“I see no face on the wall, Ribault.”
“Alas, no, Monsieur! Alas, alas, no! When he returned, this strange relation, this vandal, after his brother’s death, to arrange for the funeral and dispose of his effects, he saw the drawing and he denounced it. He did more: in his anger he seized a cloth, and, before I could interpose, that miracle, that dream, was but a featureless smudge upon the wall. And even then he would not be satisfied until the last rainbow tints had vanished.”
The frown on M. le Baron’s brow was again darkening its habitual placidity.
“What excuse had the man to offer for an act so outrageous?” he demanded warmly.
The designer shrugged his shoulders. “What excuse but of the jealous and coarse-grained! He said that the lady’s permission should have been asked first; that anyhow the artist being dead it could not matter, and that he had no idea of leaving the portrait there to become the cynosure of common eyes. He was a hard man, Monsieur, and we came to words.”
The visitor grunted. “M. Ribault, what was the name of this Goth?”
“It was the name of my friend, Monsieur.”
“What! Christian and surname the same?”
“Precisely one, Monsieur. They werebeaux-frères, no more. With such it may be.”
“Indubitably. And the lady’s name?”
“I could show you sooner than pronounce it. It was written by Jean under the portrait.”
“But the portrait is lost!”
“Nevertheless, it is not altogether forgotten. Before it was destroyed I had borrowed a camera from a friend and achieved a reproduction of it. Alas, Monsieur! but a cold shadow of the original—a sadness, a reflection, but, such as it is, a record I would not willingly let perish.”
The Baron’s brow was smoother again; his eyes had recovered their good humour.
“But this is interesting, my friend,” he said. “Might I be permitted to see it?”
“Who sooner!” cried the designer. “Monsieur has only to command.”
He went to a cupboard, and presently produced from it a photograph mounted on brown paper, which he presented to his visitor.
“You must not judge from it,” he said, “more than you would from the shadow of an apple tree the colour of its blossom. But is it not a beautiful face, Monsieur?”
“Beautiful, indeed,” answered Le Sage, profoundly pre-occupied. “And did the brother know you had secured this transcript?” he asked presently.
“Of a truth not, Monsieur. Sooner would I have died than tell him.”
“Ah!” For minutes longer the Baron stood absorbed in contemplation of the photograph. Then suddenly he looked up.
“I want you to part with this to me, my friend.”
“Monsieur, it is yours. There is none to whom I would sooner confide it.”
“You have the negative?”
“Truly, yes.”
“Keep it, and print no more from it for the present. Above all, keep the knowledge of your possessing it from the Goth.”
Between wonder and sympathy the Frenchman acquiesced.
“No doubt he would want to destroy that too,” he said.
“Exactly,” answered Le Sage. “Now, listen, my friend. I have a commission for you.”
It was a very handsome commission, the nature of which need not be specified, since it was in effect merely a delicate acknowledgment of a service rendered. And if the acknowledgment was out of all proportion with the service, that was M. le Baron’s way, and one not to be resented by a poor man who was also a reasonably proud man. So the two parted very good friends, and the Baron went back to his hotel, in high good humour with himself and all the world. On the following night he was in London, ensconced in rooms in a private hotel in Bloomsbury, where he learnt from the papers of the latest startling development in what had come to be known as the “Wildshott Murder Case.” “So,” he thought, “it works according to plan.”
He had managed to procure, while in Paris, a personal introduction from a certain eminent official to a corresponding dignitary in the Metropolis; but for the present he kept that in his pocket. There were some smaller fry to be dealt with first: aids of the great approach.
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
Whothat was present at that scene could ever forget its anguish and pathos? Its fierce dramatic intensity will remain for all time indelibly seared on my soul. Could I believe in my friend’s guilt? Knowing him, it was impossible: and yet that seemingly incontrovertible evidence as to when the shot was fired? If he had done it, if hehaddone it, not his own nature but some fiend temporarily in possession of it must have directed his hand. But I would not believe he had done it. I would not, until I had heard him confess to it with his own lips. However appearances might be against him, he should find an unshakable ally in me. And if the worst were to come to the worst, and the trial confirm his guilt beyond dispute, there would be that yet for me to plead in revision of my former evidence so cruelly surprised from me, to plead in virtue of my intimacy with the unhappy boy—that in the moods to which he was subject he was apt to lose complete control of himself, and to behave on occasions veritably like a madman. It might mitigate, extenuate—who could say? But in the meantime I would not believe—not though the world accused him.
Before he was taken away he and his father met in a room below the Court. Sir Calvin, coming across the floor after the committal, looked like a white figure of Death—Death stark, but in motion. He walked straight on, avoiding nobody; but a little stagger as he passed near me was eloquent of his true state. I was moved impulsively to hold out my arm to him, and he took it blindly, and we descended the stairs together. In a bare vault-like office we found my poor friend. He was in charge of the two policemen who had arrested him. His deadly pallor was all gone, and succeeded by a vivid flush. He held out his hand with a steadfast smiling look.
“Take it or not, sir,” he said.
It was taken, and hard wrung—just that one moment’s understanding—and the two fell apart.
“Thank you, sir,” said the boy simply. “I did not do it, of course.”
The father laughed; it wrung one to hear him, and to see his face.
“One of your judges, Hughie,” he said, wheezing hilariously—“old Crosson; you know him—told me not to lose heart—that appearances weren’t always to be trusted. He ought to know, eh, after three attempts?”
“I wanted you just to hear me say,” said the other hurriedly, “that I’m glad it’s come—not thewayit has, but the truth. I’ve behaved like a blackguard, sir, and it’s been weighing on me; you don’t know how it’s been weighing. It’s been making my life hell for some little time past. But now you know, and it’s the worst of me—bad enough, but not the unutterable brute they’d make me out.” He turned to me. “So they got at you, Viv.,” he said. “Never mind, old boy; you meant the best.”
“It was an infamous breach of confidence,” I burst out. “It was that Sergeant led me on.”
“Yes,” said Hugh: “I supposed he was at the bottom of all this. But I can’t help his witnesses. It was the truth I told.”
“He has betrayed the house,” I said hotly. “He was engaged to serve.”
But to this Sir Calvin, greatly to my surprise and indignation, demurred, in a hoarse broken way: “If he thought his duty lay this road, it was his business like an honest man to take it. We want no absolution on sufferance—eh, Hughie, my boy?”
“No, sir, no. You will see that I am properly advised as to the best way to go to clear myself. Thank God my mother isn’t alive!”
It was said with the first shadow of a break in his voice, and the General could not stand it. He gave a little gasp, and turned away, his fingers working at his moustache.
“She’ll see to it, Hughie,” he said indistinctly, “that—that it’s all made right. There was never a more truth-loving woman in the world. But you shall have your advice—for form’s sake—the best that can be procured.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was intimated that the interview must end. The two men just faced one another—an unforgetable look; and then the father turned, and, rigid as a sleep-walker, passed out of the room without another word. I lingered behind a moment, just to whisper my friendbonne chance; then hurried after the retreating figure. We entered the car in silence, and drove off alone together, leaving the household witnesses to follow later. All the way it must have lain in the mind of the stiff figure beside me with what other expectations, in what other company, we had made the outward journey. I thought it best not to disturb him; and we reached the house without a solitary sentence, I believe, having passed between us. Once there, Sir Calvin walked straight into his study, and I saw him no more that day.
