sent to Harley Terrace by telephone.
+“You won’t be coming to the office?” asked Elk.
+“No: do you think it is necessary?”
+“I wanted to see you for ten minutes,” drawled the other, “perhaps a
+quarter of an hour.”
+“Come back to the house.”
+“Well, I wasn’t thinking of coming back to the house,” said Elk.
+“Perhaps you’ve got a lady’s drawing-room. I remember seeing one as I
+came through the marble hall, and Miss Bennett would not mind——”
+“Why, of course not,” she said. “If I’m in the way, I’ll do anything you
+wish. Show me your lady’s drawing-room.”
+When Dick had come back, the detective was smoking, his elbows on the
+table, his thin, brown hands clasped under his chin, and he was
+examining, with the eye of a connoisseur, the beautifully carved
+ceiling.
+“What’s the trouble, Elk?” said Gordon as he sat down.
+“The man under sentence of death is Ray Bennett,” said Elk without
+preliminary.
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+THE PHOTO-PLAY
+DICK’S face went white.
+“How do you know this?”
+“Well, there’s a photograph coming along; it will be in London this
+afternoon; but I needn’t see that. This man under sentence has three
+vaccination marks on the right forearm.”
+There was a dead silence.
+“I wondered why you turned the talk to vaccination,” said Dick quietly.
+“I ought to have known there was something in it. What can we do?”
+“I’ll tell you what you can’t do,” said Elk. “You can’t let that girl
+know. For good and sufficient reasons, Ray Bennett has decided not to
+reveal his identity, and he must pass out. You’re going to have a rotten
+afternoon, Captain Gordon,” said Elk gently, “and I’d rather be me than
+you. But you’ve got to keep up your light-hearted chatter, or that young
+woman is going to guess that something is wrong.”
+“My God! How dreadful!” said Dick in a low voice.
+“Yes, it is,” admitted Elk, “and we can do nothing. We’ve got to accept
+it as a fact that he’s guilty. If you thought any other way, it would
+drive you mad. And even if he was as innocent as you or I, what chance
+have we of getting an inquiry or stopping the sentence being carried
+into execution?”
+“Poor John Bennett!” said Dick in a hushed voice.
+“If you’re starting to get sentimental,” snarled Elk, blinking
+furiously, “I’m going into a more practical atmosphere. Good afternoon.”
+“Wait. I can’t face this girl for a moment. Come back to the house with
+me.”
+Elk hesitated, and then grudgingly agreed.
+Ella could not guess, from their demeanour, the horror that was in the
+minds of these men. Elk fell back upon history and dates—a prolific and
+a favourite subject.
+“Thank heaven those catalogues have arrived!” said Dick, as, with a sigh
+of relief, he saw the huge pile of literature on his study table.
+“Why ‘thank heaven’?” she smiled.
+“Because his conscience is pricking him, and he wants an excuse for
+working.” Elk came to the rescue.
+The strain was one which even he found almost insupportable; and when,
+after a pleading glance at the other, Dick nodded, he got up with a
+sense of holiday.
+“I’ll be going now, Miss Bennett,” he said. “I expect you’ll be busy all
+the afternoon furnishing your cottage. I must come down and see it,” he
+went on, wilfully dense. “Though it struck me that there wouldn’t be
+much room for new furniture at Maytree.”
+So far he got when he heard voices in the hall—the excited voice of a
+woman, shrill, insistent, hysterical. Before Dick could get to the door,
+it was flung open, and Lola rushed in.
+“Gordon! Gordon! Oh, my God!” she sobbed. “Do you know?”
+“Hush!” said Dick, but the girl was beside herself.
+“They’ve got Ray! They’re going to hang him! Lew’s dead.”
+The mischief was done. Ella came slowly to her feet, rigid with fear.
+“My brother?” she asked, and then Lola saw her for the first time and
+nodded.
+“I found out,” she sobbed. “I had a suspicion, and I wrote . . . I’ve
+got a photograph of Phenan. I knew it was Lew at once, and I guessed the
+rest. The Frog did it! He planned it; months in advance he planned it.
+I’m not sorry about Lew; I swear I’m not sorry about Lew! It’s the boy.
+I sent him to his death, Gordon——” And then she broke into a fit of
+hysterical sobbing.
+“Put her out,” said Gordon, and Elk lifted the helpless girl in his arms
+and carried her into the dining-room.
+“True!” Ella whispered the word, and Dick nodded.
+“I’m afraid it’s true, Ella.”
+She sat down slowly.
+“I wonder where I can find father,” she said, as calmly as though she
+were discussing some everyday event.
+“You can do nothing. He knows nothing. Do you think it is kind to tell
+him?”
+She searched his face wonderingly.
+“I think you’re right. Of course you’re right, Dick. I’m sure you’re
+right. Father mustn’t know. Couldn’t I see him—Ray, I mean?”
+Dick shook his head.
+“Ella, if Ray has kept silent to save you from this, all his
+forbearance, all his courage will be wasted if you go to him.”
+Again her lips drooped.
+“Yes. It is good of you to think for me.” She put her hand on his, and
+he felt no tremor. “I don’t know what I can do,” she said. “It is
+so—stunning. What can I do?”
+“You can do nothing, my dear.” His arm went round her and her tired head
+fell upon his shoulder.
+“No, I can do nothing,” she whispered.
+Elk came in.
+“A telegram for Miss Bennett,” he said. “The messenger just arrived with
+it. Been redirected from Horsham, I expect.”
+Dick took the wire.
+“Open it, please,” said the girl. “It may be from father.”
+He tore open the envelope. The telegram ran:
+“Have printed your picture.  Cannot understand the murder.  Were
+you trying take photo-play?  Come and see me.  Silenski House,
+Wardour Street.”
+“What does it mean?” she asked.
+“It is Greek to me,” said Dick. “‘Cannot understand murder’—has your
+father been trying to take photo-plays?”
+“No, dear, I’m sure he hasn’t; he would have told me.”
+“What photographs did your father take?”
+“It was a picture of trout,” she said, gathering her scattered thoughts;
+“but he took another picture—in his sleep. He was in the country
+waiting for a badger, and dozed. He must have pressed the starter; he
+thought that picture was a failure. It can’t be the trout; it doesn’t
+mention the trout; it must be the other.”
+“We will go to Wardour Street.”
+It was Elk who spoke so definitely, Elk who called a cab and hustled the
+two people into it. When they arrived at Wardour Street, Mr. Silenski
+was out at lunch, and nobody knew anything whatever about the film, or
+had authority to show it.
+For an hour and a half they waited, fuming, in that dingy office, whilst
+messengers went in search of Silenski. He arrived at last, a polite and
+pleasant little Hebrew, who was all apologies, though no apology was
+called for, since he had not expected his visitors.
+“Yes, it is a curious picture,” he said. “Your father, miss, is a very
+good amateur; in fact, he’s a professional now; and if it is true that
+he can get these Zoo photographs, he ought to be in the first rank of
+nature photographers.”
+They followed him up a flight of stairs into a big room across which
+were row upon row of chairs. Facing them as they sat was a small white
+screen, and behind them an iron partition with two square holes.
+“This is our theatre,” he explained. “You’ve no idea whether your father
+is trying to take motion pictures—I mean photo-plays? If he is, then
+this scene was pretty well acted, but I can’t understand why he did it.
+It’s labelled ‘Trout in a Pond’ or something of the sort, but there are
+no trout here, and there is no pond either!”
+There was a click, and the room went black; and then there was shown on
+the screen a picture which showed in the foreground a stretch of grey,
+sandy soil, and the dark opening of a burrow, out of which peeped a
+queer-looking animal.
+“That’s a badger,” explained Mr. Silenski. “It looked very promising up
+to there, and then I don’t know what he did. You’ll see he changed the
+elevation of the camera.”
+As he spoke, the picture jerked round a little to the right, as though
+it had been pulled violently. And they were looking upon two men,
+obviously tramps. One was sitting with his head on his hands, the other,
+close by him, was pouring out whisky into a container.
+“That’s Lew Brady,” whispered Elk fiercely, and at that moment the other
+man looked up, and Ella Bennett uttered a cry.
+“It is Ray! Oh, Dick, it is Ray!”
+There was no question of it. The light beard he wore melted into the
+shadows which the strong sunlight cast. They saw Brady offer him a
+drink, saw him toss it down and throw the cup back to the man; watched
+him as his arms stretched in a yawn; and then saw him curl up to sleep,
+lie back, and Lew Brady standing over him. The prostrate figure turned
+on to its face, and Lew, stooping, put something in his pocket. They
+caught the reflection of glass.
+“The flask,” said Elk.
+And then the figure standing in the centre of the picture spun round.
+There walked toward him a man. His face was invisible. Never once during
+that period did he turn his face to that eager audience.
+They saw his arm go up quickly, saw the flash of the two shots, watched
+breathless, spellbound, horrified, the tragedy that followed.
+The man stooped and placed the pistol by the side of the sleeping Ray,
+and then, as he turned, the screen went white.
+“That’s the end of the picture,” said Mr. Silenski. “And what it means,
+heaven knows.”
+“He’s innocent! Dick, he’s innocent!” the girl cried wildly. “Don’t you
+see, it was not he who fired?”
+She was half-mad with grief and terror, and Dick caught her firmly by
+the shoulders, the dumbfounded Silenski gaping at the scene.
+“You are going back to my house and you will read! Do you hear, Ella?
+You’re to do nothing until you hear from me. You are not to go out; you
+are to sit and _read_! I don’t care what you read—the Bible, the Police
+News, anything you like. But you must not think of this business. Elk
+and I will do all that is possible.”
+She mastered her wild terror and tried to smile.
+“I know you will,” she said between her chattering teeth. “Get me to
+your house, please.”
+He left Elk to go to Fleet Street to collect every scrap of information
+about the murder he could from the newspaper offices, and brought the
+girl back to Harley Terrace. As he got out of the cab, he saw a man
+waiting on the steps. It was Joshua Broad. One glance at his face told
+Dick that he knew of the murder, and he guessed the source.
+He waited in the hall until Dick had put the girl in the study, and had
+collected every illustrated newspaper, every book he could find.
+“Lola told me of this business.”
+“I guessed so,” said Dick. “Do you know anything about it?”
+“I knew these two men started out in the disguise of tramps,” said
+Broad, “but I understood they were going north. This is Frog work—why?”
+“I don’t know. Yes, I do,” Dick said suddenly. “The Frog came to Miss
+Bennett last night and asked her to marry him, promising that he would
+save her brother if she agreed. But it can hardly be that he planned
+this diabolical trick to that end.”
+“To no other end,” said Broad coolly. “You don’t know Frog, Gordon! The
+man is a strategist—probably the greatest strategist in the world. Can
+I do anything?”
+“I would ask you to stay and keep Miss Bennett amused——” Dick began.
+“I think you might do worse,” said the American quietly.
+Ella looked up with a look of pain as the visitor entered the room. She
+felt that she could not endure the presence of a stranger at this
+moment, that she would break under any new strain, and she glanced at
+Dick imploringly.
+“If you don’t want me to stay, Miss Bennett,” smiled Broad, “well, I’ll
+go just as soon as you tell me. But I’ve one piece of information to
+pass to you, and it is this: that your brother will not die.”
+His eyes met Dick Gordon’s, and the Prosecutor bit his lip to restrain
+the cry that came involuntarily.
+“Why?” she asked eagerly, but neither of the men could tell her.
+Dick telephoned to the garage for his car, the very machine that Ray
+Bennett had driven the first day they had met. His first call was at the
+office of the Public Prosecutor, and to him he stated the facts.
+“It is a most remarkable story, and I can do nothing, of course. You’d
+better see the Secretary of State at once, Gordon.”
+“Is the House of Commons sitting, sir?”
+“No—I’ve an idea that the Secretary, who is the only man that can do
+anything for you—is out of town. He may be on the Continent. I’m not
+sure. There was a conference at San Remo last week, and I’ve a dim
+notion that he went there.”
+Dick’s heart almost stood still.
+“Is there nobody else at the Home Office who could help?”
+��There is the Under Secretary: you’d better see him.”
+The Public Prosecutor’s Department was housed in the Home Office
+building, and Dick went straight away in search of the responsible
+official. The permanent secretary, to whom he explained the
+circumstances, shook his head.
+“I’m afraid we can do nothing now, Gordon,” he said, “and the Secretary
+of State is in the country and very ill.”
+“Where is the Under Secretary?” asked Dick desperately.
+“He’s at San Remo.”
+“How far out of town is Mr. Whitby’s house?”
+The official considered.
+“About thirty miles—this side of Tunbridge Wells,” and Dick wrote the
+address on a slip of paper.
+Half an hour later, a long yellow Rolls was flying across Westminster
+Bridge, threading the traffic with a recklessness which brought the
+hearts of hardened chauffeurs to their mouths; and forty minutes after
+he had left Whitehall, Dick was speeding up an elm-bordered avenue to
+the home of the Secretary of State.
+The butler who met him could give him no encouragement.
+“I’m afraid Mr. Whitby cannot see you, sir. He has a very bad attack of
+gout, and the doctors have told him that he mustn’t touch any kind of
+business whatever.”
+“This is a matter of life and death,” said Dick, “and I must see him.
+Or, failing him, I must see the King.”
+This message, conveyed to the invalid, produced an invitation to walk
+upstairs.
+“What is it, sir?” asked the Minister sharply as Dick came in. “I cannot
+possibly attend to any business whatever. I’m suffering the tortures of
+the damned with this infernal foot of mine. Now tell me, what is it?”
+Quickly Gordon related his discovery.
+“An astounding story,” said the Minister, and winced. “Where is the
+picture?”
+“In London, sir.”
+“I can’t come to London: it is humanly impossible. Can’t you get
+somebody at the Home Office to certify this? When is this man to be
+hanged?”
+“To-morrow morning, sir, at eight o’clock.”
+The Secretary of State considered, rubbing his chin irritably.
+“I should be no man if I refused to see this damned picture,” he said,
+and Dick made allowance for his language as he rubbed his suffering
+limb. “But I can’t go to town unless you get me an ambulance. You had
+better ’phone a garage in London to send a car down, or, better still,
+get one from the local hospital.”
+Everything seemed to be conspiring against him, for the local hospital’s
+ambulance was under repair, but at last Dick put through a message to
+town, with the promise that an ambulance would be on its way in ten
+minutes.
+“An extraordinary story, a perfectly amazing story! And of course, I can
+grant you a respite. Or, if I’m convinced of the truth of this
+astounding romance, we could get the King to-night; I could even promise
+you a reprieve. But my death will lie at your door if I catch cold.”
+Two hours passed before the ambulance came. The chauffeur had had to
+change his tyres twice on the journey. Very gingerly, accompanied by
+furious imprecations from the Cabinet Minister, his stretcher was lifted
+into the ambulance.
+To Dick the journey seemed interminable. He had telephoned through to
+Silenski, asking him to keep his office open until his arrival. It was
+eight o’clock by the time the Minister was assisted up to the theatre,
+and the picture was thrown upon the screen.
+Mr. Whitby watched the drama with the keenest interest, and when it was
+finished he drew a long breath.
+“That’s all right so far as it goes,” he said, “but how do I know this
+hasn’t been play-acted in order to get this man a reprieve? And how am I
+to be sure that this wretched tramp _is_ your man?”
+“I can assure you of that, sir,” said Elk. “I got the photograph up from
+Gloucester this afternoon.”
+He produced from his pocket-book two photographs, one in profile and one
+full-face, and put them on the table before the Minister.
+“Show the picture again,” he ordered, and again they watched the
+presentation of the tragedy. “But how on earth did the man manage to
+take this picture?”
+“I’ve since discovered, sir, that he was in the neighbourhood on that
+very day. He went out to get a photograph of a badger—I know this, sir,
+because Mr. Silenski has given me all the information in his power.”
+Mr. Whitby looked up at Dick.
+“You’re in the Public Prosecutor’s Department? I remember you very well,
+Captain Gordon. I must take your word. This is not a matter for respite,
+but for reprieve, until the whole of the circumstances are
+investigated.”
+“Thank you, sir,” said Dick, wiping his streaming forehead.
+“You’d better take me along to the Home Office,” grumbled the great man.
+“To-morrow I shall be cursing your name and memory, though I must
+confess that I’m feeling better for the drive. I want that picture.”
+They had to wait until the picture was replaced in its box, and then
+Dick Gordon and Elk assisted the Secretary of State to the waiting
+ambulance.
+At a quarter-past eight, a reprieve, ready for the Royal
+counter-signature, was in Dick’s hand, and the miracle, which Mr. Whitby
+had not dared expect, had happened. He was able, with the aid of a
+stick, to hobble to a car. Before the great Palace, streams of carriages
+and motor-cars were passing. It was the night of the first ball of the
+season, and the hall of the Palace was a brilliant sight. The glitter of
+women’s jewels, the scarlet, blue and green of diplomatic uniforms, the
+flash of innumerable Orders, no less than the organization of this
+gorgeous gathering, interested Dick as he stood, a strangely contrasting
+figure, watching the pageant pass him.
+The Minister had disappeared into an ante-room and presently came back
+and crooked his finger; Dick followed him down a red-carpeted passage
+past white-haired footmen in scarlet and gold, until they came to a
+door, before which another footman stood. A whispered word, the footman
+knocked, and a voice bade them enter. The servant opened the door and
+they went in.
+The man who was sitting at the table rose. He wore the scarlet uniform
+of a general; across his breast was the blue ribbon of the Garter. There
+was in his eyes a kindliness and humanity which Dick had not imagined he
+would find.
+“Will you be seated? Now please tell me the story as quickly as you can,
+because I have an appointment elsewhere, and punctuality is the
+politeness of princes,” he smiled.
+He listened attentively, stopping Gordon now and again to ask a
+question. When Dick had finished, he took up a pen and wrote a word in a
+bold, boyish hand, blotted it punctiliously and handed it to the
+Secretary of State.
+“There is your reprieve. I am very glad,” he said, and Dick, bowing over
+the extended hand, felt the music of triumph in his soul, forgot for the
+moment the terrible danger in which this boy had stood; and forgot, too,
+the most important factor of all—the Frog, still vigilant, still
+vengeful, still powerful!
+When he got back to the Home Office and had taken farewell, with a very
+earnest expression of gratitude, of the irascible, but kindly Minister,
+Dick flew up the stairs to his own office and seized the telephone.
+“Put me through to Gloucester 8585 Official,” he said, and waited for
+the long-distance signal.
+It came after a few minutes.
+“Sorry, sir, no call through to Gloucester. Line out of order. Trunk
+wires cut.”
+Dick put down the ’phone slowly. Then it was that he remembered that the
+Frog still lived.
+CHAPTER XXXV
+GETTING THROUGH
+WHEN Elk came up to the Prosecutor’s room, Dick was sitting at the
+table, writing telegrams. They were each addressed to the Governor of
+Gloucester Prison, and contained a brief intimation that a reprieve for
+James Carter was on its way. Each was marked viâ a different route.
+“What’s the idea?” said Elk.
+“The ’phone to Gloucester is out of order,” said Dick, and Elk bit his
+lip thoughtfully.
+“Is that so?” he drawled. “Then if the ’phone’s out of order——”
+“I don’t want to think that,” said Dick.
+Elk took up the instrument.
+“Give me the Central Telegraph Office, miss,” he said. “I want to speak
+to the Chief Clerk. . . . Yes, Inspector Elk, C.I.D.”
+After a pause, he announced himself again.
+“We’re putting some wires through to Gloucester. I suppose the lines are
+all right?”
+His face did not move a muscle while he listened, then:
+“I see,” he said. “Any roundabout route we can get? What’s the nearest
+town open?” A wait. “Is that so? Thank you.”
+He put down the instrument.
+“All wires to Gloucester are cut. The trunk wire has been cut in three
+places; the connection with Birmingham, which runs in an earthenware
+pipe underground, has been blown up, also in three places.” Dick’s eyes
+narrowed.
+“Try the Radio Company,” he said. “They’ve got a station at Devizes, and
+another one somewhere near Cheltenham, and they could send on a
+message.”
+Again Elk applied himself to the telephone.
+“Is that the Radio Station? Inspector Elk, Headquarters Police,
+speaking. I want to get a message through to Gloucester, to Gloucester
+Prison, viâ—eh? . . . But I thought you’d overcome that difficulty. How
+long has it been jammed? . . . Thank you,” he said, and put down the
+telephone for the second time.
+“There’s a jam,” he said. “No messages are getting through. The radio
+people say that somebody in this country has got a secret apparatus
+which was used by the Germans during the war, and that when the jam is
+on, it is impossible to get anything through.”
+Dick looked at his watch. It was now half-past nine.
+“You can catch the ten-five for Gloucester, Elk, but somehow I don’t
+think it will get through.”
+“As a telephone expert,” said Elk, as he patiently applied himself to
+the instrument, “I have many of the qualities that make, so to speak,
+for greatness. Hullo! Get me Great Western, please. Great Western
+Stationmaster. . . . I have a perfect voice, a tremendous amount of
+patience, and a faith in my fellow-man, and—Hullo! Is that you,
+Stationmaster? . . . Inspector Elk. I told you that before—no, it was
+somebody else. Inspector Elk, C.I.D. Is there any trouble on your road
+to-night?” . . . A longer pause this time. “Glory be!” said Elk
+unemotionally. “Any chance of getting through? . . . None whatever? What
+time will you have trains running? . . . Thank you.”
+He turned to Dick.
+“Three culverts and a bridge down at Swindon, blown at seven o’clock;
+two men in custody; one man dead, shot by rail guard. Two culverts down
+at Reading; the metals blown up at Slough. I won’t trouble to call up
+the other roads, because—well, the Frog’s thorough.”
+Dick Gordon opened a cupboard and took out a leather coat and a soft
+leather helmet. In his drawer he found two ugly-looking Browning pistols
+and examined their magazines before he slipped them into his pocket.
+Then he selected half-a-dozen cigars, and packed them carefully in the
+breast pocket of the coat.
+“You’re not going alone, Gordon?” asked Elk sternly. Dick nodded.
+“I’m going alone,” he said. “If I don’t get through, you follow. Send a
+police car after me and tell them to drive carefully. I don’t think
+they’ll stop me this side of Newbury,” he said. “I can make that before
+the light goes. Tell Miss Bennett that the reprieve is signed, and that
+I am on my way.”
+Elk said nothing, but followed his chief into the street, and stood by
+him with the policeman who had been left in charge of the car, while
+Dick made a careful scrutiny of the tyres and petrol tank.
+So Dick Gordon took the Bath road; and the party of gunmen that waited
+at the two aerodromes of London to shoot him down if he attempted to
+leave by the aerial route, waited in vain. He avoided the direct road to
+Reading, and was taking the longer way round. He came into Newbury at
+eleven o’clock, and learnt of more dynamited culverts. The town was full
+of it. Two laden trains were held up on the down line, and their
+passengers thronged the old-fashioned streets of the town. Outside _The
+Chequers_ he spoke to the local inspector of police. Beyond the outrages
+they had heard nothing, and apparently the road was in good order, for a
+car had come through from Swindon only ten minutes before Dick arrived.
+“You’re safe as far as Swindon, anyway,” said the inspector. “The
+countryside has been swarming with tramps lately, but my mounted
+patrols, that have just come in, have seen none on the roads.”
+A thought struck Dick, and he drove the inspector round to the
+police-station and went inside with him.
+“I want an envelope and some official paper,” he said, and, sitting down
+at the desk, he made a rough copy of the reprieve with its quaint
+terminology, sealed the envelope with wax and put it into his pocket.
