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WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
HISTORICAL ROMANCES
ADVENTURES OF THE OOMTE DE LA MUETTE
OUR LADY OF DARKNESS
A CASTLE IN SPAIN
DIANA PLEASE ' -
A JAY 0F ITALY
A ROOUE’S TRAGEDY
THE POT 0F BASIL
MOLL DAVIS
HISTORICAL VIGNETTES. 1st Series
I: H I I!
ROMANCES
THE LAKE OF WINE
THE MYSTERIOUS SINGER
JOAN BROTHERHOOD
LOVE LIKE A GIPSY
THE SECRET IN THE HILL
THE GREEN PARROT
JEMMY ABERCRAW
THE LOVE STORY OF ST. BEL
THE STORY OF LOHENGRIN
THE HOUSE OF MANY VOICES
JESSIE BAZLEY
THE STORY OF FIFINE
IF AGE COULD
WHERE ENGLAND SETS HER FEET
TALES OF MYSTERY
THE GREAT SKENE MYSTERY
WHY DID HE DO IT?
THE WILL AND THE WAY
GILEAD BALM
THE SKELETON KEY
SHORT STORIES
FROM DOOR To DOOR
AT A WINTER’S FIRE
PLOTS
LOAVES AND FISHES
BAG AND BAGGAGE
THE FABULISTS
POEMS
A FOOL’S PASSION AND OTHER POEMS
AMARANTHUS
11


THE
SKELETON KEY
BY DU
BERNARD C‘ZAPES


LONDON! 4:8 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
If¢ ) 0/ ) 74]
M R




THE NEW YII'IKK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
74250B
ASTOR, LI'IXUX AND
TthliN Fun HATE'AS
B 11:40 I.


Copyright
First Impression, APtil ‘919
Second n my 1919
* i’hB’QTg
UP THE
W VOW
W. m HEP-“"3”


-__. _____ _._._~_
I


JUL 6 1919
CHAP.
II.
III.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
x.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
xxv.
XV.
xvx.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
xx.
XXI.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . .
MY FIRST MEETING WITH THE BARON
MY SECOND MEETING WITH THE BARON
WILDSHOTT . . .
I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON
THE BARON CONTINUES TO INTEREST ME
THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX
THE BARON VISITS THE
CRIME . . .
AN ENTR'ACTE . .
THE INQUEST . .
AFTERWARDS . .
THE BARON DRIVES .
THE BARON WALKS .
ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE
THE EXPLOSION . ‘
THE FACE ON THE WALL
THE BARON FINDS A CHAMPION
AND AUDREY . .
THE BARON RETURNS .
THE DARK HORSE . .
SCENE OF THE
-
THE BARON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE
A LAST WORD .
PAGE
10
I7
28
38
47
64
80
87
I 19
127
I40
I45
I55
184
192
207
2 I6
225
234
272
V





INTRODUCTION
To introduce the last book by the late Bernard
Capes is a sad sort of honour in more ways than
one; for not only was his death untimely and
unexpected, but he had a mind of that fertile type
which must always leave behind it, with the
finished life, a sense of unfinished labour. From
the first his prose had a strong element of poetry,
which an appreciative reader could feel even more,
perhaps, when it refined a frankly modern and
even melodramatic theme, like that of this mystery
story, than when it gave dignity, as in Our Lady
of Darkness, to more tragic or more historic things.
It may seem a paradox to say that he was in-
sufliciently appreciated because he did popular
things well. But it is true to say that he always
gave a touch of distinction to a detective story
or a tale of adventure; and so gave it where it
was not valued, because it was not expected.
In a sense, in this department of his work at least,
he carried on the tradition of the artistic conscience
of Stevenson; the technical liberality of writing
a penny-dreadful so as to make it worth a. pound.
In his short stories, as in his historical studies, he
did indeed permit himself to be poetic in a more
direct and serious fashion; but in his touch upon
such tales as this the same truth may be traced.
It is a good general rule that a poet can be known
vii


INTRODUCTION ix
really awaken sensations. But the truer way of
stating it would perhaps be this ; that to a type
of work which generally is, for him or anybody
else, a work of invention, he always added at least
one touch of imagination
The detective or mystery tale, in which this
last book is an experiment, involves in itself a
problem for the artist, as Odd as any of the prob-
lems which it puts to the policeman. A detective
story might well be in a special sense a spiritual
tragedy ; since it is a story in which even the moral
sympathies may be'in doubt. A police romance
is almost the only romance in which the hero may
turn out to be the villain, or the villain to be the
hero. We know that Mr Osbaldistone's business
has not been betrayed by his son Frank, though
possibly by his nephew Rashleigh. We are quite
sure that Colonel Newcome's company has not
been conspired against by his son Clive, though
possibly by his nephew Barnes. But there is a
stage in a story like The Moonstone, when we are
meant to suspect Franklin Blake the hero, as he
is suspected by Rachel Verinder the heroine;
there is a stage in Mr Bentley's Trent’s Last Case
when the figure of Mr Marlowe is as sinister as
the figure of Mr Manderson. The obvious result
of this technical trick is to make it impossible, or
at least unfair, to comment, not only on the plot,
but even on the characters; since each of the
characters should be an unknown quantity. The
Italians say that translation is treason; and here
9


)2 INTRODUCTION
at least is a case where criticism is treason. I have
too great a love or lust for the roman policier to
spoil sport in so unsportsmanlike a fashion; but
I cannot forbear to comment on the ingenious
inspiration by which in this story, one of the
characters contrives to remain really an unknown
quantity, by a trick of verbal evasion, which he
himself defends, half convincingly, as a scruple of
verbal veracity. That is the quality of Bernard
Capes’ romances that remains in my own memory;
a quality, as it were, too subtle for its own subject.
Men may well go back to find the poems thus
embedded in his prose.
G. K. CHESTERTON.


MRS BERNARD CAPES wishes to express her
gratitude to Mr Chesterton for his appreciative
introduction to her husband’s last work, and to
Mr A. K. Cook for his invaluable assistance in
preparing it for the press.
WINCHESTER.
xi





CHAPTER I
MY FIRST MEETING WITH THE BARON
(From the late Mr Bickerdike’s ‘ Apologia ’1)
SOME few years ago, in the month of September, I
happened to be kicking my heels in Paris, awaiting
the arrival there of my friend Hugo Kennett. We
had both been due from the south, I from Vaucluse
and Kennett from the Riviera, and the arrangement
had been that we should meet together for a week
in the capital before returning home. Enfants
perdus! Kennett was never anything but unpunc—
tual, and he failed to turn up to time, or anywhere
near it, at the rendezvous. I was a trifle hipped,
as I had come to the end of my circular notes, and
had rather looked to him to help me through with
a passing difficulty; but there was nothing for it but
to wait philosophically on, and to get, pending his
appearance, what enjoyment I could out of life. It
was not very much. The Parisian may be a saving
man, but Paris is no city to save in. It is surprising
how dull an empty purse can make it. It had come
to this after two days, either that I must shift my
quarters from the Ritz into cheaper lodgings, or
‘ Found in manuscript.
{if
I


2 MY FIRST MEETING
abandon my engagement altogether and go back
alone.
One afternoon, aimless and thirsty, I turned into
the Café l’Univers in the Place du Palais Royal, and
sat down at one of the little tables under the awning
where was a vacant chair. This is a busy spot, upon
which many streets converge, and one may rest
there idly and study an infinite variety of human
types. There was a man seated not far from me,
against the glass side of the verandah whose occupa-
tion caught my attention. He was making very
rapidly in a minute-book pencil notes of all the
conspicuous ladies’ hats that passed him. It was
extraordinary to observe the speed and fidelity
with which he secured his transcripts. A few,
apparently random, sweeps of the pencil in his thin
nervous fingers, and there, in the flitting of a figure,
was some unconscious head ravished of its most
individual idea. It reminded me of the ‘wig-
snatching’ of the eighteenth century; yet I could
not but admire the dexterity of the thief, as, sitting
behind him, I followed his skilful movements.
‘ A clever dog that, sir,’ said a throaty voice
beside me.
It came from a near neighbour, whom I had not
much observed until now—a large-faced, clean-
Shaved gentleman of a very full body and a com-
fortable complacent expression. He was dressed in
a baggy light-grey suit, wore a loose Panama hat on
his head, and smelt, pleasantly and cleanly, of
snuff. On the table before him stood a tumbler of


WITH THE BARON 3
grenadine and soda stuffed with lumps of ice, and
with a couple of straws sticking from it.
‘Most,’ I answered. ‘What would you take him
to be?’
'Eh? ’ said the stranger. ‘Without prejudice,
now, a milliner’s pander—will that do?’
I thought it an admissible term, and said so,
adding, ‘or a fashion-plate artist?’
‘Surely,’ replied the stranger. ‘A distinction
without a difference, is it not?’
No more was said for the moment, while I sat
covertly studying the speaker. He reminded me a
little of the portraits of Thiers, only without the
spectacles. A placid, well-nourished benevolence
had been his prominent feature, were it not somehow
for the qualification of the eyes. Those were as
perpetually alert, busy, observant, as the rest was
seemingly supine. They appeared to ‘peck’ for
interests among the moving throng, as a hen pecks
for scattered grain.
‘ Wonderful hands,’ he said suddenly, coming back
to the artist. ‘ Do you notice anything characteristic
about them now?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘What?’
He did not answer, but applied for a refreshing
moment or two to his grenadine.
‘Ah !’ he said, leaning back again, with a relishing
motion of his lips. ‘A comfortable seat and a cool
glass, and we have here the best café-chantant in the
world.’
‘Well, it suits me,’ I agreed—' to pass the time.’
sic. B


4 MY FIRST MEETING
'Ah !’ he said, ‘ your friend is unpunctual? '
I yawned inexcusably.
'He always is. What would you think of an
appointment, sir, three days overdue?’
‘I should think of it with philosophy, having the
Ritz cuisine and cellar to fall back upon.’
I turned to him interestedly, my hands behind my
head. ~
'You have? '
‘No, but you,’ said he.
I was a bit puzzled and amused; but curious, too.
‘You are not staying at the Ritz?’ I asked. He
shook his head good—humouredly. ‘Then how do
you know I am?’
' There is not much mystery in that,’ said be.
‘You happened to be standing on the steps when I
happened to be passing. The rest you have
admitted.’
‘And among all these ’——I waved my hand com-
prehensively-—' you could remember me from that
one glimpse? ’
He laughed, but again ignored my question.
‘How did you know,’ I persisted, ‘that my friend
was a man? '
‘ You yourself,’ said he, ’supplied the gender.’
‘But not in the first instance.’
‘No, not in the first instance,’ he agreed, and said
no more.
‘ You don’t like the Ritz? ’ I asked after an interval,
just to talk and be talked to. I was horribly bored,
that is the truth, by my own society; and here was


WITH THE BARON 5
at least a compatriot to share some of its burden
with me.
‘ I never said so,’ he answered. 'But I confess it
is too sumptuous for me. I lodge at the H6tel
Montesquieu, if you would know.’
' Where is that, may I ask?’
‘It is in the Rue Montesquieu, but a step from
here.’
‘ I should like, if you don’t mind, to hear something
of it. I am at the Ritz, true, but in a furiously
economical mood.’
‘Certainly,’ he answered, with perfect good-
humour. ‘ It would not suit all people; it does not
even figure in the guides; but for those of an
unexacting disposition—'well it might serve—to pass
the time. You can have your good bedroom there
and your adequate petit déjeuner—nothing more.
For meals, there is a Duval’s across the road, or,
more particularly, the Restaurant au Boeuf a la mode
in the Rue de Valois close by, where such delicacies
may be tasted as sole d la Russe, or noisettes d’agneau
d la Réjane. Try it.’
I was half thinking I would, and wondering how
I could express my sense of obligation to my new
acquaintance, when a sudden crash and scream in
the road brought us both to our feet. The hat-
sketcher, having finished with his task and gone, had
stepped thoughtlessly off the kerb right under the
shafts Of a passing cab.
For a tranquil body, my companion showed the
most curious excitement over the accident. Uttering