What was the true thought in his heart? faith scornful and triumphant, or some secret misgiving? Who could tell? Perhaps for the first time some doubts as to his own qualifications as a father were beginning to move in him, some tragic, self-searching for the seed of what might or might not be in this “fruit of his blood.” The day stole by on hushed wings; a sense of still fatality brooded over the house. The voiceless, almost unpeopled quiet told upon my nerves, and kept me wandering, aimless and solitary, from room to room. Near evening, Audrey was sent for by her father. I saw her, and saw her for the first time since our return, as she disappeared into his study. What passed between them there one could only surmise, but at least it was marked by no audible sounds of emotion. In that dead oppression I would have welcomed even her company; but she never came near me, and I was left to batten as I would on my own poisonous reflections. They passed and passed in review, with sickening iteration, the same wearisome problems—the evidence, my hateful and unwilling share in it, my friend’s dreadful situation. Against the detective I felt a bitter animosity. No wonder that, conscious of his treachery to his employer, as I still persisted in regarding it, his manner had changed of late, and he had held himself aloof from us. Even that cynical official fibre, I supposed, could not be entirely insensitive to the indecency of eating the salt of him he was planning to betray. I was so wroth with him that I could have wished, if for no other reason than his discomfiture, to vindicate my friend’s innocence. The thought sent me harking back once more over familiar ground. If Hugh were innocent, who was guilty? If another could be proved guilty, or even reasonably suspect, the whole evidence against the prisoner fell into discredit. Who, then?
Now, not this overwhelming business itself had been enough to dismiss wholly from my mind its haunting suspicions regarding the Baron. So secret, so subtle, so inexplicable, could it still be possible that he was somehow implicated in the affair? If not, was it not at least remarkable that it should have coincided with his coming, involved his servant, been followed by that midnight theft of the paper? And then suddenly there came to me, with a little shock of the blood, a memory of our conversation in the keeper’s cottage on the fatal day of the shoot. How curious he had been then on the subject of poachers, of their methods, of their proneness to violence on occasion! He had asked so innocently yet shown such shrewdness in his questions, that even Orsden had laughingly commented on the discrepancy. And that mention of the muffling properties of a mist in the matter of a gunshot!Why, it was as if he had wished to assure himself of the adequacy of some precaution already calculated and taken to mislead and bewilder in a certain issue!
The thought came upon me like a thunderclap. Was it, could it be possible that some blackguard poacher had been made the instrument of a diabolical plot—perhaps that fourth shadowy figure that had never materialised; perhaps Henstridge himself, who had volunteered the damning evidence, and whom it would be one’s instinct to mistrust? Le Sage and Henstridge in collusion! Was it an inspiration? Did I stand on the threshold of a tremendous discovery? In spite of the feverish excitement which suddenly possessed me, I could still reason against my own theory. The motive? What possible motive in murdering an unoffending servant girl? Again, what time had been the Baron’s in which to complot so elaborate a crime?
But, supposing it had all been arranged beforehand, before ever he came? I had not overlooked the mystery attaching to the girl herself. It might cover, for all one knew, a very labyrinthine intrigue of vengeance and spoliation.
And then in a moment my thought swerved, and the memory of Cleghorn returned to me—Cleghorn, white and abject, grasping the rail of the dock. Cleghorn fainting where he stood. What terrific emotion had thus prostrated the man, relieved from an intolerable oppression? Was mere revulsion of feeling enough to account for it, or was it conceivable that he too was, after all, concerned in the business, a third party, and overwhelmed under his sense of unexpected escape from what he had regarded as his certain doom?
I was getting into deep waters. I stood aghast before my own imagination. How was I to deal with its creations?
It was an acute problem, my decision on which was reached only after long deliberation. It was this: I would keep all my suspicions and theories to myself until I could confide them to the ear of the Counsel on Hugo’s behalf.
In the meantime some relief from the moral stagnation of Wildshott had become apparent with the opening of the day succeeding the inquiry. That deadly lethargy which had followed the first stunning blow was in part shaken off, and the household, though in hushed vein, began to resume its ordinary duties. Sir Calvin himself reappeared, white and drawn, but showing no disposition to suffer commiseration in any form, or any relaxation from his iron discipline. The events of the next few days I will pass over at short length. They yielded some pathos, embraced some preparations, included a visit. I may mention here a decision of the General’s which a little, in one direction, embarrassed my designs. Just or unjust to the man, he would not have Cleghorn back. One could not wonder, perhaps, over his determination; yet I could have preferred for the moment not to lose sight of my suspect. We heard later that the butler, as if anticipating his dismissal, had gone, directly after his release, up to London, where, no doubt, he could be found if wanted. I had to console myself with that reflection. The valet, Louis, we came to learn about the same time, had taken refuge, pending his master’s return—he had got to hear somehow of the Baron’s absence—with an excellent Roman Catholic lady, who had pitied his case and offered him employment.Hehad no desire, very certainly, to return to a house where he had suffered so much.
Of a visit I was allowed to pay my friend in the prison I do not wish to say a great deal. The interview took place in a room with a grating between us and a warder present. The circumstances were inexpressibly painful, but I think I felt them more than Hugo. He was cheery and optimistic—outspoken too in a way that touched me to the quick.
“I want to tell you everything, Viv.,” he said hurriedly, below his breath; “I want to get it all off my chest. You guessed the truth, of course; but not the whole of it. There was one thing—I’d like you to tell my father, if you will—it makes me out a worse cur than I admitted, but I can’t feel clean till I’ve said it. It began this way. I surprised the girl over some tricky business—God forgive her and me; that’s enough said about it!—and I bargained with her for my silence on terms. I’ll say for myself that I knew already she was fond of me; but it doesn’t excuse my behaving like a damned cad. Anyhow, she fell to it easily enough; and then the fat was in the fire. It blazed up when she discovered—you know. It seemed to turn her mad. She must be made honest—my wife—or she would kill herself, she said. I believe in the end I should have married her, if—Viv., old man, I loved that girl, I loved her God knows with what passion; yet, I tell you, my first emotion on discovering her dead was one of horrible relief. Call me an inhuman beast, if you will. I dare say it’s true, but there it is. I was in such a ghastly hole, and my nerves had gone all to pieces over it. If I had done what she wished, it meant the end of everything for her and me. I knew the old man, and that he would never forgive such an alliance—would ruin and beggar us. I had been on a hellish rack, and was suddenly off it, and the momentary sensation was beyond my own control. Does the admission seem to blacken the case against me? I believe I know you better than to think so. I’m only accounting in a way for my behaviour on the night of the—the——. Why, all the time, at the bottom of my soul, I was crying on my dead darling to come back to me, that I could not live without her. O, Viv.! why is it made so difficult for some men to go straight?”
