THE
 SKELETON KEY

 BY
 BERNARD CAPES
 AUTHOR OF “THE GREAT SKENE MYSTERY,”
 “A CASTLE IN SPAIN,” ETC., ETC.

 WITH INTRODUCTION
 BY
 G. K. CHESTERTON

 NEW YORK
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




 INTRODUCTION.

To introduce the last book by the late Bernard Capes is a sad sort
of honour in more ways than one; for not only was his death untimely
and unexpected, but he had a mind of that fertile type which must
always leave behind it, with the finished life, a sense of unfinished
labour. From the first his prose had a strong element of poetry, which
an appreciative reader could feel even more, perhaps, when it refined
a frankly modern and even melodramatic theme, like that of this
mystery story, than when it gave dignity, as in “Our Lady of
Darkness,” to more tragic or more historic things. It may seem a
paradox to say that he was insufficiently appreciated because he did
popular things well. But it is true to say that he always gave a touch
of distinction to a detective story or a tale of adventure; and so
gave it where it was not valued, because it was not expected. In a
sense, in this department of his work at least, he carried on the
tradition of the artistic conscience of Stevenson; the technical
liberality of writing a penny-dreadful so as to make it worth a pound.
In his short stories, as in his historical studies, he did indeed
permit himself to be poetic in a more direct and serious fashion; but
in his touch upon such tales as this the same truth may be traced. It
is a good general rule that a poet can be known not only in his poems,
but in the very titles of his poems. In the case of many works of
Bernard Capes, “The Lake of Wine,” for instance, the title is itself a
poem. And that case would alone illustrate what I mean about a certain
transforming individual magic, with which he touched the mere
melodrama of mere modernity. Numberless novels of crime have been
concerned with a lost or stolen jewel; and “The Lake of Wine” was
merely the name of a ruby. Yet even the name is original, exactly in
the detail that is hardly ever original. Hundreds of such precious
stones have been scattered through sensational fiction; and hundreds
of them have been called “The Sun of the Sultan” or “The Eye of
Vishnu” or “The Star of Bengal.” But even in such a trifle as the
choice of the title, an indescribable and individual fancy is felt; a
sub-conscious dream of some sea like a sunset, red as blood and
intoxicant as wine. This is but a small example; but the same element
clings, as if unconsciously, to the course of the same story. Many
another eighteenth century hero has ridden on a long road to a lonely
house; but Bernard Capes, by something fine and personal in the
treatment, does succeed in suggesting that at least along that
particular road, to that particular house, no man had ever ridden
before. We might put this truth flippantly, and therefore falsely, by
saying he put superior work into inferior works. I should not admit
the distinction; for I deny that there is necessarily anything
inferior in sensationalism, when it can really awaken sensations. But
the truer way of stating it would perhaps be this; that to a type of
work which generally is, for him or anybody else, a work of invention,
he always added at least one touch of imagination.

The detective or mystery tale, in which this last book is an
experiment, involves in itself a problem for the artist, as odd as any
of the problems which it puts to the policeman. A detective story
might well be in a special sense a spiritual tragedy; since it is a
story in which even the moral sympathies may be in doubt. A police
romance is almost the only romance in which the hero may turn out to
be the villain, or the villain to be the hero. We know that Mr.
Osbaldistone’s business has not been betrayed by his son Frank, though
possibly by his nephew Rashleigh. We are quite sure that Colonel
Newcome’s company has not been conspired against by his son Clive,
though possibly by his nephew Barnes. But there is a stage in a story
like “The Moonstone,” when we are meant to suspect Franklin Blake the
hero, as he is suspected by Rachel Verinder the heroine; there is a
stage in Mr. Bentley’s “Trent’s Last Case” when the figure of Mr.
Marlowe is as sinister as the figure of Mr. Manderson. The obvious
result of this technical trick is to make it impossible, or at least
unfair, to comment, not only on the plot, but even on the characters;
since each of the characters should be an unknown quantity. The
Italians say that translation is treason; and here at least is a case
where criticism is treason. I have too great a love or lust for the
_roman policier_ to spoil sport in so unsportsmanlike a fashion; but I
cannot forbear to comment on the ingenious inspiration by which in
this story, one of the characters contrives to remain really an
unknown quantity, by a trick of verbal evasion, which he himself
defends, half convincingly, as a scruple of verbal veracity. That is
the quality of Bernard Capes’ romances that remains in my own memory;
a quality, as it were, too subtle for its own subject. Men may well go
back to find the poems thus embedded in his prose.

                                                  G. K. Chesterton.




 [DEDICATION.]

Mrs Bernard Capes wishes to express her gratitude to Mr Chesterton for
his appreciative introduction to her husband’s last work, and to Mr A.
K. Cook for his invaluable assistance in preparing it for the press.

Winchester




 CONTENTS.

 Introduction
 I. My First Meeting with the Baron
 II. My Second Meeting with the Baron
 III. Wildshott
 IV. I Am Interested in the Baron
 V. The Baron Continues to Interest Me
 VI. “That Thunders in the Index”
 VII. The Baron Visits the Scene of the Crime
 VIII. An Entr’acte
 IX. The Inquest
 X. Afterwards
 XI. The Baron Drives
 XII. The Baron Walks
 XIII. Accumulating Evidence
 XIV. The Explosion
 XV. The Face on the Wall
 XVI. The Baron Finds a Champion
 XVII. And Audrey
 XVIII. The Baron Returns
 XIX. The Dark Horse
 XX. The Baron Lays His Cards on the Table
 XXI. A Last Word
 Footnotes.




 THE SKELETON KEY

 CHAPTER I.
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH THE BARON

 (_From the late Mr. Bickerdike’s “Apologia”_[1])

Some few years ago, in the month of September, I happened to be
kicking my heels in Paris, awaiting the arrival there of my friend
Hugo Kennett. We had both been due from the south, I from Vaucluse
and Kennett from the Riviera, and the arrangement had been that we
should meet together for a week in the capital before returning home.
_Enfants perdus!_ Kennett was never anything but unpunctual, and he
failed to turn up to time, or anywhere near it, at the rendezvous. I
was a trifle hipped, as I had come to the end of my circular notes,
and had rather looked to him to help me through with a passing
difficulty; but there was nothing for it but to wait philosophically
on, and to get, pending his appearance, what enjoyment I could out of
life. It was not very much. The Parisian may be a saving man, but
Paris is no city to save in. It is surprising how dull an empty purse
can make it. It had come to this after two days, either that I must
shift my quarters from the Ritz into cheaper lodgings, or abandon my
engagement altogether and go back alone.

One afternoon, aimless and thirsty, I turned into the Café l’Univers
in the Place du Palais Royal, and sat down at one of the little tables
under the awning where was a vacant chair. This is a busy spot, upon
which many streets converge, and one may rest there idly and study an
infinite variety of human types. There was a man seated not far from
me, against the glass side of the verandah whose occupation caught my
attention. He was making very rapidly in a minute-book pencil notes of
all the conspicuous ladies’ hats that passed him. It was extraordinary
to observe the speed and fidelity with which he secured his
transcripts. A few, apparently random, sweeps of the pencil in his
thin nervous fingers, and there, in the flitting of a figure, was some
unconscious head ravished of its most individual idea. It reminded me
of the “wig-snatching” of the eighteenth century; yet I could not but
admire the dexterity of the thief, as, sitting behind him, I followed
his skilful movements.

“A clever dog that, sir,” said a throaty voice beside me.

It came from a near neighbour, whom I had not much observed until
now--a large-faced, clean-shaved gentleman of a very full body and a
comfortable complacent expression. He was dressed in a baggy
light-grey suit, wore a loose Panama hat on his head, and smelt,
pleasantly and cleanly, of snuff. On the table before him stood a
tumbler of grenadine and soda stuffed with lumps of ice, and with a
couple of straws sticking from it.

“Most,” I answered. “What would you take him to be?”

“Eh?” said the stranger. “Without prejudice, now, a milliner’s
pander--will that do?”

I thought it an admissible term, and said so, adding, “or a
fashion-plate artist?”

“Surely,” replied the stranger. “A distinction without a difference,
is it not?”

No more was said for the moment, while I sat covertly studying the
speaker. He reminded me a little of the portraits of Thiers, only
without the spectacles. A placid, well-nourished benevolence had been
his prominent feature, were it not somehow for the qualification of
the eyes. Those were as perpetually alert, busy, observant, as the
rest was seemingly supine. They appeared to “peck” for interests among
the moving throng, as a hen pecks for scattered grain.

“Wonderful hands,” he said suddenly, coming back to the artist. “Do
you notice anything characteristic about them now?”

“No,” I said. “What?”

He did not answer, but applied for a refreshing moment or two to his
grenadine.

“Ah!” he said, leaning back again, with a relishing motion of his
lips. “A comfortable seat and a cool glass, and we have here the best
café-chantant in the world.”

“Well, it suits me,” I agreed--“to pass the time.”

“Ah!” he said, “your friend is unpunctual?”

I yawned inexcusably.

“He always is. What would you think of an appointment, sir, three days
overdue?”

“I should think of it with philosophy, having the Ritz cuisine and
cellar to fall back upon.”

I turned to him interestedly, my hands behind my head.

“You have?”

“No, but you,” said he.

I was a bit puzzled and amused; but curious, too.

“You are not staying at the Ritz?” I asked. He shook his head
good-humouredly. “Then how do you know I am?”

“There is not much mystery in that,” said he. “You happened to be
standing on the steps when I happened to be passing. The rest you have
admitted.”

“And among all these”--I waved my hand comprehensively--“you could
remember me from that one glimpse?”

He laughed, but again ignored my question.

“How did you know,” I persisted, “that my friend was a man?”

“You yourself,” said he, “supplied the gender.”

“But not in the first instance.”

“No, not in the first instance,” he agreed, and said no more.

“You don’t like the Ritz?” I asked after an interval, just to talk and
be talked to. I was horribly bored, that is the truth, by my own
society; and here was at least a compatriot to share some of its
burden with me.

“I never said so,” he answered. “But I confess it is too sumptuous for
me. I lodge at the Hôtel Montesquieu, if you would know.”

“Where is that, may I ask?”

“It is in the Rue Montesquieu, but a step from here.”

“I should like, if you don’t mind, to hear something of it. I am at
the Ritz, true, but in a furiously economical mood.”

“Certainly,” he answered, with perfect good-humour. “It would not
suit all people; it does not even figure in the guides; but for those
of an unexacting disposition--well it might serve--to pass the time.
You can have your good bedroom there and your adequate _petit
déjeuner_--nothing more. For meals, there is a Duval’s across the road,
or, more particularly, the Restaurant au Bœuf à la mode in the Rue de
Valois close by, where such delicacies may be tasted as _sole à la
Russe_, or _noisettes d’agneau à la Réjane_. Try it.”

I was half thinking I would, and wondering how I could express my
sense of obligation to my new acquaintance, when a sudden crash and
scream in the road brought us both to our feet. The hat-sketcher,
having finished with his task and gone, had stepped thoughtlessly off
the kerb right under the shafts of a passing cab.

For a tranquil body, my companion showed the most curious excitement
over the accident. Uttering broken exclamations of reproof and
concern, he hurried down, as fast as his bulk would permit him, to the
scene of the mishap, about which a crowd was already swarming. I could
see little of what followed; but, the press after a time dispersing, I
made shift to inquire of an onlooker as to the nature of the victim’s
hurt, and was told that the man had been taken off to the St. Antoine
Hospital in the very cab which had run him down, my friend of the
Panama hat accompanying him. And so there for the moment our
acquaintance ended.

But we met again at the Montesquieu--whither I had actually
transferred my quarters in the interval--a day or two later. He came
down into the hall just as I had entered it from the street, and
greeted me and pressed my arm paternally.

“But this will not do at all,” he said. “This will not do at all,” and
summoned the hôtelier from his little dark room off the passage.

“I am sorry, Monsieur,” he said, when the bowing goodman appeared, “to
find such scant respect paid to my recommendation. If this is the
treatment accorded to my patronage, I must convey it elsewhere.”

The proprietor was quite amazed, shocked, confounded. What had he
done to merit this severe castigation from M. Le Sage? If M. le Baron
would but condescend to particularise his offence, the resources of
his establishment were at M. le Baron’s command to remedy it.

“That is easily specified,” was M. le Baron’s answer. “I sing the
modest praises of your hotel to my friend, Mr. Bickerdike; on the
strength of these my friend decides to give you a trial. What is the
result? You put him into number 19, where the aspect is gloomy, where
the paper peels off the wall; where to my certain suspicion there are
bugs.”

I laughed, not quite liking this appropriation, but the landlord was
profuse in his apologies. Not for a moment had he guessed that I was a
friend of M. le Baron Le Sage; I had not informed him of the fact; it
was a mere question of expediency: Number 19 happened to be the only
room vacant at the moment; but since--in short, I was transferred
straightway to a very good _appartement_ in the front, where were
ample space and comfort, and a powder-closet to poke my head into if I
wished, and invoke the ghosts of the dead lords of Montesquieu, whose
Hôtel this had once been.

Now I should have been grateful for M. le Baron’s friendly offices,
and I hope I was, but with a dash of reservation. I did not know what
to make of him, in fact, and the uncertainty kept me on my guard. Nor
was I the more reassured upon his commiserating me presently on the
fact of my friend, Mr. Kennett, not having yet turned up. So he had
found out my friend’s name? That might be possible through an inquiry
at the Ritz, where Kennett was expected. But why was he interested in
inquiring at all? Then, as to my own name; he might have ascertained
that, of course, of my present landlord--a pardonable curiosity, only
somehow coloured by his unauthorised examination of my room. What had
he wanted in there in the first instance? On the other hand, he was
evidently held, for whatever reason, in high respect by the
proprietor; and if the reason itself was to seek for me, I had
certainly no grounds for suspecting its adequate claims. He _appeared_
to be a man of education and some distinction, not to speak of his
title, which, however, might be territorial and of small account. And,
assuredly, he did not seem French, unless by deliberate adoption. His
speech, appearance, habit of mind, were all as English as the shoes he
wore on his feet.

I asked him, on that day of his service to me, how it had gone with
the poor hat-sketcher whom, I had understood, he had accompanied to
the hospital. He seemed to regard my question as if for a moment it
puzzled him, and then he answered:--

“O, the artist! O, yes, to be sure. I accompanied him, did I? Yes,
yes. An old house this, Mr. Bickerdike--a fragment of old Paris. If
there is nothing more I can do for you, I think I will be going.”

So it always was on the few further occasions which brought us
together. He could not, or would not, answer a direct question
directly; he seemed to love secrecy and evasion for their own sake,
and for the opportunity they gave him for springing some valueless
surprises on the unsuspecting. Well, he should not have his little
vanity for me. There is nothing so tiresome as that habit of
meaningless reserve, of hoarding information which there can be no
possible objection to disseminating; but some people seem to have it.
I responded by asking no more questions of M. le Baron, and I only
hope my incuriosity disappointed him. The next day, or the day after,
Kennett turned up, and I left the Montesquieu for my original
quarters.




 CHAPTER II.
 MY SECOND MEETING WITH THE BARON

 (_From Mr. Bickerdike’s Manuscript_)

It might have been somewhere near the anniversary of my first
meeting with the Baron when I came upon him again--in London this
time. I had been lunching at Simpson’s in the Strand, and, my meal
finished, had gone up into the smoking-room for a coffee and liqueur.
This is a famous corner of a famous caravansary, being dedicate, like
no other smoking-room I know, to the service of the most ancient and
most royal game of chess, many of whose leading professors forgather
therein, as it were, in an informal club, for the mixed purposes of
sociability and play. There one may watch astounding mental conflicts
which leave one’s brain in a whirl; or, if one prefers it, may oneself
join issue in a duel, whether for glory or profit; or, better still,
like Gargantua, having a friend for adversary, for the mere serious
diversion of the game, and for its capacity for giving a rare
meditative flavour to one’s tobacco. The room, too, for such a haunt
of gravity, is a cheerful room, with its large window overlooking the
Strand, and one may spend a postprandial hour there very agreeably,
and eke very gainfully if one takes an idler’s interest in other
people’s problems. That I may confess I do, wherefore Simpson’s is, or
was, a fairly frequent resort of mine.

Now, on this occasion I had hardly entered the room when my eyes fell
on the figure of M. le Baron sitting profoundly absorbed over a game
with one in whom I recognised a leading master in the craft. I knew
my friend at once, as how could I fail to, for he sat before me in
every detail the stranger of the Café l’Univers--bland, roomy,
self-possessed, and unchanged as to his garb. I would not venture to
break into his preoccupation, but passed him by and took a convenient
seat in the window.

“Stothard has found his match,” remarked a casual acquaintance who
lounged near me, nodding his head towards the pair.

“Who is it?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“I know his name,” was the answer. “Le Sage, an out-of-pocket French
Baron; but that’s all.”

“O! out of pocket, is he?”

“I’ve no right to say it, perhaps, but I only surmise--he’ll play you
for a half-crown at any time, if you’re rash enough to venture. He
plays a wonderful game.”

“Is he new to the place?”

“O, no! I’ve seen him here frequently, though at long intervals.”

“Well, I think I’ll go and watch them.”

Their table was against the wall, opposite the window. One or two
devotees were already established behind the players, mutely following
the moves. I took up a position near Le Sage, but out of his range of
vision. He had never, to my knowledge, so much as raised his face
since I entered the room; intent on his game, he appeared oblivious to
all about him. Yet the moment I came to a stand, his voice, and only
his voice, accosted me,--

“Mr. Bickerdike? How do you do, sir?”

I confess I was startled. After all, there _was_ something
disconcerting about this surprise trick of his. It was just a
practised pose, of course; still, one could not help feeling, and
resenting in it, that impression of the preternatural it was no doubt
his desire to convey. I responded, with some commonplace
acknowledgment, to the back of his head, and no more was spoken for
the moment. Almost immediately the game came to an end. M. le Baron
sat back in his chair with a “My mate, I think?”--a claim in which his
opponent acquiesced. Half the pieces were still on the board, but that
made no difference. Your supreme chess expert will foresee, at a
certain point in the contest, all the possible moves to come or to be
countered, and will accept without dispute the inevitable issue. The
great man Stothard was beaten and acknowledged it.

M. le Baron rose from his seat, and turned on me with a beaming face.

“Happy to renew your acquaintance, Mr. Bickerdike,” he said. “You are
a student of the game?”

“Not much better, I think,” I answered. “I am still in my novitiate.”

“You would not care----?”

“O, no, I thank you! I’m not gull enough to invite my own plucking.”

It was a verbal stumble rather than a designed impertinence on my
part, and I winced over my own rudeness the moment it was uttered, the
more so for the composure with which it was received.

“No, that would be foolish, indeed,” said M. le Baron.

I floundered in a silly attempt to right myself.

“I mean--I only meant I’m just a rotten muff at the game, while
you----” I stuck, at a loss.

“While I,” he said with a smile, “have just, like David, brought down
the giant Stothard with a lucky shot.”

He touched my arm in token of the larger tolerance; and, in some
confusion, I made a movement as of invitation, towards the table in
the window.

“I am obliged,” he said, “but I have this moment recalled an
appointment.” “So,” I thought, “in inventing a pretext for declining,
he administers a gentle rebuke to my cubbishness.” “You found your
friend, I hope,” he asked, “when you left the Montesquieu on that
occasion?”

“Kennett? Yes,” I answered; and added, moved to some expiatory
frankness, “It is odd, by the bye, M. le Baron, that our second
meeting should associate itself with the same friend. I am going down
to-morrow, as it happens, on a visit to his people.”

“No,” he said: “really? That is odd, indeed.”

He shook hands with me, and left the room. Standing at the window a
moment after, I saw him going Citywards along the Strand, looking,
with his short thick legs and tailed morning coat, for all the world
like a fat jaunty turtle on its way to Birch’s.

Now I fancied I _had_ seen the last of the man; but I was curiously
mistaken. When I arrived at Waterloo Station the next day, there,
rather to my stupefaction, he stood as if awaiting me, and at the
barrier--_my_ barrier--leading to the platform for _my_ train, the two
o’clock Bournemouth express. We passed through almost together.

“Hullo!” I said. “Going south?”

He nodded genially. “I thought, with your permission, we might be
travelling companions.”

“With pleasure, of course. But I go no further than the first
stop--Winton.”

“Nor I.”

“O, indeed? A delectable old city. You are putting up there?”

“No, O no! My destination, like yours, is Wildshott.”

“Wildshott! You know the Kennetts then?”

“I know Sir Calvin. His son, your friend, I have never met. It is odd,
as you said, that our visits should coincide.”

“But you must have known yesterday--if you did not know in Paris. Why
in the name of goodness did you not----” I began; and came to a rather
petulant stop. This secrecy was simply intolerable. One was pulled up
by it at every turn.

“Did I not?” he said blandly. “No, now I come to think of it---- O,
Louis, is that an empty compartment? Put the rugs in, then, and the
papers.”

He addressed a little vivid-eyed French valet, who stood awaiting his
coming at an opened door of a carriage. Le Sage climbed in with a
breathing effort, and I followed sulkily. Who on earth, or what on
earth, was the man? Nothing more nor less than what he appeared to be,
he might have protested. After all, not himself, but common gossip,
had charged him with necessitousness. He might be as rich as Crœsus,
for all I knew or he was likely to say. Neediness was not wont to
valet it, though insolvency very well might. But he was a friend of
Sir Calvin, a most exclusive old Bashaw; and, again, he was said to
play chess for half-crowns. O! it was no good worrying: I should find
out all about him at Wildshott. With a grunt of resignation I sank
into the cushions, and resolutely put the problem from me.

But the fellow was an engaging comrade for a journey--I will admit so
much. He was observant, amusing, he had a fund of good tales at his
command, and his voice, without unpleasant stress, was softly
penetrative. Adapted to anecdote, moreover, his habit of secrecy, of
non-committal, made for a sort of ghostly humour which was as
titillating as it was elusive; and the faint aroma of snuff, which was
never absent from him, seemed somehow the appropriate atmosphere for
such airy quibbles. It surrounded him like an aura--not disagreeably;
was associated with him at all times--as one associates certain
perfumes with certain women--a particular snuff, Macuba I think it is
called, a very delicate brand. So he is always recalled to me, himself
and his rappee inseparable.




 CHAPTER III.
 WILDSHOTT

Wildshott, the Hampshire seat of the Kennetts, stands off the
Winton-Sarum road, at a distance of some six miles from the former,
and some three and a half from the sporting town of Longbridge, on the
way to the latter. The house is lonely situated in wild but beautiful
country, lying as it does in the trough of the great downs whose
summits hereabouts command some of the most spacious views in the
County. A mile north-east, footing a gentle incline, shelters the
village of Leighway; less than a mile away, in a hollow of the main
road, stands a wayside tavern called the Bit and Halter; and, with
these two exceptions, no nearer neighbour has Wildshott than the tiny
Red Deer inn, which perches on a high lift of the downs a mile and a
half distant, rising north.

The stately, wrought-iron gates of Wildshott open from the main road.
Thence a drive of considerable extent reaches to the house, which is a
rectangular red-brick Jacobean structure, with stone string-courses
and a fine porch, having a great shell over it. There are good stables
contiguous, and the grounds about are ample and well timbered--almost
too well timbered, it might be thought by some people, since the
closeness of the foliage gives an effect of gloom and solemnity to a
building which, amid freer surroundings, should have nothing but grace
and frankness to recommend it. But settled as it is in the wash of the
hills, with their moisture draining down upon it, growth and greenness
have become a tradition of its life, and as such not to be
irreverently handled by succeeding generations of Kennetts.

All down the west boundary of the upper estate--which, to its
northernmost limit, breaks upon that bare hill on whose summit, at
closer range now, the little Red Deer inn sits solitary--runs a wide
fringe of beech-wood, which is continued to the high road, and thence,
on the further side, dispersed among the miscellaneous plantations
which are there situated. The highway itself roughly bisects the
property--the best of whose grass and arable lands are contained in
the southern division--and can be reached from the house, if one
likes, through the long beech thicket by way of a narrow path, which,
entering near the stables, runs as far as the containing hedge, in
which, at some fifty yards from the main entrance, is a private
wicket, leading down by a couple of steps to the road. This path is
known, through some superstitious association, as the Bishop’s Walk,
and is little used at any time, the fact that it offers a short cut
from the house to the lower estate being regarded, perhaps, as
inadequate compensation for its solitariness, its dankness, and the
glooms of the packed foliage through which it penetrates. Opposite the
wicket, across the road, an ordinary bar-gate gives upon a
corresponding track, driven through the thick of a dense coppice,
which, at a depth of some two hundred feet, ends in the open fields.
It is useful to bear in mind these local features, in view of the
event which came presently to give them a tragic notoriety.

At Winton a wagonette met the two gentlemen, and they were landed at
Wildshott soon after four o’clock. Bickerdike was interested to
discover that they were the only guests. He was not surprised for
himself, since he and Hugo Kennett were on terms of unceremonial
intimacy. He _did_ wonder a little what qualities he and the Baron
could be thought to possess in common that they should have been
chosen together for so exclusive an invitation. But no doubt it was
pure accident; and in any case there was his friend to explain. He was
a bit down in the mouth, was Hugo--for any reason, or no reason, or
the devil of a reason; never mind what--and old Viv was always a tower
of strength to him in his moods--hence old Viv’s citation to come and
“buck” his friend, and incidentally to enjoy a few days’ shooting,
which accounted for one half of the coincidence. Old Viv accepted his
part philosophically; it was not the first time he had been called
upon to play it with this up and down young officer, whose temporal
senior he was by some six years, and whose elder, in all questions of
sapience and self-sufficiency, he might have been by fifty. He did not
ask what was the matter, but he said “all right,” as if all right were
all reassurance, and gave a little nod to settle the matter. He had a
well-looking, rather judicial face, clean shaven, a prim mouth, a
somewhat naked head for a man of thirty, and he wore eyeglasses on a
neatly turned nose, with a considerable prominence of the organ of
eventuality above it. The complacent bachelor was writ plain in his
every line. And then he inquired regarding the Baron.

“O! I know very little about him,” was young Kennett’s answer. “I
believe the governor picked him up in Paris originally, but how or
where I can’t say. He’s a marvel at chess; and you remember that’s the
old man’s obsession. They’re at it eternally while he’s down here.”

“This isn’t his first visit then?”

“No, I believe not; but it’s the first time I’ve seen him. I’m quoting
Audrey for the chess. Why, what’s the matter? Is anything wrong with
him?”

“There you go, you rabbit! Who said anything was wrong with him? I’ve
met him before, that’s all.”

“Have you? Where?”

“Why, in Paris. You remember the Montesquieu, and my French Baron?”

“I remember there _was_ a Baron. I don’t think you ever told me his
name.”

“Well, it was Le Sage, and this is the man.”

“Is it? That’s rather queer.”

“What is?”

“The coincidence of your meeting again like this.”

“O, as to that, coincidence, you know, is only queer till you have
traced back its clues and found it inevitable.”

“Well, that’s true. You can trace it in his case to the governor’s
being down with the gout again, and confined to the house, and wanting
something and somebody to distract him.”

“There you are, you see. He thought of chess, and thought of this Le
Sage, and wrote up to him on the chance. Your father probably knows
more about his movements than we do. So we’re both accounted for. No,
what _is_ queer to me is the man’s confounded habit of secrecy. Why
didn’t he say, when I met him in Paris, that the friend I was waiting
for was known to him? Why didn’t he admit yesterday, admit until we
actually met on the platform to-day, that we were bound for the same
place? I hate a stupidly reticent man.”

Kennett laughed, and then frowned, and turned away to chalk his cue.
The two men were in the billiard-room, playing a hundred up before
dinner.

“Well,” he said, stooping to a losing hazard, “I hope a fellow may be
a good fellow, and yet not tell all that’s in him.”

“Of course he may,” answered Bickerdike. “Le Sage, I’m sure, is a very
good fellow, a very decent old boy, and rare company when he
chooses--I can answer for that. But there’s a difference between
telling all that’s in one and not telling anything.”

“Well, perhaps he thinks,” said the other impatiently, “that if he
once opened the sluice he’d drain the dammed river. Do let him alone
and attend to the game.”

Bickerdike responded, unruffled. He had found his friend in a
curiously touchy state--irritable, and nervous, and moody. He had
known him to be so before, though never, perhaps, so conspicuously.
Hugo was temperamentally high-strung, and always subject to
alternations of excitement and despondence; but he had not yet
exhibited so unbalanced a temper as he seemed inclined to display on
this occasion. He was wild, reckless, dejected, but seldom normal,
appearing possessed by a spirit which in turns exalted or depressed
him. What was wrong with the boy? His friend, covertly pondering the
handsome young figure, found sufficient solution in the commonplace.
He was in one of his nervous phases, that was all. They would afflict
men subject to them at any odd time, and without apparent provocation.
It was one of the mysteries of our organic being--a question of misfit
somewhere between spirit and matter. No one looking at the young
soldier would have thought him anything but a typical example of his
kind--constitutionally flawless, mentally insensitive. He belonged to
a crack regiment, and was popular in it; was tall, shapely-built,
attractive, with a rather girlish complexion and umber-gold hair--a
ladies’ man, a pattern military man, everything nice. And yet that
demon of nerve worked in him to his perfection’s undoing. Perhaps it
was the prick of conscience, like a shifting grit in one’s shoe, now
here, now there, now gone--for the boy had quite fine impulses for a
spoilt boy, a spoilt child of Fortune--and spoilt, like Byron by his
mother, in the ruinous way. His father, the General, alternately
indulgent and tyrannical, was the worst of parents for him; he had
lost his mother long ago; his one sister, flippant,
independent--undervalued, it may be, and conscious of it--offered no
adequate substitute for that departed influence. And so the good in
Hugo was to his own credit, and stood perhaps for more than it might
have in another man.

His father, Sir Calvin--he had got his K.C.B., by the way, after
Tel-el-Kebir in ’82, in reward for some signal feat of arms, and at
the expense of his trigger-finger--was as proud as sin of his comely
lad, and blind to all faults in him which did not turn upon opposition
to himself. He designed great connexions for the young man, and
humoured his own selfishness in the prospect. He was a martinet of
fifty-five, with a fine surface polish and a heart of teak beneath it,
a patrician of the Claudian breed, irascible, much subject to gout for
his past misdeeds, and an ardent devotee of the game of chess, at
which he could hold his own with some of the professed masters. It was
that devotion which had brought him fortuitously acquainted with the
French Baron--a sort of technical friendship, it might be called--and
which had procured the latter an occasional invitation of late to
Wildshott. Le Sage came for chess, but he proved very welcome for
himself. There was a sort of soothing tolerance about him, the
well-informed urbanity of a polished man of the world, which was as
good as a lenitive to the splenetic invalid. But nobody, unless it
were Sir Calvin himself, appeared to know anything concerning him;
whether he were rich or indigent; what, if dependent on his wits, he
did for a living; what was the meaning or value of his title in an
Englishman, if English he were; whether, in short, he were a shady
Baron of the _chevalier d’industrie_ order, or a reputable Baron, with
only some eccentricities to mark him out from the common. One of
these, not necessarily questionable, was his sly incommunicativeness;
another was his fondness for half-crowns. He invariably, whether with
Sir Calvin or others, made that stake, no more and no less, a
condition of his playing at all, and for the most part he carried it
off. Vivian Bickerdike soon learned all that there was to be told
about him, and he was puzzled and interested--“intrigued,” as they
would say in the horrible modern phrase. But being a young man of
caution, in addition to great native curiosity, he kept his wits
active, and his suspicions, if he had any, close.

The game proceeded--badly enough on the part of Hugo, who was
generally a skilful player. He fouled or missed so many shots that his
form presently became a scandal. “Phew!” whistled his opponent, after
a peculiarly villainous attempt; “what’s gone wrong with you?”

The young man laughed vexedly; then, in a sudden transition to
violence, threw his cue from him so that it clattered on the floor.

“I can’t play for nuts,” he said. “You must get somebody else.”

“Hugh,” said his friend, after a moment or two of silence, “there’s
something weighing on your mind.”

