HITHERTO I have said little about my mother, and I may even seem to have regarded that lady in the light of a temporary convenience. My readers will, however, already have guessed thatmymother was no common character.
Consider for a moment the position which she so readily consented to occupy.
The trifling details about the sudden decease of Sir Runan and the affair of the baby, as we have seen, I had thought it betternotto name to her.
Matters, therefore, in her opinion, stood thus:—
Philippa was the victim of a baronet’s wiles.
When off with the new love, she had promptly returned and passed a considerable time under the roof of the old love; that is, of myself.
Then I had suddenly arrived with this eligible prospective daughter-in-law at my mother’s high-priced hotel, and I kept insisting that we should at once migrate, we three, to foreign parts—the more foreign the better.
I had especially dilated on the charms of the scenery and the salubrity of the climate incountries where there was no extradition treaty with England.
Even if there was nothing in these circumstances to arouse the watchful jealousy of a mother, it must be remembered that, as achaperon, she did seem to come a little late in the day.
‘As you have lived together so long without me,’ some parents would have observed, ‘you can do without me altogether.’
None of these trivial objections occurred to my mother.
She was good-nature itself.
Just returned from a professional tour on the Continent (she was, I should have said, in the profession herself, and admirably filled theexigeantpart of Stout Lady in a highly respectable exhibition), my mother at once began to pack up her properties and make ready to accompany us.
Never was there a more good-humouredchaperon. If one of us entered the room where she was sitting with the other, she would humorously give me a push, and observing ‘Two is company, young people, three is none,’ would toddle off with all the alacrity that her figure and age permitted.
I learned from inquiries addressed to theFamily Herald(correspondence column) that the Soudan was then, even as it is now, the land safest against English law. Spain, in this respect, was reckoned a bad second.
The very next day I again broached the subject of foreign travel to my mother. It was already obvious that the frost would not last for ever. Once the snow melted, once the crushed mass that had been a baronet was discovered, circumstantial evidence would point to Philippa. True, there was no one save myself who could positivelyswearthat Philippa had killed Sir Runan. Again, though I could positively swear it, my knowledge was only an inference of my own. Philippa herself had completely forgotten the circumstance. But the suspicions of the Bearded Woman and of the White Groom were sure to be aroused, and the Soudan I resolved to seek without an hour’s delay.
I reckoned without my hostess.
My mother at first demurred.
‘You certainly don’t look well, Basil. But why the Soudan?’
‘A whim, a sick man’s fancy. Perhaps because it is not so very remote from Old Calabar, the country of Philippa’s own father. Mother, tell me, how do you like her?’
‘She is the woman you love, and however shady her antecedents, however peculiar her style of conversation, she is, she must be, blameless. To say more, after so short an acquaintance, might savour of haste and exaggeration.’
A woman’s logic!
‘Then youwillcome to the Soudan with us to-morrow?’
‘No, my child, further south than Spain I willnotgo, not this journey!’
Here Philippa entered.
‘Well, what’s the next news, old man?’ she said.
‘To Spain, to-morrow!’
‘Rain, rain, Go to Spain,Be sure you don’t come back again.’
sang sweet Philippa, in childish high spirits.
I had rarely seen her thus!
Alas, Philippa’s nursery charm against the rain proved worse than unavailing.
That afternoon, after several months of brave black frost, which had gripped the land in its stern clasp, the rain began to fall heavily.
The white veil of snow gradually withdrew.
All that night I dreamed of the white snow slowly vanishing from the white hat.
Next morning the snow had vanished, and the white hat must have been obvious to the wayfaring man though a fool.
Next morning, and the next, and the next, found me still in London.
Why?
My mother was shopping!
Oh, the awful torture of having a gay mother shopping the solemn hours away, when each instant drew her son nearer to the doom of an accessory after the fact!
My mother did not object to travel, but shedidlike to have her little comforts about her.
She occupied herself in purchasing—
A water-bed.
Aboule, or hot-water bottle.
A portable stove.
A travelling kitchen-range.
A medicine chest.
A complete set of Ollendorff.
