Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  Mr. Harding did not consult his own lawyer at all. But he went on foot to the purlieus of the Old Bailey, and there mounted to a noisome den, with his shoulders up and his hat well over his eyes. He departed as furtively some minutes later; and was followed down the breakneck stairs by an unclean vulture of a man, with snuffy beak and grimy talons, who skipped into a cabriolet and was driven at speed to the Marylebone office.

  There was a dense crowd outside, but with the free use of his own elbows and Mr. Harding’s money, the Old Bailey lawyer fought and bought his way in. He was in time to witness the formal remand of Thomas Erichsen, and to draw his own conclusion from the bold fixed eyes and tremulously scornful lips behind the iron railing of the dock. That look was less for the magistrate than for the opera-glasses of the noble lord whom the magistrate had allowed upon the bench. But the Old Bailey lawyer read it his own way: here was a glaringly guilty man putting a face of brass upon a heart of putty: the very type with which he was best accustomed and most competent to deal. So the vulture took a pinch of snuff that resounded through the court, and, on the prisoner’s removal, squeezed out himself to make inquiries. It was as he expected. The prisoner would be conveyed immediately to the new prison at Clerkenwell. But the attorney managed to get away first through the swelling crowd now on tip-toe for the prison van; and in a neighbouring tavern he had his heartiest meal that year, also with Mr. Harding’s money.

  Between three and four he presented himself, well primed, at Clerkenwell, and sent in a greasy card to the prisoner.

  “He is much obliged, but he doesn’t want to see you,” said the turnkey, on his reappearance.

  “Tell him I am commissioned by his friends to get up his defence. No expense to be spared. Tell him that.”

  The turnkey was gone longer, but came back shaking his head.

  “He says it is impossible. He has no friends. And you mention no name.”

  “That is true; but my client’s name is the one thing my client will not give.”

  This did it; the ambassador returned beckoning, and conducted the visitor to a narrow dark cell, at the end of which glowered the prisoner on his bed. Two more turnkeys joined them at the door.

  “Do you want to be alone with him?” said they.

  “It is absolutely necessary.”

  “Very well. We wait outside.”

  And the three officials withdrew across the corridor, and chatted a little, but kept an eye on the open door. They saw the lawyer seat himself upon the chair, at a gesture from the prisoner, who restrained him with another as he edged it nearer and nearer the bed. They heard the lawyer’s whisper, low and rapid, and saw his dirty gesticulating fingers; but not his face; only that of the prisoner, very calm and cold. Suddenly it flared up; and next instant the visitor was hurled through the open door, and Thomas Erichsen stood with the empty chair poised a moment, before dashing it after him with a yell of rage.

  Two of the turnkeys rushed in and secured this caged tiger, while the third knelt over the Old Bailey lawyer, who lay moaning outside.

  “It’ll be a strait-waistcoat for you, my beauty, after this.”

  “You’ve half killed him!”

  “Half killed him?” roared Tom. “Only let in another of them, to insult and threaten me, and I’ll kill him quite, and deserve all I get!”

  And he tore away from them, and flung himself, unstrung and sobbing, upon the bed.

  CHAPTER ΧII

  WHEEL WITHIN WHEEL

  MR. HARDING drove home in a dull fury, and was met by Claire upon the steps. Her heart sank at his face. He passed her without a word. She followed him into his library, and there besought him to tell her what had happened now.

  “Oh, nothing. I wash my hands of a young demon; that’s all.”

  “Tom Erichsen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have changed your mind!”

  “I have.”

  And he told her how the prisoner had treated the attorney he had sent him that very afternoon; committing a brutal and unprovoked assault upon the very man who was there to save his life, if that had been possible. It was not. The villain would hang, and rightly too. But there was gratitude! There was a young tiger in human shape!

  Claire kept her head, and gradually Mr. Harding cooled down. Then she asked questions, and discovered that it was not the family lawyer who had been so grossly handled, but one whose name was new to her.

