Jemmy, now very cool, lifted his head high and let his fingers flutter out in a gesture of derision.
“Come, old boy!” he protested. “If I knew Jack was going to finish you next morning, would I have tried to pistol you that night?”
“Ah!” said Darwent. “But you didn’t know that, Jemmy!”
“Eh?”
“When I left you at the door of White’s, you were nearly in a fit. You couldn’t control your speech. You had expected me to choose pistols; but I chose sabers. If I stuck to my rights, as a sword master naturally would, it seemed probable that I should kill Buckstone. You, poor fellow, would be left with nothing but a charge as accessory before and after the fact. So you lost your head and pulled that trigger.”
“Dashed clever of you, old boy. But you can’t prove that.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” said Darwent. “Townsend!”
The old runner, carefully putting his knife on the floor, reached into an almost elbow-deep pocket and produced a crumpled, dirty, good-sized scrap of paper.
“When you came to see me afterwards, Jemmy,” continued Darwent, “that scrap of paper worked out from under your fine black waistcoat with the pearl buttons, and fell on the floor.”
“Come, my dear fellow!”
“Oh, you didn’t notice. Now you’re aware, Jemmy, that the wadding for pistols is usually torn from newspaper. This fragment, you see, looked as though it had been dirtied by gunpowder and ripped away when, a pistol was too hastily wadded. I therefore sent it in a letter to Mr. Townsend, together with a certain honorarium …
“’Andsome, me lord! Devilish ’andsome!”
“And asked him to search your rooms in Chesterfield Street. Well, Townsend?”
The runner gravely threw out his paunch and spoke as though throwing the words over Darwent’s head in a witness box.
“Which on date named,” he declared, “me and Tom Gilliflower searched. In one old boot cupboard of accused’s bedroom, found old heavy pistol inscribed with accused’s name.” Out came the pistol, from that capacious pocket, and back again. “A-probing of fouled barrel, done with very small file, picked out unburned scraps of wad. Some scraps of wad, pasted over copy of Times that date, just fitted. You’d wish me go on, m’lord?”
“By all means.”
“We-el! First scrap of paper, with date on it, exac-a-ly fitted copy of Times wrapped round pistol to hide it. Other bits, as spoken, fit as well. Signed statement of finding: J. Townsend, Esq., also T. Gilliflower.”
“And when you came to me afterwards, Jemmy,” purred Darwent, “what a comedy you played! You must lure me into a pistol duel, eh?”
“Damme, you’re twistin’ everything to look …”
“You were bored; you tantalized; you prodded; you suggested cowardice. How Buckstone was amused at a saber duel! How the haut monde would stir its white-faced corpse to smile! Perhaps they did and could. But I had rights, Jemmy, which you tried to persuade me were as airy as your own talk.
“Any fool would have insisted on his rights, Jemmy, unless he were a dead shot with the pistol. But you persuaded me, didn’t you? You were almost maudlin when you left me, poor fellow, because of what must be done.”
Darwent pushed his hands back through wet hair. His voice began to change.
“But, only a short time before, you had been willing to shoot me in the back.”
“Only a butterfly, old boy! No harm!”
Then Darwent’s voice rang out.
“How say you, members of the jury? Is the prisoner guilty, or not guilty?”
“Guilty!” replied Alfred and Thomas, who were slowly moving forward from the doorway.
“He’s …” Caroline could not continue. Her lips formed the word filthy.
“Oh, gallows meat,” agreed Townsend, who was again picking his teeth with the knife.
“You’ve got no right to keep me here!” Jemmy almost whispered.
“Not even the right to try you, at the moment,” Darwent agreed. “But you will have a fair chance. Look into the lower part of the sideboard, there, and choose your own weapons.”
“Weapons?”
“Yes.”
Jemmy’s tall body stiffened. Slowly he moved forward, to a point under the great chandelier. Among glass prisms many candles were bending or drooping amid their own heat and runs of wax; no host or guest ever minded this; it was too common.
“Hark’ee, old boy,” Jemmy gulped. “I’m no coward, mind.” He spread out his hands. “It’d surprise you, perhaps, what I can do with a saber. But dying!” His voice went up in a half-feminine scream.