He paused a moment, his head leaned down on his hands, which held on to the bars. I did not speak. His allusion to the “tricky business” he had surprised the girl over was haunting my mind. How did it consort with my latent suspicion of a mystery somewhere?
“Hugh,” I said presently, “you won’t tell me what she was doing when you first——”
“No, I won’t,” he interrupted me bluntly. “Think what she became to me, and allow me a little decency. I’ve told you all that’s necessary—more than I had ever intended to tell you when I promised you my confidence. I’m sorry for that, Viv. God knows if I had spoken to you at first it might have altered things. But I couldn’t make up my mind while a chance existed—or I thought it did. She put me out of my last conceit that day, swearing she was going to expose the whole story. It was all true that I said. She may have been waiting there on the chance of my passing: I swear I didn’t know it. We had our few words, and I gave my promise and passed on. The evidence about the shot was a black lie. I can say no more than that.”
I give his words, and leave them at that, making no comment and drawing no conclusions. If his admission as to his first emotion on learning of his release might repel some people, I can only plead that one man’s psychology, like one man’s meat, may be impossible of digestion by another. I found it, I confess, hard to stomach myself; but then I had never been a spoilt and wayward only son.
We talked some little time longer on another matter, which had indeed been the main object of my visit—the nature of, and Counsel for, his defence. I had undertaken, at Sir Calvin’s instance, to go to London and interview his lawyers on the subject, thus sparing the father the bitter trial of a preliminary explanation, and I told Hugo of my intention.
“What a good fellow you are, Viv.,” he said fondly. “I don’t deserve that you should take all this trouble about me.”
“If I can only appear to justify my own indecent persistence in remaining on to help,” I said stiffly, “I shall feel satisfied.”
I could not forbear the little thrust: that wounding remark of his had never ceased to rankle in me.
“Well, I asked for it,” he said, with a flushed smile. “But don’t nurse a grudge any longer. I was hardly accountable for what I said in those days: a man hardly is, you know, when he’s on the rack.”
“O! I forgive you,” I answered. “There’s a virtue sometimes in pretending to a thick skin——” and we parted on good terms.
My journey to London was arranged for the morrow after the interview. I had one of my passages with Audrey before going. I don’t know what particular prejudice it was the girl cherished against me, but she would never let us be friends. I saw scarcely anything of her in these days, and when we did meet she would hardly speak to me. I could have wished even to propitiate her, because it was plain enough to me how the poor thing was suffering. Her pride and her affections—both of which, I think, were really deep-seated—were cruelly involved in the disgrace befallen them. They found some little compensation, perhaps, in the improved relations established between her father and herself. Circumstances had brought these two into closer and more sympathetic kinship; it was as if they had discovered between them a father and a daughter; and so far poor Hugo’s catastrophe had wrought good. But still the girl’s loneliness of heart was an evident thing. Pathetically grateful as she might be for the change in her father’s attitude towards her, she could never get nearer to that despotic nature than its own limitations would permit.
“You are pining for your Baron, I suppose,” I said on this day, goaded at last to speak by her insufferable manner towards me. The taunt was effective, at least, in opening her mouth.
“You are always hinting unpleasant things about the Baron, Mr. Bickerdike,” she answered, turning sharply on me. “Don’t you think it a little mean to be continually slandering him in that underhand way?”
I saw it was still to be battle, and prepared my guard.
“That is your perverse way of looking at it, Audrey,” I answered quietly. “From my point of view, it is just trying to help my friends.”
“By maligning them to their enemies?” she answered. “I suppose that was why you confided to Sergeant Ridgway all you knew about Hugh’s affairs?”
It gave me a certain shock. I knew that she had read a full report of the proceedings, but not that she, or any one, had drawn such a cruel conclusion from it.
“Confided, is the word, Audrey,” I answered, with difficulty levelling my voice. “I can’t be held responsible for that breach of trust. Yes, thank you for that smile; but I know what was in my heart, and it was to help Hugh over a difficult place I foresaw for him. My weakness was in thinking other men as honourable as myself. But, anyhow, your stab is rather misplaced, since I wasn’t ‘maligning,’ as you say, my friends to their enemies, but the other way about, asIsee it.”
“Well, don’t see it,” she said insolently. “Perhaps—just consider it as possible—I may happen to know more about the Baron than you do.”
“O! I dare say he’s been yarning to you,” I answered, “and quite plausibly enough to a credulous listener. But, if I were you, I wouldn’t attach too much importance to what he tells you about himself. I’ll say no more as to my own suspicions, though events have not modified them, I can assure you; but Iwillsay that regard for your brother should at least incline you to go warily in a matter which may have a very strong bearing on his interests.”
She stood conning me a moment or two in silence.
“Please to be explicit,” she said then. “Do you mean that you believe the Baron to be the real criminal?”
I positively jumped.
“Good Heavens!” I cried. “Don’t make me responsible for such wild statements. I mean only that, in the face of your brother’s awful situation, you should be scrupulously careful to do nothing which might seem to impair the efforts of those who are working to throw new light on it. I don’t say the Baron is the guilty one, but it is possible your brother is not.”
“Is that all?” she cried. She stepped right up to me, so that our faces were near touching. “Mr. Vivian Bickerdike,” she said, “Hugh did not commit that murder. I tell you, in case you do not know.”
“I never said he did,” I answered, involuntarily backing a little, her eyes were so pugnacious. “How you persist in misreading me! I only want to be prepared against all contingencies.”
“Amongst which, I suppose, is the Baron’s wicked attempt to exculpate himself to me, by encouraging my suspicions against Hughie?” She laughed, with a sort of defiant sob in her voice. “I’ll tell you what I truly think: that he is a better friend to my brother than you are; and I hope he’ll come back soon; and, when he does, I shall go on listening to and believing in him, as I do think I believe in no one else. And in the meantime I’ll tell you this for your comfort: he is really English, and really the Baron Le Sage. He takes his title from an estate in the Cevennes, which was left him by a maternal uncle; and he is very rich, and I dare say very eccentric in wanting to do good with his money; and that is enough for the present.”
“And he plays chess for half-crowns and steals private papers!” I cried to myself scornfully, as she turned and left me.
Poor foolish creature. It was no good my trying to convince her, and I gave up the attempt then and there.
Audreyhad been starting for a walk when detained by the interview recorded in the last chapter. She left it burning with indignation and passionate resentment. That this man could call himself a friend of Hughie, and conceive for one moment the possibility of his guilt! He pretended to be his intimate, and did not even know him. How she hated such Laodicean allies! And that he should dare to try to involveherin his doubts and half concessions! It was infamous. It had needed all her sense of the confidence her father placed in him, and of the authority to act for him which he had delegated to him, to stop her from saying something so cuttingly rude that even he could not have consented to swallow the insult and remain on.