Ten thousand pots of Dundee marmalade. And such other articles as she deemed essential to her comfort and safety during the expedition. In vain I urged that our motto wasRescue and Retire, and that such elaborate preparations might prevent our retiring from our native shore, and therefore make rescue exceedingly problematical.
My Tory mother only answered by quoting the example of Lord Wolseley and the Nile Expedition.
‘How long didtheytarry among the pots—the marmalade pots?’ said my mother. ‘Didtheystart before every mess had its proper share of extra teaspoons in case of accident, and a double supply of patent respirators for the drummer-boys, and of snow-shoes for the Canadian boatmen in case the climate proved uncertain?’
My mother’s historical knowledge, and the unique example of provident and exhaustive equipment which she cited, reduced me to silence, but did not diminish my anxiety. The delay made me nervous, excited, and chippy.
To-morrow morning we were to start.
To-morrow morning was too late.
With an effort I opened the morning paper—theMorning Post, as it happened—and ran hastily up and down the columns, active exercise having been recommended to me. What cared I for politics, foreign news, or even the sportive intelligence? All I sought for was a paragraph headed ‘Horrible Disclosures,’ or, ‘Awful Death of a Baronet.’ I ran up and down the columns in vain.
No such item of news met my eye. Joyously I rose to go, when my eye fell on the Standard.
Mechanically I opened it.
Those words were written (or so they seemed to me to be written) in letters of fire, though the admirable press at Shoe Lane did not really employ that suitable medium.
‘Horrible Discovery near Roding.’
At once the truth flashed across me. TheMorning Posthad not contained the intelligence because,
The Government had Boycotted the ‘Morning Post’!
Only journals which more or less supported the Government were permitted to obtain ‘copy’ of such thrilling interest!
And yet they speak of a free press and a free country!
Tearing myself away from these reflections, I bent my mind on the awful paragraph.
‘The melting of the snow has thrown a lurid light on the mysterious disappearance (which up to this moment had attracted no attention) of an eccentric baronet, well known in sporting circles. Yesterday afternoon a gentleman’s groom, wading down the highway, discovered the white hat of a gentleman floating on the muddy stream into which the unparalleled weather and the negligence of the Road Trustees has converted our thoroughfare. An inscription in red ink within the lining leaves no doubt that this article of dress is all that is left of the late Sir Runan Errand. The unfortunate nobleman’s friends have been communicated with. The active and intelligent representative of the local police believes that he is in possession of a clue to the author of the crime. Probably the body of the murdered noble has been carried down by the flooded road to the sea.’
I tore that paper to pieces, and used it to wrap up sandwiches for the journey.
Once again I say, if you cannot feel with me, throw this tale aside. Heaven knows it is a sombre one, and it goes on getting sombrer and sombrer! But probably, by this time, you have either tossed the work away or looked at the end to see what happened to them all.
The morning dawned.
I filled my bag with Hanover pieces, which I thought might come in handy on the Spanish Turf, and packed up three or four yellow, red, green, and blue opera hats, so useful to the adventurous bookmaker.
At this very moment the postman arrived and gave me a letter in a woman’s hand.
I thrust it in my breast pocket recklessly.
The cab rattled away.
At last we were off.
I am sure that no one who could have seen us that morning would have dreamt that out of that party of three—a more than comfortable-looking English matron, a girl whose strange beauty has been sufficiently dwelt upon, and a gentleman in a yellow crush hat and a bookmaker’s bag—two were flying from the hands of justice.
Our appearance was certainly such as to disarm all suspicion.
But appearances are proverbially deceitful. Were ours deceitful enough?
‘But where are we going?’ said my mother, with the short memory of old age.
‘To Paris first, then to Spain, and, if needful, down to Khartoum.’
‘Thenyou young people will have to go alone. I draw the line at Dongola.’
I glanced at Philippa.
Then for the first time since her malady I saw Philippa blushing! Her long curved eyelashes hid her eyes, which presumably were also pink, but certainly my mother’s broad pleasantry had called a tell-tale blush to the cheek of the young person.
As we drew near Folkestone I remembered the letter, but the sight of the Roding postmark induced me to defer opening it till we should be on board the steamer. When Philippa was battling with the agonies of the voyage, then, undisturbed, I might ascertain what Mrs. Thompson (for it was sure to be Mrs. Thompson) had to say.