+Then he took the real reprieve, and, taking off his shoe and sock, put
+it between his bare foot and his sock. Replacing his shoe, he jumped on
+to the car and started his cautious way toward Didcot. Both his glare
+lamps were on, and the road before him was as light as day.
+Nevertheless, he went at half speed, one of his Brownings on the cushion
+beside him.
+Against the afterglow of the sunset, a faint, pale light which is the
+glory of late summer, he saw three inverted V’s and knew they were the
+ends of a building, possibly an aerodrome. And then he remembered that
+Elk had told him of the chemical factory. Probably this was the place,
+and he drove with greater caution. He had turned the bend, when, ahead
+of him, he saw three red lights stretched across the road, and in the
+light of the head-lamps stood a policeman. He slowed the machine and
+stopped within a few yards of the officer.
+“You can’t go this way, sir. The road’s up.”
+“How long has it been up?” asked Dick.
+“It’s been blown up, sir, about twenty minutes ago,” was the reply.
+“There’s a side road a mile back, which will bring you to the other side
+of the railway lines. You can back in here.” He indicated a gateway
+evidently leading to the factory. Dick pulled back his lever to the
+reverse, and sent the Rolls spinning backward into the opening. His hand
+was reaching to change the direction, when the policeman, who had walked
+to the side of the car, struck at him.
+Gordon’s head was bent. He was incapable of resistance. Only the helmet
+he wore saved him from death. He saw nothing, only suddenly the world
+went black. Scarcely had the blow been struck when half-a-dozen men came
+from the shadows. Somebody jumped into the driver’s seat, and, flinging
+out the limp figure of its owner, brought the car still further
+backward, and switched off the lights. Another of the party removed the
+red lamps. The policeman bent over the prostrate figure of Dick Gordon.
+“I thought I’d settled him,” he said, disappointed.
+“Well, settle him now,” said somebody in the darkness, but evidently the
+assailant changed his mind.
+“Hagn will want him,” he said. “Lift him up.”
+They carried the inanimate figure over the rough ground, through a
+sliding door, into a big, ill-lit factory hall, bare of machinery. At
+the far end was a brick partition forming an office, and into this he
+was carried and flung on the floor.
+“Here’s your man, Hagn,” growled the policeman. “I think he’s through.”
+Hagn got up from his table and walked across to where Dick Gordon lay.
+“I don’t think there’s much wrong with him,” he said. “You couldn’t kill
+a man through that helmet, anyway. Take it off.”
+They took the leather helmet from the head of the unconscious man, and
+Hagn made a brief inspection.
+“No, he’s all right,” he said. “Throw some water over him. Wait; you’d
+better search him first. Those cigars,” he said, pointing to the brown
+cylinders that protruded from his breast pocket, “I want.”
+The first thing found was the blue envelope, and this Hagn tore open and
+read.
+“It seems all right,” he said, and locked it away in the roll-top desk
+at which he was sitting when Dick had been brought in. “Now give him the
+water!”
+Dick came to his senses with a throbbing head and a feeling of
+resentment against the consciousness which was being forced upon him. He
+sat up, rubbing his face like a man roused from a heavy sleep, screwed
+up his eyes in the face of the bright light, and unsteadily stumbled to
+his feet, looking around from one to the other of the grinning faces.
+“Oh!” he said at last. “I seem to have struck it. Who hit me?”
+“We’ll give you his card presently,” sneered Hagn. “Where are you off to
+at this time of night?”
+“I’m going to Gloucester,” said Dick.
+“Like hell you are!” scoffed Hagn. “Put him upstairs, boys.”
+Leading up from the office was a flight of unpainted pine stairs, and up
+this he was partly pushed and partly dragged. The room above had been
+used in war time as an additional supervisor’s office. It had a large
+window, commanding a view of the whole of the floor space. The window
+was now thick with grime, and the floor littered with rubbish which the
+present occupants had not thought it worth while to move.
+“Search him again, and make sure he hasn’t any gun on him. And take away
+his boots,” said Hagn.
+A small carbon filament lamp cast a sickly yellow light upon the
+sinister group that surrounded Dick Gordon. He had time to take his
+bearings. The window he had seen, and escape that way was impossible;
+the ceiling was covered with matchboards that had once been varnished.
+There was no other way out, save down the steps.
+“You’ve got to stay here for a day or two, Gordon, but perhaps, if the
+Government will give us Balder, you’ll get away with your life. If they
+don’t, then it’ll be a case of ‘good-night, nurse!’”
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+THE POWER CABLE
+DICK GORDON knew that any discussion with his captors was a waste of
+breath, and that repartee was profitless. His head was aching, but no
+sooner was he left alone than he gave himself a treatment which an
+osteopath had taught him. He put his chin on his breast, and his two
+open hands behind his neck, the finger-tips pressing hard, then he
+slowly raised his head (it was an agony to do so), bringing his fingers
+down over the jugular. Three times repeated, his head was comparatively
+clear.
+The door was of thin wood and could easily be forced, but the room below
+was filled with men. Presently the light below went out, and the place
+was in darkness. He guessed that it was because Hagn did not wish the
+light to be seen from the road; though it was unlikely that there would
+come any inquiries, he had taken effective steps to deal with the police
+car which he knew would follow.
+They had not taken his matches away, and Dick struck one and looked
+round. Standing before a fireplace filled with an indescribable litter
+of half-burnt papers and dust, was a steel plate, with holes for rivets,
+evidently part of a tank which had not been assembled. There was a heavy
+switch on the wall, and Dick turned it, hoping that it controlled the
+light; but apparently that was on the same circuit as the light below.
+He struck another match and followed the casing of the switch. By and by
+he saw a thick black cable running in the angle of the wall and the
+ceiling. It terminated abruptly on the right of the fireplace; and from
+the marks on the floor, Dick guessed that at some time or other there
+had been an experimental welding plant housed there. He turned the
+switch again and sat down to consider what would be the best thing to
+do. He could hear the murmur of voices below, and, lying on the floor,
+put his ear to the trap, which he cleared with a piece of wire he found
+in the fireplace. Hagn seemed to do most of the talking.
+“If we blow up the road between here and Newbury, they’ll smell a rat,”
+he said.
+“It’s a stupid idea you put forward, Hagn. What are you going to do with
+the chap upstairs?”
+“I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear from Frog. Perhaps the Frog will want
+him killed.”
+“He’d be a good man to hold for Balder, though, if Frog thought it was
+worth while.”
+Towards five o’clock, Hagn, who had been out of the office, came back.
+“Frog says he’s got to die,” he said in a low voice.
+*    *    *    *    *    *
+Two people sat in Dick Gordon’s study. The hour was four o’clock in the
+morning. Elk had gone, for the twentieth time, to Headquarters, and for
+the twentieth time was on his way back. Ella Bennett had tried
+desperately hard to carry out Dick’s instructions, and turned page after
+page determinedly, but had read and yet had seen nothing. With a deep
+sigh she put down the book and clasped her hands, her eyes fixed upon
+the clock.
+“Do you think he will get to Gloucester?” she asked.
+“I certainly do,” said Broad confidently. “That young man will get
+anywhere. He is the right kind and the right type, and nothing is going
+to hold him.”
+She picked up the book but did not look at its printed page.
+“What happened to the police cars? Mr. Elk was telling me a lot about
+them last night,” she said. “I haven’t heard since.”
+Joshua Broad licked his dry lips.
+“Oh, they got through all right,” he said vaguely.
+He did not tell her that two police cars had been ditched between
+Newbury and Reading, the cars smashed and three men injured by a mine
+which had been sprung under them. Nor did he give her the news, that had
+arrived by motor-cyclist from Swindon, that Dick’s car had not been
+seen.
+“They are dreadful people, dreadful!” She shivered. “How did they come
+into existence, Mr. Broad?”
+Broad was smoking (at her request) a long, thin cigar, and he puffed for
+a long time before he spoke.
+“I guess I’m the father of the Frogs,” he said to her amazement.
+“You!”
+He nodded.
+“I didn’t know I was producing this outfit, but there it is.” How, he
+did not seem disposed to explain at that moment.
+Soon he heard the whirr of the bell, and thinking that Elk had perhaps
+forgotten the key, he rose, and, going along the passage, opened the
+door. It was not Elk.
+“Forgive me for calling. Is that Mr. Broad?” The visitor peered forward
+in the darkness.
+“I’m Broad all right. You’re Mr. Johnson, aren’t you? Come right in, Mr.
+Johnson.”
+He closed the door behind him and turned on the light. The stout man was
+in a state of pitiable agitation.
+“I was up late last night,” he said, “and my servant brought me an early
+copy of the _Post Herald_.
+“So you know, eh?”
+“It’s terrible, terrible! I can’t believe it!”
+He took a crumpled paper from his pocket and looked at the stop-press
+space as though to reassure himself.
+“I didn’t know it was in the paper.”
+Johnson handed the newspaper to the American.
+“Yes, they’ve got it. I suppose old man Whitby must have given away the
+story.”
+“I think it came from the picture man, Silenski. Is it true that Ray is
+under sentence of death?”
+Broad nodded.
+“How dreadful!” said Johnson in a hushed voice. “Thank God they’ve found
+it out in time! Mr. Broad,” he said earnestly, “I hope you will tell
+Ella Bennett that she can rely on me for every penny I possess to
+establish her brother’s innocence. I suppose there will be a respite and
+a new trial? If there is, the very best lawyers must be employed.”
+“She’s here. Won’t you come in and see her?”
+“Here?” Johnson’s jaw dropped. “I had no idea,” he stammered.
+“Come in.”
+Broad returned to the girl.
+“Here is a friend of yours who has turned up—Mr. Johnson.”
+The philosopher crossed the room with quick, nervous strides, and held
+out both his hands to the girl.
+“I’m so sorry, Miss Bennett,” he said, “so very, very sorry! It must be
+dreadful for you, dreadful! Can I do anything?”
+She shook her head, tears of gratitude in her eyes.
+“It is very sweet of you, Mr. Johnson. You’ve done so much for Ray, and
+Inspector Elk was telling me that you had offered him a position in your
+office.”
+Johnson shook his head.
+“It is nothing. I’m very fond of Ray, and he really has splendid
+capabilities. Once we get him out of this mess, I’ll put him on his feet
+again. Your father doesn’t know? Thank God for that!”
+“I wish this news hadn’t got into the papers,” she said, when he told
+her how he had learnt of the happening.
+“Silenski, of course,” said Broad. “A motion picture publicity man would
+use his own funeral to get a free par. How are you feeling in your new
+position, Johnson?” he asked, to distract the girl’s mind from the
+tragic thoughts which were oppressing her.
+Johnson smiled.
+“I’m bewildered. I can’t understand why poor Mr. Maitland did this. But
+I had my first Frog warning to-day; I feel almost important,” he said.
+From a worn pocket-case he extracted a sheet of paper. It contained only
+three words;
+“You are next!”
+and bore the familiar sign manual of the Frog.
+“I don’t know what harm I have done to these people, but I presume that
+it is something fairly bad, for within ten minutes of getting this note,
+the porter brought me my afternoon tea. I took one sip and it tasted so
+bitter that I washed my mouth out with a disinfectant.”
+“When was this?”
+“Yesterday,” said Johnson. “This morning I had the analysis—I had the
+tea bottled and sent off at once to an analytical chemist. It contained
+enough hydrocyanic acid to kill a hundred people. The chemist cannot
+understand how I could have taken the sip I did without very serious
+consequences. I am going to put the matter in the hands of the police
+to-day.”
+The front door opened, and Elk came in.
+“What is the news?” asked the girl eagerly, rising to meet him.
+“Fine!” said Elk. “You needn’t worry at all, Miss Bennett. That Gordon
+man can certainly move. I guess he’s in Gloucester by now, sleeping in
+the best bed in the city.”
+“But do you _know_ he’s in Gloucester?” she asked stubbornly.
+“I’ve had no exact news, but I can tell you this, that we’ve had no bad
+news,” said Elk; “and when there’s no news, you can bet that things are
+going according to schedule.”
+“How did you hear about it, Johnson?”
+The new millionaire explained.
+“I ought to have pulled in Silenski and his operator,” said Elk
+thoughtfully. “These motion picture men lack reticence. And how does it
+feel to be rich, Johnson?” he asked.
+“Mr. Johnson doesn’t think it feels too good,” said Broad. “He has
+attracted the attention of old man Frog.”
+Elk examined the warning carefully.
+“When did this come?”
+“I found it on my desk yesterday morning,” said Johnson, and told him of
+the tea incident. “Do you think, Mr. Elk, you will ever put your hand on
+the Frog?”
+“I’m as certain as that I’m standing here, that Frog will go the
+way——” Elk checked himself, and fortunately the girl was not
+listening.
+It was getting light when Johnson left, and Elk walked with him to the
+door and watched him passing down the deserted street.
+“There’s a lot about that boy I like,” he said; “and he’s certainly
+fortunate. Why the old man didn’t leave his money to that baby of
+his——”
+“Did you ever find the baby?” interrupted Broad.
+“No, sir, there was no sign of that innocent child in the house. That’s
+another Frog mystery to be cleared up.”
+Johnson had reached the corner, and they saw him crossing the road, when
+a man came out of the shadow to meet him. There was a brief parley, and
+then Elk saw the flash of a pistol, and heard a shot. Johnson staggered
+back, and his opponent, turning, fled. In a second Elk was flying along
+the street. Apparently the philosopher was not hurt, though he seemed
+shaken.
+The inspector ran round the corner, but the assassin had disappeared. He
+returned to the philosopher, to find him sitting on the edge of the
+pavement, and at first he thought he had been wounded.
+“No, I think I just had a shock,” gasped Johnson. “I was quite
+unprepared for that method of attack.”
+“What happened?” asked Elk.
+“I can hardly realize,” said the other, who appeared dazed. “I was
+crossing the road when a man came up and asked me if my name was
+Johnson; then, before I knew what had happened, he had fired.”
+His coat was singed by the flame of the shot, but the bullet must have
+gone wide. Later in the day, Elk found it embedded in the brickwork of a
+house.
+“No, no, I won’t come back,” said Johnson. “I don’t suppose they’ll
+repeat the attempt.”
+By this time one of the two detectives who had been guarding Harley
+Terrace had come up, and under his escort Johnson was sent home.
+“They’re certainly the busiest little fellows,” said Elk, shaking his
+head. “You’d think they’d be satisfied with the work they were doing at
+Gloucester, without running sidelines.”
+Joshua Broad was silent until they were going up the steps of the house.
+“When you know as much about the Frog as I know, you’ll be surprised at
+nothing,” he said, and did not add to this cryptic remark.
+Six o’clock came, and there was no further news from the west. Seven
+o’clock, and the girl’s condition became pitiable. She had borne herself
+throughout the night with a courage that excited the admiration of the
+men; but now, as the hour was drawing close, she seemed on the verge of
+collapse. At half-past seven the telephone bell rang, and Elk answered.
+It was the Chief of Police at Newbury speaking.
+“Captain Gordon left Didcot an hour ago,” was the message.
+“Didcot!” gasped Elk in consternation. He looked at the clock. “An hour
+ago—and he had to make Gloucester in sixty minutes!”
+The girl, who had been in the dining-room trying to take coffee which
+Gordon’s servant had prepared, came into the study, and Elk dared not
+continue the conversation.
+“All right,” he said loudly, and smashed down the receiver.
+“What is the news, Mr. Elk?” The girl’s voice was a wail.
+“The news,” said Elk, twisting his face into a smile, “is fine!”
+“What do they say?” she persisted.
+“Oh, them?” said Elk, looking at the telephone. “That was a friend of
+mine, asking me if I’d dine with him to-night.”
+She went back to the dining-room, only half-satisfied, and Elk called
+the American to him.
+“Go and get a doctor,” he said in a low voice, “and tell him to bring
+something that’ll put this young lady to sleep for twelve hours.”
+“Why?” asked Broad. “Is the news bad?”
+Elk nodded.
+“There isn’t a chance of saving this boy—not the ghost of a chance!” he
+said.
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+THE GET-AWAY
+DICK, with his ear to the floor, heard the words “Frog says he’s got to
+die,” and his cracked lips parted in a grin.
+“Have you heard him moving about?” asked Hagn.
+“No, he’s asleep, I expect,” said another voice. “We shall have to wait
+for light. We can’t do it in the dark. We shall be killing one another.”
+This view commended itself to most of the men present. Dick counted six
+voices. He struck a match for another survey, and again his eye fell
+upon the cable. And then an inspiration came to him. Moving stealthily
+across the floor, he reached up, and, gripping the cable, pulled on it
+steadily. Under his weight, the supporting insulator broke loose. By
+great good luck it fell upon the heap of rubbish in the fireplace and
+made no sound. For the next half-hour he worked feverishly, unwrapping
+the rubber insulation from the wires of the cable, pulling the copper
+strands free. His hands were bleeding, his nails broken; but after
+half-an-hour’s hard work, he had the end of the cable frayed. The door
+opened outward, he remembered with satisfaction, and, lifting the steel
+plate, he laid it tight against the door, so that whoever entered must
+step upon it. Then he began to fasten the frayed copper wires of the
+cable to the rivet holes; and he had hardly finished his work before he
+heard a stealthy sound on the stairs.
+Day had come now, and light was streaming through the glass roof of the
+factory. He heard a faint whisper, and even as faint a click, as the
+bolts of the door were pulled; and, creeping to the switch, he turned it
+down.
+The door was jerked open, and a man stepped upon the plate. Before his
+scream could warn him who followed the second of the party had been
+flung senseless to the floor.
+“What the devil’s wrong?” It was Hagn’s voice. He came running up the
+stairs, put one foot on the electric plate, and stood for the space of a
+second motionless. Then, with a gasping sob, he fell backward, and Dick
+heard the crash as he struck the stairs.
+He did not wait any longer. Jumping over the plate, he leapt down the
+stairs, treading underfoot the senseless figure of Hagn. The little
+office was empty. On the table lay one of his pistols. He gripped it,
+and fled along the bare factory hall, through a door into the open. He
+heard a shout, and, looking round, saw two of the party coming at him,
+and, raising his pistol, he pressed the trigger. There was a click—Hagn
+had emptied the magazine.
+A Browning is an excellent weapon even if it is not loaded, and Dick
+Gordon brought the barrel down with smashing force upon the head of the
+man who tried to grapple with him. Then he turned and ran.
+He had made a mistake when he thought there were only six men in the
+building; there must have been twenty, and most of them were in full
+cry.
+He tried to reach the road, and was separated only by a line of bushes.
+But here he blundered. The bushes concealed a barbed wire fence, and he
+had to run along uneven ground, and in his stockinged feet the effort
+was painful. His slow progress enabled his pursuers to get ahead.
+Doubling back, Dick flew for the second of the three buildings, and as
+he ran, he took out the magazine of his pistol. As he feared, it was
+empty.
+Now they were on him. He could hear the leading man’s breath, and he
+himself was nearly spent. And then, before him, he saw a round
+fire-alarm, fixed to the wall, and in a flash the memory of an almost
+forgotten conversation came back to him. With his bare hands he smashed
+the glass and tugged at the alarm, and at that minute they were on him.
+He fought desperately, but against their numbers resistance was almost
+useless. He must gain time.
+“Get up, you fellows!” he shouted. “Hagn’s dead.”
+It was an unfortunate statement, for Hagn came out of the next building
+at that moment, very shaken but very alive. He was livid with rage, and
+babbled in some language which Dick did not know, but which he guessed
+was Swedish.
+“I’ll fix you for that. You shall try electric shock yourself, you dog!”
+He drove his fist at the prisoner’s face, but Dick twisted his head and
+the blow struck the brickwork of the building against which he stood.
+With a scream, the man leapt at him, clawing and tearing with open
+hands, and this was Dick’s salvation. For the men who were gripping his
+arms released their hold, that their chief might have freer play. Dick
+struck out, hitting scientifically for the body, and with a yell Hagn
+collapsed. Before they could stop him, Gordon was away like the wind,
+this time making for the gate.
+He had reached it when the hand of the nearest man fell on him. He flung
+him aside and staggered into the roadway, and then, from down the
+straight road, came the clang of bells, a glitter of brass and a touch
+of crimson. A motor fire-engine was coming at full speed.
+For a moment the men grouped about the gate stared at this intervention.
+Then, without taking any further notice of their quarry, they turned and
+ran. A word to the fire chief explained the situation. Another engine
+was coming, at breakneck speed, and firemen were men for whom Frogs had
+no terror.
+Whilst Hagn was being carried to one of the waiting wagons, Dick looked
+at his watch; it was six o’clock. He went in search of his car, fearing
+the worst. Hagn, however, had made no attempt to put the car out of
+gear; probably he had some plan for using it himself. Three minutes
+later, Dick, dishevelled, grimy, bearing the marks of Hagn’s talons upon
+his face, swung out into the road and set the bonnet of the car for
+Gloucester. He could not have gone faster even had he known that his
+watch was stopped.
+Through Swindon at breakneck speed, and he was on the Gloucester Road.
+He looked at his watch again. The hands still pointed to six, and he
+gave a gasp. He was going all out now, but the road was bad, full of
+windings, and once he was nearly thrown out of the car when he struck a
+ridge on the road.
+A tyre burst, and he almost swerved into the hedge, but he got her nose
+straight again and continued on a flat tyre. It brought his speed down
+appreciably, and he grew hot and cold, as mile after mile of the road
+flashed past without a sign of the town.
+And then, with Gloucester Cathedral showing its spires above the hill, a
+second tyre exploded. He could not stop: he must go on, if he had to run
+in to Gloucester on the rims. And now the pace was painfully slow in
+comparison with that frantic rush which had carried him through
+Berkshire and Wiltshire to the edge of Somerset.
+He was entering the straggling suburbs of the town. The roads were
+terrible; he was held up by a street car, but, disregarding a
+policeman’s warning, flew past almost under the wheels of a great
+traction engine. And now he saw the time—two minutes to eight, and the
+gaol was half a mile farther on. He set his teeth and prayed.
+As he turned into the main street, with the gaol gates before him, the
+clocks of the cathedral struck eight, and to Dick Gordon they were the
+notes of doom.
+They would delay the carrying out of the death penalty for nothing short
+of the reprieve he carried. Punctually to the second, Ray Bennett would
+die. The agony of that moment was a memory that turned him grey. He
+brought the bumping car to a halt before the prison gates and staggered
+to the bell. Twice he pulled, but the gates remained closed. Dick pulled
+off his sock and found the soddened reprieve, streaky with blood, for
+his feet were bleeding. Again he rang with the fury of despair. Then a
+little wicket opened and the dark face of a warder appeared.
+“You’re not allowed in,” he said curtly. “You know what is happening
+here.”
+“Home Office,” said Dick thickly, “Home Office messenger. I have a
+reprieve!”
+The wicket closed, and, after an eternity, the lock turned and the heavy
+door opened.
+“I’m Captain Gordon,” gasped Dick, “from the Public Prosecutor’s office,
+and I carry a reprieve for James Carter.”
+The warder shook his head.
+“The execution took place five minutes ago, sir,” he said.
+“But the Cathedral clock!” gasped Dick.
+“The Cathedral clock is four minutes slow,” said the warder. “I am
+afraid Carter is dead.”
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+THE MYSTERY MAN
+RAY BENNETT woke from a refreshing sleep and sat up in bed. One of the
+warders, who had watched him all night, got up and came over.
+“Do you want your clothes. Carter?” he said. “The Governor thought you
+wouldn’t care to wear those old things of yours.”
+“And he was right,” said the grateful Ray. “This looks a good suit,” he
+said as he pulled on the trousers.
+The warder coughed.
+“Yes, it’s a good suit,” he agreed.