6 MY FIRST MEETING
broken exclamations of reproof and concern, he
hurried down, as fast as his bulk would permit him,
to the scene of the mishap, about which a crowd
was already swarming. I could see little of what
followed; but, the press after a time dispersing, I
made shift to inquire of an onlooker as to the nature
of the victim’s hurt, and was told that the man
had been taken off to the St. Antoine Hospital in the
very cab which had run him down, my friend of the
Panama hat accompanying him. And so there for
the moment our acquaintance ended.
But we met again at the Montesquieu—whither I
had actually transferred my quarters in the interval—
a day or two later. He came down into the hall just
as I had entered it from the street, and greeted me
and pressed my arm paternally.
‘But this will not do at all,’ he said. ‘This will
not do at all,’ and summoned the hOtelier from his
little dark room off the passage.
‘ I am sorry, Monsieur,’ he said, when the bowing
goodman appeared, ‘to find such scant respect paid
to my recommendation. If this is the treatment
accorded to my patronage, I must convey it else-
where.’
The proprietor was quite amazed, shocked, con-
founded. What had he done to merit this severe
castigation from M. Le Sage ? If M. 1e Baron would
but condescend to particularise his offence, the
resources of his establishment were at M. le Baron’s
command to remedy it.
‘That is easily specified,’ was M. le Baron’s


WITH THE BARON .7
answer 'I sing the modest praises of your hotel
to my friend, Mr Bickerdike; on the strength of these
my friend decides to give you a trial. What is the
result? You put him into number 19, where the
aspect is gloomy, where the paper peels off the wall;
where to my certain suspicion there are bugs.’
I laughed, not quite liking this appropriation, but
the landlord was profuse in his apologies. Not for
a moment had he guessed that I was a friend of
M. 1e Baron Le Sage; I had not informed him of
the fact; it was a mere question of expediency:
Number 19 happened to be the only room vacant
at the moment; but since—in short, I was transferred
straightway to a very good appurtement in the front,
where were ample space and comfort, and a powder-
closet to poke my head into if I wished, and invoke
the ghosts of the dead lords of Montesquieu, whose
Hotel this had once been.
Now I should have been grateful for M. 1e Baron’s
friendly offices, and I hope I was, but with a dash
of reservation. I did not know what to make of
him, in fact, and the uncertainty kept me on my
guard. Nor was I the more reassured upon his
commiserating me presently on the fact of my friend,
Mr Kennett, not having yet turned up. So he had
found out my friend’s name? That might be possible
through an inquiry at the Ritz, where Kennett was
expected. But why was he interested in inquiring
at all? Then, as to my own name; he might have
ascertained that, of course, of my present landlord——
a pardonable curiosity, only somehow coloured by


8 MY FIRST MEETING
his unauthorised examination of my room. What
had he wanted in there in the first instance? On
the other hand, he was evidently held, for whatever
reason, in high respect by the proprietor; and if the
reason itself was to seek for me, I had certainly no
grounds for suspecting its adequate claims. He
appeared to be a man of education and some dis-
tinction, not to speak of his title, which, however,
might be territorial and of small account. And,
assuredly, he did not seem French, unless by delib-
erate adoption. His speech, appearance, habit of
mind, were all as English as the shoes he wore on
his feet.
I asked him, on that day of his service to me, how
it had gone with the poor hat-sketcher whom, I had
understood, he had accompanied to the hospital.
He seemed to regard my question as if for a moment
it puzzled him, and then he answered :—
‘O, the artist ! 0, yes, to be sure. I accom-
panied him, did I? Yes, yes. An old house this,
Mr Bickerdike—a fragment of old Paris. If there
is nothing more I can do for you, I think I will be
going.’
So it always was on the few further occasions
which brought us together. He could not, or would
not, answer a direct question directly; he seemed
to love secrecy and evasion for their own sake, and
for the opportunity they gave him for springing
some valueless surprises on the unsuspecting. Well,
he should not have his little vanity for me. There
is nothing so tiresome as that habit of meaningless


WITH THE BARON 9
reserve, of hoarding information which there can be
no possible objection to disseminating; but some
people seem to have it. I responded by asking no
more questions of M. 1e Baron, and I only hope my
incuriosity disappointed him. The next day, or the
day after, Kennett turned up, and I left the
Montesquieu for my original quarters.


CHAPTER II
MY SECOND MEETING WITH THE BARON
(From Mr Bickerdike’s Manuscript)
IT might have been somewhere near the anniversary
of my first meeting with the Baron when I came upon
him again—in London this time. I had been lunch-
ing at Simpson’s in the Strand, and, my meal
finished, had gone up into the smoking-room for a
coffee and liqueur. This is a famous corner of a
famous caravansary, being dedicate, like no other
smoking-room I know, to the service of the most
ancient and most royal game of chess, many of
whose leading professors forgather therein, as it
were, in an informal club, for the mixed purposes of
sociability and play. There one may watch astound-
ing mental conflicts which leave one’s brain in a
whirl; or, if one prefers it, may oneself join issue in
a duel, whether for glory or prOfit; or, better still,
like Gargantua, having a friend for adversary, for
the mere serious diversion of the game, and for its
capacity for giving a rare meditative flavour to one’s
tobacco. The room, too, for such a haunt of gravity,
is a cheerful room, with its large window overlooking
the Strand, and one may spend a postprandial hour
IO


WITH THE BARON II
there very agreeably, and eke very gainfully if one
takes an idler’s interest in other people’s problems.
That I may confess I do, wherefore Simpson’s is, or
was, a fairly frequent resort of mine.
Now, on this occasion I had hardly entered the
room when my eyes fell on the figure of M. le Baron
sitting profoundly absorbed over a game with one
in whom I recognised a leading master in the craft.
I knew my friend at once, as how could I fail
to, for he sat before me in every detail the stranger
of the Café l’Univers——bland, roomy, self-possessed,
and unchanged as to his garb. I would not ven-
ture to break into his preoccupation, but passed
him by and took a convenient seat in the
window.
‘ Stothard has found his match,’ remarked a
casual acquaintance who lounged near me, nodding
his head towards the pair.
‘ Who is it?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?
'I know his name,’ was the answer, ‘Le Sage, an
out-of-pocket French Baron; but that’s all.’
‘0! out of pocket, is he?’
‘I’ve no right to say it, perhaps, but I only
surmise—he’ll play you for a half—crown at any
time, if you’re rash enough to venture. He plays
a wonderful game.’
‘ Is be new to the place?’
0, no! I’ve seen him here frequently, though
at long intervals.’
‘Well, I think I’ll go and watch them.’
Their table was against the Wall, opposite the


12 MY SECOND MEETING
window. One or two devotees were already estab-
lished behind the players, mutely following the
moves. I took up a position near Le Sage, but out
of his range of vision. He had never, to my know-
ledge, so much as raised his face since entered the
room; intent on his game, he appeared oblivious to
all about him. Yet the moment I came to a stand,
his voice, and only his voice, accosted me,—
‘Mr Bickerdike? How do you do, sir?’
I confess I was startled. After all, there was
something disconcerting about this surprise trick of
his. It was just a practised pose, of course; still,
one could not help feeling, and resenting in it, that
impression of the preternatural it was no doubt his
desire to convey. I responded, with some common-
place acknowledgment, to the back of his head, and
no more was spoken for the moment. Almost
immediately the game came to an end. M. le Baron
sat back in his chair with a ‘My mate, I think? ’—a
claim in which his opponent acquiesced. Half the
pieces were still on the board, but that made no
difference. Your supreme chess expert will foresee,
at a certain point in the contest, all the possible
moves to come or to be countered, and will accept
without dispute the inevitable issue. The great man
Stothard was beaten, and acknowledged it.
M. 1e Baron rose from his seat, and turned on me
with a beaming face.
‘Happy to renew your acquaintance, Mr
Bickerdike,’ he said. ‘You are a student of the
game?’


WITH THE BARON 13
‘Not much better, I think,’ I answered. ‘I am
still in my novitiate.’
‘You would not care-———? '
‘0, no, I thank you! I'm not gull enough to
invite my own plucking.’
It was a verbal stumble rather than a designed
impertinence on my part, and I winced over my
own rudeness the moment it was uttered, the more
so for the composure withwhich it was received.
‘No, that would be foolish, indeed,’ said M. le
Baron.
I floundered in a silly attempt to right myself.
‘ I mean—I only meant I’m just a rotten muff at
the game, while you——’ I stuck, at a loss.
‘While I,’ he said with a smile, ‘have just, like
David, brought down the giant Stothard with a
lucky shot.’
He touched my arm in token of the larger
tolerance; and, in some confusion, I made a
movement as of invitation, towards the table in
the window.
‘I am obliged,’ he said, ‘but I have this moment
recalled an appointment.’ ‘So,’ I thought, ‘in invent-
ing a pretext for declining, he administers a gentle
rebuke to my cubbishness.’ ‘ You found your friend,
I hope,’ he asked, ‘when you left the Montesquieu
on that occasion?’
'Kennett? Yes,’ I answered; and added, moved
to some expiatory frankness; ‘it is odd, by the
bye, M. 1e Baron, that our second meeting should
associate itself with the same friend. I am going


I4 MY SECOND MEETING
down to-morrow, as it happens, on a visit to his
people.’
‘No,’ he said: ‘really? That is odd, indeed.’
He shook hands with me, and left the room.
Standing at the window a moment after, I saw him
going Citywards along the Strand, looking, with his
short thick legs and tailed morning coat, for all the
world like a fat jaunty turtle on its way to Birch’s.
Now I fancied I had seen the last of the man; but
I was curiously mistaken. When I arrived at
Waterloo Station the next day, there, rather to my
stupefaction, he stood as if awaiting me, and at the
barrier—my barrier——leading to the platform for my
train, the two o’clock Bournemouth express. We
passed through almost together.
‘Hullo !’ I said. ‘Going south?’
He nodded genially. ‘I thought, with your per-
mission, we might be travelling companions.’
‘With pleasure, of course. But I go no further
than the first stop—Winton.’
'Nor I.’
‘O, indeed? A delectable old city. You are
putting up there? ’
‘No, 0 no ! My destination, like yours, is Wild-
shott.’
‘Wildshott ! You know the Kennetts then?’
‘I know Sir Calvin. His son, your friend, I have
never met. It is odd, as you said, that our visits
should coincide.’
‘But you must have known yesterday—if you did
not know in Paris. Why in the name of goodness


WITH THE BARON I 5
did you not-—’ I began; and came to a rather
petulant stop. This secrecy was simply intolerable.
One was pulled up by it at every turn.
‘ Did I not?’ he said blandly. ‘No, now I come
to think of it-——— 0, Louis, is that an empty
compartment? Put the rugs in, then, and the
papers.’
He addressed a little vivid-eyed French valet,
who stood awaiting his coming at an opened door of
a carriage. Le Sage climbed in with a breathing
effort, and I followed sulkily. Who on earth, or
what on earth, was the man? Nothing more nor
less than what he appeared to be, he might have
protested. After all, not himself, but common
gossip, had charged him with necessitousness. He
might be as rich as Croesus, for all I knew or he was
likely to say. Neediness was not wont to valet it,
though insolvency very well might. But he was a
friend of Sir Calvin, a most exclusive old Bashaw;
and, again, he was said to play chess for half-crowns.
0! it was no good worrying: I should find out all
about him at Wildshott. With a gnmt of resigna-
tion I sank into the cushions, and resolutely put the
problem from me.
But the fellow was an engaging comrade for a
journey—I will admit so much. He was observant,
amusing, he had a fund of good tales at his command,
and his voice, without unpleasant stress, was softly
penetrative. Adapted to anecdote, moreover, his
habit of secrecy, of non-committal, made for a
sort of ghostly humour which was as titillating as


16 MY SECOND MEETING
it was elusive; and the faint aroma of snuff, which
was never absent from him, seemed somehow the
appropriate atmosphere for such airy quibbles. It
surrounded him like an aura—not disagreeably; was
associated with him at all times—as one associates
certain perfumes with certain women—a particular
snuff, Macuba I think it is called, a very delicate
brand. So he is always recalled to me, himself and
his rappee inseparable.


