Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  I say I saw all this to my horror. But I could still smile grimly to myself. After all, I had ample evidences of a decentidentity upon my person: but there might well be an unpleasant scent ere I could establish it, and I hate and dread unpleasant scenes. They invariably make me tremble, and I was beginning even now to tremble while I smiled.

  I recalled the little I had already seen of the man behind the other newspaper. He had got in after me and my casual impression was of an elderly man bearded to the waist like a missionary, but still abominably active and robust. The carpetbag above his head had been slung up there by his own hands. Yet it was manifestly heavy for the rack. The middle-aged men who come home merely bleached and bearded from the tropics, as a rule, come hard home. And my missionary (for so I labelled him from the start ) had the makings of a sufficiently, formidable antagonist.

  Could one keep the same newspaper before one’s face from Euston to Crewe? Could one not go to sleep behind one’s newspaper with perfect, propriety at dead of night? To be sure, and pull one’s cap over one’s eyes and one’s collar about one’s ears! I was proceeding to do both when my companion addressed me, lowering his guard, as my ears assured me.

  “What a dreadful case!”

  For an instant I was not going to answer, for another I would tell him he had woke me up yet in the very next I was acting in equal defiance of either impulse. How preposterous for an innocent man to entertain the fears of the guilty! I would take the bull by the horns, and did on the spot: at least I lowered my own paper and took my elderly companion by the eyes.

  “It is, indeed.” said I.

  “We mean the same thing, of course?” said he, smiling, but not with his hard, clear eyes, which already had a rather unpleasant grip of mine.

  “I mean the Walham Green murder,” I returned, with a gruff candor, assumed subconsciously to meet suspicion half-way.

  “And so do I,” said he smiling at my aggressive tone, as though he read me and misread me as it was. “A nice young man, that Chandler!”

  “Very nice.” I echoed, ineffectually enough.

  “But it’s his youth I think of.” went on my missionary, his metallic eyes on mine. “A youngster like that, ‘ardly out of his teens, to be married at all in the first instance—”

  “But they all do marry young in that class,” I interrupted with some confidence, for I had not before reflected that, after all, I was eight-and-twenty (if I did not look it), while the murderer’s age was twenty-two.

  “They do, do they?” said my companion, his bright eyes close together, but sound teeth showing in a smile between the bushy gray beard and mustache. “And what may they do in your class. Ain’t you married — eh?”

  I considered my reply. I had already taken a rapid dislike to my impertinent interlocutor, and it was in my heart to snub him, as he deserved. His fixed stare, his familiar leer, his metropolitan accent, had between them soon dispelled my missionary theory, and I deduced instead a Cockney mechanic with a strong fancy for himself. It was the heyday of the bicycle: and here was jus the type then floating into heady prosperity on the bicycle wave. But, apart from the fact that l shrank from avoidable quarrel with a glib Londoner whose company I must endure for over two hours more, there was still a doubt in my mind as to whether ho had seen the likeness or not. If he had not, civility again might at least stave off the scene I dreaded. As it happened, I was married, and was leaving wife and child for the first time in our married life, on a visit to an old school in Scotland. I admitted the primary fact.

  “But I’m nearly thirty,” said I.

  “You don’t look it,” he replied, skewering me with his horrid eyes. “And where’s your wife?”

  “I have left her in town.”

  “Alive?” the brute asked; but I held myself in without difficulty, for now, of course, l knew that he had seen the likeness all the time.

  “She was at ten o’clock,” I answered.

  “And where did you leave her? Not Walham Green way, I hope?”

  And he leered with vile good humor, but I saw his strong hands ready to spring and clutch my throat.

  “Well, at Chelsea,” said I, in my determination to make no more bones.

  “That’s pretty ‘ot!” he returned; and for the first time he let one eye fall. “So we bin rondin’ it outer the sime rag?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Looks a nice young man, don’t he?”