+He did not say more, but something in his demeanour betrayed the truth.
+These were the clothes in which some man had been hanged, and yet Ray’s
+hands did not shake as he fixed the webbed braces which held them. Poor
+clothes, to do duty on two such dismal occasions! He hoped they would be
+spared the indignity of a third experience.
+They brought him his breakfast at six o’clock. Yet once more his eyes
+strayed toward the writing-pad, and then, with breakfast over, came the
+chaplain, a quiet man in minister’s garb, strength in every line of his
+mobile face. They talked awhile, and then the warder suggested that Ray
+should go to take exercise in the paved yard outside. He was glad of the
+privilege. He wanted once more to look upon the blue sky, to draw into
+his lungs the balm of God’s air.
+Yet he knew that it was not a disinterested kindness, and well guessed
+why this privilege had been afforded to him, as he walked slowly round
+the exercise yard, arm in arm with the clergyman. He knew now what lay
+behind the third door. They were going to try the trap in the death
+house, and they wished to spare his feelings.
+In half an hour he was back in the cell.
+“Do you want to make any confession. Carter? Is that your name?”
+“No, it is not my name, sir,” said Ray quietly, “but that doesn’t
+matter.”
+“Did you kill this man?”
+“I don’t know,” said Ray. “I wanted to kill him, and therefore it is
+likely that I did.”
+At ten minutes to eight came the Governor to shake hands, and with him
+the Sheriff. The clock in the prison hall moved slowly, inexorably
+forward. Through the open door of the cell Ray could see it, and,
+knowing this, the Governor closed the door, for it was one minute to
+eight, and it would soon open again. Ray saw the door move. For a second
+his self-possession deserted him, and he turned his back to the man who
+came with a quick step, and, gripping his hands, strapped them.
+“God forgive me! God forgive me!” murmured somebody behind him, and at
+the sound of that voice Ray spun round and faced the executioner.
+The hangman was John Bennett!
+Father and son, executioner and convicted murderer soon to be launched
+to death, they faced one another, and then, in a voice that was almost
+inaudible, John Bennett breathed the word:
+“Ray!”
+Ray nodded. It was strange that, in that moment, his mind was going back
+over the mysterious errands of his father, his hatred of the job into
+which circumstances had forced him.
+“Ray!” breathed the man again.
+“Do you know this man?” It was the Governor, and his voice was shaking
+with emotion.
+John Bennett turned.
+“He is my son,” he said, and with a quick pull loosed the strap.
+“You must go on with this, Bennett.” The Governor’s voice was stern and
+terrible.
+“Go on with it?” repeated John Bennett mechanically. “Go on with this?
+Kill my own son? Are you mad? Do you think I am mad?” He took the boy in
+his arms, his cheek against the hairy face. “My boy! Oh, my boy!” he
+said, and smoothed his hair as he had done in the days when Ray was a
+child. Then, recovering himself instantly, he thrust the boy through the
+open door into the death chamber, followed him and slammed the door,
+bolting it.
+There was no other doorway except that, to which he had the key, and
+this he thrust into the lock that it might not be opened from the other
+side. Ray looked at the bare chamber, the dangling yellow rope, the
+marks of the trap, and fell back against the wall, his eyes shut,
+shivering. Then, standing in the middle of the trap, John Bennett hacked
+the rope until it was severed, hacked it in pieces as it lay on the
+floor. Then:
+_Crack, crash!_
+The two traps dropped, and into the yawning gap he flung the cut rope.
+“Father!”
+Ray was staring at him; oblivious to the thunderous blows which were
+being rained on the door, the old man came towards him, took the boy’s
+face between his hands and kissed him.
+“Will you forgive me, Ray?” he asked brokenly. “I had to do this. I was
+forced to do it. I starved before I did it. I came once . . . out of
+curiosity to help the executioner—a broken-down doctor, who had taken
+on the work. And he was ill . . . I hanged the murderer. I had just come
+from the medical school. It didn’t seem so dreadful to me then. I tried
+to find some other way of making money, and lived in dread all my life
+that somebody would point his finger at me, and say: ‘There goes Benn,
+the executioner.’”
+“Benn, the executioner!” said Ray wonderingly. “Are you Benn?”
+The old man nodded.
+“Benn, come out! I give you my word of honour that I will postpone the
+execution until to-morrow. You can’t stay there.”
+John Bennett looked round at the grating, then up to the cut rope. The
+execution could not proceed. Such was the routine of death that the rope
+must be expressly issued from the headquarter gaol. No other rope would
+serve. All the paraphernalia of execution, down to the piece of chalk
+that marks the “T” on the trap where a man must put his feet, must be
+punctiliously forwarded from prison headquarters, and as punctiliously
+returned.
+John shot back the bolts, opened the door and stepped out.
+The faces of the men in the condemned cell were ghastly. The Governor’s
+was white and drawn, the prison doctor seemed to have shrunk, and the
+Sheriff sat on the bed, his face hidden in his hands.
+“I will telegraph to London and tell them the circumstances,” said the
+Governor. “I’m not condemning you for what you’re doing, Benn. It would
+be monstrous to expect you to have done—this thing.”
+A warder came along the corridor and through the door of the cell. And
+behind him, entering the prison by virtue of his authority, a
+dishevelled, dust-stained, limping figure, his face scratched, streaks
+of dried blood on his face, his eyes red with weariness. For a second
+John Bennett did not recognize him, and then:
+“A reprieve, by the King’s own hand,” said Dick Gordon unsteadily, and
+handed the stained envelope to the Governor.
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+THE AWAKENING
+THROUGHOUT the night Ella Bennett lay, half waking, half sleeping. She
+remembered the doctor coming; she remembered Elk’s urgent request that
+she should drink the draught he had prepared; and though she had
+suspected its nature and at first had fought against drinking that
+milky-white potion, she had at last succumbed, and had lain down on the
+sofa, determined that she would not sleep until she knew the worst or
+the best. She was exhausted with the mental fight she had put up to
+preserve her sanity, and then she had dozed.
+She was dimly conscious, as she came back to understanding, that she was
+lying on a bed, and that somebody had taken off her shoes and loosened
+her hair. With a tremendous effort she opened her eyes and saw a woman,
+sitting by a window, reading. The room was intensely masculine; it smelt
+faintly of smoke.
+“Dick’s bed,” she muttered, and the woman put down her book and got up.
+Ella looked at her, puzzled. Why did she wear those white bands about
+her hair, and that butcher-blue wrapper and the white cuffs? She was a
+nurse, of course. Satisfied with having solved that problem, Ella closed
+her eyes and went back again into the land of dreams.
+She woke again. The woman was still there, but this time the girl’s mind
+was in order.
+“What time is it?” she asked.
+The nurse came over with a glass of water, and Ella drank greedily.
+“It is seven o’clock,” she said.
+“Seven!” The girl shivered, and then, with a cry, tried to rise. “It is
+evening!” she gasped. “Oh, what happened?”
+“Your father is downstairs, miss,” said the nurse. “I’ll call him.”
+“Father—here?” She frowned. “Is there any other news?”
+“Mr. Gordon is downstairs too, miss, and Mr. Johnson.”
+The woman was faithfully carrying out the instructions which had been
+given to her.
+“Nobody—else?” asked Ella in a whisper.
+“No, miss, the other gentleman is coming to-morrow or the next day—your
+brother, I mean.”
+With a sob the girl buried her face in the pillow.
+“You are not telling the truth!”
+“Oh yes, I am,” said the woman, and there was something in her laugh
+which made Ella look up.
+The nurse went out of the room and was gone a little while. Presently
+the door opened, and John Bennett came in. Instantly she was in his
+arms, sobbing her joy.
+“It is true, it is true, daddy?”
+“Yes, my love, it is true,” said Bennett. “Ray will be here to-morrow.
+There are some formalities to be gone through; they can’t secure a
+release immediately, as they do in story-books. We are discussing his
+future. Oh, my girl, my poor girl!”
+“When did you know, daddy?”
+“I knew this morning,” said her father quietly.
+“Were you—were you dreadfully hurt?” she asked.
+He nodded.
+“Johnson wants to give Ray the management of Maitlands Consolidated,” he
+said. “It would be a splendid thing for Ray. Ella, our boy has changed.”
+“Have you seen him?” she asked in surprise.
+“Yes, I saw him this morning.”
+She thought it was natural that her father should have seen him, and did
+not question him as to how he managed to get behind the jealously
+guarded doors of the prison.
+“I don’t think Ray will accept Johnson’s offer,” he said. “If I know him
+as he is now, I am sure he will not accept. He will not take any
+ready-made position; he wants to work for himself. He is coming back to
+us, Ella.”
+She wanted to ask him something, but feared to hurt him.
+“Daddy, when Ray comes back,” she said after a long silence, “will it be
+possible for you to leave this—this work you hate so much?”
+“I have left it, dear,” he replied quietly. “Never again—never
+again—never again, thank God!”
+She did not see his face, but she felt the tremor that passed through
+the frame of the man who held her.
+Downstairs, the study was blue with smoke. Dick Gordon, conspicuously
+bandaged about the head, something of his good looks spoiled by three
+latitudinal scratches which ran down his face, sat in his dressing-gown
+and slippers, a big pipe clenched between his teeth, the picture of
+battered contentment.
+“Very good of you, Johnson,” he said. “I wonder whether Bennett will
+take your offer. Honestly, do you think he’s competent to act as the
+manager of this enormous business?”
+Johnson looked dubious.
+“He was a clerk at Maitlands. You can have no knowledge of his
+administrative qualities. Aren’t you being just a little too generous?”
+“I don’t know. Perhaps I am,” said Johnson quietly. “I naturally want to
+help. There may be other positions less important, and perhaps, as you
+say, Ray might not care to take any quite as responsible.”
+“I’m sure he won’t,” said Dick decidedly.
+“It seems to me,” said Elk, “that the biggest job of all is to get young
+Bennett out of the clutches of the Frogs. Once a Frog, always a Frog,
+and this old man is not going to sit down and take his beating like a
+little gentleman. We had a proof of that yesterday morning. They shot at
+Johnson in this very street.”
+Dick took out his pipe, sent a cloud of blue smoke toward the haze that
+lay on the room.
+“The Frog is finished,” he said. “The only question now is, what is the
+best and most effective way to make an end? Balder is caught; Hagn is in
+gaol; Lew Brady, who was one of their most helpful agents, though he did
+not hold any executive position—Lew is dead; Lola——”
+“Lola is through.” It was the American who spoke. “She left this morning
+for the United States, and I took the liberty of facilitating her
+passage—there remains Frog himself, and the organization which Frog
+controls. Catch him, and you’ve finished with the gang.”
+John Bennett came back at that moment, and the conversation took another
+turn; soon after, Joshua Broad and Johnson went away together.
+“You have not told Ella anything, Mr. Bennett?”
+“About myself?—no. Is it necessary?”
+“I hope you will not think so,” said Dick quietly. “Let that remain your
+own secret, and Ray’s secret. It has been known to me for a very long
+time. The day Elk told me he had seen you coming from King’s Cross
+station, and that a burglary had been committed, I saw in the newspapers
+that a man had been executed in York Prison. And then I took the trouble
+to look up the files of the newspapers, and I found that your absences
+had certainly coincided with burglaries—and there are so many
+burglaries in England in the course of a year that it would have been
+remarkable if they had not coincided—there were also other
+coincidences. On the day the murder was committed at Ibbley Copse, you
+were in Gloucester, and on that day Waldsen, the Hereford murderer, was
+executed.”
+John Bennett hung his head.
+“You knew, and yet . . .” he hesitated.
+Dick nodded.
+“I knew none of the circumstances which drove you to this dreadful
+business, Mr. Bennett,” he said gently. “To me you are an officer of the
+law—no more and no less terrible than I, who have helped send many men
+to the scaffold. No more unclean than the judge who sentences them and
+signs the warrant for their death. We are instruments of Order.”
+Ella and her father stayed that night at Harley Terrace, and in the
+morning drove down to Paddington Station to meet the boy. Neither Dick
+nor Elk accompanied them.
+“There are two things which strike me as remarkable,” said Elk. “One is,
+that neither you nor I recognized Bennett.”
+“Why should we?” asked Dick. “Neither you nor I attend executions, and
+the identity of the hangman has always been more or less unknown except
+to a very few people. If he cares to advertise himself, he is known.
+Bennett shrank from publicity, avoided even the stations of the towns
+where the executions took place, and usually alighted at some wayside
+village and tramped into the town on foot. The chief warder at
+Gloucester told me that he never arrived at the gaol until midnight
+before an execution. Nobody saw him come or go.”
+“Old man Maitland must have recognized him.”
+“He did,” nodded Dick. “At some period Maitland was in gaol, and it is
+possible for prisoners, especially privileged prisoners, to catch a
+glimpse of the hangman. By ‘privileged prisoners’ I mean men who, by
+reason of their good conduct, were allowed to move about the gaol
+freely. Maitland told Miss Bennett that he had been in ‘quod,’ and I am
+certain that that is the true explanation. All Bennett’s official
+letters came to him at Dorking, where he rented a room for years. His
+mysterious journeys to town were not mysterious to the people of
+Dorking, who did not know him by sight or name.”
+To Elk’s surprise, when he came back to Harley Terrace, Dick was not
+there. His servant said that his master had had a short sleep, had
+dressed and gone out, and had left no message as to where he was going.
+Dick did not, as a rule, go out on these solitary expeditions, and Elk’s
+first thought was that he had gone to Horsham. He ate his dinner, and
+thought longingly of his comfortable bed. He did not wish to retire for
+the night until he had seen his chief.
+He made himself comfortable in the study, and was fast asleep, when
+somebody shook him gently by the shoulder. He looked up and saw Dick.
+“Hullo!” he said sleepily. “Are you staying up all night?”
+“I’ve got the car at the door,” said Dick. “Get your top-coat. We’re
+going to Horsham.”
+Elk yawned at the clock.
+“She’ll be thinking of bed,” he protested.
+“I hope so,” said Dick, “but I have my fears. Frog was seen on the
+Horsham Road at nine o’clock to-night.”
+“How do you know?” asked Elk, now wide awake.
+“I’ve been shadowing him all the evening,” said Dick, “but he slipped
+me.”
+“You’ve been watching Frog?” repeated Elk slowly. “Do you know him?”
+“I’ve known him for the greater part of a month,” said Dick Gordon. “Get
+your gun!”
+CHAPTER XL
+FROG
+THERE is a happiness which has no parallel in life—the happiness which
+comes when a dear one is restored. Ray Bennett sat by his father’s
+chair, and was content to absorb the love and tenderness which made the
+room radiant. It seemed like a dream to be back in this cosy
+sitting-room with its cretonnes, its faint odour of lavender, the wide
+chimney-place, the leaded windows, and Ella, most glorious vision of
+all. The rainstorm that lashed the window-panes gave the comfort and
+peace of his home a new and a more beautiful value. From time to time he
+fingered his shaven face absently. It was the only sure evidence to him
+that he was awake and that this experience belonged to the world of
+reality.
+“Pull up your chair, boy,” said John Bennett, as Ella carried in a
+steaming teapot and put it on the table.
+Ray rose obediently and placed the big Windsor chair where it had always
+been when he lived at home, on his father’s right hand.
+John Bennett sat at the table, his head bent forward. It was the old
+grace that his father had said for years and years, and which secretly
+amused him in other days, but which now was invested with a beautiful
+significance that made him choke.
+“_For all the blessings we have received this day, may the Lord make us
+truly thankful!_”
+It was a wonderful meal, more wonderful than any he had eaten at Heron’s
+or at those expensive restaurants which he had favoured. Home-cured
+tongue, home-made bread, and a great jar of home-made preserves, tea
+that was fragrant with the bouquet of the East. He laid down his knife
+and fork and leant back with a happy smile.
+“Home,” he said simply, and his father gripped his hand under cover of
+the table-cloth, gripped and held it so tightly that the boy winced.
+“Ray, they want you to take over the management of Maitlands—Johnson
+does. What do you think of that, son?”
+Ray shook his head.
+“I’m no more fit to manage Maitlands than I am to be President of the
+Bank of England,” he said with a little laugh. “No, dad, my views are
+less exalted than they were. I think I might earn a respectable living
+hoeing potatoes—and I should be happy to do so!”
+The older man was looking thoughtfully at the table.
+“I—I shall want an assistant if these pictures of mine are the success
+that Silenski says they will be. Perhaps you can hoe potatoes between
+whiles—when Ella is married.”
+The girl went red.
+“Is Ella going to be married? Are you, Ella?” Ray jumped up and, going
+to the girl, kissed her. “Ella, it won’t make a difference, will
+it—about me, I mean?”
+“I don’t think so, dear. I’ve promised.”
+“What is the matter?” asked John Bennett, as he saw the cloud that came
+to the girl’s face.
+“I was thinking of something unpleasant, daddy,” she said, and for the
+first time told of the hideous visitation.
+“The Frog wanted to marry you?” said Ray with a frown. “It is
+incredible! Did you see his face?”
+She shook her head.
+“He was masked,” she said. “Don’t let us talk about it.”
+She got up quickly and began to clear away the meal, and, for the first
+time for many years, Ray helped her.
+“A terrible night,” she said, coming back from the kitchen. “The wind
+burst open the window and blew out the lamp, and the rain is coming down
+in torrents!”
+“All nights are good nights to me,” said Ray, and in his chuckle she
+detected a little sob.
+No word had been spoken since they met of his terrible ordeal; it was
+tacitly agreed that that nightmare should remain in the region of bad
+dreams, and only now and again did he betray the horror of those three
+weeks of waiting.
+“Bolt the back door, darling,” said John Bennett, looking up as she went
+out.
+The two men sat smoking, each busy with his own thoughts. Then Ray spoke
+of Lola.
+“I do not think she was bad, father,” he said. “She could not have known
+what was going to happen. The thing was so diabolically planned that
+even to the very last, until I learnt from Gordon the true story, I was
+under the impression that I had killed Brady. This man must have the
+brain of a general.”
+Bennett nodded.
+“I always used to think,” Ray went on, “that Maitland had something to
+do with the Frogs. I suppose he had, really. I first guessed that much
+after he turned up at Heron’s Club—what is the matter?”
+“Ella!” called the old man.
+There was no answer from the kitchen.
+“I don’t want her to stay out there, washing up. Ray, boy, call her in.”
+Ray got up and opened the door of the kitchen. It was in darkness.
+“Bring the lamp, father,” he called, and John Bennett came hurrying
+after him.
+The door of the kitchen was closed but not bolted. Something white lay
+on the floor, and Ray stooped to pick it up. It was a torn portion of
+the apron which Ella had been wearing.
+The two men looked at one another, and Ray, running up to his room, came
+down with a storm lantern, which he lit.
+“She may be in the garden,” he said in a strained voice, and, throwing
+open the door, went out into the storm.
+The rain beat down unmercifully; the men were wet through before they
+had gone a dozen yards. Ray held the light down to the ground. There
+were tracks of many feet in the soft mud, and presently he found one of
+Ella’s. The tracks disappeared on to the edge of the lawn, but they were
+making straight for the side gate which opened into a narrow lane. This
+passage-way connected the road with a meadow behind Maytree Cottage, and
+the roadway gate was usually kept chained and padlocked. Ray was the
+first to see the car tracks, and then he found that the gate was open
+and the broken chain lay in the muddy roadway. Running out into the
+road, he saw that the tracks turned to the right.
+“We had better search the garden first to make absolutely sure, father,”
+he said. “I will arouse some of the cottagers and get them to help.”
+By the time he came back to the house, John Bennett had made a thorough
+search of the garden and the house, but the girl had disappeared.
+“Go down to the town and telephone to Gordon,” he said, and his voice
+was strangely calm.
+In a quarter of an hour Ray Bennett jumped off his old bicycle at the
+door of Maytree Cottage, to tell his grave news.
+“The ’phone line has been cut,” he said tersely. “I’ve ordered a car to
+be sent up from the garage. We will try to follow the tracks.”
+The machine had arrived when the blazing head-lamps of Dick’s car came
+into view. Gordon knew the worst before he had sprung to the ground.
+There was a brief, unemotional consultation. Dick went rapidly through
+the kitchen and followed the tracks until they came back to the road, to
+find Elk going slowly along the opposite side, examining the ground with
+an electric lamp.
+“There’s a small wheel track over here,” he said. “Too heavy for a
+bicycle, too light for a car; looks to me like a motor-cycle.”
+“It was a car,” said Dick briefly, “and a very big one.”
+He sent Ray and his father to the house to change; insisted on this
+being done before they moved a step. They came out, wrapped in
+mackintoshes, and leapt into the car as it was moving.
+For five miles the tracks were visible, and then they came to a village.
+A policeman had seen a car come through “a little time ago”—and a
+motor-cyclist.
+“Where was the cyclist?” asked Elk.
+“He was behind, about a hundred yards,” said the policeman. “I tried to
+pull him up because his lamp was out, but he took no notice.”
+They went on for another mile, and then struck the hard surface of a
+newly tarred road, and here all trace of the tracks was lost. Going on
+for a mile farther, they reached a point where the road broke into
+three. Two of these were macadamized and showed no wheel tracks; nor did
+the third, although it had a soft surface, offer any encouragement to
+follow.
+“It is one of these two,” said Dick. “We had better try the right-hand
+road first.”
+The macadam lasted until they reached another village. The road was
+undergoing repair in the village itself, but the night watchman shook
+his head when Dick asked him.
+“No, sir, no car has passed here for two hours.”
+“We must drive back,” said Dick, despair in his heart, and the car spun
+round and flew at top speed to the juncture of the roads.
+Down this they went, and they had not gone far before Dick half leapt at
+the sight of the red tail-lamp of the machine ahead. His hopes, however,
+were fated to be dashed. A car had broken down on the side of the road,
+but the disgruntled driver was able to give them valuable information. A
+car had passed him three-quarters of an hour before; he described it
+minutely, had even been able to distinguish its make. The cyclist was
+driving a Red Indian.
+Again the cyclist!
+“How far was he behind the car?”
+“A good hundred yards, I should say,” was the reply.
+From now on they received frequent news of the car, but at the second
+village, the motor-cyclist had not been seen, nor at subsequent places
+where the machine had been identified, was there any reference to a
+motor-cyclist.
+It was past midnight when they came up with the machine they were
+chasing. It stood outside a garage on the Shoreham Road, and Elk was the
+first to reach it. It was empty and unattended. Inside the garage, the
+owner of that establishment was busy making room for the last comer.
+“Yes, sir, a quarter of an hour ago,” he said, when Elk had produced his
+authority. “The chauffeur said he was going to find lodgings in the
+town.”
+With the aid of a powerful electric lamp they made an examination of the
+car’s interior. There was no doubt whatever that Ella had been an
+inmate. A little ivory pin which John Bennett had given her on her
+birthday, was found, broken, in a corner of the floor.
+“It is not worth while looking for the chauffeur,” said Elk. “Our only
+chance is that he’ll come back to the garage.”
+The local police were called into consultation.
+“Shoreham is a very big place,” said the police chief. “If you had luck,
+you might find your man immediately. If he’s with a gang of crooks, it
+is more likely that you’ll not find him at all, or that he’ll never come
+back for the machine.”
+One matter puzzled Elk more than any other. It was the disappearance of
+the motor-cyclist. If the story was true, that he had been riding a
+hundred yards behind and that he had fallen out between two villages,
+they must have passed him. There were a few cottages on the road, into
+which he might have turned, but Elk dismissed this possibility.
+“We had better go back,” he said. “It is fairly certain that Miss
+Bennett has been taken out somewhere on the road. The motor-cyclist is
+now the best clue, because she evidently went with him. This cyclist was
+either the Frog, or one of his men.”
