CHAPTER XXXIX.
ON SUSPICION.
Mr. Treverton’s hunter was taken back to his loose-box, where he executed an energeticpas seulwith his hind legs, in the exuberance of his feelings at being let off his day’s work. Mr. Treverton himself was closeted with his wife in the book-room, but not alone. The man from Scotland Yard was present throughout the interview, while his subordinate, a respectable-looking young man in plain clothes, paced quietly up and down the corridor outside.
Laura bore this last crushing blow as she had borne the first—with a noble heroism. She neither wept nor trembled, but stood by her husband’s side, pale and steadfast, ready to sustain and comfort him, rather than to add to his burden with the weight of her own grief.
‘I am not afraid, John,’ she said. ‘I am almost glad that you should face this hideous charge. Better to be put upon your trial, and prove yourself innocent, as I know you can, than to live all your life under the shadow of a groundless suspicion.’
She spoke boldly, yet her heart sickened at the thought that it might not be easy, perhaps not even possible, for her husband to prove himself guiltless. She remembered what had been said at the time of the murder, and how every circumstance had seemed to point at him as the murderer.
‘My dearest, I shall be able to confront this charge,’ answered John Treverton. ‘I have no fear of that. I made a miserable mistake in not facing the difficulty at the time. The business may be a little more troublesome now than it would have been then, but I am not afraid. I would not ask you to go to London with me, darling, if I feared the result of my journey.’
‘Do you think I would let you go alone in any case?’ asked Laura.
She was thinking that even if this trouble were to end in the scaffold, she would be with him to the last, clinging to him and holding by him as other brave women had held by their loved ones, face to face with death. But no, it would not come to that. She was so convinced, in her own mind, of his innocence, that she could not suppose there would be much difficulty in proving the fact in a court of law.
‘You will take your maid with you, of course?’ said Treverton.
‘Yes, I should like to take Mary.’
‘Where am I to be during this inquiry?’ asked Treverton, turning to the detective.
‘At the House of Detention, Clerkenwell.’
‘Not the most desirable neighbourhood, but it might be worse,’ said Treverton.
‘They are surely not going to put you in prison, John, before they have proved anything against you?’ cried his wife, with a look of horror.
‘It’s only a form, dear. We needn’t call it prison; but I shan’t be exactly at large. I think, perhaps, the best plan would be for you to take quiet lodgings at Islington, say in Colebrook Row, for instance. That’s a decent place. You’d prefer that to an hotel, wouldn’t you?’
‘Infinitely.’
‘Very well. You had better put up at the Midland Hotel to-night, and to-morrow morning you and Mary can drive about in a cab till you find a nice lodging. I shall write a line to Sampson, asking him to follow us as soon as he can. He may be of use to us in London.’
Everything was settled as quietly as if they had been starting on a pleasure trip. The brougham was at the door in time to take them to the station. Celia, who was ready dressed to drive to the meet, was the only person who appeared excited or bewildered.
‘What does it all mean, Laura?’ she asked. ‘Have you andMr. Treverton gone suddenly mad? At eight o’clock you send up to tell me you are going to take me to the meet; and at nine I find you are starting for London, with two strange men. What can you mean by it?’
‘It means very serious business, Celia,’ Laura answered quietly. ‘Do not worry yourself about it. You will know everything by-and-by.’
‘By-and-by,’ echoed Celia scornfully. ‘I suppose you mean when I go to heaven, and look down upon you with a new pair of eyes? I want to know now. By-and-by will not be the least use. I remember when I was a child, if people told me I should have anything by-and-by, I never got it.’
‘Good-bye, Celia dearest. John will write to your father.’
‘Yes, and my father will keep the letter all to himself. When will you be back?’
‘Soon, I hope; but I cannot say how soon.’
‘Now, madam,’ said the police officer, ‘the time is up.’
Laura embraced her friend and stepped into the carriage. Her husband followed, then the detective, and lastly the faithful Mary, who had had hard work to get a couple of portmanteaus packed for her master and mistress, and a few things huddled into a carpet bag for herself. She had no idea where they were going, or the motive of this sudden journey. A few hasty words had been said to Trimmer, as to the conduct of the household, and that was all.
At the station Mr. Palby, the detective, contrived to secure a compartment for Mr. and Mrs. Treverton and himself. His subordinate was to travel with Mary in a second-class carriage.
‘You needn’t be afraid of his talking,’ said Mr. Palby to his prisoner. ‘Grummles is as close as wax.’
‘It can matter very little whether he talks or not,’ answered Treverton indifferently. ‘Everybody will know everything in a day or two. The newspapers will make my story public.’
