After luncheon came the speeches.
Sir Haselton Jardine's was as deadly as it very well could have been. He was not a bit of an orator. He reminded one of an automatic figure as much as anything, as if he had been wound up to go. He went quietly on, in the same placid, passionless sort of whisper, but as clear as a bell. One never lost a syllable he uttered. He never faltered or stumbled. The words, as they flowed from him, were exactly adapted to the meaning they were intended to convey. He fitted them together with the dexterity of an artist in mosaic.
One began almost to feel that one was listening to the voice of doom.
He recounted the story. He observed that it did not appear to be disputed that the prisoner had travelled in the same compartment with the woman who was dead. He did not know what the defence would be. But if it was intended to suggest that death had been the result of accident, he asked the attention of the jury to the medical evidence. It was shown by that that death had not been caused by falling from the train. The woman had been strangled--strangled by a man's two hands. The degree of violence which had been used not only inevitably suggested premeditation, but also great resolution in carrying out what had been premeditated. The murderer had resolved to kill, and he did kill.
They could not say with certainty what happened after the train left Brighton. A feature of the case was that the efforts of the police had failed in establishing the dead woman's identity. So far as they could discover she was nameless. No one had come forward to claim her--to say who she was. She seemed to have come from nowhere. No one seemed to have missed her now that she had gone. It was a mystery. He could not say if the prisoner had it in his power to supply them with the key to that mystery. Men live double lives. The witness Taunton had told them that what he had heard had caused him to conclude that the man and woman in the next compartment were acquaintances. That might have been the case. In that connection he would merely remark--that the prisoner was a married man; that the woman was young and pretty; that she was far advanced in pregnancy; that she wore no wedding-ring.
In these facts they might, possibly, find a motive for the crime.
A great crime had been committed. A young woman, scarcely more than a girl, who would shortly have become a mother, had been done to death. So far as one could perceive, there were no palliating circumstances. It was the other way. The crime was the act of a coward, as well as of a criminal. He did not desire to press the case unduly against the prisoner. It was his duty to ask them, as jurymen, if the facts which had been presented were not adequate to bring the crime home to him. If they deemed them inadequate, then, without showing fear or favour, it was their duty to say so.
Sir Haselton Jardine sat down.
And Mr. Bates got up.
Mr. Bates began by remarking that he did not propose to call any witnesses for the defence.
Then, in that case, in view of the body of evidence which had been called for the other side, Tommy's goose was cooked, and he was done for. Mr. Bates might have as well kept still. A general movement which took place in the court seemed to be a voiceless expression of this consensus of opinion.
Mr. Bates said that, in taking this course, he was almost overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility. That was chiefly owing to the fact that the law of England was still in such a state that the prisoner could not go into the box and testify. He was exceedingly anxious to give his testimony, but it could not be received as evidence. If he had spoken out at first he might not, and probably would not, have been in the position which he was occupying now. But he had shrunk from the course which a wiser man would have pursued--shrunk from it for reasons which were natural enough, but which still, he was bound to say, were insufficient. Now it was too late. His voice could not be heard.
It was his duty, as the prisoner's advocate, to lay before the jury the prisoner's story.
Then Mr. Bates told what had really happened, and told it very well indeed. His story was literally accurate. I did not detect a single discrepancy. I think I should have done! He was frank almost to a fault. He nothing extenuated, nothing set down in malice. Nothing was omitted--even the dotting of the i's.
And yet I doubt if a soul in court, with the exception, perhaps, of Tommy's wife, believed a word he said.
To me, listening up there, the thing was inconceivably funny.
The chief difficulty which Mr. Bates had to contend with, as he owned, and as one perceived without his owning it, was the medical evidence. He admitted that it was difficult to reconcile it with the prisoner's story. The prisoner declared that he did not understand it; that it had come upon him with the force of a surprise.
His theory was that the woman had been stunned by her fall from the train. As she was unconscious, or before she had recovered, some straggling vagabond had found her lying on the bank. He had robbed her. To effect his purpose he had had to add murder to robbery. The prosecution had not laid stress upon the point, but she evidently had been robbed. There was not the slightest tittle of evidence to connect the prisoner with the robbery, so counsel for the Crown had been wise not to dwell upon it. On the other hand there was complete absence of motive, and the fact that nothing of any sort could have belonged to the dead woman had been found in the possession of the prisoner.
He admitted that the suggestion that murder had been committed after the fall from the carriage was well worthy the attention of the jury.
