‘My very dear Friend,—At what time you was atConstantinople, when trouble came, you made promise that youwould not forget me if my poor Demetri should trouble aboutyou. When you last wrote to me this was made again—thepromise. My life for not one moment is safe. My aunt is deadand my possessions are now mine, but there is no friend inall the world. Demetri is mad. Of him I know not when I amsafe. I fly then to London, where all is safe. But there itis not possible that I should be alone. If there is anylady in the circle of your knowledge who would be kind withme, and permit that I should live with her, it will have forever my gratitude. I shall go as of old to the Palace Hotelat Westminster. Two days beyond this letter I shall bethere.‘Always your friend,‘Thecla Perzio.’
After the reading of this epistle, the friends sat in silence, regarding each other with grave looks. In the silence they could hear the river lapping against the bank, and the rustling of the boughs on the roof, and the moaning and sighing of the wind. But they could not hear the suppressed breathing of Demetri Agryopoulo where he stood knee-deep in water below the house-boat window, listening to their talk. Yet there he stood, not knowing that he was not on dry land; drunk with rage and jealousy; with murder plainly written in his heart and eyes, and all his blood on fire. He threw his soul into his ears, and listened.
‘This letter has been a long time on its way, surely,’ said Barndale, referring to the date. ‘It can’t take three weeks to bring a letter from Constantinople.’
‘Where’s the envelope?’ asked. Leland. ‘Look at that, and see what the London date is.’
The home stamp made it clear that the letter had reached England ten days back.
‘My man brought it down this afternoon, the lazy scamp!’ said Leland. ‘He has never been near those blessed chambers since I left till now. A pile of letters came together, but I took no notice.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Barndale. ‘You have done harm enough in this matter already, Jimmy, and you must do no more. You must keep clear of her. I will send her down to my sister for a time. Sophy is a good girl, and will be glad to have a companion whilst I am away. I will go up to town to-morrow and see Miss Perzio. You stay here. I shall either wire to you or come back in the evening.’
The weather had been hot and clear for weeks together, and the traditions of English summer were preparing to enforce themselves by the common thunderstorm. The wind moaned in swift and sudden gusts, and the distant thunder rumbled threateningly. The listener outside misheard this speech thus:
‘You will be glad of a companion whilst I am away. I will go up to town to-morrow and see Miss Perzio.’
He ground his teeth, and clenched his hands, and held himself in resolute silence, fighting against the instinct which prompted him to cry aloud and dash in upon the two, and either slay them both, or sell his own life, then and there. But reflecting on the certainty of defeat, unarmed as he was, and dreading to declare himself too soon, and so put his enemy upon his guard, he fought the instinct down. Yet so strong was it upon him that he knew that sooner or later it would master him. He waded to the shore and crept along the field in the thick darkness, groping his way with both hands. Turning, he could see the dull gleam of the river, and the house-boat bulking black against it. He stood watching, whilst within and without the storm swept swiftly up. Dead silence. Then a creeping whisper in the grass at his feet and in the trees about him, but no wind. Then the slow dropping of heavy rain—drop, drop, drop—like blood. Then a fierce and sudden howl from the wind, like some hoarse demon’s signal, and the storm began. But what a puny storm was that which raged outside could one have seen the tempest in this murderous soul! Not all the tones of great material nature’s diapason could find this tortured spirit voice enough. Yet to find the very heavens in tune with his mood brought the Greek to a still madder ecstasy of passion.
At such times the mind, fearful for herself, catches at phrases and fancies, as drowning men catch at straws. So now, with terrible irrelevance, his mind caught at the simple couplet:—
Nenni, nenni, vattienne, non me stà chiù’ à seccarSta rosa che pretienne non la sto manco à gardar!
There was nothing for the mind to hold to except that it was the last song the runaway Thecla had sung to him. He did not remember this, and had only a half consciousness of the words themselves. But in this mad whirl of the spiritual elements the mind was glad to cling to anything, and turned the refrain over, and over, and over,
Nenni, nenni, vattienne, non me stà chiù’ à seccarSta rosa che pretienne non la sto manco à gardar!
Rain, and wind, and thunder, and Lightning, had their time without and within. Peace came to the summer heavens, and the pale stars took the brief night with beauty. But to the firmament of his soul no star of peace returned. There dwelt night and chaos. If his passion were blind, the blindness was wilful. For he saw clearly the end of what he meant to do, and chose it. Whatever his love might have been worth, he had been robbed of it, and for him life ended there. He was but an automaton of vengeance now.
