CHAPTER XLIII
THE MURDER AT MRS 'ENDERSON'S
It is something of a drive from Waterloo to Limehouse,--it seems longerwhen all your nerves are tingling with anxiety to reach your journey'send; and the cab I had hit upon proved to be not the fastest I mighthave chosen. For some time after our start, we were silent. Each wasoccupied with his own thoughts.
Then Lessingham, who was sitting at my side, said to me,
'Mr Champnell, you have that report.'
'I have.'
'Will you let me see it once more?'
I gave it to him. He read it once, twice,--and I fancy yet again. Ipurposely avoided looking at him as he did so. Yet all the while I wasconscious of his pallid cheeks, the twitched muscles of his mouth, thefeverish glitter of his eyes,--this Leader of Men, whose predominatecharacteristic in the House of Commons was immobility, was rapidlyapproximating to the condition of a hysterical woman. The mental strainwhich he had been recently undergoing was proving too much for hisphysical strength. This disappearance of the woman he loved bade fairto be the final straw. I felt convinced that unless something was donequickly to relieve the strain upon his mind he was nearer to a state ofcomplete mental and moral collapse than he himself imagined. Had hebeen under my orders I should have commanded him to at once returnhome, and not to think; but conscious that, as things were, such adirection would be simply futile, I decided to do something elseinstead. Feeling that suspense was for him the worst possible form ofsuffering I resolved to explain, so far as I was able, precisely whatit was I feared, and how I proposed to prevent it.
Presently there came the question for which I had been waiting, in aharsh, broken voice which no one who had heard him speak on a publicplatform, or in the House of Commons, would have recognised as his.
'Mr Champnell,--who do you think this person is of whom the report fromVauxhall Station speaks as being all in rags and tatters?'
He knew perfectly well,--but I understood the mental attitude whichinduced him to prefer that the information should seem to come from me.
'I hope that it will prove to be Miss Lindon.'
'Hope!' He gave a sort of gasp.
'Yes, hope,--because if it is I think it possible, nay probable, thatwithin a few hours you will have her again enfolded in your arms.'
'Pray God that it may be so! pray God!--pray the good God!'
I did not dare to look round for, from the tremor which was in histone, I was persuaded that in the speaker's eyes were tears. Athertoncontinued silent. He was leaning half out of the cab, staring straightahead, as if he saw in front a young girl's face, from which he couldnot remove his glance, and which beckoned him on.
After a while Lessingham spoke again, as if half to himself and half tome.
'This mention of the shrieks on the railway, and of the wailing noisein the cab,--what must this wretch have done to her? How my darlingmust have suffered!'
That was a theme on which I myself scarcely ventured to allow mythoughts to rest. The notion of a gently-nurtured girl being at themercy of that fiend incarnate, possessed--as I believed that so-calledArab to be possessed--of all the paraphernalia of horror and of dread,was one which caused me tangible shrinkings of the body. Whence hadcome those shrieks and yells, of which the writer of the report spoke,which had caused the Arab's fellow-passengers to think that murder wasbeing done? What unimaginable agony had caused them? what speechlesstorture? And the 'wailing noise,' which had induced the prosaic,indurated London cabman to get twice off his box to see what was thematter, what anguish had been provocative of that? The helpless girlwho had already endured so much, endured, perhaps, that to which deathwould have been preferred!--shut up in that rattling, jolting box onwheels, alone with that diabolical Asiatic, with the enormous bundle,which was but the lurking place of nameless terrors,--what might shenot, while being borne through the heart of civilised London, have beenmade to suffer? What had she not been made to suffer to have kept upthat continued 'wailing noise'?
It was not a theme on which it was wise to permit one's thoughts tolinger,--and particularly was it clear that it was one from whichLessingham's thoughts should have been kept as far as possible away.
'Come, Mr Lessingham, neither you nor I will do himself any good bypermitting his reflections to flow in a morbid channel. Let us talk ofsomething else. By the way, weren't you due to speak in the Houseto-night?'
'Due!--Yes, I was due,--but what does it matter?'
'But have you acquainted no one with the cause of your non-attendance?'
'Acquaint!--whom should I acquaint?'
'My good sir! Listen to me, Mr Lessingham. Let me entreat you veryearnestly, to follow my advice. Call another cab,--or take this! and goat once to the House. It is not too late. Play the man, deliver thespeech you have undertaken to deliver, perform your political duties.By coming with me you will be a hindrance rather than a help, and youmay do your reputation an injury from which it never may recover. Do asI counsel you, and I will undertake to do my very utmost to let youhave good news by the time your speech is finished.'