He thought with supreme bitterness how much easier it would have been for him to face this accusation as Jack Chicot than as John Treverton,aliasChicot; how much less there would have been for the newspapers to say about him, had he stood boldly forward at the inquest and faced his difficulty. About Jack Chicot, the literary Bohemian, the world would have been little curious. How much greater was the scandal now that the accused was a man of fortune, a country squire, the bearer of a good old name!
At five o’clock that winter afternoon the doors of the House of Detention closed upon John Treverton. There was some deference shown to the accused even here, and much consideration for the lovely young wife, who remained quietly with herhusband to the last moment, and gave vent to none of the lamentations which were wont to disturb the orderly silence of those stony halls. Laura made herself acquainted with the rules and regulations to which her husband would be subject—the hours at which she would be allowed to see him, and then bade him good-bye without a tear. It was only when she and Mary were alone in the cab, on their way to the Midland Hotel, that her fortitude broke down, and she burst into convulsive sobs.
‘Oh, please don’t,’ cried Mary, putting her friendly arms round her mistress. ‘You mustn’t give way, indeed you mustn’t. It’s so dreadful bad for you. Everything’s bound to come right, ma’am. Look at master, how cheerful he is, and how brave and handsome he looked in that horrid place.’
‘Yes, Mary, he pretended to be cheerful and confident for my sake, just as I try to keep myself calm in order to sustain him. But it is a mere pretence on both sides. I shall be a miserable woman until this inquiry is over.’
‘Well, ma’am, of course it’s an anxious time.’
‘We have hardly a friend who can help us. What does Mr. Sampson know of criminal law? What does my husband know as to what he ought to do to protect himself in his present position? We are like children lost in a dark wood—a wood where there are beasts of prey that may devour us.’
‘Mr. Sampson seems very clever, ma’am. Depend upon it, he’ll know what to do. Lor’, what a ugly place this London is!’ exclaimed Mary, looking with astonished eyes at the architectural beauties of the Gray’s Inn Road, ‘everything so dark and smoky. Beechampton is ever so much grander.’
Here the cab turned into the Euston Road, and the palatial front of the Midland Hotel revealed itself in a burst of splendour to Mary’s astonished eyes.
‘My!’ she exclaimed, ‘it must be Buckingham Palace, surely!’
Her astonishment became stupefaction when the cab drove under the Italian-Gothic portico, and a liveried page sprang forward to open the door, and relieve the bewildered Abigail of her mistress’s travelling bag. Her surprise and admiration went on increasing, like a geometrical progression, commencing above unity, as she followed her mistress across the pillared hall and up the marble staircase, to a corridor, whose remote perspective ended far away in a twinkling speck of gaslight.
‘Gracious, what a place!’ she cried. ‘If all the hotels in London are like this, what must the Queen’s palace be?’
The polite German attendant opened the door of a sitting-room, where a bright fire burned as if to welcome expected guests. He had softly murmured the words ‘sitting-room’ into Laura’s ear as she crossed the hall, and she bowed gently in assent.No more was needed. He felt that she was the right sort of customer for the Grand Midland.
‘Die pettroom is vithin,’ he said, indicating a door of communication. ‘Dere is also tressing-room. Dere vill pe a room vanted for die mait, matam, I subbose. I vill sent die champermait. Matam vill vish to tine?’
‘No, thanks. You can bring some tea,’ answered Laura, sinking wearily into a chair. She kept her veil down to hide her tear-stained cheeks. ‘If a gentleman called Sampson should inquire for me in the course of the evening, please send him here.’
‘Yes, matame. Vat name?’
‘What man? Oh, you mean my own name. Treverton, Mrs. Treverton.’
She shuddered at the thought that in a few days the name might be notorious.
Mary ordered a dish of cutlets to be sent up with the tea, and presently she and the chambermaid were arranging Mrs. Treverton’s bedroom, opening the portmanteau, setting out the ivory brushes and silver-topped bottles from the travelling bag, and giving a look of comfort and homeliness to the strange apartment.
Fires were lighted in the bedroom and dressing-room, and there was that all-pervading air of luxury, which, to the traveller of limited means, suggests the idea that, for the time being, he is living at the rate of ten thousand a year.
The evening was sad and weary for Laura Treverton. Now only was she beginning to realize the catastrophe that had befallen her. Now only, as she walked up and down the strange sitting-room, alone, friendless, in the big world of London, did all the horror of her position come home to her.