So having set resolve before him, and having done with it, he went his way. His plan was long since laid, and was simple enough. Demetri Agryopoulo was not the man to perplex himself with details until the time came for them to be useful. When that time came he could rely upon himself for invention. And so his plan was simply to take James Leland alone, and then and there to put an end to him. He had taken a room in a river-side public-house near Kingston, and thither he walked. He made some grim excuse for the lateness of the hour and his bedraggled garments to the drowsy ostler who had sat up for him, and calmed the drowsy ostler’s grumbles by a gift of half-a-crown. Then he drank a glass of neat brandy, and went to bed and slept like an innocent child.
Next morning he was up early, ate a cheerful breakfast, delighted his host with foreign affabilities, paid his bill, and went away by train to London. Leaving his luggage in a cloak-room at the station, he took a stroll about town, dropping into public-houses here and there, and drinking terrible brandy. At home he drankmasticaas Englishmen drink beer, and brandy was insipid as water to his palate, and had just now almost as little effect upon his head. Demetri Agryopoulo had discovered the one secret of the true dissembler, that he who controls his features controls his mind. A man who can put a smile on his face while torments rack him, can thereby calm the torments. The resolute will which arrests the facial expression of grief or rage, allays the grief or rage. He went about with an aspect of calm insouciance, and therefore with a feeling of calm and ease within. Yet he was like one who walks with a madman, knowing that if his own courage should for one instant seem to waver, the maniac will be upon him. In his journey to town he had been alone, and between one station and another he had opened his portmanteau and taken therefrom a small breech-loading revolver and a stiletto. He laid his hand upon these now and again, and smiled to himself.
The afternoon grew into evening. He took train to Wimbledon, and thence struck across country in the direction of the houseboat. He skirted the village with its straggling lights, and made his way across the fields to the river side. Nearing the boat cautiously, he ensconced himself in the bushes on the bank, and watched and listened. There were two voices audible. Barndale and Leland were engaged in serious and indeed in angry talk. There was a woman in the question apparently, and it would seem that the friends were quarrelling concerning her. But the Greek soon heard enough to convince him that this woman was not Thecla Perzio. The voices grew louder, and some open breach of the peace seemed imminent. The friends were rehearsing their own especial scene in Barndale’s comedy.
It becomes necessary to this history at this point to set forth the fact that one Hodges, resident in the village, had within an hour of this time received intelligence of the straying of a cow. This man was a yokel of no interest to us, apart from this one episode in his career. He had supplied the inmates of the house-boat with new milk and fresh butter from the time of their first coming. And it was he who had set afloat a report, not unknown at the historic ‘Swan,’ to the effect that for all so sweet as them two young gents did go about wi’ one another, they was a naggin’ like blazes every night,’ He came by now, driving his recovered cow before him, and passed within a foot of the Greek, who lay as still as death in the brushwood. The quarrel, when at its height, ceased suddenly, and the voices fell so low that neither Hodges nor the Greek could hear anything more than a murmur. The amateurs were criticising the dialogue and its rendering over pipes and beer.
‘Well,’ said Hodges, addressing vacancy, ‘if theer ain’t murder afore long, itisa pity.’
Then the bovine Hodges went his way. Events supplied him with an excitement which lasted him for life; and the younger Hodges who has succeeded to his father’s cows and remembrances, will not willingly let die the story of his progenitor’s association with this tragic tale.
The Greek lay hidden in the bushes, and listened to the soft retreating steps in the field and the murmur of voices in the boat. By-and-by the door opened, and the friends appeared.
‘I shall not come back by the late train now, Jimmy,’ Barndale said, as he placed a small portmanteau in the dingy. ‘You had better come down with me to the “Swan” and scull up again.’
‘No,’ said Leland, unconscious of the impending fate, ‘I’ll walk down for the boat tomorrow. If I get down there to-night I shall stay, and I want to write some letters. Goodbye, old fellow. Send us a line in the morning.’
‘All right,’ said Barndale. ‘Good-bye.’
The sculls dipped, and he shot into the darkness. For a few minutes we follow Barndale. He pulled down stream rapidly, for the train by which he intended to reach town was already nearly due. There was nobody at the landing place. He fastened the boat, and seizing his small portmanteau, dashed at full speed into the road, ran all the way to the station, and threw himself into the train panting, and just in time. At the bottom of the station steps he had spilt a countryman, to whom he threw out a hurried apology. The countryman was Mr. Hodges.