He turned on me with a bitterness for which I was unprepared.
'If I were to go down to the House, and try to speak in the state inwhich I am now, they would laugh at me, I should be ruined.'
'Do you not run an equally great risk of being ruined by staying away?'
He gripped me by the arm.
'Mr Champnell, do you know that I am on the verge of madness? Do youknow that as I am sitting here by your side I am living in a dualworld? I am going on and on to catch that--that fiend, and I am backagain in that Egyptian den, upon that couch of rugs, with the Woman ofthe Songs beside me, and Marjorie is being torn and tortured, and burntbefore my eyes! God help me! Her shrieks are ringing in my ears!'
He did not speak loudly, but his voice was none the less impressive onthat account. I endeavoured my hardest to be stern.
'I confess that you disappoint me, Mr Lessingham. I have alwaysunderstood that you were a man of unusual strength; you appear instead,to be a man of extraordinary weakness; with an imagination soill-governed that its ebullitions remind me of nothing so much asfeminine hysterics, Your wild language is not warranted bycircumstances. I repeat that I think it quite possible that byto-morrow morning she will be returned to you.'
'Yes,--but how? as the Marjorie I have known, as I saw her last,--orhow?'
That was the question which I had already asked myself, in whatcondition would she be when we had succeeded in snatching her from hercaptor's grip? It was a question to which I had refused to supply ananswer. To him I lied by implication.
'Let us hope that, with the exception of being a trifle scared, shewill be as sound and hale and hearty as even in her life.'
'Do you yourself believe that she'll be like that,--untouched,unchanged, unstained?'
Then I lied right out,--it seemed to me necessary to calm his growingexcitement.
'I do.'
'You don't!'
'Mr Lessingham!'
'Do you think that I can't see your face and read in it the samethoughts which trouble me? As a man of honour do you care to deny thatwhen Marjorie Lindon is restored to me,--if she ever is!--you fear shewill be but the mere soiled husk of the Marjorie whom I knew and loved?'
'Even supposing that there may be a modicum of truth in what yousay,--which I am far from being disposed to admit--what good purpose doyou propose to serve by talking in such a strain?'
'None,--no good purpose,--unless it be the desire of looking the truthin the face. For, Mr Champnell, you must not seek to play with me thehypocrite, nor try to hide things from me as if I were a child. If mylife is ruined--it is ruined,--let me know it, and look the knowledgein the face. That, to me, is to play the man.'
I was silent.
The wild tale he had told me of that Cairene inferno, oddly enough--yetwhy oddly, for the world is all coincidence!--had thrown a flood oflight on certain events which had happened some three years previouslyand which
ever since had remained shrouded in mystery. The conduct ofthe business afterwards came into my hands,--and briefly, what hadoccurred was this:
Three persons,--two sisters and their brother, who was younger thanthemselves, members of a decent English family, were going on a tripround the world. They were young, adventurous, and--not to put too finea point on it--foolhardy. The evening after their arrival in Cairo, byway of what is called 'a lark,' in spite of the protestations of peoplewho were better informed than themselves, they insisted on going,alone, for a ramble through the native quarter.
They went,--but they never returned. Or, rather the two girls neverreturned. After an interval the young man was found again,--what wasleft of him. A fuss was made when there were no signs of theirre-appearance, but as there were no relations, nor even friends oftheirs, but only casual acquaintances on board the ship by which theyhad travelled, perhaps not so great a fuss as might have been was made.Anyhow, nothing was discovered. Their widowed mother, alone in England,wondering how it was that beyond the receipt of a brief wire,acquainting her with their arrival at Cairo, she had heard nothingfurther of their wanderings, placed herself in communication with thediplomatic people over there,--to learn that, to all appearances, herthree children had vanished from off the face of the earth.
Then a fuss was made,--with a vengeance. So far as one can judge thewhole town and neighbourhood was turned pretty well upside down. Butnothing came of it,--so far as any results were concerned, theauthorities might just as well have left the mystery of theirvanishment alone. It continued where it was in spite of them.
However, some three months afterwards a youth was brought to theBritish Embassy by a party of friendly Arabs who asserted that they hadfound him naked and nearly dying in some remote spot in the Wady Haifadesert. It was the brother of the two lost girls. He was as nearlydying as he very well could be without being actually dead when theybrought him to the Embassy,--and in a state of indescribablemutilation. He seemed to rally for a time under careful treatment, buthe never again uttered a coherent word. It was only from his deliriousravings that any idea was formed of what had really occurred.
