Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  PROVISIONAL CASE AGAINST —— —— ——

  1. Was in Sloane Street on the night of the murder, at an hotel about a mile from the house in which the murder was committed. This can be proved.

  2. Left hotel shortly after arrival towards midnight, believed to have returned between two and three, and would thus have been absent at very time at which crime was committed according to medical evidence adduced at trial. But exact duration of absence from hotel can be proved.

  3. Knew M. in Australia, but was in England unknown to M. till two mornings before murder, when M. wrote letter on receipt of which —— —— —— came up to town (arriving near scene of murder as above stated, about time of commission). All this morally certain and probably capable of legal proof.

  4. “So then I asked why a man he hadn’t seen for so long should pay his debts; but M. only laughed and swore, and said he’d make him.” C. could be subpoenaed to confirm if not to amplify this statement to me, with others to effect that it was for money M. admitted having written to “a millionaire.”

  5. Attended Mrs. M.’s trial throughout, thereafter making her acquaintance and offering marriage without any previous private knowledge whatsoever of her character or antecedents.

  POSSIBLE MOTIVES

  —— —— —— is a human mystery, his past life a greater one. He elaborately pretends that no part of that past was spent in Australia.

  M. said he knew him there; also that “he’d make him” — pay up!

  Blackmail not inconsistent with M.’s character.

  Men have died as they deserved before to-day for threatening blackmail.

  Possible Motive for Marriage

  Atonement of the Guilty to the Innocent.

  As Langholm read and re-read these precise pronouncements, with something of the detachment and the mild surprise with which he occasionally dipped into his own earlier volumes, he congratulated himself upon the evidently lucid interval which had produced so much order from the chaos that had been his mind. Chaotic as its condition still was, that orderly array of impression, discovery, and surmise, bore the test of conscientious reconsideration. And there was nothing that Langholm felt moved to strike out in the train; but, on the other hand, he saw the weakness of his case as it stood at present, and was helped to see it by the detective officer’s remark to him at Scotland Yard: “You find one [old Australian] who carries a revolver like this, and prove that he was in Chelsea on the night of the murder, with a motive for committing it, and we shall be glad of his name and address.” Langholm had found the old Australian who could be proved to have been in Chelsea, or thereabouts, on the night in question; but the pistol he could not hope to find, and the motive was mere surmise.

  And yet, to the walls of the mind that he was trying so hard to cleanse from prejudice and prepossession — to school indeed to an inhuman fairness — there clung small circumstances and smaller details which could influence no one else, which would not constitute evidence before any tribunal, but which weighed more with Langholm himself than all the points arrayed in his note-book with so much primness and precision.

  There was Rachel’s vain appeal to her husband, “Find out who is guilty if you want people to believe that I am not.” Why should so natural a petition have been made in vain, to a husband who after all had shown some solicitude for his wife’s honor, and who had the means to employ the best detective talent in the world? Langholm could only conceive one reason: there was nothing for the husband to find out, but everything for him to hide.

  Langholm remembered the wide-eyed way in which Steel had looked at his wife before replying, and the man’s embarrassment grew automatically in his mind. His lips had indeed shut very tight, but unconscious exaggeration made them tremble first.

  And then the fellow’s manner to himself, his defiant taunts, his final challenge! Langholm was not sorry to remember the last; it relieved him from the moral incubus of the clandestine and the underhand; it bid him go on and do his worst; it set his eyes upon the issue as between himself and Steel, and it shut them to the final possibilities as touching the woman in the case.

  So Langholm came back from sultry London to a world of smoke and rain, with furnaces flaring through the blurred windows, and the soot laid with the dust in one of the grimiest towns in the island; but he soon shook both from his feet, and doubled back upon the local line to a rural station within a mile and a half of his cottage. This distance he walked by muddy ways, through the peculiarly humid atmosphere created by a sky that has rained itself out and an earth that can hold no more, and came finally to his dripping garden by the wicket at the back of the cottage. There he stood to inhale the fine earthy fragrance which atoned somewhat for a rather desolate scene. The roses were all washed away. William Allen Richardson clung here and there, in the shelter of the southern eaves, but he was far past his prime, and had better have perished with the exposed beauties on the tiny trees. The soaking foliage had a bluish tinge; the glimpse of wooded upland, across the valley through the gap in the hedge of Penzance briers, lay colorless and indistinct as a faded print from an imperfect negative. A footstep crunched the wet gravel at Langholm’s back.

  “Thank God you’ve got back, sir!” cried a Yorkshire voice in devout accents; and Langholm, turning, met the troubled face and tired eyes of the woman next door, who kept house for him while living in her own.

  “My dear Mrs. Brunton,” he exclaimed, “what on earth has happened? You didn’t expect me earlier, did you? I wired you my train first thing this morning.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t that, sir. It’s — it’s the poor young gentleman—”

  And her apron went to her eyes.

  “What young gentleman, Mrs. Brunton?”

  “Him ‘at you saw i’ London an’ sent all this way for change of air! He wasn’t fit to travel half the distance. I’ve been nursing of him all night and all day too.”

