He had hardly spoken when the detective turned and leapt for the open window. The table, which stood between him and escape, went down with a crash: he had his foot on the sill, when a shot slammed out, and he stumbled and fell back into the room. The Baron’s bullet had caught him neatly on the heel of his shoe, knocking his leg from under him at the critical moment. Before he could rise the police were on him, and he was handcuffed and helpless.
‘A clean shot, though I say it,’ said the Baron coolly, as he returned the revolver to his pocket. ‘No, he’s not hurt, though I may have galled his kibe. Look out for him there!’
They had need to. They had got the man to his feet, and were holding him as if in doubt whether he needed support or not, when he resolved the question for them, and in unmistakable fashion. This way and that, foaming, snarling, tearing with his manacled hands, now diving head-foremost, now nearly free, and caught back again into the human maelstrom—three stout men as they were, they had a hard ado to keep and restrain him. But they got him exhausted and quiet at last, and he stood among then torn and dishevelled, his chest heaving convulsively, dribbling at the mouth, his face like nothing human.
‘You, you!’ he gasped, glaring at his denouncer, ‘if I had only guessed—if I had only known!’
‘It would have been short shrift for me, I expect,’ said the Baron shrewdly.
‘It would,’ said the prisoner—‘that inn-keeper! It was you contrived the trap, was it? You damned, smiling traitor!’
The mortal vehemence he put into it! ‘What I had always suspected, but could never quite unmask,’ thought Le Sage. ‘The dramatic fire, vicious and dangerous—banked down, but breaking loose now and again and roaring into uncontrollable flame!’
The second gentleman—who was in fact the Chief Constable of the County—put in a reproving word:
‘Come, Ridgway, keep a civil tongue in your head, my man.’
The detective laughed like a devil.
‘Civility, you old fool! If words could blister him, I’d ransack hell’s language for them till he curled and shrivelled up before me.’
‘Well,’ said the gentleman reasonably, ‘you’re not improving your case, you know, by all this.’
‘My case!’ cried the other. ‘I’ve got none. It was always a gamble, and I knew it well enough from the first. But I’d have pulled it through, if it hadn’t been for him—I’d have pulled it through and hanged my fine gentleman—his son there—as sure as there’s a God of Vengeance in the world.’
He wrenched himself in the hold that gripped him, and, bare-chested, snarling like a dog in a leash, flung forward to denounce the father:
‘Curse you, do you hear? I’d have ruined and hanged that whelp of yours as surely as he ruined and murdered the girl that was mine till he debauched and stole her from me. When I put the shot into her, it was as truly his hand that fired it as if his finger had pulled on the trigger. She’d betrayed me, and it was him that led her to it, and by doing so made himself responsible for the consequences.’
The Inspector thought it right here to utter the usual official warning. It was curious to note in his tone, as he did so, a suspicion of deference, almost of apology, such as might characterise a schoolboy forced to bear witness against his headmaster. Ridgway turned on him with a jeering oath:
‘You can save your breath, Cully. That devil spoke true. It was I killed Ivy Mellor; and him, that old dog’s son, that ought to hang for it.’
M. le Baron spoke up: ‘Is it necessary to go further, gentlemen, since he confesses to the double crime?’
‘I think not,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Remove him, Inspector.’
The three closed about the prisoner, who submitted quietly to being taken away. But he forced a stop a moment as he passed by Sir Calvin—who, greatly overcome, had sunk into a chair, the Baron leaning above him—and spoke, with some faint return to reason and self-control:
‘I don’t know how much you think you’ve found out. You’ve got to prove it, mind. No confession counts to hang a man, unless there’s proof to back it.’
‘Par exemple,’ said the Baron, looking up, ‘a skeleton key, a coat button, a packet of letters, a false character, a falser impersonation, a proposed disinheritance, and, to end all, a confederate murdered, and the plot to hang an innocent man for the deed!—altogether a very pretty little list, my friend.’
Ridgway, to those who held him, seemed to stagger slightly. He stood gazing with haggard eyes into the face of this deadly jocular Nemesis, who, so utterly unsuspected by him, had all this time, it appeared, while he smiled and smiled, been silently weaving his toils about his feet. He had not a word to answer; but a sort of stupor of horror grew into his expression, as if for the first time a cold mortal fear were beginning to possess him. Then suddenly he stiffened erect, turned, and passed mutely out of the room.