I8 WILDSHOTT
too well timbered, it might be thought by some
people, since the closeness of the foliage gives an
effect of gloom and solemnity to a building which,
amid freer surroundings, should have nothing but
grace and frankness to recommend it. But settled
as it is in the wash of the hills, with their moisture
draining down upon it, growth and greenness have
become a tradition of its life, and as such not to be
irreverently handled by succeeding generations of
Kennetts.
All down the west boundary of the upper estate—
which, to its northernmost limit, breaks upon that
bare hill on whose summit, at closer range now, the
little Red Deer inn sits solitary—runs a wide
.fringe of beech—wood, which is continued to the
high road, and thence, on the further side, dispersed
among the miscellaneous plantations which are there
Situated. The highway itself roughly bisects the
property—the best of whose grass and arable lands
are contained in the southern division—and can be
reached from the house, if one likes, through the
long beech thicket by way of a narrow path, which,
entering near the stables, runs as far as the containing
hedge, in which, at some fifty yards from the main
entrance, is a private wicket, leading down by a
couple of steps to the road. This path is known,
through some superstitious association, as the
Bishop’s Walk, and is little used at any time, the
fact that it Offers a short cut from the house to the
lower estate being regarded, perhaps, as inadequate
compensation for its solitariness, its dankness, and


WILDSHOTT 19
the glooms of the packed foliage through which it
penetrates. Opposite the wicket, across the road,
an ordinary bar-gate gives upon a corresponding
track, driven through the thick of a dense coppice,
which, at a depth of some two hundred feet, ends
in the open fields. It is useful to bear in mind these
local features, in view of the event which came
presently to give them a tragic notoriety.
At Winton a wagonette met the two gentlemen,
and they were landed at Wildshott soon after four '
o’clock. Bickerdike was interested to discover that
they were the only guests. He was not surprised
for himself, since he and Hugo Kennett were on
terms of unceremonial intimacy. He did wonder a
little what qualities he and the Baron could be
thought to possess in common that they should have
been chosen together for so exclusive an invitation.
But no doubt it was pure accident; and in any case
there was his friend to explain. He was a bit down
in the mouth, was Hugo—for any reason, or no reason,
or the devil of a reason; never mind what—and old
Viv was always a tower of strength to him in his '
moods—hence old Viv’s citation to come and ‘buck’
his friend, and incidentally to enjoy a few days’
shooting, which accounted for one half of the
coincidence. Old Viv accepted his part philosophic-
ally; it was not the first time he had been called
upon to play it with this up and down young officer,
whose temporal senior he was by some six years,
and whose elder, in all questions of sapience and
self-sufficiency, he might have been by fifty. He did
S.K. c


20 WILDSHOTT
not ask what was the matter, but he said ‘all right,’
as if all right were all reassurance, and gave a little
nod to settle the matter. He had a well-looking,
rather judicial face, clean shaven, a prim mouth,
a somewhat naked head for a man of thirty, and he
wore eyeglasses on a neatly turned nose, with a
considerable prominence of the organ of eventuality
above it. The complacent bachelor was writ plain
in his every line. And then he inquired regarding
the Baron.
‘O! I know very little about him,’ was young
Kennett’s answer. ‘I believe the governor picked
him up in Paris originally,- but how or where I can’t
say. He’s a marvel at chess; and you remember
that’s the old man's obsession. They’re at it
eternally while he’s down here.’
‘This isn’t his first visit then?’
‘N o, I believe not; but it’s the first time I’ve seen
him. I’m quoting Audrey for the chess. Why,
what’s the matter? Is anything wrong with him? ’
'There you go, you rabbit ! Who said anything
was wrong with him? I’ve met him before, that’s
all.’
‘Have you? Where?’
‘ Why, in Paris. You remember the Montesquieu,
and my French Baron ?’
‘I remember there was a Baron. I don’t think
you ever told me his name.’
‘Well, it was Le Sage, and this is the man.’
‘ Is it? That’s rather queer.’
‘What is?’


WILDSHOTT 21
‘The coincidence of your meeting again like this.’
‘0, as to that, coincidence, you know, is only
queer till you have traced back its clues and found
it inevitable.’
‘Well, that’s true. You can trace it in his case
to the govemor’s being down with the gout again,
and confined to the house, and wanting something
and somebody to distract him.’
‘There you are, you see. He thought of chess,
and thought of this Le Sage, and wrote up to him
on the chance. Your father probably knows more
about his movements than we do. So we’re both
accounted for. No, what is queer to me is the man’s
confounded habit of secrecy. Why didn’t he say,
when I met him in Paris, that the friend I was
waiting for was known to him? Why didn’t he
admit yesterday, admit until we actually met on
the platform to-day, that we were bound for the
same place? I hate a stupidly reticent man.’
Kennett laughed, and then frowned, and turned
away to chalk his cue. The two men were in the
billiard-room, playing a hundred up before dinner.
‘ Well,’ he said, stooping to a losing hazard, ‘ I hope
a fellow may be a good fellow, and yet not tell all
that’s in him.’
‘Of course he may,’ answered Bickerdike. ‘Le
Sage, I’m sure, is a very good fellow, a very decent
old boy, and rare company when he chooses—I can
answer for that. But there’s a difference between
telling all that’s in one and not telling anything.’
‘Well, perhaps he thinks,’ said the other


22\ WILDSHOTT
impatiently, 'that if he once opened the sluice he’d
drain the dammed river. Do let 'him alone and
attend to the game.’
Bickerdike responded, unruflied. He had found
his friend in a curiously touchy state—irritable, and
nervous, and moody. He had known him to be so
before, though never, perhaps, so conspicuously.
Hugo was temperamentally high-strung, and always
subject to alternations of excitement and despond-
ence; but he had not yet exhibited so unbalanced a
temper as he seemed inclined to display on this
occasion. He was wild, reckless, dejected, but
seldom normal, appearing possessed by a spirit
which in turns exalted or depressed him. What
was wrong with the boy? His friend, covertly pon-
dering the handsome young figure, found sufficient
solution in the commonplace. He was in one of
his nervous phases, that was all. They would
afflict men subject to them at any odd time, and
without apparent provocation. It was one of the
mysteries of our organic being—a question of misfit
Somewhere between spirit and matter. No one
looking at the young soldier would have thought
him anything but a typical example of his kind—
constitutionally flawless, mentally insensitive. He
belonged to a crack regiment, and was popular in
it; was tall, shapely-built, attractive, with a rather
girlish complexion and umber-gold hair-—a ladies’
man, a pattern military man, everything nice. And
yet that demon of nerve worked in him to his per-
fection’s undoing. Perhaps it was the prick of


WILDSHOTT 23
conscience, like a shifting grit in one’s shoe, now
here, now there, now gone—for the boy had quite
fine impulses for a spoilt boy, a spoilt child of
Fortune—and spoilt, like Byron by his mother, in
the ruinous way. His father, the General, alternately
indulgent and tyrannical, was the worst of parents
for him ; he had lost his mother long ago ; his one
sister, flippant, independent——undervalued, it may
be, and conscious of it—offered no adequate sub-
stitute for that departed influence. And so the
good in Hugo was to his own credit, and stood per-
haps for more than it might have in another man.
His father, Sir Calvin—he had got his K.C.B., by‘
the way, after Tel-el-Kebir in ’82, in reward for some
signal feat of arms, and at the expense of his trigger-
finger—was as proud as sin of his comely lad, and
blind to all faults in him which did not turn upon
opposition to himself. He designed great con-
nexions for the young man, and humoured his own
selfishness in the prospect. He was a martinet of
fifty-five, with a fine surface polish and a heart of
teak beneath it, a patrician of the Claudian breed,
irascible, much subject to gout for his past misdeeds,
and an ardent devotee of the game of chess, at which
he could hold his own with some of the professed
masters. It was that devotion which had brought
him fortuitously acquainted with the French Baron-—
a sort of technical friendship, it might be called-—
and which had procured the latter an occasional
invitation of late to Wildshott. Le Sage came for
chess, but he proved very welcome for himself.


24 WILDSHOTT
There was a sort of soothing tolerance about him,
the well-informed urbanity of a polished man of the
world, which was as good as a lenitive to the splenetic
invalid. But nobody, unless it were Sir Calvin
himself, appeared to know anything concerning him;
whether he were rich or indigent; what, if dependent
on his wits, he did for a living; what was the meaning
or value of his title in an Englishman, if English he
were; whether, in short, he were a shady Baron of
the chevalier d’indusm'e order, or a reputable Baron,
with only some eccentricities to mark him out from
the common. One of these, not necessarily ques-
tionable, was his sly incommunicativeness; another
was his fondness for half-crowns. He invariably,
whether with Sir Calvin or others, made that stake,
no more and no less, a condition of his playing at
all, and for the most part he carried it off. Vivian
Bickerdike soon learned all that there was to be
told about him, and he was puzzled and interested
-—‘intrigued,’ as they would say in the horrible
modern phrase. But being a young man of caution,
in addition to great native curiosity, he kept his
wits active, and his suspicions, if he had any,
close.
The game proceeded—badly enough on the part
of Hugo, who was generally a skilful player. He
fouled or missed so many shots that his form pre-
sently became a scandal. ‘Phew !’ whistled his
opponent, after a peculiarly villainous attempt;
'what's gone wrong with you?‘
The young man laughed vexedly; then, in a


WILDSHOTT 25
sudden transition to violence, threw his cue from him
so that it clattered on the floor.
‘I can’t play for nuts,’ he said. ‘You must get
somebody else.’
‘Hugh,’ said his friend, after a moment or two
of silence, ‘there’s something weighing on your
mind.’
‘ Is there?’ cried the other jeeringly. ‘ I wonder.’
‘What is it? You needn’t tell me.’
‘0! thank you for that. I tell you what, Viv: I
dreamed last night I was sitting on a barrel of gun-
powder and smoking a cigarette, and the sparks
dropped all about. Didn’t I? That’s what I feel,
anyhow. Nerves, all nerves, my boy. 0! shut
up that long mug, and talk of something else. I
told you I was off colour when I wrote.’
‘ I know you did, and I came down.’
‘Good man. You’ll be in at the kill. There’s
going to be a most infernal explosion—pyrotechnics
galore. Or isn’t there? Never mind.’
He appeared to Bickerdike to be in an extra-
ordinary state, verging on the hysterical. But no
more was said, and in a few moments they parted
to dress for dinner.
M. 1e Baron, coming up to his room about the
same time and for the same purpose, was witness
of a little stage comedy, which, being for all his bulk
a light treader, he surprised. The actors were his
valet Louis and an under-housemaid, the latter of
whom was at the moment depositing a can of hot
water in the washing basin. He saw the lithe,


26 WILDSHOTT
susceptible little Gascon steal from his task of laying
ready his master's dress clothes, saw him stalk his
quarry like a cat, pounce, enfold the jimp waist,
heard the startled squeal that followed, a smack like
a hundred kisses, a spitting sacré chien! from the
discomfited assailant, as he staggered back with a
face of fury and a hand held to his ear, and, seeing,
stood to await the upshot, a questioning smile upon
his lips. Both parties realised his presence at the
same instant, and checked the issue of hot words
which was beginning to join between them. The
girl, giving a defiant toss to her chin, hurried past
Le Sage and out of the room; M. Louis Cabanis
returned to his business with the expression of a
robbed wild-cat.
Le Sage said nothing until he was being presently
helped on'with his coat, and then suddenly challeng-
ing the valet, eye to eye, he nodded, and congratu-
lated him :—
‘That is better, my friend. It is not logical, you
know, for the injurer to nurse the grievance.’
The Gascon looked at his master gravely.
‘ Will you tell me who is the injurer, Monsieur?’
‘Surely,’ answered Le Sage, ‘it cannot be she, in
these first few hours of your acquaintance?’
‘But if she had appeared to encourage me,
Monsieur?’
The Baron laughed.
‘The only appearance to be trusted in a pretty
woman, Louis, is her prettiness.’
‘Monsieur, is her ravishing loveliness.