The prisoner made a mistake--which however, he submitted, was the mistake which we might naturally have expected from a constitutionally nervous man--in not giving the alarm immediately the accident took place. He ought to have spoken when they reached Victoria. He ought not to have allowed himself to be frightened by the blackmailing Taunton. But, after all, these were all mistakes which a perfectly innocent man, of his constitution, in his position, might have made. We none of us could absolutely rely upon having our wits about us when we most wanted them.
The prisoner had made mistakes. He owned it. But he begged the jury to consider that the law did not permit him to put the prisoner into the witness-box, and that the prisoner was convinced that, if he only might be suffered to tell his tale his innocence would be established. Above all, he entreated them not to send a fellow-creature to an ignominious death because he had yielded to the promptings of a timorous constitution and had not played the man.
When Mr. Bates sat down the judge summed up.
And he did it very briefly.
He pooh-poohed Mr. Bates's story altogether. He told the jury that they were at liberty to believe it, if they could. But it was not supported by a shred of evidence. It was disproved in several essential particulars, and it was his duty to inform them that it was contrary to every principle of English law that anex partestatement which was without any sort of corroboration should be allowed to weigh, for an instant, against a large and authenticated body of evidence which had been sworn to by credible and impartial witnesses. At the same time, if there was any doubt in their minds, let the prisoner have the benefit of it; though, so far as he was concerned, he had not the least doubt in his own mind that the man was guilty, and, if they did their duty, they would say so.
Of course this was not exactly what he did say, and of course he said a good deal more than this, but this is the gist of what his saying amounted to. Certainly the judge's summing-up was every whit as damning as Sir Haselton's speech had been. Mr. Justice Hunter had evidently himself no doubt upon the matter, and, by inference, he took it for granted that no one else could have any either.
The jury followed the judge's lead. They never left their places. They whispered together for a few moments. Then one of them announced that they were prepared with their verdict.
"Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty."
Some one told the prisoner to stand up. He stood up.
"Have you anything to say, prisoner, why sentence should not be pronounced against you?"
The prisoner had something to say--just a word or two.
He was very white. He was clinging to the rail in front of him. His throat seemed parched. It seemed all that he could do to speak.
I noticed that his wife was looking at him with upturned face, and that her eyes were streaming with tears.
"I am innocent. I did not do it. I did not kill her. I never touched her. There is something I do not understand."
That was all he had to say--and that was not enough.
As the judge very soon made him comprehend.
He took a black thing out of a tin box which was at his side and perched it on the top of his wig, and he sentenced Tommy to be hanged; and, in sentencing him, he gave it to him hot.
He told him that instead of exhibiting any signs of remorse for the dreadful thing he had done he had just uttered an infamous lie to add to the rest of his crimes. That lie had extinguished any spark of pity which he might have felt. Tommy had been guilty of as wicked, as cruel, and as cowardly a murder as had ever come within the range of the judge's experience. He might not hope for mercy. There was no circumstance of extenuation. He had behaved more like a devil than a man. He was a disgrace to his class and to his station, and he had brought shame upon our common manhood; and the sentence of the court was that he should be taken to the place from whence he came, and there be hanged by the neck till he was dead; and might God have mercy on his soul!
And that was the end of it--or it might have been, if it had not been for me.
I don't know how it was; I don't know whether the devil prompted me or not. But the idea came to me, all at once, with a force which was beyond my powers of resistance.
And I did it!
I dropped my cloak, I removed my veil, and I stood up where I knew that Tommy would see me. And he did see me. He looked my way, and he saw me, and he knew me too!
And I smiled at him.
And with sudden, instant recognition he stretched out his arms towards me in a kind of frenzy; and he tried to speak, or shout, or do something, but he couldn't. And before he could get a word out edgeways the warder bustled him down the stairs below.
(The Author tells the Tale.)
"I saw her! I saw her!"
"None of that now. You'd better come quietly."
Mr Tennant looked at the warder who spoke. With the assistance of his colleague the man was hurrying him along in a fashion which, even at that moment of amazement and of horror, in some subtle way reminded him of his school days.
"I saw her!" he repeated.
"So you might have done; nobody says you didn't. Only don't let's have any fuss."
The man spoke as one might speak, not ill-naturedly, but with the superior wisdom of a senior to a fractious child. Mr. Tennant knew that he was not understood; that it was no use to attempt to make himself understood. His mind was in a chaos. What was he to do?
It had come to him in a flash of revelation that he had been made the subject of some hideous mockery, the victim of some malevolent plot; that he had been racked and re-racked for nothing at all; that he had stood his trial for the murder of a woman, who, all the time, was actually alive; that the law had committed some grotesque blunder; that he had been condemned to be hung for another person's crime.
What was he to do?