  “You can’t judge by rough cuts in the papers,” said I, on the spur of a queer instinct, as though I really had been the flying felon.

  My companion was much tickled, and showed it with a codfish grin.

  “That you can’t,” said he, holding his paper out between us. “It’s impossible to tell from this whether he’s a toff like you or a young chap” — the sentence snapped between his parted teeth—” or whether he isn’t,” was its final form.

  “Not much of the toff about him,” I remarked.

  And his eyes gleamed again.

  “Don’t you mike any mistike! He’s a smart one, you bet!”

  “Perhaps, but he is a grocer’s assistant.”

  “And what are you?”

  “Oh, I write a bit, that’s all,” said I, no doubt with that which apes humility.

  “And what’s the difference?”

  “Well, I sell my own stuff, for one thing; and I don’t have to sell it across a counter, for another!”

  I do not say my scorn was rightly placed; but there it was, and my manner as aggressive as you please; for I felt that, in some inexplicable way. I had pierced my adversary’s hide, and the sensation was to he enjoyed. We glared at each other, or, rather, he glared and I grinned, for a change, while the express charged noisily through the night. There was the fast train’s inevitable amount of motion, and we both swayed almost systematically where we sat while in my ears at least the jangling rhythm had long allied itself to a popular piano-organ tune of the day. The lumps burned ns dimly as the lamps always do in those obsolete non-corridor third-class carriages. It was as well we had no more to read than a flesh-and-blood face apiece. There was enough light for that. But so fiercely offended about nothing did my companion seem — so indignant were the young wolf’s eyes above the old wolf’s muzzle — that I could afford at last ft certain geniality.

  “I grant you his smartness,” said I. “It was a foul deed, but marvellously smartly done!”

  “Who said he did it?” the fellow almost thundered through his teeth.

  “Isn’t it plain?”

  “No one saw him any’ow, and in England a man’s innocent until he’s found guilty: don’t you forget it and I’ll try not to.” he went on, conquering his strange emotion with an output of native strength, and regaining his sinister geniality by the same effort. “You know, I’m treating you pretty well!” he added, as though I had treated him badly.

  “How so?”

  I was successful in repressing a provocative tone.

  “Most men would have pulled the cord and stopped the train,” he replied. “And you know why!”

  “Because of my likeness to this young wretch Chandler?”

  His eyes flashed, but he nodded.

  “He’s esciped, you see. He may be on his way to Scotland — there’s some one very like him in this ‘ere carriage!” Our four eyes had never been so close together.

  “I suppose you think I think you’re ‘im?” he went on.

  “My good fellow,” said I, “I have seen that all along! And, according to this paper, I admit the likeness is absurd.”

  “Is it?” said he. “I wonder if I can’t show you an absurder!” He lifted his paper, and I thought he was scanning it afresh until I saw his bright eyes still on mine above the rim. The paper rustled as he fumbled behind it. The paper floated down between our knees, and it was as though a mirror had risen in its place: I was! seated opposite my living image, with other eyes, and a huge false beard, and a plated revolver held on either thigh.

  “
Wrong again, you see,” he grinned. “I never thought you was Rowley Chandler, because — I am!”

  There could be no doubt of it. For one instant, despite his looks, I had found a triple coincidence the easier explanation to accept, and had set him down as a detective on my tracks. Would suspected murderer travel deliberately with his double? Would he proceed to reveal himself of his own accord? I was far too bewildered by the sudden change of position to see for myself any conceivable object in such conduct. And yet I believed him on the spot, and only wondered that his young eyes and his young hands, alike so cruel and so strong, had not betrayed him long ago.

  His youth in mere years was as apparent as his maturity in all evil. The jaw was powerful, salient: the full lips pouted grossly under the mere eyebrow of a mustache that might have been own fellow to mine. The small bright eyes gleamed close together. The forehead narrowed, but the depth of skull belied its frontage. A bad face, a face capable of any given evil, given also the jaundiced eye of one who knew beforehand the evil that lay behind. I confess that, despite this special knowledge (for, as I say, the case was as clear as crystal), I for one was amazed and distressed at its frank, its debonair, its incongruously boyish expression.