The Greek listened until the measured beat of Barndale’s sculls had lost itself in silence. Then he crept forward from the bushes, stepped lightly to the margin of the stream, laid both hands on a sturdy branch which drooped above the house-boat, and swung himself light as a feather to the after deck The door of the rear room, which served the inmates as a kitchen, was unsecured and open. He passed through, pistol in hand, and trod the matted floor stealthily, drawn and guided by the tiny beam of light which issued from the interstice between it and the doorway. With the motion of the boat the door beat idly and noiselessly to and fro, so that the beam was cut off at regular intervals, and at regular intervals again shone forth, keeping time with the Greek’s noiseless footsteps, and his beating heart and his bated breath, and altogether taking to itself that importance and force which trifles always have in moments of intense passion or suffering. Even yet he would not let the madman within him loose. Even yet he would hold him back until he saw the object of his hate and rage, and then——
The door swung to and fro gently, and the Greek approached it with his hand, when suddenly the unconscious Leland from within banged it to noisily and fixed the hasp. Then with one resolute action Demetri threw it back and stepped into the doorway, pistol in hand. Leland rose and turned. He saw the Greek, and read murder in his face, and dashed himself upon him. But the murderous hand was quick and true. One shot rang out, and Leland, with outcast arms, fell backwards. The Greek, with a hand on the table, looked down upon him. Not a struggle or a groan stirred the prone figure. Demetri threw the revolver through the open window, and heard the splash with which it fell into the water. He drew the stiletto from his bosom, and threw that after it. Then closing the door lightly, and stepping still on tiptoe as though he feared to wake that prone figure from its awful sleep, he swung himself on shore again.
‘Our rustic friend,’ he said to himself as he stood and looked upon the boat, bulking black against the dull gleam of the river, like some uncouth animal standing at the bank and peering landward with fiery eyes, our rustic friend may not forget his prophecy.’
Therewith he went his way again, and the darkness shrouded him.
What should bring fashion, and wealth, and beauty in one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished—the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk—why should Lilian care to return thus at the fag end of London’s feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian’s especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists on Lilian being present thereat. This ball is designed as the crowning festivity of a brilliant year; and to Lilian, blest with youth and beauty and high spirits, and such a splendid lover, shall it not be a night to remember until the grey curtain fall on the close of the last season, and nothing is any more remembered? But a cloud of sadness settles on Lilian’s charming face when she misses the bronzed and bearded. Lady Dives knows all about the engagement, and is enthusiastic over it; and, when Lilian has a second’s time to snatch an enquiry concerning the absent one, she answers, ‘He has never been near me once. I wrote him a special note, and told him you were coming. He will be here.’ So Lady Dives strives to chase the cloud. Barndale does not come, having never, in point of fact, received that special note which Lady Dives had despatched to him. So the ball is a weariness, and Lilian goes back with mamma to the hotel with quite drooping spirits. She makes excuses for the absent Barndale, but fancies all manner of things in her feminine fashion, preferring to believe in fevers and boat accidents and other horrors rather than think that a valet has been lazy or a postman inaccurate.
Papa Leland, who is here to take care of his womankind, has ideas of his own on some matters.
‘Hang your swell hotels,’ says Papa Leland; ‘I always stop at the Westminster, It’s near the House, and quite convenient enough for anywhere.’
It was thus that Lilian found herself under the same roof with Thecla Perzio, who lived there with a sore and frightened heart, waiting for that shallow lover who had caught her in love’s toils, and broken up her life for her, and who now left her poor appeal unanswered.
Poor indiscreet little Thecla had a suite of rooms on the first floor, and lived alone within them with her Greek maid, and agonised. She was for ever peering furtively through the door when any manly step sounded in the corridor, but she never saw the form she waited for. But it chanced, the morning after the ball, that she opened her door and looked out upon the corridor at the sound of Papa Leland’s footstep. Papa Leland went by briskly; but Lilian caught sight of her and knew her in a moment, and stayed to speak. The two girls had been too closely engaged with their respective love-makings to form any very close acquaintance with each other; but during a week’s imprisonment on board ship the friendships of women, and especially of young and gentle-hearted women, advance very rapidly. They had parted with a great deal of mutual liking, and met again now with mutual pleasure. In a minute Lilian was seated in the poor little Greek’s big and dreary parlour. She was a proud creature was little Thecla, and would not chatter with her maid. She had given nobody her confidence; and now, having once confessed that she was unhappy, she broke out, with her pretty head on Lilian’s lap, and had a grand, refreshing, honest cry. That over, she set forth her story. She told how Demetri was madly, foolishly jealous; how he had tried to murder the gentleman of whom he was jealous; and how at last, finding herself alone in the world, and being afraid of Demetri, she had sought an asylum in England. She did not say of whom Demetri was jealous, and Lilian had not the remotest notion of the truth. It very soon came out, however; and then Lihan was sore afraid for Thecla Perzio’s happiness. She had no great belief in her brother. She loved him very much; but she was dimly afraid that James was an impracticable and unmarriable man, a person who could set all the wiles and all the tenderness of the sex at calm defiance—a born bachelor. And, besides that, being, in spite of her many charms and virtues, an Englishwoman, she had a natural and ridiculous objection to the marriage of any person whom she valued to any other person of foreign blood, excepting in the case of British royalty, in whose foreign matches she felt unfeigned delight—wherefore, Heaven, perchance, knoweth. But then Lilian was not a woman of a logical turn of mind; she was inconsistent and amiable, as good girls always are; and being strongly opposed to marriages of this kind in general, determined to lay herself out, heart and soul, for the prosperity of this particular arrangement. So she kissed Thecla vivaciously, and went to mamma, and persuaded that estimable lady to a visit to Thames Ditton in search of James. Mamma, having regard to the missing Barndale, and being in some matronly alarm for him, consented, and the two set out together.
