The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  No wonder John (her husband) had been always so inclined towards mercy…. My God, were there often such scenes as these going on in the same world…. Was there often this weight of terror and complete HORROR bred into being by the deliberate doings of Man, for any purpose whatever—call it Justice or by any other name?… This dreadfulness. This dreadfulness that choked her. This…and suddenly she found her voice:

  “STOP!” she cried, with a voice as deep and hoarse as a man’s. “STOP!”… She waved her hands a moment incoherently, fighting to take control of the fierce passion of horror and agony of pity that beat through every fibre of her, possessing her. “Stop!” she cried again; and then:

  “How dare you!… Oh, how dare all you men be met together here to do this—to do such a thing! To do such a thing…” She stopped abruptly, and stared at the men, as if they were things incredibly monstrous, and they, on their part, looked round at her and the Judge, only then aware of their advent.

  “Let him go at once!” said old Mrs Judge Barclay, speaking again, as her voice became once more a controllable possession…. “Let him go to his mother…. Let them both go.”

  Across the ring of men the mother had fallen suddenly to her knees; her mouth was gabbering breathless words of prayer, her hands outstretched at arms’ length, her fingers twining and intertwining madly.

  “Save…him,” came her voice at last, no louder than a hoarse whisper, yet having a strange quality that seemed to make the very leaves above them stir and rustle. And, with the two completed words, she pitched forward, out of the relaxed hands of the two men who held her, on to her face, with a little thump, her forehead and nose ploughing into the trampled mud beneath the tree.

  There came a queer, little inarticulate cry from Jem, and he began to fight desperately, bound hands and feet as he was, towards where his mother lay on her knees and face; but the sheriff and one of the men caught him and dragged him back beneath the over-reaching bough. The sheriff signed hastily to old Judge Barclay, and the Judge put his arm about his wife to lead her away. But she tore from him, and faced the sheriff.

  “It’ll be all right, mum,” said that man. “You go along quiet now with the Jedge. We ain’t goin’ to hurt Jem more’n the flap of a fly’s tail. Don’t ye worrit…”

  “You’re going to hang that young man as soon as I’ve gone!” burst in Mrs Barclay, very white-faced, but with now a strange shining in her eyes. “That’s what you mean to do!”

  “Yep,” said the sheriff, scratching his head, and trying to catch Judge Barclay’s eye. But Judge Barclay was looking only at his wife, with something that was new in the way of his look.

  “Yep,” said the sheriff again. “Jem’s boun’ to hang, sure, mum, but we ain’t goin’ to hurt him worth a mench. We’ll turn ’m off nice an’ easy. You go along of the Jedge now…”

  But he never finished his piece of excellent and practical advice; for, with a bound astonishing in so elderly a woman, she came at him, and he gave back helplessly, not knowing how to cope with such an attack. Yet she had no meaning to strike him. Instead, before he knew anything beyond his bewilderment, she had opened his holster and twitched out the heavy Smith and Wesson; then, with a leap, she was back from him, facing the group:

  “Hands up!” she screamed, her voice cracking and her old eyes literally blazing, “You shall not murder that boy; not so what he’s done! Hands up! I say, or I’ll surely shoot at you.”

  The old woman’s expression was so full of a desperate resolve that the men’s hands went up, though maybe a little hesitatingly and doubtfully. Yet, they had gone up, and up they remained, as the muzzle of the heavy weapon menaced first one and then another. For suddenly it was very clear to the men that the woman was wound up to such a pitch of intensity that she would shoot first and do the thinking afterwards. It is true that several of the men held their revolvers in their hands; but what could they do? They could undoubtedly have snapped off shots at the old woman, but they were not going to shoot old Mrs Judge Barclay; the thought was below their horizon of practical things. Neither would it have done to have attempted to rush her, for there would have been, most surely, one or two sudden deaths achieved in the operation, and the after situation also would have to be faced; so, as I have told, they kept up their hands, and watched the old woman with quite as much curiosity as rancour. They were very practical men.