“Is there?” cried the other jeeringly. “I wonder.”

“What is it? You needn’t tell me.”

“O! thank you for that. I tell you what, Viv: I dreamed last night I
was sitting on a barrel of gunpowder and smoking a cigarette, and the
sparks dropped all about. Didn’t I? That’s what I feel, anyhow.
Nerves, all nerves, my boy. O! shut up that long mug, and talk of
something else. I told you I was off colour when I wrote.”

“I know you did, and I came down.”

“Good man. You’ll be in at the kill. There’s going to be a most
infernal explosion--pyrotechnics galore. Or isn’t there? Never mind.”

He appeared to Bickerdike to be in an extraordinary state, verging on
the hysterical. But no more was said, and in a few moments they parted
to dress for dinner.

M. le Baron, coming up to his room about the same time and for the
same purpose, was witness of a little stage comedy, which, being for
all his bulk a light treader, he surprised. The actors were his valet
Louis and an under-housemaid, the latter of whom was at the moment
depositing a can of hot water in the washing basin. He saw the lithe,
susceptible little Gascon steal from his task of laying ready his
master’s dress clothes, saw him stalk his quarry like a cat, pounce,
enfold the jimp waist, heard the startled squeal that followed, a
smack like a hundred kisses, a spitting _sacré chien!_ from the
discomfited assailant, as he staggered back with a face of fury and a
hand held to his ear, and, seeing, stood to await the upshot, a
questioning smile upon his lips. Both parties realised his presence at
the same instant, and checked the issue of hot words which was
beginning to join between them. The girl, giving a defiant toss to her
chin, hurried past Le Sage and out of the room; M. Louis Cabanis
returned to his business with the expression of a robbed wild-cat.

Le Sage said nothing until he was being presently helped on with his
coat, and then suddenly challenging the valet, eye to eye, he nodded,
and congratulated him:--

“That is better, my friend. It is not logical, you know, for the
injurer to nurse the grievance.”

The Gascon looked at his master gravely.

“Will you tell me who is the injurer, Monsieur?”

“Surely,” answered Le Sage, “it cannot be she, in these first few
hours of your acquaintance?”

“But if she had appeared to encourage me, Monsieur?”

The Baron laughed.

“The only appearance to be trusted in a pretty woman, Louis, is her
prettiness.”

“Monsieur, is her ravishing loveliness.”

“Well, well, Louis, as you will. Only bear it no grudge.”

He turned away from a parting keen scrutiny of the dark, handsome
face, and left the room, softly carolling. The little episode had
amused rather than surprised him. Certainly it had seemed to point, in
respect of time, to a quite record enslavement on the Gascon’s part;
but then the provocation to that passionate impressionable nature! For
the girl had been really amazingly pretty, with that cast of feature,
that Hebe-like beauty of hair and eye and complexion about whose
fascination no two properly constituted minds could disagree. She was
a domestic servant--and she was a young morning goddess, fresh from
the unsullied dawn of Nature, a Psyche, a butterfly, a Cressid like
enough. “If I were younger,” thought Le Sage, “even I!” and he
carolled as he went down to dinner.




 CHAPTER IV.
 I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

I seemed conscious somehow, at dinner on the night of our arrival,
of a feeling of electricity in the domestic atmosphere. Having no
clue, such as the later course of events came to supply, to its
origin, I diagnosed it, simply and vulgarly, as the vibrations from a
family jar, of the sort to which even the most dignified and
well-regulated households cannot always rise superior. Sir Calvin
himself, exacting and domineering, could never at the best of times be
considered a tactful autocrat: a prey to his hereditary foe, he
appeared often to go out of his way to be thought detestable. When
such was the case, his habit of harping on grievances could become an
exquisite torture, his propensity for persisting in the unwelcome the
more he saw it resented a pure malignancy. On this occasion, observing
an obvious inclination in his son, my friend, to silence and
self-obliteration, he took pleasure in drawing him out, with something
of the savagery, I could not but think, of a fisherman who wrenches an
obstinate hermit crab from its borrowed shell for bait. I saw how poor
Hugh was rasped and goaded, but could do no more than take upon
myself, where I could, the burden of response. Believing at the time
that this aggravated fencing between the two was a part, or
consequence, of some trouble, the serious nature of which might or
might not have been implied in my friend’s recent outburst, I made and
could make but an inefficient second; yet, even had I known, as I came
to know, that my surmise was wrong, and that the father’s persistence
was due to nothing but a perverse devil of teasing, it is not clear to
me how else I could have helped the situation. I could not have
hauled my host by the ears, as I should have liked to do, over his own
dining-room table.

But the sense of atmospheric friction was not confined to these two.
In some extraordinary way it communicated itself to the servants, the
very butler, our young hostess. I had not seen Audrey at tea, and now
greeted her for the first time. She came in late, to find us, by the
Bashaw’s directions, already seated, and to suffer a sharp reprimand
for her unpunctuality which brought a flush to her young rebellious
cheek. Nor did I better things, so far as she was concerned, by an
ostentatious display of attentions; she seemed to resent my sympathy
even more than the harshness which had provoked it. It is the way of
cats and women to tear the hand that would release them from the trap.

The dinner, in short, began very uncomfortably, with an irascible
host, a moody son, and an offended daughter, the butler taking his cue
from his master, and the servants from the butler. They waited
nervously, and got in one another’s way, only the more flurriedly for
their whispered harrying by the exacerbated Cleghorn. I was surprised,
I confess, by the change in that usually immaculate dignitary. The
very type and pattern of his kind, correct, imperturbable, pontifical,
I had never before known Cleghorn to manifest the least sign of human
emotion, unless it were when Mr. Yockney, the curate from Leighway,
had mixed water with his _Château Margaux_ 1907. Now, preposterous as
it appeared, I could have believed the great man had been crying. His
globous eyes, his mottled cheeks, bore suspicious evidences of the
fact; his very side-whiskers looked limp. Surely the domestic storm,
if such, which had rocked the house of Kennett must have been
demoralising to a hitherto unknown degree.

It was the Baron who redeemed the situation, winning harmony out of
discord. He had, to do him justice, the reconciliatory faculty,
chiefly, I think, because he could always find, as one should, a
bright interest in differences of opinion instead of a subject for
contention. I never knew him, then or thereafter, to be ruffled by
opposition or contradiction. He accepted them placidly, as
constituting possible rectifications of his own argumentative
frontiers.

His opportunity came with a growl of Sir Calvin’s over the lateness of
the evening papers. The General had been particularly curious to hear
the result of a local trial, known as the Antonferry Bank robbery
case, which was just reaching its conclusion, and it chafed him to be
kept waiting. Le Sage asked for information, and the supplying it
smoothed the troubled waters. There is a relish for most people in
being the first to announce news, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

The case, as stated, was remarkable for nothing but the skill with
which it had been unravelled. A Bank in Antonferry--a considerable
market town lying some eight or nine miles north of Wildshott--had
been robbed, and the question was by whom. That question had been
answered in the upshot by an astute Scotland Yard detective, who, in
spite of the obloquy thrown upon his kind by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, had
shown considerable sagacity in tracing the crime to its source in the
Bank’s own manager--a startling _dénouement_. The accused, on the
strength of this expert’s evidence, had been committed to stand his
trial at Winton Quarter Sessions, and it was the issue of that event
which was interesting Sir Calvin. He had had some dealings with the
Bank in question, and had even been brought into some personal contact
with the delinquent official.

“It seems,” he ended, “that there can be no doubt about the verdict.
That Ridgway is a clever dog.”

“The detective?” queried Le Sage; and the General nodded.

“The sort I should be sorry, if a thief, to have laid on my trail.”

“But supposing you left none?” questioned the Baron, with a smile.

“Ah!” said Sir Calvin, having nothing better to reply.

“I have often thought,” said Le Sage, “that if crime realised its own
opportunities, there would be no use for detectives at all.”

“Eh? Why not?” asked his host.

“Because there would be nothing to find out,” answered the Baron.

“How d’ye mean? Nothing to find out?”

“Nothing whatever. My idea, now, of a successful crime is not a crime
which baffles its investigators, but a crime which does not appear as
a crime at all.”

“Instance, M. le Baron,” I ventured to put in.

“Why,” said Le Sage good-humouredly, “a dozen may well present
themselves to a man of average inventive intelligence. Direct murder,
for example--how crude! when a hundred means offer themselves for
procuring plausible ends to life. Tetanus germs and an iron tack;
ptomaine, that toxicologic mystery, so easy to introduce; the edge of
a cliff and a windy day; a frayed picture cord; a loosened nut or two;
a scrap of soap left on the boards by an opened window--given
adroitness, timeliness, a little nerve, would not any of these do?”

Audrey drew back in her chair, with a flushed little laugh.

“What a diabolical list!” she said, and made a face as if she had
taken medicine.

“Yes,” said I. “But after all, Baron, this is no more than
generalising.”

“You want a concrete instance?” he answered, beaming on me. “What do
you say then to a swimmer being awarded the Humane Society’s
certificate for attempting to save the life of a man whom he had
really drowned? It needs only a little imagination to fill in the
details.”

“That is good,” I admitted. “We put one to your credit.”

“Again,” said the Baron, “I offer the case of a senseless young
spendthrift. He gambles, he drinks, his life is a bad life from the
insurance company’s point of view. When hard pressed, he is lavish
with his I.O.U.’s; when flush of money he redeems them; he pays up, he
throws the slips into the fire with hardly a glance at them. One who
holds a good deal of his paper observes this, and acts accordingly. He
preserves the original securities, and on redemption, offers forgeries
in their place, which he is careful to see destroyed. On the death of
the young man he puts in his claim on his estate on the strength of
the indisputable original documents. Thus he is paid twice over,
without a possibility of any suspicion arising.”

“But one of the forged I.O.U.’s,” said Audrey, “had been carried up
the chimney without catching a light, and had been blown through the
open window of the young man’s family lawyer, who had kept it as a
surprise.”

There was a shout of laughter, in which the Baron joined.

“Bravo, Audrey!” cried her brother. “What about your average inventive
intelligence, Baron?”

“I said, specifically, a man’s,” pleaded Le Sage. “Women, fortunately
for us, are not eligible for the detective force.”

Audrey laughed at the compliment, but I think she liked the Baron for
his pleasant good-nature. About that, for my part, I kept an open
mind. Had he really invented these cases on the spur of the moment, or
could it be possible that they touched on some experience of his own?
One could not say, of course; but one could bear the point in mind.

The dinner went cheerfully enough after this _jeu d’esprit_ of
Audrey’s. That had even roused Hugh from his glooms, and to quite
exaggerated effect. He became suddenly talkative where he had been
taciturn, and almost boisterously communicative where he had been
reserved. But I noticed that he drank a good deal, and detected
curiously, as I thought, a hint of desperation under his feverish
gaiety.

In all this, it may be said, I was appropriating to myself, without
authority, a sort of watching brief on behalf of a purely chimerical
client. I had no real justification for suspecting the Baron, either
on his own account, or in association with my friend’s apparent state;
it was presumptive that Sir Calvin knew at least as much about the man
as I did; still, I thought, so long as I preserved my attitude of what
I may call sympathetic vigilance _à la sourdine_, nothing could be
lost, and something even might be gained. The common atmosphere,
perhaps, affected me with the others, and inclined me to an unusually
observant mood; a mood, it may be, prone to attach an over-importance
to trifles. Thus, I could find food for it in an incident so ordinary
as the following. There was a certain picture on the wall, a genre
painting, to which Le Sage, sitting opposite it, referred in some
connexion. Sir Calvin, replying, remarked that so-and-so had declared
one of the figures to be out of proportion--too short or too tall, I
forget which--and, in order to measure the discrepancy, interposed,
after the manner of the connoisseur, a finger between his eye and the
subject. There was nothing out of the common in the action, save only
that the finger he raised was the second finger of his right hand, the
first having been shot away in some long-past engagement; but it
appeared, quite obviously to me, to arrest in a curious way the
attention of the visitor. He forgot what he was saying at the moment,
his speech tailed off, he sat gazing, as if suddenly fascinated, not
at the picture but at the finger. The next instant he had caught up
and continued what he was observing; but the minute incident left me
wondering. It had signified, I was sure, no sudden realization of the
disfigurement, since that must have been long known to him, but of
some association with it accidentally suggested. That, in that single
moment, was my very definite impression--I could hardly have explained
why at the time; but there it was. And I may say now, in my own
justification, that my instinct, or my intuition, was not at fault.

Once or twice later I seemed to catch Le Sage manœuvring to procure a
repetition of the action, but without full success; and soon
afterwards the two men fell upon the ever-absorbing subject of chess,
and lapsed into vigorous discussion over the relative merits of
certain openings, such as the Scotch, the Giuoco Piano, the Ruy Lopez
attack, Philidor’s defence, and the various gambits; to wit, the
Queen’s, the Allgaier, the Evans, the Muzio, the Sicilian, and God
knows what else. They did not favour the drawing-room for long after
dinner, but went off to the library to put their theories into
practice, leaving Hugh and me alone with the lady. I cannot admit that
I found the subsequent evening exhilarating. Hugh appeared already to
be suffering a relapse from his artificial high spirits, and again
disturbed me by the capricious oddity of his behaviour. He and his
sister bickered, after their wont, a good deal, and once or twice the
girl was brought by him near the verge of angry tears, I thought. I
never could quite make out Audrey. She seemed to me a young woman of
good impulses, but one who was for ever on the defensive against
imagined criticism, and inclined therefore, in a spirit of pure
perversity, to turn her worst side outermost. Yet she was a really
pretty girl, a tall stalk of maidenhood, nineteen, and athletically
modern in the taking sense, and had no reason but to value herself and
her attractions at the plain truth they represented. The trouble was
that she was underestimated, and I think proudly conscious of the
fact. With a father like Sir Calvin, it was, and must be, Hugo first
and the rest nowhere. He bullied every one, but there was no
under-suggestion of jealous proprietorship in his bullying of Audrey
as there was in his adoring bullying of his son. He did not care
whether _she_ felt it or not; with the other it was like a lover’s
temper, wooing by chastisement. Nor was Hugo, perhaps, a very
sympathetic brother. He could enjoy teasing, like his father, and feel
a mischievous pleasure in seeing “the galled jade wince.” Audrey, I
believe, would have worshipped him had he let her--I had observed how
gratified she looked at dinner over his commendation of her jest--but
he held her aloof between condescension and contempt, and the two had
never been real companions. The long-motherless girl was lonely, I
think, and it was rather pathetic; still, she did not always go the
right way about it to avoid unfavourable criticism.

We were out for a day in the stubble on the morrow, and I made it an
excuse for going to bed betimes. The trial of the Bank-Manager, I may
mention by the way, had ended in a verdict of guilty, and a sentence
of three years penal servitude. I found, and took the paper in to Sir
Calvin before going upstairs. The servants never dared to disturb him
at his game.




 CHAPTER V.
 THE BARON CONTINUES TO INTEREST ME

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

We were three guns--Hugo, myself, and a young local landowner, Sir
Francis Orsden, of Audley, whom I had met before and liked. He was a
good fellow, though considered effeminate by a sporting squirearchy;
but that I could never see. Our shooting lay over the lower estate,
from which the harvest had lately been carried, and we went out by the
main gates, meeting the head gamekeeper, Hanson, with the dogs and a
couple of boy beaters, in the road. Our plan was to work the stubble
as far as possible in a south-westerly direction, making for Asholt
Copse and Hanson’s cottage, where Audrey and the Baron were to meet
us, driving over in a pony trap with the lunch.

I perceived early enough that my chance of a day’s sport wholly
untrammelled by scruples of anxiety was destined to be a remote one.
Hugh, it had been plain to me from the first, had not mastered with
the new day his mood of the night before. His nervous irritability
seemed to me even to have increased, and the truth was he was a trying
companion. I had already made him some tentative bid for his
confidence, but without result; I would not be the one again to
proffer my sympathy uninvited. After all, he had asked for it, and was
the one to broach the subject, if he wanted it broached. Probably--I
knew him--the matter was no great matter--some disappointment or
monetary difficulty which his fancy exaggerated. He hated trouble of
any sort, and was quite capable of summoning a friend from a sick-bed
to salve some petty grievance for him. So I left to him to explain, if
and when he should think proper.

It was a grey quiet day, chill, but without wind; the sort of day on
which the echo of a shot might sound pretty deceptively from a
distance--a point to be remembered. I was stationed on the left,
Orsden on the extreme right, and Hugh divided us. His shooting was
wild to a degree; he appeared to fire into the thick of the coveys
without aim or judgment, and hardly a bird fell to his gun. Hanson,
who kept close behind his young master, turned to me once or twice,
when the lie of the ground brought us adjacent, and shook his head in
a surprised, mournful way. Once Hugh and I came together at a gap in a
hedge. I had negotiated it without difficulty, and my friend was
following, when something caught my eye. I snatched at his gun barrel,
directing it between us, and on the instant the charge exploded.

“Good God, man!” I exclaimed. “_You_?”

Like the veriest Cockney greenhorn, he had been pulling his piece
after him by the muzzle, and the almost certain consequence had
followed. I stood staring at him palely, and for the moment his face
was distorted.

“Hugh!” I said stiffly, “you didn’t mean it?”

He broke into a mirthless laugh.

“Mean it, you mug! Of course I didn’t mean it. Why should I?”

“I don’t know. Mug for saving your life, anyhow!”

“I’ll remember it, Vivian. I wish I owed you something better worth
the paying.”

“That’s infernal nonsense, of course. Now, look here; what’s it all
about?”

“All what?”

“You know.”

“I’ll tell you by-and-by, Viv--on my honour, I will.”

“Will you? Hadn’t you better go back in the meantime and leave your
gun with Hanson?”

“No; don’t be a fool, or make me seem one. I’ll go more careful after
this; I promise you on my sacred word I will. There, get on.”

I was not satisfied; but Hanson coming up at the moment to see what
the shot had meant, I could have no more to say, and prepared silently
to resume my place.

“It’s all right, George,” said his master, “only a snap at a rabbit.”

Had he meant to kill himself? If he had, what trouble so much more
tragic than any I had conceived must lie at the root of the matter!
But I would not dare to believe it; it had been merely another
manifestation of the reckless mood to which his spoilt temper could
only too easily succumb. Nevertheless, I felt agitated and disturbed,
and still, in spite of his promise, apprehensive of some ugly
business.

He shot better after this episode, however, and thereby brought some
reassurance to my mind. Hanson, that astute gamekeeper, led us well
and profitably, and the morning reached its grateful end in that
worthy’s little parlour in the cottage in the copse, with its cases of
stuffed birds and vermin, and its table delectably laid with such
appetising provender as ham, tongue, and a noble pigeon pie, with
bottled beer, syphons, and old whisky to supply the welcome moisture.
Audrey presided, and the Baron, who had somehow won her liking, and
whom she had brought with her in the governess cart, made a cheerful
addition to the company. He was brightly interested in our morning’s
sport, as he seemed to be generally in anything and everything; but
even here one could never make out from his manner whether his
questions arose from knowledge or ignorance in essential matters. They
were not, I suppose--in conformity with his principle of
_inwardness_--intended to betray; but the whole thing was to my mind
ridiculous, like rattling the coppers in one’s pocket to affect
affluence. One might have gathered, for all proof to the contrary,
that his acquaintance with modern sporting weapons was expert; yet he
never directly admitted that he had used them, or was to be drawn into
any relation of his personal experiences in their connexion. The
subject of poachers was one on which, I remember, he exhibited a
particular curiosity, asking many questions as to their methods,
habits, and the measures taken to counter their dangerous activities.
It was Orsden who mostly answered him, in that high eager voice of
his, with just the suspicion of a stammer in it, which I could never
hear without somehow being tickled. Hugh took no trouble to appear
interested in the matter. He was again, I noticed with uneasiness,
preoccupied with his own moody reflections, and was drinking far too
much whisky and soda.

The Baron asked as if for information; yet it struck me that his
inquiries often suggested the knowledge they purported to seek, as
thus:--

“Might it not be possible, now, that among the quiet, respectable men
of the village, who attend to their business, drink in moderation, go
punctually to church, and are well thought of by the local policeman,
the real expert poacher is mostly to be found--the man who makes a
study and a business of his craft, and whose depredations, conducted
on scientific and meteorological lines, should cause far more steady
havoc among the preserves than that wrought by the organised gangs, or
by the unprofessional loafer--‘moucher,’ I think you call him?”

Or thus: “This country now, with its mixture of downlands and low
woods, and the variety of opportunities they afford, should be, one
might imagine, peculiarly suited to the operations of these gentry?”

Or thus: “I wonder if your shrewd poacher makes much use of a gun,
unless perhaps on a foggy morning, when the sound of the report would
be muffled? He should be a trapper, I think, _par excellence_”--and
other proffered hypotheses, seeming to show an even more intimate
acquaintance with the minutiæ of the subject, such as the springes,
nets, ferrets, and tricks of snaring common to the trade--a list which
set Orsden cackling after a time.

“On my word, Baron,” said he, “if it wasn’t for your innocent way of
p-putting things, I could almost suspect you of being a poacher
yourself.”

Le Sage laughed.

“Of other men’s game, in books, perhaps,” he said.

“Well,” said Orsden, “you’re right so far, that one of the closest and
cunningest poachers I ever heard of was a Leighway hedge-carpenter
called Cleaver, and he was as quiet, sober, civil-spoken a chap as one
could meet; pious, too, and reasonable, though a bit of a village
politician, with views of his own on labour. Yet it came out that for
years he’d been making quite a handsome income out of Audley and its
neighbours--a sort of D-Deacon Brodie, you know. Not one of their
preserves, though; you’re at fault there, Baron. Your local man knows
better than to put his head into the noose. His dealings are with the
casual outsiders, so far as pheasants are concerned. When he takes a
gun, it’s mostly to the birds; and of course he shoots them sitting.”

“Brute!” said Audrey.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the young Baronet. “He’s a tradesman,
isn’t he, not a sportsman, and tradesmen don’t give law.”

“How did he escape so long?” asked the girl.

“Why, you see,” answered Orsden, “you can’t arrest a man on suspicion
of game-stealing with nothing about him to prove it. He must be caught
in the act; and if one-third of his business lies in poaching, quite
two-thirds lie in the art of avoiding suspicion. Fellows like Cleaver
are cleverer hypocrites than they are trappers--J-Joseph Surfaces in
corduroys.”

“Do you find,” said Le Sage, “men of his kind much prone to violence?”

“Not usually,” replied Orsden, “but they may be on occasion, if
suddenly discovered at work with a gun in their hands. It’s exposure
or murder then, you see; ruin or safety, with no known reason for any
one suspecting them. I expect many poor innocent d-devils were hanged
in the old days for the sins of such vermin.”

“Yes,” said Le Sage, “a shot-gun can be a great riddler.”

One or two of us cackled dutifully over the _jeu de mot_. Could we
have guessed what tragic application it would receive before the day
was out, we might have appreciated it better, perhaps.

I shall not soon forget that afternoon. It began with Audrey and the
Baron driving off together for a jaunt in the little cart. They were
very merry, and our young Baronet would have liked, I think, to join
them. I had noticed Le Sage looking excessively sly during lunch over
what he thought, no doubt, was an exclusive discovery of his regarding
these two. But he was wrong. They were good friends, and that was
all; and, as to the young lady’s heart, I had just as much reason as
Orsden--which was none whatever--for claiming a particular share in
its interest. Any thought of preference would have been rank
presumption in either of us, and the wish, I am sure, was founded upon
no such supposition. It was merely that with Hugh in his present mood,
the prospect of spending further hours in his company was not an
exhilarating one.

He was flushed, and lethargic, and very difficult to move to further
efforts when the meal was over; but we got him out at last and went to
work. It did not last long with him. It must have been somewhere short
of three o’clock that he shouldered his gun and came plodding to me
across the stubble.

“Look here, Viv,” he said, “I’m going home. Make my apologies to
Orsden, and keep it up with him; but I’m no good, and I’ve had enough
of it.”

He turned instantly with the word, giving a short laugh over the
meaning expressed obviously enough, I dare say, in my eyes, and began
to stride away.

“No,” he called, “I’m not going to shoot myself, and I’m not going to
let you make an ass of me. So long!”

I had to let him go. Any further obstruction from me, and I knew that
his temper would have gone to pieces. I gave his message to Orsden,
and we two continued the shoot without him. But it was a joyless
business, and we were not very long in making an end of it. We parted
in the road--Orsden for the Bit and Halter and the turning to
Leighway, and I for the gates of Wildshott. It was near five o’clock,
and a grey still evening. As I passed the stables, a white-faced groom
came hurrying to stop me with a piece of staggering news. One of the
maids, he said, had been found murdered, shot dead, that afternoon in
the Bishop’s Walk.




 CHAPTER VI.
 “THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX”

Le Sage, in the course of a pleasant little drive with Audrey, asked
innumerable questions and answered none. This idiosyncrasy of his
greatly amused the young lady, who was by disposition frankly
outspoken, and whose habit it never was to consider in conversation
whether she committed herself or any one else. Truth with her was at
least a state of nature--though it might sometimes have worn with
greater credit to itself a little more trimming--and states of nature
are relatively pardonable in the young. A child who sees no indecorum
in nakedness can hardly be expected to clothe Truth.

“This Sir Francis,” asked the Baron, “he is an old friend of yours?”

“O, yes!” said Audrey; “quite an old friend.”

“And favourite?”

“Well, he seems one of us, you see. Don’t you like him yourself?”

“I suppose he and your brother are on intimate terms?”

“We are all on intimate terms; Hugh and Frank no more than Frank and
I.”

“And no less, perhaps; or perhaps not quite so much?”

“O, yes they are! What makes you think so?”

“Not quite so intimate, I will put it, as your brother and Mr.
Bickerdike?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Hugh is great friends with them both.”

“Tell me, now--which would you rather he were most intimate with?”

“How can it matter to me?”

“You have a preference, I expect.”

“I certainly have; but that doesn’t affect the question. It was Hugh
you were speaking of, not me.”

“Shall I give your preference? It is for Mr. Bickerdike.”

“Well guessed, Baron. Am I to take it as a compliment to my good
taste?”

“He is a superior man.”

“Isn’t he? And always wishes one to know it, too.”

“Aha! Then the Baronet is the man?”

“How absurd you are! Do you value your friends by preference? Nobody
is the _man_, as you call it. Because I don’t much like Mr.
Bickerdike, it doesn’t follow that I particularly like anybody else.”

“Why don’t you like him?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because he likes himself too much.”

“Conceited, is he?”

“Not quite that: a first-rate prig I should call him--always wanting
to appear cleverer than he really is.”

“Isn’t he clever?”

“O, yes! Clever after a sort; but frightfully obtuse, too. I wouldn’t
trust him with a secret. He’s so cocksure of himself that he’d always
be liable to give it away with his blessing. But I oughtn’t to speak
like that of him. He’s a great friend of Hugh’s, and he does really
like to help people, I think, only it must be in his own way and not
theirs. Do _you_ like him?”

“I am rather surprised that he and your brother should be on such
close terms of friendship.”

“Are you? Why?”

“Is not Mr. Hugo, now, without offence, a rather passionate,
self-willed young gentleman?”

“Very, I should say.”

“Balance and instability--there you are.”

“You mean they are not at all alike. I should have thought that was
the best reason in the world for their chumming. One of oneself is
quite enough for most people. Fancy the horror of being a Siamese
twin!”

“Is that why you and Sir Francis are on such good terms--because there
is nothing in common between you?”

“Isn’t there? What, for instance.”

“He presents himself to me, from what little I have seen and heard of
him, as a rather gentle, spiritual young man, with a taste for books
and the fine arts, and a preference in sport, if any, for angling. _In
aere piscari_.”

“What does that mean?”

“I should fancy him a fisherman, by choice, of ideas rather than of
streams.”

“And me, I suppose, a cross-tempered, empty-headed country hoyden, who
thinks of nothing but dogs and stables?” But she laughed as she bent
to Le Sage, looking mockingly into his smiling eyes. “M. le Baron,
what a character!”

“It is not of my giving,” he said. “A spirited Diana should have been
_my_ antithesis.”

“But why should you contrast us at all? Frank and I are not going to
live together.”

“You are bearing in mind, I hope,” he said, “that I promised your
father to be back at Wildshott by half-past two?”

“For chess again? What can you find in it?” She pulled up the pony,
and, halting in the road, determinedly faced her companion. “Do you
know you never answer anything that’s asked of you? Why don’t you?”

“I didn’t know I didn’t.”

“Don’t fib, sir.”

He chuckled aloud. “You are a frank young lady.” He took her slim left
hand between his cushiony palms, and patted it paternally. “When a
suspected man is arrested, my dear, the first warning he receives from
the police is that anything he says may be used in evidence against
him. Supposing we apply that rule to common converse? Then at least
we shall avoid self-committal.”

“But are we all, every one of us, suspected people?”

“One never knows what may lie in a question. For instance, you ask me
what can I find in chess. Very seeming innocent; but, O, the
suspicion it may embody!”

“What suspicion?”

“Why, that chess represents my poor wits, and that I live upon them.”

Audrey tinkled with laughter. “I never guessed I was such a serpent.
But I am afraid I was only thinking of the dullness of it. To sit for
ten minutes looking at a board, and then to move a pawn a single inch
on it! Ugh! By that time I should be screaming for ‘Grab.’”

“Let us play ‘Grab’ one night,” said the Baron gaily.

They drove on by the pleasant lanes, and presently came out into the
High road near Wildshott. As they passed the wicket in the hedge, a
gleam of something, quickly seen and quickly withdrawn among the green
beyond, caught Le Sage’s attention. He laid a hand on the reins,
suggesting a halt.

“Was that a private way to the house?” he asked. “--there, where the
little gate stood?”

Audrey told him yes. That it was called the Bishop’s Walk, and that he
might lift the latch and go by it if he pleased. She twinkled as she
spoke, and the Baron looked roguish.

“Inquisitive?” said he; “I admit it, if it is the word for an
inquiring mind. But not conceited, I hope. I am going to explore.”

He was out in the road, to the dancing relief of the governess-cart
springs, and waved _au revoir_ to his companion. She nodded, and drove
on, while he turned to go back to the wicket. He hummed as he went, a
little philandering French air, droning the words in a soft, throaty
way, and was still recalling them as he mounted the two steps from the
road, opened the gate, and passed through. His eyes, moving in an
immobile face, were busy all the time. “_Dites moi, belle
enchanteresse_,” he sang, “_Qui donc vous a donné vos yeux?_” just
above his breath and suddenly, at a few yards in, eighteen or twenty,
swerved from the close narrow track and stepped behind a beech-trunk.
And there was a girl hiding from view, her eyes wide, her forefinger
crooked to her lip.

“_Vos doux yeux, si pleins de tendresse_,” hummed M. le Baron, and
nodded humorously. “I thought I recognised you from the road.”

She did not flush up or exclaim “_Me!_” or exhibit any of the
offensive-defensive pertness of the ordinary housemaid surprised out
of bounds. She just stood looking at the intruder, a wonder on her
rosy lips, and Le Sage for his part returned her scrutiny at his
leisure. His impression of the night before he found more than
confirmed by daylight: she was a very Arcadian nymph, with a
sweet-briar complexion and eyes and hair of thyme and honey; shapely
as a doe, ineffably pretty. He wondered less than ever over Louis’s
infatuation.

And what was she doing here? Her head was bare; a light waterproof
veiled her official livery: it might be concluded without much
circumspection that a tryst was in the air.

“I am sorry,” said M. le Baron. “I did not come to be a spoil-sport. I
ought, perhaps, to have pretended to see nothing and pass by. But that
rudeness of my man last night sticks in my mind, and it occurred to me
to apologise for him.”

She laughed, with a tiny toss of her head. “Thank you, sir, but I can
look after myself.”

“So I perceive,” he said. “You tone very well with the trees. No eyes,
except perhaps the favoured ones, could possibly guess you were here.”

“Except yours, sir,” she said, with just a tiny sauce of irony.

“Except mine, of course,” he agreed; and left her to wonder why, if
she would.