He did nothing till he was back again in gaol. In the condemned cell this time. Nobody had told him, but he knew what it was. He knew that here a long line of murderers had awaited their fate, that here he would be kept until he was hung.
A natural shudder shook him as he realised that they were about to thrust him into this last abiding-place of the damned. He felt that if he did not speak so as to make himself understood before they had him fast in there he would never have a chance to speak at all: That if that door clanged upon his silence, hope, for him, would have died with its clangour.
He turned to the warder.
"I wish to see the governor."
"You can't see the governor now."
"I must. Listen to me." He tried to restrain his emotion, to hold himself in hand. "Some extraordinary error has taken place. Just as I was leaving the court I saw the woman whom I am charged with having killed."
The warder stared, as if inclined to laugh.
"I am not mad, nor am I dreaming; nor did I see a ghost. I saw this woman. She was as much alive as you or I. She was among a number of other women on the bench near the judge. She stood up and she stared at me. I saw her as plainly as I see you. There has been some astounding mistake. Tell the governor that I must see him at once or it will be too late. If you do not tell him my blood may be upon your head."
"All right."
The warder clanged the door, and went.
Mr. Tennant was left alone in that abode of the haunted.
Would the man tell him? Would the governor come? Would he listen if he came? Would they stir a finger? Would they believe him? Would they pay the slightest attention to anything that he said?
It would have been hard enough to hang believing her dead, although he had not killed her, but now that he had seen her standing up and looking at him, and smiling at his agony----!
This explained the two ghostly visitations. It was not a ghost, it was herself he had seen. All this time he had been suffering the agonies of the damned, and she had been laughing in her sleeve. How she must have enjoyed the play! Oh, what a fool he had been!
What was that? Was that footsteps ringing on the stone pavement along the vaulted corridor? He listened. It was somebody going, not coming.
Suppose the governor would not come?
There was a bell. Should he ring it and make a scene and in that way emphasise the expression of his desire? If he could succeed in no other way, he would try that. It was time that was precious. Every moment that passed made his task the harder. If they had only given him an opportunity to proclaim the woman's identity! If they only had! If he could only get back into the court even now and stop her before again she vanished into air!
Would the governor not come?
Then he would ring the bell and wake the echoes of the prison, and keep on ringing until they either disconnected the bell or put him into irons. He would not hang without a struggle now. He would ring at once.
Ah! There was some one coming.
Two persons. He could hear two separate tramp tramps, one falling a little behind the other as they came along the flagstones.
The door was opened. It was the governor.
"You wish to see me?"
"I do, sir."
Again Mr. Tennant tried to master himself, to hold himself in hand. He realised to the full, and very late in the day, how much might hinge upon his being able to preserve his presence of mind.
"What do you wish to say?"
"I wish to say that the woman whom I am charged with having murdered was actually in the court."
"Nonsense."
"It is not nonsense. It is the simple truth. I saw her as plainly as I see you."
The governor eyed him with what, for him, was a look of ferocity--unofficially, he was one of the softest-hearted creatures breathing.
"Man, don't tell such tales to me."
"I am telling you the absolute, literal truth. I have felt all along that there was something about the medical evidence which I did not understand. The woman they described was not the woman who fell out of the train. Now I understand how it was. That woman is not dead. I saw her, just now, alive, in court."
"Why did you not interrupt the proceedings to say so?"
"I did not see her before sentence was pronounced. When I did see her I was so astonished that, before I had recovered sufficiently from my astonishment to be able to speak the warders removed me from the court. I told the warders who it was that I had seen."
The governor observed the prisoner, as it was, reflectively. Certainly Mr. Tennant had become on a sudden a different man. He had lost his awkwardness. He was no longer ill at ease. He held himself erect. His eyes were clear, his glance unwavering. His bearing was simple--the simplicity of the man was what struck one first of all--yet assured. He spoke with a calmness, and even with a dignity which, considering that sentence of ignominious death had just been pronounced upon him, could scarcely fail to be impressive.
"Tennant, so far as it concerns your fate, whatever you may have to say will be without effect. For you in this world there is no hope. You had better prepare yourself for the world which is to come. Do not buoy yourself up with any hopes that anything you may say will prevent the sentence which has been pronounced upon you being executed. That sentence will certainly be carried out."
The condemned man would have spoken, but the governor went on.
"But the warder has just told me what you told him, and in discharge of what I hold to be my duty I have requested the detective who has been in charge of the case to come and hear what you may have to say. Here he is."
And there he was--Matthew Holman, the man who looked so like a sailor.
"Well, Tennant, what cock-and-bull story have you to tell us now?"
"None. I have to tell you the truth."
"It is time."
Mr. Holman's tone was biting, his glance was keen.