  Old Judge Barclay, however, failed to realise the entire earnestness of the situation, and, after a moment of stupefaction, began to run towards his wife in vast distress.

  “Anna, Anna!” he cried out. “Anna, my dear, put that down and come away!”

  But she ripped round at him:

  “Stand back, John!” she shouted shrilly. “I shall shoot!”

  But the old Judge still failed to realise, and continued to come towards her.

  “Stand back, John, or I shall shoot!” she screamed. “I’m fair wound up, an’ you’ll make me do murder! Stand back, John!”

  As she spoke, she fired the pistol to frighten him; and because she had never fired a pistol before, she had no suspicion that the reason her husband’s hat flew off was that the bullet had passed clean through the crown of it, just grazing his bald, old head. If she had thought at all about the displacing of the hat, she would merely have supposed that his sudden start at the shot accounted for it.

  The old Judge came to an abrupt stand, his face grown very white; but he said not a word more, and his wife took no further notice of him; not even insisting on his putting up his hands. She wheeled round sharply again upon the sheriff and his posse, and discovered the sheriff half way across the grass towards her; for he had thought to catch and disarm her whilst her attention was taken with the Judge. The old woman’s eyes blazed as she saw how nearly he had succeeded:

  “Back!” she screamed at him, and in the same instant fired. The sheriff reeled a moment; then steadied himself, and thrust his hands earnestly above his head. The bullet had struck him full in the stomach, but the huge buckle of his belt had turned it, so that it had glanced out through his shirt again harmlessly, a mere half-flattened little chunk of lead.

  “Get back to the others!” ordered the old woman, in a voice high and tense. “Turn your backs, all of you!”

  As one man, the posse faced about.

  “Go off a bit from the young man!” said Mrs Judge Barclay. “Stop there. Keep there!”

  She ran swiftly to the prisoner, whirled him round on his heels with one vigorous hand, and pulled out the sheath-knife, which had never been removed from his belt. She slashed at the thin rope about his wrists, and all the time she kept a strict watch upon the line of masculine backs before her. She cut the rope at last, and his hands also, but not badly; then pushed the knife into his cramped fingers, and the lad proceeded to cut loose the lashings about his ankles.

  “Now, go!” said old Mrs Judge Barclay, fiercely, as he stood free. “An’ mind an’ sin no more. Go!”

  She almost shrieked as he stood and stared at her; and she pointed to the horses of the posse. He looked swiftly towards his mother; but the Judge’s wife beat him with her free hand fiercely, pushing him towards the horses. And suddenly, he obeyed, and began to run stiffly towards the animals.

  When he reached them he displayed a little of that sense and ability which I have hinted lay cloaked so securely below his somewhat habitually sullen expression, for, having freed all the reins, he gathered them into his hand, and mounted the finest of the horses, which belonged to the sheriff; then, leading the rest, he went off at a fast trot.

  The line of silent men began to stir uneasily, and old Mrs Judge Barclay steadied them with her voice. For a space of fifteen minutes, timed by her old-fashioned gold watch, she stood on guard. At the end of that time the mother of Jem came-to, and lifted a muddy face, stiffening sharply into terror with suddenly returned memory. She hove herself up giddily on to her knees, and glared upwards and round her, expecting dreadfully to see something that swayed, writhin
g, above her from the great branch.

  Said Mrs Judge Barclay:

  “Your son’s gone, ma’am. He’ll be well down the trail by this.”

  Her voice began to shake curiously as she spoke; and suddenly she reached her breaking-point, and collapsed, settling all in a heap on the muddy ground. She never heard the dazed, crazy words of fierce gratitude that the other woman gave out as she bent over her, aiding the old Judge to lay her down straight.