“Well,” he said, after a smiling moment, “that was an unpardonable act
of Louis’s, only don’t visit it further on his head. I have wanted to
warn you, and here is my opportunity. He comes of a hot-blooded race,
and there’s no knowing----. But you can look after yourself; I will
take your word for it.”

He believed she could, though she made no further answer to assure
him; and, with a nod, he went on his way, taking up again the little
murmured burden of his song: “_Yeux, yeux,--Astres divins tombés des
cieux_.” “O, eyes!” he said. “Sweetest eyes were even seen! From what
heaven did you fall to flower in a housemaid’s face!” There was
something suggestive about the girl, more than her surprising
beauty--a “towniness,” a hint, both in speech and manner, of some
shrewd quality which was not of the soil. “When Lamia takes to country
service,” thought the Baron, “let more than rustic hearts look to
their locks!” With whom, he wondered, could be her assignation? What
if, after all, it were with Louis himself? Would that surprise him?
Perhaps not. Cabanis was a handsome and compelling fellow, and women,
like the Lord, could chasten whom they loved. But he devoutly hoped it
was not so; he desired no amorous complications in his train; and,
disturbed by the thought, he inquired for his valet the moment he
reached the house--only to learn that the man had gone out some time
before and had not yet returned. Somewhat disquieted, Le Sage entered
the hall, where he was met by his host.

“Ah, Baron!” hailed Sir Calvin. “Punctuality itself! Go into my
study, will you, and I’ll join you in a moment.”

The study was a comfortable room on the ground floor, with a large bay
window overlooking the gardens. Here the table for chess was set
ready, with a brace of high easy chairs and, handily contiguous, a
smoker’s cabinet. There were trophies of the chase and some good
sporting pictures on the walls, against them a couple of mahogany
bookcases containing well-bound editions of Alken, Surtees, and
others, and, let into an alcove of that one of them which included the
fireplace, a substantial safe. Le Sage knew it was there, though it
was hidden from sight behind a shallow curtain; and now, as he moved
humming about the room, his hands behind his back, his eyes
scrutinising a picture or two while he awaited his host’s coming, he
gravitated gradually toward its place of concealment. Arrived there,
he lifted very delicately, and still humming, the hem of the curtain,
just exposed the keyhole, and bent to examine it with singular
intentness. But a moment later, when the General entered, he was
contemplating a coaching print by Flavell over the mantelpiece.

“Indifferent art, I suppose you will admit,” he said. “But there is
something picturesquely direct about these old Sporting pieces.”

“Well, they suit me,” answered Sir Calvin, “because I understand them.
Red’s red and blue’s blue to me, and if any artist tells me they are
not, I’ve nothing to answer the fellow but that he’s a damned liar.”

Le Sage laughed--“What is the colour of a black eye, then?”--and they
settled down to their game. The General was a good player; all the
best of his mental qualifications--which were otherwise of the
standard common among retired officers of an overbearing, obstinate,
and undiscerning disposition--were displayed in his astute engineering
of his small forces. He was a tactical Napoleon in miniature when it
came to chess; he seemed to acquire then a reason and a dignity
inconspicuous in his dealings with living people. The chess-men could
not misrepresent him; their movements were his movements, and their
successes or failures his. If he lost, he had no one but himself he
could possibly blame, and his understanding of that condition seemed
to bring out the best in him. He was never choleric over the fortunes
of the game. For the rest, he was not a wise man, or an amenable man,
or anything but a typical despot of his class, having an inordinate
pride of family, which owed less than it should have to any moral
credit he had brought it in the past. In person he was a leanish,
clean-built soldier of fifty-five, with bullying eyebrows and a thick
blunt moustache of a grizzled blonde.

He and the Baron were very fond of devising problems, which they would
send up for solution to the _Morning Post_. They set to elaborating a
tough one now, a very difficult changed-mate two-mover, which kept
them absorbed and occupied over the board for a considerable time.
Indeed, a full hour and a half had passed before they had settled it
to their satisfaction; and then the Baron, taking a refreshing pinch
of Macuba, rose to his feet.

“That is it, my friend,” said he; “an economical B.P. at K. Knight 4,
and the thing is done.”

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a quarter past four as he spoke,
and on the tinkling reverberation of its one stroke some one opened
the door. It was Hugo Kennett: the young man’s face was ghastly; his
hands shook; he came into the room hurriedly, as if overweighted with
some dreadful piece of intelligence.

“Good God, Hughie!” exclaimed his father, and rose, staring at the
boy, his eternal cigarette caught between his teeth.

The young soldier made an effort to speak; his breath fluttered
audibly in him like the leaf of a ventilator; his nerve seemed for the
moment gone utterly beyond his control.

“Steady, sir!” commanded the General; and his masterful tone had its
visible effect. “Now,” he said, after a rallying pause. “What is it?”

Hugh swallowed once or twice, and answered. Le Sage, observant of
him, could see what immense force he had to put upon himself to do so.

“The Bishop’s Walk! Can you come at once, sir? There’s been what looks
like a dreadful murder there.”

Sir Calvin never so much as blenched or exclaimed. One might at least
admire in him the self-possessed soldier, not to be rattled by any
sudden call upon his nerve.

“Murder!” he said. “Whose murder?”

The young man’s lips quivered; he looked physically sick.

“It’s one of the maids, sir. I saw her; I came upon her myself. I had
forgotten my gun, and went back to fetch it, and there she was lying
on her face, and----” He put his hands before his own face and
shuddered horribly.

“Look here,” said the father, “you must pull yourself together. This
won’t do at all. Baron, get me my hunting flask, if you’ll be so good.
It’s in the right-hand top drawer of my desk.”

He poured into the cup, with an unshaking hand, a full half gill of
liqueur brandy, and made his son drink it down. It wrought a measure
of effect; a tinge of colour came to Hugh’s cheek; his hurried
respirations steadied.

“Now,” said Sir Calvin, “try to be coherent. What do you mean by
forgetting your gun?”

“I mean, sir,”--he looked down; his features still twitched
spasmodically, “I mean--it was like this. I was no good at the shoot,
and I left it and came back by myself--came back by the Bishop’s Walk.
Just a little way inside, I stopped to light a cigarette, and rested
my gun against a tree and forgot it; but an hour later I remembered
that I had left it there, and went back to fetch it, and saw--O, it
was ghastly!”

“Steady, man! Was the girl there when you first entered the path?”

Le Sage listened for an answer in the affirmative, and could hardly
hear it when it came.

“And you stopped to light a cigarette?” The father looked keenly into
the son’s face. “You haven’t yet told us what girl, Hughie.”

The good liqueur was working. The young fellow lifted his head, a new
passionate expression in his eyes:--

“It was Annie, sir--that good-looking housemaid. You wouldn’t wonder
over my horror if you saw. He must have fired at short range, the
damned villain, and when she was turned from him. There is a hole in
her back that one could put--ah, I can’t tell you!”

M. le Baron exclaimed, “That would have been,” said he, speaking for
the first time, “between three and four, when you discovered the
body?”

“Just now,” answered Hugh, addressing his father. “I have come
straight from it. They are waiting for you, sir, to know what to do.”

“It was done with your gun? Is that the assumption?” suggested the
Baron.

“I don’t know,” replied the young man feverishly, again not to the
questioner. “I suppose so; I dare say. Both barrels are discharged,
and one I am pretty sure I left loaded. Are you coming, sir?”

Sir Calvin, frowning a stiff moment, moved to acquiesce. They all went
out together. At the entrance to the track a group of frightened
maid-servants stood white-lipped and whispering, afraid to penetrate
farther. One or two grooms and a couple of gardeners had already gone
in, and were awaiting about the body the arrival of their master. It
lay, face downwards, close beside the beech trunk behind which the
living girl had sought to hide herself from Le Sage. That stood at a
point in the winding path some twenty-five yards from the wicket, and
was nowhere remotely visible from the road. She might have been making
her way back to the house when she was fired on and shattered. It was
a pitiful, ugly sight; but death must have been instantaneous--that
was one comfort. Le Sage made the most of it to himself, though he was
really distressed and moved. “Poor eyes!” he thought, “_si pleins de
tendresse_: but an hour ago so beautiful, and now quenched in death.
So this was the tryst you kept! Why, it can hardly be cold yet about
your heart.”

Sir Calvin, stern and wrath, gave brief directions. A shutter was to
be brought, a doctor fetched from Longbridge by one servant, the
county police informed by another. He asked a short question or
two--one of his son. Was this the tree against which he had left his
gun leaning? Hugh answered no, while Le Sage listened. He had left it,
he said, propped against a smaller trunk, four or five yards nearer
the gate. He had had to pass the body to recover it, and had then
taken it home, and thrust it into the gun-room as he had hurried by to
raise an alarm. He spoke with extreme agitation, averting his eyes
from the dead girl; and, indeed, it was a sight to move a tougher
heart than his. Sir Calvin’s next question was to the group at large.
It was to ask if any one knew of any enemy the unfortunate victim had
raised against herself, or of any possible reason for the attack. But
no one knew or guessed, or, if he felt a suspicion, would have dared
to formulate it. It would have been too risky a venture at this stage
of the affair. Their master looked from face to face, and grunted and
spoke a warning word. If that were so, he said, let them avoid all
loose discussion of the matter until the police had taken it in hand.
It might, after all, prove no murder, but only an accident, the
perpetrator of which, terrified by the deed which he had unwittingly
committed, might be keeping silence only until assured that he could
tell the truth without danger to himself. Le Sage ventured to applaud
that suggestion, turning to Hugh to ask him if he did not think it a
quite reasonable one. But the young man refused to consider it; he was
very excited; it was murder, he said, gross, palpable, open, and it
was mere criminal sophistry to pretend to account for it on any other
theory. His father steadied him once more with a word, and the three
turned to go back to the house together as they had come, leaving the
men to follow with the body. On issuing from the copse they found the
little group of frightened sobbing women reinforced by Cleghorn. The
butler wore a cloth cap and a light overcoat. His face was the colour
of veal, and his lower jaw hung in a foolish incapable way.

“Ha, Cleghorn!” said his master. “This is a bad business.”

“It’s knocked me all of a heap, sir,” answered the man. His voice
shook and wheezed. “I’ve only this moment heard of it, sir.”

Hugo hung behind as they entered the hall. His father, steady as a
rock, marched on to his study, and was followed by M. le Baron. The
latter shut the door upon them.

“An ugly business,” he said.

“A cursed interruption to our game,” damned the General. He was
greatly incensed. That such a vulgar scandal should have come to
pollute the sacred preserves of Wildshott seemed to him the incredible
outrage.

“What am I to do?” he said. “What is the infernal procedure? There
will have to be an inquest, I suppose, and then----”

“And then to indict the murderer,” said Le Sage, answering the pause.

“You think it _is_ a murder?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know; I suppose so. It may prove a devil of a business to
find out. Ought we to have a detective?”

“These provincial police are excellent men, but their normal
training----. Still, it may prove a quite simple affair.”

“I have a feeling somehow that it won’t. I’d better write up to
Scotland Yard.”

“If you’re decided on it, why not apply? there is, or was, in the
neighbourhood the very man.”

“You mean that fellow Ridgway? By Jove, yes--a clever dog! I’ll motor
into Winton first thing to-morrow, and find out. In the
meantime--where’s Hugo?”

“I think I saw him go upstairs. I’ll have him sent to you, if you’ll
allow me. I was wanting to write some letters.”

He retreated, with a smile which left his face the moment he was
outside. Finding a servant, he gave her Sir Calvin’s message, and then
put a question of his own:--

“Do you know where my man is, my dear?”

“I think Mr. Cabanis is out, sir,” answered the girl. Her cheeks were
still mottled with the fright of things. “He went out some time ago.”

“O, to be sure! About three o’clock, wasn’t it?”

“Earlier than that, sir--directly after dinner in the servants’ hall.”

Her manner appeared a little odd, disordered; but that might have been
due to the shock they had all received.

“And he has not yet returned?” said the Baron cheerily. “Well, send
him to me the moment he comes in, if you will be so good.” And he
moved to mount the stairs, humming as he went. But again, though his
song was light, he turned a dark face to the wall.




 CHAPTER VII.
 THE BARON VISITS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

I confess that the man’s communication, coming on the top of my
concern for my friend, fairly, in the first moment of it, took me
aghast. The state in which I had found Hugh, that disquieting
business of the gun, his insistence on sticking to his weapon--it was
inevitable that my mind should instinctively leap to some association
between these and a catastrophe so seemingly their corollary in its
nature and instrumentality. It was odd, but ever since my meeting with
the Baron in Simpson’s smoking-room a sense as of some vague fatality
had seemed to overcloud me. It was formless, impalpable, but it was
there, like that unnerving atmosphere which precedes, according to
people who know, an earthquake. But that first sick alarm was not long
in dissipating itself in me in a fine scorn. The thing, to my
recovered judgment, was simply incredible. Apart from the brutal
clumsiness, the unthinking recklessness of such a deed, what was there
in my knowledge of my friend to justify such a horrible assumption?
Spoilt he was, selfish he was, no doubt, but always the last man in
the world to incline to personal violence. A sensitiveness to pain,
almost morbid, on account of himself or others, was rather his
characteristic; an excess of affection, his charm and his weakness. He
could not have done it, of course, for whatever mad reason.

But, as I came to learn the particulars of the tragedy, so far as they
were known or guessed, another suspicion, less base though still
discomposing, _would_ occur to me. The poor girl, according to all
accounts, had been a great beauty; and it appeared probable--from
evidence freely volunteered by M. le Baron, who had passed through
the copse some short time before the murder must have been committed,
and who had seen and spoken with her there--that she was keeping an
assignation. With whom? Who could as yet say? But I had too good
reason to dread my friend’s susceptibility where the adorable feminine
was concerned, and I could not forget how the time of the assignation,
if such it were, had coincided with that of his leaving the shoot.
“This,” I thought, “may be as unjustified an assumption as the other;
still, for the sake of argument, admit it, and one thing at least is
accounted for. With such a wire-strung nature as Hugh’s, the
consciousness of a guilty intrigue would be quite enough to induce in
him that state of recklessness and excitability which had so bothered
and perplexed me.”

It was still, in fact, perplexing me at dinner on the night of the
murder, when, after the withdrawal of Audrey and the servants, much
discussion of the tragic subject took place, and later, when he and I
were for a brief time alone together in the billiard-room. It was not
so much that he was not shocked and horrified with the rest of us, as
that his emotions were expressed in such an extraordinary form. They
made him lament one moment, and go into half hysterical laughter the
next; now utter raging imprecations against the dastard capable of so
damnable a crime, now assert that jealousy was probably responsible
for it, and that no man who had not felt jealousy had a right to sit
in judgment on a passion which was after all not so much a passion as
a demoniac possession. Then he would declare that, the thing being
done, it was no good making oneself miserable about it, and rally me
on my long face, which, he said, made him feel worse than a hundred
murders. The horror of the thing had no doubt unhinged him, coupled
with the knowledge that it was through his own carelessness in leaving
a loaded gun within reach of temptation that the deed had been made
possible. With such a nature as his, that consciousness must have
counted for much, though still, and at the same time, I could never
quite rid myself of the feeling that, beneath all his expressed
remorse and pity, a strange little note of--I will not call it relief,
but ease from some long haunting oppression, made itself faintly
audible. However, remembering his late promise of confidence to me, I
determined to abide in patience its coming, only wondering in the
interval what had instigated his remarks on jealousy, and if it were
possible that they had been inspired by any suspicion of the criminal,
and if so, on what personal grounds. He came down quite quiet to
breakfast the next morning, and from that time onwards was his own
rational hospitable self.

Early in the afternoon of that day Sir Calvin came back with the
detective, Sergeant Ridgway, in tow. The latter had been retrieved, by
good luck, from Antonferry, whither, after the trial, he had returned
from Winton to settle for the lodgings he had occupied during the Bank
investigations. The General had been fortunate in encountering him at
the very moment of his departure, and had at once secured from him,
contingent on the receipt of official authority, a promise to
undertake the case. A prepaid telegram to Scotland Yard had brought
the necessary sanction, and within a couple of hours of its despatch
the Sergeant was safe at Wildshott, and already engaged over the
preliminaries of the business. Personally, I admit, I felt greatly
relieved by his appearance on the scene. A notable writer has somewhat
humoured a belief in the fatuity of the professional detective; but
that was with a view, I think, to exalt his own incomparable amateur
rather than to discredit a singularly capable body of men, having a
pretty persistent record of success to justify their being.
Intellectuality was at least not absent by inference from this face.
When I saw it, I felt that the case was in safe hands, and that
henceforth we might, one and all of us, cast whatever burden of
personal responsibility had unwittingly overhung our spirits. The
Sergeant was installed in the house, and lost no time in getting to
work in a reassuring, business-like way. He went in the first instance
to view the body, which had been laid on a table in the gun-room, with
a policeman--one of two brought over the night before by the Chief
Constable, a friend of Sir Calvin’s, in person--to watch the door.
Thereafter, established in the General’s study, he briefly reviewed
the evidence of such witnesses as could supply any topical information
that bore on the crime--Le Sage, to wit, Hugo himself, Mrs. Bingley
the housekeeper, and one or two of the servants, including the men
who, on their young master’s alarmed summons, had first entered the
copse to remove the body.

I was present during the whole, I think, of this examination, and for
the following reason. It happened that I and the Baron, on his way to
the study, met in the hall, when he attacked me, I thought rather
impertinently, on a question of punctilio.

“Do you not think, my friend,” he said, “that under the circumstances
it would be decent of us to offer to terminate our visit? Supposing we
both, here and now, address Sir Calvin on the subject?”

I was very much annoyed. “Baron,” I said, “I am not accustomed to seek
advice in matters of conduct, and I certainly shall not do as you
propose. Apart from the question of deserting my friend in a crisis,
I think that any suggestion of our leaving now would look like a
desire to avoid inquiry--which I, for my part, am far from wishing to
do--and would bear a very bad complexion. You can act as you like; but
it is my intention to see this thing through.”

“O, very well!” he said. “Then I will speak for myself alone.”

Why should he wish to escape? All my instinctive suspicion of him
reawakened on the moment; and I wondered. True, he could not himself
have perpetrated the crime; Hugo’s evidence would not permit of such a
supposition; but could he not be somehow implicated in it as
instigator or abettor? I determined then and there to keep a very
close observation on M. le Baron.

We entered the room together, since I would not suffer his going in
alone to misrepresent me. Sir Calvin was there, with his son and the
detective. I saw the last for the first time. He was quite the
typical Hawkshaw, and handsome at that--a lithe man of middle height,
with a keen, dark, aquiline face, and clean-shaven jaws and chin. I
could have thought him a young man for his work and reputation; he did
not look more than thirty-five, and might have been less; but about
his mental ability, if one could judge by indications, there was no
question. A certain rather truculent dandyism in his dress contrasted
oddly with this intellectuality of feature; it showed itself a little
over-emphatic in the matter of trouser-crease and collar and
scarf-pin, and it tilted his black plush Homburg hat, when out of
doors, at a slightly theatrical angle. But taste, after all, is a
question not of mind but of breeding, and the man who has, like
Disraeli, to stand on his head for a living, may be excused a little
ostentation in the process. He looked at us both searchingly as we
entered.

“This, Sergeant,” said Sir Calvin, “is the Baron Le Sage, whom I
mentioned to you as having encountered the unfortunate young woman in
the copse a little before----”

The detective nodded. “I should like to ask a question of you, sir.”

Le Sage told what he knew. It was very little, and only of value in so
far as it touched upon the evidence of time.

“It must have been a little before half-past two when we met,” he
said.

“And shortly after three,” said the detective, turning to Hugo, “when
you came by the same path, sir, and had your little talk with her,
like this gentleman?”

“My talk,” said the Baron, smiling, “was of the briefest. We exchanged
but a pleasant word or two, and I passed on.”

“And yours,” said the detective to Hugh, “was perhaps of a more
prolonged sort?”

“It may have been, Sergeant,” was my friend’s answer. He was looking
pale but composed; and his manner was absolutely frank and
unequivocal. “You see,” said he, “poor Annie was, after all, one of
the household, and there was nothing out of the way in _my_ stopping
to speak with her. We may have chatted for ten minutes--I should think
no longer--while I put down my gun and lighted a cigarette. I was back
at the house by a quarter past three or thereabouts.”

“And you remembered, and returned for your gun?”

“That must have been just about four o’clock.”

“So that the murder, if murder it was, must have been committed some
time between 3.15 and 4 p.m.”

“That is so, I suppose.”

The detective stood as if mutely weighing the few facts at his
disposition for a moment or two, then turned to the General.

“We shall want evidence of identity, Sir Calvin,” he said. “Your
housekeeper, I suppose, engaged the young woman? Can I see her?”

Mrs. Bingley was rung for, and in the interval, while awaiting her
appearance, Le Sage approached our host.

“Pardon me, Sir Calvin,” said he; “but before you proceed any further,
would you not prefer that I should withdraw? I cannot but feel that my
visit itself is proving untimely, and that it were better that I
should relieve you of the embarrassment of----”

But the General broke in forcibly.

“Not a bit of it! There’s nothing to conceal. Damn it, man! Beyond
helping this Sergeant what we can to find out the truth, I don’t see
why the even tenour of our ways need disturb itself by so much as a
thought. No, no; you came for chess, and you’ll stay for chess!” A
sentiment which, while justifying my own attitude, pretty effectually
disposed of the Baron’s affected, and perhaps interested scruples.

He smiled, with a tiny shrug. “Well, if I am not in the way!” and
addressed the detective; “the ruling passion, you see, Sergeant
Ridgway. Do you play chess?”

“A little,” answered the man, cautious even in his admission. “It’s a
great game.”

“It’s _the_ game,” said the Baron. “We’ll play, you and I, one of
these days, when you’re needing some distraction from your labours.”

“Very well, sir,” responded the detective civilly, and at that moment
Mrs. Bingley entered the room.

Wildshott was, by common assent, fortunate in its housekeeper. She was
a good soul and a good manager, strict but tolerant, ruling by tact
alone. Spare and wiry, her virgin angularity (despite her courtesy
title), was of the sort one associates with blessed women in old
painted manuscripts. Firmness and patience showed in her capable face,
to which agitation had now lent a rather red-eyed pallor. She bowed to
Sir Calvin, and faced the detective quietly:--

“You wanted to speak with me, sir?”

“Just a few words,” he answered. “This young woman’s name, Mrs.
Bingley----?”

“Was Annie Evans, sir.”

“And her age?”

“She was just, by her own statement, turned twenty-three.”

“You have communicated with her relations?”

“No, indeed. She never referred to any, and I have no means of finding
them out. Annie was a very reserved girl.”

“But surely, when you engaged her----”

“I did so by advertisement, sir, through the _Ladies’ Times_
newspaper. We were in immediate need of an under-housemaid, and there
was a difficulty about local girls. I put an advertisement in the
paper, as I had often done before, preferring that method to the
agencies, and she answered it. That was about two months ago.”

“And her former employer?”

“That was a Mrs. Wilson, sir. She had gone to New Zealand, and left a
written character with Annie. It was quite against my custom to take a
servant with only a written character; but in this instance I was
persuaded to break my rule, the character given was so excellent, and
the girl herself so modest and attractive.”

“H’m! Then you saw her before engaging her?”

“I went up to see her at the office of the paper itself by her own
appointment, and was so struck by her manner and appearance that I
settled with her then and there. She was to come down two days later.
To the best of my memory, I never inquired about her people.”

“But she must have spoken of them--received letters?”

“She never spoke of them to my knowledge, or that of her fellow
servants, to whom I have put the question. As to letters, Annie
certainly did receive one now and again--one or two quite recently;
but I have been looking, and can find no trace of any. It would have
been just like her funny sensitive ways to destroy every one of them.”

The detective was silent for a moment, his dark scrutinizing eyes
fixed on the speaker’s face, as if he were pondering some
significance, to him, in the answer.

“What became of the written character?” he asked presently.

“I returned it to her, sir. It is customary to do so.”

“In case she should want to use it again? That being so, I should have
thought she would have kept it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you have not come across it?”

“It may be in her boxes. I have not looked.”

“You and I must overhaul those boxes, Mrs. Bingley. Did you think,
now, of making any inquiries about this Mrs. Wilson?”

“No, it would have been useless; she had already sailed for New
Zealand.”

“Do you remember her address?”

“She wrote, so far as I can recollect, from the Savoy Hotel.”

Sergeant Ridgway took an envelope from his pocket, and making a note
on the back of it, returned it into keeping.

“Well, you can leave that to me,” he said, and, resting his right
elbow in the palm of the other hand, softly caressed his chin, bending
an intent look on his witness.

“Now, ma’am,” he said. “I want to ask you a particular question. Has
Annie Evans’s conduct, while in this service, always continued to
justify you in your first good opinion of her?”

“Always,” answered the housekeeper with emphasis. “She was a
thoroughly good straightforward girl, and during the short time she
was here I have never had any trouble with her that was of her own
procuring.”

“Will you tell me quite what you mean by that?”

“Well, sir, she could not help being pretty and admired, and if it led
to some quarrels among the men on her account, the blame was theirs,
and never in the smallest degree to be charged to her conduct with
them. She always did her best to keep them at a distance.”

“O, quarrels, were there? Can you tell me of any particular quarrel,
now?”

“I could----” began the housekeeper, and stopped.

“Come, Mrs. Bingley,” said her master. “You must speak out without
fear or favour.”

“I know it, sir,” said the housekeeper, distressed. “I will try to do
my duty.”

“Hey!” cried the General. “Of course you must. You wouldn’t want to
risk hanging the wrong man? _What_ particular quarrel--hey?”

“It was between Mr. Cleghorn and the Baron’s gentleman, sir.”

“Cleghorn, eh? Great Scott! Was _he_ sweet on the girl?”

“I think for some time he had greatly admired her, sir. And then Mr.
Cabanis came; and being a young man, with ways different from
ours----” again she hesitated.

“Out with it!” cried Sir Calvin. “Don’t keep anything back.”

“On the night before--before the deed,” said the housekeeper, with an
effort, “Annie had come down into the kitchen, I was told, red with
fury over Mr. Cabanis having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears
for him, she said, and he had looked murder at her for it. He came
down himself later on, I understand, and there was a fine scene
between the two men. It was renewed the next day at dinner, when Annie
wasn’t there, and in the end, after having come to blows and been
separated, they both went out, Cabanis first, and Mr. Cleghorn a
little later. That is the truth, sir, and now may I go?”

I think we were all sorry for the Baron; it appeared so obvious
whither the trend of the detective’s inquiries must henceforth carry
him. But he sat quite quiet, with only a smile on his face.

“Louis is not vindictive,” was the sole thing he contented himself
with saying.

Sir Calvin turned to the detective. “Do you need Mrs. Bingley any
more?”

“Not for the present,” answered the Sergeant, and the housekeeper left
the room. I had expected from him, on her disappearance, some
significant look or gesture, betokening his acceptance of the
inevitable conclusion; but he made no such sign, and merely resumed
his business conduct of the case. He knew better than we, no doubt,
that in crime the most obvious is often the most unreliable.

“We must find the girl’s relations, if possible, Sir Calvin,” he said.
“You can leave that to me, however. What I would advise, if her boxes
yield no clue, would be an advertisement in the papers.”

An examination of some of the servants ensued upon this; but beyond
the fact of their supplying corroborative testimony as to the quarrel,
their evidence was of little interest, and I omit it here. The Baron
disappeared during the course of the inquiry, so secretively that I
think I was the only one who noticed his going. At the end the
detective expressed a desire to examine the scene of the crime. If
one of us, he said, would conduct him there, he would be satisfied and
would ask no more. He did not want a crowd. I ventured to volunteer,
and was accepted. Sir Calvin had looked towards his son; but Hugh,
with reason sufficient, had declined to go. He had sat throughout the
inquiry, after giving his own evidence, perfectly still, and with a
sort of white small smile on his lips. Thinking my own thoughts, I was
sorry for him.

The Sergeant and I made for the coppice. Passing the constable at the
gun-room door, he nodded to him. “That’s a poor thing inside,” he
said, as we went on. “What a lot of trouble she’d save if she could
speak! Well, I suppose that him that did it thinks she’s got her
deserts.” “I hope he’ll get his,” I answered. “Ah!” he agreed, “I hope
he will.” We turned a bend as we came near the fatal beech-tree--and
there was the Baron before us!

The detective stopped with a smart exclamation, then went on slowly.

“Doing a little amateur detective work on your own, sir?” he asked
sarcastically.

“I was considering, my friend,” answered the Baron. “It becomes
interesting to me, you see, since my man is involved.”

“Who said he was involved, sir?”

“Ah! Who, now? You can see very distinctly, Sergeant, where the body
lay--just the one ugly token. No signs of a struggle, I think; and the
ground too hard to have left a trace of footprints. But I won’t
disturb you at your work.”

“I wouldn’t, sir,” said the detective pretty bluntly. “You can
undertake, I fancy, to leave it all to me.”

“I’m sure I can,” answered the Baron pleasantly, and he went off
towards the house, humming softly to himself a little French air.

“Who is he?” asked the detective, when the odd creature was out of
hearing.

“I know little more about him than you do,” I answered; “and Sir
Calvin’s acquaintance with him is, I think, almost as casual as my
own. We both met him abroad at different times. He may be a person of
distinction, or he may be just an adventurer for all I know to the
contrary.”

“Well,” said the officer, “whoever he is, I don’t want him meddling in
my business, and I shall have to tell Sir Calvin so.”

“Do,” I said. “Chess is the Baron’s business, and it’s that that he’s
here for.”

But I kept my private suspicions, while duly noting as much as might
or might not be implied in Le Sage’s curious interest in the scene of
the crime. No doubt the last thing he had expected was our sudden
descent upon him there.




 CHAPTER VIII.
 AN ENTR’ACTE

Jake was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought
it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very
gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have
precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis Orsden--the son of
one of whose gamekeepers he was--would never, though a young man of
imagination himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit. Yet, when
Sir Francis played on the organ in the little church at Leighway, and
Jake blew for him, it was odds which of the two brought the more
inspiration to his task. Sir Francis would practise there
occasionally, and bring the boy with him, because Jake was dogged and
strong of muscle, and not easily tired. He never knew what secret goad
to endurance the small rascal possessed in his imagination. The
business in hand-blowing was to watch a plummet’s rise and fall: you
pumped for the fall and slackened for the rise. That was the hard
prose of it; but Jake knew a better way. He would imagine himself
blowing up a fire with a bellows. When a full organ was needed, he
had to blow like the devil to keep the plummet down, and then the fire
roared under his efforts; otherwise, a gentle purring glow was easily
stimulated. At another time he would be filling a bucket at a well for
a succession of thirsty horses, and would so nicely time the allowance
for each that the bucket was descending again on the very point of its
being sucked dry. Or he would be the landlord of the Bit and Halter,
dozing over his parlour fire, nodding, nodding down in little jerks,
and then recovering himself with an indrawn rising sigh. Sometimes,
when the music was very liquid, he would work a beer engine--one or
two good pulls, and then the upward flow through the syphon; sometimes
he would fish, and, getting a bite, pull in. These make-believes
greatly ameliorated the tedium of his office by importing a sense of
personal responsibility into it. It was not so much the music he had
to keep going as his fancy of the moment.

One morning he was blowing for his master--and pretending, rather
gruesomely, to be an exhausted swimmer struggling for a few strokes,
and then relaxing and drifting until agonised convulsively to fresh
efforts--when he became aware of a young lady standing by him and
amusedly watching his labours. Jake ducked, even in the process of
pumping, and Miss Kennett put a finger to her lips. She was quite a
popular young lady among the villagers, whom she treated on terms of
sociability which her father would strongly have disapproved had he
known. There was nothing of Touchstone’s rosy Audrey about Miss
Kennett, but there was a good deal of the graceful and graceless
rebel. Grievance, mutely felt, had thrown her into another camp than
that of her order.

