CHAPTER VTHE IDENTITY OF CAPTAIN SHANNON DISCLOSED AT LAST
The news that the captured conspirator had turned informer and divulged the name and identity of Captain Shannon created, as may be supposed, the wildest excitement. Contrary to general expectation, the authorities seemed willing to accord information instead of withholding it, though whether this was not as much due to gratification at finding themselves in the novel position of having any information to accord, as to their desire to allay public anxiety, may be questioned.
The editor of the “Dublin News” had, it seemed, been speaking at a public dinner and was returning between twelve and one o’clock from the gathering. As it was a close night and the room had been hot, he mentioned to a friend that he thought he should walk home instead of driving. This he had apparently done, for a police constable who was standingin the shadow of a doorway near the editor’s residence saw him turn the corner of the street closely followed by another man who was presumably begging. The editor stopped and put his hand in his pocket as if to search for a coin, and as he did so the supposed beggar struck at him, apparently with a knife. The unfortunate gentleman fell without a cry, and the assassin then stooped over him to repeat the blow, after which he started to run at full speed in the direction of the constable, who drew back within the doorway until the runner was almost upon him, when he promptly tripped his man up and held him down until assistance arrived. When taken to the station the prisoner at first denied, with much bluster, all knowledge of the crime; but when he learned, with evident dismay, that the murder had been witnessed, and saw the damning evidence of guilt in the shape of blood-spattering upon his right sleeve, his bluster gave place to the most grovelling terror, and though he refused to give any account of himself he was removed to a cell in a state of complete collapse.
The next morning his condition was even more abject. The result of his self-communingshad apparently been to convince him that the hangman’s hand was already upon him, and that his only chance of saving his neck lay in turning informer and throwing himself upon the mercy of the authorities. The wretched creature implored the police to believe that he was no assassin by his own choice, and that the murder would never have been committed had he not gone in fear of his life from the spies and agents of Captain Shannon, whose instructions he dared not disobey. He expressed his readiness to reveal all he knew of the conspiracy, and declared that he was not only aware who Captain Shannon was, but actually had a portrait of the arch-conspirator which he was prepared to hand over to the police. He then went on to say that the murder of the editor of the “Dublin News” was to be companioned in London by the murder of the editor of the “Daily Record.”
On hearing this last startling piece of news the Dublin police wired immediately to New Scotland Yard and to the London office of the “Daily Record,” but the warning arrived at the latter place a few minutes too late, for when the telegram was taken to the editor’s room he was found lying stabbed through the heart.
An alarm was raised as already described, the doors locked, and every one within the building subjected to the severest examination, but all that could be discovered was that a well-groomed and young-looking man, dressed and speaking like a gentleman, had called some ten minutes before, saying that he had an appointment with the editor. He had sent up the name of Mr. Hyram B. Todd, of Boston, and the editor’s reply had been, “Show the gentleman in.” Why this unknown stranger was allowed access to an editor who is generally supposed to be entirely inaccessible to outsiders, there was not a particle of evidence to show. All that was known was that a minute or two before the murder had been discovered, the supposed Mr. Todd came out from the editor’s room, turning back to nod “Good-morning; and thank you very much” at the door, after closing which he left the building. No cry or noise of scuffling had been heard, but, from the fact that the editor was lying face downwards over a table upon which papers were generally kept, it was supposed that he had risen from his chair and walked across the room to this table to look for a manuscript or memorandum.To do so he must have turned his back upon the visitor, who had apparently seized the opportunity to stab his victim to the heart, and had then left the office just in time to escape detection.
The importance of the arrest which had been made was fully realized when, two days after its occurrence, the name, personal description, and portrait of Captain Shannon were posted up on every police-station in the kingdom, with the announcement that the Government would pay a reward of £5,000 for information which should lead to his arrest.
He was, it seemed, the fourth man on the “Daily Record’s” list, his name being James Mullen, an Irish-American, and was described as between forty and fifty years of age, short, and slightly lame. In complexion he was stated to be dark, with brown hair and bushy beard, but his most distinguishable feature was said to be his eyes, which were described as particularly full and fine, with heavy lids.