Shorthand notes were taken of some of the utterances of his delirium.Afterwards they were submitted to me. I remembered the substance ofthem quite well, and when Mr Lessingham began to tell me of his ownhideous experiences they came back to me more clearly still. Had I laidthose notes before him I have little doubt but that he would haveimmediately perceived that seventeen years after the adventure whichhad left such an indelible scar upon his own life, this youth--he waslittle more than a boy--had seen the things which he had seen, andsuffered the nameless agonies and degradations which he had suffered.The young man was perpetually raving about some indescribable den ofhorror which was own brother to Lessingham's temple and about somefemale monster, whom he regarded with such fear and horror that everyallusion he made to her was followed by a convulsive paroxysm whichtaxed all the ingenuity of his medical attendants to bring him out of.He frequently called upon his sisters by name, speaking of them in amanner which inevitably suggested that he had been an unwilling andhelpless witness of hideous tortures which they had undergone; and thenhe would rise in bed, screaming, 'They're burning them! they're burningthem! Devils! devils!' And at those times it required all the strengthof those who were in attendance to restrain his maddened frenzy.
The youth died in one of these fits of great preternatural excitement,without, as I have previously written, having given utterance to onesingle coherent word, and by some of those who were best able to judgeit was held to have been a mercy that he did die without having beenrestored to consciousness. And, presently, tales began to be whispered,about some idolatrous sect, which was stated to have its headquarterssomewhere in the interior of the country--some located it in thisneighbourhood, and some in that--which was stated to still practise,and to always have practised, in unbroken historical continuity, thedebased, unclean, mystic, and bloody rites, of a form of idolatry whichhad had its birth in a period of the world's story which was so remote,that to all intents and purposes it might be described as pre-historic.
While the ferment was still at its height, a man came to the BritishEmbassy who said that he was a member of a tribe which had its habitaton the banks of the White Nile. He asserted that he was in associationwith this very idolatrous sect,--though he denied that he was one ofthe actual sectaries. He did admit, however, that he had assisted morethan once at their orgies, and declared that it was their constantpractice to offer young women as sacrifices--preferably white Christianwomen, with a special preference, if they could get them, to youngEnglish women. He vowed that he himself had seen with his own eyes,English girls burnt alive. The description which he gave of whatpreceded and followed these foul murders appalled those who listened.He finally wound up by offering, on payment of a stipulated sum ofmoney, to guide a troop of soldiers to this den of demons, so that theyshould arrive there at a moment when it was filled with worshippers,who were preparing to participate in an orgie which was to take placeduring the next few days.
His offer was conditionally accepted. He was confined in an apartmentwith one man on guard inside and another on guard outside the room.That night the sentinel without was startled by hearing a great noiseand frightful screams issuing from the chamber in which the native wasinterned. He summoned assistance. The door was opened. The soldier onguard within was stark, staring mad,--he died within a few months, agibbering maniac to the end. The native was dead. The window, which wasa very small one, was securely fastened inside and strongly barredwithout. There was nothing to show by what means entry had been gained.Yet it was the general opinion of those who saw the corpse that the manhad been destroyed by some wild beast. A photograph was taken of thebody after death, a copy of which is still in my possession. In it aredistinctly shown lacerations about the neck and the lower portion ofthe abdomen, as if they had been produced by the claws of some huge andferocious animal. The skull is splintered in half-a-dozen places, andthe face is torn to rags.
That was more than three years ago. The whole business has remained asgreat a mystery as ever. But my attention has once or twice been caughtby trifling incidents, which have caused me to more than suspect thatthe wild tale told by that murdered native had in it at least theelements of truth; and which have even led me to wonder if the trade inkidnapping was not being carried on to this very hour, and if women ofmy own flesh and blood were not still being offered up on that infernalaltar. And now, here was Paul Lessingham, a man of world-widereputation, of great intellect, of undoubted honour, who had come to mewith a wholly unconscious verification of all my worst suspicions!
That the creature spoken of as an Arab,--and who was probably no morean Arab than I was, and whose name was certainly not Mohamed elKheir!--was an emissary from that den of demons, I had no doubt. Whatwas the exact purport of the creature's presence in England was anotherquestion, Possibly part of the intention was the destruction of PaulLessingham, body, soul and spirit; possibly another part was theprocuration of fresh victims for that long-drawn-out holocaust. Thatthis latter object explained the disappearance of Miss Lindon I feltpersuaded. That she was designed by the personification of evil who washer captor, to suffer all the horrors at which the stories pointed, andthen to be burned alive, amidst the triumphant yells of the attendantdemons, I was certain. That the wretch, aware that the pursuit was infull cry, was tearing, twisting, doubling, and would stick at nothingwhich would facilitate the smuggling of the victim out of England, wasclear.