WILDSHOTT 27
'Well, well, Louis, as you will. Only bear it no
grudge.’
He turned away from a parting keen scrutiny of
the dark, handsome face, and left the room, softly
carolling. The little episode had amused rather
than surprised him. Certainly it had seemed to
point, in respect of time, to a quite record enslave-
ment on the Gascon’s part; but then the provoca-
tion to that passionate impressionable nature ! For
the girl had been really amazingly pretty, with that
cast of feature, that Hebe-like beauty of hair and
eye and complexion about whose fascination no two
properly constituted minds could disagree. She was
a domestic servant—and she was a young morning
goddess, fresh from the unsullied dawn of Nature,
a Psyche, a butterfly, a Cressid like enough. ‘If I
were younger,’ thought Le Sage, ‘even I l’ and he
carolled as he went down to dinner.


CHAPTER IV
I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON
(From the Bickerdike M S .)
I SEEMED conscious somehow, at dinner on the
night of our arrival, of a feeling of electricity in
the domestic atmosphere, Having no clue, such as
the later course of events came to supply, to its
origin, I diagnosed it, simply and vulgarly, as the
vibrations from a family jar, of the sort to which
even the most dignified and well-regulated house~
holds cannot always rise superior. Sir Calvin him-
self, exacting and domineering, could never at the
best of times be considered a tactful autocrat: a
prey to his hereditary foe, he appeared often to go
out of his way to be thought detestable. When
such was the case, his habit of harping on grievances
could become an exquisite torture, his propensity
for persisting in the unwelcome the more he saw
it resented a pure malignancy. On this occasion,
observing an obvious inclination in his son, my
friend, to silence and self-obliteration, he took plea-
sure in drawing him out, with something of the
savagery, I could not but think, of a fisherman who
wrenches an obstinate hermit crab from its borrowed
28


I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON 29
shell for bait. I saw how poor Hugh was rasped and
goaded, but could do no more than take upon myself,
where I could, the burden of response. Believing at
the time that this aggravated fencing between the
two was a part, or consequence, of some trouble,
the serious nature of which might or might not have
been implied in my friend’s recent outburst, I made
and could make but an inefficient second; yet, even
had I known, as I came to know, that my surmise
was wrong, and that the father’s persistence was
due to nothing but a perverse devil of teasing, it is
not clear to me how else I could have helped the
situation. I could not have hauled my host by the
ears, as I should have liked to do, over his own
dining-room table.
But the sense of atmospheric friction was not
confined to these two. In some extraordinary way
it communicated itself to the servants, the very
butler, our young hostess. I had not seen Audrey
at tea, and now greeted her for the first time. She
came in late, to find us, by the Bashaw’s directions,
already seated, and to suffer a sharp reprimand for
her unpunctuality which brought a flush to her
young rebellious cheek. Nor did I better things, so
far as she was concerned, by an ostentatious display
of attentions; she seemed to resent my sympathy
even more than the harshness which had provoked
it. It is the way of cats and women to tear the
hand that would release them from the trap.
The dinner, in short, began very uncomfortably,
with an irascible host, a moody son, and an offended


30 I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON
daughter, the butler taking his cue from his master,
and the servants from the butler. They waited
nervously, and got in one another’s way, only the
more flurriedly for their whispered harrying by the
exacerbated Cleghorn. I was surprised, I confess,
by the change in that usually immaculate dignitary.
The very type and pattern of his kind, correct, imper-
turbable, pontifical, I had never before known
Cleghorn to manifest the least Sign of human
emotion, unless it were when Mr Yockney, the
curate from Leighway, had mixed water with his
Chdteau Margaux 1907. Now, preposterous as it
appeared, I could have believed the great man had
been crying. His globous eyes, his mottled cheeks,
bore suspicious evidences of the fact; 'his very side-
whiskers looked limp. Surely the domestic storm, '
if such, which had rocked the house of Kennett must
have been demoralising to a hitherto unknown
degree.
It was the Baron who redtemed the situation,
winning harmony out of discord. He had, to do
him justice, the reconciliatory faculty, chiefly, I
think, because he could always find, as one should,
a bright interest in differences of opinion instead of
a subject for contention. I never knew him, then
or thereafter, to be ruffled by opposition or contra-
diction. He accepted them placidly, as constituting
possible rectifications of his own argumentative
frontiers. '
His opportunity came with a growl of Sir Calvin’s
over the lateness of the evening papers. The General


I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON 31
had been particularly curious to hear the result of
a local trial, known as the Antonferry Bank robbery
case, which was just reaching its conclusion, and it
chafed him to be kept waiting. Le Sage asked for
information, and the supplying it smoothed the
troubled waters. There is a relish for most people
in being the first to announce news, whether good,
bad, or indifferent.
The case, as stated, was remarkable for nothing
but the skill with which it had been unravelled. A
Bank in Antonferry—a considerable market town
lying some eight or nine miles north of Wildshott—
had been robbed, and the question was by whom.
That question had been answered in the upshot by
an astute Scotland Yard detective, who, in spite of
the obloquy thrown upon his kind by Mr Sherlock
Holmes, had shown considerable sagacity in tracing
the crime to its source in the Bank’s own manager—a
startling dénouement. The accused, on the strength
of this expert’s evidence, had been committed to
stand his trial at Winton Quarter Sessions, and it
was the issue of that event which was interesting
Sir Calvin. He had had some dealings with the
Bank in question, and had even been brought into
some personal contact with the delinquent oflicial.
‘It seems,’ he ended, ‘that there can be no doubt
about the verdict. That Ridgway is a clever dog.’
‘The detective?’ queried Le Sage; and the General
nodded.
‘ The sort I should be sorry, if a thief, to have laid
on my trail.’
“‘6‘


32 I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON
‘But supposing you left none?’ questioned the
Baron, with a smile. ,
‘ Ah! ’said Sir Calvin,having nothing better to reply.
‘ I have often thought,’ said Le Sage, ‘that if
crime realised its own opportunities, there would be
no use for detectives at all.’
‘Eh? Why not?’ asked his host.
‘Because there would be nothing to find out,’
answered the Baron.
‘How d’ye mean? Nothing to find out?’
‘Nothing whatever. My idea, now, of a successful
crime is not a crime which baffles its investigators,
but a crime which does not appear as a crime at all.’
' Instance, M. le Baron,’ I ventured to put in.
‘Why,’ said Le Sage good—humouredly, 'a dozen
may well present themselves to a man of average
inventive intelligence. Direct murder, for example—
how crude! when a hundred means offer themselves
for procuring plausible ends to life. Tetanus germs
and an iron tack; ptomaine, that toxicologic
mystery, so easy to introduce; the edge of a cliff and
a windy day; a frayed picture cord; a loosened
nut or two; a scrap of soap left on the boards by an
opened window——given adroitness, timeliness, a little
nerve, would not any of these do?’
Audrey drew back in her chair, with a flushed little
laugh. '
‘What a diabolical list!’ she said, and made a
face as if she had taken medicine.
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘But after all, Baron, this is no
more than generalising.’


I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON 33
‘You want a concrete instance?’ he answered,
beaming on me. ‘What do you say then to a
swimmer being awarded the Humane Society’s
certificate for attempting to save the life of a man
whom he had really drowned? It needs only a
little imagination to fill in the details.’
‘That is good,’Iadmitted.' We put onetoyourcredit.’
‘Again,’ said the Baron, ‘I offer the case of a
senseless young spendthrift. He gambles, he drinks,
his life is a bad life from the insurance company’s
point of view. When hard pressed, he is lavish with
his I O U ’s; when flush of money he redeems them;
he pays up, he throws the slips into the fire with
hardly a glance at them. One who holds a good
deal of his paper observes this, and acts accordingly.
He preserves the original securities, and on redemp-
tion, offers forgeries in their place, which he is careful
to see destroyed. On the death of the young man
he puts in his claim on his estate on the strength
of the indisputable original documents. Thus he is
paid twice over, without a possibility of any sus-
picion arising.’
‘ But one of the forged I O U ’s,’ said Audrey, ‘had
been carried up the chimney without catching alight,
and had been blown through the open window of
the young man’s family lawyer, who had kept it
as a surprise.’
There was a shout of laughter, in which the Baron
joined.
‘ Bravo, Audrey ! ’ cried her brother. ‘ What about
your average inventive intelligence, Baron?’


34 I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON
‘I said, specifically, a man’s,’ pleaded Le Sage.
‘Women, fortunately for us, are not eligible for the
detective force.’
Audrey laughed at the compliment, but I think
she liked the Baron for his pleasant good-nature.
About that, for my part, I kept an open mind. Had
he really invented these cases on the spur of the
moment, or could it be possible that they touched
on some experience of his own? One could not say,
of course; but one could bear the point in mind.
The dinner went cheerfully enough after this fan
d’esprit of Audrey’s. That had even roused Hugh
from his glooms, and to quite exaggerated effect.
He became suddenly talkative Where he had been
taciturn, and almost boisterously communicative
where he had been reserved. But I noticed that he
drank a good deal, and detected curiously, as I
thought, a hint of desperation under his feverish
gaiety.
In all this, it may be said, I was appropriating to
myself, without authority, a sort of watching brief
on behalf of a purely chimerical client. I had no
real justification for suspecting the Baron, either on
his own account, or in association with my friend’s
apparent state; it was presumptive that Sir Calvin
knew at least as much about the man as I did; still,
I thought, so long as I preserved my attitude of what
I may call sympathetic vigilance d la sourdine,
nothing could be lost, and something even might be
gained. The common atmosphere, perhaps, affected
me with the others, and inclined me to an unusually


I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON 35
observant mood; a mood, it may be, prone to attach
an over-importance to trifles. Thus, I could find
food for it in an incident so ordinary as the following.
There was a certain picture on the wall, a genre
painting, to which Le Sage, sitting opposite it,
referred in some connexion. Sir Calvin, replying,
remarked that so-and-so had declared one of the
figures to be out of proportion—too short or too tall,
I forget which—and, in order to measure the dis-
crepancy, interposed, after the manner of the con-
noisseur, a finger between hiseye and the subject.
There was nothing out of the common in the action,
save only that the finger he raised was the second
finger of his right hand, the first having been shot
away in some long-past engagement; but it appeared,
quite obviously to me, to arrest in a curious way the
attention of the visitor. He forgot what he was
saying at the moment, his speech tailed off, he sat
gazing, as if suddenly fascinated, not at the picture
but at the finger. The next instant he had caught
up and continued what he was observing; but the
minute incident left me wondering. It had signified,
I was sure, no sudden realization of the disfigurement,
since that must have been long known to him, but
of some association with it accidentally suggested.
That, in that single moment, was my very definite
impressioan could hardly have explained why at
the time; but there it was. And I may say now,
in my own justification, that my instinct, or my
intuition, was not at fault.
Once or twice later I seemed to catch Le Sage
5.x. 1:


36 I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON
manoeuvring to procure a repetition of the action,
but without full success; and soon afterwards the
two men fell upon the ever-absorbing subject of
chess, and lapsed into vigorous discussion over the
relative merits of certain openings, such as the
Scotch, the Giuoco Piano, the Ruy Lopez attack,
Philidor’s defence, and the various gambits; to wit,
the Queen’s, the Allgaier, the Evans, the Muzio, the
Sicilian, and God knows what else. They did not
favour the drawing-room for long after dinner, but
went off to the library to put their theories into
practice, leaving Hugh and me alone with the lady.
I cannot admit that I ound the subsequent evening
exhilarating. Hugh appeared already to be suffering
a relapse from his artificial high spirits, and again
disturbed me by the capricious oddity of his
behaviour. He and his sister bickered, after their
wont, a good deal, and once or twice the girl was
brought by him near the verge of angry tears, I
thought. I never could quite make out Audrey.
She seemed to me a young woman of good impulses,
but one who was for ever on the defensive against
imagined criticism, and inclined therefore, in a spirit
of pure perversity, to turn her worst side outermost.
Yet she was a really pretty girl, a tall stalk of maiden-
hood, nineteen, and athletically modern in the taking
sense, and had no reason but to value herself and
her attractions at the plain truth they represented.
The trouble was that she was underestimated, and
I think proudly conscious of the fact. With a
father like Sir Calvin, it was, and must be, Hugo


I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON 37
first and the rest nowhere. He bullied every one,
but there was no under-suggestion of jealous pro-
prietorship in his bullying of Audrey as there was
in his adoring bullying of his son. He did not care
whether she felt it or not; with the other it was
like a lover’s temper, wooing by chastisement. Nor
was Hugo,‘ perhaps, a very sympathetic brother.
He could enjoy teasing, like his father, and feel a
mischievous pleasure in seeing ‘the galled jade
wince.’ Audrey, I believe, would have worshipped
him had he let her—I had observed how gratified
she looked at dinner over his commendation of her
jest—but he held her aloof between condescension
and contempt, and the two had never been real
companions. The long-motherless girl was lonely,
I think, and it was rather pathetic; still, she did
not always go the right way about it to avoid
unfavourable criticism.
We were out for a day in the stubble on the
morrow, and I made it an excuse for going to bed
betirnes. The trial of the Bank-Manager, I may
mention by the way, had ended in a verdict of
guilty, and a sentence of three years penal servitude.
I found, and took the paper in to Sir Calvin before
going upstairs. The servants never dared to disturb
him at his game.