+“They disappeared somewhere between Shoreham and Morby,” said Dick. “You
+know the country about here, Mr. Bennett. Is there any place where
+they’d be likely to go near Morby?”
+“I know the country,” agreed Bennett, “and I’ve been trying to think.
+There is nothing but a very few houses outside of Morby. Of course,
+there is Morby Fields, but I can’t imagine Ella being taken there.”
+“What are Morby Fields?” asked Dick, as the car went slowly back the way
+it had come.
+“Morby Fields is a disused quarry. The company went into liquidation
+some years ago,” replied Bennett.
+They passed through Morby at snail pace, stopping at the local
+policeman’s house for any further news which might have been gleaned in
+their absence. There was, however, nothing fresh.
+“You are perfectly certain that you did not see the motor-cyclist?”
+“I am quite certain, sir,” said the man. “The car was as close to me as
+I am to you. In fact, I had to step to the pavement to prevent myself
+being splashed with mud; and there was no motor-cyclist. In fact, the
+impression I had was that the car was empty.”
+“Why did you think that?” asked Elk quickly.
+“It was riding light, for one thing, and the chauffeur was smoking for
+another. I always associate a smoking chauffeur with an empty car.”
+“Son,” said the admiring Elk, “there are possibilities about you,” and a
+recruit to Headquarters was noted.
+“I’m inclined to agree with that village policeman,” said Dick when they
+walked back to their machine. “The car was empty when it came through
+here, and that accounts for the absence of the motor-cyclist. It is
+between Morby and Wellan that we’ve got to look.”
+And now they moved at a walking pace. The brackets that held the
+head-lamps were wrenched round to throw a light upon the ditch and hedge
+on either side of the road. They had not gone five hundred yards when
+Elk roared:
+“Stop!” and jumped into the roadway.
+He was gone a few minutes, and then he called Dick, and the three men
+went back to where the detective was standing, looking at a big red
+motor-cycle that stood under the shelter of a crumbling stone wall. They
+had passed it without observation, for its owner had chosen the other
+side of the wall, and it was only the gleam of the light on a handlebar
+which showed just above its screen, that had led to its detection.
+Dick ran to the car and backed it so that the wall and machine were
+visible. The cycle was almost new; it was splattered with mud, and its
+acetylene head-lamps were cold to the touch. Elk had an inspiration. At
+the back of the seat was a heavy tool-wallet, attached by a firm strap,
+and this he began to unfasten.
+“If this is a new machine, the maker will have put the name and address
+of the owner in his wallet,” he said.
+Presently the tool-bag was detached, and Elk unstrapped the last
+fastening and turned back the flap.
+“Great Moses!” said Elk.
+Neatly painted on the undressed leather was:
+“Joshua Broad, 6, Caverley House, Cavendish Square!”
+CHAPTER XLI
+IN QUARRY HOUSE
+THE first impression that Ella Bennett had when she returned to the
+kitchen to fasten the door that shut off the sitting-room, was that the
+tea-cloth, which she had hung up to dry on the line near the lofty
+ceiling, had fallen. With startling suddenness she was enveloped in the
+folds of a heavy, musty cloth. And then an arm was flung round her, a
+hand covered her mouth and drew back her head. She tried to scream, but
+no sound came. She kicked out toward the door and an arm clutched at her
+dress and pulled back her foot. She heard the sound of something
+tearing, and then a strap was put round her ankles. She felt the rush of
+the cold air as the door was opened, and in another second she was in
+the garden.
+“Walk,” hissed a voice, and she discovered her feet were loosened.
+She could see nothing, only she could feel the rain beating down upon
+the cloth that covered her head, and the strength of the wind against
+her face. It blew the cloth so tightly over her mouth and nose that she
+could hardly breathe. Where they were taking her she could only guess.
+It was not until she felt her feet squelch in liquid mud that she knew
+she was in the lane by the side of the house. She had hardly identified
+the place before she was lifted bodily into the waiting car; she heard
+somebody scrambling in by her side, and the car jerked forward. Then
+with dexterous hand, one of the men sitting at her side whisked the
+cloth from her head. Ahead, in one of the two bucket seats, the only one
+occupied, was a dark figure, the face of which she could not see.
+“What are you doing? Who are you?” she asked, and no sooner did the
+voice of the man before her come to her ears than she knew she was in
+the power of the Frog.
+“I’m going to give you your last chance,” he said. “After to-night that
+chance is gone.”
+She composed the tremor in her voice with an effort, and then:
+“What do you mean by my last chance?” she asked.
+“You will undertake to marry me, and to leave the country with me in the
+morning. I’ve such faith in you that I will take your word,” he said.
+She shook her head, until she realized that, in the darkness, he could
+not see her.
+“I will never do that,” she answered quietly, and no other word was
+spoken through the journey. Once, at a whispered word from the man in
+the mask—she saw the reflection of his mica eye-pieces even though the
+blinds were drawn, as the car went through some village street—one of
+the men looked back through the glass in the hood.
+“Nothing,” he said.
+No violence was offered to her; she was not bound, or restricted in any
+way, though she knew it was perfectly hopeless for her to dream of
+escape.
+They were running along a dark country road when the car slowed and
+stopped. The passengers turned out quickly; she was the last. A man
+caught her arm as she descended and led her, through an opening of the
+hedge, into what seemed to her to be a ploughed field.
+The other came after her, bringing her an oilskin coat and helping her
+into it.
+The rain flogged across the waste, rattling against the oil-coat; she
+heard the man holding her arm mutter something under his breath. The
+Frog walked ahead, only looking back once. She slipped and stumbled, and
+would have often fallen but for the hand which held her up.
+“Where are you taking me?” she asked at last.
+There was no reply. She wondered if she could wrench herself free, and
+trust to the cover of darkness to hide her, but even as the thought
+occurred, she saw a gleam of water to the right—a round, ghostly patch.
+“These are Morby Fields,” she said suddenly, recognizing the place.
+“You’re taking me to the quarry.”
+Again no answer. They tramped on doggedly, until she knew they were
+within measurable distance of the quarry itself. She wondered what would
+be her fate when she finally refused, as she would refuse. Did this
+terrible man intend to kill her?
+“Wait,” said the Frog suddenly, and disappeared into the gloom.
+Then she saw a light, which came from a small wooden house; two patches
+of light, one long, one square—a window and a door. The window
+disappeared as he closed the shutter. Then his figure stood silhouetted
+in the doorway.
+“Come,” he said, and she went forward.
+At the door of the hut she drew back, but the hand on her arm tightened.
+She was pushed into the interior, and the door was slammed and bolted.
+She was alone with Frog!
+Curiosity overcame her fear. She looked round the little room. It was
+about ten feet long by six feet broad. The furnishings were simple: a
+bed, a table, two chairs and a fireplace. The wooden floor was covered
+by an old and grimy rug. Against one of the walls were piled two shallow
+wooden boxes, and the wood was new. The mask followed the direction of
+her eyes and she heard his slow chuckle.
+“Money,” he said tersely, “your money and my money. There is a million
+there.”
+She looked, fascinated. Near the boxes were four long glass cylinders,
+containing an opaque substance or liquid—she could not tell from where
+she stood. The nature of this the Frog did not then trouble to explain.
+“Sit down,” he said.
+His manner was brisk and businesslike. She expected him to take off his
+mask as he seated himself opposite her, but in this she was
+disappointed. He sat, and through the mica pieces she saw his hard eyes
+watching her.
+“Well, Ella Bennett, what do you say? Will you marry me, or will you go
+into a welcome oblivion? You leave this hut either as my wife, or we
+leave together—dead.”
+He got up and went to where the glass cylinders lay and touched one.
+“I will smash one of these with my foot and take off my mask, and you
+shall have at least the satisfaction that you know who I am before you
+die—but only just before you die!”
+She looked at him steadily.
+“I will never marry you,” she said, “never! If for no other reason, for
+your villainous plot against my brother.”
+“Your brother is a fool,” said the hollow voice. “He need never have
+gone through that agony, if you had only promised to marry me. I had a
+man ready to confess, I myself would have taken the risk of supporting
+his confession.”
+“Why do you want to marry me?” she asked.
+It sounded banal, stupid. Yet so grotesque was the suggestion, that she
+could talk of the matter in cold blood and almost without emotion.
+“Because I love you,” was the reply. “Whether I love you as Dick Gordon
+loves you, I do not know. It may well be that you are something which I
+cannot possess, and therefore are all the more precious to me—I have
+never been thwarted in any desire.”
+“I would welcome death,” she said quickly, and she heard the muffled
+chuckle.
+“There are worse things than death to a sensitive woman,” he said
+significantly, “and you shall not die until the end.”
+He did not attempt to speak again, but, pulling a pack of cards from his
+pocket, played solitaire. After an hour’s play, he swept the cards into
+the fireplace and rose.
+He looked at her and there was something in his eyes that froze her
+blood.
+“Perhaps you will never see my face,” he said, and reached out his hand
+to the oil lamp which stood on the table.
+Lower and lower sank the flame, and then came a gentle tap at the door.
+_Tap . . . tap . . . tappity . . . tap!_
+The Frog stood still, his hand upon the lamp.
+_Tap . . . tap . . . tappity . . . tap!_
+It came again. He turned up the light a little and went to the door.
+“Who’s that?” he asked.
+“Hagn,” said a deep voice, and the Frog took a startled step backward.
+“Quick! Open!’”
+The mask turned the heavy bar, and, taking a key from his pocket, he
+drew back the lock.
+“Hagn, how did you get away?”
+The door was pushed open with such violence that he was flung back
+against the wall, and Ella uttered a scream of joy.
+Standing in the doorway was a bareheaded man, in a shining trench-coat.
+It was Joshua Broad.
+“Keep back!”
+He did not look round, but she knew the words were addressed to her and
+stood stock-still. Both Broad’s hands were in the deep pockets of his
+coat; his eyes did not leave the mask.
+“Harry,” he said softly, “you know what I want.”
+“Take yours!” screeched the Frog. His hand moved so quickly that the
+girl could not follow it.
+Two shots rang out together and the Frog staggered back against the
+wall. His foot was within a few inches of the glass cylinders, and he
+raised it. Again Broad fired, and the Frog fell backward, his head in
+the fireplace. He came struggling to his feet, and then, with a little
+choking sob, fell backward, his arms outstretched.
+There was a sound of voices outside, a scraping of feet on the muddy
+path, and John Bennett came into the hut. In a moment the girl was in
+his arms. Broad looked round. Elk and Dick Gordon were standing in the
+doorway, taking in the scene.
+“Gentlemen,” said Joshua Broad, “I call you to witness that I killed
+this man in self-defence.”
+“Who is it?” said Dick.
+“It is the Frog,” said Joshua Broad calmly. “His other name is Harry
+Lyme. He is an English convict.”
+“I knew it was Harry Lyme.” It was Elk who spoke. “Is he dead?”
+Broad stooped and thrust his hand under the man’s waistcoat.
+“Yes, he is dead,” he announced simply. “I’m sorry that I have robbed
+you of your prey, Mr. Elk, but it was vitally necessary that he should
+be killed before I was, and one of us had to die this night!”
+Elk knelt by the still figure and began to unfasten the hideous rubber
+mask.
+“It was here that Genter was killed,” said Dick Gordon in a low voice.
+“Do you see the gas?”
+Elk looked at the glass cylinders and nodded. Then his eyes came back to
+the bareheaded American.
+“Saul Morris, I believe?” he said, and “Joshua Broad” nodded.
+Elk pursed his lips thoughtfully, and his eyes went back to the still
+figure at his feet.
+“Now, Frog, let me see you,” he said, and tore away the mask.
+He looked down into the face of Philosopher Johnson!
+CHAPTER XLII
+JOSHUA BROAD EXPLAINS
+THE sunlight was pouring through the windows of Maytree Cottage; the
+breakfast things still stood upon the table, when the American began his
+story.
+“My name, as you rightly surmised, Mr. Elk, is Saul Morris. I am, by all
+moral standards, a criminal, though I have not been guilty of any
+criminal practice for the past ten years. I was born at Hertford in
+Connecticut.
+“I am not going to offer you an apology, conventional or unconventional,
+for my ultimate choice; nor will I insult your intelligence by inviting
+sympathy for my first fall. I guess I was born with light fingers and a
+desire for money that I had not earned. I was not corrupted, I was not
+tempted, I had no evil companions; in fact, the beginnings of my career
+were singularly unlike any of the careers of criminals which I have ever
+read.
+“I studied bank robberies as a doctor might take up the study of
+anatomy. I understand perfectly every system of banking—and there are
+only two, one of which succeeds, the other produces a plentiful crop of
+fraudulent directors—and I have added to this a knowledge of lockcraft.
+A burglar who starts business without understanding the difficulties and
+obstacles he has to overcome is—to use the parallel I have already
+employed—like the doctor who starts off to operate without knowing what
+arteries, tissues and nerves he will be severing. The difference between
+a surgeon and a butcher is that one doesn’t know the name of the tissues
+he is cutting!
+“When I decided upon my career, I served for five years in the factory
+of the greatest English safe-maker in Wolverhampton. I studied locks,
+safes, the tensile qualities of steel, until I was proficient, and my
+spare time I gave up to as important a study—the transportation of
+negotiable currency. That in itself is a study which might well occupy a
+man’s full time.
+“I returned to America at the age of twenty-five, and accumulated a kit
+of tools, which cost me several thousand dollars, and with these, and
+alone, I smashed the Ninth National Bank, getting away, on my first
+attempt, with three hundred thousand dollars. I will not give you a long
+list of my many crimes; some of them I have conveniently forgotten.
+Others are too unimportant, and contain too many disappointments to tell
+you in detail. It is sufficient to say that there is no proof, other
+than my word, that I was responsible for any of these depredations. My
+name has only been associated with one—the robbery of the strong-room
+on the _Mantania_.
+“In 1898 I learnt that the _Mantania_ was carrying to France fifty-five
+million francs in paper currency. The money was packed in two stout
+wooden cases, and before being packed, was submitted to hydraulic
+pressure in order to reduce the bulk. In one case were thirty-five
+packets, each containing a thousand mille notes, and in the second case
+twenty packets. I particularly want you to remember that there were two
+cases, because you will understand a little better what happened
+subsequently.
+“It was intended that the ship should call at a French port; I think it
+was Havre, because the trans-Atlantic boats in those days did not call
+at Cherbourg. I had made all my plans for getting away with the stuff,
+and the robbery had actually been committed and the boxes were in my
+cabin trunk, substitute boxes of an exact shape having been left in the
+strong-room of the _Mantania_, when to my dismay we lost a propeller
+blade whilst off the coast of Ireland, and the captain of the _Mantania_
+decided to put in to Southampton without making the French port.
+“A change of plans, to a man of my profession, is almost as embarrassing
+as a change of plan in the middle of a battle. I had on this occasion an
+assistant—a man who afterwards died in _delirium tremens_. It was
+absolutely impossible to work alone; the job was too big, and my
+assistant was a man I had every reason to trust.”
+“Harry Lyme?” suggested Elk.
+“Joshua Broad” shook his head.
+“No, you’re wrong. I will not tell you his name—the man is dead, and he
+was a very faithful and loyal fellow, though inclined to booze, a
+weakness which I never shared. However, the reason we were so
+embarrassed was that, had we gone ashore at the French port, the robbery
+in the strong-room would not have been discovered, because it was
+unlikely that the purser would go to the strong-room until the ship was
+in Southampton Water. I had fixed everything, the passing of my bags
+through the Customs being the most important. This change meant that we
+must improvise a method to get ashore at Southampton before the hue and
+cry was raised, and, if possible, before the robbery was discovered,
+though it did not seem possible that we should succeed.
+“Fortunately, there was a fog in the Solent, and we had to go dead slow;
+and, if you remember the circumstances, as the _Mantania_ came up the
+Solent, she collided with a steam dredger that was going into
+Portsmouth. The dredger’s foremast became entangled in the bowsprit of
+the _Mantania_ and it was some time before they were extricated. It was
+then that I seized my opportunity. From an open port-way on my deck,
+where we were waiting with our baggage, ready to land, we were level
+with the side of the dredger as she swung round under the impact. I
+flung the two grips that held the boxes on to the dredger’s deck, and I
+and my friend jumped together.
+“As I say, a fog lay on the water, and we were not seen, and not
+discovered by the crew of the dredger until we had parted company with
+the _Mantania_, and although the story we told to the dredger’s captain
+was the thinnest imaginable—namely, that we thought it was a tender
+that had come off to collect us—he very readily accepted it, and the
+twenty-dollar bill which I gave him.
+“We made Portsmouth after a great deal of difficulty late in the
+evening. There was no Customs inspection and we got our bags safely on
+land. I intended staying the night at Portsmouth, but after we had taken
+our lodgings, my friend and I went round to a little bar to get a drink,
+and there we heard something which sent us back to our rooms at full
+pelt. What we heard was that the robbery had been discovered, and that
+the police were looking for two men who had made their escape on the
+dredger. As it was the dredger’s captain who had recommended our
+lodgings, I had little expectation of getting into the room and out
+again without capture.
+“However, we did, and as we passed out of the street at one end, the
+police came in at the other. I carried one bag, my friend the lighter,
+and we started on foot across country, and before the morning we had
+reached a place called Eastleigh. It was to Eastleigh, you will
+remember, Mr. Elk, that I came when I left the cattle-boat during the
+war and suddenly changed my character from a hard-up cattle-puncher to a
+wealthy gambler at Monte Carlo.
+“That matter I will explain later. When we reached Eastleigh, I had a
+talk with my companion, and it was a pretty straight talk, because he’d
+got a load of liquor on board and was becoming more and more unreliable.
+It ended by his going into the town to buy some food and not returning.
+When I went in search of him, I found him lying in the street, incapably
+drunk. There was nothing to do but to leave him; and getting a little
+food, I took the two bags and struck the road. The bags, however, were
+much too heavy for me, and I had to consider my position.
+“Standing by the road was an old cottage, and on a board was an
+announcement that it was to be sold. I took the address; it was the name
+of a Winchester lawyer; and then I got over the fence and made an
+inspection of the ground, to find that, at the lower end of the rank
+garden, was an old, disused well, boarded over by rotten planks. I could
+in safety drop the lighter of my burdens down the well and cover it up
+with the rubble, of which there was plenty around. I might have buried
+both; in many ways a lot of trouble would have been saved if I had. But
+I was loth to leave all that I had striven for with such care and pains,
+and I took the second box on with me, reached Winchester, bought a
+change of clothing, and spent a comfortable day there, interviewing the
+lawyer, who owned the cottage.
+“I had some English money with me, and the purchase was effected. I gave
+strict instructions that the place was not to be let in any
+circumstances, and that it was to remain as it was until I came back
+from Australia—I posed as a wealthy Australian who was repurchasing the
+house in which he was born.
+“From Winchester I reached London, never dreaming that I was in any
+danger. My companion had given me the name of an English crook, an
+acquaintance of his, who, he said, was the finest safe-man in Europe—a
+man who was called ‘Lyme’ and who, I discovered many years after, was
+the same Harry Lyme. He told me Lyme would help me in any emergency.
+“And that emergency soon arose. The first man I saw when I put my foot
+on the platform at Waterloo was the purser of the _Mantania_, and with
+him was the ship’s detective. I dodged back, and, fortunately for me,
+there was a suburban train leaving from the opposite platform, and I
+went on to Surbiton, reaching London by another route. Afterwards, I
+learnt that my companion had been arrested, and in his half-drunken
+state had told all he knew. The thing to do now was to cache the
+remainder of the money—thirty-five million francs. I immediately
+thought of Harry Lyme. I have never suffered from the illusion that
+there is honour amongst thieves. My own experience is that that is one
+of the most stupid of proverbs. But I thought that at least I might make
+it worth Lyme’s while to help me out of a mess.
+“I learnt from the newspapers that there was a special force of police
+looking for me, and that they were watching the houses of well-known
+criminals, to whom, they thought, I might gravitate. At first I thought
+this was a bluff, but I was to discover that this was not the case. I
+reached Lyme’s house, in a disreputable thoroughfare in Camden Town. The
+fog was thick and yellow, and I had some difficulty in finding my way.
+It was a small house in a mean, squalid street, and at first I could get
+no reply to my knocking. Then the door was opened cautiously.
+“‘Is that Lyme?’ I asked. ‘He’s not at home,’ said a man, and he would
+have shut the door, but my instinct told me this was the fellow I was
+seeking, and I put my foot in the way of the closing door. ‘Come in,’ he
+said at last, and led the way into a small room, the only light of which
+was a lantern which stood on the table. The room was thick with fog, for
+the window was open, as I learnt afterwards, to allow Lyme to make his
+escape.
+“‘Are you the American?’ he asked. ‘You’re mad to come here. The police
+have been watching this place ever since this afternoon.’ I told him
+briefly what my difficulty was. ‘I have here thirty-five million
+francs—that’s a million, three hundred thousand pounds,’ said I, ‘and
+there’s enough for both of us. Can you plant this whilst I make a
+get-away?’ ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. ‘What do I get out of it?’ ‘I’ll give
+you half,’ I promised, and he seemed to be satisfied with that.
+“I was surprised that he spoke in the voice and tone of an educated man,
+and I learnt afterwards that he also had been intended for some
+profession, and, like myself, had chosen the easier way. Now, you’ll not
+believe me when I tell you that I did not see his face, and that I
+carried no very vivid impression away with me. This is due to the fact
+that I concentrated my attention upon the frog which was tattooed on his
+wrist, and which afterwards, at great expense, he succeeded in having
+removed by a Spanish doctor at Valladolid, who specialized in that kind
+of work. That frog was tattooed a little askew, and I knew, and he knew
+too, that, whether I remembered his face or not, he had a mark which was
+certain to guide me back to him.
+“The arrangement I made was that, when I got back to America, I should
+send a cable to him, at an address we agreed upon, and that he was then
+to send me, by registered post to the Grand Hotel, Montreal, a half of
+the money he had in the box. To cut a long story short, I made my
+escape, and eventually reached the Continent by way of Hook of Holland.
+Encumbered with any baggage, that would have been impossible. In due
+course I left for the United States from Bremen, Germany, and
+immediately on my arrival sent the cable to Lyme, and went up to
+Montreal to await the arrival of the money. It did not come. I cabled
+again; still it did not come.
+“It was months after that I learnt what had happened. It came from a
+cutting of a newspaper, saying that Lyme had been drowned on his way to
+Guernsey. How he sent that, I don’t know and never have inquired. Lyme
+was, in fact, very much alive. He had some six million dollars’ worth of
+French notes, and his job was to negotiate them. His first step was to
+move to a Midland town, where for six months he posed as a man of
+business, in the meantime changing his whole appearance, shaving off his
+moustache and producing an artificial baldness by the application of
+some chemical.
+“Whilst he was doing this, and determined that every penny he had taken
+from me he would hold, he decided to make assurance doubly sure, and
+started in a small way the Fellowship of the Frog. The object of this
+was to spread the mark of identification by which I should know him, as
+far and wide as possible. He may have had no other idea in his mind, and
+probably had not, but to broadcast this mark of the frog, a little
+askew, the exact replica of his. Obviously, no class would be willing to
+suffer the tortures of tattooing for nothing. So began this curious
+Benefit Fund of his. From this little beginning grew the great Frog
+organization. Almost one of the first men he came into contact with was
+an old criminal named Maitland, a man who could neither read nor write.”
+There was a gasp.
+“Why, of course!” said Elk, and smacked his knee impatiently. “That is
+the explanation of the baby!”