Barndale in the meantime had gone to his own chambers, and had there smoked many deliberative and lonely pipes. When he came near to the enterprise he had so readily undertaken in his friend’s behalf, he began to feel signally nervous and uncomfortable about it. Of course he did not for one moment think of resigning it; but he was puzzled, and in his be-puzzlement retired within himself to concoct a plan of action. Having definitely failed in this attempt, he resolved to go off at once without preparation, and ask at the hotel for Miss Perzio, and then a round, unvarnished tale deliver. This resolution formed, he started at once and hurried, lest it should break by the way. Lilian and he were within twenty yards of each other, neither of them knowing it, when his cab rushed up to the door of the hotel.
Lilian knew the house-boat and its ways. One of the Amphibia of Ditton conveyed the two ladies in a capacious boat to the aquatic residence of the two friends. Lilian stepped lightly to the fore deck, and assisted mamma from the boat.
‘They are both away,’ said Lilian, smiling and blushing. ‘And the careless creatures have left the doors open. We will wait for them and give them a surprise.’
The two women, full of fluttering complacency, entered the living room. Lilian went first, and fell upon her knees with a sudden shriek, beholding the prone figure on the floor; the mother darted to her side, saw and partly understood, whipped out a vinaigrette, seized a caraffe of water, and applied those innocent restoratives at once. Neither mother nor daughter had time to think of anything worse than a fainting fit, until Lilian, who had taken her brother’s head upon her lap, found blood upon her hands. Then she turned white to the very lips, and tore open the blue serge coat and waistcoat. The white flannel shirt beneath was caked with blood. The two women moaned, but not a finger faltered. They opened the shirt tenderly, and there, on the right breast, saw a dull blue stain with a crimson thread in the middle of it. A gunshot wound looks to unaccustomed eyes altogether too innocent a thing to account for death or even for serious danger. But the cold pallor of the face and body, the limp and helpless limbs betokened something terrible.
‘Take his poor head, mamma,’ cried Lilian; and she darted from the cabin to the deck, The boatman was lounging quietly in the boat some thirty yards down stream. She called to him aloud—
‘Go for a doctor. My brother is dying here. Be quick, be quick, be quick!’ she almost screamed as the man stared at her. Understanding at last, the fellow snatched up his sculls and dashed through the water. Lilian flew back to her brother; and while the two women, not knowing what to do further, sat supporting the helpless head together; a man leapt aboard.
‘You called for a doctor, madam,’ he said quietly, ‘I am a surgeon. Permit me to assist you.’
The women made way for him. He was a youngish man, with a sunburnt complexion and grey hair, a gentleman beyond denial, and beyond doubt self-possessed and accustomed to obedience. They trusted him at once. He raised the recumbent figure to a couch, and then looked at the wound. He turned over the lappel of the coat and glanced at it. He had a habit of speaking to himself.
‘Pistol shot,’ he muttered. ‘Close quarters. Coat quite burned. Decimal three-fifty or thereabouts I fancy from the look of it. Ah, here it is! Have you a penknife or a pair of scissors, madam? That small knife will do. Thank you.’
A dexterous touch, and from the little gaping lips carved by the penknife’s point in the muscle of the back rolled out a flattened piece of lead with jagged edges like a battered shilling, but a trifle thicker.
‘Yes,’ said the surgeon, laying it on the table; ‘decimal three-fifty. What’s this? Wound on the head. Your handkerchief, please. Cold water. Thank you.’
His busy and practised hands were at work all the while.
‘Now, ladies, wait here for a few moments. I must bring help.’
‘Stop one minute!’ cried the mother. ‘Is he in danger?’
‘Grave danger.’