We were now on board. Philippa and my mother fled to the depths of the saloon, and I opened the fateful missive. It began without any conventional formalities, and the very first words blanched a cheek already pale.
‘I see yer!’
This strange epistle commenced:—
‘Iknow why Sir Runan never reached my house. I know the reason (it was only too obvious) forherstrange, excited state. I know how he met the death he deserved.
‘I never had the pluck. None of the rest of us ever had the pluck. We all swore we’d swing for him as, one after another, he wedded and deserted us. The Two-headed Nightingale swore it, and the Missing Link, and the Spotted Girl, and the Strong Woman who used to double up horseshoes. Now she doubles up her perambulator with her children in it, but she never doubled up him.
‘As to your sister, tell her from me that she is all right. She has made herself his widow, she is the Dowager Lady Errand.
‘The fact is,the Live Mermaid was never alive at all!She was a put-up thing of waxwork and a stuffedsalmo ferox. His pretended marriage withheris therefore a mere specious excuse to enable him to avoid your sister’s claims.
‘Now he is dead, your sister can take the name, title, and estates. I wish she may get them.’
I READ the woman’s letter again and again, read it with feelings of the most mingled description. First, I reflected with solemn pride that Philippa wasmorethan an honest woman; that she really was a baronet’s lady! After we were married she should keep her title. Many people do. How well it would sound when we entered a room together—’ Dr. South and Lady Errand!’ Yet, on second thoughts, would not this conjunction of names rather set people asking questions?
Yes, disagreeable associations might be revived.
My second thought was that, if Mrs. Thompson kept her word, we might as well go home at once, without bothering about the Soudan. The White Groom, I felt certain, had long been speechless. There was thus no one to connect Lady Errand with the decease of Sir Runan.
Moreover, Philippa’s self-respect was now assured. She had lost it when she learned that she was not Sir Runan’s wife; she would regain it when she became aware that she had made herself Sir Runan’s widow. Such is the character of feminine morality, as I understand the workings of woman’s heart.
I had reached this point in my soliloquy, when I reflected that perhaps I had betternottell Philippa anything about it.
You see, things were so very mixed, because Philippa’s memory was so curiously constructed that she had entirely forgotten the murder which she had committed; and even if I proved to her by documentary evidence that she had only murdered her own husband, it might not help to relieve her burdened conscience as much as I had hoped. There are times when I almost give up this story in despair. To introduce a heroine who is mad in and out, so to speak, and forgets and remembers things exactly at the right moment, seems a delightfully simple artifice.
But, upon my word, I am constantly forgetting what it is that Philippa should remember, and on the point of making her remember the very things she forgets!
So puzzled had I become that I consoled myself by cursing Sir Runan’s memory.De mortuis nil nisi bonum!
What a lot of trouble a single little murder, of which one thinks little enough at the time, often gives a fellow.
All this while we were approaching Paris.
The stains of travel washed away, my mother gave a sigh of satisfaction as she seated herself at the dinner table. As any one might guess who looked at her, she was no despiser of the good things of this life! That very night we went to the Hippodrome, where we met many old acquaintances. My own Artillery Twins were there, and kissed their hands to me as they flew gracefully over our heads towards the desired trapeze. Here, also, was the Tattooed Man, and I grasped his variegated and decorative hand with an emotion I have rarely felt. Without vanity I may say that Philippa and my mother had asuccès fou.
From the moment when they entered their box everylorgnettewas fixed upon them.
All Paris was there, thetout Parisofpremières, ofles courses, thetout Parisofclubsmanofbelles petites, of ladiesà chignon jaune. Here were the Booksmen, thegommeux, they whofont courir, the journalists, and here I observed with peculiar interest my great masters, M. Fortuné du Boisgobey and M. Xavier de Montépin.
In the intervals of the performancetout le mondecrowded into ourloge, and I observed that my mother and Lady Errand made an almost equal impression on many a gallant and enterprising youngimpresario.
We supped at theCafe Bignon; toasts were carried; I also was carried home.
Next morning I partly understood the mental condition of Philippa. I had absolutely forgotten the events of the later part of the entertainment.
Several bills arrived for windows, which, it seems, I had broken in a moment of effusion.