The Chief Constable lingered behind a moment.
‘Come, Calvin, old man,’ he said: ‘pull yourself together. The thing’s over, and well over, thanks to your wonderful friend here—by George, as remarkable a shot, sir, as you are a strategist! I don’t know which I admired most, the way you stalked your quarry, or the way you brought him down.’
‘Really quite simple little matters of deduction and sighting,’ answered the Baron, beaming deprecation, ‘if you make a practice, as I do, of never loosening your bolt in either case till you’re sure of your aim.’
‘Ha!’ said the gentleman. ‘Well, I congratulate you, Calvin, and I congratulate us all, on this happy termination to a very distressing business. I hope now the order of release won’t be long in coming, and that your poor unfortunate lad will be restored to you before many hours have passed.’
A pallid, but wondering, face peered round the door.
‘May I come in?’ said Mr Bickerdike.
CHAPTER XX
THE BARON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE
SIR FRANCIS ORSDEN and the Baron Le Sage walked slowly up the kitchen garden together. It was a windless autumn morning, such serene and gracious weather as had prevailed now for some days, and the primroses under the wall were already putting forth a little precocious blossom or two, feeling for the Spring. There was a balm in the air and a softness in the soil which communicated themselves to the human fibre, reawakening it as it were to a sense of new life out of old distress. Such feelings men might have who have landed from perilous seas upon a smiling shore.
The two talked earnestly as they strolled, on a subject necessarily the most prominent in their minds. Said Le Sage:
‘Are we not a little apt to judge a man by his business—as that a lawyer must be unfeeling, a butcher cruel, a doctor humane, and a sweep dishonest? But it is not his profession which makes a man what he is, but the man who makes his profession what it appears in him. A lawyer does not appropriate trust funds because he is a lawyer, but because he is a gambler: so, a detective is not impeccable because he is a detective, but because he is an honest man. You wonder that he can be at the same time a detective and a desperate criminal. Well, I don’t.’
‘Ah! You’ve got a reason?’
‘Just this. What is in that lawyer’s mind when he steals? Imagination. It leaps the dark abyss to wing for the golden peaks beyond, where, easy restitution passed, it sees its dreams fulfilled. What was in Ridgway’s mind when he planned his tremendous venture? Imagination again. It may be the angel or the devil of a piece, spur a Pegasus or ride a broomstick. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker may any of them have it, and still be the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. The last thing of which a lawyer, as a lawyer, would be guilty, would be the bringing himself within the grasp of the law: the last thing of which a detective, as a detective, would be guilty, would be the making himself a subject for detection. What induces either of them, then, to sin against the logic of his own profession? Imagination alone and always, the primary impulse to everything that is good and bad in the world. A man may be blessed with it, or he may
be cursed; contain it in his being like the seed of beauty or the seed of dipsomania.’
‘And Ridgway like the latter?’
‘It would seem so. The man is by nature a romantic. I once got a glimpse of the truth in a conversation I had with him. What flashed upon me, in that momentary lifting of the veil, was a revelation of fierce vision, immense passion. It was like taking a stethoscope to a man’s heart and surprising its secret.’
‘A d-diseased heart, eh?’
‘One may say so—diseased with Imagination, which is like an aneurism, often unsuspected and undetectable, until, put to some sudden strain, it bursts in blood.’
‘You mean, in this case—?’
‘I mean that the murder was not premeditated; that is my sure conviction. It was the result of a sudden frenzied impulse finding the means ready to its hand. The man had plotted, but not that. Why should he, since it meant the ruin of his visions?’
‘Ah! You forget, Baron—’
‘We will come to that. What I want to impress upon you at the outset is that Ridgway was at soul a gambler. Circumstance, accident, may have made him a detective: if it had made him a bishop it would have been all the same. That fire, that energy, kept under and banked down, would as surely have roared into flame the moment Fate drew out the damper. That moment came, and with it the vision. He saw in it certain hazards, leading to certain ruin or certain fortune; like a gambler he counted the cost and took the odds, since they seemed worth to him. What he failed to count on was a certain contingency which a less imaginative man than he might have foreseen—the possible treachery of a confederate.’