CHAPTER V
THE BARON CONTINUES TO INTEREST ME
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
WE were three guns—Hugo, myself, and a young
local landowner, Sir Francis Orsden, of Audley, whom
I had met before and liked. He was a good fellow,
though considered effeminate by a sporting squire-
archy; but that I could never see. Our shooting lay
over the lower estate, from which the harvest had
lately been carried, and we went out by the main
gates, meeting the head gamekeeper, Hanson, with
the dogs and a couple of boy beaters, in the road.
Our plan was to work the stubble as far as possible
in a south-westerly direction, making for Asholt
Copse and Hanson’s cottage, where Audrey and the
Baron were to meet us, driving over in a pony trap
with the lunch.
I perceived early enough that my chance of a
day’s sport wholly untrammelled by scruples of
anxiety was destined to be a remote one. Hugh,
it had been plain to me from the first, had not
mastered with the new day his mood of the night
before. His nervous irritability seemed to me even
to have increased, and the truth was he was a trying
I 33


THE BARON INTERESTS ME 39
companion. I had already made him some tentative
bid for his confidence, but without result; I would
not be the one again to proffer my sympathy
uninvited. After all, he had asked for it, and was
the one to broach the subject, if he wanted it
broached. Probably—I knew him—the matter was
no great matter—some disappointment or monetary
difficulty which his fancy exaggerated. He hated
trouble of any sort, and was quite capable of sum-
moning a friend from a sick-bed to salve some petty
grievance for him. So I left it to him to explain, if
and when he should think proper. '
It was a grey quiet day, chill, but without wind;
the sort of day on which the echo of a shot might
sound pretty deceptively from a distance—a point
to be remembered. I /was stationed on the left,
Orsden on the extreme right, and Hugh divided us.
His shooting was wild to a degree; he appeared to
fire into the thick of the coveys without aim or
judgment, and hardly a bird fell to his gun. Hanson,
who kept close behind his young master, turned to
me once or twice, when the lie of the ground brought
us adjacent, and shook his head in a surprised,
mournful way. Once Hugh and I came together
at a gap in a hedge. I had negotiated it without
difficulty, and my friend was following, when some-
thing caught my eye. I snatched at his gun barrel,
directing it between us, and on the instant the
charge exploded.
‘Good God, man !’ I exclaimed. ‘ You? ’
Like the veriest Cockney greenhom, he had been


40 THE BARON CONTINUES
pulling his piece after him by the muzzle, and the
almost certain consequence had followed. I stood
staring at him palely, and for the moment his face
was distorted.
‘Hugh 1’ I said stiffly, ‘you didn’t mean it?’
He broke into a mirthless laugh.
‘Mean it, you mug ! Of course I didn’t mean it.
Why should I?’
‘I don’t know. Mug for saving your life, any-
how !’
‘I’ll remember it, Vivian. I wish I owed you
something better worth the paying.’
‘That’s infernal nonsense, of course. Now, look
here; what’s it all about?’
‘All what?’
‘You know.’
‘I’ll tell you by-and-by, Viv—on my honour, I
will.’
‘Will you? Hadn’t you better go back in the
meantime and leave your gun with Hanson?’
‘No; don’t be a fool, or make me seem one. I’ll
go more careful after this; I promise you on my
sacred word I will. There, get on.’
I was not satisfied; but Hanson coming up at the
moment to see what the shot had meant, I could
have no more to say, and prepared silently to resume
my place.
‘It’s all right, George,’ said his master, ‘only a
snap at a rabbit.’
Had he meant to kill himself? If he had, what
trouble so much more tragic than any I had


TO INTEREST ME 41
conceived must lie at the root of the matter! But I
would not dare to believe it; it had been merely
another manifestation of the reckless mood to which
his spoilt temper could only too easily succumb.
Nevertheless, I felt agitated and disturbed, and still,
in spite of his promise, apprehensive of some ugly
business.
He shot better after this episode, however, and
thereby brought some reassurance to my mind.
Hanson, that astute gamekeeper, led us well and
profitably, and the morning reached its grateful
end in that worthy’s little parlour in the cottage in
the copse, with its cases of stuffed birds and vermin,
and its table delectably laid with such appetising
provender as ham, tongue, and a noble pigeon pie,
with bottled beer, syphons, and old whisky to supply
the welcome moisture. Audrey presided, and the
Baron, who had somehow won her liking, and whom
she had brought with her in the governess cart,
made a cheerful addition to the company. He'was
brightly interested in our morning’s sport, as he
seemed to be generally in anything and everything;
but even here one could never make out from his
manner whether his questions arose from knowledge
or ignorance in essential matters. They were not,
I suppose—in conformity with his principle of
inwardness—intended to betray; but the whole thing
was to my mind ridiculous, like rattling the coppers
in one’s pocket to affect affluence. One might have
gathered, for all proof to the contrary, that his
acquaintance with modern sporting weapons was


42 THE BARON CONTINUES
expert; yet he never directly admitted that he had
used them, or was to be drawn into any relation of
his personal experiences in their connexion. The
subject of poachers was one on which, I remember,
he exhibited a particular curiosity, asking many
questions as to their methods, habits, and the
measures taken to counter their dangerous activities.
It was Orsden who mostly answered him, in that high
eager voice of his, with just the suspicion of a
stammer in it, which I could never hear without
somehow being tickled. Hugh took no trouble to
appear interested in the matter. He was again, I
noticed with uneasiness, preoccupied with his own
moody reflections, and was drinking far too much
whisky and soda.
The Baron asked as if for information; yet it
struck me that his inquiries often suggested the
knowledge they purported to seek, as thus :—
‘Might it not be possible, now, that among the
quiet, respectable men of the village, who attend to
their business, drink in moderation, g0 punctually
to church, and are well thought of by the local
policeman, the real expert poacher is mostly to be
found—the man who makes a study and a business
of his craft, and whose depredations, conducted on
scientific and meteorological lines, should cause far
more steady havoc among the preserves than that
wrought by the organised gangs, or by the unpro-
fessional loafer— “ moucher,” I think you call
him? ’
Or thus : ‘This country now, with its mixture of


TO INTEREST ME 43
downlands and low woods, and the variety of oppori'
tunities they afford, should be, one might imagine, .
peculiarly suited to the operations of these gentry?’
~ Or thus 2 ‘I wonder if your shrewd poacher makes
much use of a gun, unless perhaps on a foggy morn—
ing, when the sound of the report would be muflied?
He should be a trapper, I think, par excellence ’—
and other proffered hypotheses, seeming to show
an even more intimate acquaintance with the
minutiae of the subject, such as the springes, nets,
ferrets, and tricks of snaring common to the trade—-
a list which set Orsden cackling after a time.
‘On my word, Baron,’ said he, ‘if it wasn’t for
your innocent way of p-putting things, I could
almost suspect you of being a poacher yourself.’
Le Sage laughed.
‘Of other men’s game, in books, perhaps,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said Orsden, ‘you’re right so far, that one
of the closest and cunningest poachers I ever heard
of was a Leighway hedge-carpenter called Cleaver,
and he was as quiet, sober, civil-spoken a chap as
one could meet; pious, too, and reasonable, though
a bit of a village politician, with views of his own
on labour. Yet it came out that for years he’d
been making quite a handsome income out of
Audley and its neighbours—a sort of D-Deacon
Brodie, you know. Not one of their preserves,
though; you’re at fault there, Baron. Your local
man knows better than to put his head into the
noose. His dealings are with the casual outsiders,
so far as pheasants are concerned. When he takes


44 THE BARON CONTINUES
a gun, it’s mostly to the birds; and of course he
shoots them sitting.’
‘Brute !’ said Audrey.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the young Baronet.
‘He’s a tradesman, isn’t he, not a sportsman, and
tradesmen don’t give law.’
‘How did he escape so long?’ asked the girl.
‘Why, you see,’ answered Orsden, ‘you can’t
arrest a man on suspicion of game-stealing with
nothing about him to prove it. He must be caught
in the act; and if one-third of his business lies in
poaching, quite two-thirds lie in the art of avoiding
suspicion. Fellows like Cleaver are cleverer hypo-
crites than they are trappers—J-Joseph Surfaces in
corduroys.’ _
‘ Do you find,’ said Le Sage, ‘men of his kind much
prone to violence?’
‘Not usually,’ replied Orsden, ‘but they may be
on occasion, if suddenly discovered at work with a
gun in their hands. It’s exposure or murder then,
you see; ruin or safety, with no known reason
for any one suspecting them. I expect many poor
innocent d-devils were hanged in the old days for
the sins of such vermin.’
‘Yes,’ said Le Sage, ‘a shot-gun can be a great
riddler.’
One or two of us cackled dutifully over the jeu
de mot. Could we have guessed what tragic appli-
cation it would receive before the day was out, we
might have appreciated it better, perhaps.
I shall not soon forget that afternoon. It began


TO INTEREST ME 45
with Audrey and the Baron driving off together for
a jaunt in the little cart. They were very merry,
and our young Baronet would have liked, I think,
to join them. I had noticed Le Sage looking exces-
sively sly during lunch over what he thought, no
doubt, was an exclusive discovery of his regarding
these two. But he was wrong. They were good
friends, and that was all; and, as to the young lady’s
heart, I had just as much reason as Orsden—which
was none whatever—for claiming a particular share
in its interest. Any thought of preference would
have been rank presumption in either of us, and the
wish, I am sure, was founded upon no such supposi-
tion. It was merely that with Hugh in his present .
mood, the prospect of spending further hours in
his company was not an exhilarating one.
He was flushed, and lethargic, and very difficult to
move to further efforts when the meal was over; but
we got him out at last and went to work. It did not
last long with him. It must have been somewhere
short of three o’clock that he shouldered his gun
and came plodding to me across the stubble.
‘ Look here, Viv.,’ he said, ‘ I’m going home. Make
my apologies to Orsden, and keep it up with him;
but I’m no good, and I’ve had enough of it.’
He turned instantly with the word, giving a short
laugh over the meaning expressed obviously enough,
I dare say, in my eyes, and began to stride away.
‘No,’ he called, ’I’m' not going to shoot myself,
and I’m not going to let you make an ass of me.
So long 1’


46 THE BARON INTERESTS ME
I had to let him go. Any further obstruction
from me, and I knew that his temper would have
gone to pieces. I gave his message to Orsden, and
we two continued the shoot without him. But it
was a joyless business, and we were not very long
in making an end of it. We parted in the road—
Orsden for the Bit and Halter and the turning to
Leighway, and I for the gates of Wildshott. It was
near five o’clock, and a grey still evening. As I
passed the stables, a white-faced groom came hurry-
ing to stop me with a piece of staggering news. One
of the maids, he said, had been found murdered,
shot dead, that afternoon in the Bishop’s Walk.