  Old Mrs Judge Barclay came round some minutes later, to find her mouth uncomfortably full of bad whisky, and her husband still anxiously loosening garments that Jem’s mother had already loosed quite sufficiently. His clumsy old fingers shook as he fumbled, and she put up a sudden hand of tenderness, and caught the fumbling fingers and held them with an almost hysterical firmness. In a little she rose to a sitting position, and looked round at the ring of men, who stood, each with his whisky-flask in his hand, ready, as it might be thought, to insure that the supply of restorative should not run dry.

  Presently Mrs Judge Barclay spoke:

  “Now,” she said, turning her white, plucky old face towards the sheriff, “if you must hang somebody, hang me; not a bit of a young boy like that!”

  But they hanged neither old Mrs Judge Barclay nor young Jem Turrill; for the latter got clear away. And concerning the former, if the truth must be known, the sheriff and his men entertain for her a respect few women have ever screwed out of their somewhat rugged-natured hearts. Moreover, they kept the affair strictly quiet, for it was not one in which any of them was able to discover undue credit to himself. As for old Judge Barclay, he had nothing of reproach for his wife. In his heart he was unfeignedly thankful that young Jem had got away; and equally glad, in another fashion, that Providence or kind Chance had ordered it that his wife should witness the working of the unmitigated Justice that she had so often upheld.

  THE ARCHDUKE’S TEA, by H.C. Bailey

  Originally published in 1920.

  Mr. Reginald Fortune, M.A., M.B., B.Ch., F.R.C.S., was having a lecture from his father.

  “You only do just enough,” Dr. Fortune complained. “Never brilliant. No zeal. Now, Reginald, it won’t do. Just enough is always too little. Take my word for it. And do be attentive to the Archduke. God bless you!”

  “Have a good time, sir,” said Mr. Reginald Fortune, and watched his father settle down in the car (a long process) beside his mother and drive off. They were gone at last, which Reginald had begun to think impossible, and the opulent practice of Dr. Fortune lay for a month in the virgin hands of Reginald.

  “Beautifully patient the mater is,” Reginald communed with himself as he ate his third muffin. “Fretful game to spend your life waitin’ for a man to get ready. Quaint old bird, the pater. Death-bed manner for a tummy-ache. Wonder the patients lap it up.”

  But old Dr. Fortune was good at diagnosis, and he had his reasons for saying that Reggie lacked zeal. At Oxford, at his hospital, Reggie did what was necessary to take respectable degrees, but no more than he could help. It was remarked by his dean that he did things too easily. He always had plenty of time, and spent it here, there, and everywhere, on musical comedy and prehistoric man, golf and the newer chemistry, bargees and psychical research. There was nothing which he knew profoundly, but hardly anything of which he did not know enough to find his way about in it. Nobody, except his mother, had ever liked him too much, for he was a self-sufficient creature, but everybody liked him enough; he got on comfortably with everybody from barmaids to dons.

  He was of a round and cheerful countenance and a perpetual appetite. This gave him a solidity of aspect emphasized by his extreme neatness. Neither his hair nor anything else of his was ever ruffled. He was more at his ease with the world than a man has a right to be at thirty-five.

  It is presumed that he had never wanted anything which he had not got. Old Dr. Fortune possessed a small fortune and a rich practice, and Reggie enjoyed the proceeds and proposed to inherit both. The practice lay in that pleasant outer suburb of London called Westhampton, a region of commons and a large park, sacred to the well-to-do, and still boasting one or two houses inhabited by what auctioneers call the nobility.