‘And such a confederate.’
‘Exactly. It was to sin most vilely against all his instinctive code; and worse—it was to stab him with a double-edged dagger.’
‘I th-think I can pity him for that.’
‘And so can I; and for this reason. Coolness is, or should be, the first quality of a gambler; gamblers, for that reason, do not easily fall in love. But when they do fall they fall hard, they fall headlong, they do not so much fall as plunge, as a gambler plunges, all heaven or all hell the stake. There is no doubt that Ridgway’s passion for this girl was a true gambler’s passion. To gain or lose her meant heaven or hell to him.’
‘I can quite believe it, Baron. But, d-damn it! how much longer are you going to keep me on tenterhooks?’
Le Sage laughed. They had been strolling, and pausing, and strolling again, until they had approached by degrees the upper boundary of the estate, where, amid great bushes of lavender and sweet marjoram, stood a substantial thatched summer-house, cosily convenient for the view. ‘Let us go and sit in there,’ he said, ‘and I will unfold my tale without further preamble.’
As he spoke a figure dodging about among the raspberry canes came into view.
‘Hullo!’ cried Orsden: ‘Bickerdike, What’s he doing here?’
‘I think I know,’ said the Baron. He went over to the elaborately unconscious gentleman—who, pretending to see him for the first time, glanced up with a start and an expression of surprise which would not have deceived a town-idiot—and accosted him genially:
‘Looking for anything, Mr Bickerdike?’
‘Just the chance of a late raspberry the birds may have left,’ was the answer.
‘O! I wonder if I can provide any fruit as much to your taste. You haven’t a half-hour to spare, I suppose?’
Mr Bickerdike came promptly out from among the canes.
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘I am quite at your service. What is it?’ ‘
‘Only that I am under promise to Sir Francis to unfold for his delectation the story of a certain mystery, and the steps by which I came to arrive at its elucidation. It occurs to me—but, of course, if it would bore you—’
‘Not at all. I am all eagerness to hear.’
‘Well, it occurs to me that you have a leading title to the information, if you care to claim it, since it was in your company that I found my first clue to the riddle.’
‘Was it, indeed, Baron? You excite me immensely. What was that?’
‘Let us all go in here, and I will tell you.’
They entered the summer-house, and seated themselves on the semi-hexagonal bench which enclosed a stout rustic table.
‘Now,’ said Sir Francis, his eyes sparkling, ‘out with it every bit, Baron, and give our hungering souls to feed.’
Le Sage took a pinch of snuff, laid the box handy, dusted his plump knees with his handkerchief, and, leaning back and loosely twining his fingers before him, began:
‘I have this, my friends, to say to you both before I start. What I have to tell, my story—and not the most creditable part of it—is fundamentally concerned with one about whom, it might be thought, my obligations as his guest should keep me silent. That would be quite true, were it not for a single consideration so vital as to constitute in itself a complete moral justification of my candour. In a few days, or weeks, the whole will be common property, and that figure subjected, I fear, to a Pharisaic criticism, which will be none the more bitter for his friends having anticipated it and rallied about him. Moreover, he himself has bound me to no sort of silence in the matter, but, on the contrary, has rather intimated to me that he leaves to my discretion the choice and manner of his defence—or apologia. It may be admitted, perhaps, that he does not see these things quite from our point of view: he derives from another generation and another code of morals: but for what he is, or has been, he has paid a very severe penalty, and we must judge him now by what he has suffered rather than by what he has deserved.
‘So much for this confidence; which, I beg you to consider, is still, though unenforced, a confidence, due to you, Sir Francis, through your coming matrimonial connexion with the family’—(Mr Bickerdike, with a start and a positive gape, which lifted his eyebrows, looked across at the young Baronet, who grinned and nodded)—‘and to you, my friend, for your unshakable loyalty to a much-tried member of it. And with that I will quit grace and get to the joint.’
The Macuba came once more into action, the box was again laid aside, and the two settled down finally to listen.
‘In the following narrative,’ said M. le Baron, ‘what was and remains conjectural it must be left to events to substantiate. I claim so much, though, for myself, I entertain no doubt as to the truth.’