Mr. Tennant re-told the story of his famous journey. The detective seemed not so much to be listening to the words he uttered as searching for what might be behind them.
"So you did know her? What was her name?"
"I knew her as Ellen Howth. But she may have had half a dozen names before I knew her and since."
The detective made a note in his pocket-book.
"Where did she live?"
"I have no notion. As I have told you before that night I had not seen or heard of her for years."
"Describe her."
Mr. Tennant described her.
"You understand that, until I heard the medical evidence, I supposed that she had been killed by the fall from the carriage. When I heard what the doctors had to say I began to wonder. It became clearer and clearer to me that they could not be talking of Ellen Howth. The two descriptions did not tally. I did not believe that she was pregnant. I knew that she was over thirty, and it seemed inconceivable that a medical man could mistake a woman of considerably over thirty for a girl under twenty-one. When I saw Ellen Howth standing up there and smiling at me, in an instant it was all made plain."
"What was all made plain?"
"Many things. For one, it explained what seemed to me to be the discrepancies between the evidence and what I knew to be the facts--the facts, that is, so far as they concerned myself."
"Where was the woman whom you say you saw standing--tell me exactly."
Mr. Tennant paused to think. The detective's eyes were on him, and the governor's and the warder's at the back.
"She was on the bench. She was on the last row of seats. She sat either second or third from the judge, to his right. When he had pronounced sentence I noticed her rising and I noticed her remove her veil, and she looked at me, I have no doubt with the deliberate design of attracting my attention."
"I believe I noticed the woman to whom you refer."
This was the governor. The detective said nothing. He continued to look at the prisoner for a moment or two in silence. Then from a pocket in his coat he took an envelope.
"There is a portrait of Ellen Howth."
He handed a photograph to Mr. Tennant.
"This is not Ellen Howth."
"Then that is."
He passed the prisoner a second photograph.
"Nor is this. Neither of these photographs in the least resembles Ellen Howth. Not in any one particular. I have never seen the woman whose portrait this purports to be. Of that I am sure."
"It beats me, my lad, to think how a man circumstanced as you are, can lie so glibly. You know as well as I do, and indeed better, that you are holding in your hands portraits of the poor young woman whose life you took."
"That is not so. Neither of these portraits at all resembles the woman, Ellen Howth, with whom I travelled from Brighton. If they are photographs of the woman who was found dead, then it is certain that I had no hand whatever in killing her."
"You have seen those portraits before."
"Never!"
"Do you mean to tell me that no one, neither your counsel nor your solicitor, nor any one else showed you them?"
"I do. You appear surprised."
"It is not a question of surprise. I don't believe you."
"You can soon ascertain for yourself that what I tell you is a fact. You must remember that from the first I told my solicitor the actual facts. I took it for granted that the woman who had been found dead was Ellen Howth. Under those circumstances there was no reason why I should be shown or why I should wish to be shown her photograph. I have not seen that portrait before. The woman whose portrait it is is a complete stranger to me. Were she here she would tell you that I am equally a stranger to her. There is some mystery which, at present, I do not profess to understand. But of one thing I am certain, that the woman, Ellen Howth, whom I supposed was dead, is as much alive as you are or as I am."
"Give me those portraits. It strikes me that you are one of those men who will go even to face their God with a lie upon their lips. I don't believe a word that you have said."
"Then you wrong me cruelly. I hope, for your sake, as well as for my own, that you will learn that you do, before it is too late."
The detective made no reply. He went out of the cell without a word. The governor followed him. The door was clanged. The condemned man was left alone to get himself, if he could, into a mood in which he should be able to look the gallows squarely and without flinching in the face.
The governor spoke to the detective as they walked side by side.
"What do you think of it?"
"Queer-street."
"I certainly noticed myself the woman of whom he speaks. I wonder you didn't. Her action was most marked. She certainly did cast at him what seemed to me to be a glance of exultant recognition, while the sight of her seemed to fill him with stupefied amazement. I wondered when I saw it what the scene might mean."
"What was she like?"
"He describes her very fairly."
"If she's still in Lewes I'll leave no stone unturned to find her."
"And if she isn't?"
"You know, sir, that if you give him a chance, a man in his position can always pitch some sort of a tale to save his neck. And the worse they are the more they lie like the truth."
"That's true enough."
The governor sighed.
"If ever a man was found guilty on the evidence this man was. If he's not guilty, then I'll never again put my trust in evidence; and so far I've generally found evidence that will stand sifting quite good enough for me. Still, as I say, I'll leave no stone unturned to find the woman of whom he speaks."
"And of whom I speak."
The governor spoke with a little smile.