She did Mr. Bickerdike, as we know, a sad injustice. The truth was, one suspects, that in all this business of his friend’s exoneration the unhappy gentleman was flying in the face of his own conscience, and doing it for pure loyalty’s sake. He could not quite bring himself to argue against appearances in the Justice’s sense; but hehoped, and he tried to take a rosy view of his own hopes. It was not to be expected of him, or of his disposition, that he should feel or express that blind and incorrigible staunchness to an ideal natural in a devoted blood-relation; yet it should be counted to him that he was staunch too, and on behalf of a cause which in his heart he mistrusted. Perhaps his suspicions anent the Baron were conceived more in a desperate attempt to discover a way out for his friend, than in any spirit of strong belief in their justification. But Audrey was prejudiced against him, and the prejudices of young people are like their loves, unreasoning and devastating.
She was very miserable, poor girl—proud, friendless, solitary. Essentially companionable by nature, the social restrictions of her state, man-administered, had deprived her of all warm intimacies among her own sex. She was not allowed to know those she would have liked to know; the few selected for her acquaintance she detested. There was none to whom she could appeal for understanding or sympathy. Repellent to them all in her pride, was it likely they would spare her in her humiliation? The very thought made her hold her head high, and filled her heart with a hard defiance. Nobody cared, nobody believed but herself and her father. Poor Hughie, to be so admired and courted in prosperity, so slandered and abandoned in adversity! Never mind; the truth would be known presently, and then the humiliation would be theirs who had unwittingly betrayed their own abject natures.
She crossed the high road, and, entering the thickets beyond, proceeded in a direction almost due west. That way lay the least association with all the squalid events of the past few weeks, and she knew that if she pushed on over the boundaries of Wildshott, she would come presently to a place of quiet woods and streams and easeful solitudes. She wanted to avoid any possibility of contact with her fellow-creatures, and to be alone. It was a glowing September day, when everything, save her own unquiet heart, seemed resolved into an eternal serenity of peace and happiness never again to be broken. The coney had lain down with the fox and the stoat; the ageing bracken had renewed its youth in a sparkling vesture of diamond-mist; the birds were singing as if a dream-spring had surprised them in the very thought of hybernating. Presently, going among trees, Audrey came out on the lip of a little shelving dingle, at whose foot ran a full bountiful stream watering a wooded valley. And at once she paused, because the figure of a small sturdy boy was visible below her, busy about a spot where a tiny fall plunged frothing and merry-making into a pool which it tried to brim and could not. She paused, watching the figure; and suddenly, driven by some inexplicable impulse, she was going quickly down the slope to speak to it. It was a revulsion of feeling, a sob for a voice in the wilderness, a cry to give herself just one more chance before she flung away the world and took loneliness for her eternal doom.
The boy, hearing her coming, lifted his head, then rose to his feet. He had been engaged over a fly rod, which he held in his hand.
“Mornin’, Miss,” he said, grinning and saluting.
“Are you fishing, Jacob?”
“Me and the master, Miss. He’ll be back in a minute. He’n been whipping the stream up-ways.”
Her lip curled, ever so slightly. There might be better occupation than fishing for a man who cared.
“He’s thinking,” said Jake.
“Thinking!” she echoed scornfully.
“Yes’m. He says to me, he says, ‘Jacob, fishing helps a man to think; and what d’you suppose I’ve been thinking about, Jacob?’”
“Well?”
“‘Why, who it was as killed Annie Evans,’ he says.” The boy looked up shyly. “We knows anyhow as it weren’t Master Hugo, Miss.”
“Do you? Did he say that, Jacob?” She spoke softly, with a wonderful new glow about her heart.
“Yes’m,” said the boy. “He did that. You should ha’ heard him yesterday giving Squire Redwood the lie. We was hunting otter, Miss, and was on to hisspraints, when Squire said something bad about Master Hugo as caught Sir Francis’s ear. He went up to him, he did, and he told him he’d lay his good ash-spear across his shoulders unless he withdrew the expression.”
“Redwood! That great powerful bully!” cried Miss Kennett.
“Yes’m. And Squire looked that frit, it might ha’ been a boggle had sudden come to life and faced him. But he did what he was told, and saved his shoulders.”
“He did, he did?” She put her hands up to her throat a moment, as if to strangle the emotion that would not be suppressed, and in the act heard his footstep and turned.
He came with wonder and pleasure in his face.
“Audrey!” he exclaimed; “what good luck has brought you here?”
“I don’t know, Frank,” she answered a little wildly: “but it is good luck, and I thank it. Why do you, who hate hunting, hunt otters, sir?”
“Because they kill my fish,” he replied promptly.
“And so spoil your thinking, I suppose,” she said.
He seemed to understand in a moment, and his face flushed.
“Jake has been t-talking, has he?” he said. “Jake, I’m ashamed of you.”
“And did Redwood save his big shoulders?” she asked.
“Jake!” cried his master reproachfully.
She laughed and sobbed together.
“Frank, will you leave your things here, and come a little way with me, please?”
“O, Audrey! You know—not only a little way, if it could be.”
They walked together along the green bank of the stream, from sunlight into luminous shadow, and forth again, parting the branches sometimes, always with the water, like a merry child, running and talking beside them. Suddenly she stopped, and turned upon him.
“If it could be,” she said, repeating his words: “that is to say, if I had not a murderer for a brother!”
He cried out: “Good God! What do you mean? Hugh is not a murderer!”
“You declare it—in spite of all, Frank?”
“All what? I know him, and that’s enough.”
“For me, for me, yes, and for you! O, Frank!——” she could not keep them back; they came irresistibly, and rolled down her cheeks—“you don’t know what you have done, what you have lifted from my heart! And I said you were not a man—like him. O, forgive me, Frank dear!”
“Hush!” he said. He took her arm and tucked it close and comfortable under his, and led her on. “I am not, if it comes to that,” he said.
“You don’t mean that unkindly? No, you never would, of course. But I can be glad to think it now—glad that you are not. He is not good, Frank. I should hate him for what he has done—I can say it to you now—if he were not suffering so dreadfully for what he hasnotdone.”
“I know, Audrey. Poor fellow—for what he has not done. That is the point. How are we going to p-prove it? I have been pushing some private inquiries, for my part, about that mysterious figure seen or not seen by Henstridge on the hill. I can’t get it out of my head that there really was such a figure, and that, if we could only t-trace it, we should hold the clue to the riddle.”
“Have you been doing that, Frank? And I thought you had forsaken us like the rest.”
“That was ungenerous of you, Audrey, dear. I should have come and told you, only I was delicate of starting you, perhaps, on a false scent, and thought it better to w-wait till I had something definite to offer.”
“Frank, did you read of the Inquest?”
“I was present at it—in the background.”
“O! Do you remember the master of the poor man who was supposed then——”
“Le Sage? I should think I do. His b-benevolent truthfulness was a thing to wonder over.”
“I think it is. He and I are great friends. He is away for the moment; but when he comes back, I wish you would let me introduce you to him.”
“Why, Audrey, I know him already. Have you forgotten Hanson’s cottage and our talk about the poachers? A r-remarkably shrewd old file I thought him.”