Gendarmes arrived, and would have arrested me on a charge of having knocked down some thirty-seven of their number.
This little matter was easily arranged.
I apologised separately and severally to each of the thirty-sevenbraves hommes, and collectively to the whole corps, the French army, the President, the Republic, and the statue of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde. These duties over, I was at leisure to reflect on the injustice of English law.
Certain actions which I had entirely forgotten I expiated at the cost of a few thousand francs, and some dozen apologies.
For only one action, about which she remembered nothing at all, Philippa had to fly from English justice, and give up her title and place in society! Both ladies now charmed me with a narrative of the compliments that had been paid them; both absolutely declined to leave Paris.
‘I want to look at the shops,’ said my mother.
‘I want thegommeuxto look at me,’ said Philippa.
Neither of them saw the least fun in my proposed expedition to Spain.
Weeks passed and found us still in the capital of pleasure.
My large fortune, except a few insignificant thousands, had passed away in the fleeting exhilaration of baccarat.
We must do something to restore our wealth.
My mother had an idea.
‘Basil,’ she said, ‘you speak of Spain. You long to steep yourself in local colour. You sigh forhidalgos, sombreros, carbonados, and carboncillos, why not combine business with pleasure?
‘Why not take the Alhambra?’
Thiswasan idea!
Where could we be safer than under the old Moorish flag?
Philippa readily fell in with my mother’s proposal. When woman has once tasted of public admiration, when once she has stepped on the boards, she retires without enthusiasm, even at the age of forty.
‘I had thought,’ said Philippa, of exhibiting myself at the Social Science Congress, and lecturing on self-advertisement and the ethical decline of the Moral Show business, with some remarks on waxworks. But the Alhambra sounds ever so much more toney.’
It was decided on.
I threw away the Baedeker and Murray, and Ford’s ‘Spain,’ on which I had been relying for three chapters of padding and local colour. I ceased to think of the very old churches of St. Croix and St. Seurin and a variety of other interesting objects. I did not bother about St. Sebastian, and the Valley of the Giralda, and Burgos, the capital of the old Castilian kingdom, and the absorbing glories of the departed Moore. Gladly, gaily, I completed the necessary negotiations, and found myself, with Philippa, my mother, and many of my oldtroupe, in the dear old Alhambra, safe under the shelter of the gay old Moorish flag.
Shake off black gloom, Basil South, and make things skip.
You have conquered Fate!
GLORIOUS, wonderful Alhambra! Magical Cuadrado de Leicestero! Philippa and I were as happy as children, and the house was full every night.
We called everything by Spanish names, and played perpetually at being Spaniards.
Thefoyerwe named apatio—a space fragrant with the perfume of oranges, which the public were always sucking, and perilous with peel. Add to this a refreshment-room,refectorio, full of the rarest oldcigarros, and redolent ofaqua de soda and aguardiente. Here thebotellasofaqua de sodawere continually popping, and thecorchosflying with a murmur of merry voices and of mingling waters. Here half through the night you could listen to—
The delight of happy laughter,The delight of low replies.
With such surroundings, almost those of a sybarite, who can blame me for being lulled into security, and telling myself that my troubles were nearly at an end? Who can wonder at thecháteaux en Espagnethat I built as I lounged in thepatio, and assisted my customers to consume themedia aqua de soda, or ‘split soda,’ of the country? Sometimes we roamed as far as the Alcazar; sometimes we wandered to the Oxford, or laughed light-heartedly in the stalls of theAlegria.
Such was our life. So in calm and peace (for we had secured a Torychuckeroutofrom Birmingham) passed the even tenor of out days.
As to marrying Philippa, it had always been myintention.
Whether she was or was not Lady Errand; whether she had or had not precipitated the hour of her own widowhood, made no kind of difference to me.
A moment of ill-judged haste had been all her crime.
That moment had passed. Philippa was not that moment. I was not marrying that moment, but Philippa.
Picture, then, your Basil naming and insisting on the day, yet somehow the day had not yet arrived. It did, however, arrive at last.
The difficulty now arose under which name was Philippa to be married?