‘Will he die?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ And with that the stranger leaped on shore, and ran like a racehorse across the fields and into the nearest house, where he turned out the residents in a body, and made them unship a five-barred gate. There were plenty of cushions in the boat, and he wasted no time in getting others. The helpers beaten up by the doctor worked with a will; and one ran off in advance and seized upon a punt belonging to the Campers Out, and set it at the end of the house-boat, towards the shore. Over this they bore Leland, and laid him on the cushions which the doctor had arranged upon the gate. Then they carried him into the ‘Swan’ and got him to bed there.
Lilian and her mother, trembling and struggling with their tears, followed the bearers. The crowd which always accompanies disaster, even in a village, made its comments as the melancholy little cortege went along, and Lilian could not fail to overhear. Hodges was there.
‘I know’d what it ud come to,’ proclaimed Hodges loudly. ‘They was a naggin’ every night, like mad, they was. I told you all what it ud come to.’
‘So a did,’ said others in the crowd. Then some one asked ‘Where’s t’other chap?’ and in the murmur Lilian heard her lover’s name again and again repeated.
She knew well enough—she could not fail to know—the meaning of the murmurs; but she started as though she had been struck when Hodges said aloud, so that all might hear—
‘They was a naggin’ again last night, an’ then theer was a shot; and then ten minutes arterwards that Barndale bolts and knocks me over at the bottom o’ the station steps. What’s all that pint to?’
‘Oh,’ said another, ‘there can’t be no mortal shadder of a doubt who done it.’
For a moment these cruel words turned her faint; but the swift reaction of certainty and resolve which followed them nerved her and braced her for all the troublous times to come. She waited calmly until all had been done that could be done. Then when the doctor had left his patient, she took him apart.
‘My brother has been wounded by a pistol shot?’ she asked him very bravely and steadily. The doctor nodded. ‘I must find out who did it,’ she went on, looking him full in the face with her hazel eyes.
‘The people here seem to suspect a Mr. ———’
She snatched the word out of the doctor’s mouth.
‘My brother’s dearest friend, sir. Why, sir, they would have died for each other.’
‘As you would for one of them?’ said the doctor to himself.
‘You have experience in these matters, sir. Will you help me to examine the boat? There may perhaps be something there to help us to track the criminal.’
The doctor had but the poorest opinion of this scheme. ‘But, yes,’ he said, he would go, and then fell to thinking aloud. ‘Poor thing. Wonderfully plucky. Bears it well. Brother half killed. Lover suspected. Go! Of course I’ll go. Why the devil shouldn’t I?’ And he marched along unconscious of his utterances or of the heightened colour and the look of momentary surprise in Lilian’s face. ‘Pretty girl, too,’ said the doctor, in audible thought. ‘Devilish pretty! Good girl, I should fancy. Like the looks of her. Hard lines, poor thing—hard lines!’
They reached the bank and walked across the punt into the house-boat. As she entered the door Lilian gave a cry, and dashed at the table; then turned and held up before the doctor’s eyes a meerschaum pipe—the identical Antoletti meerschaum stolen in the Stamboul Bazaar by Demetri Agryopoulo.
‘This is it!’ she gasped. ‘The clue! Oh, it is certain! It is true! Who else could have wished him ill?’
Then she told the doctor the story of the pipe. She told her tale in verbal lightning. Every sentence flashed forth a fact; and in sixty seconds or thereabouts the doctor was a man convinced.
But meantime where was Barndale? Poor Leland could tell them nothing. For many a day he would bear no questioning. Could her lover, Lilian asked herself, have started for the ball last night, and come to any damage by the way?
‘Here is a letter,’ said the doctor, quietly taking up something from the table. ‘A lady’s handwriting. Postmark, Constantinople.’
He drew the letter from its envelope and read it as coolly as if he had a right to read it.
‘The story is clear enough,’ he said. ‘The lady is in London. Your brother knew of her presence there. The Greek you speak of has followed her. The pipe proves his presence here. But how did he find out with whom the lady was in correspondence?’
‘That I cannot guess,’ said Lilian.
It had been late in the afternoon when Lilian and her mother reached the house-boat first. Twilight had fallen when the doctor and the girl started to walk back together. Lilian, turning to look at the house-boat as they went, seized the doctor by the shoulder. He turned and looked at her. She pointed to a figure in the fields.
‘The Greek!’ she whispered.
She was right. Demetri Àgryopoulo had come back again with twilight to the scene of his crime, drawn by an impulse, passionate, irresistible, supreme.
The doctor ran straight for him, leaping the hedge like a deer. Lilian, mad with the excitement of the moment, followed she knew not how. Demetri Agryopoulo turned and awaited the arrival of these two onward-rushing figures calmly. The doctor laid a hand upon him.
‘I arrest you on a charge of murder,’ he said, gasping for breath.
‘Bah!’ said Demetri Agryopoulo quietly, and threw the doctor’s hand aside.