“So he is. I have such faith in him somehow. Somehow I feel that all will come right when he returns. I do wish he would. It is all so dreadful waiting. Will you tell him about your theory, when he does?”
“Of course I will. Don’t go yet, Audrey.”
She had stopped.
“Yes, Frank, I am going. I feel that every moment taken from your fishing is robbing Hughie of a chance.”
“Audrey—after what you’ve said—poor Hugh—I’ll not be thought a man at his expense—but—are you going to let me hope just a little again?”
“Are you serious, dear? His sister? Think.”
“A m-martyr’s sister—the greater honour mine.”
She could not help a little laugh over the picture of Hugh a martyr.
“I love you, Frank,” she said, “but not quite that way.”
“Well, I love you all ways,” he answered, “so that any little defect in yours is provided for.”
“How good you are to me!” she sighed. “If it’s to be thought of, it must not be on any consideration till Hugh is cleared.”
“Agreed!” he cried joyously. “Then we are as g-good as engaged already.”
“You dear!” she said, and jumped at him. “I will kiss you once for that. No, put your hands down—handy-pandy-sugary-candy, and—there, sir! And now please to go back to your fishing.”
She smiled to him and hurried away, a fine pink on her cheek. After the rain, fine weather; after despair, reassurance. She was not alone; she had these two good staunch friends, Frank and little Jacob, to stand by her. Her heart was singing with the birds, sparkling with the mist. When she reached home she found another comfort to greet her. Mr. Bickerdike had already started for London. Then she did a queer, shame-faced thing, in a queer shame-faced way. She got out some old dog’s-eared music, long forgotten childish exercises, and sat down to the piano to try if she could remember them. She played very softly in a young stumbling fashion, all stiff fingers and whispering lips. It did not come naturally to her, and she had long arrears of neglect to make good. But she persevered. If it was a question of qualifying herself for the intellectual life, she must not throw up the sponge at the first round. After a strenuous hour she had more or less mastered No. 1 Exercise for two hands in Czerny’s first course, and had got so far on the road to Audley.
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
I hada long and interesting interview with Sir Calvin’s lawyers, when I used the occasion to unburden my mind of some of the misgivings which had been disturbing it. I spoke theoretically, of course, and without prejudice, and no doubt considerably impressed my hearers, who were very earnest with me to keep my own counsel in the matter until one of the partners could run down—which he would do in the course of a few days—to examine into all the circumstances of the case on the spot; and, above all, not to let the Baron guess that he was in any way an object of my suspicion. They had, of course, heard of the murder and its sequel, and had been expecting their client’s instructions for the defence. They were very sympathetic, but naturally cautious about advancing any opinion one way or the other at this stage of the affair, and the gist of the matter was relegated for discussionin diem. I do not, however, describe the interview at greater length for the simple reason that, as things came to turn out, it bore no eventual fruit. But that will appear.
I stayed three nights in town, and returned to Wildshott on the fourth day from my leaving it. Going to Sir Calvin’s study straightway, and being bidden to enter, what was my chagrin and astonishment to find the Baron already in the room before me, having anticipated my own return by some twelve hours or so. He was seated talking with his host—on some matter of grave import, I at once assumed, from the serious expression on the faces of the two. Even Le Sage’s habitual levity appeared subdued, while as to the General, I thought he looked like a man in process of rallying from some great shock or recent illness. He sat with his head hunched into his shoulders, all the starch gone from him, and with a fixed white stare in his eyes, as if he were battling with some inward torment. What had the man been saying or doing to him? My gorge rose; I was seized with a fierce anger and foreboding. Was I witnessing the effects of that very villain blow so apprehended by me as in course of preparing when that significant journey to London was first announced? My eyes, instinctively hawking for evidence, pounced on the embrasure which contained the safe. The curtain was drawn aside, the door open; and on the table near Sir Calvin stood a packet of papers, the tape which had bound them fallen to the carpet. Had he by chance been learning for the first time of his loss—and too late? I was tired, and my temper, perhaps, was short. In my infinite disgust at discovering how this man had stolen a march on me, I made little attempt to control it. “What, you back!” I exclaimed, for my only greeting.
“And you!” he responded placidly. “This is a happy coincidence, Mr. Bickerdike.”
I passed him, and went to shake Sir Calvin by the hand. The look of my poor friend as he gave me formal welcome inflamed my anger to that degree that I could contain myself no longer. I felt, too, that the moment had come; that it would be criminal in myself to postpone it longer; that I must give this fellow to understand that his villainy had not passed wholly undetected and unrecorded. Forgetting, I confess, in my exasperation, my promise to the lawyers, I turned on him in an irresistible impulse of passion.
“How, sir,” I said, “have you succeeded in reducing my friend the General to this state?”
There followed a moment’s startled silence, and then Sir Calvin stiffened, and sat up, and cleared his throat.
“Bickerdike,” he said, “don’t be a damned ass!”
“That’s as it may be, sir,” I said, now in a towering rage. “You shall judge of the extent of my folly when you have heard what I insist upon making known to you.”
He sat looking at me in a frowning, wondering sort of way; then shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well—if you insist,” he said.
“I have no alternative,” I answered. “If I am to do my duty, as I consider it, at this crucial pass, when the life of a dear friend hangs in the balance, all stuff of punctilio must be let go to the winds. If I hold the opinion that an evil influence is at work in this house, operating somehow to sinister but mysterious ends, it would be wickedness on my part to withhold the evidence on which that opinion is founded. I do think such an influence is at work, and I claim the condition in which I now find you as some justification for my belief.”
“You are quite mistaken,” said my host, “utterly mistaken.”
I bowed. “Very well, sir; and I only wish I were as mistaken about the character of this gentleman whom you have admitted to your acquaintance and your hospitality.”
Sir Calvin looked at Le Sage, who sat still all this time with a perfectly unruffled countenance. He laughed now good humouredly, and bent forward to take a pinch of snuff.
“Come, come, Mr. Bickerdike,” he expostulated, brushing the dust from his waistcoat; “of what do you accuse me?”
“That is soon said,” I answered, “and said more easily than one can explain the general impression of underhandedness one receives from you. I intend to be explicit, and I accuse you to your face of having secretly left your room one midnight, when the house was asleep” (I gave the date) “and stolen a paper from Sir Calvin’s desk here.”
He looked at me oddly.
“To be sure,” he said. “Do you know, Mr. Bickerdike, your half-face looking round the post that night reminded me so ludicrously of those divided portraits one sees in picture-restorers’ shops that I was near bursting into laughter.”
“You may have eyes in your ears,” I cried, rallying from the shock; “but that is not an answer to my charge.”
He turned to Sir Calvin: “The sixty-four Knight move problem: you remember: I told you that, not being able to sleep, I had come down to borrow it from your desk, and work it out in the small hours.”
The General nodded, and looked at me.
“Upon my word, Bickerdike,” he said, “you mustn’t bring these unfounded charges. I don’t know what’s put this stuff about the Baron into your head; but you must understand that he’s my very good friend, and much better known to me than he seems to be to you. Come, if I were you, I’d just apologize and say no more about it.”