CHAPTER VI
‘THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX,
LE SAGE, in the course of a pleasant little drive with
Audrey, asked innumerable questions and answered
none. This idiosyncrasy of his greatly amused the
young lady, who was by disposition frankly out-
spoken, and whose habit it never was to consider in
conversation whether she committed herself or any
one else. Truth with her was at least a state of
nature—though it might sometimes have worn
with greater credit to itself a little more trimming
—-and states of nature are relatively pardonable
in the young. A child who sees no indecorum
in nakedness can hardly be expected to clothe
Truth.
‘This Sir Francis,’ asked the Baron, ‘he is an
old friend of yours?’
‘0, yes!’ said Audrey; ‘quite an old friend.’
‘And favourite?’
‘Well, he seems one of us, you see. Don’t you
like him yourself?’
‘I suppose he and your brother are on intimate
terms?’
‘We are all on intimate terms; Hugh and Frank
no more than Frank and I.’
47


48 THAT THUNDERS
‘And no less, perhaps; or perhaps not quite so
much?’ ‘
‘0, yes they are ! What makes you think so?’
‘Not quite so intimate, I will put it, as your
brother and Mr Bickerdike?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know. Hugh is great friends
with them both.’
‘Tell me, now—which would you rather he were
most intimate with?’
‘How can it matter to me?’
‘You have a preference, I expect.’
‘I certainly have; but that doesn’t affect the
question. It was Hugh you were speaking of,
not me.’
‘Shall I give your preference? It is for Mr
Bickerdike.’
‘Well guessed, Baron. Am I to take it as a
compliment to my good taste?’
‘He is a superior man.’
‘Isn’t he? And always wishes one to know it,
too.’
‘Aha! Then the Baronet is the man?’
‘How absurd you are! Do you value your
friends by preference? Nobody is the man, as you
call it. Because I don’t much like Mr Bickerdike,
it doesn’t follow that I particularly like anybody
else.’ ‘
‘Why don’t you like him? ’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps because he likes him-
self too much.’
'Conceited, is he?’
/


IN THE INDEX 49
‘Not quite that: a first-rate prig I should call
him—always wanting to appear cleverer than he
really is.’
‘ Isn’t he clever?’
‘0, yes! Clever after a sort; but frightfully
obtuse, too. I wouldn’t trust him with a secret.
He’s so cocksure of himself that he’d always be
liable to give it away with his blessing. But I
oughtn’t to speak like that of him. He’s a great
friend of Hugh’s,'and he does really like to help
people, I think, only it must be in his own way and
not theirs. Do you like him?’
‘I am rather surprised that he and your brother
should be on such close terms of friendship.’
‘Are you? Why?’
‘Is not Mr Hugo, now, without offence, a rather
passionate, self-willed young gentleman?’ >
‘Very, I should say.’
‘Balance and instability—there you are.’
‘You mean they are not at all alike. I should
have thought that was the best reason in the world
for their chumming. One of oneself is quite enough
for most people. Fancy the horror of being a
Siamese twin 1’
‘ Is that why you and Sir Francis are on such good
terms—because there is nothing in common between
you?’
‘Isn’t there? What, for instance.’
‘He presents himself to me, from what little I
have seen and heard of him, as a rather gentle,
spiritual young man, with a taste for books and the


5o THAT THUNDERS
fine arts, and a preference in sport, if any, for
angling. I n aere piscam'.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I should fancy him a fisherman, by choice, of
ideas rather than of streams.’
‘And me, I suppose, a cross-tempered, empty-
headed country hoyden, who thinks of nothing but
dogs and stables?’ But she laughed as she bent to
Le Sage, looking mockingly into his smiling eyes.
‘M. 1e Baron, what a character ! ’
‘It is not of my giving,’ he said. ‘A spirited
Diana should have been my antithesis.’
‘But why should you contrast us at all? Frank
and I are not going to live together.‘
‘You are bearing in mind, I hope,’ he said, 'that
I promised your father to be back at Wildshott by
half-past two?’
‘For chess again? What can you find in it?’
She pulled up the pony, and, halting in the road,
determinedly faced her companion. ‘Do you know
you never answer anything that’s asked of you?
Why don’t you?’
‘ I didn’t know I didn’t.’
‘Don’t fib, sir.’
He chuckled aloud. ‘You are a frank young
lady.’ He took her slim left hand between his
cushiony palms, and patted it paternally. ‘When
a suspected man is arrested, my dear, the first
warning he receives from the police is that any-
thing he says may be used in evidence against
him. Supposing we apply that rule to common
2*


IN THE INDEX 51
converse? Then at least we shall avoid self-
committal.’
‘ But are we all, every one of us, suspected people? ’
‘One never knows what may lie in a question.
For instance, you ask me what can I find in chess.
Very seeming innocent; but, 0, the suspicion it
may embody !’
‘What suspicion?’
‘Why, that chess represents my poor wits, and
that I live upon them.’
Audrey tinkled with laughter. ‘I never guessed
I was such a serpent. But I am afraid I was only
thinking of the dullness of it. To sit for ten minutes
looking at a board, and then to move a pawn a single
inch on it ! Ugh ! By that time I should be
screaming for “ Grab.” ’
‘Let us play “ Grab” one night,’ said the Baron
gaily.
They drove on by the pleasant lanes, and presently
came out into the High road near Wildshott. As
they passed the wicket in the hedge, a gleam of
something, quickly seen and quickly withdrawn
among the green beyond, caught Le Sage’s atten-
tion. He laid a hand on the reins, suggesting a
halt.
‘Was that a private way to the house? ' he asked.
‘—-—there, where the little gate stood?’
Audrey told him yes. That it was called the
Bishop’s Walk, and that he might lift the latch and
go by it if he pleased. She twinkled as she spoke,
and the Baron looked roguish.
5.x. F.


52 THAT THUNDERS
‘Inquisitive?’ said he ; ‘I admit it, if it is the
word for an inquiring mind. But not conceited, I
hope. I am going to explore.‘
He was out in the road, to the dancing relief of
the governess-cart springs, and waved au revoir to
his companion. She nodded, and drove on, while he
turned to go back to the wicket. He hummed as
he went, a little philandcring French air, droning
the words in a soft, throaty way, and was still
recalling them as he mounted the two steps from the
road, opened the gate, and passed through. His
eyes, moving in an immobile face, were busy all the
time. ‘Dites moi, belle enchanteresse,’ he sang,
‘Qm' done was a donné vos yenx?’ just above his
breath and suddenly, at a few yards in, eighteen
or twenty, swerved from the close narrow track and
stepped behind a beech-trunk. And there was a
girl hiding from view, her eyes wide, her forefinger
crooked to her lip.
‘Vos doux yeux, si plains de tendresse,’ hummed
M. 1e Baron, and nodded humorously. ‘I thought
I recognised you from the road.’
She did not flush up or exclaim ‘Me!’ or exhibit
any of the offensive-defensive pertness of the
ordinary housemaid surprised out of bounds. She
just stood looking at the intruder, a wonder on her
rosy lips, and Le Sage for his part returned her
scrutiny at his leisure. His impression of the night
before he found more than confirmed by daylight:
she was a very Arcadian nymph, with a sweet—briar
complexion and eyes and hair of thyme and honey;


IN 1THE INDEX 53
shapely as'a doe, ineffably pretty. He wondered
less than ever over Louis’s infatuation.
And what was she doing here? Her head was
bare; a light waterproof veiled her official livery:
it might be concluded without much circumspection
that a tryst was in the air. '
‘I am sorry,’ said M. 1e Baron. ‘I did not come
to be a spoil-sport. I ought, perhaps, to have pre-
tended to see nothing and pass by. But that rude-
ness of my man last night sticks in my mind, and it
occurred to me to apologise for him.’
She laughed, with a tiny toss of her head. ‘ Thank
you, sir, but I can look after myself.’
‘So I perceive,’ he said. ‘You tone very well
with the trees. N0 eyes,“ except perhaps the
favoured ones, could possibly guess you were here.’
‘ Except yours, sir,’ she said, with just a tiny sauce
of irony.
‘Except mine, of course,’ he agreed; and left her
to wonder why, if she would.
‘Well,’ he said, after a smiling moment, ‘that was
an unpardonable act of Louis’s, only don’t visit it
further on his head. I have wanted to warn you,
and here is my opportunity. He comes of a hot—
blooded race, and there’s no knowing———. But you
can look after yourself; I will take your word for
it.’
He believed she could, though she made no furth or
answer to assule him; and, with a nod, he went on
his way, taking up again the little murmured burden
of his song: ‘Y eux, yeux,-—Astres dz'm'ns tombés des


54 THAT THUNDERS
cieux.’ ‘0, eyes! ’ he said. ‘Sweetest eyes were
ever seen ! ’ From what heaven did you fall to
flower in a housemaid’s face ! ’ There was something
suggestive about the girl, more than her surprising
beauty —a ‘towniness,’ a hint, both in speech and
manner. of some shrewd quality which was not of
the soil. ‘When Lamia takes to country service,’
thought the Baron, ‘let more than rustic hearts look
to their locks!’ With whom, he wondered, could
be her assignation? What if, after all, it were with
Louis himself? Would that surprise him? Perhaps
not. Cabanis was a handsome and compelling
fellow, and women, like the Lord, could chasten
whom they loved. But he devoutly hoped it was
not so; he desired no amorous complications in his
train; and, disturbed by the thought, he inquired for
his valet the moment he reached the house—only to
learn that the man had gone out some time before and
had not yet returned. Somewhat disquieted, Le
Sage entered the hall, where he was met by his host.
‘Ah, Baron !‘ hailed Sir Calvin. ‘Punctuality
itself! Go into my study, will you, and I’ll join
you in a moment.’ _
The study was a comfortable room on the ground
floor, with a large bay window overlooking the
gardens. Here the table for chess was set ready,
with a brace of high easy chairs and, handin con-
tiguous, a smoker's cabinet. There were trophies
of the chase and some good sporting pictures on the
walls, against them a couple of mahogany bookcases
containing well-bound editions of Alken, Surtees,


IN THE INDEX 55
and others, and, let into an alcove of that one of
them which included the fireplace, a substantial
safe. Le Sage knew it was there, though it was
hidden from sight behind a shallow curtain; and
now, as he moved humming about the room, his
hands behind his back, his eyes scrutinising a picture
or two while he awaited his host’s coming, he gravi-
tated gradually towards its place of concealment.
Arrived there, he lifted very delicately, and still
humming, the hem of the curtain, just exposed the
keyhole, and bent to examine it with singular
intentness. But a moment later, when the General
entered, he was contemplating a coaching print by
Flavell over the mantelpiece.
‘Indifferent art, I suppose you will admit,’ he
said. ‘But there is something picturesquely direct
about these old Sporting pieces.’
‘ Well, they suit me,’ answered Sir Calvin, ‘ because
I understand them. Red’s red and blue’s blue to
me, and if any artist tells me they are not, I’ve
nothing to answer the fellow but that he’s a damned
liar.’
Le Sage laughed—J What is the colour of a black
eye, then? ’—and they settled down to their game.
The General was a good player; all the best of his
mental qualifications —which were otherwise of the
standard common among retired officers of an over-
bearing, obstinate, and undiscerning disposition—
were displayed in his astute engineering of his small
forces. He was a tactical Napoleon in miniature
when it came to chess; he seemed to acquire then


56 THAT THUNDERS
a reason and a dignity inconspicuous in his dealings
with living people. The chess-men could not mis-
represent him; their movements were his move-
ments, and their successes or failures his. If he lost,
he had no one but himself he could possibly blame,
and his understanding of that condition seemed to
bring out the best in him. He was never choleric
over the fortunes of the game. For the rest, he
was not a wise man, or an amenable man, or anything
but a typical despot of his class, having an inordinate
pride of family, which owed less than it should
have to any moral credit he had brought it in the
past. In person he was a leanish, clean-built soldier
of fifty-five, with bullying eyebrows and a thick
blunt moustache of a grizzled blonde.
He and the Baron were very fond of devising
problems, which they would send up for solution
to the Morning Post. They set to elaborating a
tough one now, a very difficult changed—mate two-
mover, which kept them absorbed and occupied over
the board for a considerable time. Indeed, a full
hour and a half had passed before they had settled
it to their satisfaction; and then the Baron, taking a
refreshing pinch of Macuba, rose to his feet.
‘That is it, my friend,’ said he; ‘an economical
B.P. at K. Knight 4, and the thing is done.’
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a quarter
past four as he spoke, and on the tinkling reverbera-
tion of its one stroke some one opened the door. It
was Hugo Kennett: the young man’s face was
ghastly; his hands shook; he came into the room