The doctor seized him again, but he was spent and breathless. The Greek threw him off as if he had been a child.
‘Are you mad?’ he asked. ‘What murder? Where? When?’
‘My brother’s murder, here, last night,’ panted Lilian, and flung herself, a mouse against a mountain, on the Greek, and grappled with him, and actually bore him to the ground. But before the doctor could lend a hand to aid her, Demetri was on his feet again, and with one bound sprang into a little skiff which lay with its nose upon the bank. He swung one of the sculls about his head, and shouted, ‘Stand back!’ But the doctor watched his time, and dashed in upon him, and before he knew it was struggling in the water, whilst Demetri in the skiff was a score of yards away tugging madly for the farther shore. The doctor scrambled to the bank and ran up and down the riverside looking for another boat. But he found none, and the Greek was already growing dim in the twilight mist. And again Demetri Agryopoulo went his own way, and the darkness shrouded him.
Thecla Perzio received Barndale with much shyness and embarrassment; and he, seeing that she was a good deal afraid of him, plucked up courage and treated her rather wilfully. He insisted on her going down to his sister at his own house in Surrey and staying there under the old maid’s chaperonage, at least until such time as she should be able to find another suitable companion. The more Thecla found herself overpowered by this masterful son of Anak, the more she felt resigned, and comfortable, and peaceful, and safe. Barndale, like the coward he was, felt his power and took advantage of it. He would have no ‘nay’ on any grounds, but exacted immediate obedience.
To make things smoother he set out that afternoon for Surrey, saw his sister, talked her into a great state of sympathy for little Thecla, and brought her back to town by the next morning’s train. Then, having introduced the ladies to each other, he left them and went to his own chambers in King’s Bench Walk. Arrived there he stooped at the keyhole, finding some trifle or other there opposing his latch-key. The key-hole was half-filled with putty. Barndale never lost his temper. ‘Some genius takes this for a joke, I suppose,’ he murmured philosophically, and proceeded by the aid of a pocket corkscrew to clear the keyhole. He had just succeeded when a hand was laid familiarly upon his shoulder. He turned and saw a stranger clean-shaven, calm, and in aspect business-like.
‘Mr. Barndale, I think?’ said the familiar stranger.
‘Yes,’ said Barndale, looking down at him in a somewhat stately way, in resentment of the familiar hand upon his shoulder.
‘We’ll do our little bit of business inside, sir, ifyouplease.’
Barndale looked at him again inquiringly, opened the door, walked in, and allowed the stranger to follow. The man entered the room and stood before Barndale on the hearthrug. He had one hand in the breast of his coat; and somehow, as Barndale looked at him, he bethought him of the Greek who had stood with his hand at his breast in the Concordia Garden glaring at Leland.
‘I hope you’ll take it quietly,’ said the clean-shaven man, ‘but it’s got to be done, and will be done whether you take it quietly or not. I’m an officer, and it’s my duty to arrest you.’
There passed rapidly through Barndale’s mind the remembrance of a disputed wine-bill, and the service of some legal document which he had thrown into the fire without reading.
He connected the clean-shaven stranger with these things, and was tickled at the idea of being arrested for some such trifle as a hundred pounds. He was so far tickled that he laughed outright.
‘Come,’ said Barndale, still smiling, ‘this is absurd. I’ll give you a cheque at once. Are you empowered to give a receipt?’
The clean-shaven stranger regarded him with a cool, observant, wary eye.
‘It’s my duty to arrest you,’ he said again quietly, ‘and I hope you’ll come quietly and make no fuss about it.’
‘My good man,’ said Barndale, ‘you can’t arrest me if I pay the money.’
‘Come, come, come, sir,’ said the official, with calm superiority in his tone; ‘that’s all very well and very pretty, but it’s Mr. Leland’s affair that I want you for, sir.’
‘Mr. Leland’s affair?’ said Barndale.
‘That little attempted murder the night before last, that’s all. Now, take it quiet; don’t let’s have any nonsense, you know.’
The clean-shaven stranger’s lips pressed close together with a resolute look, and his hand came a little way out of the breast of his coat.
‘Will you have the goodness to tell me what you mean?’ asked Barndale, bewildered, and a little angry to find himself so.
‘Well, if youwon’tknow anything about it, Mr. James Leland was found yesterday in a house-boat at Thames Ditton, with a pistol bullet into him, and he ain’t expected to recover, and that’s my business along with you, and I’ll trouble you to come quiet.’
The tension on the official nerves made hash of the official’s English. Barndale smote the mantel-piece with his clenched hand.
‘Great God!’ he cried. ‘The Greek! Where is Mr. Leland?’ he asked the official eagerly.