"Yes, sir, and of whom you speak too."
But they looked for her in vain. They did not find her. And the following night Mr. Holman was in the bosom of his family.
Mr. Holman's home was in a street off Leicester Square. His family consisted of his wife. Of her he was wont to make a confidant, as he did on the present occasion.
Mr. Holman had come up by an afternoon train from Lewes. Mrs. Holman had prepared a meat tea for him on his arrival. He had commenced his attack upon the viands before she began to question him.
"So they're going to hang him?"
"It would seem as though they were."
Mrs. Holman detected something in her husband's tone.
"What do you mean? Aren't they going to hang him?"
"Did I say they weren't going to hang him? Didn't I say it seems as though they were. Don't you understand Queen's English?"
Mrs. Holman was silent for a second or two.
"Surely they're not getting up a petition to let him off?"
"I've heard nothing at all about it, if they are. But perhaps you've heard more than me. You do sometimes, don't you?"
"You don't mean to say that you don't believe he did it. I thought you were sure that he was guilty."
"I've been sure of a good many things in my time, and been sorry for it afterwards. I'm not the only leather-headed fool there is about, as perhaps you know."
Mrs. Holman was skilled in the inflections of her husband's voice. She perceived that it would be wiser, temporarily, to keep her curiosity in her pocket, and to allow him to finish his meal in peace, which she did and obtained her reward.
When the lady's lord and master had eaten and drunk to his heart's content he wiped his lips and he looked at his wife.
"What do you think he says?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"He says that the woman who was found is not the woman who was with him in the train."
"A man like him would say anything."
"How clever you women are. You know everything. As it happens, it seems to me that he's just the sort of man who would not say anything, and I ought to be a pretty good judge of that kind of thing if any one is." Mr. Holman was regarding the two portraits which he had submitted to Mr. Tennant for inspection. "I don't half like it. I can swear that this is a good likeness of the woman that was found. He says that it's not the least like the woman who was with him in the train.
"Fiddlededee!"
"Of course it's fiddlededee. And if he was hung, and it came out afterwards that what he said was true, it would look like fiddlededee, wouldn't it? I should feel as if I'd murdered him."
"Matthew!"
"Somehow the tale which he tells sounds true, and the queer part of it is that he says that the woman whom he travelled with in the train from Brighton was actually present in the court during the trial."
"It isn't possible."
"Oh, dear no! Of course not. If you say so, it couldn't be. It seems funny though that the governor should be of a different opinion."
"What governor?"
"What governor! The governor of Lewes gaol--stupid! Considering how clever you set yourself up to be, it's queer what a lot of explanation you seem to want. The governor noticed this woman of whom Tennant speaks, and something about her goings-on struck him as being queer. I've been looking for her in Lewes all this blessed day. She's not there. But I'll find her if she's anywhere. I'm not going to have a man hung for a woman that's alive if I can help it. I'm going to make my report in the morning, and if I'm not told off to hunt her up I'll be surprised."
A ring was heard.
"Go and see what idiot that is ringing the bell. If it's any one to see me let me know who it is before you show him in."
Mrs. Holman went to see what idiot it was. She returned and reported.
"It's that American who has lost his daughter, Mr. Haines his name is."
"Confound Mr. Haines! What's he come humbugging about? Show him in. I'll make short work of Mr. Haines."
Mr. Haines was shown in, tall and thin, Yankee writ large all over him. Uninvited, he seated himself. He crossed his legs. He balanced his hat upon his knees. He looked at Mr. Holman without speaking a word. Mr. Holman, without any show of deference, looked back at him, nor was his manner when he spoke marked by a superfluity of courtesy.
For some moments the silence remained unbroken--a fact which seemed to arouse the detective's irascibility.
"Is that all you have to say? If so, perhaps you will excuse me. My time happens to be of value."
Mr. Haines opened his lips.
"That creature has buncoed me again."
"What creature?"
"Private detective Stewart Trevannion."
"When a man calls himself a private detective, nine times out of ten yon may safely write him down a scoundrel. The tenth time, perhaps, he is something worse."
"A scoundrel. That's what he is. And next time we chance to meet I'll write the thing on him in good bold letters in my very plainest hand. He raised another fifty out of me. He undertook to place me in communication with my girl if I let him have it. He has placed me in communication neither with my girl nor with himself since he raised that fifty."
Mr. Holman leaned against the side of the table on which he had just been having tea. He regarded his visitor with something like a twinkle in his eye.
"Governor, do you mind my speaking a little plainly?"
"I do not."
"Take my tip, book a berth in the next boat, and go back where you came from. You'll be more at home like over there."