IN THE INDEX 57
hurriedly, as if overweighted with some dreadful
piece of intelligence.
‘Good God, Hughie !' exclaimed his father, and
rose, staring at the boy, his eternal cigarette caught
between his teeth. _
The young soldier made an effort to speak; his
breath fluttered audibly in him like the leaf of a
ventilator; his nerve seemed for the moment gone
utterly beyond his control.
‘Steady, sir!’ commanded the General; and his
masterful tone had its visible effect. ‘Now,’ he
said, after a rallying pause. ‘What is it? ’
Hugh swallowed once or twice, and answered. Le
Sage, observant of him, could see what immense force
he had to put upon himself to do so.
‘The Bishop’s Walk! Can you come at once,
sir? There’s been what looks like a dreadful
murder there.’
Sir Calvin never so much as blenched or exclaimed.
One might at least admire in him the self-possessed
soldier, not to be rattled by any sudden call upon
his nerve.
‘Murder !’ he said. ‘Whose murder?’
The young man’s lips quivered ; he looked
physically sick.
'It’s one of the maids, sir. I saw her; I came
upon her myself. I had forgotten my gun, and went
back to fetch it, and there she was lying on her face,
and ’ he put his hands before his own face and
shuddered horribly.
' Look here,’ said the father, ‘you must pull your-


58 THAT THUNDERS
self together. This won't do at all. Baron, get me
my hunting flask, if you’ll be so good. It’s in the .
right-hand top drawer of my desk.’
He poured into the cup, with an unshaking hand,
a full half gill of liqueur brandy, and made his son _
drink it down. It wrought a measure of effect; a"?
tinge of colour came to Hugh’s cheek ; his hunied
respirations steadied.
‘Now,’ said Sir Calvin, ‘try to be coherent.
What do you mean by forgetting your gun?’
‘I mean, sir,’——he looked down; his features still
twitched spasmodically, ‘I mean—it was like this.
I was no good at the shoot, and I left it and came
back by myself—came back by the Bishop’s Walk.
Just a little way inside, I stopped to light a cigarette,
and rested my gun against a tree and forgot it; but
an hour later I remembered that I had left it there,
and went back to fetch it, and saw—O, it was
ghastly I’
‘Steady, man ! Was the girl there when you
first entered the path? ’
Le Sage listened for an answer in the affirmative,
and could hardly hear it when it came.
‘And you stopped to light a cigarette?’ The
father looked keenly into the son’s face. ‘You
haven’t yet told us what girl, Hughie.’
The good liquor was working. The young fellow
lifted his head, a new passionate expression in his
eyes :—
' It was Annie, sir—that good-looking housemaid.
You wouldn’t wonder over my horror if you saw.


IN THE INDEX 59
He must have fired at short range, the damned
villain, and when she was turned from him. There
is a hole in her back that one could put—ah, I can’t
tell you ! ’
M. 1e Baron exclaimed, ‘That would have been,’
said he, speaking for the first time, ‘between three
and four, when you discovered the body?’
‘Just now,’ answered Hugh, addressing his father.
‘I have come straight from it. They are waiting
for you, sir, to know what to do.’
‘ It was done with your gun? Is that the assump-
tion? ’ suggested the Baron.
‘I don’t know,’ replied the young man feverishly,
again not to the questioner. ‘ I suppose so; I
dare say. Both barrels are discharged, and one I
am pretty sure I left loaded. Are you coming, sir?’
Sir Calvin, frowning a stiff moment, moved to
acquiesce. They all went out together. At the
entrance to the track a group of frightened maid~
servants stood white-lipped and whispering, afraid
to penetrate farther. One or two grooms and a
couple of gardeners had already gone in, and were
awaiting about the body the arrival of their master.
It lay, face downwards, close beside the beech trunk
behind which the living girl had sought to hide herself
from Le Sage. That stood at a point in the winding
path some twenty-five yards from the wicket, and
was nowhere remotely visible from the road. She
might have been making her way back to the house
when she was fired on and shattered. It was a
pitiful, ugly sight ; but death must have been
\
l


6o THAT THUNDERS
instantaneous—that was one comfort. Le Sage
made the most of it to himself, though he was really
distressed and moved. ‘Poor eyes !’ he thought,
’sz' pie-ins de tendresse: but an hour ago so beautiful,
and now quenched in death. So this was the tryst
you kept ! Why, it can hardly be cold yet about
your heart.’
Sir Calvin, stern and wrath, gave brief directions.
A shutter was to be brought, a doctor fetched from
Longbridge by one servant, the county police
informed by another. He asked a short question
or two»—one of his son. Was this the tree against
which he had left his gun leaning? Hugh answered
no, while Le Sage listened. He had left it, he said,
propped against a smaller trunk, four or five yards
nearer the gate. He had had to pass the body to
recover it, and had then taken it home, and thrust
it into the gun-room as he had hurried by to raise
an alarm. He spoke with extreme agitation, averting
his eyes from the dead girl; and, indeed, it was a sight
to move a tougher heart than his. Sir Calvin’s next
question was to the group at large. It was to ask
if any one knew of any enemy the unfortunate victim
had raised against herself, or of any possible reason
for the attack. But no one knew or guessed, or, if
he felt a suspicion, would have dared to formulate
it. It would have been too risky a venture at this
stage of the affair. Their master looked from face
to face, and grunted and spoke a warning word.
If that were so, he said, let them avoid all loose
discussion of the matter until the police had taken


IN THE INDEX 61
it in hand. It might, after all, prove no murder,
but only an accident, the perpetrator of which,
terrified by the deed which he had unwittingly
committed, might be keeping silence only until
assured that he could tell the truth without danger
to himself. Le Sage ventured to applaud that
suggestion, turning to Hugh to ask him if he did
not think it a quite reasonable one. But the young
man refused to consider it; he was very excited; it
was murder,_he said, gross, palpable, open, and it
was mere criminal sophistry to pretend to account
for it on any other theory. His father steadied him
once more with a word, and the three turned to go ‘
back to the house together as they had come, leaving
the men to follow with the body. On issuing from
the copse they found the little group of frightened
sobbing women reinforced by Cleghorn. The butler
wore a cloth cap and a light overcoat. His face
was the colour of veal, and his lower jaw hung in
a foolish incapable way.
‘Ha, Cleghorn !’ said his master. ‘This is a bad
business.’
‘It’s knocked me all of a heap, sir,’ answered
the man. His voice shook and wheezed. ‘I’ve
only this moment heard of it, sir.’
Hugo hung behind as they entered the hall. His
father, steady as a rock, marched on to his study,
and was followed by M. 1e Baron. The latter shut
the door upon them.
‘An ugly business,’ he said.
‘A cursed interruption to our game,’ damned the


62 THAT THUNDERS
General. He was greatly incensed. That such a
Vulgar scandal should have come to pollute the
sacred preserves of Wildshott seemed to him the
incredible outrage.
‘What am I to do?’ he said. ‘ What is the infernal
procedure? There will have to be an inquest, I
suppose, and then———.‘
‘And then to indict the murderer,’ said Le Sage,
answering the pause.
‘You think it is a murder?‘
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know; I suppose so. It may prove a
devil of a business to find out. Ought we to have a
detective?’
‘These provincial police are excellent men, but
their normal training—-—-. Still, it may prove a
quite simple affair.’
‘I have a feeling somehow that it won‘t. I’d
better write up to Scotland Yard.’
‘If you’re decided on it, why not apply?
there is, or was, in the neighbourhood the very
man.‘
'You mean that fellow Ridgway? By Jove,
yes --a clever dog! I'll motor into Winton first
thing to-morrow, and find out. In the meantime
-—where’s Hugo?’
‘I think I saw him go upstairs. I’ll have him
sent to you, if you’ll allow me. I was wanting to
write some letters.’
He retreated, with a smile which left his face
the moment he was outside. Finding a servant,


CHAPTER VII
THE BARON VISITS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
I CONFESS that the man’s communication, coming
on the top of my concern for my friend, fairly, in
the first moment of it, took me aghast. The state
in which I had found Hugh, that disquieting business
of the gun, his insistence on sticking to his weapon—
it was inevitable that my mind should instinctively
leap to some association between these and a catas-
trophe so seemingly their corollary in its nature and
instrumentality. It was odd, but ever since my
meeting with the Baron in Simpson’s smoking-room
a sense as of some vague fatality had seemed to over-
cloud me. It was formless, impalpable, but it was
there, like that unnerving atmosphere which pre-
cedes, according to people who know, an earthquake.
But that first sick alarm was not long in dissipating
itself in me in a fine scorn. The thing, to my
recovered judgment, was simply incredible. Apart
from the brutal clumsiness, the unthinking reckless-
ness of such a deed, what was there in my knowledge
of my friend to justify such a horrible assumption?
Spoilt he was, selfish he was, no doubt, but always
64 '


66 THE BARON VISITS
of Audrey and the servants, much discussion of the
tragic subject took place, and later, when he and I
were for a brief time alone together in the billiard-
room. It was not so much that he was not shocked
and horrified with the rest of us, as that his emotions
were expressed in such an extraordinary form.
They made him lament one moment, and go into
half hysterical laughter the next; now utter raging
imprecations against the dastard capable of so damn-
able a crime, now assert that jealousy was probably
responsible for it, and that no man who had not
felt jealousy had a right to sit in judgment on a
passion which was after all not so much a passion
as a demoniac possession. Then he would declare
that, the thing being done, it was no good making
oneself miserable about it, and rally me on my long
face, which, he said, made him feel worse than a
hundred murders. The horror of the thing had no
doubt unhinged him, coupled with the knowledge
that it was through his own carelessness in leaving
a loaded gun within reach of temptation that the
deed had been made possible. With such a nature
as his, that consciousness must have counted for
much, though still, and at the same time, I could
never quite rid myself of the feeling that, beneath
all his expressed remorse and pity, a strange little
note of —I will not call it relief, but ease from some
long haunting oppression, made itself faintly audible.
However, remembering his late promise of confidence
to me, I determined to abide in patience its coming,
only wondering in the interval what had instigated


THE SCENE OF THE CRIME 67
his remarks on jealousy, and if it were possible that
they had been inspired by any suspicion of the
criminal, and if so, on what personal grounds. He
came down quite quiet to breakfast the next morn-
ing, and from that time onwards was his own
rational hospitable self.
Early in the afternoon of that day Sir Calvin
came back with the detective, Sergeant Ridgway,
in tow. The latter had been retrieved, by good luck,
from Antonferry, whither, after the trial, he had
returned from Winton to settle for the lodgings he
had occupied during the Bank investigations. The
General had been fortunate in encountering him at
the very moment of his departure, and had at once
secured from him, contingent on the receipt of
official authority, a promise to undertake the case.
A prepaid telegram to Scotland Yard had brought
the necessary sanction, and within a couple of hours
of its despatch the Sergeant was safe at Wildshott,
and already engaged over the preliminaries of the
business. Personally, I admit, I felt greatly relieved
by his appearance on the scene. A notable writer
has somewhat humoured a belief in the fatuity of
the professional detective; but that was with a
view, I think, to exalt his own incomparable amateur
rather than to discredit a singularly capable body
of men, having a pretty persistent record of success
to justify their being. Intellectuality was at least
not absent by inference from this face. When I
saw it, I felt that the case was in safe hands, and that
henceforth we might, one and all of us, cast whatever
5.x.
#(J-é <
b
r“ ‘
I_ ‘ My git
n
-
»