  “Hattersley never touches criminal work,” said her father; “besides, I should have been ashamed to ask him. No; I went to the very man for the job; and this is all the thanks I get!”

  “Did he know it was you?”

  “No; I sent word I would give any money, but not my name.”

  “That message was delivered?”

  “It was.”

  “Something more must have been said!”

  “Hardly a word; my man was proceeding to business, when this maniac sprang upon him and flung him out of the cell.”

  Claire shook her head.

  “I cannot think that’s all that passed,” said she.

  “It was, though; you ask the warders. There were three of them outside the open door, and they’ve put him in a strait-waistcoat for it, at any rate! So you see how he has made use of the chance I gave him. Don’t ask me to give him another, that’s all.”

  “No, no,” said Claire, sadly; “it was only too noble of you to give him one at all, and I shall never, never, never forget all this — your forgiveness — everything! Papa, dear, you may not have me with you very long; how can one go on living after such a thing? I loved him, and I long to die. But until I do, I promise one thing. I may deceive others, but never again will I deceive or disobey my own dear father!”

  She spoke with the sad fortitude of sheer despair; and she left Nicholas Harding in an icy exhalation, with one tingling spot, where she had stooped and kissed his face.

  Claire had hardly reached her room, when there was a knock at the door, and in came Hannah with a neat sealed packet.

  “Oh, please, miss, Mr. Daintree said I was to give you this.”

  “Mr. Daintree!”

  She had seen him during the day; then what could he have to say to her which would not bear plain verbal utterance? Claire opened the packet when the maid was gone, and found a smaller packet and a letter inside. The letter ran, —

  “DEAR MISS HARDING, — Think what you will of me for slandering the dead; I can bear it better than to see you mourning one who was never worthy to touch the hem of your garment. The enclosed will give you a true insight into the character of the late Captain Blaydes; but I make a separate packet of it, so that you may destroy it unread, if you prefer not to know, and to think me the liar.

  “You may remember telling me that Captain Blaydes had the room that I have now, when he was here and I was not. That was the week before last. The weather has been so warm, the fire has not been alight since my return; and to-day, quite by chance, I discovered, torn up in the grate, the fragments which I have put together and now enclose. I will not tell you the word that caught my eye and irresistibly impelled me to put the letter together and read it through. Nor will I seek to defend an action that will no doubt condemn me in your eyes for ever. It was dishonourable. I admit it. But I am a believer in instinct. My instinct always told me that that man was a bad man; and my instinct told me then that I was within reach of proving its own unerring truth, and the measure of a villain’s villainy. I have done both, as you will soon see, if you can nerve yourself to know the truth; if not, condemn me with a glance, or with words as bitter as you please, and I leave this house to-night and for ever. I shall never regret what I have done. You mourn a traitor; and I had rather forfeit your respect — nay, and my own honour to boot — than let one so divine waste another sigh on one so devilish!

  “But if you forgive me, oh, let me hear it from your own sweet lips; and I will move heaven and earth to atone for what present misery this may inflict. One day you will thank me: m
eanwhile, if you do not spurn, command me, and your lightest word shall be my law. If only I could do something for you! My one remaining chance of happiness is in serving her I may not love.

  “Humbly and sincerely always, “James E. W. DAINTREB.”

  Claire arrived at the last paragraph with a mind made up. She perceived with amazement the writer’s theory regarding the wretched Blaydes and herself; it had never struck her that her every agitation might be thus misconstrued; and her first impulse was to set Daintree right upon the point. She would then return the incriminating enclosure unopened: that would be a sufficient rebuke for an action as it were so honestly dishonourable; and at these decisions her nimble mind had arrived before she came to the last paragraph.

  This she read over more than once, with a puckered forehead and a changeful eye, as eagerness, reluctance, hesitation and decision, shame and pride, whipped across her face like shadows and sunbeams on a gusty day. And suddenly she tore open the enclosure, and felt as mean as Daintree from that moment, though she barely glanced at what she found.