"Not till I have looked upon her grave if she is dead, or on her face if she is living."
"Ah, then, I shouldn't be surprised if you were to stay this side some time. You'll settle here."
"Aren't the resources of civilisation sufficient to enable me to find my girl?"
"The resources of civilisation aren't interested. You drove her away, it's for you to fetch her back again. What it strikes me is that she don't want to come, and she don't mean to, either."
"She is dead."
"How are you going to prove it?"
"I want you to help me."
"How am I going to help you any more than I have done? I'm a public servant. I receive instructions from my superiors, and I have to obey them. How am I going to devote myself to you? I don't know what good I should do if I could. Thousands of girls are missing; they leave home because they're sick of it, and they set up on their own hook. How do you think you're going to find 'em if they don't mean to be found? It may be easy in the stories, but it isn't out of them."
Rising from his chair, Mr. Haines paced slowly across the room. Mr. Holman watched him. He noticed his air of extreme depression.
"You do as I say, take my tip, and go back by the next ship. You'll be able to look for her as well there as over here--yes, and better. You say she knows what address will find you. You'll hear from her safe enough when she's had about enough of it.
"Not me."
"How can you tell that."
"Because she's dead."
Mr. Holman moved from the table with a gesture of impatience. Not impossibly he would have terminated the interview then and there. He looked as if language of even unusual strength was trembling on his lips. He was prevented, however, from giving it utterance by the unannounced entrance of a second visitor.
The visitor was in the shape of a girl--a young girl. She was pretty, with a prettiness which more than suggested the theatre. She had an amazing array of short, fair hair. It shrined her face like a sort of coronal. The big hat was perched on the top of her hair. There was a hint of kohl about her pretty eyes. And though her plump cheeks were clean enough and tempting enough just then, one could have sworn that they had long been familiar with rouge.
She came into the room with a complete absence of ceremony, as if she was perfectly at home.
"Well, uncle, so you're back again."
Mr. Holman looked her up and down without saying a word. Planting herself right in front of him she clasped her hands behind her back--impudently demure. "You can look at me."
"So you have dyed your hair."
"I have."
"And cut it off."
"And cut it off."
"And fluffed it?"
"Fluffed it? Crimped it, I suppose you mean. My dear uncle, if anybody offered to double your salary on condition that you dyed your hair, you'd dye it all the colours of the rainbow." Mr. Holman turned away. "Aren't you going to kiss me? You'd not only dye, you'd give your hair to kiss me if you weren't my uncle. How nice it is to have relations!"
Mrs. Holman appeared at the door.
"Never mind him, Hetty. He's come back in a bad temper."
"Of course he's come back in a bad temper. Did you ever know him when he hadn't come back in a bad temper? He's the worst-tempered man I ever knew, and that's saying something."
Mr. Holman seated himself in an arm-chair by the fire. The young lady sat on one of the arms. She smoothed her uncle's hair.
"Dear uncle, how well you're looking."
Mr. Holman shook his head, as if to remove it from the reach of her embrace.
"Don't touch me."
"And what a nice, kind look you've got in your eyes."
"Hetty, I'm ashamed of you."
"Oh, no, you're not. You're not half such a goose as you pretend to be."
"I tell you that I am."
"You're what? A goose. Dear uncle, I would never let any one call you a goose except yourself. Won't you kiss me?"
The fair young face stooped down. The man's weather-beaten face looked up. The lips met.
The kiss was interrupted by a series of exclamations which came from the back of the room. So unexpected and so startling a series of exclamations that Mr. Holman rose from his chair with such suddenness as almost to overturn his niece.
"What's up now?" he asked.
A good deal seemed to be up, at any rate with Mr. Haines. That gentleman was standing on the other side of the table staring at something which he was holding in his hand, giving vent to a variety of observations which were scarcely parliamentary.
"It's Loo! Blamed if it ain't! It's my girl! It's Loo!"
Throwing down what he was holding, he rushed at the detective like some wild animal.
"Damn you!" he yelled. "It's Loo!"
The detective easily avoided the man's blind rush, the result of which was that Mr. Haines all but cannoned into Mr. Holman's niece.
Miss Hetty Johnson, however--the young lady's name was Johnson--seemed in no way disconcerted.
"That's right. Knock me down and trample on me. I don't mind. I've done nothing to nobody. But it's all the same as if I had."
Brought back by the young lady's words to a sense of reality, Mr. Haines spluttered out an apology.
"I beg your pardon. It was an accident." Then he raved at Mr. Holman. "You--you devil! You've been having me, tricking me, doing me. You cursed slippery British hound, I feel like killing you!"