Sir Francis played on, unconscious of his listener; until presently,
with a whispered “Give it me, Jacob,” the young lady appropriated the
pump-handle and began herself to inflate the lungs of the music. The
change did not make for success; her strokes, femininely short and
quick, raced against the rising plummet, and presently gave out
altogether at a critical moment of full pressure. The wind went from
the pipes in a dismal whine; Miss Kennett sat back on the pump-handle
in a fit of helpless laughter, and Sir Francis came dodging round the
organ in a fume.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed; and the asperity in his face melted into
an amiable grin.

“My mistake,” said Audrey. “Do go on!”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t; but I heard some one grinding the organ, and came in to
see.”

“Jake,” said his master, “Miss Kennett is going to blow for me, so you
can cut along.”

The boy touched his forehead, secured his cap, and departed.

“A good youngster,” said Sir Francis.

“I love him,” said Audrey.

“Ah!” sighed the young Baronet, “lucky Jake!”

“Frank, don’t be tiresome. Do you really want me to blow for you? No,
not for ever. I know you are going to say it, and it would simply be
silly. If I am going to stop here, you must talk sense.”

“I have hardly said anything yet.”

“Well, don’t say it. Sit down and play.”

“I don’t want to play: I want to be serious. Why am I so obnoxious to
you, Audrey?”

“Now I shall go.”

“No. Do be patient. Really, you know, you have never yet said, in so
many words, why you won’t marry me.”

“Yes I have. It is because I couldn’t possibly call myself Audrey
Orsden of Audley.”

“Well, if you will be flippant.”

She stood looking at him a moment. “I didn’t mean to be flippant,
Frank--nothing but kind. Shall we go a walk together? It’s such a
lovely morning. Only you must promise.”

“I think I know what you mean by kind, Audrey--kind in forbearing.
Very well, I will promise.”

He stowed his music away, and they went out together--out through the
green and shadowed churchyard, with its old headboards and epitaphs.
There was one to a merry maid dead at sixteen, whose thoughtless
laughter had served some mortuary rhymster for a theme on the
perishableness of sweet things, with an earnest recommendation to the
Christian to be wise while he might--as if wisdom lay in melancholy.
There was a fine opportunity for drawing a moral; but Sir Francis did
not draw it. Perhaps he thought he would rather have marriage as a
jest than no wife at all.

Soon they were outside the village and making for the free Downs.
Audrey was always at her best and frankest on the Downs.

“I had wanted to speak to you,” said her companion. “Is it really
true that our friend the Baron’s man has been arrested in connexion
with this horrible affair?”

“Yes, it is quite true. Poor Baron! I am not allowed to know much
about it all; but it seems that everything points to this Louis being
the culprit. He went out on the afternoon of the murder with the
express purpose of seeking Annie, and did not come home till long
afterwards. The police have taken him into custody on suspicion.”

“It must be awkward for you all, having the Baron for a guest.”

“It is, in a way; but we can’t very well ask him to go elsewhere while
his man is in peril. He offered; but papa wouldn’t hear of it. He said
the best thing for them both was to go on playing chess.”

“How’s Hugo?”

“He’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?”

“I don’t know. Only he struck me as being upset about something on
that day we shot together.”

“Well, he doesn’t give me his confidence, you know.”

“No, I know. Poor Audrey!”

“Why do you call me poor Audrey?” asked the girl angrily. “I don’t
want your pity, or anybody’s.”

“You don’t want anything of mine, I’m sure; and yet it’s all there for
your acceptance--every bit.”

“Is this keeping your promise? No, I don’t. I want what I want, and
it’s nothing that you can give me.”

“Not my whole love and submission, Audrey?”

She flounced her shoulder, and seemed as if about to leave him, but
suddenly thought better of it, and faced him resolutely.

“It’s that, Frank, though you don’t seem to understand it. I don’t
want any man’s submission! I want his mastership, if I want him at
all.” Her eyes softened, and she looked at him pityingly. “I hate to
pain you, you dear; but I can’t marry you. You have a thousand good
qualities; you are gentle and true and just and honourable, and you
have a mind to put my poor little organ to shame. Why you should
possibly want me, I can’t tell; but I’m very sure of one thing--that I
am wise in disappointing you. We should be the brass and the
earthenware pots, Frank, and you would be the one to be broke. I know
it. You are a poet, and I am the very worst of prose. You have a right
to despise me, and I have a right--not to despise you, but to see what
you are not--from my point of view.”

“That is to say, a sportsman.”

“You know I could never pretend to any sympathy with your real
tastes--books and music and musty old prints, and all that sort of
thing.”

He laughed. “Well, I shall try again.”

His persistence goaded her to cruelty.

“If you want to know the truth, I like a man to be a man, as my
brother is.”

His face twitched and sobered. “And I am not one.”

“Why do you make me say these things?” she cried resentfully. “You
drive me to it, and then take credit, I suppose, for your larger
nature.”

“I take credit for nothing,” said he. “My account with you is all on
the debit side. Audrey, dear, please forgive me for having broken my
word. It shall be the last time.”

“I believe it has been the first,” she said, with a rather quivering
lip. “I will say that for you, Frank. Your word is your bond. Now do
let us talk about something else. I came out to get rid of all that
horrible atmosphere, of police, and detectives, and suspicions about
everybody and everything, and this is my reward. The inquest is taking
place this very day, and how glad I shall be when the whole sick
business is over, and the poor thing decently buried, words can’t say.
Now, one, two, three, and let us race for that clump.”




 CHAPTER IX.
 THE INQUEST

The Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe
Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains
of that which, five days earlier, had been the living entity known as
Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master of the Ceremonies at
some important entertainment. The tap overflowed as on an auction
day--occasion most popular for bringing together from near and far
those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a bankrupt farm stock
offers an irresistible attraction. Here it was another sort of
calamity, but the moral was the same. It turned upon that form of
Epicurism which consists in watching comfortably from an auditorium
the agonies of one’s martyred fellow-creatures in the arena. There are
sybarites of that complexion who, if they cannot be in at the death,
will go far to be in at the burying.

The case, both from its local notoriety and the agreeable mystery
which surrounded it, had aroused pretty widespread interest.
Speculation as to its outcome was rife and voluble. Quite a pack of
vehicles stood congregated in the road, and quite a crowd of their
owners in and about the inn enclosure. Each known official visage, as
it appeared, was greeted with a curious scrutiny, silent until the
new-comer had passed, and then rising garrulous in the wake of his
going. There was no actual ribaldry heard, but plenty of rather
excited jocularity, with odds given and taken on the event. If the
poor shattered voiceless thing, which lay so quietly in its shell in
an outhouse awaiting the coming verdict, could only once have pleaded
in visible evidence for itself, surely the solemnity of that mute
entreaty for peace and forgetfulness would have found its way even to
those insensate hearts. But charity is as much a matter of imagination
as of feeling, and many an unobtrusive need in the world fails of its
relief through the lack of that penetrative vision in the
well-meaning. Our souls, it may be, are not to be measured within the
limits of our qualities.

At near eleven o’clock the deputy District Coroner, Mr. Brabner, drove
up in a fly. He was a small important-looking, be-whiskered man, in
large round spectacles of such strength as to impart to his whole face
a solemn owlish look, very sapient and impressive. A hush fell upon
the throng as he alighted, with his clerk, and, ushered by the
landlord, entered the inn. But he had hardly disappeared when a more
thrilling advent came, like Aaron’s serpent, to devour the lesser.
This was of the arrested man, in charge of a couple of officers from
the County police-station. The unhappy little Gascon looked frightened
and bewildered. His restless, vivacious, brown eyes glanced hither and
thither among the people, seeming to deprecate, to implore, to appeal
for pity from a monstrous terror which had trapped and was about to
devour him. But his emotions had hardly found scope for their display
when he was gone--hurried in by his escort.

Thereafter--the party from the house, with all necessary witnesses,
being already assembled in the inn--no time was lost in opening the
proceedings, which were arranged to take place in the coffee-room, the
one fair-sized chamber in the building, though still so small that
only a fraction of the waiting public could be allowed admittance to
it, the rest hanging disconsolately about the passages and windows,
and getting what information they could by deputy. The Coroner took
his seat at one end of the long table provided; the jury--_probi et
legales homines_ to the number of twelve, good farm-hands and true,
the most of them, and ready to believe anything they were told--were
despatched to view the body; and the business began. Mr. Redstall, a
Winton solicitor, watched the case on behalf of Sir Calvin, the
deceased’s family being unrepresented, and Mr. Fyler,
barrister-at-law, appeared for the police. A report of the subsequent
proceedings is summarised in the following notes:--

Evidence of identification being in the first instance required,
Sergeant Ridgway, of the Scotland Yard detective force, stated that it
had been found impossible so far, in spite of every effort made, to
trace out the deceased’s relations. He had himself made a journey to
London, whence the girl had been originally engaged, for the express
purpose of inquiring, but had failed wholly to procure any information
on the subject. All agencies had been communicated with, and the name
did not figure anywhere on their books. An advertisement, appealing to
the next of kin, had been inserted in a number of newspapers, but
without as yet eliciting any response. He called on Mrs. Bingley to
repeat the statement she had already made to him regarding the
deceased’s engagement by her, and the housekeeper having complied, he
asked the Coroner, in default of any more intimate proof, to accept
the only evidence of identification procurable at the moment. Further
attempts would be made, of course, to elucidate the mystery, as by way
of the deceased’s former employer, Mrs. Wilson; but that lady, being
gone to New Zealand, might prove as difficult to trace as Evans’s own
connexions; and in any event a long time must elapse before an answer
could be obtained from her. A search of the girl’s boxes and personal
belongings, though minutely conducted by himself and the housekeeper,
had failed to yield any clue whatsoever, and, in short, so far as
things went, that was the whole matter.

The Sergeant spoke, now as hereafter, always with visible effect, not
only on the jury but on the Coroner himself. His cool, keen aspect,
his pruned and essential phrases, the awful halo with which his
position as a great London detective surrounded him, not to speak of
the local reputation he had lately acquired, weighted his every word,
to these admiring provincial minds, with a gravity and authority which
were final. If he said that such a thing was, it was. The Coroner’s
clerk entered on his minutes the name of Annie Evans, domestic
servant, age twenty-three, family and condition unknown; and the case
proceeded.

Mr. Hugo Kennett was the first witness called. He gave his evidence
quietly and clearly, though with some signs of emotion when he
referred to his discovery of the dead body. His relation of the event
has already been given, and need not here be repeated. The essential
facts were that he had entered the Bishop’s Walk, on the fatal
afternoon, shortly after three o’clock; had encountered and stood
talking with the girl for a period estimated at ten minutes; had then
continued his way to the house, which he may have reached about 3.15,
and later, just as it struck four, had suddenly remembered leaving his
gun in the copse, and had returned to retrieve it, with the result
known. The body was lying on its face, and from its attitude and the
nature of the injury, it would appear that the shot had been fired
from the direction of the road. He went at once to raise an alarm.

At the conclusion of this evidence, Counsel rose to put a few
questions to the witness.

_Q._ You say, Mr. Kennett, you left at once, on discovering the body,
to give the alarm?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ Leaving your gun where it was?

_A._ No, I forgot. I spoke generally, not realising that the point
might be important.

_Q._ You see that it may be?

_A._ Quite.

_Q._ You secured your gun first, then?

_A._ Yes, I did. I had to pass the body to do it, not liking the job,
but driven to it in a sort of insane instinct to get the thing into my
safe keeping when it was too late. You see, I blamed myself for having
in a sort of way contributed to the deed by my carelessness. I was
very much agitated.

_Q._ You mean that, in your opinion, the crime might never have been
committed had not the gun offered itself to some sudden temptation?

_A._ Yes, that is what I mean.

_Q._ You are convinced, then, that the shot was fired from this
particular weapon?

_A._ It seems reasonable to conclude so.

_Q._ Why?

_A._ I had left it with one of the barrels loaded, and when I saw it
again they had both been discharged.

_Q._ You will swear to the one barrel having been loaded when you left
it leaning against the tree?

_A._ To the best of my belief it was.

_Q._ You will swear to that?

_A._ No, I cannot actually swear to it, but I am practically convinced
of the fact.

_Q._ Did you notice, when you took up the gun again, if the barrels,
or barrel, were warm?

_A._ No, I never thought of it.

_Q._ Don’t you think it would have been well if it _had_ occurred to
you? Don’t you think you would have done better to leave the gun alone
altogether, until the police arrived?

_A._ (_The witness for the first time exhibiting a little irritability
under this catechism_): I dare say it would have been better. I was
agitated, I tell you, and the situation was new to me. One doesn’t
think of the proper thing to do on such an occasion unless one is a
lawyer. I just took the gun with me, and chucked it into the gun-room
as I passed, hating the infernal thing.

_Q._ Very natural under the circumstances, I am sure. Now, another
question. The shot was fired, you consider, from the direction of the
road. At what distance from the deceased would your knowledge as a
sportsman put it?

_A._ Judging roughly, I should say about fifteen feet.

_Q._ About the distance, that is to say, between the tree against
which you had leaned your gun and the spot where the body was found?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ Then the inference is that the gun had suddenly been seized by
some one from its position, fired, and replaced where it was?

_A._ I suppose so.

_Q._ You reached the house, you say, about 3.15, and left it again, on
your way to the copse, just as it struck four. Would you mind telling
us how you disposed of the interval?

_A._ (_With some temper_): I was in my own den all the time. What on
earth has that to do with the matter?

_Q._ Everything, sir; touching on the critical movements of witnesses
in a case of this sort matters. I wish to ask you, for instance, if,
during that interval from 3.15 to 4 o’clock, you heard any sound, any
report, like that of a gun being discharged?

_A._ If I had, I should probably have paid no attention to it. The
sound of a gun is nothing very uncommon with us.

_Q._ I ask you if you were aware of any such sound?

_A._ Not that I can remember.

Mr. Fyler was an advocate of that Old Bailey complexion, colourless,
black-eyebrowed, moist, thick rinded, whose constant policy it is to
provoke hostility in a witness with the object of bullying him for it
into submission and self-committal. With every reason, in the present
case, to _res_pect, and none to _sus_pect, the deponent, his
professional habit would nevertheless not permit him to cast his
examination in a wholly conciliatory form.

_Q._ Now, Mr. Kennett, I must ask you to be very particular in your
replies to the questions I am about to put to you. You came upon Annie
Evans, I understand, shortly after entering the copse, and put down
your gun with the purpose of speaking to her.

_A._ With the purpose of lighting a cigarette.

_Q._ But you did speak with her?

_A._ Yes, I have said so.

_Q._ You placed your gun against the tree where you afterwards found
it?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ Was the deceased then standing near you, or further in by the
tree where her body was found?

_A._ She was standing---- (_Some amazing purport in the question
seemed suddenly here to burst upon the witness, and he uttered a
violent ejaculation_)--Great God! Are you meaning to suggest that I
fired the shot myself? (_Sensation._)

_Q._ I am suggesting nothing of the sort, of course. Will you answer,
if you please, whether, after you had put aside your gun, she came
towards you or you walked towards her?

_A._ (_Recovering himself with obvious difficulty_): She came towards
me.

_Q._ So as to bring herself within view, we will say, of any one who
might be watching from the road, or thereabouts?

_A._ Just possibly she might, if the person had come inside the gate.

_Q._ Would you mind telling us what was the subject of your brief
conversation with the deceased?

_A._ I asked her what she was doing there.

_Q._ Just so. And she answered, Mr. Kennett?

_A._ O! what one might expect.

_Q._ Evasively, that is to say?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ Did you twit her, possibly, with being there for an assignation?

_A._ Something of the sort I might.

_Q._ And she admitted it?

_A._ Of course not. (_Laughter._)

_Q._ What else, would you mind saying?

_A._ I understood from her that she had come out to escape the company
in the kitchen. It seemed there had been a row regarding her between
Cleghorn our butler and the prisoner, and she wanted to get away from
them both. She said that the foreigner had paid her unwelcome
attentions, and had tried to kiss her, for which she had boxed his
ears, and that ever since she had gone in fear of her life from him.
(_Sensation._) I took it more for a joke than a formal complaint, and
did not suppose her to be serious. It did not occur to me that she was
really frightened of the man, or I should have taken steps for her
protection.

_Q._ And that was all?

_A._ All that was essential.

_Q._ Thank you, Mr. Kennett. I will not trouble you any further.

Witness turned and retired. His evidence had yielded something of the
unexpected, in its incredulous little outburst and in its conclusion.
As to the first, it was patent that Counsel’s object in putting the
question which had provoked it was to suggest maddened jealousy as a
motive for the crime on the part of some one to whom the girl’s
actions had become suddenly visible through her movement towards the
witness, between whom and herself had possibly occurred some
philandering passages. Such, at least, from the witness’s own implied
admission of a certain freedom in his conversation with the deceased,
would appear a justifiable assumption. His final statement--though
legally inadmissible--inasmuch as it supplied the motive with a name,
caused a profound stir in Court.

Mrs. Anna Bingley, housekeeper to Sir Calvin Kennett, was the next
witness called. Her evidence repeated, in effect, what has already
been recorded, and may be passed over. Where it was important, it was,
like the other, evidence of hearsay, and inadmissible.

Jane Ketchlove, cook to Sir Calvin, gave evidence. She had never seen
the prisoner till the night of his arrival, though she had seen his
master once or twice on the occasion of former visits. He, the Baron,
had not at those times come accompanied by any gentleman. Mr. Cabanis
made himself quite at home like: he was a very lively, talkative
person, and easily excited, she thought. He showed himself very
forward with the ladies, and they remarked on it, though putting it
down to his foreign breeding. On the night of his arrival the valet
went up to lay out his master’s things about seven o’clock. Shortly
afterwards Annie followed him with the hot water. She, witness,
rather wondered over the girl’s assurance in going alone, after the
way the man had been acting towards her. He had seemed like one struck
of a heap with her beauty; for the poor creature was beautiful, there
was no denying it. It was as if he claimed her for his own from the
first moment of his seeing her, and dared any one to say him nay. A
few minutes later Annie came down, red with fury over his having tried
to kiss her. She had boxed his ears well for him, she said. Mr.
Cleghorn was in the kitchen, and he flew into a fury when he heard.
He said she must have encouraged the man, or he never would have
dared. He was a great admirer of Annie himself, and it was always said
among us that they would come to make a match of it. Annie answered
up, asking him what business it was of his, and there was a fine row
between the two. In the middle this Cabanis came down. His cheek was
red as fire, and he looked like a devil. He said no one had ever
struck him--man, woman, or child--without living to repent it. He and
Mr. Cleghorn got at it then, and the rest of us had a hard ado to part
them; but we got things quiet after a time, though it was only for a
time, Mr. Cleghorn having to go upstairs, upset as he was. They
simmered like, and came on the boil again the next day at dinner in
the servants’ hall. Annie was not there, and that seemed to give them
the chance to settle things in her absence. Mr. Cleghorn began it,
insisting on his prior claim to the girl, and Cabanis answered that,
if he couldn’t have her, nobody else should; he would see her dead
first. That led to a struggle, ending in blows between them; and at
the last Cabanis broke away, declaring he was going out then and there
to find the girl and put the question to her.

_Q._ What question?

_A._ Whether it was to be himself or Mr. Cleghorn, sir.

_Q._ Did he utter any threat against the girl, in case her choice was
against him?

_A._ Not in so many words, sir; but we were all terrified by his look
and manner.

_Q._ They struck you as meaning business, eh?

_A._ That was it, sir.

_Q._ About what time was that?

_A._ As near as possible to two o’clock.

_Q._ And Mr. Cleghorn followed?

_A._ After waiting a bit, sir, to recover himself. Then he got up
sudden, saying he was going to see this thing through, and, putting on
his cap and coat, out he went.

_Q._ At what time was that?

_A._ It may have been ten minutes after the other.

_Q._ Did you form any conclusion as to what he meant by seeing the
thing through?

_A._ We all thought he meant, sir, that he was going to follow Cabanis
and get the girl herself to choose between them.

_Q._ When did you see him again?

_A._ It was at half after four, when, as some of us stood waiting and
shivering at the head of the path, he came amongst us.

_Q._ In his cap and overcoat?

_A._ Yes, sir. Just as he had gone out. We told him what had happened.

_Q._ And how did he take it?

_A._ Very bad, sir. He turned that white, I thought he would have
fallen.

_Q._ And when did the prisoner return?

_A._ It may have been five o’clock when I saw him come in.

_Q._ Did his manner then show any signs of agitation or disturbance?

_A._ No, sir, I can’t say it did. On the contrary, he seemed cheerful
and relieved, as if he had got something off his mind.

_Q._ Did you tell him what had happened?

_A._ Yes, to be sure.

_Q._ And how did _he_ take it?

_A._ Very quiet--sort of stunned like.

_Q._ Did he make any remark?

_A._ He said something in his own language, sir, very deep and hoarse.
It sounded like--but I really can’t manage it.

M. le Baron (_interposing_): “It was ‘_Non, non, par pitié!_’”

Counsel (_tartly_): I shall be obliged, sir, if you will keep your
evidence till it is asked for. (_M. le Baron admitted his error with a
bow._)

_Q._ Was that all?

_A._ One of the maids told him, sir, that his master was asking for
him, and he went off at once, without another word.

_Q._ And he has never referred to the subject since?

_A._ He would not talk of it. It was too horrible, he said.

Jessie Ellis, parlour-maid, and a couple of house-maids--(they kept no
male indoor servants, except the butler, at Wildshott)--Kate Vokes and
Mabel Wheelband, gave corroborative evidence, substantiating in all
essential particulars the last witness’s statement.

Reuben Henstridge, landlord of the Red Deer inn, was the next witness
summoned. He was a big cloddish fellow, unprepossessing in appearance,
and reluctant and unwilling in his answers, as though surlily
suspecting some design to ensnare him into compromising himself. He
deposed that on the afternoon of the crime he was out on the hill
somewhere below his inn “taking the air,” when he saw a man break
through the lower beech-thicket skirting Wildshott, and go down
quickly towards the high road. That man was the prisoner. He parted
the branches savage-like, and jumped the bank and trench, moving his
arms and talking to himself all the time. Witness went on with his
business of “taking the air,” and, when he had had enough, returned to
his own premises. Later Mr. Cleghorn, whom he knew very well as a
casual customer, came in for a glass. He did not look himself, and
stayed only a short time, and that was the whole _he_ knew of the
matter.

_Q._ What time of day was it when you saw the prisoner come from the
wood?

_A._ Ten after two, it might be.

_Q._ And he went down towards the road?

_A._ Aye.

_Q._ Did you notice what became of him?

_A._ No, I didn’t. I had my own concerns to look after.

_Q._ Taking the air, eh?

_A._ That’s it.

_Q._ You weren’t taking it with a wire, I suppose? (_Laughter._)

_A._ No, I weren’t. You keep a civil tongue in your head.

The witness, called sharply to order by the Coroner, stood glowering
and muttering.

_Q._ Where is your inn situated?

_A._ Top o’ Stockford Down.

_Q._ How far is it from the high road?

_A._ Call it a mile and a half.

_Q._ Where were you on the hill when you saw the prisoner?

_A._ Nigher the road than the inn. Three-quarters way down, say.

_Q._ Were you anywhere near the prisoner when he emerged?

_A._ Nigh as close as I am to you.

_Q._ Did he see you?

_A._ No, he didn’t. I were hid in the ditch. (_Laughter._)

_Q._ You didn’t recognise him?

_A._ Not likely. I’d never seen him before.

_Q._ Did anything strike you in his manner or expression?

_A._ He looked uncommon wild.

_Q._ Did he? Now, what time was it when you started to return to your
inn?

_A._ It may have been an hour later.

_Q._ A little after three, say?

_A._ Aye.

_Q._ Did you pass anybody by the way?

_A._ No.

_Q._ The Red Deer is very lonely situated, is it not?

_A._ Lonely enough.

_Q._ High up, at the meeting of four cross roads, I understand?

_A._ That’s it.

_Q._ You don’t have many customers in the course of a day?

_A._ Maybe, maybe not.

_Q._ Not so many that you would forget this one or that having called
yesterday or the day before?

_A._ What are you trying to get at?

_Q._ I must trouble you to answer questions, not put them. What time
was it on that day when Mr. Cleghorn looked in?

_A._ Put it at four o’clock.

_Q._ And you thought he looked unwell?

_A._ He said himself he was feeling out of sorts. The liquor seemed
to pull him round a bit.

_Q._ Did he say anything else?

_A._ Not much. He went as soon a’most as he’d drunk it down. I thought
he’d tired himself walking up the hill.

_Q._ What made you think that?

_A._ I see’d him a’coming when he was far off. I was crossing the yard
to the pump at the time. That might have been at a quarter before
four. He looked as if he’d pulled his cap over his eyes and turned his
coat collar up; but I couldn’t make him out distinct.

_Q._ How did you know, then, that it was Mr. Cleghorn?

_A._ Because he come in himself a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes
later. Who else could it be?

_Q._ What sort of coat and hat or cap was this figure wearing?

_A._ What I see when Mr. Cleghorn come in, of course--same as he’s got
now.

_Q._ Colour, style--the same in every particular?

_A._ That’s it.

_Q._ You made out the figure in the distance to be wearing a coat and
cloth cap like Mr. Cleghorn’s?

_A._ Nat’rally, as it were Mr. Cleghorn himself.

_Q._ Now attend to me. Will you swear you could distinguish the colour
of the coat and cap the figure was wearing?

_A._ I won’t go so far as to say that. It were a dull day, and my
eyesight none of the best, and he were too far off, and down in the
shadder of the hollers. He looked all one colour to me--a sort o’
misty purple. But I knew him for Mr. Cleghorn, sure enough, when he
walked into the tap.

_Q._ Wonderfully sagacious of you. (_Laughter._) How far away was this
figure when you saw it?

_A._ Couple o’ hundred yards, maybe.

_Q._ Was it climbing the hill fast?

_A._ What you might call fast--hurrying.

_Q._ Didn’t it strike you as odd, then, that it should take it a
quarter of an hour or twenty minutes to cover that short distance
between the spot where you saw it and your inn?

_A._ No, it didn’t. I didn’t think about it. Mr. Cleghorn, he might
have stopped to rest himself, or to tie a bootlace, or anything.

_Q._ After seeing the figure did you return to the bar?

_A._ No. I went into the parlour to make tea.

_Q._ And remained there till Mr. Cleghorn entered?

_A._ That’s it.

Counsel nodded across at the detective, as if to say, “Here’s possible
matter for you, Sergeant,” and with that he closed the examination,
and told the witness he might stand down.

Samuel Cleghorn, butler to Sir Calvin, was then called to give
evidence. Witness appeared as a substantial, well-nourished man of
forty, with a full, rather unexpressive face, a fixed eye (literally),
and a large bald tonsure--not at all the sort of figure one would
associate with a romantic story of passion and mystery. He admitted
his quarrel with the prisoner, pleading excessive provocation, and
that he had followed him out on the fatal afternoon with the intention
actually suggested by the witness Ketchlove. He had failed, however,
to discover him, or the direction in which he had gone, and had
ultimately, after some desultory prying about the grounds, withdrawn
himself to the upper kitchen gardens, where he had taken refuge in a
tool-shed, and there remained, nursing his sorrow, until 3.30 or
thereabouts, when, feeling still very overcome, he had decided to go
up to the Red Deer for a little refreshment, which he had done,
afterwards returning straight to the house.

_Q._ How did you leave the kitchen garden?

_A._ By a door in the wall, sir, giving on the downs; and by that way
I returned.

_Q._ During all this time, while you were looking for the prisoner, or
mourning in the tool-shed--(_laughter_)--did you encounter any one?

_A._ Not a soul that I can remember, sir.

_Q._ You were greatly attached to the deceased?

_A._ (_With emotion._) I was.

_Q._ And wished to make her your wife?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ Though your acquaintance with her extended over only a couple of
months?

_A._ That is so.

_Q._ Almost a case of love at first sight, eh?

_A._ As you choose, sir.

_Q._ Did she return your attachment?

_A._ Not as I could have wished.

_Q._ She refused you?

_A._ I never offered myself to her in so many words.

_Q._ Had you reason to suspect a rival?

_A._ None in particular--till the Frenchman came.

_Q._ Rivals generally, then?

_A._ Naturally there were many to admire her.

_Q._ But no one in especial to excite your jealousy?

_A._ No.

_Q._ Did the deceased give you her confidence?

_A._ Not what you might call her confidence. We were very friendly.

_Q._ She never spoke to you of her past life, or of her former
situations, or of her relations?

_A._ No, never. She was not what you might call a communicative young
woman.

_Q._ You had no reason to suspect that she was carrying on with
anybody unknown to you?

_A._ No _reason_, sir. I can’t answer for my thoughts.

_Q._ What do you mean by that?

_A._ Why, I might have wondered now and again _why_ she was so
obstinate in resisting me.

_Q._ But you suspected no rival in particular? I ask you again.

_A._ A man may think things.

_Q._ Will you answer my question?

_A._ Well, then, I didn’t.

_Q._ Are you speaking the truth?

_A._ Yes.

Witness was subjected to some severe cross-questioning on this point,
but persisted in his refusal to associate his suspicions with any
particular person. He argued only negatively, he said, from the
deceased’s indifference to himself, which (he declared amid some
laughter) was utterly incomprehensible to him on any other supposition
than that of a previous attachment. Counsel then continued:--

_Q._ When, after leaving the garden, you were making for the Red Deer,
did you observe any other figure on the hill, going in the same
direction as yourself, but in advance of you?

_A._ There may have been. I won’t answer for sure.

_Q._ Will you explain what you mean by that?

_A._ I was what you might call preoccupied--not thinking much of
anything but my own trouble. But--yes, I have an idea there was some
one.

_Q._ How was he dressed?

_A._ I can’t say, sir. I never looked; it’s only a hazy sort of
impression.

_Q._ Was he far ahead?

_A._ He may have been--very far; or perhaps it was only the shadows. I
shouldn’t like to swear there was any one at all.

_Q._ You have heard the witness Henstridge’s evidence. Are you sure
you are not borrowing from it the idea of this second figure, a sort
of simulacrum of yourself?

_A._ Well, I may be, unconscious as it were. I can’t state anything
for certain.

_Q._ Were you walking fast as you got near the inn?

_A._ I dare say I was--fast for me. (_Laughter._) What with one thing
and another, my throat was as dry as tinder.

_Q._ Did you stop, or linger, for any purpose when approaching the
inn?

_A._ Not that I can remember. I may have. What happened afterwards
has put all that out of my head.

_Q._ You mean the news awaiting you on your return?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ So that you can’t tell me, I suppose, whether or not, as you
climbed the hill, your coat-collar was turned up and the peak of your
cap pulled down?

_A._ It’s like enough they were. I had put the things on anyhow in my
hurry. But it’s all a vague memory.

_Counsel._ Very well. You can stand down.

Daniel Groome, gardener, was next called. He stated that he was
sweeping up leaves in the drive to the east side of the house--that is
to say, the side furthest from the copse--on the afternoon of the
murder. Had heard the stable clock strike three, and shortly
afterwards had seen the young master come out of the head of the
Bishop’s Walk and go towards the house, which he entered by the front
door. He was looking, he thought, in a bit of a temper: but the young
master was like that--all in a stew one moment over a little thing,
and the next laughing and joking over something that mattered. Had
wondered at seeing him back so soon from the shooting, but supposed he
had shot wild, as he sometimes would, and was in a pet about it. Did
not see him again until he, witness, was summoned to the copse to help
remove the body.

_Q._ During the time you were sweeping in the drive, did you hear the
sound of a shot?

_A._ A’many, sir. The gentlemen was out with their guns.

_Q._ Did any one shot sound to you nearer than the others?

_A._ One sounded pretty loud.

_Q._ As if comparatively close by?

_A._ Yes, it might be.

_Q._ From the direction of the Bishop’s Walk?

_A._ I couldn’t rightly say, sir. It wasn’t a carrying day. Sounds on
such a day travel very deceptive. It might have come from across the
road, or further.

_Q._ At what time did you hear this particular shot?

_A._ It might have been three o’clock, or a little later; I couldn’t
be sure.

_Q._ Think again.

_A._ No, I couldn’t be sure, sir. I shouldn’t like to swear.