It was the collapse of my life. I will own to it fairly, and save my credit at least for a sense of humour. To think that all this time I had been building such a structure on such a foundation! I was bitterly mortified, bitterly humbled; but I trust that I did the gentlemanly thing in at once accepting Sir Calvin’s advice. I went straight up to the Baron and apologized.
“It seems I’ve been making a fool of myself,” I said.
“And I know how that must distress you,” he answered heartily. “Think no more about it. Your motive has been all through an excellent one—to help your friend at somebody else’s expense; and if I’ve failed you at a pinch, it’s not for want of a real good try on your part. And as to my underhand ways——”
“O, they necessarily disappear with the rest,” I interrupted him. “When one’s moon-stricken one sees a bogey in every bush.”
“Well, well,” said Sir Calvin impatiently. “That’s enough said. We hadn’t quite done our talk when you came in, Bickerdike. Shut the door when you go out, there’s a good fellow.”
The hint was plain to starkness. I slunk away, feeling my tail between my legs. In the hall, to add to my discomfiture, I came upon Audrey. Her face fell on seeing me.
“O, haveyoucome back?” she said in a discharmed voice, fairly paying me with my own bad coin.
“Yes,” I said: “and now I have, everybody seems to love me.”
She looked at me queerly.
“The Baron has returned too: isn’t that delightful?” She laughed and moved away, then came again, on a mischievous thought: “O, by the by! There was another thing I might have told you about him the other day. All the half-crowns he wins at chess he puts into a benevolent fund for poor chess-players. He says a half-crown on a game is like a Benedictine—neither too much nor too little. It is just enough to bring out the brilliancy in a player without intoxicating him.”
I said meekly, “Yes, Audrey. I expect he is very right; and it is a good thought of his for the poor Professors.”
She stood staring at me a moment, said, “What is the matter with you?” then turned away, moving much more slowly than before.
All the wind seemed knocked out of me by this blow, and I remained in a very depressed mood. It was my greatest mortification to realize on what vain and empty illusions I had been building a case for my friend. I will do myself so much justice. But whatever I planned seemed to go wrong. I had better retire, I thought, and leave it to better heads than mine to grapple with the problem. Nor did myamour-propreachieve any particular reinstatement for itself from my interview with Sir Calvin on the subject of my journey, made entirely on his behalf. I found him, when at length he called me to it, verydistrait, and I thought not particularly interested in what I had to tell him. He seemed to listen attentively, but in fact his answers proved that he had done nothing of the sort. Everything since my return appeared somehow wrong and peculiar. It might have struck one almost as if a cloud had passed away, and a threatened tempest been forgotten. And yet Hugo was in his prison, and nothing new that I could see had happened. I told his father, as he had asked me to do, about the circumstances of his wrong-doing, and even in that failed greatly to interest the General. He did not appear to be particularly shocked. No doubt his principles in such respects were old-fashioned, and took for their text that licentious proverb which, in the name of love and war, exempts a gentleman from those bonds of truth and honour which alone make him one. He was in a strange state altogether, distraught, nervous, excited by turns, and yet always with a look about him which I should have described as exultant pride at high tension. What was the meaning of everything?
During the following day or two I kept myself studiously in the background, proffering no opinions on anything, and only pleading mutely to be put to any use I could reasonably serve. My attitude commended itself to Audrey at last. “Frank and the Baron,” she once said to me, “have been meeting and having a long talk together. I wonder if you will disapprove, Mr. Bickerdike?”
“Two heads are better than one,” I answered, “and as good as three when the Baron’s is counted in. I’m not sure you weren’t right, Audrey, and that I’m not a worse judge of character than I supposed.”
She looked at me in that queer way of hers.
“That’s jolly decent of you,” she said; “and so I’ll say the same to you. It’s something to be a gentleman, after all.”
Cryptic, but meant to be propitiatory. I forgave her. She had recovered her spirits wonderfully. She knew, or felt, I think, that something was in the air, though she could not tell what, and it made her confident and happy. I fancy it was her dear friend the Baron who kept her on that prick of expectancy, without quite letting her into the secret. Sometimes now she would even condescend to speak with me.
“Do you know,” she said one day, “that Sergeant Ridgway is coming down again from Scotland Yard to see us?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “He can’t have the atrocious bad taste.”
“O, but he is!” she said. “The First Commissioner, or the Public Prosecutor, or the Lord High Executioner, or somebody, isn’t satisfied with Henstridge’s evidence, and he’s got to come down and go through all that part of it again. He’s to be here to-morrow to see my father at two o’clock.”
“Well,” I said, “I hope we shan’t run across one another, that’s all.”
“No,” she answered, in a rather funny way: “I don’t suppose you exactly love him.”
I will say no more, since I have reached the threshold of that extraordinary event which was to falsify at a blow every theory which I, in common with hundreds of others, had built up and elaborated about the Wildshott Murder Case.
Sergeant Ridgway, turning up punctually to his appointment, was shown into Sir Calvin’s study, where he found, not his former employer, but the Baron Le Sage, seated alone. Characteristically, the detective showed as little surprise at seeing who awaited him as he did embarrassment over his return to a house whose hospitality he had, according to Mr. Bickerdike, so cruelly abused. He could have understood, no doubt, no reason for his feeling any. His commission had been to discover the murderer of Annie Evans, and, according to the best of his lights, he had executed that commission. It was not his fault if it had led him in a direction tragically counter to the expectations of his employer. He had been engaged for a particular purpose, and he had dutifully pursued that purpose—inevitably, if unfortunately, to a regrettable end. But sentiment could not be allowed to affect the detectival philosophy, or the Law became a dead letter. In professional matters he was, and had to be, a simple automaton; wherefore no sign of uneasiness was visible in his expression as he entered the room, nor was there discernible there a trace of animus of any sort. He was quite prepared, if necessary, to own himself in the wrong. His high superiors had expressed themselves as dissatisfied with a certain portion of the evidence. Very well, he would bow to their scruples, and make a thorough re-investigation of that part of the case. He understood that the landlord of the Red Deer inn had been warned, and was to meet him here this afternoon. Personally, he did not hope much from the interview, or attach great importance to a rumour which he understood had got about since the Inquest. But whether that rumour embodied a fact, or proved on examination as unsubstantial as mostcanardsof its kind, the finding of the murderer of Annie Evans remained, as it had been, his sole object and purpose in undertaking the case.
All this, or the moral gist of it, the detective took it upon himself to explain to the Baron in the course of the brief conversation which ensued between them. He spoke drily, deliberately, as if measuring out his words, rather with the air of plain-stating a professional view-point, and instructing Counsel, than of asking for sympathy. His hearer made a curious study of him the while, wondering and calculating why he was being chosen the recipient of this extrajudicial confidence. Perhaps, after all, there was a thought more embarrassment under the surface than the other cared to admit, perhaps just a hint of a human desire to make a friend in a difficult pass. For the rest, it was the familiar figure of their knowledge which had returned upon them—keen, handsome, dark-eyed, economical of speech, potent in suggestion of a certain inscrutable order of mentality, and exhibiting, as always, that faint discrepancy between mind and material—distinction in the one, a touch of theatricalism and vulgarity in the other.