‘In bed at the “Swan,” abeing doctored. That’s whereheis,’ replied the official curtly. ‘Now, come along, and don’t let’s have no more palaver.’
Barndale discerned the nature of the situation, and remained master of himself.
‘I will come with you,’ he said with grave self-possession. ‘I am somehow suspected of having a hand in the attempted murder of my friend. Now, you shall arrest me since you must, but you shall not tie the hands of justice by preventing me from tracing the criminal. The man who has committed this crime is Demetri Agryopoulo, a Greek, attached to the Persian Embassy at Constantinople. You look like a shrewd and wary man,’ Barndale took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for one hundred pounds. ‘When you have done with me, cash that cheque and spend every penny of it, if need be, in pursuit of that man. When it is gone come to me for more. When you have caught him, come to me for five hundred pounds. Wait a moment.’
He sat down and wrote in a great, broad hand: ‘I promise to pay to Bearer the sum of Five Hundred Pounds (500L.) on the arrest of Demetri Agryopoulo, attaché to the Persian Embassy at Constantinople__W. Holmes Barn-dale.’ He appended date and place, and handed it to the officer.
‘Very good, sir,’ said he, waving the papers to and fro in the air to dry the ink, and keeping all the while a wary eye on Barndale. ‘I know that my opinion goes for nothing, but if I was a grand jury I should throw out the bill, most likely. We’ll make it as quiet as wecan, sir; but there’s two of my men outside, and if there should be any need for force it’ll have to be used, that’s all.’
‘I shall go with you quietly,’ said Barndale. ‘I have two things to impress upon you. Let no apparent evidence in any other direction throw you off the scent on which I have set you. Next: send a smart man to Thames Ditton and let him collect evidence of all the grounds on which I am suspected. Now I am ready.’
Thus torn with grief for his friend, and sorrow for his lover, but moved to no upbraiding of Fate for the cruel trick she had played him, this British gentleman surrendered himself to the emissary of Public Gossip and went away with him.
The officer, having ideas of his own, got into a cab with Barndale and drove straight to Scotland Yard. On the way Barndale set out the evidence in favour of his own theory of the crime and its motive. Inspector Webb’s experience of criminals was large; but he had never known a criminal conduct himself after Barn-dale’s fashion, and was convinced of his innocence, and hotly eager to be in pursuit of the Greek. When the cab drew up in the Yard a second cab drew up behind it, and from it emerged two clean-shaven, quiet-looking men in inconspicuous dresses, whom Barndale had seen in King’s Bench Walk as he had gone that afternoon to his chambers. Scarcely had they alighted when a third cab came up, and from it dashed a mahogany-coloured young man with grey hair, and assisted a lady to alight. Catching sight of Barndale, the lady ran forward and took him by the arm.
‘Oh, Will,’ she said, ‘you have heard this dreadful news?’
‘My poor child!’ he answered.
‘This,’ said Lilian, pointing out her companion, ‘is Dr. Wattiss, who saved James’s life.’
‘Hundred and Ninety-first Foot,’ said the medical man. ‘I’ve had considerable experience in gunshot wounds, and I don’t think Mr. Leland’s case at all desperate, if that’s any comfort to anybody,’ There the doctor smiled. ‘You are Mr. Barndale, I presume. Miss Leland has evidence of the name and even the whereabouts of the scoundrel who inflicted the wound, and we are here to hunt him up.’
‘May I ask who’s the suspected party?’ asked Inspector Webb with his eye on the doctor.
‘Demetri Agryopoulo,’ said Lilian, ‘a Greek——’
‘Attached to the Persian Embassy at Constantinople.’ said Inspector Webb. ‘All right. Come with me, ma’am. This way, gentlemen.’ And the inspector marshalled them all upstairs. There he gave a whispered order to an officer who lounged to the door, and placed his back against it, and there picked his teeth, insouciant. The inspector disappeared. In two minutes he was back again.
‘This way, ma’am. This way, gentlemen,’ And he ushered all three before him up a set of stone stairs, down a set of stone stairs, and into a carpeted apartment, where sat a gentleman of military aspect, behind a business-looking table overspread with papers.
‘You have a statement to make to me, I believe,’ he said to Lilian with grave politeness.
Lilian told her story without faltering and without superfluous words. When she mentioned the pipe Dr. Wattiss drew a packet from his pocket and unwound it carefully, and laid the precious meerschaum on the table.
‘What is this statement of a nightly quarrel between the two residents in the house-boat, Webb?’ Thus spoke the superior officer behind the business table.
‘Man named Hodges, sir,’ responded the inspector, ‘states that he overheard violent rows after dusk.’
In spite of all his grief and anxiety Barn-dale laughed, and was about to speak in explanation when Lilian rose and laid a letter on the table.