_Q._ Might it have been nearer half-past three?

_A._ Very like. I dare say it might.

This point was urged, but the witness persisted in refusing to commit
himself to any more definite statement.

John Tugwood, coachman, Edward Noakes, groom, and Martha Jolly,
lodge-keeper, were called and examined on the same subject. They had
all distinguished, or thought they had distinguished, the louder shot
in question; but their evidence as to its precise time was so
hopelessly contradictory that no reliance whatever could be placed on
it.

Sergeant-Detective Ridgway deposed that, having been put in charge of
the case by Sir Calvin Kennett, he had proceeded to make an
examination of the spot where the body had been found. This was some
twenty-four hours after the commission of the alleged crime, and it
might be thought possible that certain local changes had occurred
during the interval. He understood, however, that the police had,
when first called in, conducted an exhaustive investigation of the
place, and that their conclusions differed in no material degree from
his own, so that he was permitted to speak for them in the few details
he had to place before the jury. Briefly, his notes comprised the
following observations:--The measured distance from the wicket in the
boundary hedge to the tree against which the witness, Mr. Hugo
Kennett, had stated that he rested his gun was nineteen and a quarter
yards: thence to the beech-tree by which the body had been found was
another fifteen feet. Between the wicket and the first tree there was
a curve in the track, sufficient to conceal from any one standing by
the second, or inner, tree the movements of one approaching from the
direction of the gate. All about this part of the copse, down to the
hedge, was very dense thicket, which in one place, in close proximity
to the first tree supporting the gun, bore some tokens as of a person
having been concealed there. If such were the case, the movements of
the person in question had been presumably stealthy, the growth
showing only slight signs of disturbance, not easily detected. His
theory was that this person had entered possibly by the gate from the
road, had crept along the path, or track, until he had caught a
glimpse through the trees of the deceased in conversation with Mr.
Kennett, had then slipped into the undergrowth and silently worked his
way to the point of concealment first-mentioned, where he would be
both eye and ear witness of what was passing between the two, and had
subsequently, whether torn by the passion of revenge or of jealousy,
issued noiselessly forth, some few minutes after Mr. Kennett’s
departure, seized up the gun, and either at once, or following a brief
altercation, shot the deceased dead as she was moving to escape from
him. Conformably with this theory, there was no sign of any struggle
having occurred; but there _were_ signs that the murderer had moved
and conducted himself with great caution and circumspection.
Unfortunately no evidence as to footprints could be adduced, the
ground being in too hard and dry a state to record their impression.
Finally, he was bound to say that there was nothing in his theory
incompatible with the assumption that the prisoner was the one
responsible for the deed. On the other hand, it was true that the
man’s movements between the time when the witness Henstridge had seen
him descending towards the road, and the time of the commission of the
crime--which could not have been earlier than three o’clock--had still
to be accounted for. But it was possible, of course, that he had
occupied this interval of three-quarters of an hour in stalking, and
in finally running to earth his victim. If he could produce witnesses
to prove the contrary, the theory of course collapsed.

The Sergeant delivered his statement with a hard, clear-cut precision
which was in curious and rather deadly contrast with the nervous
hesitation displayed by other witnesses. There was a suggestion about
him of the expert surgeon, demonstrating, knife in hand, above the
operating table; and in a voice as keen and cold as his blade.

Raymond, Baron Le Sage, was the next witness called. It was noticed
once or twice, during the course of the Baron’s evidence, that the
prisoner looked as if reproachfully and imploringly toward his master.

_Q._ The prisoner is your servant?

_A._ He is my servant.

_Q._ Since when, will you tell me?

_A._ He has been in my service now over a year.

_Q._ You took him with a good character?

_A._ An excellent character.

_Q._ He is a Gascon, I believe?

_A._ Yes, a Gascon.

_Q._ A hot-blooded and vindictive race, is it not?

_A._ A warm-blooded people, certainly.

_Q._ Practising the vendetta?

_A._ You surprise me.

_Q._ I am asking you for information.

_A._ I have none to give you.

_Q._ Very well; we will leave it at that. On the afternoon of the
murder, about half-past two, you entered the Bishop’s Walk?

_A._ I had been out driving with Miss Kennett, and, passing the gate,
asked her wither it led. She told me, and I decided to go by the path,
leaving her to drive on to the house alone.

_Q._ Why did you so decide?

_A._ I had caught a glimpse among the trees of, as I thought, the
maid, Annie Evans, and I wished to speak with her.

_Q._ Indeed? (_Counsel was evidently a little taken aback over the
frankness of this admission._) Would you inform me on what subject?

_A._ I had been accidental witness the night before of the scrimmage
between her and Louis already referred to, and I wished at once to
apologise to her for Louis’s behaviour, and to warn her against any
repetition of the punishment she had inflicted.

_Q._ On what grounds?

_A._ On the grounds that, the man being quick-tempered and impulsive,
I would not answer for the consequences of another such assault.
(_Sensation._)

_Q._ And what was the deceased’s answer?

_A._ She thanked me, and said she could look after herself.

_Q._ Anything further?

_A._ Nothing. I went on and joined my friend, Sir Calvin, in the
house.

_Q._ The deceased, while you were with her, offered no sort of
explanation of her presence in the copse?

_A._ None whatever.

_Q._ And you did not seek one?

_A._ O, dear, no! I should not have been so foolish. (_Laughter._)

_Q._ Did you speak to the prisoner on the subject of the assault?

_A._ At the time, yes.

_Q._ And what did you gather from his answer?

_A._ I gathered that, in his quick ardent way, he was very much
enamoured of the girl’s beauty.

_Q._ And was correspondingly incensed, perhaps, over her rejection of
his advances?

_A._ Not incensed. Saddened.

_Q._ He uttered no threat?

_A._ No.

_Q._ On the afternoon of the murder, on your return to the house, as
just described, you inquired for the prisoner?

_A._ I inquired for him, then, and again later on our return from the
copse after we had been to view the body.

_Q._ You were troubled about him, perhaps?

_A._ I was uneasy, until I had seen and questioned him.

_Q._ When was that?

_A._ He came in about five o’clock, and was immediately sent up to me.

_Q._ You asked him, perhaps, to account for his absence?

_A._ I did.

_Q._ And what was his explanation?

_A._ He made a frank confession of his quarrel with Mr. Cleghorn,
described how his first intention on rushing from the house had really
been to find the girl and throw himself upon her mercy; but how, once
in the open air, his frenzy had begun to cool, and to yield itself
presently to indecision. He had then, he said, gone for a long walk
over the downs, fighting all the way the demon of rage and jealousy
which possessed him, and had finally, getting the better of his black
unreasoning mood, grown thoroughly repentant and ashamed of his
behaviour, and had returned to make amends.

_Q._ And you credited that wonderful story?

_A._ I believed it implicitly.

_Q._ Well, indeed, sir! Did he appear overcome by the _news_ which had
greeted him on his return?

_A._ He appeared stupefied--that is the word.

_Q._ Did he comment on it at all?

_A._ If you mean in the self-incriminating sense, he did not.

_Q._ In what sense, then?

_A._ He cursed the assassin capable of destroying so sweet a paragon
of womanhood. (_Laughter._)

_Q._ Very disinterested of him, I’m sure. Thank you, sir; that will
suffice.

Counsel sitting down, Mr. Redstall, for Sir Calvin, rose to put a
question or two to the witness:--

_Q._ You have never had reason, M. le Baron, to regard the prisoner as
a vindictive man?

_A._ Never. Impulsive, yes.

_Q._ And truthful?

_A._ Transparently so--to a childish degree.

_Q._ He would have a difficulty in dissembling?

_A._ An insuperable difficulty, I should think.

Dr. Harding, of Longbridge, was the last witness called. He deposed to
his having been summoned to the house on the afternoon of the murder,
and to having examined the body within an hour and a half of its first
discovery in the copse. The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the
back, from a weapon fired at short range. Practically the whole of the
charge had entered the body in one piece. Death must have been
instantaneous, and must have occurred, from the indications, some two
hours before his arrival; or, approximately, at about 3.30 o’clock.
The wound could not possibly have been self-inflicted, and the
position of the gun precluded any thought of accident. He had since,
assisted by Dr. Liversidge of Winton, made a _post-mortem_ examination
of the body. Asked if there was anything significant in the deceased’s
condition, his answer was yes.

This completed the evidence, at the conclusion of which, and of some
remarks by the Coroner, the jury, after a brief consultation among
themselves, brought in a verdict that the deceased died from a gunshot
wound deliberately inflicted by the prisoner Louis Victor Cabanis, in
a fit of revengeful passion; which verdict amounting to one of wilful
murder, the prisoner was forthwith, on the Coroner’s warrant,
committed to the County gaol, there to await his examination before
the magistrates on the capital charge. The jury further--being local
men--added a rider to their verdict respectfully commiserating Sir
Calvin on the very unpleasant business which had chosen to select his
grounds for its enactment; and with that the proceedings terminated.




 CHAPTER X.
 AFTERWARDS

The inquest was over, the provisional verdict delivered, and all
that remained for the time being was to put the poor subject of it
straightway to rest under the leafless trees in Leighway churchyard.
It was done quietly and decently the morning after the inquiry, with
some of her fellow-servants attending, and Miss Kennett to represent
the family; and so was another blossom untimely fallen, and another
moral--a somewhat ghastly one now--furnished for the reproof of the
too hilarious Christian.

Audrey, coming back from the sad little ceremony, met Le Sage walking
by himself in the grounds. The Baron looked serious and, she thought,
dejected, and her young heart warmed to his grief. She went up to him,
and, putting her hands on his sleeve, “I am so sorry,” she said, “so
very, very sorry.”

He smiled at her kindly, then took her hand and drew it under his arm.

“Let us walk a little way, and talk,” he said; and they strolled on
together. “Poor Louis!” he sighed.

“It is not true, is it, Baron?”

“I don’t think it is, my dear. But the difficulty is to prove that it
isn’t.”

“How can it be done?”

“At the expense only, I am afraid, of finding the real criminal.”

“Have you any idea who that is?”

He laughed; actually laughed aloud.

“Have I not had enough of cross-examination?”

“I could not help wondering why, as I have been told, you confessed to
the warning you gave the poor girl.”

“About the danger of tempting hot blood, and so forth?”

“Yes, that.”

“It was the truth.”

“Yes, but----”

He put a finger to his lips, glancing at her with some solemnity.

“You were not going to say that it is my way to repress the truth?”

“No,” answered the girl, with a little flush; “but only not to blurt
it out unnecessarily.”

“My dear,” he said, “take my word for it that I always speak the
truth.”

“O! I only meant to say----” she began; but he stopped her.

“What would you do if a question were put to you which, for some
reason of expediency, or good-feeling, you did not wish to answer?”

“I am afraid I should fib.”

“Try my plan, and answer it with another question. It saves a world
of responsibility. That is a secret I confide to you. An answer may
often be interpreted into an innuendo which is as false to the
speaker’s meaning as it is unjust to its subject. I love truth so much
that I would not expose it to that misunderstanding. In this instance,
to have left the truth for some one else to discover might have cast
suspicion on us both, thereby darkening the case against Louis. But,
in general, not to answer is surely not to lie?”

“No, I suppose not, Baron”--she thought a little--“I wonder if you
would answer me just _one_ question?”

“What is that?”

“Do you put any faith in that talk about there having been another man
on the hill besides Cleghorn?”

He did not reply for awhile, but went softly patting the hand on his
arm. Presently he looked up.

“If I were to say yes, I should not speak the truth, and if I were to
say no, I should not speak the truth. So I follow my bent, and you
will not be offended with me. Are you going to take me for a drive
to-day, I ask?”

“Certainly, if you wish it.”

“What a question! I can answer that without a scruple. I wish it with
such fervour, seeing my companion, as my years may permit themselves.
Where shall we go?”

“You shall choose.”

“Very well. Then we will go north by the Downs, that we may take the
great free air into our lungs, and realise the more sympathetically
the condition of my poor Louis.”

“O, don’t! It would kill me to be in prison. Baron, you are going to
stop with us, are you not, until the trial is over?”

“Both you and your father are very good. I may have, however, to
absent myself for a short time presently. We will see. In the
meanwhile I am your grateful Baron.” He took vast snuff, making his
eyes glisten, and somehow she liked him for it.

“I shall be glad,” she said, “when that detective goes. One will feel
more at peace from the squalor of it all.”

He shook his head.

“I do not think he means to go just yet.”

“Not? Why not?”

“Ah! that is his secret.”

“But what can he have to do now?”

“You must ask him, not me. All I can tell you is that he considers his
work here not yet finished; in fact, from words I heard him let fall
to your father this morning, little more than just begun.”

“How very strange! What can it mean?”

“Let us hazard a conjecture that he is not wholly satisfied with the
evidence against my Louis. It would be a happy thought for me.”

“O, yes, wouldn’t it! But--I wonder.”

“What do you wonder?”

“If the question of that other figure on the hill is puzzling him
too.”

Le Sage laughed. “Well, we are permitted to wonder,” he said, and,
humming a little tune, changed the subject to one of topography, and
the situation of various places of interest in the neighbourhood.

Audrey was perplexed about him. That he felt, and felt deeply, not
only the unhappy position of the prisoner, but the disturbance which
he himself had been the innocent means of introducing into the house,
she could not doubt; yet the patent genuineness of this sentiment was
unable, it seemed, wholly to deprive him of that constitutional
serenity, even gaiety, habitual to his nature. It was as if he either
could not, or would not, realise the black gravity of the affair; as
if, almost, holding the strings of it in his own hands, he could
afford to give this or that puppet a little tether before reining it
in to submit to his direction. And then she thought how this
impression was probably all due to that unanswering trick of his which
they had just been discussing, and which might very well seem to
inform his manner with a significance it did not really possess or
intend. She left him shortly, being called to some duty in the house,
and he continued his saunter alone, an aimless one apparently, but
gradually, after a time, assuming a definite direction. It took him
leisurely down the drive, out by the lodge gates into the road as far
as the fatal wicket, and so once more into the Bishop’s Walk. Going
unhurried along the track, he suddenly saw the detective before him.

The Sergeant, bent over, it seemed, in an intent observation of the
ground, was fairly taken off his guard. He showed it, as he came
erect, in a momentary change of colour. But the little shock of
surprise was mastered as soon as felt: self-possession is not long or
easily yielded by one trained in self-resourcefulness.

“Were you wanting me, sir?” he said; “because, if not----”

“Because, if not,” took up the Baron, wagging his head cheerfully,
“what am I doing here, interrupting you at your business?”

“Well, sir, it’s you have said it, not I.”

“So your business is not yet over, Sergeant? Am I to borrow any hope
for my man from that?”

“Was it the question, sir, you were looking for me to answer?”

“Excellent! My own way of meeting an awkward inquiry.”

“What do you mean by awkward?”

“Why, you won’t answer me, of course. What sensible detective would,
and give away his case? Still, I am justified in assuming that there
is something in the business which, so far, does not satisfy you; and
I build on that.”

“O! you do, do you?” He rubbed his chin grittily, pulling down his
well-formed lower jaw, and stood for a moment or two speculatively
regarding the face before him. “I wonder now,” he said suddenly, “if
you would answer a question I might put to you?”

“I’ll see, my friend. Chance it.”

“What made you so interested in this business before even your man was
charged on suspicion?”

“You allude----?”

“I allude to my finding you already on the spot here when I came down
to make my own examination of it.”

“Surely I have no reason to hide what I have already admitted in
public. I was uneasy about Louis.”

“And wanted to look and see, perhaps, if he’d left any evidences of
his guilt behind him?”

“I admit I was anxious to assure myself that there were no such
evidences.”

“And you did assure yourself?”

“Quite.”

“You found nothing suspicious?”

“Nothing whatever to connect with his presence here.”

“Found nothing at all?”

“Yes, I did: I found this.”

The Baron took from a pocket a common horn coat-button, and handed it
to the other, who received it and turned it over in silence.

“I picked it up,” said Le Sage, “near the tree where the gun had
stood.”

“Why,” said the detective, looking up rather blackly, “didn’t you
produce this at the Inquest?”

“I never supposed for the moment it could be of any importance.”

“H’mph!” grunted the Sergeant, and after a darkling moment, put the
button into his own pocket. “I don’t know; it may or may not be; but
you should have told me about it, sir. For the present, by your leave,
I’ll take charge of the thing. And now, if you’ve nothing more to show
me----”

“Nothing.”

“Then I should like to get on with my work, if it’s all the same to
you.”

“And I with my walk,” said the Baron, and he tripped jauntily away.




 CHAPTER XI.
 THE BARON DRIVES

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

On the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened. It became
really entertaining. One did not know whether to appear the more
scandalised or amused. On the one hand there was a certain
satisfaction in knowing that the last word was apparently not said in
what had seemed to be a perfectly straightforward affair, on the other
one’s sense of fitness had received a severe blow. In short, the
impeccable Cleghorn had been arrested, and was detained on suspicion.
I saw him go off in a fly in charge of a couple of policemen, and
never did hooked cod-fish on the Dogger Bank look more gogglingly
stupefied than he over the amazing behaviour of the bait he had
swallowed. Sir Calvin stormed, and blasphemed, and demanded to know if
the whole household of Wildshott was in a conspiracy to shame him and
tarnish his escutcheon; but his objurgations were received very
civilly and sensibly by the detective, who explained that he must act
according to his professional conscience, that detention did not
necessarily mean conviction, or even indictment, and that where a
sifting of the truth from the chaff imposed precautionary measures, he
must be free to take them, or abandon his conduct of the case.
Whereon the wrathful General simmered down, and contented himself only
with requesting sarcastically a few hours’ grace to settle his
affairs, when it came to be _his_ turn to wear the official bracelets.

And so, for the while, we were without a butler; nor could one, on
reviewing the evidence, be altogether surprised, perhaps, over that
deprivation. Certainly Cleghorn’s account of his own movements could
not be considered wholly satisfying or convincing, and he had admitted
his lack of any witness to substantiate it. It seemed incredible, with
a man of his substance and dignity; but is not the history of crime
full of such apparent contradictions? After all, he had had the same
provocation as the other man, and had departed, apparently, the same
way to answer it; and, as to his moral condition _after_ the event,
all testimony went to prove that it was worse than that of the Gascon.
Anyhow, this new development, however it was destined to turn out,
added fifty per cent. to the excitement of the business. Cleghorn! It
seemed inexpressibly comic.

As day followed day succeeding this terrific event, however
progressively other things might be assumed to be moving, no ground
was made in the matter of tracing out the dead girl’s origin or
connexions--and that in spite of the publicity given to the affair.
It was very strange, and I was immensely curious to know what could be
the reason. Her portrait was published in the _Police Gazette_, and
exhibited outside the various stations, but without result. I saw a
copy of it, and did not wonder. It had been reproduced, enlarged, it
seemed, from a tiny snapshot group, taken by one of the grooms, in
which she had figured quite inconspicuously, and was like nothing
human. I spoke to Ridgway about it, and he said it was the best that
could be done, that no other photograph of her could be traced, though
all the photographers in London had been applied to, and he owned
frankly that there seemed some mystery about the girl. I quite agreed
with him, and hinted that it was not the only one that remained to be
cleared up. He did not ask me what I meant, but I saw, by his next
remark, that he had understood what was in my mind.

“Why don’t you persuade him, sir,” he said, “to throw this business
off his chest, and get back to his old interests? He takes it too much
to heart.”

It was to Hugo he referred, of course, and I did not pretend to
misapprehend him. To tell the truth, I was a little smarting from my
friend’s treatment of me, and not in the mood to be indulgent of his
idiosyncrasies. I might have my suspicions as to his involvement in a
discreditable affair, but I had certainly not made him a party to
them, or even touched upon the subject of the scandal to him save with
the utmost delicacy and consideration. If he had chosen to give me his
confidence then and there, I would have honoured it; as it was, since
he showed no disposition to keep his promise to me made on the day of
the shoot, I considered myself as much at liberty to canvass the
subject as any one else who had heard, and formed his own conclusions,
from the doctor’s evidence. It was true that, to me at least, Hugh was
doing his best to give his case away by his behaviour. He seemed to
make little attempt to rally from the gloom with which the tragedy had
overcast him, but mooned about, silent, and aimless, as if for the
moment he had lost all interest in life. It was only that morning
that, moved by his condition, I had come at last to the resolution to
remind him of his promise, and get him to share with me, if he would,
the burden that was crushing his soul. His answer showed me at once,
however, the vanity of my good intentions. “Thanks, old fellow,” he
had said; “but a good deal has happened since then, and I’ve nothing
to confide.”

Now, that might be true, in the sense that the danger was past, and I
could have forgiven his reticence on the score of the loyalty it might
imply to a reputation passed beyond its own defence; but he went on
with some offensive remark about his regret in not being able to
satisfy my curiosity, and ended with a suggestion which, however
well-meaning it might have been, I considered positively insulting.

“You are wasting yourself here, old boy,” he said. “I’m not, truth to
tell, in the mood for much, and we oughtn’t to keep you. I feel that I
got you here under false pretences; but I couldn’t know what was going
to happen, could I? and so I won’t apologise. I think, I really think,
that, for the sake of all our feelings, it would be better if you
terminated your visit. You don’t mind my saying so, do you?”

“On the contrary, I mind very much,” I answered. “Have you forgotten
how, at considerable inconvenience to myself, I responded at once to
your invitation, and came down at a moment’s notice? The reason, as
you ought to know, Hugh, was pure regard for yourself and a desire to
help, and that desire is not lessened because I find you involved in a
much more serious business than I had anticipated.”

“O, if you put it in that way”--he began.

“I do put it in that way,” I said, “and I don’t take it very friendly
of you that you should talk of denying me a privilege which you were
ready enough to grant to that precious new Baron of yours--even
pressing him to stay.”

“It was not I who asked him,” he murmured.

“No,” I insisted, “I came to be helpful, and I am going to remain to
be helpful. I don’t leave you till I have seen this thing through.”

“Well,” he said very equivocally, “I hope that will be soon”--and he
left me to myself to brood over his ingratitude. I was sore with him,
I confess, and my grievance made me more unguarded perhaps in my
references to him than otherwise I should have been.

“I dare say he does,” I answered the detective; “but after all, I
suppose, it is his heart that is affected.”

He looked at me keenly.

“You mean, sir?”

“O! what _you_ mean,” I answered, “and that I can see that you mean.
What’s the good of our beating about the bush? My friend wouldn’t be
the first young fellow of his class to have got into trouble with a
good-looking servant girl.”

“No,” he said, “no,” in a hard sort of way. “They are not the kind to
bother about the consequences to others where their own gratification
is concerned. I’ve knocked up against some pretty bad cases in my
time. So, that’s what you gather from the medical report?”

“Partly from that; not wholly.”

“Ah! I dare say now, being on such friendly terms with Mr. Kennett,
you’ve been taken into his confidence?”

“Not directly; but in a way that invited me to form my own
conclusions. What then? It doesn’t affect this case, does it, except
in suggesting a possible motive for the crime on the part of some
jealous rival?”

“That’s it. It’s of no consequence, of course--except to the girl
herself--from any other point of view.”

His assurance satisfied me, and, taken by his sympathetic candour, I
could not refrain from opening my rankling mind to him a bit.

“The truth is,” I said, “that the moment I came down, I saw there was
something wrong with my friend. Indeed, he had written to me to imply
as much.”

“He was upset like, was he?” commented the detective.

“He was in a very odd mood,” said I--“an aggravated form of hysteria,
I should call it. I had never known him quite like it before, though,
as I dare say you have gathered, his temperament is an excitable one,
up and down like a see-saw. He talked of his dreaming of sitting on a
gunpowder barrel smoking a cigarette, and of the hell of an explosion
that was coming. And then there was his behaviour at the shoot the
next day.”

“I’ve heard something about it,” said Ridgway. “Queer, wasn’t it?”

“More than queer,” I answered. “I don’t mind telling you in confidence
that I had reason at one time to suspect him of playing the fool with
his gun, with the half intention--you know--an accident, and all the
bother ended. He swore not, when I tackled him about it; but I wasn’t
satisfied. I tried to get him to go home, leaving his gun with the
keeper, but he absolutely refused; and he refused again to part with
it when, in the afternoon, he finally did leave us, saying he was good
for nothing, and had had enough of it. If only then he had done what I
wanted him to do, and left his gun behind, this wretched business
might never have happened.”

“Ah!” said the detective, “he feels that, I dare say, and it doesn’t
help to cheer him up. Well, sir, I’d get him out, if I was
you--distract his thoughts, and make him forget himself. He won’t mend
what’s done by moping.”

“All very well,” I answered, “to talk about making him forget himself;
but when I’m forced to affect an ignorance of the very thing he wants
to forget--if we’re right--what am I to do? You might think that after
having had me down for the express purpose of advising him--as I have
no doubt was the case--in this scrape, he would take me more into his
confidence, and not at least resent, as seemingly he does, any
allusion to it.”

“Well, you see,” said the detective, “from his point of view the
scrape’s ended for him, and so there isn’t the same need for advice.
But I’d keep at it, if I was you, and after a time you may get him to
unburden himself.”

I had not much hope, after what had passed between us; but I held the
Sergeant’s recommendation in mind, and resolved to watch for and
encourage the least disposition to candour which might show itself on
my friend’s part. Perhaps I had gone a little further than I should
have in taking the detective into my confidence about a scandal which,
after all, was no more than surmise; but it was so patent to me that
his judgment ran, and must run, with my own, that it would have been
simply idle to pretend ignorance of a situation about which no two men
of intelligence could possibly have come to differing conclusions.
And, moreover, as Ridgway himself had admitted, true or not, the
incident had no direct bearing on the case.

These days at Wildshott, otherwise a little eventless for me as an
outsider, found a certain mitigation of their dullness in the
suspicion still kept alive in me regarding the Baron’s movements, and
in the consequent watchfulness I felt it my duty to keep on them. I
don’t know how it was, but I mistrusted the man, his secretiveness,
the company he kept, the mystery surrounding his being. Who was he?
Why did he play chess for half-crowns? Why had he come attended--as,
according to evidence, never before--by a ruffianly foreign
man-servant, ready, on the most trifling provocation, to dip his hands
in blood? That had been outside the programme, no doubt: men who use
dangerous tools must risk their turning in their hands; but what had
been his purpose in bringing the fellow? Throat-cutting? Robbery?--I
was prepared for any revelation. Abduction, perhaps: the Baron was for
ever driving about the country with Audrey in the little governess
cart. In the meanwhile, following that miscarriage of his master’s
plans, whatever they might be, Mr. Louis Victor Cabanis had been had
up before a full bench of magistrates, and, the police asking for time
in which to compact their evidence, had been remanded to prison for a
fortnight. The delay gave some breathing space for all concerned, and
was, I think, welcomed by every one but Hugo. I don’t know by what
passion of hatred of the slayer my friend’s soul might have been
agitated. Perhaps it was that, perhaps mere nervous tension; but he
appeared to be in a feverish impatience to get the business over. He
did not say much about it; but one could judge by his look and manner
the strained torment of his spirit. We were not a great deal together;
and mostly I had to make out my time alone as best I could.
Sometimes, in a rather pathetic way, he would go and play chess with
his father, a thing he had never dreamed of doing in his normal state.
I used to wonder if the General had guessed the truth, and how he was
regarding it if he had. According to all accounts, he had been no
Puritan himself in his younger days.

I have said that Audrey and the Baron were about a good deal together.
They were, and the knowledge troubled me so much that I made up my
mind to warn her.

“You appear to find his company very entertaining,” I said to her one
day. Audrey had a rather disconcerting way of responding to any
unwelcome question with a wide-eyed stare, which it was difficult to
undergo quite stoically.

“Do I?” she said presently. “Why?”

“You would hardly favour it so much otherwise, would you?”

“Perhaps not. You see I take the best there is. I can’t help it if
the choice is so limited.”

“That’s one for me. But never mind. I’m content he should do the
entertaining, if I can do the helpful.”

“To me, Mr. Bickerdike?”

“I hope so--a little. As Hugo’s friend I feel that I ought to have
some claim on your forbearance, not to say your good will. I think at
least that, on the strength of that friendship, you need not resent my
giving you a word of advice on a subject where, in my opinion, it’s
wanted.”

“I have a father and brother to look after me, Mr. Bickerdike.”

“I’m aware of it, Audrey; and also of the fact that--for reasons
sufficient of their own, no doubt--they leave you pretty much as you
like to go your own way. It may be an unexceptionable way for the most
part; but the wisest of us may occasionally go wrong from ignorance,
and then it is the duty--I dare say the thankless duty--of friendship
to interpose. You are very young, you know, and, one can’t help
seeing, rather forlornly situated----”

“Will you please to leave my situation alone, and explain what this is
all about?”

“Frankly, then--I offer this in confidence--I don’t think the Baron
very good company for you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a little difficult to say. If you had more knowledge of the
world you would understand, perhaps. There’s an air about him of the
shady Continental adventurer, whose purpose in society, wherever he
may seek it, is never a disinterested purpose. He’s always, one may
be sure, after something profitable to himself--in one word, spoil.
What do we any of us know about the Baron, except that he plays chess
for money and consorts with doubtful characters? Your father knows, I
believe, little more than I do, and that little for me is summed up in
the word ‘suspect.’ One can’t say what can be his object in staying on
here when common decency, one would have thought, seeing the trouble
he has been instrumental in causing, should have dictated his
departure; but, whatever his object, it is not likely, one feels
convinced, to be a harmless one, and one cannot help fearing that he
may be practising on your young credulity with a view to furthering it
in some way. I wish you would tell me--will you?--what he talks to
you about.”

She laughed in a way which somehow nettled me. “Doesn’t it strike
you,” she said, “as rather cheek on the part of one guest in a house
to criticize the behaviour of another to his hostess?”

“O, if you take it in that way,” I answered, greatly affronted, “I’ve
nothing more to say. Your power of reading character is no doubt
immensely superior to mine.”

“Well, I don’t think yours is very good,” she answered; “and I don’t
see why the question of common decency should apply to him more than
to another.”

“Don’t you?” I said, now fairly in a rage: “then it’s useless to
prolong the discussion further. This is the usual reward of trying to
interpose for good in other people’s affairs.”

“Some people might call it prying into them,” she answered, and I
flung from her without another word. I felt that I really hated the
girl--intolerable, pert, audacious young minx; but my rebuff made me
more determined than ever to sift the truth out of this questionable
riddle, and face her insolent assurance with it at the proper time.




 CHAPTER XII.
 THE BARON WALKS

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

I was still in this resolved mood, when something happened one night
which confirmed my worst suspicions, showing me how faithfully I had
weighed and measured the character of the man posing as a benevolent
guest in the house, the hospitality of which he was designing all the
time, in some mysteriously villainous way, to abuse. On that night I
had gone to bed rather late, outstaying, in fact, the entire family
and household, whose early country ways my degenerate London habits
found sometimes rather irksome. It was past midnight when I turned out
the lights in the billiard room, and, taking a candle, made my way
upstairs. There was a double flight rising from a pretty spacious
hall, and both the Baron’s room and my own gave upon the corridor
which opened west from the first-floor landing. As I passed his door I
noticed that a thread of light showed under it, proving him to be
either still awake, or fallen asleep with his candle unextinguished.
Which? For some unaccountable reason a thrill of excitement overtook
me. No sound came from behind the door; the whole house was dead
quiet. I stooped to peer through the keyhole--a naked light burning
beside one’s bed is a dangerous thing--but the key being in the lock
prevented my seeing anything. Soft-footed I went on--but not to sleep.
I determined to sit up and listen in my own room for any possible
developments. I don’t know why it was, but my heart misgave me that
there was some rascality afoot, and that I had only to wait patiently,
and go warily, to unmask it. And I was not mistaken.