  “I’ve bin arfter you ever since it ‘appened,” said the young murderer.

  “You see, I knew about this before.” And with two long strong fingers he indicated our faces in turn.

  “How did you know?” I asked. I was interested, in spite of all. I had never even seen a murderer before, and this one was all unlike my preconceptions. Interest in his personality had already borne me beyond the confines of fear, and now curiosity as to his motive overcame even a proper human abhorrence. The phase was fleeting, but while it lasted the young monster was no longer even objectionable in my eyes.

  “Ever ‘eard of a piper called ‘Igh Thinkin’?” said he.

  I had, and for my sins. My portrait had once split up its priggish columns in context galling to remember even in present company: nay when I thought of the High Thinking interviewer I was a murderer myself at heart. I must have changed color with my nod.

  “That was what put me up to you.’ continued Chandler. “My friends arst if it was me, and I told one girl it was, and that your nime was the one I wrote under.” His eyes gloated wickedly. “You shouldn’t let those interviewing swine give your address away. I’ve fairly ‘minted that flat of yours ever since I’ve been in trouble; if I hadn’t ‘eard you were off to Scotland to-night, that’s where I should be talkin’ to you now. But this is better!”

  His vile face lit with malevolent satisfaction; and I began at last to feel afraid.

  “But what good can I do you?”

  “Aha! You’ll see.”

  “You don’t propose to murder me, too?”

  Rowland Chandler had gripped his plated pistol. But it was only at my words that the devil broke loose in his fare.

  “What do you mean?” he demanded, with shocking embroidery. “Who’s murdered anybody? You say that word agine, though, an’ some one will! Do you ‘ear? You say that agine, and you’ll be the first!... I never touched ‘er. It may look black agon me, but I never.... They can’t prove it. They didn’t see me. But I know them! I know their blasted circumstantial evidence! They’d tike an’ hang me on that, as they’ve took an’ hung many as good a man as me. They must hang some one; that’s their gime.”

  He had worked himself into a white fury, standing over me with his pistol, but he shuddered through his bluster, and the narrow brow glistened under the lamp. “They don’t hang me!” he screamed. “I know too much; they don’t get the chance!”

  He withdrew, covering me — not to the far end of the carriage, but half-way — and sat down muttering on his old side. His hand so trembled that I thought I should be a dead man before he had the revolver safely cocked. But it was the tremor still of brute rage.

  “Now,” said he, “you start tikin’ off those clothes!’’

  And I began to understand, as I obeyed.

  “Every stitch, mind! And don’t you move a thing from the pockets!” he thundered. “How much money ‘ave you.”

  “Between three and four pounds.’’

  “Well, you leave it where it is and it’ll have to do me: and I’ll leave mine where it is and it’ll ‘ave to do you,” he added, with a grim chuckle.

  “As many shillings?” I asked, in my shirt-sleeves to the elbows. I was philosophic enough so far. The situation demanded it. But already I began to feel a drain on my philosophy.

  “About as many pence.” quoth (handler, and was out of his own coat and waistcoat like lightning, while my hands were still tied in mine.

  “Trousers?” I asked.

  “Shirt and vest first,” said he. “Every blessed stitch! Let me see you stark in that corner, and every stitch on this seat next me.”

  He removed some of his own clothes while I stripped, but sparingly, at his leisure, with his revolver and his eye never off me for a moment. And soon enough I stood stark naked to mine enemy, my back to the door, a hand on either rack, at one end of the carriage, while at the other, still watching me and always armed, the hell-born young criminal got deliberately into my clothes.

  “I can shoot through them as well as not.” he would remind me, as hand and arm followed the cocked pistol slowly through a sleeve; and my terror was lest he should shoot when least intending.