Le Sage took him up on one point. The Baron, who was looking extraordinarily pink and cheery, had already explained that Sir Calvin was engaged with a visitor in another room, and had asked him to receive and entertain the Sergeant during the short period of his absence.
“Am I to be allowed to opine,” he said with a smile, “that the rumour to which you refer bears upon your instructions, and is connected somehow with Mr. Cleghorn’s mysterious double?”
The detective looked at the speaker curiously.
“Meaning?” he said.
“Meaning that supposititious figure on the hill, about which Mr. Fyler was so inquisitive at the Inquest, but which he seemed most unaccountably to overlook before the magistrates.”
“Ah!” said the detective drily, “I expect he’d come to the conclusion, which was my own, that it wasn’t really worth another thought.”
“O! so I’m mistaken in fancying any association between that and your particular mission? Well, well, it shall be a lesson to my self-sufficiency. By the by, Sergeant, we’ve never had our long-deferred game of chess. What do you say to a duel now while we’re waiting?”
“No time, sir. Chess takes a lot of thought.”
“So it does. But it can be sampled in a problem. These tests are rather a weakness of mine. Look here,”—he led the way to the window, which, it being a mild warm day, stood wide open, and in which was placed the usual table with the board on it, and half a dozen pieces on the squares—“there’s a neat one, I flatter myself. I was at work on it when you came in—black Knight (or dark horse, shall we call it?) to play, and mate in three moves. Take the opposition, and see if you can prevent it.”
He moved the Knight; mechanically the detective put down his hand and responded with a Bishop: at the Baron’s third move the other looked up, and looked his adversary full in the face. Le Sage had stepped back. He had a way sometimes of thrusting his hands into the tail pockets of his coat, and bringing them round in front of him. So he stood now, with a curious smile on his lips.
“Dark horse wins,” said he. “My mate, I think, Sergeant John Ridgway.”
The door opened with the word, spoken pretty loudly, and there came quickly into the room an inspector and two constables of the local police, followed by Sir Calvin and another gentleman.
“I have the pleasure,” said M. le Baron to the new-comers, “of introducing to you the murderer of Annie Evans,aliasIvy Mellor.”
He had hardly spoken when the detective turned and leapt for the open window. The table, which stood between him and escape, went down with a crash: he had his foot on the sill, when a shot slammed out, and he stumbled and fell back into the room. The Baron’s bullet had caught him neatly on the heel of his shoe, knocking his leg from under him at the critical moment. Before he could rise the police were on him, and he was handcuffed and helpless.
“A clean shot, though I say it,” said the Baron coolly, as he returned the revolver to his pocket. “No, he’s not hurt, though I may have galled his kibe. Look out for him there!”
They had need to. They had got the man to his feet, and were holding him as if in doubt whether he needed support or not, when he resolved the question for them, and in unmistakable fashion. This way and that, foaming, snarling, tearing with his manacled hands, now diving head-foremost, now nearly free, and caught back again into the human maelstrom—three stout men as they were, they had a hard ado to keep and restrain him. But they got him exhausted and quiet at last, and he stood among them torn and dishevelled, his chest heaving convulsively, dribbling at the mouth, his face like nothing human.
“You, you!” he gasped, glaring at his denouncer, “if I had only guessed—if I had only known!”
“It would have been short shrift for me, I expect,” said the Baron shrewdly.
“It would,” said the prisoner—“that inn-keeper! It was you contrived the trap, was it! You damned, smiling traitor!”
The mortal vehemence he put into it! “What I had always suspected, but could never quite unmask,” thought Le Sage. “The dramatic fire, vicious and dangerous—banked down, but breaking loose now and again and roaring into uncontrollable flame!”
The second gentleman—who was in fact the Chief Constable of the County—put in a reproving word:—
“Come, Ridgway, keep a civil tongue in your head, my man.”
The detective laughed like a devil.
“Civility, you old fool! If words could blister him, I’d ransack hell’s language for them till he curled and shrivelled up before me.”
“Well,” said the gentleman reasonably, “you’re not improving your case, you know, by all this.”
“My case!” cried the other. “I’ve got none. It was always a gamble, and I knew it well enough from the first. But I’d have pulled it through, if it hadn’t been for him—I’d have pulled it through and hanged my fine gentleman—his son there—as sure as there’s a God of Vengeance in the world.”
He wrenched himself in the hold that gripped him, and, bare-chested, snarling like a dog in a leash, flung forward to denounce the father:—
“Curse you, do you hear? I’d have ruined and hanged that whelp of yours as surely as he ruined and murdered the girl that was mine till he debauched and stole her from me. When I put the shot into her, it was as truly his hand that fired it as if his finger had pulled on the trigger. She’d betrayed me, and it was him that led her to it, and by doing so made himself responsible for the consequences.”
The Inspector thought it right here to utter the usual official warning. It was curious to note in his tone, as he did so, a suspicion of deference, almost of apology, such as might characterise a schoolboy forced to bear witness against his headmaster. Ridgway turned on him with a jeering oath:—
“You can save your breath, Cully. That devil spoke true. It was I killed Ivy Mellor; and him, that old dog’s son, that ought to hang for it.”
M. le Baron spoke up: “Is it necessary to go further, gentlemen, since he confesses to the double crime?”
“I think not,” said the Chief Constable. “Remove him, Inspector.”
The three closed about the prisoner, who submitted quietly to being taken away. But he forced a stop a moment as he passed by Sir Calvin—who, greatly overcome, had sunk into a chair, the Baron leaning above him—and spoke, with some faint return to reason and self-control:—
“I don’t know how much you think you’ve found out. You’ve got to prove it, mind. No confession counts to hang a man, unless there’s proof to back it.”
“Par exemple,” said the Baron, looking up, “a skeleton key, a coat button, a packet of letters, a false character, a falser impersonation, a proposed disinheritance, and, to end all, a confederate murdered, and the plot to hang an innocent man for the deed!—altogether a very pretty little list, my friend.”
Ridgway, to those who held him, seemed to stagger slightly. He stood gazing with haggard eyes into the face of this deadly jocular Nemesis, who, so utterly unsuspected by him, had all this time, it appeared, while he smiled and smiled, been silently weaving his toils about his feet. He had not a word to answer; but a sort of stupor of horror grew into his expression, as if for the first time a cold mortal fear were beginning to possess him. Then suddenly he stiffened erect, turned, and passed mutely out of the room.
The Chief Constable lingered behind a moment.
“Come, Calvin, old man,” he said: “pull yourself together. The thing’s over, and well over, thanks to your wonderful friend here—by George, as remarkable a shot, sir, as you are a strategist! I don’t know which I admired most, the way you stalked your quarry, or the way you brought him down.”