“Dying!” he said. “Ged, it’s awful. It’s unthinkable. Dick, the man’s a fool who risks it; he’s a fool, Dick. Under the ground; no poetry albums to write in; no fine clothes.” Again his voice shrilled up. “I won’t fight you! You can’t make me!”
The heavy crash, which they somehow associated with Jemmy, made them all jump until they realized it was the flinging open of the street door.
Into the drawing room—majestic, fat, slovenly, his raw-beef face suave and his white hat over one ear—marched Mr. Hubert Mulberry.
“Stand back!” roared Mr. Mulberry.
He was not drunk. He had taken only three or four glasses of brandy to uplift him and strengthen his wits. Most of all, he knew the whole truth. He removed his hat with such a lordly gesture that Thomas instantly sprang forward and took it with deep respect.
But Townsend, who knew him well and knew his intelligence too, made a snarl.
“And now ’oo the devil are you?” he asked.
“Stand back, you Bow Street scum,” roared Mr. Mulberry, “and let a gentleman of law expound the evidence!”
Now it was quite true, as Townsend had said, that he was the best thieftaker of his time. When he died, sixteen years later, he left twenty thousand pounds in fees and royal gratuities. But he gave ground to Hubert Mulberry, because—it spread in the air as palpably as Mr. Mulberry’s breath—the slovenly lawyer knew.
The lawyer looked at Darwent, and his gaze softened.
“Lad, lad!” he said. “I wasted a lot of time, and that’s a fact, going to Stephen’s Hotel to discover if they’d killed ye. And now, I take it, you’ve been expounding the cause to these good people?”
“You heard …?”
“Ay; who denies it? I was listening outside the street door. You reasoned closely, Dick; you reasoned well.” Here Mr. Mulberry prepared for a pounce. “But—”
“But what?”
Mr. Mulberry pointed his finger at Jemmy Fletcher.
“Lad,” he said clearly, “you’ve got the wrong man.”
There was one of those silences which can intensify even the pulse of a heartbeat. Darwent, with the windows at his right hand, had backed away until he was nearly against the wall built against that of the house next door. Then he found his voice.
“That’s impossible!”
“Listen, now,” said Mr. Mulberry, pointing a none-too-clean finger in his face. “What was your oath, Dick, when you left Newgate? It was to find and hang the person who killed Lord Francis Orford. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes!”
Again Mr. Mulberry pointed to Jemmy: on whom, unregarded, the drops of wax were spattering.
“Well!” said Mr. Mulberry. “Your lily friend didn’t kill Lord Francis Orford, and in fact he knows nothing at all about it.”
“But Jemmy’s the coachman! He’s as good as admitted it!”
“Burst my bladder,” snapped Mr. Mulberry, “but of course he’s the coachman! Any soft ’un could see that. At the same time, Dick, he’s not the murderer; not even of young Lewis, who’s not dead. Stop; no questions; attend to ME!”
And Mr. Mulberry drew himself up, tapping his bulging waistcoat.
“What you said was true, lad, as far as it went. But you didn’t tell ’em, which you could have done if you’d only mentioned points you mentioned to me—ay, and the Padre—because you didn’t tell ’em the full
tale. Shall I do it?”
“Yes!”
“Imprimis!” said Mr. Mulberry, raising his forefinger impressively. “He drove you out in the blue coach, let’s say, to Kinsmere House in Bucks. Item: he carried you up the steps. Item: he set you down in front of a certain door. Item: he cut your leg cords and the door opened.”
“Confound it, man, I know all that!”
“Do you?” inquired Mr. Mulberry. “Then, rot my bowels, you saw precious little. When old Bert Mulberry was sober (not until then; I give you that!)—why, lad, it was as plain as poison in a swelled old hag. I thought I could remember even the words you said, and I’ve compared ’em with what the Padre heard.
“Hark’ee, now!
“‘It seemed that, in an instant,’ you said, ‘all things stopped as a clock stops. As though these persons with me, if there were more than one,’—which there wasn’t!—’stood paralyzed. The hand on my back, impelling me, rested motionless.’