Time passed--enough to assure the watcher at last of my being long in
bed and asleep--when I was aware of a stealthy sound in the corridor.
All my blood leaped and tingled to the shock of it. I stole, and put
my ear to my own keyhole; and at once the nature of the sound was made
clear to me. He had noiselessly opened his door and come out into the
passage, down which he was stealthily creeping in a direction away
from me. I don’t know how I recognized all this, but there is a
language in profound stillness. When silence is at its deathliest, one
can hear almost the way the earth is moving on its axis. I waited
until I felt that he had turned the corner to the stairs, then, with
infinite care, manipulated, a fraction at a time, the handle of my own
door, and, slipping off my pumps, emerged and followed, hardly
breathing, in pursuit.

At the opening to the stairs I paused discreetly, to give my quarry
“law,” and, with sovereign caution, peered round the corner--and saw
him. He was in his pyjamas, and carried an electric torch in his hand,
reminding me somehow, thus attired, of the actor Pellissier, only a
little squatter in his build. He descended soundlessly, throwing the
little beam of light before him, and, reaching the foot of the flight,
turned to his left at the moment that I withdrew my head. But I could
see from my eyrie the way he was going by the course of the travelling
light, and I believed that he was making for Sir Calvin’s study. And
the next moment there came to my ears the tiniest confirmatory
sound--the minute bat-like screak of a rusty door-handle. I had
noticed that very day how the one in question needed oiling, and the
evidence left me no longer in doubt. It was for the study he was
bound, and with what sinister purpose? That remained to see; but I
remembered the hidden safe in the room. I had happened upon it once
when left alone there.

A minute I paused, to allow him time to settle to his business; then
descended the stairs cat-footed. At the newel post, crowned with a
great carved wyvern, the Kennett device, I stood to reconnoitre,
pressing my face to the wood and looking round it with one eye. And at
once I perceived that I neither could nor need venture further. He
stood, sure enough, at the desk in the study, fairly revealed in the
diffused glow from his torch, whose little brilliant facula was turned
upon a litter of papers that lay before him. But the door of the
room--he had left it so in his fancied security--stood wide open,
precluding any thought of a closer espionage on my part. I could only
stay where I was, concentrating all my vision on the event.

Suddenly he seemed to find what he sought, and I saw a paper in his
hand. Something appeared to tell me at the same moment that he was
about to return, and I yielded and--judging discretion, for the
occasion, to be the better part of valour--went up the stairs on my
hands and feet as fast as I could paddle, in a soft hurry to regain my
room and extinguish the light before so much as the ghost of a
suspicion could occur to him. It would not have served my purpose to
face him then and there, and I had learnt as much as for the time
being I needed. To have detected our worthy friend in a secret
midnight raid on his host’s papers was proof damning enough of the
correctness of my judgment.

Listening intently, I heard him re-enter his room, as he had left it,
with supreme caution. I was feeling a good deal agitated, and the
moisture stood on my forehead. How was I to proceed; what course to
take? My decision was not reached until after much debating within
myself. It might be guided by the General’s chance assertion that some
important document had been lost or mislaid in his room, in which case
I must act at once; but if, on the other hand, he made no such
statement, it might very well be days or weeks before his loss were
brought home to him. In that event I would say nothing about my
discovery, trusting to lead the criminal on, through his sense of
immunity, to further depredations. By then I might have acquired, what
at present I lacked, some insight into the nature and meaning of his
designs, holding the key to which I could face him with any discovery.
No, I would not tell Sir Calvin as yet. In such a case premature
exposure might very easily prove more futile than unsuspicion itself.
The keystone being wanting, all one’s structure might fall to pieces
at the first test.

But what a stealthy villain it was! As I recovered, it was to plume
myself a little, I confess, on my circumventing such a rogue. I would
have given a good deal to know what was the character of the paper he
had stolen. Hardly a draft, for such would not have been left about,
not to speak of the crude futility of such a deed. No, there was some
more subtle intention behind it--blackmail perhaps--but it was useless
to speculate. He had not at least touched the safe, and that was so
much to be thankful for.

Now I came to my resolution. I would speak to Sir Calvin on the
subject when the moment was ripe, and not before: and then, having so
far justified my remaining on as his guest, I would go. In the
meanwhile I would make it my especial and individual province to
expose this rascal, and thereby refute Audrey’s detestable calumny of
me as a sort of unpleasant eavesdropper and hanger-on. Perhaps she
would learn to regret her insult when she saw in what fashion I had
retaliated on it.




 CHAPTER XIII.
 ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE

Wednesday of the third week following the Inquest was appointed for
the magisterial inquiry, and during the interval Sergeant Ridgway was
busily occupied, presumably in accumulating and piecing together
various evidence. Of what it consisted no one but himself knew, nor
did it appear whether or not its trend on the whole was favourable or
disastrous to the unhappy prisoner, at the expense possibly of
Cleghorn, or possibly to the complete exculpation of that injured man.
The detective kept his own counsel, after the manner of his kind; and
if any had thought to extract from the cover of that sealed book a
hint of its contents, no reassuring message at least could have been
gathered from its unlettered sombreness. But nobody asked, fearful of
being thought to profane the majestic muteness of the oracle; and the
labouring atmosphere lowered unlightened as the days went on. Even M.
le Baron, most individually concerned in the fate of his henchman,
made no attempt to plumb the official profundity, and that in spite of
his curiosity about most things. He seemed, indeed, oddly passive
about the whole business, never referring to it but indirectly, and,
so far as appeared, taking no steps to interview the prisoner or
supply him with the means of defence. If any sneering allusion was
made to this insensibility by Mr. Bickerdike or another, Audrey, were
she present, would be hot in her friend’s vindication. It may have
been that, in the course of their queer association, he had confided
to her sufficient reasons for his behaviour; old Viv, on the other
hand, saw in her attitude only proof of the process of corruption he
had suspected. But, whatever the case, cheerfully detached the Baron
remained, asking no questions of the detective, and taking chess and
life with as placid a gaiety as if no Louis Victor Cabanis lay caged a
few miles away, awaiting his examination on a charge of wilful murder.

Whether it were in some apology for a darkness which he could not
afford to illuminate, or to avoid teasing inquiries, or for any other
reason, the Sergeant came gradually to give the house less and less of
his company. He seemed rather to avoid contact with its inmates, and
his manner, when he rarely appeared, was sombre and preoccupied. No
one, perhaps, felt this withdrawal more than the house-keeper, Mrs.
Bingley, with whom he had been accustomed to take his meals, and who
had found him, when once her awe of his office was overcome, a most
entertaining guest, full of intelligence, rich in anecdote, and deeply
interested in everything appertaining to Wildshott, from its family
portraits and accumulated collections to the beauty of its grounds and
of the country in which it lay situated.

“It must have been,” she said one day to her master, to whom she was
lamenting the Sergeant’s prolonged absences, “such a relief to a man
of his occupations to be able to forget himself, even for an hour or
two, in such noble surroundings. But perhaps he wants to show us that
he’s taking no advantage of the attentions paid him, lest we might
think he was trying to worm himself into our confidence.”

“Or can it be that he has already found out from you all that he wants
to know?” observed Le Sage, who was present on the occasion, with a
humorous look.

“I’m sure, sir,” said Mrs. Bingley with asperity, “that he is
incapable of the meanness. If you had heard him express the sentiments
that I have you would never hint such a charge. No, there is some
delicacy of feeling, take my word for it, at the bottom of this change
in him; and I can’t help fearing that it means he has found out
something fresh, something even more distressful to the family, which
makes him chary of accepting its hospitality. I only hope----” she
paused, with a little sigh.

“You’re thinking of Cleghorn!” broke in her master. “Damme! I’ll never
believe in respectability again if that man’s done it.”

“God forbid!” said the housekeeper. “But I wish Sergeant Ridgway would
appear more, and more in his old way, when he _does_ honour me with
his company.”

Her wish, however, was not to be fulfilled. The detective more and
more absented himself as the days went on, and became more and more of
an Asian mystery in the fleeting glimpses of his presence vouchsafed
the household. Dark, taciturn, abysmal, he flitted, a casual shadow,
through the labyrinthine mysteries of the crime, and could never be
said to be here before an echo of his footfall was sounding in the
hollows far away. A picturesque description of his processes, perhaps,
but consorting in a way with the housekeeper’s fanciful rendering.
Perhaps delicacy rather than expediency _was_ the motive of his
tactics; perhaps, having virtually completed his case, he _was_
keeping out of the way until the time came to expound it; perhaps a
feature of its revision _was_ that distressful something, menacing,
appalling, foreseen by the housekeeper. He had plenty otherwise to do,
no doubt, in the way of collecting evidence, consulting Counsel, and
so forth, which alone gave plenty of reason for neglecting the social
amenities. Whatever the explanation, however, the issue was not to be
long delayed.

The Baron came upon him unexpectedly one morning in the upper grounds,
where the fruit gardens were, and the espaliers, and all the signs of
a prosperous vegetable order. There was a fair view of the estate to
be gained from that elevation, and the Sergeant appeared to be
absorbed for the moment in the gracious prospect. He waited unmoving
for the other to join him, and nodded as he came up.

“It’s pleasant to snatch a minute, sir,” he said, “to give to a view
like this. People of my profession don’t get many such.”

“I suppose not,” answered Le Sage, “nor of a good many other
professions. Proprietary views, like incomes, are very unfairly
distributed, don’t you think?”

“Well, that’s so, no doubt; and among the wrong sort of people often
enough.”

Le Sage laughed.

“Are you one of the right sort of people, Sergeant?”

“I won’t go so far as to say that, sir, but I will go so far as to say
that, if _I_ owned this property, I’d come to feast my eyes on it here
more often than what Sir Calvin does.”

The Baron, without moving his head, took in the face of the speaker.
He saw a glow, a subdued passion in it which interested him. What
spirit of romance, to be sure, might lurk unsuspected under the hard
official rind. Here was the last man in the world whom one would have
credited with a sense of beauty, and he was wrought to emotion by a
landscape!

“You talk,” said he, “of your profession not affording you many such
moments as this. Now, to my mind, it seems _the_ profession for a man
romantically inclined.”

“Does it, indeed, sir?”

“Why, don’t you live in a perpetual atmosphere of romance? Think of
the mysteries which are your daily food.”

“That’s it--my daily food, and lodging too. The men who pull on the
ropes for a living don’t think much, or see much, of the fairy scene
they’re setting. That’s all for the prosperous folks in front.”

“You’d rather be one of them?”

“Which would you rather, sir--be a police-officer, or the owner of an
estate like this? If such things were properly distributed, as you
say, there’d be no need perhaps for police-officers at all. You read
the papers about a case like ours here, and you see only a romance:
we, whose necessity puts us behind the scenes, see only, in nine cases
out of ten, the dirty mishandling of Fate. Give a man his right
position in the world, and he’ll commit no crimes. That’s my belief,
and it’s founded on some experience.”

“I dare say you’re right. It’s comforting to know, in that case, that
my valet has always fitted into _his_ place like a stopper into a
bottle.”

The detective stood silent a moment; then turned on the speaker with a
queer enigmatic look.

“Well, I wouldn’t lose heart about him, if I was you,” he said drily.

“That’s good!” said Le Sage. “I can leave him with a tolerably safe
conscience then.”

“What, sir--you’re going away before the inquiry?”

“I must, I’m afraid. I have business in London which I can no longer
postpone.”

“But how about your evidence?”

“After what you have said, cannot you afford to do without it?”

The detective considered, frowning and rubbing his chin; then said
simply, “Very well,” and made a movement to go.

They went down the garden together, and parted at the door in the
wall. This was on the Saturday. On the following Monday the officer
appeared for the last time to arrange for his witnesses on the
Wednesday ensuing. He carried his handbag with him, and intimated that
it was not his purpose to return again before the event. They were
all--Mrs. Bingley perhaps excepted--glad to see the last of him, and
the last of what his presence there implied, and welcomed the prospect
of the one clean day which was to be theirs before their re-meeting in
Court.

The Sergeant’s manner at his parting was restrained, and his
countenance rigidly pale. Sir Calvin, receiving his formal thanks for
the courtesy shown him, remarked upon it, and asked him if he were
feeling overdone.

“No, sir,” he replied: “never better, thank you. I hope you yourself
may never feel worse than I do at this moment.”

Something in his way of saying it, some significance of tone, or look,
or emphasis, seemed to cast a sudden chill upon the air. The General
turned away with a slightly wondering, puzzled expression, and
shrugged his shoulders as if he were cold. There were one or two
present who remembered that gesture afterwards, identifying it with
some vague sensation in themselves.

That same night the Baron caused a considerable stir by announcing his
intention of leaving them on the morrow. They all had something to say
in the way of surprise and remonstrance except Mr. Bickerdike, and he
judiciously held his tongue. Even Hugo showed a certain concern, as a
man might who felt, without quite realizing what it was he felt, the
giving way of some moral support on which he had been unconsciously
leaning. He looked up and asked, as the detective had asked, “What
about your evidence?”

“It is said to be immaterial,” answered Le Sage. “I am speaking on
the authority of the Sergeant himself.”

Hugh said no more; but he eyed the Baron in a wistful, questioning
way. He was in a rather moving mood, patently looking forward to
Wednesday’s ordeal with considerable nervousness and apprehension, and
not altogether without reason. The Inquest had been trying enough; yet
that had been a mere local affair, conducted amid familiar
surroundings. To stand up in public Court and repeat, perhaps be
forced to amplify, the evidence he had already given was a far
different and more agitating prospect. What was in his mind, who could
know? There was something a little touching in the way he clung to his
family, and in the slight embarrassment they showed over his
unaccustomed attentions. Audrey, falling in for her share, laughed,
and responded with only a bad grace; but the glow in her eyes
testified to feelings not the less proud and exultant because their
repression had been so long a necessity with her.

Coming upon the Baron in the hall by-and-by, as he was on his way
upstairs to prepare for the morrow’s journey, she stopped and spoke to
him.

“Can you manage without a valet, Baron?”

“As I have managed a hundred times before, my dear.”

“Must you really go?”

“I must, indeed.”

“Leaving Louis to shift for himself?”

“I leave him in the hands of Providence.”

“Yes, but Providence is not a lawyer.”

“Heaven forbid! God, you know, like no lawyer, tempers the wind to the
shorn lamb--_à brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent_. That is a good
French proverb, and I am going to France in the faith of it.”

“But you will come back again?”

“Yes, I will come back. It will be all right about Louis--you will
see.”

She did not answer. She had been holding him by the lapels of his
coat, running her thumbs down the seams, and suddenly, feeling a
little convulsive pressure there, he looked up in her face and saw
that thick tears were running down her cheeks. Very softly but
resolutely then he captured the two wandering hands and held them
between his own.

“My dear,” he said, “my dear, I understand. But listen to this--have
confidence in your friend the Baron.”

And on the morrow morning he left, accompanied by Mr. Vivian
Bickerdike’s most private and most profound misgivings. That he was
going to London on some business connected with the stolen document
was that gentleman’s certain conviction. But what was he to do? Expose
at once, or wait and learn more? On the whole it were better to wait,
perhaps: the fellow was coming back--he had said so, and to the same
unconsciousness of there being one on his track who at the right
moment could put a spoke in his nefarious wheel.

He was still considering the question, when something happened which,
for the time being, put all considerations but one out of his head. By
the first post on the very morning of the inquiry he received, much to
his astonishment, a _subpœna_ binding him to appear and give evidence
in Court. About what? If any uneasy suspicion in his mind answered
that question, to it was to be attributed, no doubt, his rather white
conscience-troubled aspect as he presently joined the party waiting to
be motored over to the Castle in the old city where the case was to be
tried.




 CHAPTER XIV.
 THE EXPLOSION

The Magistrates assembled to hear the case were four in number, two
of them being local magnates and personal friends of Sir Calvin, who
was accorded a seat on the Bench. They took their places at eleven
o’clock, the Court being then crowded to its utmost capacity. The case
stood first on the list, and no delay was experienced in opening it.
As before, Mr. Fyler appeared for the police, and Mr. Redstall for Sir
Calvin. The prisoner was undefended.

At the outset of the proceedings a surprise awaited the public. The
prisoner having been brought up from the cells beneath the Court, and
placed in the dock, Sergeant Ridgway asked permission to speak.
Addressing the Bench, he said that since the inquiry before the
Coroner, which had ended, as their Worships were aware, in a verdict
by the jury of wilful murder against the prisoner Louis Victor
Cabanis, facts had come to his knowledge which entirely disposed of
the theory of the prosecution, proving, as they did, an unquestionable
_alibi_ in the prisoner’s favour. Under these circumstances he
proposed to offer no evidence against the accused, who, with their
Worships’ permission would be discharged.

Smart in aspect, concise in phrase, the detective stood up and made
his avowal, and again, though in an auguster atmosphere, with a marked
impression upon his hearers. Some of them had already encountered him,
no doubt, and were prepared to concede to his every statement the
force and value of an official fiat.

“Very well, Sergeant,” was the reply, while the public wondered if
they were going to be defrauded of their feast of sensation, or if
some spicier substitute were about to be placed before them. They were
not kept long in suspense.

Following the Sergeant’s declaration, brief evidence was given by
Andrew Marle, shepherd, and Nicholas Penny, thatcher. The former
deposed that on the afternoon in question he was setting hurdles on
the uplands above Leighway, at a point about three miles north-east of
Wildshott Park as the crow flies, when he saw prisoner. That was as
near three o’clock as might be. Prisoner had stood watching him for a
few minutes while exchanging a remark or two, and had then gone on in
a northerly direction.

Penny gave evidence that, on the same afternoon, at three-thirty, he
was working in the garden of his cottage at Milldown, two miles beyond
the point mentioned by the last witness, when prisoner came by and
asked him the time. He gave it him, and the prisoner thanked him and
continued his way, still bearing north by east until he was out of
sight. He was going leisurely, both witnesses affirmed, and there
appeared nothing peculiar about him except his foreign looks and
speech. Neither had the slightest hesitation in identifying the
prisoner with the man they had seen. There was no possibility of
mistaking him.

This evidence, said the detective, addressing the justices again at
the end of it, precluded any idea of the prisoner’s being the guilty
party, the case for the prosecution holding that the murder was
committed at some time between three and four o’clock in the
afternoon. At three o’clock the accused was proved to have been at a
spot good three miles away from the scene of the crime, and again at
3.30 at a spot five miles away, representing a distance which, even on
an extravagant estimate, he could hardly have covered within the
period remaining to him if the theory of the prosecution was to be
substantiated. There was no case, in fact, and the prosecution
therefore withdrew the charge.

A magistrate put the question somewhat extrajudicially, why had he not
pleaded this _alibi_ in the first instance. The accused, who appeared
overwhelmed by the change in his situation, was understood to say,
with much emotion and gesticulation, that he had not been advised, nor
had he supposed that the deposition of a prisoner himself would count
for anything, and, moreover, that he had been so bewildered by the
labyrinth of suspicion in which he had got himself involved, that it
had seemed hopeless to him to think of ever extricating himself from
it. He seemed a simple soul, and the justices smiled, with some
insular superiority, over his naïve declaration. He was then given to
understand that he was discharged and might go, and with a joyous
expression he stepped from the dock and vanished like a jocund goblin
down the official trap.

Counsel for the prosecution then rose, and stated that, the charge
against Cabanis being withdrawn, it was proposed to put in his place
Samuel Cleghorn, against whom, although no definite charge had as yet
been preferred by the police, a _prima facie_ case existed. His
examination, and the examination of the witnesses concerned, would
probably prove a lengthy affair, and he asked therefore that the case
might be taken next on the list. The justices concurring, Samuel
Cleghorn was brought up from the cells, and stood to undergo his
examination.

Confinement and anxiety, it was evident, had told upon the prisoner,
whose aspect since the Inquest had undergone a noticeable change. He
looked limp and deteriorated, like a worn banknote, and his lips were
tremulous. Respectability in a sidesman caught pilfering from the
plate could not have appeared more self-conscious of its fall. He
bowed deferentially to the Bench, with a slight start on seeing his
master seated there, and, making some ineffectual effort to appear at
ease, clasped his plump white hands before him and fixed a glassy eye
on the wall. The public, reassured, settled down, like a music-hall
audience to a new exciting “turn,” the Bench assumed its most judicial
expression, and Counsel, adjusting its wig for the fray, proceeded to
open the case.

It is not proposed to recapitulate _in extenso_ the evidence already
given. In bulk and essentials the two hardly differed, the only marked
changes being in the order of the witnesses examined, and in the
absence from their list of the Baron Le Sage, who, however, inasmuch
as his sole use had been to testify to the character of his servant,
was no longer needed. There was the same reference to the insuperable
difficulty--experienced and still unsurmounted--in tracing out the
deceased’s connexions, the same statement by Sergeant Ridgway as to
the fruitlessness of the measures taken, and the same request that, in
default of further information, such evidence of identification as was
at present available should be provisionally accepted. The Bench
agreed, the detective sat down, and Counsel rose once more, this time
with a formidable eye to business.

Mr. Fyler began by reconstructing, so far as was possible, the history
of the crime from the evidence already adduced, into the particulars
of which it is unnecessary to follow him. In summarising the known
facts, he made no especial point, it was observed, of bringing them to
bear on the presumptive guilt of the prisoner, but used him rather as
a convenient model or framework about which to shape his story.
Indeed, when he sat down again, it might have been given as even odds
whether the conviction or acquittal of the accused man was the thing
foreshadowed. And what then? After two attempts, was the whole
business to end in a fiasco? Incredible! Some one must have killed
the girl. The very atmosphere of the Court, moreover, fateful,
ominous--derided such a conclusion. “Attend and wait!” it seemed to
whisper.

Counsel was no sooner down than he was up again, and calling now upon
his witnesses to appear. They came one by one, as summoned--Mrs.
Bingley, Jane Ketchlove, Jessie Ellis, Kate Vokes, Mabel Wheelband;
and there the order was broken. The examination of these five was in
all essentials a replica of that conducted at the Inquest, but, to the
observant, with one significant note added. For the first time Counsel
showed, as it were, a corner of the card up his sleeve by suggesting
tentatively, insinuatively, _à propos_ the question of a guilty
intrigue, that one or other of them might possibly have her suspicions
as to the identity of the second party implicated in it. The hint was
disowned as soon as rejected; but it had left a curious impression
here and there of more to come, of its having only been proffered to
open and prepare the way to evidence, the stronger, perhaps, for some
such moral corroboration. Not one of the women, however, would own to
the subtle impeachment, and the question for the moment was dropped.

But it was dropped only tactically, in accordance with a pre-arranged
plan, as became increasingly apparent with the choice of the next
witness. This was Dr. Harding, who had made the _post-mortem_
examination, and whose evidence repeated exactly what he had formerly
stated. It added, moreover, a detail which, touching upon a question
of time, showed yet a little more plainly which way the wind was
setting; and it included an admission, or correction, no less
suggestive in its import. The question was asked witness: “At the
Inquest you stated, I believe, that death must have occurred at 3.30
o’clock, or thereabouts. Is that so?”

_A._ I said “approximately,” judging by the indications.

_Q._ Just so. I am aware that, in these cases, a certain latitude must
be granted. It might then, in fact, have occurred somewhat earlier or
somewhat later?

_A._ Yes. By preference, somewhat earlier.

_Q._ How much earlier?

Witness, refusing to submit to any brow-beating on the question,
finally, at the end of a highly technical disputation, conceded a half
hour as the extreme limit of his approximation; and with that the
matter ended. As he stepped from the box the name of a new witness--a
witness not formerly included in the inquiry--was called, and public
interest, already deeply stimulated, grew intensified.

Margaret Hopkins, widow, deposed on oath. She was landlady of the
Brewer’s Dray inn at Longbridge. The inn was situated to the east of
the town and a little outside it on the Winton Road. One afternoon,
about five weeks ago, a lady and gentleman had called at her inn,
wanting tea, and a private room to drink it in. They were shown up to
a chamber on the first floor, where the gentleman ordered a fire to be
lighted. Tea was brought them by witness herself, and they had
remained there shut in a long time together--a couple of hours
perhaps. They were very affectionate with one another, and had gone
away, when they did go, very lovingly arm in arm. The gentleman was
Mr. Hugo Kennett, whom she now saw in Court, and whom she had
recognised for the male stranger at once. The name of the lady
accompanying him she had had no means of ascertaining, but her
companion had addressed her as Annie.

Mr. Redstall, rising to cross-examine witness, put the following
questions:--

_Q._ Will you swear to Mr. Kennett having been the gentleman in
question?

_A._ Yes, on my oath, sir.

_Q._ You already knew Mr. Kennett by sight, eh?

_A._ No, I did not, sir. I had never seen him before, and have never
seen him since till to-day. I hadn’t been settled in Longbridge not a
two-month at the time he come.

_Q._ You say the two appeared to be on affectionate terms. On
companionable terms would perhaps be the truer expression, eh?

_A._ As you choose, sir, if that means behaving like lovers together.
(_Laughter._)

_Q._ What do you mean by like lovers? They would hardly have made a
display of their sentiments before you.

_A._ Not intentional perhaps, sir; but I come upon them unexpected
when I brought in the tea; and there they was a’sitting on the sofy
together, as close and as fond as two turtle-doves. (_Laughter._)

Mrs. Bingley, recalled, reluctantly admitted having given deceased an
afternoon off about the date in question. The girl had returned to the
house before six o’clock.

Reuben Henstridge called, repeated his evidence given on the day of
the Inquest, omitting only, or abridging, such parts of it as bore on
the movements of the Frenchman, and excluding altogether--by tacit
consent, it seemed--those references to the butler’s approach which
had brought such a confusion of cross-questioning about his ears. The
following bodeful catechism then ensued:--

_Q._ You say it was ten minutes past two when you saw Cabanis break
from the copse and go down towards the road?

_A._ Aye.

_Q._ And that, having hung about after seeing him, you eventually
returned to the Red Deer inn, reaching it at about 3.30?

_A._ That’s it.

_Q._ At what time did you start to return to the inn?

_A._ Three o’clock, or a bit after.

_Q._ What had you been doing in the interval?

_A._ (_Sulkily._) That’s my business.

_Q._ I ask you again. You had better answer.

_A._ (_After a scowling pause._) Setting snares, then. (_Defiantly._)
Weren’t it the open downs?

_Q._ I’m not entering into that question. We’ll assume, if you like,
that the downs and your behaviour were equally open. You were setting
snares, that’s enough. Did anything suddenly occur to interrupt you at
your task?

_A._ Yes, it did.

_Q._ What was that?

_A._ The sound of a gun going off.

_Q._ From what direction?

_A._ From down among the trees near the road.

_Q._ Quite so. Now will you tell the Bench exactly what time it was
when you heard that sound?

_A._ The time when I started to go home.

_Q._ About three o’clock or a little after?

_A._ That’s it.

_Q._ You state that on your oath?

_A._ Yes, I do.

It was as if a conscious tremor, like the excitement of many hearts
leaping in unison, passed through the Court, dimly foretelling some
approaching crisis. The examination was resumed:--

_Q._ What makes you so certain of the time?

_A._ The stable clock had just gone three.

_Q._ And, following on the sound of the gun, you left your
snare-setting and made for home?

_A._ Aye.

_Q._ For what reason?

_A._ Because I thought they might be working round my way.

_Q._ Whom do you mean by “they”?

_A._ The party as was out shooting. I made sure at first it come from
them.

_Q._ What made you alter your opinion?

_A._ I see them, as I went up the hill, afar off nigh Asholt wood.

_Q._ Now, tell me: why didn’t you mention all this at the Inquest?

_A._ Because I weren’t asked.

_Q._ Or was it because you feared having to confess to what made you
bolt, and from what occupation, when the shot startled you? (_No
answer._) Very well. Now attend to this. You have heard it propounded,
or assumed, that the murder took place some time between 3.15 and 4
o’clock. Do you still adhere to your statement that it was just after
three when you heard the sound of the gun?

_A._ Aye.

_Q._ You are on your oath, remember.

_A._ All right, master.

_Q._ And you adhere to it?

_A._ Yes, I do.

_Q._ That is enough. You can stand down.

A sibilation, a momentary rustling and shuffling, as on the close of
an engrossing sermon when tension is relaxed and the hymn being
prepared for, followed the dismissal of the witness. A few glanced
furtively, hardly realizing yet why they were moved to do so, at a
rigid soldierly figure, seated upright and motionless beside the
justices on the Bench. But the sense of curious perplexity was hardly
theirs when the next witness was claiming their attention. This was
Daniel Groome, the gardener, whose evidence, generally a repetition of
what he had formerly stated, was marked by a single amendment, the
significance of which he himself hardly seemed to realize. It appeared
as follows:--

_Q._ You stated before the Coroner that this louder shot heard by you
occurred at a time which you roughly estimated to be anything between
three and half-past three o’clock. Is that so?

_A._ No, sir.

_Q._ What do you mean by “no”?

_A._ I’ve thought it over since, sir, and I’ve come to the conclusion
that my first impression was nearer the correct one.

_Q._ Your impression, that is to say, that the shot was fired somewhat
about three o’clock?

_A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ What is your reason for this change of opinion?

_A._ Because I remembered afterwards, sir, having heard the clock in
the master’s study strike the quarter past. I had gone round by then
to the back of the house.

_Q._ And you had heard the shot fired while at the front?

_A._ Yes, sir.

This witness was stiffly cross-examined by Mr. Redstall, who sought
to shake his evidence on the grounds that he was, consciously or
unconsciously, seeking to adapt it to what was expected of him. But
the poor fellow’s honesty was so transparent, and his incomprehension
of the gravity of his statement so ingenuous, that the only result of
his harrying was to increase the impression of his disinterested
probity. He said what he believed to be the truth, and he adhered to
it.

He went, and the usher, tapping with his wand on the floor, called in
a loud voice on Vivian Bickerdike to appear and give evidence.

A famous writer has asserted that there are two kinds of witness to
whom lawyers take particular exception, the reluctant witness and the
too-willing witness. To these may be added a third, the anxious
witness, who, being oppressed with a sense of responsibility of his
position, fears at once to say too much or too little, and ends by
saying both. Bickerdike entered the box an acutely anxious witness.
The trend of some recent evidence had left him in no doubt as to the
lines on which his own examination was destined to run, and he foresaw
at once the use to which a certain conversation of his with the
detective was going to be put. Now it was all very well to hold the
Sergeant guilty in this of a gross breach of confidence, but his
conscience would not thereby allow him to maintain himself blameless
in the matter. He should have known quite well, being no fool, that a
detective did not ask questions or invite communications from a purely
altruistic point of view, and that the apparent transparency of such a
man’s sentiments was the least indication of their depth. By
permitting pique a little to obscure that fact to him he had done his
friend--for whom he had a real, very warm regard--a disservice, to
which he had now, in that friend’s hearing, to confess. So far, then,
it only remained to him to endeavour to repair, through his sworn
evidence, the mischief to which he had made himself a party.

But could any reparation stultify now a certain issue, to which--he
had seen it suddenly, aghast--that too-open candour of his had been
seduced into contributing? What horrible thing was it which was being
approached, threatened, in the shadow of his friend’s secret? The
thing was monstrous, damnable; yet he could not forget how it had
appeared momentarily adumbrated to himself on his first hearing of the
murder. But he had rejected the thought with incredulous scorn then,
as he would reject it now. Of whatever sinful weakness Hugh might be
capable, a crime so detestable, so cruel, was utterly impossible to
him. He swore it in his heart; but his faith could not relieve him of
the weight of responsibility which went with him into the witness box.
It was like a physical oppression, and he seemed to bend under it.
Counsel took the witness’s measure with a rolling relish of the lips,
as he prepared, giving a satisfied shift to his gown, to open his
inquisitions:--

_Q._ You are on very intimate terms, I believe, Mr. Bickerdike, with
Sir Calvin and his family?

_A._ With Sir Calvin’s permission, I think I may say yes.

_Q._ You have seen the prisoner before?

_A._ Many times.

_Q._ Could you, as a guest, speak to his general character?

_A._ It has always appeared to me quite unexceptionable.

_Q._ Not a violent man?

_A._ O! dear, no.

_Q._ At dinner, on the night before the murder, did you notice
anything peculiar about him?

_A._ He appeared to me to be upset about something.

_Q._ And you wondered, perhaps--having only arrived that afternoon, as
I understand--what domestic tribulation could have discomposed so
stately a character? (_Laughter._)

_A._ I may have. I had always considered Cleghorn as immovable an
institution as the Monument.