“Really quite simple little matters of deduction and sighting,” answered the Baron, beaming deprecation, “if you make a practice, as I do, of never loosening your bolt in either case till you’re sure of your aim.”
“Ha!” said the gentleman. “Well, I congratulate you, Calvin, and I congratulate us all, on this happy termination to a very distressing business. I hope now the order of release won’t be long in coming, and that your poor unfortunate lad will be restored to you before many hours have passed.”
A pallid, but wondering, face peered round the door.
“May I come in?” said Mr. Bickerdike.
Sir Francis Orsdenand the Baron Le Sage walked slowly up the kitchen garden together. It was a windless autumn morning, such serene and gracious weather as had prevailed now for some days, and the primroses under the wall were already putting forth a little precocious blossom or two, feeling for the Spring. There was a balm in the air and a softness in the soil which communicated themselves to the human fibre, reawakening it as it were to a sense of new life out of old distress. Such feelings men might have who have landed from perilous seas upon a smiling shore.
The two talked earnestly as they strolled, on a subject necessarily the most prominent in their minds. Said Le Sage:—
“Are we not a little apt to judge a man by his business—as that a lawyer must be unfeeling, a butcher cruel, a doctor humane, and a sweep dishonest? But it is not his profession which makes a man what he is, but the man who makes his profession what it appears in him. A lawyer does not appropriate trust funds because he is a lawyer, but because he is a gambler: so, a detective is not impeccable because he is a detective, but because he is an honest man. You wonder that he can be at the same time a detective and a desperate criminal. Well, I don’t.”
“Ah! You’ve got a reason?”
“Just this. What is in that lawyer’s mind when he steals? Imagination. It leaps the dark abyss to wing for the golden peaks beyond, where, easy restitution passed, it sees its dreams fulfilled. What was in Ridgway’s mind when he planned his tremendous venture? Imagination again. It may be the angel or the devil of a piece, spur a Pegasus or ride a broomstick. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker may any of them have it, and still be the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. The last thing of which a lawyer, as a lawyer, would be guilty, would be the bringing himself within the grasp of the law: the last thing of which a detective, as a detective, would be guilty would be the making himself a subject for detection. What induces either of them, then, to sin against the logic of his own profession? Imagination alone and always, the primary impulse to everything that is good and bad in the world. A man may be blessed with it, or he may be cursed; contain it in his being like the seed of beauty or the seed of dipsomania.”
“And Ridgway like the latter?”
“It would seem so. The man is by nature a romantic. I once got a glimpse of the truth in a conversation I had with him. What flashed upon me, in that momentary lifting of the veil, was a revelation of fierce vision, immense passion. It was like taking a stethoscope to a man’s heart and surprising its secret.”
“A d-diseased heart, eh?”
“One may say so—diseased with Imagination, which is like an aneurism, often unsuspected and undetectable, until, put to some sudden strain, it bursts in blood.”
“You mean, in this case——?”
“I mean that the murder was not premeditated; that is my sure conviction. It was the result of a sudden frenzied impulse finding the means ready to its hand. The man had plotted, but not that. Why should he, since it meant the ruin of his visions?”
“Ah! You forget, Baron——”
“We will come to that. What I want to impress upon you at the outset is that Ridgway was at soul a gambler. Circumstance, accident, may have made him a detective: if it had made him a bishop it would have been all the same. That fire, that energy, kept under and banked down, would as surely have roared into flame the moment Fate drew out the damper. That moment came, and with it the vision. He saw in it certain hazards, leading to certain ruin or certain fortune; like a gambler he counted the cost and took the odds, since they seemed worth to him. What he failed to count on was a certain contingency which a less imaginative man than he might have foreseen—the possible treachery of a confederate.”
“And such a confederate.”
“Exactly. It was to sin most vilely against all his instinctive code; and worse—it was to stab him with a double-edged dagger.”
“I th-think I can pity him for that.”
“And so can I; and for this reason. Coolness is, or should be, the first quality of a gambler; gamblers, for that reason, do not easily fall in love. But when they do fall they fall hard, they fall headlong, they do not so much fall as plunge, as a gambler plunges, all heaven or all hell the stake. There is no doubt that Ridgway’s passion for this girl was a true gambler’s passion. To gain or lose her meant heaven or hell to him.”
“I can quite believe it, Baron. But, d-damn it! how much longer are you going to keep me on tenterhooks?”
Le Sage laughed. They had been strolling, and pausing, and strolling again, until they had approached by degrees the upper boundary of the estate, where, amid great bushes of lavender and sweet marjoram, stood a substantial thatched summer-house, cosily convenient for the view. “Let us go and sit in there,” he said, “and I will unfold my tale without further preamble.”
As he spoke a figure dodging about among the raspberry canes came into view.
“Hullo!” cried Orsden: “Bickerdike. What’s he doing here?”
“I think I know,” said the Baron. He went over to the elaborately unconscious gentleman—who, pretending to see him for the first time, glanced up with a start and an expression of surprise which would not have deceived a town-idiot—and accosted him genially:—
“Looking for anything, Mr. Bickerdike?”
“Just the chance of a late raspberry the birds may have left,” was the answer.
“O! I wonder if I can provide any fruit as much to your taste. You haven’t a half-hour to spare, I suppose?”
Mr. Bickerdike came promptly out from among the canes.
“Certainly,” he said. “I am quite at your service. What is it?”
“Only that I am under promise to Sir Francis to unfold for his delectation the story of a certain mystery, and the steps by which I came to arrive at its elucidation. It occurs to me—but, of course, if it would bore you——”
“Not at all. I am all eagerness to hear.”
“Well, it occurs to me that you have a leading title to the information, if you care to claim it, since it was in your company that I found my first clue to the riddle.”
“Was it, indeed, Baron? You excite me immensely. What was that?”
“Let us all go in here, and I will tell you.”
They entered the summer-house, and seated themselves on the semi-hexagonal bench which enclosed a stout rustic table.
“Now,” said Sir Francis, his eyes sparkling, “out with it every bit, Baron, and give our hungering souls to feed.”
Le Sage took a pinch of snuff, laid the box handy, dusted his plump knees with his handkerchief, and, leaning back and loosely twining his fingers before him, began:—
“I have this, my friends, to say to you both before I start. What I have to tell, my story—and not the most creditable part of it—is fundamentally concerned with one about whom, it might be thought, my obligations as his guest should keep me silent. That would be quite true, were it not for a single consideration so vital as to constitute in itself a complete moral justification of my candour. In a few days, or weeks, the whole will be common property, and that figure subjected, I fear, to a Pharisaic criticism, which will be none the more bitter for his friends having anticipated it and rallied about him. Moreover, he himself has bound me to no sort of silence in the matter, but, on the contrary, has rather intimated to me that he leaves to my discretion the choice and manner of his defence—orapologia. It may be admitted, perhaps, that he does not see these things quite from our point of view: he derives from another generation and another code of morals: but for what he is, or has been, he has paid a very severe penalty, and we must judge him now by what he has suffered rather than by what he has deserved.