  “A young gentleman, and sent by me?” Langholm’s face was blank until a harsh light broke over it. “What’s his name, Mrs. Brunton?”

  “I can’t tell you, sir. He said he was a friend of yours, and that was all before he took ill. He’s been too bad to answer questions all day. And then we knew you’d soon be here to tell us.”

  “A foreigner, I suppose?”

  “I should say he was, sir.”

  “And did he really tell you I had sent him?”

  “Well, I can’t say he did, not in so many words, but that was what I thought he meant. It was like this, sir,” continued Mrs. Brunton, as they stood face to face on the wet gravel: “just about this time yesterday I was busy ironing, when my nephew, the lad you used to send with letters, who’s here again for his summer holidays, comes to me an’ says, ‘You’re wanted.’ So I went, and there was a young gentleman looking fit to drop. He’d a bag with him, and he’d walked all the way from Upthorpe station, same as I suppose you have now; but yesterday was the hottest day we’ve had, and I never did see living face so like the dead. He had hardly life enough to ask if this was where you lived; and when I said it was, but you were away, he nodded and said he’d just seen you in London; and he was sure he might come in and rest a bit. Well, sir, I not only let him do that, but you never will lock up anything, so I gave him a good sup o’ your whiskey too!”

  “Quite right,” said Langholm— “and then?”

  “It seemed to pull him together a bit, and he began to talk. He wanted to know about all the grand folks round about, where they lived and how long they’d lived there. At last he made me tell him the way to Normanthorpe House, after asking any amount of questions about Mr. and Mrs. Steel; it was hard work not to tell him what had just come out, but I remembered what you said before you went away, sir, and I left that to others.”

  “Good!” said Langholm. “But did he go to Normanthorpe?”

  “He started, though I begged him to sit still while we tried to get him a trap from the village; and his self-will nearly cost him his life, if it doesn’
t yet. He was hardly out of sight when we see him come staggering back with his handkerchief up to his mouth, and the blood dripping through his fingers into the road.”

  “A hemorrhage!”

  “Yes, sir, yon was the very word the doctor used, and he says if he has another it’ll be all up. So you may think what a time I’ve had! If he’s a friend of yours, sir, I’m sure I don’t mind. In any case, poor gentleman—”

  “He is a friend of mine,” interrupted Langholm, “and we must do all we can for him. I will help you, Mrs. Brunton. You shall have your sleep to-night. Did you put him into my room?”

  “No, sir, your bed wasn’t ready, so we popped him straight into our own; and now he has everything nice and clean and comfortable as I could make it. If only we can pull him through, poor young gentleman, between us!”

  “God bless you for a good woman,” said Langholm, from his heart; “it will be His will and not your fault if we fail. Yes, I should like to see the poor fellow, if I may.”

  “He is expecting you, sir. He told Dr. Sedley he must see you the moment you arrived, and the doctor said he might. No, he won’t know you’re here yet, and he can’t have heard a word, for our room is at t’front o’ t’house.”

  “Then I’ll go up alone, Mrs. Brunton, if you won’t mind.”

  Severino was lying in a high, square bed, his black locks tossed upon a spotless pillow no whiter than his face; a transparent hand came from under the bedclothes to meet Langholm’s outstretched one, but it fell back upon the sick man’s breast instead.

  “Do you forgive me?” he whispered, in a voice both hoarse and hollow.

  “What for?” smiled Langholm. “You had a right to come where you liked; it is a free country, Severino.”

  “But I went to your hotel — behind your back!”

  “That was quite fair, my good fellow. Come, I mean to shake hands, whether you like it or not.”

  And the sound man took the sick one’s hand with womanly tenderness; and so sat on the bed, looking far into the great dark sinks of fever that were human eyes; but the fever was of the brain, for the poor fellow’s hand was cool.

  “You do not ask me why I did it,” came from the tremulous lips at last.

  “Perhaps I know.”

  “I will tell you if you are right.”

  “It was to see her again — your kindest friend — and mine,” said Langholm, gently.

  “Yes! It was to see her again — before I die!”

  And the black eyes blazed again.

  “You are not going to die,” said Langholm, with the usual reassuring scorn.

  “I am. Quite soon. On your hands, I only fear. And I have not seen her yet!”

  “You shall see her,” said Langholm, tenderly, gravely. He was rewarded with a slight pressure of the emaciated hand; but for the first time he suspected that all the scrutiny was not upon one side — that the sick youth was trying to read him in his turn.

  “I love her!” at last cried Severino, in rapt whispers. “Do you hear me? I love her! I love her! What does it matter now?”

  “It would matter to her if you told her,” rejoined Langholm. “It would make her very unhappy.”

  “Then I need not tell her.”

  “You must not, indeed.”

  “Very well, I will not. It is a promise, and I keep my promises; it is only when I make none—”

  “That’s all right,” said Langholm, smiling.

  “Then you will bring her to me?”

  “I shall have to see her first, and the doctor.”

  “But you will do your best? That is why I am here, remember! I shall tell the doctor so myself.”