‘Will you kindly read that, sir, and then ask Mr. Barndale to explain?’ she said simply.
The military-looking official took the letter and read it through. It ran thus:—
‘On the Roaring Deep,‘Thames Ditton.‘Dear Lil,—‘Billy has struck ile. He’s at work on an amazing comedywith which he intends to fire the Thames next first ofApril. He and I are both going to appear in it at Barndalein the Christmas week. Meantime we rehearse a terrificcombat nightly.‘While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaze thewondering rustics gathered round.‘A genial idiot, Hodges yclept, has persuaded the wholevillage that a murder is on the carpet, and that Billy and Iare at daggers drawn. Don’t tell him this in any of yourletters. It’s a great tribute to our acting that even Hodgestakes us to be in earnest. I can’t call to mind any stagerow I ever listened to that I shouldn’t have spotted thehollowness of in a brace of shakes. At this minute Authorsummons Actor to Rehearsal. I close up. This Scrawl to tellyou I haven’t forgotten you. Would have written more, butauthority’s voice is urgent.‘Your affectionate brother,‘J.’
‘I think you had something to say, sir,’ said the military official turning to Barndale, and handing the letter back to Lilian.
‘The supposed quarrel between poor Leland and myself is easily explained. We were rehearsing for amateur theatricals, almost nightly, in a somewhat animated scene, and I can only suppose that we were overheard, and that our play was taken for earnest.’
‘Have you any clue to the whereabouts of this Greek?’ the officer asked Lilian. The doctor broke in—
‘Miss Leland was describing the Greek to me this morning with a view to his identification, when a man walked into the room, said he had overheard the lady through the open window, and had seen the man she described two hours before. He was the boots of an hotel at Kingston. We came here at once, after sending an officer to look after him.’
‘That will do, Mr. Webb,’ said the superior official. ‘There can be no necessity for detaining this gentleman.’
Lilian and the doctor read this last sentence in its most superficial light, but Barndale rose and turned with a feeling of vast inward relief—
‘Our bargain holds good still,’ he said to the inspector, as they went downstairs together.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the inspector, and bade the trio adieu with great politeness.
They three took train for Thames Ditton at once, and by the way Barndale told the story of his arrest.
Arrived at the historic ‘Swan,’ they settled down to their separate avocations—Lilian and the doctor to nurse Leland, and Barndale to do all that in him lay to track the Greek. My story nears its close; and I may say at once, without word-spinning, that Demetri Agryopoulo disappeared, and was no more heard of. He was too wily to speak the English described in the advertisement of his peculiarities. He spoke German like an Alsatian, French like a Gascon, and Italian like a Piedmontese, and could pass for any one of the three. By what devices he held himself in secrecy it matters not here to say. But again, and for the last time in this story, he went his way, and the darkness shrouded him.
On the day following Barndale’s arrest and release, Lilian sat by her brother’s bedside, when the door of the bedroom opened noiselessly, and two women stole in on stealthy tiptoe.
One was Barndale’s maiden sister, and the other was poor little Thecla Perzio.
Lilian kissed them both; and Thecla said, in a tearful, frightened whisper.
‘It is all my wicked, wicked fault. But O mademoiselle, may I not help to nurse him?’
‘Not mademoiselle, dear—Lilian!’ was Lilian’s sole answer.
So the three women stayed, together with mamma Leland, and nursed the invalid in couples. And it came to pass that the indiscreet little Thecla won everybody’s heart about the place, and that everybody came to be assured that no lack of maidenly honour had made her indiscreet, but only a very natural, unsuspecting, childlike confidence. It came to pass also that when Leland Junior began to get better he saw good and sufficient reasons for setting a term to his bachelor existence.
And with no great difficulty Thecla Perzio was brought to his opinion.
By Christmas time Leland was well and strong again. The chase after the Greek was dismissed from the official mind by this time: and Barndale, being reminded of Inspector Webb by the receipt of the promissory note for five hundred pounds, wrote to that official to offer him a week or two in the country. The inspector came, and brought the marvellous pipe with him. It had been detained until then to be put in evidence in case of the Greek’s arrest and trial.
The inspector heard the comedy, and told Barndale, later on, that he regarded the quarrel scene as a masterpiece of histrionic art.
‘I don’t wonder that bumpkin took it all for earnest,’ he said. ‘I should ha’ done that myself. No, thankee, sir. I don’t care about mixing with the lords and swells upstairs. I’ll have a look in on the butler. Smoking the old pipe again, I see, sir. Not many old meerschaums knocking about with a tale like that attached to ‘em.’
It pleases me to add that Doctor Wattiss officiated at Leland’s wedding, and married the maiden sister.