To tell you the truth, I cannot remember under which name Philippawasmarried. It was a difficult point. If she wedded me under her maiden name, and if Mrs. Thompson’s letter contained the truth, then would the wedding be legal and binding?
If she married me under the name of Lady Errand, and if Mrs. Thompson’s letter was false, then would the wedding be all square?
So far as I know, there is no monograph on the subject, or there was none at the time.
Be it as it may, wedded we were.
Morality was now restored to the show business, the legitimate drama began to look up, and the hopes of the Social Science Congress were fulfilled.
But evil days were at hand.
One day, Philippa and I were lounging in thepatio, when I heard the younghidalgos—orMacheros, as they are called—talking as they smoked their princelycigaritos.
‘Sir Runan Errand,’ said one of them; ‘where he’s gone under. A rare bad lot he was.’
‘Murdered,’ replied the other. ‘Nothing ever found of him but his hat.’
‘What a rum go!’ replied the other.
I looked at Philippa. She had heard all. I saw her dark brow contract in anguish. She was beating her breast furiously—her habit in moments of agitation.
Then I seem to remember that I and the twohidalgosbore Philippa to a couch in thepatio, while I smiled and smiled and talked of the heat of the weather!
When Philippa came back to herself, she looked at me with her wondrous eyes and said,—
‘Basil; tell me the square truth, honest Injun! What had I been up to that night?’
What was I to say, how evade her impulsive cross-examinations. I fell back upon evasions.
‘Why do I want to know?’ she echoed, ‘because I choose to! I hated him. He took a walk, I took a walk, and I had taken something before I took a walk. If we met, I was bound to have words with him. Basil, did I dream it, or read it long ago in some old penny dreadful of the past?’
Philippa occasionally broke into blank verse like this, but not often.
‘Dearest, it must have been a dream,’
I said, catching at this hope of soothing her.
‘No, no!’ she screamed; ‘no—no dream. Not any more, thank you! I can see myself standing now over that crushed white mass! Basil, I could never bear him in that hat, and I must have gone for him!’
I consoled Philippa as well as I could, but she kept screaming.
‘Howdid I kill him?’
‘Goodness only knows, Philippa,’ I replied; ‘but you had a key in your hand—a door-key.’
‘Ah, that fatal latch-key!’ she said, ‘the cause of our final quarrel. Where is it? What have you done with it?’ she shouted.
‘I threw it away,’ I replied. This was true, but I could not think of anything better to say.
‘You threw it away! Didn’t you know it would become apièce justificatif?’ said my poor Philippa, who had not read Gaboriau to no purpose.
I passed the night wrestling in argument with Philippa. She reproached me for having returned from Spain, ‘which was quite safe, you know—it is the place city men go to when they bust up,’ she remarked in her peculiarly idiomatic style. She reproved me for not having told her all about it before, in which case she would never have consented to return to England.
‘They will try me—they will hang me!’ she repeated.
‘Not a bit,’ I answered. ‘I can prove that you were quite out of your senses when you did for him.’
‘Youprove it!’ she sneered; ‘a pretty lawyeryouare. Why, they won’t take a husband’s evidence for or against a wife in a criminal case. This comes of your insisting on marrying me.’
‘But I doubt if wearemarried, Philippa, dear, as we never could remember whether you were wedded under your maiden name or as Philippa Errand. Besides——’ I was going to say that William, the White Groom (late the Sphynx), could show to her having been (as he once expressed it) as ‘crazy as a loon,’ but I remembered in time. William had, doubtless, long been speechless.
The sherry must have done its fatal work.
This is the worst of committing crimes. They do nothing, very often, but complicate matters.
Had I not got rid of William—but it was too late for remorse. As to the evidence of her nurses, I forgot all aboutthat. I tried to console Philippa on another line.
I remarked that, if she had ‘gone for’ Sir Runan, she had only served him right.
Then I tried to restore her self-respect by quoting the bearded woman’s letter.
I pointed out that she had been Lady Errand, after all.
This gave Philippa no comfort.
‘It makes things worse,’ she said. ‘I thought I had only got rid of my betrayer; and now you say I have killed my husband. You men have no tact.’