  It was an obviously genuine letter, addressed to Blaydes by some poor woman, but that was all Claire allowed herself to discover. A feeling of incredible meanness made her hot all over, and she turned the letter upside down to examine the method of reconstruction. With abominable ingenuity Daintree had pasted the scraps upon a sheet; a few were missing; many were black from the coals. Claire shuddered, and glanced at her own fireplace; it was laid and all ready for lighting. A moment later it was lit, and the dead man’s letter was blazing in its midst. Then Claire breathed again, and took another look at Daintree’s warning before burning it too.

  “An interesting revelation of character,” said she, when this was done. “I shall never think the same of him again; nor of myself either; but what does that matter, since I can never think the same of Tom?

  Nothing matters, except saving his life! And here is a man who says he’ll do anything for me. Will he? We shall see!”

  She had a word with Daintree before dinner. “Forgive you? I thank you with all my heart!” said she. And great was the change in her this evening. It was no time for gaiety, but Claire was animated; her eyes sparkled; she conversed freely on the topic of the hour; and when Mr. Harding was moved after all to give Daintree a judicious version of his attempt to provide fair play for a dastardly constituted, with the result, the girl took her father’s breath away by looking hard at their guest, and declaring that she would finance the defence herself if she had the money.

  “What on earth did you mean by saying that?” asked Mr. Harding afterwards. “Have you forgotten your word of honour, that nobody should ever suspect what had existed between you and Erichsen?”

  This was when the girl had said good-night. Mr. Harding followed her upstairs. It was his first chance of speaking to her, for Claire and Daintree had been together in the garden all the evening.

  “No, papa,” she replied; “I have forgotten nothing that I said to you. Mr. Daintree, at any rate, suspects nothing at all.”

  “You said enough to make him!”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  “Not when you said you’d pay for a defence if you had the money? Are you aware that he thinks you were in love with the murdered man?”

  “He thinks I was, but that something has since caused a complete revulsion of feeling — as to which I may as well explain everything.” And she told the incident of the letters without hiding a thing. “So he thinks it quite natural that I should fly to the other extreme, and want no human creature to hang for one so base. You see,” said Claire shrewdly, “he is a man of extremes himself.”

  “Then, instead of undeceiving him, you have literally fooled him to the top of his bent?”

  Claire blushed hotly. “I cannot help that. I may make up for it some day. Any woman would do the same.”

  Mr. Harding was slow to understand.

  “That he should never know what I know,” said he, “is right enough; but why carry the thing so far? Why pretend this revulsion?”

  Claire hung her head.

  “Come, come!” he cried. “You promised to hide nothing more from me. You are hiding your chief motive. What is it?”

  “I would rather not say.”

  “And I insist on knowing.”

  “Very well, then; it is to give Tom Erichsen another chance.”

  Harding turned livid.

  “That young—”

  “Oh, don’t be angry! You know you thought of it yourself. And I loved him; could I leave a stone unturned?”

  “But what can Daintree do?”

  “What you thought of doing yourself.”

  “He has never consented?”

  “Eagerly. He is going to have a solicitor at Marylebone to-morrow morning.”

  Mr. Harding glared at the girl, who flung back her ringlets and met his look, unafraid and unashamed.

  “And suppose I put my oar in?” said he, savagely.

  “Then you would have to tell him the truth.”

  “Oh, curse your infernal woman’s wit!” cried he. “Are you not ashamed of yourself, that you can stand there looking me in the face?”

  “No, I am not ashamed to try to save this life by hook or crook. It is the life of the man I loved.”

  “Loved! So you don’t love him now? Like everybody else, you believe him guilty? Well, well, that’s something!”

  “Not of murder,” she said. “That I’ll never believe. The other struck first; that is what we want the best man at the Bar to prove!”