+“There never was a baby,” smiled “Broad.” “The baby was Maitland
+himself, learning to write. The clothes of the baby, which were planted
+for your special benefit in the Elder Street house, were put there by
+Johnson. The toys for the baby were inventions to keep you guessing.
+There never was a baby. Once he had Maitland properly coached, he came
+to London, and Maitlands Consolidated was formed. Maitland had nothing
+to do except to sit around and look picturesque. His alleged clerk, one
+of the cleverest actors I have ever met, was the real head of the
+business, and remained Maitland’s clerk just as long as it suited him.
+When he thought suspicion was veering toward him, he had himself
+dismissed; just as, when he thought you had identified him with the
+Frog, he made one of his men shoot at him with a blank cartridge in
+Harley Terrace. He was the real Maitland.
+“In the meantime the Frog organization was growing, and he sat down to
+consider how best he could use the society for his advantage. Money was
+going out, and he naturally hated to see it go. New recruits were
+appearing every day, and they all cost money. But what he did get from
+this rabble were one or two brilliant minds. Balder was one, Hagn was
+one, and there were others, who perhaps will now never be known.
+“As the controlling force of Maitlands Consolidated, he had not the
+slightest difficulty in disposing of his francs. And then he set
+Maitlands speculating in other directions, and when his speculations
+were failing, he found ways of cutting his loss. He was once caught
+short in a wool transaction—the Frog maimed the only man who could have
+ruined him. Whenever he found it expedient for the benefit of himself to
+club a man, whether he was a military attaché or a very plain City
+merchant speculating in his own stocks, Johnson never hesitated. People
+who were bothering him were put beyond the opportunities of mischief. He
+made one great mistake. He allowed Maitland to live like a hog in a
+house he had bought. That was folly. When he found that the old man had
+been trailed, he shifted him to Berkeley Square, got him tailored, and
+eventually murdered him for daring to go to Horsham. I saw the murderer
+escape, for I was on the roof when the shots were fired. Incidentally, I
+had a narrow escape myself.
+“But to return to my own narrative. Five years ago I was broke, and I
+decided to have another attempt to get my money; and there was also the
+fact that a very large sum of money waited reclaiming at Eastleigh,
+always providing that I had not been identified as the man who bought
+the house. It took me a long time before I made absolutely certain that
+I was unknown, and then, with the title deeds in my pocket, I sailed on
+a cattle-boat and landed, as you have said, Mr. Elk, with a few dollars
+in my pocket, at Southampton. I went straight to the house, which was
+now in a shocking state of repair, and there I made myself as
+comfortable as I possibly could whilst, night after night, I toiled in
+the well to recover the small box of money, amounting to a very
+considerable sum. When this was recovered, I left for Paris, and the
+rest, so far as my public history is concerned, you know.
+“I then began my search for Frog, and I very soon saw that, if I
+depended upon the identification of the tattoo marks, my search was
+hopeless. Naturally, when I discovered, as I soon did, that Maitland was
+a Frog, I narrowed my search to that office. I discovered that Maitland
+was an illiterate by the simple expedient of stopping him in the street
+one day near his house, and showing him an envelope on which I had
+written ‘You are a fake,’ and asking him if he knew the address. He
+pointed to a house farther along the street, and hurried in.”
+“I knew that Maitland could neither read nor write when I learnt that
+the children’s clothes had been left at Eldor Street,” said Dick, “and
+from that moment I knew that Johnson was the Frog.”
+“Joshua Broad” nodded.
+“That, I think, is about all I have to say. Johnson was a genius. The
+way he handled that huge organization, which he ran practically in his
+spare time when he was away from the office, was a revelation. He drew
+everybody into his net, and yet nobody knew him. Balder was a godsend;
+he was perhaps the highest paid agent of the lot. You will find that his
+income ran into six figures!”
+*    *    *    *    *    *
+When “Joshua Broad” had gone back to London, Dick walked with Elk to the
+garden gate.
+“I shan’t be coming up for a little while,” he said.
+“I never expected you would,” said Elk. “Say, Captain Gordon, what
+happened to those two wooden boxes that were in the quarry hut last
+night?”
+“I didn’t see the boxes.”
+“I saw them,” said Elk, nodding. “They were there when we took Miss
+Bennett away, and when I came back with the police they were gone, and
+‘Joshua Broad’ was there all the time,” he added.
+They looked at one another.
+“I don’t think I should inquire too closely into that matter,” said
+Dick. “I owe ‘Broad’ something.”
+“I owe him a bit too,” said Elk with a hint of enthusiasm. “Do you know,
+he taught me a rhyme last night? There are about a hundred and fifty
+verses, but I only know four. It starts:
+William the Conqueror started his tricks,
+Battle of Hastings, ten sixty-six.
+That’s a grand rhyme, Captain Gordon. If I’d only known that ten years
+ago I might have been a Chief Commissioner by now!”
+He walked down the road towards the station, for he was returning by
+tram. The sun glittered upon the rain-fringed banners of the hollyhocks
+that filled the cottagers’ gardens. Then from the hedge a tiny green
+figure hopped, and Elk stood still and watched it. The little reptile
+looked round and eyed the detective with black, staring eyes.
+“Frog,” Elk raised a reproachful finger, “have a heart and go home—this
+is not your Day!”
+And, as if he understood what the man had said, the frog leaped back to
+the shelter of the long grass.
+THE END
+TRANSCRIBER NOTES
+Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
+spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
+Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
+occur.",The Fellowship of the Frog,Edgar Wallace,280,['Philo Johnson']
+"
+
+
+      I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental
+      and physical, than in the year ’95. His increasing fame had
+      brought with it an immense practice, and I should be guilty of an
+      indiscretion if I were even to hint at the identity of some of
+      the illustrious clients who crossed our humble threshold in Baker
+      Street. Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his
+      art’s sake, and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I
+      have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable
+      services. So unworldly was he—or so capricious—that he frequently
+      refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem
+      made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of
+      most intense application to the affairs of some humble client
+      whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which
+      appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity.
+
+      In this memorable year ’95, a curious and incongruous succession
+      of cases had engaged his attention, ranging from his famous
+      investigation of the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca—an inquiry
+      which was carried out by him at the express desire of His
+      Holiness the Pope—down to his arrest of Wilson, the notorious
+      canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East End of
+      London. Close on the heels of these two famous cases came the
+      tragedy of Woodman’s Lee, and the very obscure circumstances
+      which surrounded the death of Captain Peter Carey. No record of
+      the doings of Mr. Sherlock Holmes would be complete which did not
+      include some account of this very unusual affair.
+
+      During the first week of July, my friend had been absent so often
+      and so long from our lodgings that I knew he had something on
+      hand. The fact that several rough-looking men called during that
+      time and inquired for Captain Basil made me understand that
+      Holmes was working somewhere under one of the numerous disguises
+      and names with which he concealed his own formidable identity. He
+      had at least five small refuges in different parts of London, in
+      which he was able to change his personality. He said nothing of
+      his business to me, and it was not my habit to force a
+      confidence. The first positive sign which he gave me of the
+      direction which his investigation was taking was an extraordinary
+      one. He had gone out before breakfast, and I had sat down to mine
+      when he strode into the room, his hat upon his head and a huge
+      barbed-headed spear tucked like an umbrella under his arm.
+
+      “Good gracious, Holmes!” I cried. “You don’t mean to say that you
+      have been walking about London with that thing?”
+
+      “I drove to the butcher’s and back.”
+
+      “The butcher’s?”
+
+      “And I return with an excellent appetite. There can be no
+      question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before
+      breakfast. But I am prepared to bet that you will not guess the
+      form that my exercise has taken.”
+
+      “I will not attempt it.”
+
+      He chuckled as he poured out the coffee.
+
+      “If you could have looked into Allardyce’s back shop, you would
+      have seen a dead pig swung from a hook in the ceiling, and a
+      gentleman in his shirt sleeves furiously stabbing at it with this
+      weapon. I was that energetic person, and I have satisfied myself
+      that by no exertion of my strength can I transfix the pig with a
+      single blow. Perhaps you would care to try?”
+
+      “Not for worlds. But why were you doing this?”
+
+      “Because it seemed to me to have an indirect bearing upon the
+      mystery of Woodman’s Lee. Ah, Hopkins, I got your wire last
+      night, and I have been expecting you. Come and join us.”
+
+      Our visitor was an exceedingly alert man, thirty years of age,
+      dressed in a quiet tweed suit, but retaining the erect bearing of
+      one who was accustomed to official uniform. I recognized him at
+      once as Stanley Hopkins, a young police inspector, for whose
+      future Holmes had high hopes, while he in turn professed the
+      admiration and respect of a pupil for the scientific methods of
+      the famous amateur. Hopkins’s brow was clouded, and he sat down
+      with an air of deep dejection.
+
+      “No, thank you, sir. I breakfasted before I came round. I spent
+      the night in town, for I came up yesterday to report.”
+
+      “And what had you to report?”
+
+      “Failure, sir, absolute failure.”
+
+      “You have made no progress?”
+
+      “None.”
+
+      “Dear me! I must have a look at the matter.”
+
+      “I wish to heavens that you would, Mr. Holmes. It’s my first big
+      chance, and I am at my wits’ end. For goodness’ sake, come down
+      and lend me a hand.”
+
+      “Well, well, it just happens that I have already read all the
+      available evidence, including the report of the inquest, with
+      some care. By the way, what do you make of that tobacco pouch,
+      found on the scene of the crime? Is there no clue there?”
+
+      Hopkins looked surprised.
+
+      “It was the man’s own pouch, sir. His initials were inside it.
+      And it was of sealskin,—and he was an old sealer.”
+
+      “But he had no pipe.”
+
+      “No, sir, we could find no pipe. Indeed, he smoked very little,
+      and yet he might have kept some tobacco for his friends.”
+
+      “No doubt. I only mention it because, if I had been handling the
+      case, I should have been inclined to make that the starting-point
+      of my investigation. However, my friend, Dr. Watson, knows
+      nothing of this matter, and I should be none the worse for
+      hearing the sequence of events once more. Just give us some short
+      sketches of the essentials.”
+
+      Stanley Hopkins drew a slip of paper from his pocket.
+
+      “I have a few dates here which will give you the career of the
+      dead man, Captain Peter Carey. He was born in ’45—fifty years of
+      age. He was a most daring and successful seal and whale fisher.
+      In 1883 he commanded the steam sealer _Sea Unicorn_, of Dundee.
+      He had then had several successful voyages in succession, and in
+      the following year, 1884, he retired. After that he travelled for
+      some years, and finally he bought a small place called Woodman’s
+      Lee, near Forest Row, in Sussex. There he has lived for six
+      years, and there he died just a week ago to-day.
+
+      “There were some most singular points about the man. In ordinary
+      life, he was a strict Puritan—a silent, gloomy fellow. His
+      household consisted of his wife, his daughter, aged twenty, and
+      two female servants. These last were continually changing, for it
+      was never a very cheery situation, and sometimes it became past
+      all bearing. The man was an intermittent drunkard, and when he
+      had the fit on him he was a perfect fiend. He has been known to
+      drive his wife and daughter out of doors in the middle of the
+      night and flog them through the park until the whole village
+      outside the gates was aroused by their screams.
+
+      “He was summoned once for a savage assault upon the old vicar,
+      who had called upon him to remonstrate with him upon his conduct.
+      In short, Mr. Holmes, you would go far before you found a more
+      dangerous man than Peter Carey, and I have heard that he bore the
+      same character when he commanded his ship. He was known in the
+      trade as Black Peter, and the name was given him, not only on
+      account of his swarthy features and the colour of his huge beard,
+      but for the humours which were the terror of all around him. I
+      need not say that he was loathed and avoided by every one of his
+      neighbours, and that I have not heard one single word of sorrow
+      about his terrible end.
+
+      “You must have read in the account of the inquest about the man’s
+      cabin, Mr. Holmes, but perhaps your friend here has not heard of
+      it. He had built himself a wooden outhouse—he always called it
+      the ‘cabin’—a few hundred yards from his house, and it was here
+      that he slept every night. It was a little, single-roomed hut,
+      sixteen feet by ten. He kept the key in his pocket, made his own
+      bed, cleaned it himself, and allowed no other foot to cross the
+      threshold. There are small windows on each side, which were
+      covered by curtains and never opened. One of these windows was
+      turned towards the high road, and when the light burned in it at
+      night the folk used to point it out to each other and wonder what
+      Black Peter was doing in there. That’s the window, Mr. Holmes,
+      which gave us one of the few bits of positive evidence that came
+      out at the inquest.
+
+      “You remember that a stonemason, named Slater, walking from
+      Forest Row about one o’clock in the morning—two days before the
+      murder—stopped as he passed the grounds and looked at the square
+      of light still shining among the trees. He swears that the shadow
+      of a man’s head turned sideways was clearly visible on the blind,
+      and that this shadow was certainly not that of Peter Carey, whom
+      he knew well. It was that of a bearded man, but the beard was
+      short and bristled forward in a way very different from that of
+      the captain. So he says, but he had been two hours in the
+      public-house, and it is some distance from the road to the
+      window. Besides, this refers to the Monday, and the crime was
+      done upon the Wednesday.
+
+      “On the Tuesday, Peter Carey was in one of his blackest moods,
+      flushed with drink and as savage as a dangerous wild beast. He
+      roamed about the house, and the women ran for it when they heard
+      him coming. Late in the evening, he went down to his own hut.
+      About two o’clock the following morning, his daughter, who slept
+      with her window open, heard a most fearful yell from that
+      direction, but it was no unusual thing for him to bawl and shout
+      when he was in drink, so no notice was taken. On rising at seven,
+      one of the maids noticed that the door of the hut was open, but
+      so great was the terror which the man caused that it was midday
+      before anyone would venture down to see what had become of him.
+      Peeping into the open door, they saw a sight which sent them
+      flying, with white faces, into the village. Within an hour, I was
+      on the spot and had taken over the case.
+
+      “Well, I have fairly steady nerves, as you know, Mr. Holmes, but
+      I give you my word, that I got a shake when I put my head into
+      that little house. It was droning like a harmonium with the flies
+      and bluebottles, and the floor and walls were like a
+      slaughter-house. He had called it a cabin, and a cabin it was,
+      sure enough, for you would have thought that you were in a ship.
+      There was a bunk at one end, a sea-chest, maps and charts, a
+      picture of the _Sea Unicorn_, a line of logbooks on a shelf, all
+      exactly as one would expect to find it in a captain’s room. And
+      there, in the middle of it, was the man himself—his face twisted
+      like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck
+      upward in his agony. Right through his broad breast a steel
+      harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of
+      the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card. Of
+      course, he was quite dead, and had been so from the instant that
+      he had uttered that last yell of agony.
+
+      “I know your methods, sir, and I applied them. Before I permitted
+      anything to be moved, I examined most carefully the ground
+      outside, and also the floor of the room. There were no
+      footmarks.”
+
+      “Meaning that you saw none?”
+
+      “I assure you, sir, that there were none.”
+
+      “My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but I have
+      never yet seen one which was committed by a flying creature. As
+      long as the criminal remains upon two legs so long must there be
+      some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacement which
+      can be detected by the scientific searcher. It is incredible that
+      this blood-bespattered room contained no trace which could have
+      aided us. I understand, however, from the inquest that there were
+      some objects which you failed to overlook?”
+
+      The young inspector winced at my companion’s ironical comments.
+
+      “I was a fool not to call you in at the time Mr. Holmes. However,
+      that’s past praying for now. Yes, there were several objects in
+      the room which called for special attention. One was the harpoon
+      with which the deed was committed. It had been snatched down from
+      a rack on the wall. Two others remained there, and there was a
+      vacant place for the third. On the stock was engraved ‘SS. _Sea
+      Unicorn_, Dundee.’ This seemed to establish that the crime had
+      been done in a moment of fury, and that the murderer had seized
+      the first weapon which came in his way. The fact that the crime
+      was committed at two in the morning, and yet Peter Carey was
+      fully dressed, suggested that he had an appointment with the
+      murderer, which is borne out by the fact that a bottle of rum and
+      two dirty glasses stood upon the table.”
+
+      “Yes,” said Holmes; “I think that both inferences are
+      permissible. Was there any other spirit but rum in the room?”
+
+      “Yes, there was a tantalus containing brandy and whisky on the
+      sea-chest. It is of no importance to us, however, since the
+      decanters were full, and it had therefore not been used.”
+
+      “For all that, its presence has some significance,” said Holmes.
+      “However, let us hear some more about the objects which do seem
+      to you to bear upon the case.”
+
+      “There was this tobacco-pouch upon the table.”
+
+      “What part of the table?”
+
+      “It lay in the middle. It was of coarse sealskin—the
+      straight-haired skin, with a leather thong to bind it. Inside was
+      ‘P.C.’ on the flap. There was half an ounce of strong ship’s
+      tobacco in it.”
+
+      “Excellent! What more?”
+
+      Stanley Hopkins drew from his pocket a drab-covered notebook. The
+      outside was rough and worn, the leaves discoloured. On the first
+      page were written the initials “J.H.N.” and the date “1883.”
+      Holmes laid it on the table and examined it in his minute way,
+      while Hopkins and I gazed over each shoulder. On the second page
+      were the printed letters “C.P.R.,” and then came several sheets
+      of numbers. Another heading was “Argentine,” another “Costa
+      Rica,” and another “San Paulo,” each with pages of signs and
+      figures after it.
+
+      “What do you make of these?” asked Holmes.
+
+      “They appear to be lists of Stock Exchange securities. I thought
+      that ‘J.H.N.’ were the initials of a broker, and that ‘C.P.R.’
+      may have been his client.”
+
+      “Try Canadian Pacific Railway,” said Holmes.
+
+      Stanley Hopkins swore between his teeth, and struck his thigh
+      with his clenched hand.
+
+      “What a fool I have been!” he cried. “Of course, it is as you
+      say. Then ‘J.H.N.’ are the only initials we have to solve. I have
+      already examined the old Stock Exchange lists, and I can find no
+      one in 1883, either in the house or among the outside brokers,
+      whose initials correspond with these. Yet I feel that the clue is
+      the most important one that I hold. You will admit, Mr. Holmes,
+      that there is a possibility that these initials are those of the
+      second person who was present—in other words, of the murderer. I
+      would also urge that the introduction into the case of a document
+      relating to large masses of valuable securities gives us for the
+      first time some indication of a motive for the crime.”
+
+      Sherlock Holmes’s face showed that he was thoroughly taken aback
+      by this new development.
+
+      “I must admit both your points,” said he. “I confess that this
+      notebook, which did not appear at the inquest, modifies any views
+      which I may have formed. I had come to a theory of the crime in
+      which I can find no place for this. Have you endeavoured to trace
+      any of the securities here mentioned?”
+
+      “Inquiries are now being made at the offices, but I fear that the
+      complete register of the stockholders of these South American
+      concerns is in South America, and that some weeks must elapse
+      before we can trace the shares.”
+
+      Holmes had been examining the cover of the notebook with his
+      magnifying lens.
+
+      “Surely there is some discolouration here,” said he.
+
+      “Yes, sir, it is a blood-stain. I told you that I picked the book
+      off the floor.”
+
+      “Was the blood-stain above or below?”
+
+      “On the side next the boards.”
+
+      “Which proves, of course, that the book was dropped after the
+      crime was committed.”
+
+      “Exactly, Mr. Holmes. I appreciated that point, and I conjectured
+      that it was dropped by the murderer in his hurried flight. It lay
+      near the door.”
+
+      “I suppose that none of these securities have been found among
+      the property of the dead man?”
+
+      “No, sir.”
+
+      “Have you any reason to suspect robbery?”
+
+      “No, sir. Nothing seemed to have been touched.”
+
+      “Dear me, it is certainly a very interesting case. Then there was
+      a knife, was there not?”
+
+      “A sheath-knife, still in its sheath. It lay at the feet of the
+      dead man. Mrs. Carey has identified it as being her husband’s
+      property.”
+
+      Holmes was lost in thought for some time.
+
+      “Well,” said he, at last, “I suppose I shall have to come out and
+      have a look at it.”
+
+      Stanley Hopkins gave a cry of joy.
+
+      “Thank you, sir. That will, indeed, be a weight off my mind.”
+
+      Holmes shook his finger at the inspector.
+
+      “It would have been an easier task a week ago,” said he. “But
+      even now my visit may not be entirely fruitless. Watson, if you
+      can spare the time, I should be very glad of your company. If you
+      will call a four-wheeler, Hopkins, we shall be ready to start for
+      Forest Row in a quarter of an hour.”
+
+      Alighting at the small wayside station, we drove for some miles
+      through the remains of widespread woods, which were once part of
+      that great forest which for so long held the Saxon invaders at
+      bay—the impenetrable “weald,” for sixty years the bulwark of
+      Britain. Vast sections of it have been cleared, for this is the
+      seat of the first iron-works of the country, and the trees have
+      been felled to smelt the ore. Now the richer fields of the North
+      have absorbed the trade, and nothing save these ravaged groves
+      and great scars in the earth show the work of the past. Here, in
+      a clearing upon the green slope of a hill, stood a long, low,
+      stone house, approached by a curving drive running through the
+      fields. Nearer the road, and surrounded on three sides by bushes,
+      was a small outhouse, one window and the door facing in our
+      direction. It was the scene of the murder.
+
+      Stanley Hopkins led us first to the house, where he introduced us
+      to a haggard, grey-haired woman, the widow of the murdered man,
+      whose gaunt and deep-lined face, with the furtive look of terror
+      in the depths of her red-rimmed eyes, told of the years of
+      hardship and ill-usage which she had endured. With her was her
+      daughter, a pale, fair-haired girl, whose eyes blazed defiantly
+      at us as she told us that she was glad that her father was dead,
+      and that she blessed the hand which had struck him down. It was a
+      terrible household that Black Peter Carey had made for himself,
+      and it was with a sense of relief that we found ourselves in the
+      sunlight again and making our way along a path which had been
+      worn across the fields by the feet of the dead man.
+
+      The outhouse was the simplest of dwellings, wooden-walled,
+      shingle-roofed, one window beside the door and one on the farther
+      side. Stanley Hopkins drew the key from his pocket and had
+      stooped to the lock, when he paused with a look of attention and
+      surprise upon his face.
+
+      “Someone has been tampering with it,” he said.
+
+      There could be no doubt of the fact. The woodwork was cut, and
+      the scratches showed white through the paint, as if they had been
+      that instant done. Holmes had been examining the window.
+
+      “Someone has tried to force this also. Whoever it was has failed
+      to make his way in. He must have been a very poor burglar.”
+
+      “This is a most extraordinary thing,” said the inspector, “I
+      could swear that these marks were not here yesterday evening.”
+
+      “Some curious person from the village, perhaps,” I suggested.
+
+      “Very unlikely. Few of them would dare to set foot in the
+      grounds, far less try to force their way into the cabin. What do
+      you think of it, Mr. Holmes?”
+
+      “I think that fortune is very kind to us.”
+
+      “You mean that the person will come again?”
+
+      “It is very probable. He came expecting to find the door open. He
+      tried to get in with the blade of a very small penknife. He could
+      not manage it. What would he do?”
+
+      “Come again next night with a more useful tool.”
+
+      “So I should say. It will be our fault if we are not there to
+      receive him. Meanwhile, let me see the inside of the cabin.”
+
+      The traces of the tragedy had been removed, but the furniture
+      within the little room still stood as it had been on the night of
+      the crime. For two hours, with most intense concentration, Holmes
+      examined every object in turn, but his face showed that his quest
+      was not a successful one. Once only he paused in his patient
+      investigation.