‘Besides,’ Philippa went on, after pausing to reflect, ‘I have not bettered myself one bit. If I had not gone for him I would be Lady Errand, and no end of a swell, and now I’m only plain Mrs. Basil South.’ Speaking thus, Philippa wept afresh, and refused to be comforted.
Her remarks were not flattering to my self-esteem.
At this time I felt, with peculiar bitterness, the blanks in Philippa’s memory. Nothing is more difficult than to make your heroine not too mad, but just mad enough.
Had Philippa been a trifle saner, or less under the influence of luncheon, at first, she would either never have murdered Sir Runan at all (which perhaps would have been the best course), or she would have knownhowshe murdered him.
The entire absence of information on this head added much to my perplexities.
On the other hand, had Philippa been a trifle madder, ormoreunder the influence of luncheon, nothing could ever have recalled the event to her memory at all.
As it is, my poor wife (if shewasmy wife, a subject on which I intend to submit a monograph to a legal contemporary), my poor wife was almost provoking in what she forgot and what she remembered.
One day as my dear patient was creeping about thepatio, she asked me if I sawallthe papers?
I said I saw most of them.
‘Well, look at themall, for who knows how many may be boycotted by the present Government? In a boycotted print you don’t know but you may miss an account of how some fellow was hanged for what I did. I believe two people can’t be executed for the same crime. Now, if any one swings for Sir Runan,Iam safe; but it might happen, and you never know it.’
Dear Philippa, ever thoughtful for others! I promised to read every one of the papers, and I was soon rewarded for the unparalleled tedium of these studies.
I HATE looking back and reading words which I have written when the printer’s devil was waiting for copy in the hall, but I fancy I have somewhere called this tale a confession; if not, I meant to do so. It has no more claim to be called a work of art than the cheapest penny dreadful. How could it?
It holds but two characters, a man and a woman.
All the rest are the merest supers. Perhaps you may wonder that I thus anticipate criticism; but review-writing is so easy that I may just as well fill up with this as with any other kind of padding.
My publisher insists on so many pages of copy. When he does not get what he wants, the language rich and powerful enough to serve his needs has yet to be invented.
But he struggles on with the help of a dictionary of American expletives.
However, we are coming to the conclusion, and that, I think, will waken the public up! And yet this chapter will be a short one. It will be the review of a struggle against a temptation to commit, not perhaps crime, but an act of the grossest bad taste.
To that temptation I succumbed; we both succumbed.
It is a temptation to which I dare think poor human nature has rarely been subjected.
The temptation to go and see a man, a fellow-creature, tried for a crime which one’s wife committed, and to which one is an accessory after the fact.
Oh, that morning!
How well I remember it.
Breakfast was just oyer, the table with its relics of fragrant bloaters andterrineofpatéstill stood in thepatio.
I was alone. I loafed lazily and at my ease.
Then I lighted a princelyhavanna, blaming myself for profaning the scented air fromel Cuadro de Leicester.
You see I have such a sensitive aesthetic conscience.
Then I took from my pocket theSporting Times, and set listlessly to work to skim its lengthy columns.
This was owing to my vow to Philippa, that I would read every journal published in England. As the day went on, I often sat with them up to my shoulders, and littering all thepatio.
I ran down the topics of the day. This scene is an ‘under-study,’ by the way, of the other scene in which I read of the discovery of Sir Runan’s hat. At last I turned my attention to the provincial news column. A name, a familiar name, caught my eye; the name of one who, I had fondly fancied, had: long-lain unburied in my cellar at the ‘pike. My princelyhavannafell unheeded on the marble pavement of thepatio, as with indescribable amazement I read the following ‘par.’
‘William Evans, the man accused of the murder of Sir Runan Errand, will be tried at the Newnham Assizes on the 20th. The case, which excites considerable interest among theéliteof Boding and district, will come on thetapisthe first day of the meeting. The evidence will be of a purely circumstantial kind.’
Every word of that ‘par’ was a staggerer. I sat as one stunned, dazed, stupid, motionless, with my eye on the sheet.
Was ever man in such a situation before?
Your wife commits a murder.
You become an accessory after the fact.
You take steps to destroy one of the two people who suspect the truth.
And then you find that the man on whom you committed murder is accused of the murder which you and your wife committed.