  In Boldrewood, the best of these places, there lived at this moment in Reggie Fortune’s existence the Archduke Maurice, the heir-apparent to the Emperor of Bohemia. You may remember that the Archduke came to live in England shortly after his marriage. It is, however, not true, as scandal reported, that his uncle the Emperor sent him into exile. There is reason to believe that the Archduchess, a woman equally vehement and beautiful, was not liked in several European courts. On her return from the honeymoon she made a booby trap for that drill-sergeant of a king, Maximilian of Swabia, and for some weeks the Central Powers were threatening to mobilize. But she was a Serene Highness of the house of Erbach-Wittelsbach, which traces its descent to Odin, and had an independent realm of nearly two square miles, with parliament and army complete, and even the Emperor of Bohemia could not pretend that Maurice had married beneath him. History will affirm the simple truth that the Archduke and the Archduchess sought seclusion in England because they were bored to death by the Bohemian court, which was perpetually occupied in demonstrating that you can be very dull without being in the least respectable. The Archduke Maurice was a man of geniality and extraordinarily natural tastes. His garden—a long walk—a pint of beer in one of the old Westhampton inns made him a happy day. The Archduchess was not so simple, for she loved to drive her own car, a ferocious vehicle. But Archduchesses may not do that in Bohemia.

  Reggie, having eaten all the muffins, lit his pipe and meditated on the cases left him by his father. Old Mrs. Smythe had her autumn influenza, and old Talbot Browne had his autumn gout, and the little Robinsons were putting in their whooping-cough. A kindly world!… He was dozing in the dark when the telephone bell rang. Was that Dr. Fortune? Would he come to Boldrewood at once—at once. The Archduke had been knocked down by a motor-car and picked up unconscious.

  “Poor old pater!” Reggie grinned, as he put his tools together. The pater would never forgive himself for being out of this. He loved a lord, did the pater, and since he had been called in to remove a fish bone from the archducal throat he could not keep the Archduke out of his conversation. The royal geniality of the Archduke, the royal disdain of the Archduchess—Dr. Fortune had been much gratified thereby, and Reggie was prepared to loathe their Royal Highnesses. Thank Heaven, the pater was safe on his holiday! If his head swelled so over an archducal fish bone, he would have burst over an archduke knocked down.

  Reggie was practical, if without sympathy; he made haste in his neat way, and the sedate chauffeur of Dr. Fortune was horrified by instructions to let the car rip. The streets of Westhampton are not adapted to this. The district has tried hard to keep itself rural still, and its original narrow winding lanes remain ill-lighted and overhung by trees. Boldrewood stands high, and its grounds border upon Westhampton Heath, across which there is one lamp per furlong. Just as Reggie’s car swung round to the heath it was stopped with a jerk.

  “What’s the trouble, Gorton?” Reggie said to the chauffeur.

  Gorton was leaning sideways and peering into the gloom of the gutter. A gleam from the sidelight winked at a body which lay still. “Give me a turn,” Gorton muttered. His face showed white. Reggie jumped out, but Gorton was quicker. “Lumme, it’s the Archduke!” he said, and his voice went up high.

  “Don’t be futile, Gorton.” Reggie bent over the body. “Get the lamps on him.”

  Gorton backed the car and the body came into the light. Its face was crushed. Gorton gasped and swallowed. “But it’s not him neither,” he muttered.

  After a minute Reggie stood up. “He was a fine chap about an hour ago,” he said gently.

  “All over, sir?” Reggie nodded. “Some hog done him in?”

  “As you say, Gorton. Running-down case. Big car. Took him in the back. Went over his head. But I don’t see how he got into the gutter.�
� He walked round the body, moved it a little, and picked up two matches—unusual matches in England—very thin vestas with dark blue heads. “Why did you think he was the Archduke, Gorton?”

  “Such a big chap, sir. Not many his measure. And there’s something about the make of the poor chap that’s very like. But thank God’s it’s not the Archduke, anyway.”

  “Why?” said Reggie, who was without reverence for Archdukes. “Well, let’s take him along.”

  They brought the dead man to the lodge at the main gates of Boldrewood, and there left him with a message to be telephoned to the police.

  The hall at Boldrewood is in the Victorian baronial style, absurd but comfortable. Reggie was still blinking at the light when a woman ran at him. His first notion of the Archduchess Ianthe was vehemence. She came upon him, a great fur cloak falling away from her speed, panting, black eyes glowing, and then stopped short, and her pale face was distorted with passion. “Dr. Fortune! You are not Dr. Fortune!” she cried.