“Just afterwards, you said, you heard a woman scream. But, as I’ve told you before this, it wasn’t a woman. It was …”
“Jemmy, of course! I heard him give just that kind of cry at White’s Club, when he was apparently trying to soothe down the trouble with Buckstone!”
Mr. Mulberry grunted.
“But why, in that disused house, did the coachman scream?” he demanded. “Why was he struck all of a heap like that? Hey?
“I’ll tell you, Dick. He’d just opened a door and seen Frank Orford, his partner, skewered to the back of a chair. He was paralyzed to see a corpse he hadn’t expected to see. All he could think to do, in gaining time, was to cut your hand cords, push you inside, and lock the door.”
Mr. Mulberry nodded. He made a mesmeric gesture with the snuffbox he had fished out of his pocket.
“Now you’ll do me the honor,” he said, tapping his finger on the box lid, “to follow closely. This coachman walloped you across the napper in Hyde Park. He drove you to the house. You even saw him, on occasion, when he moved your eye bandages. Damme, he was never at the house. By your own testimony, Orford died as you entered that room. The coachman was the one person who couldn’t possibly have killed Frank Orford!”
Darwent, who had been holding his breath so long that his lungs seemed to burst, now released it.
“Agreed,” he said in a low voice.
There are some matters so obvious, he was reflecting, that their color or closeness blinds the eyes.
“Then the true murderer …?” he asked.
“Ah!” said Mr. Mulberry, opening the snuffbox and taking a huge pinch, which exploded in a sneeze. But his rheumy little eyes looked apprehensive and evasive.
“You’ll have to know, Dick,” he went on. “Because why? Because it may stagger you so much that …”
“That what?”
Mr. Mulberry slapped at his coat, like a man slapping at imaginary insects in the drink horrors. Abruptly he turned his unwieldy bulk and pointed at Jemmy.
“You have him, anyway! Two charges of attempted murder, one of inciting riot. All of ’em hanging matters. Or, if you want to hush it up and polish off matters in a duel …”
“I won’t fight him,” said Jemmy. Candle grease bedaubed his fair hair and his black-clad shoulders, yet he had regained his light poise. “What’s more,” and Jemmy laughed loudly, “the implacable Dick won’t fight either. Look at him! His strength’s so drained he can hardly stand up!”
Though Darwent instantly straightened up, holding his shoulders well back, he was terrified in his heart that this might be true.
“Look at him!” Jemmy jeered again. “He could scarcely even handle a foil, let alone a saber. I could cut him down in two passes. But I won’t fight him, and that’s flat!”
A new voice, from the doorway, struck in with startling effect.
“Then perhaps,” observed the voice, with grim pleasantry, “I might be allowed as substitute for Mr. Fletcher?”
Hubert Mulberry, who had been facing Darwent, swung fully round, moved aside, and faced the other way.
In the doorway stood the Hon. Edward Firebrace, six feet three and in full pride of strength. His dark cloak hung round him in folds. His large, long curl of reddish hair rose along the parting on his head, with the strong side whiskers framing his cheeks. On his face, as he bowed agreeably, was a smile of wide-set teeth.
Only one evil brush marred that picture. Firebrace’s upper eyelids were swollen to a puffy red, more so than the lower lids, where pepper had been thrown at him. Though a chemist in Panton Street had toiled for an hour with water and boracic powder, the reddish eyes were not quite normal in sight. They roved with hatred.
Mr. Mulberry was the first to speak.
“Who are you?” he bawled. “What the devil d’ye want?”
Firebrace, ignoring him completely, spoke across the width of the room to Darwent.
“My name is Firebrace,” he said. “You may have heard of me. I am the nephew of Major Sharpe, to whom you deliberately told lies. In addition to this, for no reason you …” Firebrace touched his inflamed eyelids. “I require satisfaction for these things, my lord.”
“You shall have it.”
“You’re damned well right I shall,” Firebrace told him coolly.
Flinging back over his shoulders both wings of his cloak, he displayed the coiled horsewhip in his right hand.
“As you once introduced yourself to my good friend Jack Buckstone,” he said, “let me introduce myself.”
His arm flung forward with the hiss of the long whip. Darwent felt pain burn his face as the lash snapped just once, more than halfway round.