My interest in the quest was already far other than a merelyprofessional one. The blood in my veins tingled at the thought of sucha woman as Miss Lindon being in the power of such a monster. I mayassuredly claim that throughout the whole business I was urged forwardby no thought of fee or of reward. To have had a share in rescuing thatunfortunate girl, and in the destruction of her noxious persecutor,would have been reward enough for me.
One is not always, even in strictly profession
al matters, influenced bystrictly professional instincts.
The cab slowed. A voice descended through the trap door.
'This is Commercial Road, sir,--what part of it do you want?'
'Drive me to Limehouse Police Station.'
We were driven there. I made my way to the usual inspector behind theusual pigeon-hole.
'My name is Champnell. Have you received any communication fromScotland Yard to-night having reference to a matter in which I aminterested?'
'Do you mean about the Arab? We received a telephonic message abouthalf an hour ago.'
'Since communicating with Scotland Yard this has come to hand from theauthorities at Vauxhall Station. Can you tell me if anything has beenseen of the person in question by the men of your division?'
I handed the Inspector the 'report.' His reply was laconic.
'I will inquire.'
He passed through a door into an inner room and the 'report' went withhim.
'Beg pardon, sir, but was that a Harab you was a-talking about to theHinspector?'
The speaker was a gentleman unmistakably of the gutter-snipe class. Hewas seated on a form. Close at hand hovered a policeman whose specialduty it seemed to be to keep an eye upon his movements.
'Why do you ask?'
'I beg your pardon, sir, but I saw a Harab myself about a hourago,--leastways he looked like as if he was a Harab.'
'What sort of a looking person was he?'
'I can't 'ardly tell you that, sir, because I didn't never have aproper look at him,--but I know he had a bloomin' great bundle on 'is'ead. ... It was like this, 'ere. I was comin' round the corner, as hewas passin', I never see 'im till I was right atop of 'im, so that Ihaccidentally run agin 'im,--my heye! didn't 'e give me a downer! I wasdown on the back of my 'ead in the middle of the road before I knewwhere I was and 'e was at the other end of the street. If 'e 'adn'tknocked me more'n 'arf silly I'd been after 'im, sharp,--I tell you!and hasked 'im what 'e thought 'e was a-doin' of, but afore my senseswas back agin 'e was out o' sight,--clean!'
'You are sure he had a bundle on his head?'
'I noticed it most particular.'
'How long ago do you say this was? and where?'
'About a hour ago,--perhaps more, perhaps less.'
'Was he alone?'
'It seemed to me as if a cove was a follerin' 'im, leastways there wasa bloke as was a-keepin' close at 'is 'eels,--though I don't know what'is little game was, I'm sure. Ask the pleesman--he knows, he knowseverything the pleesman do.'
I turned to the 'pleesman.'
'Who is this man?'
The 'pleesman' put his hands behind his back, and threw out his chest.His manner was distinctly affable.
'Well,--he's being detained upon suspicion. He's given us an address atwhich to make inquiries, and inquiries are being made. I shouldn't paytoo much attention to what he says if I were you. I don't suppose he'dbe particular about a lie or two.'
This frank expression of opinion re-aroused the indignation of thegentleman on the form.
'There you hare! at it again! That's just like you peelers,--you're allthe same! What do you know about me?--Nuffink! This gen'leman ain't gotno call to believe me, not as I knows on,--it's all the same to me if'e do or don't, but it's trewth what I'm sayin', all the same.'
At this point the Inspector re-appeared at the pigeon-hole. He cutshort the flow of eloquence.
'Now then, not so much noise outside there!' He addressed me. 'None ofour men have seen anything of the person you're inquiring for, so faras we're aware. But, if you like, I will place a man at your disposal,and he will go round with you, and you will be able to make your owninquiries.'
A capless, wildly excited young ragamuffin came dashing in at thestreet door. He gasped out, as clearly as he could for the speed whichhe had made:
'There's been murder done, Mr Pleesman,--a Harab's killed a bloke.'
'Mr Pleesman' gripped him by the shoulder.
'What's that?'
The youngster put up his arm, and ducked his head, instinctively, as ifto ward off a blow.
'Leave me alone! I don't want none of your 'andling!--I ain't donenuffink to you! I tell you 'e 'as!'
The Inspector spoke through the pigeon-hole.
'He has what, my lad? What do you say has happened?'
'There's been murder done--it's right enough!--there 'as!--up at Mrs'Enderson's, in Paradise Place,--a Harab's been and killed a bloke!'
The Beetle: A Mystery Page 43