+
+      “Have you taken anything off this shelf, Hopkins?”
+
+      “No, I have moved nothing.”
+
+      “Something has been taken. There is less dust in this corner of
+      the shelf than elsewhere. It may have been a book lying on its
+      side. It may have been a box. Well, well, I can do nothing more.
+      Let us walk in these beautiful woods, Watson, and give a few
+      hours to the birds and the flowers. We shall meet you here later,
+      Hopkins, and see if we can come to closer quarters with the
+      gentleman who has paid this visit in the night.”
+
+      It was past eleven o’clock when we formed our little ambuscade.
+      Hopkins was for leaving the door of the hut open, but Holmes was
+      of the opinion that this would rouse the suspicions of the
+      stranger. The lock was a perfectly simple one, and only a strong
+      blade was needed to push it back. Holmes also suggested that we
+      should wait, not inside the hut, but outside it, among the bushes
+      which grew round the farther window. In this way we should be
+      able to watch our man if he struck a light, and see what his
+      object was in this stealthy nocturnal visit.
+
+      It was a long and melancholy vigil, and yet brought with it
+      something of the thrill which the hunter feels when he lies
+      beside the water-pool, and waits for the coming of the thirsty
+      beast of prey. What savage creature was it which might steal upon
+      us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which
+      could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw, or
+      would it prove to be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the
+      weak and unguarded?
+
+      In absolute silence we crouched amongst the bushes, waiting for
+      whatever might come. At first the steps of a few belated
+      villagers, or the sound of voices from the village, lightened our
+      vigil, but one by one these interruptions died away, and an
+      absolute stillness fell upon us, save for the chimes of the
+      distant church, which told us of the progress of the night, and
+      for the rustle and whisper of a fine rain falling amid the
+      foliage which roofed us in.
+
+      Half-past two had chimed, and it was the darkest hour which
+      precedes the dawn, when we all started as a low but sharp click
+      came from the direction of the gate. Someone had entered the
+      drive. Again there was a long silence, and I had begun to fear
+      that it was a false alarm, when a stealthy step was heard upon
+      the other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping
+      and clinking. The man was trying to force the lock. This time his
+      skill was greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden
+      snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and
+      next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior
+      of the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted
+      upon the scene within.
+
+      The nocturnal visitor was a young man, frail and thin, with a
+      black moustache, which intensified the deadly pallor of his face.
+      He could not have been much above twenty years of age. I have
+      never seen any human being who appeared to be in such a pitiable
+      fright, for his teeth were visibly chattering, and he was shaking
+      in every limb. He was dressed like a gentleman, in Norfolk jacket
+      and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap upon his head. We watched
+      him staring round with frightened eyes. Then he laid the
+      candle-end upon the table and disappeared from our view into one
+      of the corners. He returned with a large book, one of the
+      logbooks which formed a line upon the shelves. Leaning on the
+      table, he rapidly turned over the leaves of this volume until he
+      came to the entry which he sought. Then, with an angry gesture of
+      his clenched hand, he closed the book, replaced it in the corner,
+      and put out the light. He had hardly turned to leave the hut when
+      Hopkin’s hand was on the fellow’s collar, and I heard his loud
+      gasp of terror as he understood that he was taken. The candle was
+      relit, and there was our wretched captive, shivering and cowering
+      in the grasp of the detective. He sank down upon the sea-chest,
+      and looked helplessly from one of us to the other.
+
+      “Now, my fine fellow,” said Stanley Hopkins, “who are you, and
+      what do you want here?”
+
+      The man pulled himself together, and faced us with an effort at
+      self-composure.
+
+      “You are detectives, I suppose?” said he. “You imagine I am
+      connected with the death of Captain Peter Carey. I assure you
+      that I am innocent.”
+
+      “We’ll see about that,” said Hopkins. “First of all, what is your
+      name?”
+
+      “It is John Hopley Neligan.”
+
+      I saw Holmes and Hopkins exchange a quick glance.
+
+      “What are you doing here?”
+
+      “Can I speak confidentially?”
+
+      “No, certainly not.”
+
+      “Why should I tell you?”
+
+      “If you have no answer, it may go badly with you at the trial.”
+
+      The young man winced.
+
+      “Well, I will tell you,” he said. “Why should I not? And yet I
+      hate to think of this old scandal gaining a new lease of life.
+      Did you ever hear of Dawson and Neligan?”
+
+      I could see, from Hopkins’s face, that he never had, but Holmes
+      was keenly interested.
+
+      “You mean the West Country bankers,” said he. “They failed for a
+      million, ruined half the county families of Cornwall, and Neligan
+      disappeared.”
+
+      “Exactly. Neligan was my father.”
+
+      At last we were getting something positive, and yet it seemed a
+      long gap between an absconding banker and Captain Peter Carey
+      pinned against the wall with one of his own harpoons. We all
+      listened intently to the young man’s words.
+
+      “It was my father who was really concerned. Dawson had retired. I
+      was only ten years of age at the time, but I was old enough to
+      feel the shame and horror of it all. It has always been said that
+      my father stole all the securities and fled. It is not true. It
+      was his belief that if he were given time in which to realize
+      them, all would be well and every creditor paid in full. He
+      started in his little yacht for Norway just before the warrant
+      was issued for his arrest. I can remember that last night when he
+      bade farewell to my mother. He left us a list of the securities
+      he was taking, and he swore that he would come back with his
+      honour cleared, and that none who had trusted him would suffer.
+      Well, no word was ever heard from him again. Both the yacht and
+      he vanished utterly. We believed, my mother and I, that he and
+      it, with the securities that he had taken with him, were at the
+      bottom of the sea. We had a faithful friend, however, who is a
+      business man, and it was he who discovered some time ago that
+      some of the securities which my father had with him had
+      reappeared on the London market. You can imagine our amazement. I
+      spent months in trying to trace them, and at last, after many
+      doubtings and difficulties, I discovered that the original seller
+      had been Captain Peter Carey, the owner of this hut.
+
+      “Naturally, I made some inquiries about the man. I found that he
+      had been in command of a whaler which was due to return from the
+      Arctic seas at the very time when my father was crossing to
+      Norway. The autumn of that year was a stormy one, and there was a
+      long succession of southerly gales. My father’s yacht may well
+      have been blown to the north, and there met by Captain Peter
+      Carey’s ship. If that were so, what had become of my father? In
+      any case, if I could prove from Peter Carey’s evidence how these
+      securities came on the market it would be a proof that my father
+      had not sold them, and that he had no view to personal profit
+      when he took them.
+
+      “I came down to Sussex with the intention of seeing the captain,
+      but it was at this moment that his terrible death occurred. I
+      read at the inquest a description of his cabin, in which it
+      stated that the old logbooks of his vessel were preserved in it.
+      It struck me that if I could see what occurred in the month of
+      August, 1883, on board the _Sea Unicorn_, I might settle the
+      mystery of my father’s fate. I tried last night to get at these
+      logbooks, but was unable to open the door. To-night I tried again
+      and succeeded, but I find that the pages which deal with that
+      month have been torn from the book. It was at that moment I found
+      myself a prisoner in your hands.”
+
+      “Is that all?” asked Hopkins.
+
+      “Yes, that is all.” His eyes shifted as he said it.
+
+      “You have nothing else to tell us?”
+
+      He hesitated.
+
+      “No, there is nothing.”
+
+      “You have not been here before last night?”
+
+      “No.
+
+      “Then how do you account for _that_?” cried Hopkins, as he held
+      up the damning notebook, with the initials of our prisoner on the
+      first leaf and the blood-stain on the cover.
+
+      The wretched man collapsed. He sank his face in his hands, and
+      trembled all over.
+
+      “Where did you get it?” he groaned. “I did not know. I thought I
+      had lost it at the hotel.”
+
+      “That is enough,” said Hopkins, sternly. “Whatever else you have
+      to say, you must say in court. You will walk down with me now to
+      the police-station. Well, Mr. Holmes, I am very much obliged to
+      you and to your friend for coming down to help me. As it turns
+      out your presence was unnecessary, and I would have brought the
+      case to this successful issue without you, but, none the less, I
+      am grateful. Rooms have been reserved for you at the Brambletye
+      Hotel, so we can all walk down to the village together.”
+
+      “Well, Watson, what do you think of it?” asked Holmes, as we
+      travelled back next morning.
+
+      “I can see that you are not satisfied.”
+
+      “Oh, yes, my dear Watson, I am perfectly satisfied. At the same
+      time, Stanley Hopkins’s methods do not commend themselves to me.
+      I am disappointed in Stanley Hopkins. I had hoped for better
+      things from him. One should always look for a possible
+      alternative, and provide against it. It is the first rule of
+      criminal investigation.”
+
+      “What, then, is the alternative?”
+
+      “The line of investigation which I have myself been pursuing. It
+      may give us nothing. I cannot tell. But at least I shall follow
+      it to the end.”
+
+      Several letters were waiting for Holmes at Baker Street. He
+      snatched one of them up, opened it, and burst out into a
+      triumphant chuckle of laughter.
+
+      “Excellent, Watson! The alternative develops. Have you telegraph
+      forms? Just write a couple of messages for me: ‘Sumner, Shipping
+      Agent, Ratcliff Highway. Send three men on, to arrive ten
+      to-morrow morning.—Basil.’ That’s my name in those parts. The
+      other is: ‘Inspector Stanley Hopkins, 46 Lord Street, Brixton.
+      Come breakfast to-morrow at nine-thirty. Important. Wire if
+      unable to come.—Sherlock Holmes.’ There, Watson, this infernal
+      case has haunted me for ten days. I hereby banish it completely
+      from my presence. To-morrow, I trust that we shall hear the last
+      of it forever.”
+
+      Sharp at the hour named Inspector Stanley Hopkins appeared, and
+      we sat down together to the excellent breakfast which Mrs. Hudson
+      had prepared. The young detective was in high spirits at his
+      success.
+
+      “You really think that your solution must be correct?” asked
+      Holmes.
+
+      “I could not imagine a more complete case.”
+
+      “It did not seem to me conclusive.”
+
+      “You astonish me, Mr. Holmes. What more could one ask for?”
+
+      “Does your explanation cover every point?”
+
+      “Undoubtedly. I find that young Neligan arrived at the Brambletye
+      Hotel on the very day of the crime. He came on the pretence of
+      playing golf. His room was on the ground-floor, and he could get
+      out when he liked. That very night he went down to Woodman’s Lee,
+      saw Peter Carey at the hut, quarrelled with him, and killed him
+      with the harpoon. Then, horrified by what he had done, he fled
+      out of the hut, dropping the notebook which he had brought with
+      him in order to question Peter Carey about these different
+      securities. You may have observed that some of them were marked
+      with ticks, and the others—the great majority—were not. Those
+      which are ticked have been traced on the London market, but the
+      others, presumably, were still in the possession of Carey, and
+      young Neligan, according to his own account, was anxious to
+      recover them in order to do the right thing by his father’s
+      creditors. After his flight he did not dare to approach the hut
+      again for some time, but at last he forced himself to do so in
+      order to obtain the information which he needed. Surely that is
+      all simple and obvious?”
+
+      Holmes smiled and shook his head.
+
+      “It seems to me to have only one drawback, Hopkins, and that is
+      that it is intrinsically impossible. Have you tried to drive a
+      harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut my dear sir, you must really
+      pay attention to these details. My friend Watson could tell you
+      that I spent a whole morning in that exercise. It is no easy
+      matter, and requires a strong and practised arm. But this blow
+      was delivered with such violence that the head of the weapon sank
+      deep into the wall. Do you imagine that this anæmic youth was
+      capable of so frightful an assault? Is he the man who hobnobbed
+      in rum and water with Black Peter in the dead of the night? Was
+      it his profile that was seen on the blind two nights before? No,
+      no, Hopkins, it is another and more formidable person for whom we
+      must seek.”
+
+      The detective’s face had grown longer and longer during Holmes’s
+      speech. His hopes and his ambitions were all crumbling about him.
+      But he would not abandon his position without a struggle.
+
+      “You can’t deny that Neligan was present that night, Mr. Holmes.
+      The book will prove that. I fancy that I have evidence enough to
+      satisfy a jury, even if you are able to pick a hole in it.
+      Besides, Mr. Holmes, I have laid my hand upon _my_ man. As to
+      this terrible person of yours, where is he?”
+
+      “I rather fancy that he is on the stair,” said Holmes, serenely.
+      “I think, Watson, that you would do well to put that revolver
+      where you can reach it.” He rose and laid a written paper upon a
+      side-table. “Now we are ready,” said he.
+
+      There had been some talking in gruff voices outside, and now Mrs.
+      Hudson opened the door to say that there were three men inquiring
+      for Captain Basil.
+
+      “Show them in one by one,” said Holmes.
+
+      “The first who entered was a little Ribston pippin of a man, with
+      ruddy cheeks and fluffy white side-whiskers. Holmes had drawn a
+      letter from his pocket.
+
+      “What name?” he asked.
+
+      “James Lancaster.”
+
+      “I am sorry, Lancaster, but the berth is full. Here is half a
+      sovereign for your trouble. Just step into this room and wait
+      there for a few minutes.”
+
+      The second man was a long, dried-up creature, with lank hair and
+      sallow cheeks. His name was Hugh Pattins. He also received his
+      dismissal, his half-sovereign, and the order to wait.
+
+      The third applicant was a man of remarkable appearance. A fierce
+      bull-dog face was framed in a tangle of hair and beard, and two
+      bold, dark eyes gleamed behind the cover of thick, tufted,
+      overhung eyebrows. He saluted and stood sailor-fashion, turning
+      his cap round in his hands.
+
+      “Your name?” asked Holmes.
+
+      “Patrick Cairns.”
+
+      “Harpooner?”
+
+      “Yes, sir. Twenty-six voyages.”
+
+      “Dundee, I suppose?”
+
+      “Yes, sir.”
+
+      “And ready to start with an exploring ship?”
+
+      “Yes, sir.”
+
+      “What wages?”
+
+      “Eight pounds a month.”
+
+      “Could you start at once?”
+
+      “As soon as I get my kit.”
+
+      “Have you your papers?”
+
+      “Yes, sir.” He took a sheaf of worn and greasy forms from his
+      pocket. Holmes glanced over them and returned them.
+
+      “You are just the man I want,” said he. “Here’s the agreement on
+      the side-table. If you sign it the whole matter will be settled.”
+
+      The seaman lurched across the room and took up the pen.
+
+      “Shall I sign here?” he asked, stooping over the table.
+
+      Holmes leaned over his shoulder and passed both hands over his
+      neck.
+
+      “This will do,” said he.
+
+      I heard a click of steel and a bellow like an enraged bull. The
+      next instant Holmes and the seaman were rolling on the ground
+      together. He was a man of such gigantic strength that, even with
+      the handcuffs which Holmes had so deftly fastened upon his
+      wrists, he would have very quickly overpowered my friend had
+      Hopkins and I not rushed to his rescue. Only when I pressed the
+      cold muzzle of the revolver to his temple did he at last
+      understand that resistance was vain. We lashed his ankles with
+      cord, and rose breathless from the struggle.
+
+      “I must really apologize, Hopkins,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I fear
+      that the scrambled eggs are cold. However, you will enjoy the
+      rest of your breakfast all the better, will you not, for the
+      thought that you have brought your case to a triumphant
+      conclusion.”
+
+      Stanley Hopkins was speechless with amazement.
+
+      “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Holmes,” he blurted out at last,
+      with a very red face. “It seems to me that I have been making a
+      fool of myself from the beginning. I understand now, what I
+      should never have forgotten, that I am the pupil and you are the
+      master. Even now I see what you have done, but I don’t know how
+      you did it or what it signifies.”
+
+      “Well, well,” said Holmes, good-humouredly. “We all learn by
+      experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never
+      lose sight of the alternative. You were so absorbed in young
+      Neligan that you could not spare a thought to Patrick Cairns, the
+      true murderer of Peter Carey.”
+
+      The hoarse voice of the seaman broke in on our conversation.
+
+      “See here, mister,” said he, “I make no complaint of being
+      man-handled in this fashion, but I would have you call things by
+      their right names. You say I murdered Peter Carey, I say I
+      _killed_ Peter Carey, and there’s all the difference. Maybe you
+      don’t believe what I say. Maybe you think I am just slinging you
+      a yarn.”
+
+      “Not at all,” said Holmes. “Let us hear what you have to say.”
+
+      “It’s soon told, and, by the Lord, every word of it is truth. I
+      knew Black Peter, and when he pulled out his knife I whipped a
+      harpoon through him sharp, for I knew that it was him or me.
+      That’s how he died. You can call it murder. Anyhow, I’d as soon
+      die with a rope round my neck as with Black Peter’s knife in my
+      heart.”
+
+      “How came you there?” asked Holmes.
+
+      “I’ll tell it you from the beginning. Just sit me up a little, so
+      as I can speak easy. It was in ’83 that it happened—August of
+      that year. Peter Carey was master of the _Sea Unicorn_, and I was
+      spare harpooner. We were coming out of the ice-pack on our way
+      home, with head winds and a week’s southerly gale, when we picked
+      up a little craft that had been blown north. There was one man on
+      her—a landsman. The crew had thought she would founder and had
+      made for the Norwegian coast in the dinghy. I guess they were all
+      drowned. Well, we took him on board, this man, and he and the
+      skipper had some long talks in the cabin. All the baggage we took
+      off with him was one tin box. So far as I know, the man’s name
+      was never mentioned, and on the second night he disappeared as if
+      he had never been. It was given out that he had either thrown
+      himself overboard or fallen overboard in the heavy weather that
+      we were having. Only one man knew what had happened to him, and
+      that was me, for, with my own eyes, I saw the skipper tip up his
+      heels and put him over the rail in the middle watch of a dark
+      night, two days before we sighted the Shetland Lights. Well, I
+      kept my knowledge to myself, and waited to see what would come of
+      it. When we got back to Scotland it was easily hushed up, and
+      nobody asked any questions. A stranger died by accident and it
+      was nobody’s business to inquire. Shortly after Peter Carey gave
+      up the sea, and it was long years before I could find where he
+      was. I guessed that he had done the deed for the sake of what was
+      in that tin box, and that he could afford now to pay me well for
+      keeping my mouth shut. I found out where he was through a sailor
+      man that had met him in London, and down I went to squeeze him.
+      The first night he was reasonable enough, and was ready to give
+      me what would make me free of the sea for life. We were to fix it
+      all two nights later. When I came, I found him three parts drunk
+      and in a vile temper. We sat down and we drank and we yarned
+      about old times, but the more he drank the less I liked the look
+      on his face. I spotted that harpoon upon the wall, and I thought
+      I might need it before I was through. Then at last he broke out
+      at me, spitting and cursing, with murder in his eyes and a great
+      clasp-knife in his hand. He had not time to get it from the
+      sheath before I had the harpoon through him. Heavens! what a yell
+      he gave! and his face gets between me and my sleep. I stood
+      there, with his blood splashing round me, and I waited for a bit,
+      but all was quiet, so I took heart once more. I looked round, and
+      there was the tin box on the shelf. I had as much right to it as
+      Peter Carey, anyhow, so I took it with me and left the hut. Like
+      a fool I left my baccy-pouch upon the table.
+
+      “Now I’ll tell you the queerest part of the whole story. I had
+      hardly got outside the hut when I heard someone coming, and I hid
+      among the bushes. A man came slinking along, went into the hut,
+      gave a cry as if he had seen a ghost, and legged it as hard as he
+      could run until he was out of sight. Who he was or what he wanted
+      is more than I can tell. For my part I walked ten miles, got a
+      train at Tunbridge Wells, and so reached London, and no one the
+      wiser.
+
+      “Well, when I came to examine the box I found there was no money
+      in it, and nothing but papers that I would not dare to sell. I
+      had lost my hold on Black Peter and was stranded in London
+      without a shilling. There was only my trade left. I saw these
+      advertisements about harpooners, and high wages, so I went to the
+      shipping agents, and they sent me here. That’s all I know, and I
+      say again that if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me
+      thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope.”
+
+      “A very clear statement said Holmes,” rising and lighting his
+      pipe. “I think, Hopkins, that you should lose no time in
+      conveying your prisoner to a place of safety. This room is not
+      well adapted for a cell, and Mr. Patrick Cairns occupies too
+      large a proportion of our carpet.”
+
+      “Mr. Holmes,” said Hopkins, “I do not know how to express my
+      gratitude. Even now I do not understand how you attained this
+      result.”
+
+      “Simply by having the good fortune to get the right clue from the
+      beginning. It is very possible if I had known about this notebook
+      it might have led away my thoughts, as it did yours. But all I
+      heard pointed in the one direction. The amazing strength, the
+      skill in the use of the harpoon, the rum and water, the sealskin
+      tobacco-pouch with the coarse tobacco—all these pointed to a
+      seaman, and one who had been a whaler. I was convinced that the
+      initials ‘P.C.’ upon the pouch were a coincidence, and not those
+      of Peter Carey, since he seldom smoked, and no pipe was found in
+      his cabin. You remember that I asked whether whisky and brandy
+      were in the cabin. You said they were. How many landsmen are
+      there who would drink rum when they could get these other
+      spirits? Yes, I was certain it was a seaman.”
+
+      “And how did you find him?”
+
+      “My dear sir, the problem had become a very simple one. If it
+      were a seaman, it could only be a seaman who had been with him on
+      the _Sea Unicorn_. So far as I could learn he had sailed in no
+      other ship. I spent three days in wiring to Dundee, and at the
+      end of that time I had ascertained the names of the crew of the
+      _Sea Unicorn_ in 1883. When I found Patrick Cairns among the
+      harpooners, my research was nearing its end. I argued that the
+      man was probably in London, and that he would desire to leave the
+      country for a time. I therefore spent some days in the East End,
+      devised an Arctic expedition, put forth tempting terms for
+      harpooners who would serve under Captain Basil—and behold the
+      result!”
+
+      “Wonderful!” cried Hopkins. “Wonderful!”
+
+      “You must obtain the release of young Neligan as soon as
+      possible,” said Holmes. “I confess that I think you owe him some
+      apology. The tin box must be returned to him, but, of course, the
+      securities which Peter Carey has sold are lost forever. There’s
+      the cab, Hopkins, and you can remove your man. If you want me for
+      the trial, my address and that of Watson will be somewhere in
+      Norway—I’ll send particulars later.”
+
+
+
+
+
+",The Adventure of Black Peter,Arthur Conan Doyle,18,['Patrick Cairns']
+"
+
+""It can't hurt now,"" was Mr. Sherlock Holmes's comment when, for the
+tenth time in as many years, I asked his leave to reveal the following
+narrative.  So it was that at last I obtained permission to put on
+record what was, in some ways, the supreme moment of my friend's career.
+
+Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish Bath.  It was over a
+smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found
+him less reticent and more human than anywhere else.  On the upper
+floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment there is an isolated
+corner where two couches lie side by side, and it was on these that we
+lay upon September 3, 1902, the day when my narrative begins.  I had
+asked him whether anything was stirring, and for answer he had shot his
+long, thin, nervous arm out of the sheets which enveloped him and had
+drawn an envelope from the inside pocket of the coat which hung beside
+him.
+
+
+""It may be some fussy, self-important fool, it may be a matter of life
+or death,"" said he, as he handed me the note.  ""I know no more than
+this message tells me.""
+
+It was from the Carlton Club, and dated the evening before.  This is
+what I read:
+
+
+""Sir James Damery presents his compliments to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and
+will call upon him at 4.30 to-morrow.  Sir James begs to say that the
+matter upon which he desires to consult Mr. Holmes is very delicate,
+and also very important.  He trusts, therefore, that Mr. Holmes will
+make every effort to grant this interview, and that he will confirm it
+over the telephone to the Carlton Club.""