The laughter which greeted this sally appeared to reassure witness
somewhat, as did the unexpected lines on which his rather irregular
examination seemed to be developing. But his confidence was of short
duration. The very next question brought him aware of the true purpose
of this preliminary catechism, which was merely to constitute a
pretext for getting him into the witness-box at all.

_Q._ Was your arrival that afternoon, may I ask, in response to a long
invitation or a sudden call?

_A._ (_With a sudden stiffening of his shoulders, as if rallying his
energies to meet an ordeal foreseen._) A sudden call. I came down in
response to a letter from my friend Mr. Hugo Kennett, inviting me to a
few days’ shooting.

_Q._ Mr. Hugo Kennett is a particular friend of yours, is he not?

_A._ We have known one another a long time.

_Q._ Intimate to that degree, I mean, that you have few secrets from
one another?

_A._ That may be.

_Q._ And can depend upon one another in any emergency?

_A._ I hope so.

_Q._ There was a question of emergency, perhaps, in this case?

_A._ I am bound to say there often is with Mr. Kennett.

_Q._ Will you explain what you mean by that?

_A._ I mean--I hope he will forgive my saying it--that his imagination
is a little wont to create emergencies which nothing but his friends’
immediate advice and assistance can overcome. He is apt to be in the
depths one moment and on the heights the next. He is built that way,
that’s all.

_Q._ Was this a case of an emergency due to his imagination?

_A._ I won’t go quite so far as to say that.

_Q._ Then there was really a reason this time for his having you down
at short notice?

_A._ I may have thought so.

_Q._ We will come to that. Had he mentioned the reason in his letter
to you?

_A._ No. The letter only said that he badly wanted “bucking,” and
asked me to come down at once.

_Q._ He gave no explanation?

_A._ None whatever.

_Q._ In the letter, or afterwards when you met?

_A._ No.

_Q._ You found him in an uncommunicative mood?

_A._ Somewhat.

_Q._ Kindly say what you mean by “somewhat.”

_A._ I mean that, while he told me nothing definite about his reason
for having me down, he did seem to hint that there was trouble
somewhere.

_Q._ What were his exact words?

_A._ I can’t remember.

_Q._ Were they to the effect that he was in a devil of a fix with a
girl, and could only see one way out of it? (_Sensation._)

_A._ (_Aghast._) Nothing of the sort. Now I recall, he described
himself as sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, smoking a cigarette and
waiting for the explosion that was to come.

_Q._ Thank you. Another effort or two, Mr. Bickerdike, and your
memory may need no refreshing. Did you find your friend’s manner,
now, as strange as his talk?

_A._ It might often have seemed strange on such occasions to those who
did not know him.

_Q._ Answer my question, please.

_A._ (_Reluctantly._) Well, it was strange.

_Q._ Stranger than you had ever known it to be before?

_A._ Perhaps so.

_Q._ I suggest that it was wild and reckless to a degree--the manner
of a man who had got himself into a hopeless scrape, and saw no way
out of it but social and material ruin?

_A._ It was very strange: I can say no more.

_Q._ Would you have considered his state compatible with that of a
young man of good position and prospects, who had entangled himself
with a girl greatly his social inferior, and was threatened by her
with exposure unless he, in the common phrase, made an honest woman of
her?

Mr. Redstall rising to object, the Bench ruled that the question was
inadmissible. It had created, however, a profound impression in Court,
which from that moment never abated. Counsel, accepting their
worships’ decision, resumed:--

_Q._ Had you any reason to suspect a woman in the case?

_A._ It was pure conjecture on my part.

_Q._ Then you _did_ entertain such a suspicion?

_A._ Not at that time. Later perhaps.

_Q._ After the murder?

_A._ Yes, after the murder.

_Q._ When?

_A._ The moment I heard it had been committed. I was told by a groom.

_Q._ About the woman or the murder?

_A._ About the murder.

_Q._ When was that?

_A._ When I returned from shooting that day.

_Q._ You returned alone, I believe?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ Mr. Kennett having left you shortly before three o’clock?

_A._ I fancy about that time.

_Q._ And at the moment you heard there had been this murder committed,
that conjecture, that association between your friend and the murdered
girl came into your mind?

_A._ It was wholly preposterous, of course. I dismissed the idea the
moment it occurred to me.

_Q._ You dismissed the idea of Mr. Kennett’s having been involved with
the girl?

_A._ No, of his having committed the murder. (_Sensation._)

_Q._ But you still thought the entanglement possible?

_A._ I thought it might account for his state.

_Q._ Why did the first idea, associating Mr. Kennett with the crime,
occur to you? (_Witness hesitating, the question was repeated._)

_A._ (_In a low voice._) O! just because of something--nothing
important--that had happened at the shoot--that, and the extraordinary
state I had found him in.

_Q._ Will you tell the Bench what was this unimportant something that
happened at the shoot?

_A._ (_With emotion._) It was nothing--probably my fancy--and he
denied it utterly.

_Q._ Now, Mr. Bickerdike, if you please?

_A._ I thought that in--in pulling his gun through a particular hedge
that morning, he might have done it with less risk to himself, that
was all.

_Q._ You suspected him, in short, of wanting to kill himself under the
guise of an accident?

_A._ I swear he never admitted it. I swear he denied it.

_Q._ And you accepted his denial so implicitly that you asked him to
go home, leaving his gun with the keeper. Is that not so?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ He refused?

_A._ Yes, he did.

_Q._ Did not much the same thing occur again, later in the afternoon?

_A._ Nothing of the sort at all. Shortly before three he came to me,
and said he was no good and was going home.

_Q._ What did he mean by “no good”? No good in life?

_A._ No good at shooting.

_Q._ And again you asked him to leave his gun with you?

_A._ No, I did not--not directly, at least.

_Q._ Please explain what you mean by “not directly”?

_A._ He may have understood what was in my mind. I can’t say. He just
laughed, and called out that he wasn’t going to shoot himself, and
wasn’t going to let me make an ass of him; and with that he marched
off.

_Q._ And that is all?

_A._ All.

_Q._ He didn’t, by chance, in saying “I’m not going to shoot
_myself_,” lay any particular emphasis on the last word?

_A._ Certainly not that I distinguished. The whole suggestion is too
impossible to any one who knows my friend.

_Q._ Thank you, Mr. Bickerdike. That will do.

If witness had entered the box like an oppressed man, he left it like
a beaten. His cheeks were flushed, his head bowed; it was observed
that he purposely avoided looking his friend in the face as he passed
him by on his way to the rear of the Court.

The excitement was now extreme. All attention, in the midst of a
profound stillness, was concentrated on a figure come more and more,
with each adjustment of the legal spy-glass, into a definite focus.
It was felt that the supreme moment was approaching; and, when the
expected name was called, a sigh like that of a sleeper turning seemed
to sound through the hall. The prisoner in the dock had already long
been overlooked--forgotten. He had been put up, it seemed, as a mere
medium for this deadlier manifestation, and his purpose served, had
ceased to be of interest. He stood pallid with his hands on the rail
before him, rolling his one mobile eye, the only apparently mystified
man in Court.

As Hugo entered the box, he was seen to be deadly pale, but he held
his head high, and stood like a soldier, morally and physically
upright, facing his court-martial. He folded his arms, and looked his
inquisitor steadily in the eyes. Mr. Fyler retorted with an expression
of well-assured suavity. He was in no hurry. Having netted his fowl,
he could afford to let him flutter awhile. He began by leading his
witness, only more briefly, the way he had already conducted him at
the Inquest, but with what new menace of pitfalls by the road! The
discovery of the body; the incident of the gun (prejudiced now in the
light of the possible moral to be drawn from witness’s hurry to get
rid of it, and his loathing of the weapon), the marked agitation of
his aspect when seen by the gardener; the interval in the house, with
its suggestion of nervous collapse and desperate rallying to face the
inevitable ordeal; that significant outburst of his at the Inquest,
when he had exclaimed against an implication of guilt which had never
been made; his admission of having bantered the deceased about an
assignation--an admission fraught with suspicion of the scene of
passion and recrimination which had perhaps more truthfully described
their encounter--all these points were retraversed, but in a spirit
ominously differing from that in which they had formerly been
reviewed. And then at last, in a series of swift stabbing questions
and hypotheses, issued the mortal moral of all this sinister
exordium:--

_Q._ You chaffed the deceased, you say, sir, with being where she was
for an assignation?

_A._ Something of the sort.

_Q._ Something of the sort may be nothing of the sort. I suggest that
this so-called chaff is better described as a quarrel between you.
Will you swear that that was not the case?

_A._ No, I will not.

_Q._ Then your statement was a fabrication?

_A._ I accused her of being there to meet some one.

_Q._ You accused her. I am your debtor for the word. Will you swear
that she was not there to keep an assignation, and that assignation
with yourself?

_A._ I swear it most positively. Our meeting was quite accidental.

_Q._ On your part?

_A._ On my part.

_Q._ But not on hers?

_A._ I am not here to answer for that.

_Q._ Pardon me; I think you are. I suggest that, expecting you to
return by the Bishop’s Walk, she was waiting there to waylay you?

_A._ She might have been, on the chance.

_Q._ I suggest you knew that she was?

_A._ I say I did not know.

_Q._ Well, you took that way at least, and you met and quarrelled. I
suggest that the person you accused her of being there to meet was
yourself, and that the dispute between you turned upon the question of
her thus importuning you? Is that so?

_A._ (_After a pause._) Yes.

_Q._ And I suggest further that the reason for her so importuning you
lay in her condition, for which you were responsible?

_A._ Yes. It is true. (_Sensation._)

_Q._ She entreated you, perhaps, to repair the wrong you had done her
in the only way possible to an honourable man?

_A._ (_Witness seeming to stiffen, as if resolved to face the whole
music at last._) She had already urged that; she pressed to know, that
was all, if I had made up my mind to marry her. I refused to give a
definite answer just then, since my whole career was at stake; but I
promised her one within twenty-four hours. I was very much bothered
over the business, and I dare say a bit impatient with her. She may
have upbraided me a little in return, but there was no actual quarrel
between us. I went on after a few minutes, leaving her there by
herself. And that is the whole truth.

_Q._ We will judge of that. You say the meeting was none of your
seeking?

_A._ I do say it.

_Q._ Now, please attend to me. You were on your way back, when you met
deceased, from the shooting party which you had abandoned?

_A._ Yes.

_Q._ You have heard what the last witness stated as to a certain
incident connected with that morning. Was his statement substantially
true?

_A._ I can’t deny it. It was a momentary mad impulse.

_Q._ And, being forestalled, was replaced possibly by an alternative
suggestion, pointing to another way out of your difficulties?

_A._ I don’t know what you mean. It was just the culmination, as it
were, of a desperate mood, and was regretted by me the next instant.

_Q._ Was it because of your desperate mood that you refused to be
parted from your gun when you finally left the shoot and returned
home?

_A._ No; but because I declined to be made to look a fool.

_Q._ I put it to you once more that you knew, when you went home,
carrying against all persuasion, your gun with you, that the deceased
would be waiting for you in the copse?

_A._ It is utterly false. I knew nothing about it.

_Q._ Very well. Now, as to the time of your meeting with the deceased.
I have it stated on your sworn evidence that that was at three o’clock
or thereabouts, and that after spending some ten minutes in
conversation with her, you resumed your way to the house, which you
reached at about 3.15, appearing then, according to the evidence of a
witness, in a very agitated state.

_A._ I was upset, I own--naturally, under the circumstances.

_Q._ What circumstances?

_A._ Having just promised to do or not to do what would affect my
whole life.

_Q._ No other reason?

_A._ No.

_Q._ Did you hear the sworn statement of the witness Henstridge and
another that the report of the shot, which could have been none other
than the fatal shot, was heard and fixed by them at a time estimated
at a few minutes after three o’clock, that is to say, at a time when,
according to your own admission, you were in the deceased’s company?

_A._ It is an absolute lie.

The crisis had come, the long-expected blow fallen; but, even in the
shock and echo of it, there were some who found nerve to glance from
son to father, and wonder what super-dramatic incident yet remained to
them to cap the day’s excitement. They were disappointed. Not by one
sign or movement did the stiff grey figure on the Bench betray the
torture racking it, or concede to their expectations the evidence of
an emotion--not even when, as if in response to some outspoken
direction, a couple of policemen were seen to move silently forward,
and take their stand on either side the witness box. And then,
suddenly, Counsel was speaking again.

He addressed the Bench with an apology for the course imposed upon
him, since it must have become apparent, as the case proceeded, that
the tendency of the prosecution had been to turn more and more from
its nominal objective in the dock. There had been a reason for that,
however, and he must state it. The inquiries of the police, and more
especially of the distinguished detective officer, Sergeant Ridgway,
had latterly, gradually but certainly, led them to the conclusion that
the motive for the crime, and the name of its perpetrator, must be
looked for in another direction than that originally, and seemingly
inevitably, indicated. This change of direction had necessarily
exculpated the two men concerned in to-day’s proceedings; but it had
been thought best to submit one of them to examination for the purpose
of exposing through the evidence affecting him the guilt of the
presumptive criminal. That having been done, the police raised no
objection to Cleghorn, like the other accused, being discharged.

He then went on to summarize the evidence, as it had come, by gradual
degrees, to involve the witness Kennett in its meshes--the scrape into
which the young man had got himself, his dread of exposure, the
wildness of his talk and behaviour, the incriminating business of the
gun, and, finally, the sworn testimony as to the time of the shot--and
he ended by drawing a fanciful picture of what had occurred in the
copse.

“I ask your worships,” he said, “to picture to yourselves the probable
scene. Here has this young Lothario returned, his heart full of death
and desperation since the frustration of his first mad impulse to end
his difficulties with his life, knowing, or not knowing--we must form
our own conclusions as to that--that his destined victim awaits him at
the tryst--if tryst it is--_her_ heart burning with bitterness against
the seducer who has betrayed her; each resolved on its own way out of
the trouble. She upbraids him with her ruin, and threatens in her turn
to ruin him, unless he consents to right the wrong he has done her. He
refuses, or temporizes; and she turns to leave him. Thinking she is
about to put her threat into immediate execution, goaded to
desperation, the gun in his hand--only tentatively adhered to at
first, perhaps--decides him. He fires at and kills her. The deed
perpetrated, he has to consider, after the first shock of horror, how
best to conceal the evidences of his guilt. He decides to rest the
lethal weapon against a tree (with the intention of asserting--or, at
least, not denying, if subsequently questioned--that he had left it
with one of its barrels loaded), concocts in his mind a plausible
story of a cigarette and an oversight, and hurries on to the house,
where, in his private room, he spends such a three-quarters of an hour
of horror and remorse as none of us need envy him. His nerve by then
somewhat restored, he decides to take the initiative in the necessary
discovery, and, affecting a sudden recollection of his oversight,
returns to the copse to fetch his gun, with the result we know. All
that it is open to us to surmise; what we may not surmise is the depth
of depravity in a nature which could so plan to cast the burden of its
own guilt upon the shoulders of an innocent man.”

One dumb, white look here did the son turn on the father; who met it
steadfastly, as white and unflinching.

“We have heard some loose talk, your worships,” went on Counsel, “as
to the appearance of a mysterious fourth figure in this tragedy. We
may dismiss, I think, that individual as purely chimerical--a maggot,
if I may so describe it, of the witness Henstridge’s brain. There is
no need, I think you will agree with me, for looking beyond this Court
for a solution of the problem which has been occupying its attention.
Painful as the task is to me, I must now do my duty--without fear or
favour in the face of any considerations, social or sentimental,
whatsoever--by asking you to commit for trial, on the capital charge
of murdering Annie Evans, the witness Hugo Staveley Kennett, a warrant
for whose arrest the police already hold in their hands.”

Not a sound broke the stillness as Counsel ended--only a muffled
rumble, like that of a death-drum, from the wheels of a passing wagon
in the street outside. And then the blue-clad janissaries closed in;
the Magistrates, without leaving the Bench, put their heads together,
and the vote was cast.

“Hugo Staveley Kennett, we have no alternative but to commit you to
take your trial on the capital charge.”

A sudden crash and thump broke in upon the verdict. Cleghorn had
fainted in the dock.




 CHAPTER XV.
 THE FACE ON THE WALL

The morning of the inquiry found M. le Baron in Paris, in his old
rooms at the Montesquieu. He was in very good spirits, smiling and
buoyant, and not at all conscience-smitten over his desertion of his
servant in his hour of need. “It will be a not unwholesome lesson for
the little _fanfaron_,” he thought, “teaching him in the future to
keep a guard on his tongue and temper.” He foresaw, be it observed,
that certain issue, and felt no anxiety about it. But his face fell
somewhat to an added reflection: “I wonder if they have committed
_him_ for trial by now. Poor girl!” and he shrugged his shoulders with
a tiny sigh.

Having crossed by the night boat from Southampton, one might have
looked for a certain staleness in the Baron’s aspect. On the contrary,
he was as chirpy as a sparrow, having slept well throughout a pretty
bad crossing, and since had a refreshing tub and brush-up. He sat
down--though very late, with an excellent appetite--to his _petit
pain_ and rich coffee and _brioche_, and, having consumed them, took
snuff at short intervals for half an hour, and then prepared to go
out.

M. le Baron’s movements seemed carelessly casual, but he had, in fact,
a definite objective, and he made for it at his leisure. It lay on the
left bank of the river, in or near the district calling itself loosely
the Latin or Students’ Quarter. He crossed the river by the Pont des
Arts, and went straight down the Rue de Seine as far as the Rue de
Tournon, where he turned off in the direction of St. Sulpice. The
great bell up in the high tower was crashing and booming for a
funeral, and its enormous reverberations swayed like Atlantic rollers
across the fields of air. In all the world St. Sulpice bell is _the_
death-bell, so solemn, so deep, and so overwhelming it sounds. M. le
Baron paused to listen a moment. “Is it an omen?” thought he, “and am
I going to hear bad news?”

Somewhere at the back of the church, in a little street called the Rue
Bourbon-le-Château, he came to the shop of a small dealer in
prayer-books and holy pictures and pious images. It was a poor shop in
a faded district, and suggestive of scant returns and lean commons for
its inmates. A door, as gaunt and attenuated in appearance, stood open
to one side of the shop, and by this the visitor entered, with the
manner of one who knew the place. A flight of bare wooden stairs rose
before him, and up these he went, to the first, to the second floor,
where he paused, a little breathless, to knock on a door. “_Que
diable!_” cried a hoarse voice from within. “Who’s that?”

For answer the Baron turned the handle and presented himself. It was a
ragged, comfortless room he entered, frowzy, chill, without a carpet
and with dirty whitewashed walls. A table stood in the dingy window,
and at it was seated the solitary figure of a man--emaciated,
melancholy eyed--Ribault his name, a designer on the staff of the
_Petit Courrier des Dames_. Some of his work lay before him now: he
looked up from it with a startled exclamation, and rose to his feet.
Those were clad in list slippers: for the rest he wore a rusty
frock-coat, and at his neck a weeping black bow.

“M. le Baron!” he exclaimed, in wonder and welcome. “Who would have
thought to see you again!”

“Am I that sort, then?” answered Le Sage with a smile. “I am sorry I
left so poor an impression.”

“Ah, but what an impression!” cried the other fervently. “An angel of
goodness; a Samaritan; a comforter, and a healer in one!”

“Well, well, M. Ribault!” said the Baron. “You are still at the old
toil, I observe?”

“Always at it, Monsieur; but in my plodding, uninspired way--not like
my friend’s. Ah, he was a great artist was Jean.”

“Truly, he had a wonderful facility. Has he left you?”

“But for the grave, Monsieur. We had not otherwise been parted.”

Tears gathered in the poor creature’s eyes; he sighed, with a forlorn,
resigned gesture. Hearing his words, a shadow crossed the visitor’s
face. “That foreboding bell!” he muttered. He was genuinely
concerned, and not for one only reason. “You will tell me all about
it, perhaps, M. Ribault?” he said.

“He was never himself again after that accident,” answered the
designer. “All your tenderness, your care, your disinterested help
could do no more than earn for him a little respite from a sentence
already pronounced. He was virtually a dying man when you last left
him, Monsieur. The light of your healing presence withdrawn, the
shadow came out and was visible to me. Ah, but he would talk of you
often and often, and of how you had smoothed the bitter way for him.
He confided in you much: he told you his little history?”

“Something of it, Ribault.”

“It was the history of a brave man, Monsieur: of patient merit
eternally struggling against adversity; of conscious power having to
submit itself to necessity. There was that in him could he but have
indulged it--ah, if you had only seen!”

“Seen what, my poor friend?”

“Monsieur, he died in June; but before he died, he drew in pastel on
that wall, on that bare wall, a face that was like the fine blossom of
the aloe, crowning and vindicating with its immortal beauty the harsh
and thorny ugliness of those long necessitous years. It was his
testament, his swan-song. Less than its perfection would have made a
smaller artist; and it was produced by him from memory, as he sat
there dying in his chair.”

“From a memory of whom, Ribault?”

“I will tell you. One day, shortly before his death, there had come to
see him a step-brother of his, an Englishman, of whom I had never
heard nor he spoken. He had a lady with him, this brother, one of the
most beautiful you could picture, and her loveliness entered into
Jean’s heart. He could not forget it; he had no ease from it until his
art came to dispossess him of its haunting. I watched him at work; it
was marvellous: the wall broke into song and flower under my eyes.
That was the man, Monsieur; that was the man; it was his own soul
blossoming; and, having done what he must, he grew once more at peace.
Two days later he was dead.”

“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 were _beaux-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.




 CHAPTER XVI.
 THE BARON FINDS A CHAMPION

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

Who that 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 he _had_ done 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 the _way_ it 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 friend _bonne 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. _He_ had 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, as _I_ see 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 I _will_ say 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.




 CHAPTER XVII.
 AND AUDREY

Audrey had 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 involve _her_
in 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 he _hoped_,
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 his _spraints_, 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 has _not_
done.”

“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.




 CHAPTER XVIII.
 THE BARON RETURNS

 (_From the Bickerdike MS._)

I had a 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
discussion _in 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, have _you_ come 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 my
_amour-propre_ achieve 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, very
_distrait_, 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.




 CHAPTER XIX.
 THE DARK HORSE

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 most _canards_ of 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, _alias_ Ivy 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.




 CHAPTER XX.
 THE BARON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE

Sir Francis Orsden and 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--or
_apologia_. 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.

“So much for this confidence; which, I beg you to consider, is still,
though unenforced, a confidence, due to you, Sir Francis, through your
coming matrimonial connexion with the family”--(Mr. Bickerdike, with a
start and a positive gape, which lifted his eyebrows, looked across at
the young Baronet, who grinned and nodded)--“and to you, my friend,
for your unshakable loyalty to a much-tried member of it. And with
that I will quit grace and get to the joint.”

The Macuba came once more into action, the box was again laid aside,
and the two settled down finally to listen.

“In the following narrative,” said M. le Baron, “what was and remains
conjectural it must be left to events to substantiate. I claim so
much, though, for myself, I entertain no doubt as to the truth.”

“My story opens in the Café l’Univers in Paris, where we two, Mr.
Bickerdike, strangers to one another, were sitting one September
afternoon precisely a year ago. We got into talk on the subject of a
neighbour, an artist, and an object of interest to us both, who was
busily engaged in sketching into a book pencil-memoranda of the more
noticeable hats worn by passing ladies. He worked fast and cleverly,
and was manifestly an adept at his craft. Presently, after having
watched him for some time, I asked you if you had observed anything
peculiar about his hands. You had not, it seemed, and no more was
said. But there _was_ a peculiarity, and it was this: when he lifted
his right hand, as artists will do, to measure the perspective value
of an object, it was always the second finger of the hand which he
interposed before his eye. I watched him do it over and over again,
and it was persistently the same. Why, I found myself asking myself?
Was the trick due to some malformation of the first finger, or to some
congenital impulse? Not to the first, I was presently able to convince
myself. To the alternative proposition I was fated to receive an
answer both affirmative and illuminating: but it was not to come just
yet.

“You remember what followed. The stranger suddenly closed his book,
rose, started to cross the road, and was promptly knocked down and run
over by a passing cab. I hurried to his assistance, and found that he
was pretty badly injured. He was lifted into the cab, and, accompanied
by myself and a gendarme, was conveyed to the St. Antoine Hospital, in
which he remained for some weeks. Both there, and in his own
apartments after his discharge, I visited him frequently, and was able
to show him some small attentions, such as, in our relative positions,
mere humanity demanded of me. He was poor, in his art an enthusiast,
and very little sympathy was needed to win his general confidence.
His name was John Ridgway.”

The two listeners glanced at one another, in a puzzled, questioning
way; but neither would venture to interrupt, and the Baron
continued:--

“He was John, and Ridgway--pronounced Reedsvay--but for the sake of a
necessary distinction I will call him henceforth Jean.

“Jean lived with a friend, Caliste Ribault, in two rooms in the Rue
Bourbon-le-Château, a little dull out-of-the-way street in the Latin
Quarter. They both worked for a living on the _Petit Courrier des
Dames_; but with Jean it was a weariness and a humiliation, and always
he had before his eyes the prospect of ultimate manumission and
recognition. He was an artist from his soul outwards to his
finger-tips. But, alas! his immortality was destined to be of sooner
arrival. He never properly overcame the effects of his accident, and
last June he succumbed to them and left his friend alone.

“Now, in the course of our conversations, Jean had told me a strange
story about himself--a story which I never knew at the time whether to
credit, or to part credit, or to attribute entirely to the invention
of an imaginative nature. Born ostensibly of humble parentage, he was
in reality, he said, the legitimate son of an English officer of
wealth and distinction, whose name he could claim, and whose heir he
could prove himself to be, contingent on the production of certain
documentary evidence which he knew to exist, but which, since it
remained in the possession of the putative father, it was impossible
to cite. This alleged evidence touched upon the question of a sham
marriage, a clerical impostor officiating, which had turned out to be
a true marriage; and the names of the contracting parties were
recorded, with that of the clergyman in question as witness, on the
fly-leaf of a little Roman Catholic _vade-mecum_, which had belonged
to Jean’s mother but of which her would-be wronger had secured
possession, and which he retained to this day.

“So much Jean told me, omitting only the father’s name, which he
withheld, he queerly stated, from a feeling of jealous pride for the
honour of that which was his own honour, but which was presently to be
suggested to me in a very singular fashion. You may perhaps recall,
Mr. Bickerdike, how at dinner on the night of our first arrival here,
our host, in answer to some observation of mine about a certain
picture hanging on the wall, raised the second finger of his right
hand before his eye to test an alleged misproportion in one of the
figures of the composition. The action--though, of course, I was
already familiar with Sir Calvin’s injury--instantly arrested my
attention. A vision of the Café l’Univers and of the busy hat-sketcher
leapt irresistibly into my mind: I saw again the lifted second finger,
and I saw, with astonishment, what, lacking that clue, had never yet
so much as occurred or suggested itself to me--the existence of a
subtle but definite family likeness between the two men. That
sign-manual had solved the problem of paternity, and given some
colour, at least, to my friend’s romantic tale. Let me put it quite
clearly. Before me sat, as I was convinced, the father of the man in
Paris calling himself John Ridgway, but who claimed the right, on
whatever disputable grounds, to call himself, if he would, John
Kennett.

“Judge of my feelings. From that moment I was possessed of a piece of
knowledge whose significance I could not then foresee, but which was
already half consciously associating itself in my mind with that other
curious discovery--that a well-known detective, who bore the very same
name as my friend, was operating on a case somewhere in the
neighbourhood.

“To return now to Jean’s story, and my natural comments thereon. I
asked him, assuming for the occasion the truth of his statement, if he
had never made an endeavour to assert his rights, and if not why not.
His answer did not strike me then as convincing, though I had full
reason later to alter my opinion. To attempt and fail, he said, would
be merely to disinter a long-buried scandal, and expose to renewed
odium the character of a mother whom he fondly loved. Moreover, for
himself he had no ambitions save such as centred in his art, to which
he was wholly devoted, nor any nerve or desire to take that position
in the world to which his birth entitled him. She had told him the
story one day, on the occasion of one of his rare visits to
England--where she lived--when she was lying very ill, thinking it
right that he should know, and leaving it to him to decide for himself
what action, in the event of her death, he should take or not take in
the matter. She was, I understood, a woman of French origin, in
modest circumstances, and many years the widow of a
quartermaster-sergeant in the British army. From that necessitous
household Jean himself had early broken away, to follow his bent in
Paris, in which city he had remained, working and struggling for a
livelihood, ever since the days of his adolescence. He was a man of
twenty-eight when I knew him.

“There for the present I will leave Jean’s story, turning from it to a
subject of more immediate interest to you--namely, the murder of Ivy
Mellor, and the methods by which I was enabled to bring the crime home
to the actual delinquent. I can claim no particular credit for my part
in the business. Destiny, acting blindly or providentially as you
will, had woven about me, as a web is woven about a spider, a most
extraordinary concatenation of coincidences, from whose central
observation-point I was able, as it were, to command all strands of
the design. My casual encounter with Mr. Bickerdike in Paris; the
discovery that he was there to meet Mr. Kennett, the son of a
gentleman already slightly known to me; the accident witnessed by us;
my subsequent visits to the patient, and his confiding to me of his
story; my second meeting with Mr. Bickerdike in London, and the
coincidence of our common invitation to Wildshott; the act which
betrayed Jean’s father to me, and seemed to confirm the truth of the
man’s story; the news that a second John Ridgway was at work in the
neighbourhood--in all this, considered alone, there lay some grounds,
perhaps, for wondering entertainment, but surely none for suspicion.
It was only when the murder occurred that any thought of a connexion
amongst the parts flashed inevitably into my mind; and since Fate had
placed, if in any hands, in mine, what clues might exist to the truth,
I was determined from that moment to pursue them to the end. _The Key
to it I found in a skeleton Key_.”

Again the Macuba came into requisition, and again the Baron savoured,
over a refreshing pinch, the excitement of his hearers.

“A skeleton key,” he repeated. “I discovered it before ever Sergeant
John Ridgway had had a chance of looking for it, on the very spot
where the poor thing’s body had lain. It must have been jerked from
her hand--she had probably just produced it from her pocket--by the
shot which killed her, and had remained there undetected during and
after her removal. I was fortunate in securing it only a few minutes
before the Sergeant came down to examine the place of the crime.

“Now, what had Annie Evans to do with a skeleton key--she, a modest
servant girl of irreproachable character, as the housekeeper had just
informed us? I examined the key. It was of the usual burglarious
pattern, seemed newly turned, had a slight flaw, or projection, on the
barrel end, and was splashed with an ugly Bluebeard red. Had Annie,
after all, been quite the impeccable person Mrs. Bingley supposed? I
wondered. I thought of the manner of her engagement, of her
untraceable connexions, and I wondered. I wondered still at the
Inquest, when, as it seemed, those same relations were still
hopelessly to seek. I wondered no longer when, on the day following
the inquiry, I came upon the Sergeant intently examining the ground
about the scene of the crime. I came upon him unexpectedly, and
surprised him. What was he looking for? He had already overhauled
every detail of the girl’s belongings. Had he missed something which
he had expected to find among them? A skeleton key possibly. But how
could he have known she possessed such a thing? Obviously, there was
only one answer--because he himself had provided her with it. For
what reason--he, John Ridgway? Naturally, my mind flew off at a
tangent to the other John Ridgway, my Parisian Jean, and his
extraordinary story. A reputedly sham marriage which nevertheless had
turned out genuine; documents in proof, and their possessor my host?
Was it conceivable that _this_ John Ridgway was interested in the
recovery of those documents, and had employed a female confederate to
steal them for him?

“It was quite conceivable, and quite true, for that, as appeared by
degrees, was actually the case. But why was this John Ridgway
interested in the recovery of those papers? We shall see.

“In the meanwhile, to what conviction had my reflections led me? That
the detective and the girl were in collusion for a certain purpose.
But much was to be deduced from that conviction--that the girl was an
imposter, that she had secured her situation very possibly by means of
a false character written by herself or her confederate, that, quite
certainly, her name was not Annie Evans at all. Hence the calculated
impossibility of tracing out her connexions.