  And then I got me into his horrid garments, and so lost another opportunity of resisting him with effect, since he could neither have dressed nor undressed me, or even attempted either, without coming to quarters at which I should have stood some chance. But I had reasoned the whole thing out in my mind. It seemed madness to resist an armed man with one murder on his head already. The penalty for a second was absolutely nil. And yet, had I but plumbed the depth of his infamous design, it would have been Rowland Chandler or I for it ere this.

  His clothes fitted me wonderfully, and were even quite as good as mine, for the dangerous fellow was above his class in ideas and tastes; but he had worn them; they were warm from a murderer’s skin, and they wrung fresh sweat from my reluctant members.

  Had I but guessed his inhuman purpose! I was so far from doing so that even now the popular tune that I have mentioned ran rather pleasantly in my head with the strident allegretto of the train.

  “Don’t turn out the pockets!” cried (handler as I jettisoned respectable pipe and pouch. “This ain’t a robbery, remember; it’s a fair exchinge!”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “No?” The wolfish twinkle was hack in his eyes. “Well, you put the things where you found them.”

  “They’re no use to me,” I said, obeying with a shrug. I might have said more, but in such a situation the only valor is its better No?” repeated Chandler, grinning outright like a fiend. “Well, they may be of some use to Madame Tussord’s, when you’ve done with them.”

  “That,’’ said I, drawing a well-kept Waterbury from his waistcoat pocket, “will be another three-quarters of an hour if your watch is right. You make it five minutes past two; we are due at Crewe at 2.51.”

  “Ah, due!” said he. “Due, I grant you!”

  “You mean to leave the train, of course; and you mean me to be taken instead of you.”

  The murderer nodded, but with a sly and sinister reservation that made me pause.

  “Of course,” I continued, with less confidence, “they won’t believe my tale in a minute, if they do at all to-night; but they will to-morrow when they get me back to town. So all you will have gained will be that much start.”

  Chandler looked at me. We were still where we had changed, at opposite ends of the carriage, and beyond arm’s length, or I had fallen on him, revolver and all, as the true significance of his look dawned on me in a flash. It was different; it was almost pitying.

  But the full lips parted over tight-shut teeth; and in the cruel unrelenting eyes I read my death.

  “Did you really think I would
tike all this trouble to get ft night’s start when I might have had a day and a night’s if l ‘adn’t’ve ‘ung round witing for you?” He gave a glance at his weapon, and came sidling nearer. “Did you really think that I was goin’ to let yer live to put a rope round my neck?”

  “If I don’t, you will put a second rope round it yourself,” said I. calm as another at the last, but bitterly reckoning the chances a bolder man might have taken before it was too late. In the beginning I should have flung myself upon him. But was it not fascination as much as fear that had deterred me then? I did not want to die — a coward in my own eyes, not yet — dare I confess it? — even in the eves of this accursed creature. And yet to make the slightest show of resistance now was but to precipitate my end; to argue with him, on the contrary, might at least postpone it; and it appeared that I bad used the happiest argument as it was.

  “They can’t hang you twice,” he had answered without thinking: but then came thought with the cunning angry flush I had drawn before. “They couldn’t bang me once, not yet,” he went on, defiantly. “They didn’t see me; they can’t bring it home. No, and this ain’t goin’ to be no cise o’ wunder, either. Buck up! I promise you that. It’s goin’ to be a cise o’ suicide. That’s it! Sounds letter, don’t it? Suicide of Rowland Chandler, the alleged murderer, in the Scotch Express!”

  His diabolical eyes could not stay my abnormal power of following clearly, of seeing even further than he saw; ray own doom served but to stimulate my brain. Yes, it was the clever and audacious plot of a sufficiently clever and audacious criminal. Yet was I criminologist enough even then to see the weak point in both. It is the poorest type of criminal who makes your ready murderer.