Caroline cried out. Firebrace, giving a savage yank to wrest back the whip, made Darwent stagger, reel around, and fall to his knees. Darwent put out both hands to steady himself against the floor. Jemmy Fletcher giggled.
(Well, if I’m finished now …)
Then it happened.
Often in the life of a healthy man, whether at work or sport, there comes a time when he has driven too hard; when he is beaten, and can go no further. Then mysteriously, no one knows how, there pours into him that quality known as second wind. The breath ceases to choke in his throat. His heart moves to slow, even rhythm. New strength flows into his veins, as though he were re-created, and his brain clarifies to intensity. That was what happened to Darwent, a force gathering at once, as he bounced to his feet.
“Alfred!” he said in a new voice. “Thomas!”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Take his whip away from him.”
If Firebrace retreated a step, quickly coiling his whip to strike again, it was not at all in fear. It was in utter incredulity.
“You’d not have a servant lay a hand on me?” he demanded.
Darwent ignored this.
“If he attempts to resist,” Darwent said coldly, “knock him flat.”
Alfred was moving in at Firebrace’s right side, Thomas at his left.
Firebrace hesitated. At each side of him stood a powdered I headed bruiser as large as himself. He could not understand.
He had never even noticed servants, let alone thought of them as human beings. It was as though heavy furniture had come to life against him.
“I’m sure you’ll give up the whip, sir,” Alfred said very respectfully, but with his clenched right against his waist.
“It’d be much better, sir, wouldn’t it?” respectfully suggested Thomas, whose eye measured the distance to the side of Firebrace’s already discolored jaw.
Firebrace gave up the whip.
“And now, sir,” said Darwent, “when we speak of this matter, let us refrain from debating which person is the challenger and which the challenged. I find your notion of the rules somewhat confusing. Still, if you were to choose weapons, which would you choose?”
“Sabers, of course!”
“An excellent choice. And yet,”—Darwent’s voice poured with earnestness and even sympathy—“may I not entreat you to postpone this matter
until a later day. Believe me, I have two good reasons for this. May I not entreat you?”
Firebrace showed a smile of wide-set teeth.
“And have you,” he inquired, “skip over to Calais by the morning packet? No, thanks! —What are your reasons?”
“First, sir, your eyesight is in no condition for a saber duel. Your judgment will be bad.”
“Thank you so much. I’ll risk that. Any other reason?”
Darwent spoke in a voice of vast, agreeable insult.
“Yes. It is an illusion, sir, that most cavalrymen are good swordsmen. A cavalryman fights and even exercises mainly to fight on horseback, which is a different thing. He does not practice daily on foot, especially if he should belong to a mere fashionable regiment. I give you the warning, sir.”
Firebrace’s countenance, between the side whiskers, had turned a muddy color. He said, without lowering his voice, some words which are not ordinarily heard in good society.
“Alfred!” Darwent said sharply.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Give him his choice of the sabers,” said Darwent. “Then lock the door!”
Chapter XXII
Sabers at Late Night
ALFRED MOVED SWIFTLY ACROSS to the sideboard, across firm and well-laid boards on which mud-caked shoes would not slip.
“Good!” observed Firebrace, twitching off his cloak and throwing it at Thomas. “We must proceed without seconds, since we have no gentlemen here,”—his eye passed unseeingly over Townsend and sardonic-faced Hubert Mulberry—“for the purpose. Hold! My apologies! There’s Jemmy Fletcher!”
“I won’t do it, old boy!” cried Jemmy. But he ran over toward Firebrace, long black legs a-gangle, as though for protection. “You’ll cut him up, won’t you?” Jemmy prayed. “You’re the man to do it, ain’t you?”
Only the pain of Firebrace’s eyes marred his joy.
“Oh, I flatter myself on a small victory,” he agreed. “Don’t fear, my dear fellow. I’ll shave his pate.”
Caroline had run to Darwent, seizing his arms and looking up into his face.
“You won’t believe what I say,” she told him, attempting with every fiber of her being to make him believe. “But I love you. Don’t do it, Dick! Please! You’re in no condition to fight.”
The Bride of Newgate Page 26