“So far, then, so good. We come now to the frustrated business of the
theft, and the crime which was its terrible consequence. It had
inevitably occurred to me that the safe in Sir Calvin’s study must be
the repository, and known by the confederates to be the repository, of
the papers in question; else, if of easier access, they had long ago
been abstracted and used to serve their purpose. Probably, as it
appeared to me, the girl’s first business had been to secure an
impression of the keyhole in wax, which she had despatched to Ridgway,
receiving back from him in exchange the master-key. I seized an
opportunity to examine the safe, and detected about the spot in
question certain faint marks or scratches in the paint, which I had
once before taken some curious stock of, and which I now perceived
might well correspond with that little sharp projection I spoke of at
the end of the key. I even once tried the key in the lock myself (that
was on the night, Mr. Bickerdike, when you stalked me”--poor Vivian
looked unutterably foolish--“but without detecting me in my second
descent, which occurred after you had returned to your room) and found
it easy to manipulate. Then the girl had already been secretly at work
there, fumbling her job maybe? But why, in that case, had she not
secured the plunder, given notice to leave, and at once cleared out?
_Because_--as it was perfectly legitimate to infer from the evidence
at the inquest--_she had, in the meantime, fallen desperately in love
with our young friend, and had refused to take any further part in a
transaction designed to dispossess him of his name and inheritance_.

“Now, that is to anticipate matters a little, perhaps; but grant my
deduction sound--as, indeed, it proved to be--and what followed?
Necessarily, a breach between the two confederates of a very violent
nature. To the detective it meant betrayal and the ruin of his plans.
Would that consideration be enough in itself to goad him on to murder?
With a man of Ridgway’s character and trained cautiousness of
disposition I did not think it probable. Assuming, then, that the
murder were his act, what more overmastering motive could have driven
him to it? What but jealousy, the one passion uncontrollable by even
the most self-disciplining nature. He was himself passionately
enamoured of his own beautiful decoy, and she had betrayed not only
his interests but his love. The crime had been, in the expressive
French phrase, and in the fullest sense, a _crime passionel_. I had
it.

“To figure the course of events, even, was now no difficult task for
the imagination. We will begin with Mrs. Bingley’s timely
advertisement for a housemaid, upon which the confederates happened,
and which gave them--perhaps suggested to them--the very opportunity
they desired. Once the girl was established in the house, the two
corresponded. We know that she received letters, though none could be
found after her death. Of course not. She would have taken scrupulous
care to destroy all such incriminating evidence, including the
fraudulent ‘character.’ But they corresponded, and probably, on her
part, very early in a tone which gave her accomplice to suspect, with
growing uneasiness, that all was not right with her. Accident--it
could have been nothing else--brought him down professionally and
opportunely into this part of the country. He took the occasion to
write and arrange for a secret personal interview with her--we had it
from the housekeeper that a letter was received by Annie quite shortly
before her death--and she answered appointing the Bishop’s Walk for
their place of meeting. Of that I have no doubt. She was there to keep
her engagement with Ridgway, and not to waylay the other. _His_
appearance on the scene was quite fortuitous, and, as it turned out,
the most fateful _contretemps_ that could have happened. He came, and
we know from his own confession what passed between them, with what
she upbraided him, and with what threatened. Ridgway had overheard it
all. He had arrived at the place duly to his appointment, and, on his
first entering the copse, had probably heard, or perhaps caught
distant sight of, the other male figure coming his way, and had
slipped into the thick undergrowth for concealment. His propinquity
unsuspected by the girl, she had delivered herself in his hearing of
her deadly secret, and he knew at last of her double treachery to him.
The lover gone, he came out of his ambush, and damned her with the
truth. Likely, even then, it was the presence of the gun, so adversely
left to his hand, which compelled him to the deed. It was the act of a
demented moment, unthinking and unpremeditated. It was not until
reason had returned to him that the idea of the diabolical vengeance
it might be in his power to wreak on the seducer began to form in his
mind. To bring the murder home to _him_! What a frenzy of triumph in
the very thought! It possessed him devilishly, and verily from that
moment it was as if the man had bargained away his soul to the evil
one. Everything appeared to favour him--the mood, the motive, the
conduct of his hated rival; most of all the fact that to his own
hands, by some extraordinary freak of opportunism, had been committed
the control of the case. How near he came to success in his inhuman
design needs no retelling.

“But, meanwhile, there was the murder committed in that instant of
madness. Probably he had not much hope at the time of escaping its
consequences; probably, in his desperate state, with all his schemes
gone to wreck, he did not much care. He had had his bloody revenge for
an intolerable wrong, and the rest was indifference to him. He
replaced the gun where it had stood, and left the spot. Possibly, as
sanity returned to him, some instinct of self-preservation may have
induced in him a certain mood of precaution. There is evidence to
show, I think, that he lurked for a time in the woods before leaving
them for the open hillside. But that he did leave them eventually to
make his way up the hill, we have Henstridge’s evidence to testify.

“Now, from the first I had never succeeded in convincing myself that
that hypothetical figure on the hill was as wholly a figment of the
imagination as most people seemed to consider it. The cap pulled over
the eyes and the turned-up collar--what butler ever turned up his coat
collar?--were strong presumptions in my mind that Mr. Cleghorn had not
been their wearer. Then the figure had been described as advancing
hurriedly; yet it had taken twenty minutes or so to cover a distance
of two hundred yards. You may object, possibly, that, in all your
experience of Sergeant Ridgway, you have never seen him wear on his
head other than a black plush Homburg hat. I answer that on the day of
the murder he was wearing a cloth cap, easily, in the distance, to be
mistaken for the cap worn by Mr. Cleghorn. I know this, because, in
the course of one of my drives about the country in the company of a
very charming young lady, I had made a point of calling at the
Sergeant’s one-time lodgings at Antonferry--I had procured the address
from Sir Calvin--where, at the cost of a little insinuative word-play,
I was able to ascertain that the Sergeant had gone out, _wearing a
cloth cap_, fairly early on the day of the murder, and that he had
returned late, and seemingly in an exhausted condition, from a long
walk. He had, and that hypothetical figure hurrying over the hill--at
the moment with little concern for its safety--had been the figure of
Sergeant Ridgway, tramping back to his lodgings in Antonferry after
the murder. He had passed by the inn, making north by west, and had
long turned the bend of the lonely road before Mr. Cleghorn, mistaken
by Henstridge for the same figure, had arrived at the Red Deer and
turned in at the tap.”

The Baron paused for refreshment, while Sir Francis applauded softly,
his whole face beaming delight and approval.

“Have I convinced you so far,” continued the narrator, “of the
efficiency of the toils in which I was manœuvring to entangle my
‘suspect’? Very well: here was another little _pièce de conviction_. In
spying about the scene of the crime I had picked up, in addition to
the skeleton key--a button. It was a common horn coat-button, and was
lying on the spot whence the gun had been fired--jerked off, probably,
by the recoil. Now the Sergeant’s overcoat was one of those light
covert coats which button under an overlapping hem. I took occasion to
examine it one day, when, occupied with Sir Calvin, he had left it in
the hall. It had been fitted, I observed, with a set of brand-new
buttons, which nevertheless did not correspond with the little buttons
on the cuffs. Those exactly matched the button I had found, while the
others were of a distinctly different pattern. Obviously he had
discovered his loss, had failed again to make it good, and so, for
precaution’s sake, had renewed the entire set. It was an unpardonable
oversight in such a man to have forgotten the sleeves. I made the
button over to him--or could it be an exact duplicate of it which I
had procured?--telling him in all innocence where I had found it. He
took the little blow very well, without a wince, but I could see how
it disturbed him. He never suspected me, I think, of more than an
amiable curiosity. I have often wondered why.”

“Because he wasn’t a fool,” interposed Mr. Bickerdike, with a slight
groan. Le Sage laughed.

“Or because I am more of a knave than I appear,” said he. “So let
bygones be bygones.” He helped himself to a weighty pinch of rappee,
and put down the box with a grave expression. “I come now,” he said,
“to the supreme crux of all--the apparently damning evidence as to
when the fatal shot was fired. If it were fired somewhere about three
o’clock, at the time stated by two witnesses, then Hugo Kennett, and
none but Hugo Kennett, must be, despite all specious arguments to the
contrary, the actual murderer. But it was not fired at three o’clock,
as I believe I shall find reason to convince you: it was fired a good
twenty or twenty-five minutes later; and this is my justification for
saying so. You will remember that, at the magisterial inquiry, the
witness Daniel Groome, revising his former evidence, stated that he
had heard the clock in his master’s study strike the quarter past
three--he, by then, having gone round to the back of the
house--thereby proving that the report of the gun, which had reached
him while he was still at the front, must have occurred during the
first quarter of the hour. Now I have taken the pains, since my
return, to question Daniel Groome very closely on this matter, and
with what result? You will be surprised to hear. The stable clock, to
which Daniel is accustomed to listen, strikes the quarters--one for
the first, two for the second, and so on. The study clock, to which
Daniel is not accustomed to listen, strikes the half-hour only--a
single stroke. But the single stroke represented to Daniel the
quarter past, and therefore he concluded, when he heard that single
stroke sound from his master’s study, that it was recording the first
quarter, instead of, as it actually was, the second. And on this
ingenuous evidence--not realizing in the least what he was doing--was
that simple man prepared to tighten the noose about his young master’s
neck.

“But, if Daniel Groome was wrong, it followed of necessity that
Henstridge must be wrong also--as of course he was. He had been simply
got at by the detective, and officially bullied and threatened into
stating what was wanted of him. As a matter of fact, he had had no
idea of what the time was at all, but had taken any suggestion offered
him. The fellow is a blackguard and a coward, and would swear any
man’s life away for thirty pieces of silver. I did a little persuasion
with him on my own account--again during one of those refreshing
drives, Sir Francis--and, taking a leaf out of Ridgway’s book, had
little difficulty in bringing him to his knees. He was abject when I
had finished with him. (Parenthetically, I may suggest here--what I am
convinced was the case--that our murdering friend had also ‘got at’ Mr.
Fyler, but in another sense. He had persuaded, I mean, that astute
lawyer into believing that there really _was_ nothing worth
considering in that hypothetical figure, which we may name the fourth
dimension; and that was why, I take it, the point was not taken up
again by Counsel before the magistrates.)

“Very well, now: we have got so far as to convict Sergeant Ridgway of
murder, following on a plot to disinherit, with the help of a
confederate, the very man whom he schemed to charge with the crime. So
we arrive necessarily at the question, who was this Annie Evans, whom
he had chosen for his accomplice in the business, and whom he had
ended by so foully doing to death? To get at the whole truth of the
story, it was essential that the mystery of their connexion should be
traced to its source.

“To any one, not possessed of the clues which Fortune had placed in my
hands, it must have appeared nothing less than astonishing that, with
all the wide publicity given to the case, the victim should have
remained virtually unidentified and unclaimed. She was beautiful, she
was in domestic service--two facts, one might have thought, favourable
to an easy solution of the riddle. Still her origin remained a
mystery, and so remains, to all but the few instructed, to this day.

“But that very mystery which, to those wanting the master-key,
appeared so insolvable, was to me who possessed the key, illuminating.
That the girl was in domestic service at the time of her death was no
proof that she had ever been in domestic service before. It would be
much more in accord with my conception of the astute and far-seeing
detective to suppose that he had anticipated that danger of
recognition by assigning to his confederate a part through which it
would be impracticable, should difficulties arise, to trace her. She
had not been in service before, in fact. The business of the
photograph confirmed me in that view. You will remember that travesty
of Annie’s likeness which appeared, enlarged and reproduced from a
snap-shot, in the official prints? It was completely unrecognizable,
and was intended by Ridgway to be unrecognizable. He knew that no
other recent photograph of her existed at all, and for the very good
reason that she had not for some time been in a position to be
photographed. You will understand why in a moment. It was of paramount
importance to him, both first and last, that his accomplice should be
and remain unidentifiable. Essential to that condition were her
innocence of former service, the absence of any photographic record,
and the employment of a false name.

“It was of no use, consequently, my thinking of running Annie Evans,
so called, to earth: I must look for her under another title. How was
I to ascertain that title?

“It was here again that chance, or Providence, came--I will not say in
a totally unforeseen way, but at least in a most obliging way--to my
assistance. It occurred to me that at this stage of the proceedings
it would be well for me to pay a visit to my Parisian John Ridgway,
and endeavour to extract from him, if he could be persuaded to part
with them, the fullest details possible of the story with whose
outline he had already acquainted me. Something, it might be much, I
felt, had remained untold which, if revealed, would possibly throw
such a light upon the obscure places of my quest as would enable me
from that moment to present my case without a flaw. I went--to Paris,
Mr. Bickerdike; not to London, as you supposed--only to learn from
Jean’s bosom friend--that Caliste Ribault, of whom I have already
spoken--that his loved comrade had departed this life in June of this
year. That was a blow, I confess: my hopes seemed baffled, my journey
in vain. Yet it was so far from being the case that not the artist’s
living lips could have more shouted the truth into my soul than did
the evidence of his dead hand. I will tell you how:--

“One day, shortly before Jean’s death, Caliste informed me, there had
come to visit him a stepbrother, an Englishman, of whom he, Caliste,
had never before heard nor Jean spoken. _This stepbrother bore the
same Christian and surname as Jean_, and he had come accompanied by a
girl of such beauty that the dying man could not dismiss the thought
of her face from his mind until he had made from memory a coloured
drawing of it on the white-washed wall, writing her name beneath. Now,
his step-brother being dead, John Ridgway had come once more to
arrange about the funeral and the disposition of the deceased’s
effects, and, perceiving the face on the wall, had been very angry--so
angry, that he had immediately seized a cloth and completely effaced
the drawing, so that not a vestige of it remained. Why, you ask? You
will understand later.

“Thus again Fortune seemed to laugh at me; but it was laughter like
that of a mother who dangles over the mouth of her child a cherry--to
be his in a moment. And sure enough in such a moment Caliste informed
me that, though the picture was destroyed, a copy of it remained in
the shape of a photograph which he himself had taken of the original.
He showed me the photograph; _and the face I saw was the face of Annie
Evans, but Ivy Mellor was the name written underneath_.

“I had found out what I wanted--and more. I had discovered that the
two John Ridgways were step-brothers, and light and still light
broadened on the path before me. I got Ribault to part with the
photograph to me, cautioning him to say nothing about his possessing
the negative to any one, and with my prize I came on the following day
to London. Thereafter my task was an easy one. Possessing that face
and that name, and associating both with the name of a famous Scotland
Yard detective, I had only to place the matter in the hands of a very
clever and trustworthy private inquiry agent of my acquaintance to
find out all that I needed. His investigations--with the details of
which I need not trouble you--yielded the following information:--

“Ivy Mellor had been not many months discharged from a reformatory, to
which she had been committed for three years for procuring a situation
as nursery governess with a forged character, and obtaining goods by
false pretences. She was the illegitimate daughter of an actress now
dead, and was possessed herself of some decided histrionic ability.
Upon her discharge, Ridgway had somehow got hold of her, or had been
got hold of by her, with the result that he had fallen a complete
slave to her attractions. It was probably she who had been his evil
genius from the first; probably she who had planned and perpetrated
the ‘written character’ which had procured her an _entrée_ to Wildshott.
He promised her great things in the event of success, and, in view of
those great things, she held him at arm’s length; there were to be no
questionable relations between them. The man was hopelessly
infatuated; he used to visit her under an assumed name; probably ‘kept
her,’ in the unequivocal sense. I am giving here not only the agent’s
report, but some of my own conclusions drawn therefrom. Summarized,
they showed my case complete, so far as _effect_ was concerned. I had
only now to penetrate to the _cause_. It could be fathomed, I
believed, but fathomed in one direction alone. I determined to go
boldly to the fountain-head, and challenge there a decision. In Sir
Calvin’s hands lay the final verdict. I could hardly doubt what it
would be, or that for the sake of the whole truth he would yield at
last to daylight the guarded secret of a long-past episode. I judged
him rightly, and I need say no more. He told me the story, produced
for my examination the written evidence, and left me to deal with the
matter as I would.

“But one remark more I have to make before running, as briefly as I
can, through the main points of the narrative unfolded to me. While in
Paris I had procured from my very good friend, M. Despard, the head of
the secret police, an introduction to our own First Commissioner. I
saw the latter, confided to his interested, and rather horrified, ears
the whole truth of the case, so far as I had then conceived and
mastered it, and arranged with him the little trap which was to entice
John Ridgway into our midst again--conditional always on my procuring
that supplementary evidence which was to prove his guilt beyond any
possibility of doubt. The rest you know.

“We come now to the final chapter, which, like the postscript to a
lady’s letter, contains, in Hazlitt’s phrase, the pith of the whole.
In relating it I choose my own words, and must not be understood to
aim at reproducing the actual terms in which it was revealed to me by
Sir Calvin. I wish to give a mere brief or abstract of a painful
story, and I wish, moreover, to warn you once more that certain
reflections and conclusions of mine, not affecting the main body of
the narrative, were and are conjectural, and must so remain unless and
until the accused himself shall confirm their accuracy; and that, in
my soul I anticipate, will be the case. Here, then, is the story:--

“In the early part of the year 1882, Sir Calvin Kennett, then a young
cavalry officer of twenty-six, unmarried, and only latterly succeeded
to his inheritance, was living in Cairo, attached as military
representative to the British legation there. While in that situation
he made the acquaintance of a very beautiful young Frenchwoman,
Mademoiselle Desilles, the daughter of a tobacconist in a modest way
of business, between whom and himself a mutual attachment sprang up,
pure and sincere on her part, passionate and unscrupulous on his.
Madly enamoured, yet hopeless of prevailing against the virtue of the
lady, young Kennett had recourse to the vile and dishonourable
stratagem of a sham marriage, which he effected through the
instrumentality of a worthless acquaintance, one Barry Skelton, who
had come abroad in connexion with some Oxford Missionary Society, and
who, though not yet in Holy Orders, was supposed to be qualifying
himself for the priesthood. With the aid of this scamp the cruel fraud
was perpetrated, and Mademoiselle Desilles became the wife, as she
supposed, of Sir Calvin. The union, for reasons seeming sufficient as
urged by the pseudo-husband, was kept a present secret--even from the
girl’s father, whose death about this time greatly facilitated the
success of the imposture. In July of that year occurred the definite
revolt of Arabi Pasha, and the landing at Alexandria of a considerable
British force; and Sir Calvin was called upon to rejoin his regiment
in view of the operations pending. He went, leaving his wife, as I
will call her, in the distant way to become a mother. In a skirmish
near Mahmoudieh he lost the first finger of his right hand--a casualty
not without its bearing on subsequent events. He was present at
Tel-el-Kebir in mid-September, and again, two days later, at the entry
of the British troops into Cairo, when he took the occasion--his
passion in the interval having burned itself out, as such mere animal
transports will--to break the truth to Mademoiselle Desilles of the
fraud he had practised on her. I make it no part of my business to
comment on his behaviour, then or previously, or to imagine the spirit
in which his revelation was received by his unfortunate victim. No
doubt each of you can supply the probable text for himself, as his
sympathy or his indignation may dictate. It is enough to state the
compromise by way of which the deceiver could find the heart to
propose to condone his offence. This was no other than that, in order
to save her credit and that of her unborn infant, a marriage should be
instantly contrived between his unhappy dupe and a certain
Quartermaster-Sergeant George Ridgway--a widower with a single young
child, a boy--who had been in the secret, yet who, strangely enough,
had no more inherent vice in him than was consistent with good nature,
a weakness for beauty in distress, and a conscience of the easiest
capacity in the matter of hush-money. This man was no doubt a
personable fellow; the woman’s situation very certainly desperate and
deplorable. Anyhow, following whatever distressful scenes, she was
brought to consent, the two were married, and shortly afterwards the
child was born in London, whither the couple had removed in the
interval.

“I am quite prepared to believe that George Ridgway made his wife a
good husband during the few years which remained to them in company,
for he did not very long survive his marriage. Moreover, Sir Calvin’s
liberality had placed the two in such comfortable circumstances that
no excuse for discontent existed. The Quartermaster-Sergeant adhered
honourably to his part of the bargain, and it was not until long after
his death that the question arose in the widow’s mind as to whether or
not she was justified in continuing to mislead her son in the matter
of his origin. Of that in a moment.

“In the meantime the two children, step-brothers in fact, were brought
up together, and considered themselves as half brothers. They were
both christened John--the younger through some unconquerable
perversity of the mother in insisting on calling him after her
seducer’s second name--an anomaly which, however open to curious
comment at first, was soon no doubt lost sight of in the inevitable
nicknames which affection would come to bestow on the pair. Still, for
the purposes of distinction, I will continue to call the one John and
the other Jean. Jean was popularly regarded as the Ridgways’ child,
though in truth no child was born of their union.

“John, though the elder by some three years, was frequently, as time
went on, mistaken, by those who did not know, for the younger of the
two boys--an error also not without its bearing on subsequent events.
Jean from the outset betrayed, if it could have been guessed, an
unmistakable sign of his origin in the use of his second for his digit
finger--an inherited trick due to the shock caused to his mother by
the sight of Sir Calvin’s mutilation, associated as it had been with
all the agony and despair of that time. He was a dreamy boy, and early
developed artistic proclivities. I have no means or intention of
tracing the career of either of the children up to and beyond manhood.
At some period, as we know, Jean went to Paris; at some period John
joined the Metropolitan Police force, with subsequent promotion to a
valued position in the Criminal Investigation Department. I pass from
these ascertained facts to an estimate of the circumstances which
first engendered in the latter’s mind a thought of the daring project
which has ended by bringing him to his present situation.

“Now I have already told you how Jean, on the occasion of a visit to
England, had been at last made acquainted by his mother with the true
story of his paternity. She told it him, being herself under the fear
of death at the time; and there is no doubt that the poor woman still
believed perfectly honestly in the legality of her first marriage, not
only before heaven, but on the practical testimony of the little
Catholic _vade-mecum_ in which the names of the contracting parties,
with their clerical witness, had been inscribed. She believed,
moreover, on the strength of some muddled innuendo gathered from the
Quartermaster-Sergeant, that the creature Barry Skelton had deceived,
as much as she herself had been deceived by, Sir Calvin, and that he
had actually been an ordained priest at the time of the marriage. It
was not true, I think, the ordination having occurred subsequently, as
the General took pains to make known to her; for she wrote to him on
the subject of the _vade-mecum_, begging him to return it to her
hands, whence he had appropriated it when he deserted her. Why, you
may ask, had he, after securing possession of, persisted in retaining
through all these years that damning witness to his guilt? For the
very same reason of the evidence it contained, which to her stood for
proof, to him for disproof, of the legality of the marriage. Wherefore
he could not make up his mind to destroy it. But he thought it well
to pay a visit to his correspondent, to assure her that she was
completely mistaken in her surmise, and that the continuance of his
support depended upon the utter future abandonment by her of any such
attempts on his forbearance.

“Still thinking for her boy, the fond soul was not convinced. So
little was she convinced that, when her death came actually to be
imminent, she called John to her side and confided to him the whole
story, begging him to look after his step-brother’s interests, and to
vindicate, if possible, his true claim to the name and estates of
Kennett, something about which, she told him, Jean already knew. And
John promised--she was not his mother, remember; he may have been, for
all we are aware to the contrary, a cold and undutiful stepson. But he
promised, we know; for he went after her death to Paris, to visit the
other, to acquaint him of his mother’s end, and to discuss with him
the strange story she had committed to his keeping: he went
accompanied by a beautiful young creature of his acquaintance--whom he
had brought with him probably for no other reason than her pleasure
and his own infatuation--only to find Jean himself at the point of
death.

“Was it then for the first time that a daring idea began to germinate
in his mind? I think so. Whether spontaneously, or at his companion’s
instance, I believe the conception of the plot dated from that moment.
Jean dead, what was to prevent him, John, from personating his
step-brother, from claiming himself to be Sir Calvin’s son, from
profiting by the evidence which was said to prove that son’s
legitimacy? As to that he had only Mrs. Ridgway’s word, but it had
been uttered with such solemnity and conviction, by a dying woman, as
to leave little doubt of its truth. At worst the thing would be a
gamble; but there was that in the very romantic hazard of it to appeal
to his imagination: at best it would be prosperity beyond his dreams.
And what were the odds? To consider them was to find them already
curiously in his favour. The similarity of their names; the fact that
he himself had always been regarded as the younger; the early death of
the Quartermaster-Sergeant, and the consequent long removal of the one
most damaging witness to the truth; Jean’s prolonged absence from home
in a foreign city; his own more apparent devotion to the woman to be
claimed as his mother--he could find nothing in it all inimical to the
success of the plot. Only the first essential would be to obtain
possession of the _vade-mecum_. There was full reason to believe, from
what Sir Calvin had told Mrs. Ridgway, that the book to this day was
jealously retained by him, for the reason stated, in his secure
keeping. How to recover it?

“So the conspiracy was hatched. Ivy Mellor was to be the means, the
condition of her success the bestowal of her spotless hand upon the
rightful heir of Wildshott--a splendid dream, a transpontine
melodrama. But John saw at once that a first condition of its success
lay in a scrupulous obliteration of all clues pointing to the identity
of his confederate: hence his anger on discovering the portrait, and
the immediate measures taken by him to wipe it out of existence.

“Well, we know the rest--how the beautiful accomplice betrayed her
trust; how she developed a passion for the very man whom she was
scheming to disinherit; how, to be sure, she came to recognize that
she could much more fully and satisfactorily realize her own ambitions
by baulking than by furthering the designs of her fellow-plotter. To
be the wife of the problematic heir of Wildshott might be a good
thing; to be the wife of the heir of Wildshott _in esse_, a gentleman,
a soldier and an Antinous, was certainly a better. So, having
surrendered to love, she played for the greater stake--and she lost.
We can pity her: she was frankly an adventuress. We could pity him,
were it not for the thought of that inhuman revenge. Yet he had
provocation perhaps beyond a gambler’s endurance. To find the very
woman, for worship of whom he had been scheming away his position, his
reputation, his soul of truth and honour, not only turned traitor to
his best interests, but faithless in the worse sense, and for his
rival’s sake, to her pledge to him--well, one must pause before
utterly condemning. And after all it was only a moment’s madness
served by opportunity. Yes, I can pity him. I have a notion, too,
that she told him what was not the truth--that she had already
destroyed for her love’s sake the evidence of the prayer-book. If she
had--it was the last touch. Yes, I can pity him.

“Gentlemen, that is the story.”

M. le Baron ceased speaking, and for a time a silence held among them
all. Then presently Mr. Bickerdike asked:--

“There is only one thing, Baron, which remains to puzzle me a little.
Was not Ridgway’s employment in the case originally agreed to by Sir
Calvin in response to a suggestion of yours?”

“That is quite true.”

“Was Sir Calvin himself, then, never moved to any sort of emotion or
curiosity over the association which the detective’s name would
naturally awaken in his mind?”

“Emotion?--I think not. It would hardly describe a psychology so
little superstitious as that of the General. The similarity of the
names would have struck him as no more than an inconsiderable
coincidence. With all his practical qualities, imagination is the last
thing he would care to be accused of. But curiosity?--well, perhaps to
a certain extent--though neither deep-seated nor lasting. You have to
remember that from first to last, I suppose, he never knew, or
troubled to know, what the Sergeant’s _Christian_ name was; and even
had he learned it, it would have conveyed nothing to him, as he knew
no better; nor again, probably, had ever troubled to know, by what
name his own disowned son was called. And very certainly he had never
condescended to note the name of the Quartermaster-Sergeant’s
individual offspring.”

“I see. And had you yourself, in suggesting the Sergeant for the case,
any _arrière pensée_ at that time, connecting----?”

“I had merely a curiosity, my friend, to observe the owner of a
name--really _ipsissima verba_ to me--so oddly associated in my mind
with the teller of a certain fantastic story in Paris.”

“Then you did not know--but of course you didn’t.” He turned to the
Baronet: “I congratulate you with all my heart, Orsden.”

“Thanks, old fellow,” said Sir Francis. “It’s all due to him there.
I’ll give his health, in B-Bob Cratchit’s words. Here’s to M. le
Baron, ‘the Founder of the Feast’!”




 CHAPTER XXI.
 A LAST WORD

Miss Kennett, still in process of qualifying herself for a musician,
was at work on Czerny’s fifth exercise, which, like the _pons
asinorum_ of an earlier strategist, could present an insuperable
problem to an intelligence already painful master of the four
preceding. To pick up one note with her was, like the clown with the
packages, to drop half a dozen others; to give its proper value to the
right hand was to leave the left struggling in a partial paralysis.
Still she persevered, lips counting, eyes glued to the page, pretty
fingers sprawling, until a sudden laugh at the open door of the room
startled her efforts into a shiver of unexpected harmony. She looked
up with a shake and a smile that suggested somehow to the observer a
bird scattering water from its wings in a sunshiny basin.

“O, Frank!” she exclaimed, and stretched herself with glistening
easefulness.

“You p-poor goose,” he answered. “You’ll never play, you know.”

She jumped up with a cry, and ran to him.

“Do you mean it? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Would you mind if I didn’t?”

“Not half so m-much as I should if you did.”

“But I tried, to please you, you know.”

“But it doesn’t please me, you know.”

She looked at him doubtfully. He took her hands, his eyes glowing.

“I love you for trying, you dear,” he said, “but I shouldn’t love you
if I let you go on trying--nor, I expect, would any one else.”

“Pig!” she exclaimed.

“Audrey,” he said, “you couldn’t play when I fell in love with you, so
why should I wish you to now? It would never be yourself; and that’s
what I want of all things. Let every one develop the best that’s in
him, and leave affectation to the donkeys. So you’ll just come over to
Barton’s farm with me, to give me your advice about the loveliest
litter of bull-pups you ever saw.”

He had something to say to her, and when they were on their way he
came out with it soberly.

“I wanted just to tell you--he left a full confession; and--and it
showed how the Baron had been right in almost every particular.”

She made no answer for a little; but presently she said softly, “I
think I should like to be the one, Frank, to write and tell him so.”

“Yes, Audrey.”

Again the silence fell between them, and again she broke it in the
same tone.

“We heard from Hughie this morning--only a short letter. He wrote from
Karachi, where they had just landed. They were going straight on to
Rawul Pindi.”

He nodded.

“Now let us talk of something else.”

 [The End]




 FOOTNOTES.

[1] Found in manuscript.




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

The edition published by Collins’ Clear-Type Press (London, 1921) was
referenced for most of the corrections listed below.

Alterations to the text:

Assorted punctuation corrections (missing periods, quotation marks,
etc.).

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ preoccupied/pre-occupied,
witness-box/witness box, etc.) have been preserved.

[Chapter II]

Change “all the possible moves to come or to be _counted_” to
_countered_.

[Chapter III]

“he once opened the sluice he’d drain the _damned_ river” to
_dammed_.

[Chapter IV]

“had mixed water with his _Chàteau_ Margaux 1907” to _Château_.

(“But one of the forged I.O.U.’s,” said _Andrew_) to _Audrey_.

“I never could _quiet_ make out Audrey” to _quite_.

[Chapter VIII]

“I don’t want _pour_ pity, or anybody’s” to _your_.

[Chapter X]

“but only not to blurt it _our_ unnecessarily” to _out_.

[Chapter XI]

“one’s sense _or_ fitness had received a severe blow” to _of_.

[Chapter XIV]

“All that it is open to us surmise” add _to_ after _us_.

“Hugo _Stavelly_ Kennett, we have no alternative” to _Staveley_.

[Chapter XIX]

“the detective turned and leapt _from_ the open window” to _for_.

“and hanged my fine _gentlemen_--his son there” to _gentleman_.

[Chapter XX]

“It was like taking a _stethescope_ to a man’s heart” to _stethoscope_.

“no proof that she had _even_ been in domestic service before” to
_ever_.

“the vile and dishonourable _strategem_ of a sham marriage” to
_stratagem_.

[End of Text]