+
+
+""I need not say that I have confirmed it, Watson,"" said Holmes, as I
+returned the paper.  ""Do you know anything of this man Damery?""
+
+""Only that his name is a household word in Society.""
+
+""Well, I can tell you a little more than that.  He has rather a
+reputation for arranging delicate matters which are to be kept out of
+the papers.  You may remember his negotiations with Sir George Lewis
+over the Hammerford Will case.  He is a man of the world with a natural
+turn for diplomacy.  I am bound, therefore, to hope that it is not a
+false scent and that he has some real need for our assistance.""
+
+""Our?""
+
+""Well, if you will be so good, Watson.""
+
+""I shall be honoured.""
+
+""Then you have the hour--four-thirty.  Until then we can put the matter
+out of our heads.""
+
+
+I was living in my own rooms in Queen Anne Street at the time, but I
+was round at Baker Street before the time named.  Sharp to the
+half-hour, Colonel Sir James Damery was announced.  It is hardly
+necessary to describe him, for many will remember that large, bluff,
+honest personality, that broad, clean-shaven face, above all, that
+pleasant, mellow voice.  Frankness shone from his grey Irish eyes, and
+good humour played round his mobile, smiling lips.  His lucent top-hat,
+his dark frock-coat, indeed, every detail, from the pearl pin in the
+black satin cravat to the lavender spats over the varnished shoes,
+spoke of the meticulous care in dress for which he was famous.  The
+big, masterful aristocrat dominated the little room.
+
+""Of course, I was prepared to find Dr. Watson,"" he remarked, with a
+courteous bow.  ""His collaboration may be very necessary, for we are
+dealing on this occasion, Mr. Holmes, with a man to whom violence is
+familiar and who will, literally, stick at nothing.  I should say that
+there is no more dangerous man in Europe.""
+
+""I have had several opponents to whom that flattering term has been
+applied,"" said Holmes, with a smile.  ""Don't you smoke?  Then you will
+excuse me if I light my pipe.  If your man is more dangerous than the
+late Professor Moriarty, or than the living Colonel Sebastian Moran,
+then he is indeed worth meeting.  May I ask his name?""
+
+""Have you ever heard of Baron Gruner?
+
+""You mean the Austrian murderer?""
+
+Colonel Damery threw up his kid-gloved hands with a laugh.  ""There is
+no getting past you, Mr. Holmes!  Wonderful!  So you have already sized
+him up as a murderer?""
+
+""It is my business to follow the details of Continental crime.  Who
+could possibly have read what happened at Prague and have any doubts as
+to the man's guilt!  It was a purely technical legal point and the
+suspicious death of a witness that saved him!  I am as sure that he
+killed his wife when the so-called 'accident' happened in the Splügen
+Pass as if I had seen him do it.  I knew, also, that he had come to
+England, and had a presentiment that sooner or later he would find me
+some work to do.  Well, what has Baron Gruner been up to?  I presume it
+is not this old tragedy which has come up again?""
+
+""No, it is more serious than that.  To revenge crime is important, but
+to prevent it is more so.  It is a terrible thing, Mr. Holmes, to see a
+dreadful event, an atrocious situation, preparing itself before your
+eyes, to clearly understand whither it will lead and yet to be utterly
+unable to avert it.  Can a human being be placed in a more trying
+position?""
+
+""Perhaps not.""
+
+""Then you will sympathize with the client in whose interests I am
+acting.""
+
+""I did not understand that you were merely an intermediary.  Who is the
+principal?""
+
+""Mr. Holmes, I must beg you not to press that question.  It is
+important that I should be able to assure him that his honoured name
+has been in no way dragged into the matter.  His motives are, to the
+last degree, honourable and chivalrous, but he prefers to remain
+unknown.  I need not say that your fees will be assured and that you
+will be given a perfectly free hand.  Surely the actual name of your
+client is immaterial?""
+
+""I am sorry,"" said Holmes.  ""I am accustomed to have mystery at one end
+of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing.  I fear, Sir
+James, that I must decline to act.""
+
+Our visitor was greatly disturbed.  His large, sensitive face was
+darkened with emotion and disappointment.
+
+""You hardly realize the effect of your own action, Mr. Holmes,"" said
+he.  ""You place me in a most serious dilemma, for I am perfectly
+certain that you would be proud to take over the case if I could give
+you the facts, and yet a promise forbids me from revealing them all.
+May I, at least, lay all that I can before you?""
+
+""By all means, so long as it is understood that I commit myself to
+nothing.""
+
+""That is understood.  In the first place, you have no doubt heard of
+General de Merville?""
+
+""De Merville of Khyber fame?  Yes, I have heard of him.""
+
+""He has a daughter, Violet de Merville, young, rich, beautiful,
+accomplished, a wonder-woman in every way.  It is this daughter, this
+lovely, innocent girl, whom we are endeavouring to save from the
+clutches of a fiend.""
+
+""Baron Gruner has some hold over her, then?""
+
+""The strongest of all holds where a woman is concerned--the hold of
+love.  The fellow is, as you may have heard, extraordinarily handsome,
+with a most fascinating manner, a gentle voice, and that air of romance
+and mystery which means so much to a woman.  He is said to have the
+whole sex at his mercy and to have made ample use of the fact.
+
+""But how came such a man to meet a lady of the standing of Miss Violet
+de Merville?""
+
+""It was on a Mediterranean yachting voyage.  The company, though
+select, paid their own passages.  No doubt the promoters hardly
+realized the Baron's true character until it was too late.  The villain
+attached himself to the lady, and with such effect that he has
+completely and absolutely won her heart.  To say that she loves him
+hardly expresses it.  She dotes upon him, she is obsessed by him.
+Outside of him there is nothing on earth.  She will not hear one word
+against him.  Everything has been done to cure her of her madness, but
+in vain.  To sum up, she proposes to marry him next month.  As she is
+of age and has a will of iron, it is hard to know how to prevent her.""
+
+""Does she know about the Austrian episode?""
+
+""The cunning devil has told her every unsavoury public scandal of his
+past life, but always in such a way as to make himself out to be an
+innocent martyr.  She absolutely accepts his version and will listen to
+no other.""
+
+""Dear me!  But surely you have inadvertently let out the name of your
+client?  It is no doubt General de Merville.""
+
+Our visitor fidgeted in his chair.
+
+""I could deceive you by saying so, Mr. Holmes, but it would not be
+true.  De Merville is a broken man.  The strong soldier has been
+utterly demoralized by this incident.  He has lost the nerve which
+never failed him on the battlefield and has become a weak, doddering
+old man, utterly incapable of contending with a brilliant, forceful
+rascal like this Austrian.  My client, however, is an old friend, one
+who has known the General intimately for many years and taken a
+paternal interest in this young girl since she wore short frocks.  He
+cannot see this tragedy consummated without some attempt to stop it.
+There is nothing in which Scotland Yard can act.  It was his own
+suggestion that you should be called in, but it was, as I have said, on
+the express stipulation that he should not be personally involved in
+the matter.  I have no doubt, Mr. Holmes, with your great powers you
+could easily trace my client back through me, but I must ask you, as a
+point of honour, to refrain from doing so, and not to break in upon his
+incognito.""
+
+Holmes gave a whimsical smile.
+
+""I think I may safely promise that,"" said he.  ""I may add that your
+problem interests me, and that I shall be prepared to look into it.
+How shall I keep in touch with you?""
+
+""The Carlton Club will find me.  But, in case of emergency, there is a
+private telephone call, 'XX.31.'""
+
+Holmes noted it down and sat, still smiling, with the open
+memorandum-book upon his knee.
+
+""The Baron's present address, please?""
+
+""Vernon Lodge, near Kingston.  It is a large house.  He has been
+fortunate in some rather shady speculations and is a rich man, which,
+naturally, makes him a more dangerous antagonist.""
+
+""Is he at home at present?""
+
+""Yes.""
+
+""Apart from what you have told me, can you give me any further
+information about the man?""
+
+""He has expensive tastes.  He is a horse fancier.  For a short time he
+played polo at Hurlingham, but then this Prague affair got noised about
+and he had to leave.  He collects books and pictures.  He is a man with
+a considerable artistic side to his nature.  He is, I believe, a
+recognized authority upon Chinese pottery, and has written a book upon
+the subject.""
+
+""A complex mind,"" said Holmes.  ""All great criminals have that.  My old
+friend Charlie Peace was a violin virtuoso.  Wainwright was no mean
+artist.  I could quote many more.  Well, Sir James, you will inform
+your client that I am turning my mind upon Baron Gruner.  I can say no
+more.  I have some sources of information of my own, and dare say we
+may find some means of opening matter up.""
+
+
+When our visitor had left us, Holmes sat so long in deep thought that
+it seemed to me that he had forgotten my presence.  At last, however,
+he came briskly back to earth.
+
+""Well, Watson, any views?"" he asked.
+
+""I should think you had better see the young lady herself.""
+
+""My dear Watson, if her poor old broken father cannot move her, how
+shall I, a stranger, prevail?  And yet there is something in the
+suggestion if all else fails.  But I think we must begin from a
+different angle.  I rather fancy that Shinwell Johnson might be a help.""
+
+I have not had occasion to mention Shinwell Johnson in these memoirs
+because I have seldom drawn my cases from the latter phases of my
+friend's career.  During the first years of the century he became a
+valuable assistant.  Johnson, I grieve to say, made his name first as a
+very dangerous villain and served two terms at Parkhurst.  Finally, he
+repented and allied himself to Holmes, acting as his agent in the huge
+criminal underworld of London, and obtaining information which often
+proved to be of vital importance.  Had Johnson been a ""nark"" of the
+police he would soon have been exposed, but as he dealt with cases
+which never came directly into the courts, his activities were never
+realized by his companions.  With the glamour of his two convictions
+upon him, he had the _entrée_ of every night-club, doss-house, and
+gambling-den in the town, and his quick observation and active brain
+made him an ideal agent for gaining information.  It was to him that
+Sherlock Holmes now proposed to turn.
+
+It was not possible for me to follow the immediate steps taken by my
+friend, for I had some pressing professional business of my own, but I
+met him by appointment that evening at Simpson's, where, sitting at a
+small table in the front window, and looking down at the rushing stream
+of life in the Strand, he told me something of what had passed.
+
+""Johnson is on the prowl,"" said he.  ""He may pick up some garbage in
+the darker recesses of the underworld, for it is down there, amid the
+black roots of crime, that we must hunt for this man's secrets.""
+
+""But, if the lady will not accept what is already known, why should any
+fresh discovery of yours turn her from her purpose?""
+
+""Who knows, Watson?  Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to
+the male.  Murder might be condoned or explained, and yet some smaller
+offence might rankle.  Baron Gruner remarked to me----""
+
+""He remarked to you!""
+
+""Oh, to be sure, I had not told you of my plans!  Well, Watson, I love
+to come to close grips with my man.  I like to meet him eye to eye and
+read for myself the stuff that he is made of.  When I had given Johnson
+his instructions, I took a cab out to Kingston and found the Baron in a
+most affable mood.""
+
+""Did he recognize you?""
+
+""There was no difficulty about that, for I simply sent in my card.  He
+is an excellent antagonist, cool as ice, silky voiced and soothing as
+one of your fashionable consultants, and poisonous as a cobra.  He has
+breed in him, a real aristocrat of crime, with a superficial suggestion
+of afternoon tea and all the cruelty of the grave behind it.  Yes, I am
+glad to have had my attention called to Baron Adelbert Gruner.""
+
+""You say he was affable?""
+
+""A purring cat who thinks he sees prospective mice.  Some people's
+affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.  His
+greeting was characteristic.  'I rather thought I should see you sooner
+or later, Mr. Holmes,' said he.  'You have been engaged, no doubt, by
+General de Merville to endeavour to stop my marriage with his daughter,
+Violet.  That is so, is it not?'
+
+""I acquiesced.
+
+""'My dear man,' said he, 'you will only ruin your own well-deserved
+reputation.  It is not a case in which you can possibly succeed.  You
+will have barren work, to say nothing of incurring some danger.  Let me
+very strongly advise you to draw off at once.'
+
+""'It is curious,' I answered, 'but that was the very advice which I had
+intended to give you.  I have a respect for your brains, Baron, and the
+little which I have seen of your personality has not lessened it.  Let
+me put it to you as man to man.  No one wants to rake up your past and
+make you unduly uncomfortable.  It is over, and you are now in smooth
+waters, but if you persist in this marriage you will raise up a swarm
+of powerful enemies who will never leave you alone until they have made
+England too hot to hold you.  Is the game worth it?  Surely you would
+be wiser if you left the lady alone.  It would not be pleasant for you
+if these facts of your past were brought to her notice.'
+
+""The Baron has little waxed tips of hair under his nose, like the short
+antennae of an insect.  These quivered with amusement as he listened,
+and he finally broke into a gentle chuckle.
+
+""'Excuse my amusement, Mr. Holmes,' said he, 'but it is really funny to
+see you trying to play a hand with no cards in it.  I don't think
+anyone could do it better, but it is rather pathetic, all the same.
+Not a colour card there, Mr. Holmes, nothing but the smallest of the
+small.'
+
+""'So you think.'
+
+""'So I know.  Let me make the thing clear to you, for my own hand is so
+strong that I can afford to show it.  I have been fortunate enough to
+win the entire affection of this lady.  This was given to me in spite
+of the fact that I told her very clearly of all the unhappy incidents
+in my past life.  I also told her that certain wicked and designing
+persons--I hope you recognize yourself--would come to her and tell her
+these things, and I warned her how to treat them.  You have heard of
+post-hypnotic suggestion, Mr. Holmes?  Well, you will see how it works,
+for a man of personality can use hypnotism without any vulgar passes or
+tomfoolery.  So she is ready for you and, I have no doubt, would give
+you an appointment, for she is quite amenable to her father's
+will--save only in the one little matter.'
+
+""Well, Watson, there seemed to be no more to say, so I took my leave
+with as much cold dignity as I could summon, but, as I had my hand on
+the door-handle, he stopped me.
+
+""'By the way, Mr. Holmes,' said he, 'did you know Le Brun, the French
+agent?'
+
+""'Yes,' said I.
+
+""'Do you know what befell him?'
+
+""'I heard that he was beaten by some Apaches in the Montmartre district
+and crippled for life.'
+
+""'Quite true, Mr. Holmes.  By a curious coincidence he had been
+inquiring into my affairs only a week before.  Don't do it, Mr. Holmes;
+it's not a lucky thing to do.  Several have found that out.  My last
+word to you is, go your own way and let me go mine.  Good-bye!'
+
+""So there you are, Watson.  You are up to date now.""
+
+""The fellow seems dangerous.""
+
+""Mighty dangerous.  I disregard the blusterer, but this is the sort of
+man who says rather less than he means.""
+
+""Must you interfere?  Does it really matter if he marries the girl?""
+
+""Considering that he undoubtedly murdered his last wife, I should say
+it mattered very much.  Besides, the client!  Well, well, we need not
+discuss that.  When you have finished your coffee you had best come
+home with me, for the blithe Shinwell will be there with his report.""
+
+We found him sure enough, a huge, coarse, red-faced, scorbutic man,
+with a pair of vivid black eyes which were the only external sign of
+the very cunning mind within.  It seems that he had dived down into
+what was peculiarly his kingdom, and beside him on the settee was a
+brand which he had brought up in the shape of a slim, flame-like young
+woman with a pale, intense face, youthful, and yet so worn with sin and
+sorrow that one read the terrible years which had left their leprous
+mark upon her.
+
+""This is Miss Kitty Winter,"" said Shinwell Johnson, waving his fat hand
+as an introduction.  ""What she don't know--well, there, she'll speak
+for herself.  Put my hand right on her, Mr. Holmes, within an hour of
+your message.""
+
+""I'm easy to find,"" said the young woman.  ""Hell, London, gets me every
+time.  Same address for Porky Shinwell.  We're old mates, Porky, you
+and I.  But, by Gripes! there is another who ought to be down in a
+lower hell than we if there was any justice in the world!  That is the
+man you are after, Mr. Holmes.""
+
+Holmes smiled.  ""I gather we have your good wishes, Miss Winter.""
+
+""If I can help to put him where he belongs, I'm yours to the rattle,""
+said our visitor, with fierce energy.  There was an intensity of hatred
+in her white, set face and her blazing eyes such as woman seldom and
+man never can attain.  ""You needn't go into my past, Mr. Holmes.
+That's neither here nor there.  But what I am Adelbert Gruner made me.
+If I could pull him down!""  She clutched frantically with her hands
+into the air.  ""Oh, if I could only pull him into the pit where he has
+pushed so many!""
+
+""You know how the matter stands?""
+
+""Porky Shinwell has been telling me.  He's after some other poor fool
+and wants to marry her this time.  You want to stop it.  Well, you
+surely know enough about this devil to prevent any decent girl in her
+senses wanting to be in the same parish with him.""
+
+""She is not in her senses.  She is madly in love.  She has been told
+all about him.  She cares nothing.""
+
+""Told about the murder?""
+
+""Yes.""
+
+""My Lord, she must have a nerve!""
+
+""She puts them all down as slanders.""
+
+""Couldn't you lay proofs before her silly eyes?""
+
+""Well, can you help us do so?""
+
+""Ain't I a proof myself?  If I stood before her and told her how he
+used me----""
+
+""Would you do this?""
+
+""Would I?  Would I not!""
+
+""Well, it might be worth trying.  But he has told her most of his sins
+and had pardon from her, and I understand she will not reopen the
+question.""
+
+""I'll lay he didn't tell her all,"" said Miss Winter.  ""I caught a
+glimpse of one or two murders besides the one that made such a fuss.
+He would speak of someone in his velvet way and then look at me with a
+steady eye and say: 'He died within a month.'  It wasn't hot air,
+either.  But I took little notice--you see, I loved him myself at that
+time.  Whatever he did went with me, same as with this poor fool!
+There was just one thing that shook me.  Yes, by Gripes! if it had not
+been for his poisonous, lying tongue that explains and soothes, I'd
+have left him that very night.  It's a book he has--a brown leather
+book with a lock, and his arms in gold on the outside.  I think he was
+a bit drunk that night, or he would not have shown it to me.""
+
+""What was it, then?""
+
+""I tell you, Mr. Holmes, this man collects women, and takes a pride in
+his collection, as some men collect moths or butterflies.  He had it
+all in that book.  Snapshot photographs, names, details, everything
+about them.  It was a beastly book--a book no man, even if he had come
+from the gutter, could have put together.  But it was Adelbert Gruner's
+book all the same.  'Souls I have ruined.'  He could have put that on
+the outside if he had been so minded.  However, that's neither here nor
+there, for the book would not serve you, and, if it would, you can't
+get it.""
+
+""Where is it?""
+
+""How can I tell you where it is now?  It's more than a year since I
+left him.  I know where he kept it then.  He's a precise, tidy cat of a
+man in many of his ways, so maybe it is still in the pigeon-hole of the
+old bureau in the inner study.  Do you know his house?""
+
+""I've been in the study,"" said Holmes.
+
+""Have you, though?  You haven't been slow on the job if you only
+started this morning.  Maybe dear Adelbert has met his match this time.
+The outer study is the one with the Chinese crockery in it--big glass
+cupboard between the windows.  Then behind his desk is the door that
+leads to the inner study--a small room where he keeps papers and
+things.""
+
+""Is he not afraid of burglars?""
+
+""Adelbert is no coward.  His worst enemy couldn't say that of him.  He
+can look after himself.  There's a burglar alarm at night.  Besides,
+what is there for a burglar--unless they got away with all this fancy
+crockery?""
+
+""No good,"" said Shinwell Johnson, with the decided voice of the expert.
+""No fence wants stuff of that sort that you can neither melt nor sell.""
+
+""Quite so,"" said Holmes.  ""Well, now, Miss Winter, if you would call
+here to-morrow evening at five, I would consider in the meanwhile
+whether your suggestion of seeing this lady personally may not be
+arranged.  I am exceedingly obliged to you for your co-operation.  I
+need not say that my clients will consider liberally----""
+
+""None of that, Mr. Holmes,"" cried the young woman.  ""I am not out for
+money.  Let me see this man in the mud, and I've got all I worked
+for--in the mud with my foot on his cursed face.  That's my price.  I'm
+with you to-morrow or any other day so long as you are on his track.
+Porky here can tell you always where to find me.""
+
+
+I did not see Holmes again until the following evening, when we dined
+once more at our Strand restaurant.  He shrugged his shoulders when I
+asked him what luck he had had in his interview.  Then he told the
+story, which I would repeat in this way.  His hard, dry statement needs
+some little editing to soften it into the terms of real life.
+
+""There was no difficulty at all about the appointment,"" said Holmes,
+""for the girl glories in showing abject filial obedience in all
+secondary things in an attempt to atone for her flagrant breach of it
+in her engagement.  The General 'phoned that all was ready, and the
+fiery Miss W. turned up according to schedule, so that at half-past
+five a cab deposited us outside 104 Berkeley Square, where the old
+soldier resides--one of those awful grey London castles which would
+make a church seem frivolous.  A footman showed us into a great
+yellow-curtained drawing-room, and there was the lady awaiting us,
+demure, pale, self-contained, as inflexible and remote as a snow image
+on a mountain.
+
+""I don't quite know how to make her clear to you, Watson.  Perhaps you
+may meet her before we are through, and you can use your own gift of
+words.  She is beautiful, but with the ethereal other-world beauty of
+some fanatic whose thoughts are set on high.  I have seen such faces in
+the pictures of the old masters of the Middle Ages.  How a beast-man
+could have laid his vile paws upon such a being of the beyond I cannot
+imagine.  You may have noticed how extremes call to each other, the
+spiritual to the animal, the cave-man to the angel.  You never saw a
+worse case than this.
+
+""She knew what we had come for, of course--that villain had lost no
+time in poisoning her mind against us.  Miss Winter's advent rather
+amazed her, I think, but she waved us into our respective chairs like a
+Reverend Abbess receiving two rather leprous mendicants.  If your head
+is inclined to swell, my dear Watson, take a course of Miss Violet de
+Merville.
+
+""'Well, sir,' said she, in a voice like the wind from an iceberg, 'your
+name is familiar to me.  You have called, as I understand, to malign my
+fiancé, Baron Gruner.  It is only by my father's request that I see you
+at all, and I warn you in advance that anything you can say could not
+possibly have the slightest effect upon my mind.'
+
+""I was sorry for her, Watson.  I thought of her for the moment as I
+would have thought of a daughter of my own.  I am not often eloquent.
+I use my head, not my heart.  But I really did plead with her with all
+the warmth of words that I could find in my nature.  I pictured to her
+the awful position of the woman who only wakes to a man's character
+after she is his wife--a woman who has to submit to be caressed by
+bloody hands and lecherous lips.  I spared her nothing--the shame, the
+fear, the agony, the hopelessness of it all.  All my hot words could
+not bring one tinge of colour to those ivory cheeks or one gleam of
+emotion to those abstracted eyes.  I thought of what the rascal had
+said about a post-hypnotic influence.  One could really believe that
+she was living above the earth in some ecstatic dream.  Yet there was
+nothing indefinite in her replies.