Her husband a prisoner, charged with the most direful offence man can commit against his fellow-man, to be brought, perhaps to-morrow, to face his accusers, and to have the details of his supposed guilt bandied from lip to lip to-morrow night, the subject of idle wonder and foolish speculations.He, her darling, degraded to the lowest depth to which humanity can fall! It was too horrible. She clasped her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out an actual scene of horror—the dock, the judgment-seat, the hangman, and the scaffold.
‘My husband suspected of such a crime,’ she said to herself. ‘My husband, whose inmost thoughts are known to me; a man incapable of cruelty to the meanest thing that crawls.’
Sometimes, in the course of those slow hours, a sudden excitement took hold of her. She forgot everything except the one fact of her husband’s position.
‘Let us go to him, Mary,’ she cried. ‘Get me my hat and jacket, and let us go to him directly.’
‘Indeed, ma’am, we can’t get in,’ remonstrated Mary. ‘Don’t you remember what they told us about the hours of admission? You were only to see him at a particular time. Why, they’re all abed by this time, poor things, I make no doubt.’
‘How cruel!’ cried Laura; ‘how cruel it is that I can’t be with him!’
‘If you go on worrying yourself like this, ma’am, you’ll be ill. You haven’t eaten a bit since you left home, though I’m sure the cutlets was done lovely. Shall I order some arrowroot for your supper? Or a basin of soup, now? That would be more nourishing.’
‘No, Mary, it’s no use. I can’t eat anything. How I wish Mr. Sampson would come!’
‘It’s almost too late to expect him, ma’am. I don’t suppose he’s left Hazlehurst. Perhaps he couldn’t get away to-day.’
‘Not get away!’ echoed Laura. ‘Nonsense! He would never abandon my husband in the hour of difficulty.’
The German waiter at this very moment announced, ‘Mr. Zambzon.’
‘I’m awfully late, Mrs. Treverton,’ said the little man, bustling in, ‘but I thought you’d like to see me, so I came in. I’ve engaged a room in the hotel, and I shall stay as long as I’m wanted, even if my Hazlehurst business goes to pot.’
‘How good you are! You have only just come to London?’
‘Only just come, indeed! I came by the train after yours. I was in London at seven o’clock. I’ve been with Mr. Leopold, the well-known solicitor—the man who’s so great in criminal cases, you know,—and I’ve got him for our side. And I’ve been down to Cibber Street with him, and we’ve picked up all the information we can. The landlady’s laid up with low fever, and so we couldn’t get much out of her; but we’ve seen Mr. Gerard, and we know pretty well what he has to bring forward against us, and I think he’ll be rather a reluctant witness. It’s a pity that Mr. Desrolles is out of the way. We might have made something out of him.’
Laura turned to him with a startled look. Desrolles! That was the name by which her husband had known her father. He, to whom analiasseemed so easy, had been known in his London lodgings as Mr. Desrolles. And he had been in the house at the time of the murder.
‘You have no fear as to the result, have you?’ Laura asked Sampson, with intense anxiety. ‘My husband will be able to prove himself innocent of this terrible crime.’
‘I don’t believe the other side will be able to prove him guilty,’ said Sampson thoughtfully.
‘But he may remain all his life under the stigma of this hideous suspicion. The world will believe him guilty, thoughthe crime cannot be brought home to him. Is that what you mean?’
‘My dear Mrs. Treverton, I am not clever enough or experienced enough to offer an opinion in such a case as this. We are only at the outset of things. Besides, I am no criminal lawyer.’
‘What does Mr. Leopold say?’ asked Laura, looking at him intently.
‘I am not at liberty to tell you that. It would be a breach of confidence,’ answered Sampson.
‘I see. Mr. Leopold thinks there is a strong case against my husband.’
‘Mr. Leopold thinks nothing at present. He has no data to go upon.’
‘He must remember the report of the inquest, and all that was said in the newspapers.’
‘Mr. Leopold thinks that of the newspapers,’ exclaimed Sampson, snapping his fingers. ‘Mr. Leopold is not led by the nose by the newspapers. He would not be where he is if he were that kind of man.’
‘Well, we must wait and hope,’ said Laura, with a sigh. ‘It is a hard trial, but it must be borne. Will anything be done to-morrow?’
‘There will be an inquiry at Bow Street.’
‘Will Mr. Leopold be present?’
‘Of course. He will watch the case as a cat watches a mouse.’
‘Tell him that I should think half my fortune too little to reward him if he can prove—clearly and plainly prove—my husband’s innocence.’
‘Mr. Leopold won’t ask for your fortune. He’s as rich as——well, rolling in money. He’ll do his duty, you may depend upon it, without any prompting from me.’