Then came the portrait, which, the instant I looked at it, startled me strangely. The face as I saw it there was unknown to me; but that somewhere and sometime in my life I had seenthe face—not of some one resembling this man, but of the very man himself—I was positive, though under what circumstances I could not, for the life of me, remember. I have as a rule an excellent memory, and I attribute this very largely to the fact that Inever allow myself to forget. Memory, like the lamp which came into the possession of Aladdin, can summon magicians to aid us at call. But memory is a lamp which must be kept bright by constant usage, or it ceases to retain its power. The slave-sprites serve mortals none too willingly, and if, when you rub the lamp, the attendant sprite come not readily to your call, and you, through indolence, allow him to slip back into the blue, be sure that when next you seek his offices he will again be mutinous. And if on that occasion you compel him not, he will become more and ever more slack in his service, and finally will shake off his allegiance and cease to do your bidding at all.
Hence, as I have said, I neverallow myself to forget, though when I stumble upon a stubborn matter I go like a dog with a thorn in his foot till the thing be found. Such a matter was it to remember where and when I had seen the facethat so reminded me of Captain Shannon. Day after day went by, and yet, cudgel my brains as I would, I could get no nearer to tracing the connection, and but for sheer obstinacy had pitched the whole concern out of my mind and gone about my business. Sometimes I was nigh persuaded that the thing I sought was sentient and alive, and was dodging me of pure devilry and set purpose. Once it tweaked me, as it were, by the ear, as if to whisper therein the words I was wanting, but when I turned to attend it, lo! it was gone at a bound and was making mouths at me round a corner. It seemed as if—as sportsmen tell us of the fox—the creature rather enjoyed being hunted than otherwise, and entered into the sport with as much zest as the sportsman. Sometimes it cast in my way a colour, a sound, or an odour (I noticed that when I smelt tobacco I seemed, as the children say, to be getting “warmer”) which set me off again in wild pursuit and with some promise of success. And then when I had for the fiftieth time abandoned the profitless chase, and, so to speak, returned home and shut myself up within my own walls, it doubled back to give a runaway knock at my door, only to mock mewhen I rushed out by the flutter of a garment in the act of vanishing.
But I was resolved that not all its freaks should avail it ultimately to escape me, for though I had to hunt it through every by-way and convolution of my brain, I was determined to give myself no rest till I had laid it by the heels,—and lay it by the heels I eventually did, as you shall shortly hear.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is of opinion that “Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associations, are more readily reached through the sense of smell than by almost any other channel.” The probable reason for this strange connection between the sense of smell and the mind is, he tells us, “because the olfactory nerve is the only one directly connected with the hemispheres of the brain—the part in which we have every reason to believe the intellectual processes are carried on. To speak more truly,” he continues, “the olfactory nerve is not a nerve at all, but a part of the brain in intimate connection with its anterior lobes. Contrast the sense of taste as a source of suggestive impressions with that of smell. Now the nerve of taste has no immediate connection with thebrain proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal cord.”
Curiously enough, it was in connection with a scent that I ultimately succeeded in recalling where and under what circumstances I had seen the face of which I was in search, and but for the fact of my having smelt a particular odour in a particular place this narrative would never have been written.
I have said that when I smelt tobacco I felt that I was, as the children say, “getting warmer.” But, unfortunately, tobacco in the shape of pipe, cigar, or cigarette is in my mouth whenever I have an excuse for the indulgence, and often when I have none. Hence, though the face I sought seemed more than once to loom out at me through tobacco smoke, I had watched too many faces through that pleasing mist to be able to recall the particular circumstances under which I had seen the one in question. Nevertheless, it was tobacco which ultimately gave me my clue.
The morning was very windy, and I had three times unsuccessfully essayed to light my cigar with an ordinary match. In despair—for in a general way I hate fusees like poison—I boughta box of vesuvians which an observant and enterprising match-vendor promptly thrust under my nose. As I struck the vile thing and the pestilent smell assailed my nostrils, the scene I was seeking to recall came back to me. I was sitting in a third-class smoking carriage on the London, Tilbury, and Southend Railway, and opposite to me was a little talkative man who had previously lit his pipe with a fusee. I saw him take out the box evidently with the intention of striking another, and then I heard a voice say, “For heaven’s sake, sir, don’t stink the carriage out again with that filthy thing! Pray allow me to give you a match.”
The speaker was sitting directly in front of me, and as I recalled his face while I stood there in the street with the still unlighted cigar between my lips, the open box in one hand and the now burnt-out fusee arrested half-way toward the cigar-tip in the other, I knew that his face was the face of Captain Shannon.