+
+""'I have listened to you with patience, Mr. Holmes,' said she.  'The
+effect upon my mind is exactly as predicted.  I am aware that Adelbert,
+that my fiancé, has had a stormy life in which he has incurred bitter
+hatreds and most unjust aspersions.  You are only the last of a series
+who have brought their slanders before me.  Possibly you mean well,
+though I learn that you are a paid agent who would have been equally
+willing to act for the Baron as against him.  But in any case I wish
+you to understand once for all that I love him and that he loves me,
+and that the opinion of all the world is no more to me than the twitter
+of those birds outside the window.  If his noble nature has ever for an
+instant fallen, it may be that I have been specially sent to raise it
+to its true and lofty level.  I am not clear,' here she turned her eyes
+upon my companion, 'who this young lady may be.'
+
+""I was about to answer when the girl broke in like a whirlwind.  If
+ever you saw flame and ice face to face, it was those two women.
+
+""'I'll tell you who I am,' she cried, springing out of her chair, her
+mouth all twisted with passion--'I am his last mistress.  I am one of a
+hundred that he has tempted and used and ruined and thrown into the
+refuse heap, as he will you also.  _Your_ refuse heap is more likely to
+be a grave, and maybe that's the best.  I tell you, you foolish woman,
+if you marry this man he'll be the death of you.  It may be a broken
+heart or it may be a broken neck, but he'll have you one way or the
+other.  It's not out of love for you I'm speaking.  I don't care a
+tinker's curse whether you live or die.  It's out of hate for him and
+to spite him and to get back on him for what he did to me.  But it's
+all the same, and you needn't look at me like that, my fine lady, for
+you may be lower than I am before you are through with it.'
+
+""'I should prefer not to discuss such matters,' said Miss de Merville
+coldly.  'Let me say once for all that I am aware of three passages in
+my fiancé's life in which he became entangled with designing women, and
+that I am assured of his hearty repentance for any evil that he may
+have done.'
+
+""'Three passages!' screamed my companion.  'You fool!  You unutterable
+fool!'
+
+""'Mr. Holmes, I beg that you will bring this interview to an end,' said
+the icy voice.  'I have obeyed my father's wish in seeing you, but I am
+not compelled to listen to the ravings of this person.'
+
+""With an oath Miss Winter darted forward, and if I had not caught her
+wrist she would have clutched this maddening woman by the hair.  I
+dragged her towards the door, and was lucky to get her back into the
+cab without a public scene, for she was beside herself with rage.  In a
+cold way I felt pretty furious myself, Watson, for there was something
+indescribably annoying in the calm aloofness and supreme
+self-complaisance of the woman whom we were trying to save.  So now
+once again you know exactly how we stand, and it is clear that I must
+plan some fresh opening move, for this gambit won't work.  I'll keep in
+touch with you, Watson, for it is more than likely that you will have
+your part to play, though it is just possible that the next move may
+lie with them rather than with us.""
+
+And it did.  Their blow fell--or his blow rather, for never could I
+believe that the lady was privy to it.  I think I could show you the
+very paving-stone upon which I stood when my eyes fell upon the
+placard, and a pang of horror passed through my very soul.  It was
+between the ""Grand Hotel"" and Charing Cross Station, where a one-legged
+news-vendor displayed his evening papers.  The date was just two days
+after the last conversation.  There, black upon yellow, was the
+terrible news-sheet:
+
+  +-------------+
+  |  MURDEROUS  |
+  |   ATTACK    |
+  |    UPON     |
+  |  SHERLOCK   |
+  |   HOLMES.   |
+  +-------------+
+
+
+I think I stood stunned for some moments.  Then I have a confused
+recollection of snatching at a paper, of the remonstrance of the man,
+whom I had not paid, and, finally, of standing in the doorway of a
+chemist's shop while I turned up the fateful paragraph.  This was how
+it ran:
+
+
+""We learn with regret that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known private
+detective, was the victim this morning of a murderous assault which has
+left him in a precarious position.  There are no exact details to hand,
+but the event seems to have occurred about twelve o'clock in Regent
+Street, outside the Café Royal.  The attack was made by two men armed
+with sticks, and Mr. Holmes was beaten about the head and body,
+receiving injuries which the doctors describe as most serious.  He was
+carried to Charing Cross Hospital, and afterwards insisted upon being
+taken to his rooms in Baker Street.  The miscreants who attacked him
+appear to have been respectably dressed men, who escaped from the
+bystanders by passing through the Café Royal and out into Glasshouse
+Street behind it.  No doubt they belonged to that criminal fraternity
+which has so often had occasion to bewail the activity and ingenuity of
+the injured man.""
+
+
+I need not say that my eyes had hardly glanced over the paragraph
+before I had sprung into a hansom and was on my way to Baker Street.  I
+found Sir Leslie Oakshott, the famous surgeon in the hall and his
+brougham waiting at the kerb.
+
+""No immediate danger,"" was his report.  ""Two lacerated scalp wounds and
+some considerable bruises.  Several stitches have been necessary.
+Morphine has been injected and quiet is essential, but an interview of
+a few minutes would not be absolutely forbidden.""
+
+With this permission I stole into the darkened room.  The sufferer was
+wide awake, and I heard my name in a hoarse whisper.  The blind was
+three-quarters down, but one ray of sunlight slanted through and struck
+the bandaged head of the injured man.  A crimson patch had soaked
+through the white linen compress.  I sat beside him and bent my head.
+
+""All right, Watson.  Don't look so scared,"" he muttered in a very weak
+voice.  ""It's not as bad as it seems.""
+
+""Thank God for that!""
+
+""I'm a bit of a single-stick expert, as you know.  I took most of them
+on my guard.  It was the second man that was too much for me.""
+
+""What can I do, Holmes?  Of course, it was that damned fellow who set
+them on.  I'll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.""
+
+""Good old Watson!  No, we can do nothing there unless the police lay
+their hands on the men.  But their get-away had been well prepared.  We
+may be sure of that.  Wait a little.  I have my plans.  The first thing
+is to exaggerate my injuries.  They'll come to you for news.  Put it on
+thick, Watson.  Lucky if I live the week
+out--concussion--delirium--what you like!  You can't overdo it.""
+
+""But Sir Leslie Oakshott?""
+
+""Oh, he's all right.  He shall see the worst side of me.  I'll look
+after that.""
+
+""Anything else?""
+
+""Yes.  Tell Shinwell Johnson to get that girl out of the way.  Those
+beauties will be after her now.  They know, of course, that she was
+with me in the case.  If they dared to do me in it is not likely they
+will neglect her.  That is urgent.  Do it to-night.""
+
+""I'll go now.  Anything more?""
+
+""Put my pipe on the table--and the tobacco-slipper.  Right!  Come in
+each morning and we will plan our campaign.""
+
+I arranged with Johnson that evening to take Miss Winter to a quiet
+suburb and see that she lay low until the danger was past.
+
+For six days the public were under the impression that Holmes was at
+the door of death.  The bulletins were very grave and there were
+sinister paragraphs in the papers.  My continual visits assured me that
+it was not so bad as that.  His wiry constitution and his determined
+will were working wonders.  He was recovering fast, and I had
+suspicions at times that he was really finding himself faster than he
+pretended, even to me.  There was a curious secretive streak in the man
+which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend
+guessing as to what his exact plans might be.  He pushed to an extreme
+the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone.  I was
+nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap
+between.
+
+On the seventh day the stitches were taken out, in spite of which there
+was a report of erysipelas in the evening papers.  The same evening
+papers had an announcement which I was bound, sick or well, to carry to
+my friend.  It was simply that among the passengers on the Cunard boat
+_Ruritania_, starting from Liverpool on Friday, was the Baron Adelbert
+Gruner, who had some important financial business to settle in the
+States before his impending wedding to Miss Violet de Merville, only
+daughter of, etc., etc.  Holmes listened to the news with a cold,
+concentrated look upon his pale face, which told me that it hit him
+hard.
+
+""Friday!"" he cried.  ""Only three clear days.  I believe the rascal
+wants to put himself out of danger's way.  But he won't, Watson!  By
+the Lord Harry, he won't!  Now, Watson, I want you to do something for
+me.""
+
+""I am here to be used, Holmes.""
+
+""Well, then, spend the next twenty-four hours in an intensive study of
+Chinese pottery.""
+
+He gave no explanations and I asked for none.  By long experience I had
+learned the wisdom of obedience.  But when I had left his room I walked
+down Baker Street, revolving in my head how on earth I was to carry out
+so strange an order.  Finally I drove to the London Library in St.
+James's Square, put the matter to my friend Lomax, the sub-librarian,
+and departed to my rooms with a goodly volume under my arm.
+
+It is said that the barrister who crams up a case with such care that
+he can examine an expert witness upon the Monday has forgotten all his
+forced knowledge before the Saturday.  Certainly I should not like now
+to pose as an authority upon ceramics.  And yet all that evening, and
+all that night with a short interval for rest, and all next morning I
+was sucking in knowledge and committing names to memory.  There I
+learned of the hall-marks of the great artist-decorators, of the
+mystery of cyclical dates, the marks of the Hung-wu and the beauties of
+the Yung-lo, the writings of Tang-ying, and the glories of the
+primitive period of the Sung and the Yuan.  I was charged with all this
+information when I called upon Holmes next evening.  He was out of bed
+now, though you would not have guessed it from the published reports,
+and he sat with his much-bandaged head resting upon his hand in the
+depth of his favourite arm-chair.
+
+""Why, Holmes,"" I said, ""if one believed the papers you are dying.""
+
+""That,"" said he, ""is the very impression which I intended to convey.
+And now, Watson, have you learned your lessons?""
+
+""At least I have tried to.""
+
+""Good.  You could keep up an intelligent conversation on the subject?""
+
+""I believe I could.""
+
+""Then hand me that little box from the mantel-piece.""
+
+He opened the lid and took out a small object most carefully wrapped in
+some fine Eastern silk.  This he unfolded, and disclosed a delicate
+little saucer of the most beautiful deep-blue colour.
+
+""It needs careful handling, Watson.  This is the real egg-shell pottery
+of the Ming dynasty.  No finer piece ever passed through Christie's.  A
+complete set of this would be worth a king's ransom--in fact, it is
+doubtful if there is a complete set outside the Imperial palace of
+Peking.  The sight of this would drive a real connoisseur wild.""
+
+""What am I to do with it?""
+
+Holmes handed me a card upon which was printed: ""Dr. Hill Barton, 369
+Half Moon Street.""
+
+""That is your name for the evening, Watson.  You will call upon Baron
+Gruner.  I know something of his habits, and at half-past eight he
+would probably be disengaged.  A note will tell him in advance that you
+are about to call, and you will say that you are bringing him a
+specimen of an absolutely unique set of Ming china.  You may as well be
+a medical man, since that is a part which you can play without
+duplicity.  You are a collector, this set has come your way, you have
+heard of the Baron's interest in the subject, and you are not averse to
+selling at a price.""
+
+""What price?""
+
+""Well asked, Watson.  You would certainly fall down badly if you did
+not know the value of your own wares.  This saucer was got for me by
+Sir James, and comes, I understand, from the collection of his client.
+You will not exaggerate if you say that it could hardly be matched in
+the world.""
+
+""I could perhaps suggest that the set should be valued by an expert.""
+
+""Excellent, Watson!  You scintillate to-day.  Suggest Christie or
+Sotheby.  Your delicacy prevents your putting a price for yourself.""
+
+""But if he won't see me?""
+
+""Oh, yes, he will see you.  He has the collection mania in its most
+acute form--and especially on this subject, on which he is an
+acknowledged authority.  Sit down, Watson, and I will dictate the
+letter.  No answer needed.  You will merely say that you are coming,
+and why.""
+
+It was an admirable document, short, courteous, and stimulating to the
+curiosity of the connoisseur.  A district messenger was duly dispatched
+with it.  On the same evening, with the precious saucer in my hand and
+the card of Dr. Hill Barton in my pocket, I set off on my own adventure.
+
+
+The beautiful house and grounds indicated that Baron Gruner was, as Sir
+James had said, a man of considerable wealth.  A long winding drive,
+with banks of rare shrubs on either side, opened out into a great
+gravelled square adorned with statues.  The place had been built by a
+South African gold king in the days of the great boom, and the long,
+low house with the turrets at the corners, though an architectural
+nightmare, was imposing in its size and solidity.  A butler who would
+have adorned a bench of bishops showed me in, and handed me over to a
+plush-clad footman, who ushered me into the Baron's presence.
+
+He was standing at the open front of a great case which stood between
+the windows, and which contained part of his Chinese collection.  He
+turned as I entered with a small brown vase in his hand.
+
+""Pray sit down, doctor,"" said he.  ""I was looking over my own treasures
+and wondering whether I could really afford to add to them.  This
+little Tang specimen, which dates from the seventh century, would
+probably interest you.  I am sure you never saw finer workmanship or a
+richer glaze.  Have you the Ming saucer with you of which you spoke?""
+
+I carefully unpacked it and handed it to him.  He seated himself at his
+desk, pulled over the lamp, for it was growing dark, and set himself to
+examine it.  As he did so the yellow light beat upon his own features,
+and I was able to study them at my ease.
+
+He was certainly a remarkably handsome man.  His European reputation
+for beauty was fully deserved.  In figure he was not more than of
+middle size, but was built upon graceful and active lines.  His face
+was swarthy, almost Oriental, with large, dark, languorous eyes which
+might easily hold an irresistible fascination for women.  His hair and
+moustache were raven black, the latter short, pointed, and carefully
+waxed.  His features were regular and pleasing, save only his straight,
+thin-lipped mouth.  If ever I saw a murderer's mouth it was there--a
+cruel, hard gash in the face, compressed, inexorable, and terrible.  He
+was ill-advised to train his moustache away from it, for it was
+Nature's danger-signal, set as a warning to his victims.  His voice was
+engaging and his manners perfect.  In age I should have put him at
+little over thirty, though his record afterwards showed that he was
+forty-two.
+
+""Very fine--very fine indeed!"" he said at last.  ""And you say you have
+a set of six to correspond.  What puzzles me is that I should not have
+heard of such magnificent specimens.  I only know of one in England to
+match this, and it is certainly not likely to be in the market.  Would
+it be indiscreet if I were to ask you, Dr. Hill Barton, how you
+obtained this?""
+
+""Does it really matter?"" I asked, with as careless an air as I could
+muster.  ""You can see that the piece is genuine, and, as to the value,
+I am content to take an expert's valuation.""
+
+""Very mysterious,"" said he, with a quick, suspicious flash of his dark
+eyes.  ""In dealing with objects of such value, one naturally wishes to
+know all about the transaction.  That the piece is genuine is certain.
+I have no doubts at all about that.  But suppose--I am bound to take
+every possibility into account--that it should prove afterwards that
+you had no right to sell?""
+
+""I would guarantee you against any claim of the sort.""
+
+""That, of course, would open up the question as to what your guarantee
+was worth.""
+
+""My bankers would answer that.""
+
+""Quite so.  And yet the whole transaction strikes me as rather unusual.""
+
+""You can do business or not,"" said I, with indifference.  ""I have given
+you the first offer as I understood that you were a connoisseur, but I
+shall have no difficulty in other quarters.""
+
+""Who told you I was a connoisseur?""
+
+""I was aware that you had written a book upon the subject.""
+
+""Have you read the book?""
+
+""No.""
+
+""Dear me, this becomes more and more difficult for me to understand!
+You are a connoisseur and collector with a very valuable piece in your
+collection, and yet you have never troubled to consult the one book
+which would have told you of the real meaning and value of what you
+held.  How do you explain that?""
+
+""I am a very busy man.  I am a doctor in practice.""
+
+""That is no answer.  If a man has a hobby he follows it up, whatever
+his other pursuits may be.  You said in your note that you were a
+connoisseur.""
+
+""So I am.""
+
+""Might I ask you a few questions to test you?  I am obliged to tell
+you, doctor--if you are indeed a doctor--that the incident becomes more
+and more suspicious.  I would ask you what do you know of the Emperor
+Shomu and how do you associate him with the Shoso-in near Nara?  Dear
+me, does that puzzle you?  Tell me a little about the Northern Wei
+dynasty and its place in the history of ceramics.""
+
+I sprang from my chair in simulated anger.
+
+""This is intolerable, sir,"" said I.  ""I came here to do you a favour,
+and not to be examined as if I were a schoolboy.  My knowledge on these
+subjects may be second only to your own, but I certainly shall not
+answer questions which have been put in so offensive a way.""
+
+He looked at me steadily.  The languor had gone from his eyes.  They
+suddenly glared.  There was a gleam of teeth from between those cruel
+lips.
+
+""What is the game?  You are here as a spy.  You are an emissary of
+Holmes.  This is a trick that you are playing upon me.  The fellow is
+dying, I hear, so he sends his tools to keep watch upon me.  You've
+made your way in here without leave, and, by God! you may find it
+harder to get out than to get in.""
+
+He had sprung to his feet, and I stepped back, bracing myself for an
+attack, for the man was beside himself with rage.  He may have
+suspected me from the first; certainly this cross-examination had shown
+him the truth; but it was clear that I could not hope to deceive him.
+He dived his hand into a side-drawer and rummaged furiously.  Then
+something struck upon his ear, for he stood listening intently.
+
+""Ah!"" he cried.  ""Ah!"" and dashed into the room behind him.
+
+Two steps took me to the open door, and my mind will ever carry a clear
+picture of the scene within.  The window leading out to the garden was
+wide open.  Beside it, looking like some terrible ghost, his head girt
+with bloody bandages, his face drawn and white, stood Sherlock Holmes.
+The next instant he was through the gap, and I heard the crash of his
+body among the laurel bushes outside.  With a howl of rage the master
+of the house rushed after him to the open window.
+
+And then!  It was done in an instant, and yet I clearly saw it.  An
+arm--a woman's arm--shot out from among the leaves.  At the same
+instant the Baron uttered a horrible cry--a yell which will always ring
+in my memory.  He clapped his two hands to his face and rushed round
+the room, beating his head horribly against the walls.  Then he fell
+upon the carpet, rolling and writhing, while scream after scream
+resounded through the house.
+
+""Water!  For God's sake, water!"" was his cry.
+
+I seized a carafe from a side-table and rushed to his aid.  At the same
+moment the butler and several footmen ran in from the hall.  I remember
+that one of them fainted as I knelt by the injured man and turned that
+awful face to the light of the lamp.  The vitriol was eating into it
+everywhere and dripping from the ears and the chin.  One eye was
+already white and glazed.  The other was red and inflamed.  The
+features which I had admired a few minutes before were now like some
+beautiful painting over which the artist has passed a wet and foul
+sponge.  They were blurred, discoloured, inhuman, terrible.
+
+In a few words I explained exactly what had occurred, so far as the
+vitriol attack was concerned.  Some had climbed through the window and
+others had rushed out on to the lawn, but it was dark and it had begun
+to rain.  Between his screams the victim raged and raved against the
+avenger.  ""It was that hell-cat, Kitty Winter!"" he cried.  ""Oh, the
+she-devil!  She shall pay for it!  She shall pay!  Oh, God in heaven,
+this pain is more than I can bear!""
+
+I bathed his face in oil, put cotton wadding on the raw surfaces, and
+administered a hypodermic of morphia.  All suspicion of me had passed
+from his mind in the presence of this shock, and he clung to my hands
+as if I might have the power even yet to clear those dead-fish eyes
+which gazed up at me.  I could have wept over the ruin had I not
+remembered very clearly the vile life which had led up to so hideous a
+change.  It was loathsome to feel the pawing of his burning hands, and
+I was relieved when his family surgeon, closely followed by a
+specialist, came to relieve me of my charge.  An inspector of police
+had also arrived, and to him I handed my real card.  It would have been
+useless as well as foolish to do otherwise, for I was nearly as well
+known by sight at the Yard as Holmes himself.  Then I left that house
+of gloom and terror.  Within an hour I was at Baker Street.
+
+Holmes was seated in his familiar chair, looking very pale and
+exhausted.  Apart from his injuries, even his iron nerves had been
+shocked by the events of the evening, and he listened with horror to my
+account of the Baron's transformation.
+
+""The wages of sin, Watson--the wages of sin!"" said he.  ""Sooner or
+later it will always come.  God knows, there was sin enough,"" he added,
+taking up a brown volume from the table.  ""Here is the book the woman
+talked of.  If this will not break off the marriage, nothing ever
+could.  But it will, Watson.  It must.  No self-respecting woman could
+stand it.""
+
+""It is his love diary?""
+
+""Or his lust diary.  Call it what you will.  The moment the woman told
+us of it I realized what a tremendous weapon was there, if we could but
+lay our hands on it.  I said nothing at the time to indicate my
+thoughts, for this woman might have given it away.  But I brooded over
+it.  Then this assault upon me gave me the chance of letting the Baron
+think that no precautions need be taken against me.  That was all to
+the good.  I would have waited a little longer, but his visit to
+America forced my hand.  He would never have left so compromising a
+document behind him.  Therefore we had to act at once.  Burglary at
+night is impossible.  He takes precautions.  But there was a chance in
+the evening if I could only be sure that his attention was engaged.
+That was where you and your blue saucer came in.  But I had to be sure
+of the position of the book, and I knew I had only a few minutes in
+which to act, for my time was limited by your knowledge of Chinese
+pottery.  Therefore I gathered the girl up at the last moment.  How
+could I guess what the little packet was that she carried so carefully
+under her cloak?  I thought she had come altogether on my business, but
+it seems she had some of her own.""
+
+""He guessed I came from you.""
+
+""I feared he would.  But you held him in play just long enough for me
+to get the book, though not long enough for an unobserved escape.  Ah,
+Sir James, I am very glad you have come!""
+
+Our courtly friend had appeared in answer to a previous summons.  He
+listened with the deepest attention to Holmes's account of what had
+occurred.
+
+""You have done wonders--wonders!"" he cried, when he had heard the
+narrative.  ""But if these injuries are as terrible as Dr. Watson
+describes, then surely our purpose of thwarting the marriage is
+sufficiently gained without the use of this horrible book.""
+
+Holmes shook his head.
+
+""Women of the de Merville type do not act like that.  She would love
+him the more as a disfigured martyr.  No, no.  It is his moral side,
+not his physical, which we have to destroy.  That book will bring her
+back to earth--and I know nothing else that could.  It is in his own
+writing.  She cannot get past it.""
+
+Sir James carried away both it and the precious saucer.  As I was
+myself overdue, I went down with him into the street.  A brougham was
+waiting for him.  He sprang in, gave a hurried order to the cockaded
+coachman, and drove swiftly away.  He flung his overcoat half out of
+the window to cover the armorial bearings upon the panel, but I had
+seen them in the glare of our fanlight none the less.  I gasped with
+surprise.  Then I turned back and ascended the stair to Holmes's room.
+
+""I have found out who our client is,"" I cried, bursting with my great
+news.  ""Why, Holmes, it is----""
+
+""It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman,"" said Holmes, holding
+up a restraining hand.  ""Let that now and for ever be enough for us.""
+
+I do not know how the incriminating book was used.  Sir James may have
+managed it.  Or it is more probable that so delicate a task was
+entrusted to the young lady's father.  The effect, at any rate, was all
+that could be desired.  Three days later appeared a paragraph in _The
+Morning Post_ to say that the marriage between Baron Adelbert Gruner
+and Miss Violet de Merville would not take place.  The same paper had
+the first police-court hearing of the proceedings against Miss Kitty
+Winter on the grave charge of vitriol-throwing.  Such extenuating
+circumstances came out in the trial that the sentence, as will be
+remembered, was the lowest that was possible for such an offence.
+Sherlock Holmes was threatened with a prosecution for burglary, but
+when an object is good and a client is sufficiently illustrious, even
+the rigid British law becomes human and elastic.  My friend has not yet
+stood in the dock.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+",The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,Arthur Conan Doyle,18,['Adelbert Gruner']