‘My story opens in the Café l’Univers in Paris, where we two, Mr Bickerdike, strangers to one another, were sitting one September afternoon precisely a year ago. We got into talk on the subject of a neighbour, an artist, and an object of interest to us both, who was busily engaged in sketching into a book pencil-memoranda of the more noticeable hats worn by passing ladies. He worked fast and cleverly, and was manifestly an adept at his craft. Presently, after having watched him for some time, I asked you if you had observed anything peculiar about his hands. You had not, it seemed, and no more was said. But there was a peculiarity, and it was this: when he lifted his right hand, as artists will do, to measure the perspective value of an object, it was always the second finger of the hand which he interposed before his eye. I watched him do it over and over again, and it was persistently the same. Why, I found myself asking myself? Was the trick due to some malformation of the first finger, or to some congenital impulse? Not to the first, I was presently able to convince myself. To the alternative proposition I was fated to receive an answer both affirmative and illuminating: but it was not to come just yet.
‘You remember what followed. The stranger suddenly closed his book, rose, started to cross the road, and was promptly knocked down and run over by a passing cab. I hurried to his assistance, and found that he was pretty badly injured. He was lifted into the cab, and, accompanied by myself and a gendarme, was conveyed to the St Antoine Hospital, in which he remained for some weeks. Both there, and in his own apartments after his discharge, I visited him frequently, and was able to show him some small attentions, such as, in our relative positions, mere humanity demanded of me. He
was poor, in his art an enthusiast, and very little sympathy was needed to win his general confidence. His name was John Ridgway.’
The two listeners glanced at one another, in a puzzled, questioning way; but neither would venture to interrupt, and the Baron continued:
‘He was John, and Ridgway—pronounced Reedsvay—but for the sake of a necessary distinction I will call him henceforth Jean.
‘Jean lived with a friend, Caliste Ribault, in two rooms in the Rue Bourbon-le-Château, a little dull out-of-the-way street in the Latin Quarter. They both worked for a living on the Petit Courrier des Dames; but with Jean it was a weariness and a humiliation, and always he had before his eyes the prospect of ultimate manumission and recognition. He was an artist from his soul outwards to his finger-tips. But, alas! his immortality was destined to be of sooner arrival. He never properly overcame the effects of his accident, and last June he succumbed to them and left his friend alone.
‘Now, in the course of our conversations, Jean had told me a strange story about himself—a story which I never knew at the time whether to credit, or to part credit, or to attribute entirely to the invention of an imaginative nature. Born ostensibly of humble parentage, he was in reality, he said, the legitimate son of an English officer of wealth and distinction, whose name he could claim, and whose heir he could prove himself to be, contingent on the production of certain documentary evidence which he knew to exist, but which, since it remained in the possession of the putative father, it was impossible to cite. This alleged evidence touched upon the question of a sham marriage, a clerical impost or officiating, which had turned out to be a true marriage; and the names of the contracting parties were recorded, with that of the clergyman in question as witness, on the fly-leaf of a little Roman Catholic vade-mecum, which had belonged to Jean’s mother but of which her would-be wronger had secured possession, and which he retained to this day.
‘So much Jean told me, omitting only the father’s name, which he withheld, he queerly stated, from a feeling of jealous pride for the honour of that which was his own honour, but which was presently to be suggested to me in a very singular fashion. You may perhaps recall, Mr Bickerdike, how at dinner on the night of our first arrival here, our host, in answer to some observation of mine about a certain picture hanging on the wall, raised the second finger of his right hand before his eye to test an alleged misproportion in one of the figures of the composition. The action—though, of course, I was already familiar with Sir Calvin’s injury—instantly arrested my attention. A vision of the Café l’Univers and of the busy hat-sketcher leapt irresistibly into my mind: I saw again the lifted second finger, and I saw, with astonishment, what, lacking that clue, had never yet so much as occurred or suggested itself to me—the existence of a subtle but definite family likeness between the two men. That sign-manual had solved the problem of paternity, and given some colour, at least, to my friend’s romantic tale. Let me put it quite clearly. Before me sat, as I was convinced, the father of the man in Paris calling himself John Ridgway, but who claimed the right, on whatever disputable grounds, to call himself, if he would, John Kennett.
The Mystery of the Skeleton Key Page 18