  “I will do my best,” said Langholm, as he rose.

  A last whisper followed him to the door.

  “Because I worship her!” were the words.

  CHAPTER XXV

  A POINT TO LANGHOLM

  “I am glad you have come back,” said Dr. Sedley with relief. “Of course eventually he will require trained nursing, either here or somewhere else; there is only one end to such a case, but it needn’t come yet, unless he has another hemorrhage. I understand you offered him your cottage while you were away, but there was some muddle, and he came before they were ready for him? It was like your kindness, my dear fellow, only never you send another consumptive to the northeast coast or anywhere near it! As to his seeing any ladies who like to look him up, by all means, only one at a time, and they mustn’t excite him. Your return, for example, has been quite enough excitement for to-day, and I should keep him quiet for the next twenty-four hours.”

  The doctor had called within an hour of the return of Langholm, who repeated these stipulations upstairs, with his own undertaking in regard to Rachel. He would write that night and beg her to call the following day. No, he preferred writing to going to see her, and it took up far less time. But he would write at once. And, as he went downstairs to do so then and there, Langholm asked himself whether an honorable man could meet the Steels again without reading to their faces the notes that he had made in London and conned in the train.

  This letter written, there was a small pile of them awaiting attention on top of the old bureau; and Langholm sat glancing at proofs and crumpling up press-cuttings until he needed a lamp. The letter that he kept to the last looked like one of the rare applications for his autograph which he was not too successful to welcome as straws showing the wind of popular approval. In opening the envelope, however, he noticed that it bore the Northborough postmark, also that the handwriting was that of an illiterate person, and his very surname misspelt. The contents were as follows:

  “Northborough, August 18, 189 — .

  “MR. LANGHAM, Sir,

  “I here as you are on the tracks of them that murdered Alexander Minchin, if you want to know of them that had a Reason for doing it I can give you the straight Tip.

  “I have been out to your place to-night, but you are only due home to-morrow night, therefore I will be your way again to-morrow night, but will only come to the cross-roads as your old girl look suspichious last night and this is on the strickt Q.T.

  “Till to-morrow night then at the cross-roads near your place, from nine to ten to-morrow night, when you will here of something to your advantage.

  “Believe your’s faithly,

  “JOHN WILLIAM ABEL.”

  Langholm could not guess who this man Abel might be, but idly imagined him one of the innumerable drinking drones who stood about the street corners of Northborough from morning till night throughout the year. This one had more information than the common run, with perhaps more cunning and ingenuity to boot. Langholm deemed it discreet not to mention the matter to his dear “old girl” of disrespectful reference, who served him an excellent supper at eight o’clock. And little better than an hour later, having seen the invalid once more, and left him calm and comfortable for the night, the novelist sallied forth to meet his unknown correspondent.

  It was a dark night, for the rain was by no means over, though not actually falling at the moment; and the cross-roads, which lay low, with trees in all four angles, was a dark spot at full moon. As he approached with caution, rapping the road with his stick in order to steer clear of the ditch, Langholm wished he had come on his bicycle, for the sake of the light he might have had from its lamp; but a light there was, ready waiting for him, though a very small and feeble one; for his illiterate correspondent was on the ground before him, with a cutty-pipe in full blast.

  “Name of Langholm?” said a rather rollicking voice, with a rank puff and a shower of sparks, as the cautious steps followed the rapping stick.

  “That’s it,” said Langholm; “if yours is Abel, I have got your letter.”

  “You have, have you?” cried the other, with the same jovial familiarity. “And what do you think of it?”

  The glowing pipe lit a wild brown beard and mustache, thickly streaked with gray, a bronzed nose, and nothing more. Indeed, it was only at each inhalation that so mu
ch stood out upon the surrounding screen of impenetrable blackness. Langholm kept his distance, stick in hand, his gaunt figure as invisible as the overhanging trees; but his voice might have belonged to the most formidable of men.

  “As yet,” said he, sternly, “I think very little of either you or your letter. Who are you, and what do you mean by writing to me like that?”

  “Steady, mister, you do know my name!” remonstrated the man, in rather more respectful tones. “It’s Abel — John William — and as much at your service as you like if you take him proper; but he comes from a country where Jack isn’t the dirt under his master’s feet, and you’re no master o’ mine.”

  “I don’t want to be, my good fellow,” rejoined Langholm, modifying his own manner in turn. “Then you’re not a Northborough man?”

  “Not me!”

  “I seem to have heard your voice before,” said Langholm, to whom the wild hair on the invisible face was also not altogether unfamiliar. “Where do you come from?”

  “A little place called Australia.”

  “The devil you do!”

  And Langholm stood very still in the dark, for now he knew who this man was, and what manner of evidence he might furnish, and against whom. The missing links in his own secret chain, what if these were about to be given to him by a miracle, who had discovered so much already by sheer chance! It seemed impossible; yet his instinct convinced Langholm of the nature of that which was to come. Without another word he stood until he could trust himself to speak carelessly, while the colonist made traditional comparisons between the old country as he found it and the one which he wished he had never left.