He looked as he said he felt. His tall figure was drawn upright, his long arms were stretched out in front of him, his fists were clenched as in a paroxysm of rage.
Mr. Holman stared at him with stolid imperturbability.
"Perhaps, when you've quite finished, you'll tell us what's wrong."
"You know. Don't you try to play it any more off on to me, or the presence of a woman shan't save you."
"What's the matter with the man?" asked Mrs. Holman.
"Don't you hear me asking him?" chimed in her lord. "But it doesn't seem as if he cared to tell us."
As if one was not sufficient, Mr. Haines began shaking both his fists at the detective.
"You said you knew nothing about her; you told me you could not help me; you advised me to go back by the next ship. I could not make it out. Now I do catch on. You had her portrait all the time."
"Whose portrait?"
"Loo's!"
"Who's Loo?"
"My girl!"
The words came from Mr. Haines with a roar.
The detective looked at him as if he was beginning to suspect that, after all, there might be some method in his madness.
"See here, Mr. Haines, I don't know if you are or are not mad, but just try to behave as if you weren't. I've no notion what you're talking about. I tell you I know no more about your girl than I know about the man in the moon."
"You tell me that, and expect me to believe it, when you have her portrait?"
"I have her portrait! Where?"
"Here!" Striding forward, he snatched up one of the two portraits which were lying on the table. As he did so, he perceived the second. "Why, here's another! There are two! You have two portraits of my girl, and you tell me that you know nothing of her."
Although the detective's face remained impassive, a speck of light seemed all at once to come into his eyes. The pupils dilated. There was something in them which suggested that the whole man had become, upon a sudden, alert and eager.
"I would ask you, Mr. Haines, to consider carefully what you are saying. More may depend upon your words than you imagine. Do I understand you to say that you know the original of that photograph?"
"Know the original! Of course I do. It's my girl, my Loo!"
"Are you prepared to swear it?"
"I am, before God and man."
"May I ask if there is anything in particular in which the likeness consists?"
"Don't you think a father knows his daughter when he sees her in a picture? Don't talk back to me. I tell you it's my girl, my Loo! Where is she?"
"I will tell you everything in a moment, Mr. Haines. Look at those photographs closely. Don't you notice anything about them which is peculiar?"
Mr. Haines did as he was told. He peered closely at the portraits.
"She is looking pretty sick."
"Well she might do. Those photographs were taken after death?"
"After death?"
"Have you heard of the Three Bridges Tragedy?"
"The Three Bridges Tragedy? Yes."
"That is the portrait of the victim."
"The victim? So! She is dead. She was done to death. I knew it."
"The man who has been found guilty of the crime is now lying in gaol under sentence of death."
"They shan't hang him?"
"It looks uncommonly as if they would."
"I say they shan't. Not if I have to tear down the prison walls with my hands and nails to get at him. Do you think I've come all these thousands of miles to let them strangers pay the man that killed my girl? You bet I've not!"
Mr. Haines glanced at the detective as if he defied his contradiction.
The detective looked at him, in return, as if he doubted what to make of him.
While the two men were thus, as it were, taking each other's measure, Miss Hetty Johnson advanced to the table on which Mr. Haines had, perhaps unconsciously, replaced the photographs. She picked them up.
"Is this the poor girl who was murdered?" She glanced at them. As she did so she uttered a startled exclamation, "Why, it--it's Milly!" She turned to Mr. Holman all in a tremor of excitement. "Uncle, this is Milly!"
Her uncle turned to her with what almost amounted to a savage start.
"Who do you say it is? You don't mean to say that you know the original? Hanged if I don't believe everybody does except me. And here, all this time, we've been hunting the whole world to find out."
Miss Johnson was not at all affected by her uncle's display of temper. She repeated her previous assertion, and that with more emphasis than before.
"This is Milly Carroll who was with me at the theatre. I am sure of it. Aunt, you've heard me talk of Milly Carroll?"
"Often," said her aunt. "Now, Hetty, don't you let your fancy run away with you. It may be like her, and yet it mayn't be her. Remember the mischief you might do. You think before you speak."
"My dear aunt, there is not the slightest necessity for you to talk to me like that. I am sure that this is Milly Carroll. Heaps of girls at the theatre will tell you so if you ask them. It doesn't do her justice, and she looks as if she were dead, but it's her." She dropped her hand to her side, as if a startling reflection had all at once occurred to her. "I wonder if that explains it?"
"Explains what?"
"Her silence. I wondered why she had never replied to my last letter. All the time, perhaps, she was dead. And I was telling every one how unkind she was. To think of it!"
"Do you know where she lived?"
"When I last heard from her she was living at Brighton."