The sound of my mother’s voice scolding Philippa wakened me from my stupor. They were coming.
I could not face them.
Doubling up the newspaper, I thrust it into my pocket, and sped swiftly out of thepatio.
Where did I go? I scarcely remember. I think it must have been to one of the public gardens or public-houses, I am not certain which. All sense of locality left me. I found at last some lonely spot, and there I threw myself on the ground, dug my finger-nails into the dry ground, and held on with all the tenacity of despair. In the wild whirl of my brain I feared that I might be thrown off into infinite space. This sensation passed off. At first I thought I had gone mad. Then I felt pretty certain that it must be the other people who had gone mad.
I had killed William Evans.
My wife had killed Runan Errand.
How, then, could Runan Errand have been killed by William Evans?
‘Which is absurd,’ I found myself saying, in the language of Eukleides, the grand old Greek.
Human justice! What is justice? See how it can err! Was there ever such a boundless, unlimited blunder in the whole annals of penny fiction? Probably not. I remember nothing like it in all the learned pages of theLondon Journaland theFamily Herald. Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Braddon never dreamed of aught like this. Philippamustbe told. It was too good a joke. Would she laugh? Would she be alarmed?
Picture me lying on the ground, with the intelligence fresh in my mind.
I felt confidence, on the whole, in Philippa’s sense of humour.
Then rose the temptation.
Trust this man (William Evans, late the Sphynx) to the vaunted array of justice!
Let him have a run for his money.
Nay, more.
Go down and see the fun!
Why hesitate? You cannot possibly be implicated in the deed. You will enjoy a position nearly unique in human history. You will see the man, of whose murder you thought you were guilty, tried for the offence which you know was committed by your wife.
Every sin is not easy. My sense of honour arose against this temptation. I struggled, but I was mastered. Iwouldgo and see the trial. Home I went and broached the subject to Philippa. The brave girl never blenched. She had no hesitations, no scruples to conquer.
‘Oh! Basil,’ she exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, ‘wot larx! When do we start?’
The reader will admit that I did myself no injustice when, at the commencement of this tale, I said I had wallowed in crime.
WE got down to Newnham, where the ‘Sizes were held, on the morning of September 20th. There we discovered that we had an hour or two for refreshment, and I may say that both Philippa and I employed that time to the best advantage. While at the hotel I tried to obtain the file of theTimes. I wanted to look back and see if I could find the account of the magisterial proceedings against the truly unlucky William Evans.
After all, should I call him unlucky? He had escaped the snare I had laid for him, and perhaps (such things have been) even a Newnham jury might find him not guilty.
But the file of theTimeswas not forthcoming.
I asked the sleepy-eyed Teutonic waiter for it. He merely answered, with the fatuous patronising grin of the Germankellner:—
‘You vant?’
‘I want the file of the Times!’
‘I have the corkscrew of the good landlord; but the file of theTimesI have it not. Have you your boots, your fish-sauce, your currycomb?’ he went on. Then, lapsing into irrelevant local gossip, ‘the granddaughter of the blacksmith has the landing-net of the bad tailor.’
‘I want my bill, my note, myaddition, myconsommation,’ I answered angrily.
‘Very good bed, very good post-horse,’ he replied at random, and I left the County Hotel without being able to find out why suspicion had fallen on “William Evans”.
We hailed one of the cabs which stood outside the hotel door, when a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and a voice, strange but not unfamiliar, exclaimed, ‘Dr. South, as I am a baronet—’
I turned round suddenly and found myself face to face with
Sir Runan Errand!
My brain once more began to reel. Here were the real victim and the true perpetrators of a murder come to view the trial of the man who was charged with having committed it!
Though I was trembling like an aspen leaf? I remembered that we lived in an age of ‘telepathy’ and psychical research.
Sir Runan was doubtless what Messrs. Myers and Gurney call avisible apparitionas distinguished from the commoninvisible apparition.
If a real judge confesses, like Sir E. Hornby, to having seen a ghost, why should not a mere accessory after the fact?
Regaining my presence of mind, I asked, ‘What brings you here?’
‘Oh, to see the fun,’ he replied. ‘Fellow being tried for killing me. The morbid interest excited round here is very great. Doubt your getting front seats.’