  He supplemented his cruel irony by laughing aloud at her notions of criminal law. She reminded him it was himself who had put them into her head; her view tonight was only his of the night before.

  Harding changed his ground. “If you get him off with his neck — what then?”

  “I shall be grateful to Mr. Daintree all my life.”

  “I daresay, but I want more than that. You said something about making up to him for this. Will you marry him if he asks you when it’s all over?”

  Claire turned very pale. “I pray God he never may,” she whispered.

  Mr. Harding looked her through and through. “Well! I may or may not interfere,” said he. “I make no promise either way.” And at last she was left in peace.

  She fell upon her knees, and prayed more fervently than ever in her life before. —

  “Oh, God,” cried this loving heart, “forgive me, and save poor Tom! Thou knowest these sins I have committed for his sake; forgive them, Lord, for the sake of Him whose Love passed the love of us poor women. Or let me never be forgiven, but save poor Tom from the most terrible death a man can die. Save him, O Lord; and forgive him too. And in Thy mercy, give me strength and time to atone to whomsoever I have wronged and deceived; then take me quickly, for my poor love’s sake. Amen.”

  CHAPTER ΧIII

  A FORLORN HOPE

  ABOUT a quarter to eleven next morning, before the adjourned examination had been many minutes in progress, a smart, slight gentleman was seen to shoulder his way into the well of the Marylebone police-office and touch the prosecuting barrister on the arm. The capable face, now a trifle flushed, was well known in that court, and at sight of it the learned counsel shrugged his shoulders and sat down. Thereupon the interloper bowed briskly to his worship, who had already recognised him with a sigh.

  “Well, Mr. Bassett?”

  “I must apologise to your worship for being late; but, in point of fact, I have just this minute been instructed for the defence.”

  “Do I understand that you have not yet seen the prisoner with reference to the charge I am now hearing against him?”

  “There has been no opportunity, your worship. Up to ten o’clock this morning I had received no communication upon the matter.”

  “Dear me! dear me! Then I suppose you want to confer with him here in court?”

  “With your worship’s leave—”

  “And mine!” said a hollow voice heard for
the first time by every ear; it was that of the prisoner in the dock.

  The effect was instantaneous; a volley of eyes hit the accused as one pair; but his own remained unshaken upon the raised eyebrows and creased forehead of the smart young solicitor secured by Daintree that morning.

  “Do you object to being defended?” inquired this mercenary.

  “Certainly; until I know by whom.”

  “Indeed! Well, my name is Bassett. I am tolerably well known in this court—”

  “That’s not what I mean, sir,” said Tom, respectfully. “Who has instructed you? That is what I want to know.”

  “One who has taken your case and your interests to heart.”

  “An anonymous friend?” And the prisoner’s voice trembled.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then I’ll take nothing from him. I know that friend! I know him!”

  A policeman whispered to Bassett, who approached the dock and said in a lower and a friendlier voice, “You are quite mistaken. This is another gentleman altogether. He wishes you to have fair play.”

  “Then let him give his name.”

  Bassett turned and ran a keen eye over the crowded court. At the same moment a slip of paper was passed across the sea of heads, and put into his hand. “Ah! Here it is, I make no doubt,” said he. It was not, however, and his eyebrows showed it; but he handed the paper to the accused without comment.

  And Tom read —

  “Solicitor instructed by one who believes you innocent, and will save you if he can. For God’s sake let us try.”

  The words danced beneath his eyes, and these were swimming when he raised them behind the iron railing of the dock.

  “I accept with gratitude!” said he, searching pitifully among the faces for that of his unknown ally; and he placed the slip of paper in an inside pocket, with expressive deliberation and a touching smile.

  “Then if your worship will grant us a few minutes?”

  And as the magistrate bowed, the dead silence, which had prevailed ever since the prisoner opened his lips, ended as suddenly; it was like the upsetting of a slumbering hive.