"Brighton? Then he did do it. What an artistic liar that man must be!"
"She left the stage for good. She was going to be married."
"Going to be married, was she? Then it's her. What was her future husband's name?"
"I never heard his name. We always took him for some big swell, she kept his name so close. She used to call him Reggie."
"Reggie? Oh! Not Tommy?"
"No, Reggie. I knew him very well by sight."
"What do you mean--you knew him very well by sight?"
"Well, I spoke to him two or three times, and, of course, he spoke to me. And I used often to see her with him. And then he was always at the theatre. He used to give her everything she wanted, and made no end of a fuss of her. The girls all envied her good luck."
"It looks as if they had cause to. What sort of party was this swell of hers to look at?"
"He was tall, and dark, and very handsome, and he had most beautiful hands, and one of the nicest-speaking voices I ever heard--and such a smile! And he dressed awfully well--he was an awful swell. Milly told me he was awfully rich, but I could see that without her telling me."
Mr. Holman had listened to the girl's description with some appearance of surprise.
"Of course you could. You girls can see anything. That's how it is so many of you come to grief--you think you see so much. You're sure you haven't made a mistake about this swell of hers? You're sure he wasn't short, and plump, and rosy?"
"He wasn't a scrap like that. He was exactly as I've told you. Short, and plump, and rosy? Indeed! I should think he wasn't."
"Would you recognise him if you saw him again?"
"Rather! I should think I should. I should know him anywhere. If you saw him once, you would never be likely to forget him, he was too good-looking."
"Was he indeed? You seem to have been more than half in love with him yourself. You girls always do fall in love with the right sort of men. Have you any of this young woman's writing?"
"I've some of her letters which she sent me."
Mr. Haines, advancing, laid his hand gently on Miss Johnson's arm.
"Will you let me see her letters--my girl's, my Loo's?"
"Of course I will. You can come round and look at them now if you like. There's time before I'm due at the theatre." The young girl looked up at the old man with a curious interest. "She was an American. She used to talk to me about a place called Colorado."
"She was raised in Colorado. And that is where she left me. So you were her friend--my girl's friend?"
"Well, we were pals."
"Pals? Yes. You were pals."
Mr. Haines looked at Miss Johnson inquiringly, searchingly, as if he was endeavouring to ascertain, by force of visual inspection, what sort of girl she was.
Mr. Holman interposed.
"When you two have done palavering, perhaps Miss Hetty Johnson will be good enough to tell me what was this young woman's address at Brighton--that is, if she happens to remember it."
"I remember it perfectly."
Miss Hetty proved that she did by unhesitatingly furnishing her uncle with the information required. Her uncle entered the address she gave him in his pocket-book. He looked at his watch.
"It's twenty minutes past seven. There's a train from Victoria to Brighton at 7.50. If I got a decent cab I ought to have time to catch it, and to spare. If I do catch it, I ought to be able to get all the information I want in time to catch the last train back to town. If I don't, I'll wire." This was to his wife. He turned to his niece. "You keep a still tongue in your head, if you can, and don't go chattering at the theatre. And don't let anything that was that young woman's pass out of your hands to any one--do you hear?"
"I hear. But, uncle, I don't, and I can't, believe that Milly's sweetheart had anything to do with killing her."
"No one asks you for what you believe. I've been asking you for what you know. And that's all I'm likely to ask you for. You mark what I say, and don't you give a scrap of her writing to any one. I'm off."
He was off, catching up the portraits from the table as he went.
As soon as her uncle had gone Miss Johnson turned to Mr. Haines.
"If you want to see those letters, you'll have to come now. I have to be at the theatre soon after eight."
The young girl and the old man went away together. Miss Johnson led the way through Coventry Street. Suddenly stopping, she caught Mr. Haines by the arm.
"Oh! There he is!"
"Who?"
"Milly's sweetheart."
"Where?"
Miss Johnson pointed to a tall man who was standing on the pavement talking to the driver of a hansom cab. Mr. Haines started. His companion felt that he was trembling. He spoke as if he were short of breath.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure--certain."
Mr. Haines went forward without a word. Miss Johnson stood still and watched, fearing she knew not what.
But she need have feared nothing, for nothing happened.
By the time that Mr. Haines had reached the cab the man in question had seated himself inside. Mr. Haines had a good look at him before the cab moved off.
"It's he! Her aristocrat! I knew that he smelt of blood first time I saw him, but if I'd known that the blood was hers----"
He raised his hands above his head, as if by way of a wind-up to his unfinished sentence.
The passers-by stared at the old man talking to himself and gesticulating on the pavement, wondering, perhaps, if he was drunk or if he was merely mad.