‘Can’t you manage it for me?’ I asked imploringly.
‘Daresay I can. Here, take my card, and just mention my name, and they’ll let you in. Case for the prosecution, by the way,mostfeeble.’
Here the appearance, handing me a card, nodded, and vanished in the crowd.
I returned to Philippa, where I had left her in the four-wheeler. We drove off, and found ourselves before a double-swinging (ay, ominous as it seemed,swinging) plain oak door, over which in old English letters was written—
CRIMINAL COURT.
I need not describe the aspect of the court. Probably most of my readers have at some time in their lives found themselves in such a place.
True to the minute, the red-robed Judge appears. It is Sir Joshua Juggins, well known for his severity as ‘Gibbeting Juggins.’
Ah, there is little hope for William Evans.
I have learned from a neighbour in court the evidence against Evans is purely circumstantial. He has been found in possession of a peculiar key, believed to have belonged to Sir Runan.
Well may they call the case for the prosecution weak.
William must have found that fatal key which Philippa took from the slain man.
On that accident the whole presumption of his guilt is founded.
The Grand Jury (country gentlemen—idiots all!) find a ‘True Bill.’
The clerk reads the indictment that ‘he, William Evans, did feloniously, wilfully, and of malice aforethought, kill and murder Sir Runan Errand, Baronet.’
As the reading goes on Philippa is strangely moved.
‘Basil,’ she whispered, ‘don’t you see the splendid, unequalled chance for an advertisement! I’ll get up and make a speech, and sayIdid it. Of course they can’t prove it, but it will set every one talking, and bring hundreds of pounds into the house every night.’
I now observed that Philippa had half slipped off her mantle and bonnet. Beneath these coverings she was dressed in wig and gown, like Mrs. Weldon in the photographs.
‘For goodness’ sake, Philippa,don’t!’ I whispered.
The clerk turned to William Evans, the prisoner at the Bar.
‘Are you guilty, or not guilty?’
In the silence a cigarette-ash might have been heard to drop, if any one had been smoking.
The long silence was broken, but not by the prisoner.
By Philippa!
Rising to all her stately height, with her flowing robes around her, she stood at bay. Then her clear deep voice rang out:—
‘My lord, I was the party that did it!’
‘Order in the court! order in the court!’ cried the ushers.
‘I commit you! I commit you!’ thundered Lord Justice Juggins. ‘Take her away. Five years and hard labour.’
Struggling violently, Philippa was dragged away by the minions of the law.
I notice one visitor turn round, and gaze at the commotion.
It is Mrs. Thompson, the Bearded Woman.
Silence has scarcely been restored, when it is again broken.
A manly form rises. A deep voice exclaims:—
‘My lord, the prisoner is innocent.Iam the person whom he is said to have murdered.’
The form, the voice—it is Sir Runan Errand!
Again I hear the sharp accents of Mr. Justice Juggins.
‘Is this court a bear-garden or the House of Commons? Take that man out. Give him five years and two dozen lashes.’
Scarcely had the court resumed its wonted aspect of business, scarcely had the prisoner again been asked to plead, when a shrill voice shattered the stillness.
‘My lord, the key found in the prisoner’s possession is my cellar-key.’
This time the bold interrupter was Mrs. Thompson, the Bearded Woman.
‘Five years as usual, and hard labour,’ said Sir Joshua Juggins, wearily. He was tiring of his task. ‘Please, my lord, it warn’t none of me,’ came a hoarse whisper from the prisoner at the bar.
‘Who askedyouto speak? Is that the way to plead?’ snapped the judge. ‘Give him five years also, for contempt of court.’
William Evans was carried out in hysterics.
The plot, the mystery had thickened.
I now felt that there was only one way of fathoming the secret of the crime. I also must get myself committed! Then I would be able to rejoin the other actors in this strange drama, and learn their motives, and the real facts of the case.
In a moment my resolution was taken.
Springing to my feet, I exclaimed in clarion tones:—
‘My lord, I am an accessory after the fact.’
Sir Joshua Juggins gave a cry of despair. Then mastering himself, he whispered:—
‘Take that idiot away, and give him penal servitude for life.’
As I left the court in chains, I heard the next case being called.