68 THE BARON 'VISITS
burden of personal responsibility had unwittingly
overhung our spirits. The Sergeant was installed
in the house, and lost no time in getting to work
in a reassuring, business-like way. He went in the
first instance to view the body, which had been laid
on a table in the gun-room, with a policeman —one
of two brought over the night before by the Chief
Constable, a friend of Sir Calvin’s, in person—to
watch the door. Thereafter, established in the
General’s study, he briefly reviewed the evidence of
such witnesses as could supply any topical infor-
mation that bore on the crime—Le Sage, to wit,
Hugo himself, Mrs Bingley the housekeeper, and
one or two of the servants, including the men who,
on their young master’s alarmed summons, had first
entered the copse to remove the body.
1 was present during the whole, I think, of this
examination, and for the following reason. It
happened that I and the Baron, on his way to the
study, met in the hall, when he attacked me, I
thought rather impertinently, on a question of
punctilio. ‘
‘Do you not think, my friend,’ he said, ‘ that under
the circumstances it would be decent of us to offer
to terminate our visit? Supposing we both, here
and now, address Sir Calvin on the subject?’
I was very much annoyed. ‘Baron,’ I said, ‘I
am not accustomed to seek advice in matters of
conduct, and I certainly shall not do as you propose.
Apart from the question of deserting- my friend in
a crisis, I think that any suggestion of our leaving


THE SCENE OF THE CRIME 69
now would look like a desire to avoid inquiryH
which I, for my part, am far from wishing to do—and
would bear a very bad complexion. You can act
as you like; but it is my intention to see this thing
through.’
‘0, very well!’ he said. ‘Then I will speak for
myself alone.’
Why should he wish to escape? All my instinctive
suspicion of him reawakened on the moment; and
I wondered. True, he could not himself ave per-
petrated the crime; Hugo’s evidence wo 1d not
permit of such a supposition; but could he not be
somehow implicated in it as instigator or abettor?
I determined then and there to keep a very close
observation on M. le Baron.
7 We entered the room together, since I would not
suffer his going in alone to misrepresent me. Sir
Calvin was there, with his son and the detective.
I saw the last for the first time. He was quite the
typical Hawkshaw, and handsome at that—a lithe
man of middle height, with a keen, dark, aquiline
face, and clean-shaven jaws and chin. I could have
thought him a young man for his work and reputa-
tion; he did not look more than thirty-five, and
might have been less; but about his mental ability,
if one could judge by indications, there was no
question. A certain rather truculent dandyism in
. his dress contrasted oddly with this intellectuality
of feature; it showed itself a little over-emphatic
in the matter of trouser-crease and collar and scarf-
pin, and it tilted his black plush Homburg hat,


70 THE BARON VISITS
when out of doors, at a slightly theatrical angle.
But taste, after all, is a question not of mind but
of breeding, and the man who has, like Disraeli, to
stand on his head for a living, may be excused a
little ostentation in the process. He looked at us
both searchingly as we entered.
‘This, Sergeant,’ said Sir Calvin, ‘is the Baron
Le Sage, whom l mentioned to you as having encoun-
tered the unfortunate young woman in the copse
a little before .’
The detective nodded. ‘I should like to ask a
question of you, sir.’
Le Sage told what he knew. It was very little,
and only of value in so far as it touched upon the
evidence of time.
‘It must have been a little before half-past two
when we met,’ he said.
‘And shortly after three,’ said the detective, tum-
ing to Hugo, ‘when you came by the same path,
Sir, and had your little talk with her, like this
gentleman?’
‘My talk,’ said the Baron, smiling, ‘was of the
briefest. We exchanged but a pleasant word or
two, and I passed on.’
‘And yours,’ said the detective to Hugh, ‘was
perhaps of a more prolonged sort? '
‘It may have been, Sergeant,’ was my friend's
answer. He was looking pale but composed; and
his manner was absolutely frank and unequivocal.
‘You see,’ said he, ‘poor Annie was, after all, one
of the household, and there was nothing out of the


THE SCENE OF THE CRIME 71
way in my stopping to speak with her. We may have
chatted for ten minutes—I should think no longer——
while I put down my gun and lighted a cigarette.
I was back at the house by a quarter past three or
thereabouts.’
‘And you remembered, and returned for your
a I
‘That must have been just about four o’clock.’
‘So that the murder, if murder it was, must have
been committed some time between 3.15 and 4 p.m.’
‘That is so, I suppose.’
The detective stood as if mutely weighing the few
facts at his disposition for a moment or two, then
turned to the General.
‘We shall want evidence of identity, Sir Calvin,’
he said. ‘Your housekeeper, I suppose, engaged
the young woman? Can I see her?’
Mrs Bingley was rung for, and in the interval,
while awaiting her appearance, Le Sage approached
our host.
'Pardon me, Sir Calvin,’ said be; ‘but before you
proceed any further, would you not prefer that I
should withdraw? I cannot but feel that my visit
itself is proving untimely, and that it were better
that I should relieve you of the embarrassment
of——.’
But the General broke in forcibly.
‘Not a bit of it! There’s nothing to conceal.
Damn it, man ! Beyond helping this Sergeant what
we can to find out the truth, I don’t see why the
even tenour of our ways need disturb itself by so


72 THE BARON VISITS
much as a thought. No, no; you came for chess,
and you’ll stay for chess !’ A sentiment which,
while justifying my own attitude, pretty effectually
disposed of the Baron’s affected, and perhaps inter-
ested scruples.
He smiled, with a tiny shrug. ‘Well, if I am not
in the way!’ and addressed the detective; ‘the
ruling passion, you see, Sergeant Ridgway. Do you
play chess? ’
‘A little,’ answered the man, cautious even in his
admission. ‘ It’s a great game.’
‘It’s the game,’ said the Baron. ‘We’ll play, you
and I, one of these days, when you’re needing some
distraction from your labours.’
‘Very well, sir,’ responded the detective civilly,
and at that moment Mrs Bingley entered the room.
Wildshott was, by common assent, fortunate in
its housekeeper. She was a good soul and a good
manager, strict but tolerant, ruling by tact alone.
Spare and wiry, her virgin angularit despite her
courtesy title)“ was of the sort one associates with
blessed women in old painted manuscripts. Firm-
ness and patience showed in her capable face, to
which agitation had now lent a rather red-eyed
pallor. She bowed to Sir Calvin, and faced the
detective quietly :—
‘ You wanted to speak with me, sir? ’
‘Just a few words,’ he answered. ‘This young
woman’s name, Mrs Bingley~--—?’
‘Was Annie Evans, sir.’
‘And her age?’


THE SCENE OF THE- CRIME 73
'She was just, by her own statement, turned
twenty-three.’
‘You have communicated with her relations?’
'NO, indeed. She never referred to any, and I
have no means of finding them out. Annie was a
very reserved girl.’
‘But surely, when you engaged her
’I did so by advertisement, sir, through the
Ladies’ Times newspaper. We were in immediate
need of an under-housemaid, and there was a
difficulty about local girls. I put an advertisement
in the paper, as I had often done before, preferring
that method to the agencies, and she answered it.
That was about two months ago.’
0And her former employer?’
‘That was a Mrs Wilson, sir. She had gone to
New Zealand, and left a written character with
Annie. It was quite against my custom to take a
servant with only a written character; but in this
instance I was persuaded to break my rule, the
character given was so excellent, and the girl herself
so modest and attractive.’
‘H’m ! Then you saw her before engaging her?’
‘I went up to see her at the Office of the paper
itself by her own appointment, and was so struck
by her manner and appearance that I settled with
her then and there. She was to come down two
'days later. To the best of my memory, I never
inquired about her people.’
’But she must have spoken of them—received
letters?’


74 TIIE BARON VISITS
‘She never spoke of them to my knowledge, or that
of her fellow servants, to whom I have put the ques-
tion. As to letters, Annie certainly did receive
one now and again—one or two quite recently; but
I have been looking, and can find no trace of any.
It would have been just like her funny sensitive
ways to destroy every one of them.’
The detective was silent for a moment, his dark
scrutinizing eyes fixed on the speaker’s face, as if
he were pondering some significance, to him, in the
answer.
‘ What became of the written character?’ he asked
presently.
‘ I returned it to her, sir. It is customary to do so.’
‘In case she should want to use it again? That
being so, I should have thought she would have
kept it?’
‘YeS, sir.’
' But you have not come across it? '
‘It may be in her boxes. I have not looked.’
‘You and I must overhaul those boxes, Mrs
Bingley. Did you think, now, of making any
inquiries about this Mrs Wilson?’ _
‘No, it would have been useless; she had already
sailed for New Zealand.’
‘Do you remember her address?’
' She wrote, so far as I can recollect, from the Savoy
Hotel.’
Sergeant Ridgway took an envelope from his
pocket, and making a note on the back of it, returned
it into keeping.


THE SCENE OF THE CRIME 75
‘Well, you can leave that to me,’ he said, and,
resting his right elbow in the palm of the other hand,
softly caressed his chin, bending an intent look on
his witness. -
‘Now, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you a
particular question. Has Annie Evans’s conduct,
while in this service, always continued to justify you
in your first good opinion of her?’
‘Always,’ answered the housekeeper with
emphasis. ‘She was a thoroughly good straight-
forward girl, and during the short time she was
here I have never had any trouble with her that
was of her own procuring.’
’Will you tell me quite what you mean by
that?’
‘Well, sir, she could not help being pretty and
admired, and if it led to some quarrels among the
men on her account, the blame was theirs, and never
in the smallest degree to be charged to her conduct
with them. She always did her best to keep them
at a distance.’
'0, quarrels, were there? Can you tell me of
any particular quarrel, now?’
‘ I could——-—’ began the housekeeper, and stopped.
' Come, Mrs Bingley,’ said her master. ‘ You must
speak out without fear or favour.’
‘I know it, sir,’ said the housekeeper, distressed.
‘ I will try to do my duty.’
‘Hey !’ cried the General. ‘Of course you must.
You wouldn’t want to risk hanging the wrong man?
What particular quarrel-—hey?'


76 THE BARON VISITS
‘It was between Mr Cleghorn and the Baron’s
gentleman, sir.’
‘Cleghorn, eh? Great Scott! Was he sweet on
the girl?’ '
‘ I think for some time he had greatly admired her,
sir. And then Mr Cabanis came; and being a young
man, with ways different from ours—-—’ again she
hesitated.
‘Out with it !’ cried Sir Calvin. ‘Don’t keep
anything back.’
‘On the night before—before the deed,’ said the
housekeeper, with an effort, ‘Annie had come down
into the kitchen, I was told, red with fury over
Mr Cabanis having tried to kiss her. She had boxed
his ears for him, she said, and he had looked murder
at her for it. He came down himself later on, I
understand, and there was a fine scene between the
two men. It was renewed the next day at dinner,
when Annie wasn’t there, and in the end, after
having come to blows and been separated, they both
went out, Cabanis first, and Mr Cleghorn a little
later. That is the truth, sir, and now may I go?’
I think we were all sorry for the Baron ; it
appeared so obvious whither the trend of the detec-
tive’s inquiries must henceforth carry him. But he
sat quite quiet, with only a smile on his face.
‘Louis is not vindictive,’ was the sole thing he
contented himself with saying.
Sir Calvin turned to the detective. ‘Do you need
Mrs Bingley any more?’
‘Not for the present,’ answered the Sergeant, and


THE SCENE on THE CRIME 7»;-
the housekeeper left the room. I had expected from
him, on her disappearance, some significant look or
gesture, betokening his acceptance of the inevitable
conclusion; but he made no such sign, and merely
resumed his business conduct of the case. He knew
better than we, no doubt, that in crime the most
obvious is often the most unreliable.
‘We must find the girl’s relations, if possible, Sir
Calvin,’ he said. ‘You can leave that to me, how-
ever. What I would advise, if her boxes yield no
clue, would be an advertisement in the papers.’ _
An examination of some of the servants ensued
upon this; but beyond the fact of their supplying
corrOborative testimony as to the quarrel, their
evidence was of little interest, and I omit it here.
The Baron disappeared during the course of the
inquiry, so secretively that I think I was the only
one who noticed his going. At the end the detective
expressed a desire to examine the scene of the crime.
If one of us, he said, would conduct him there, he
would be satisfied and would ask no more. He did
not want a crowd. I ventured to volunteer, and
was accepted. Sir Calvin had looked towards his
son; but Hugh, with reason sufficient, had declined
to go. He had sat throughout the inquiry, after
giving his own evidence, perfectly still, and with a
sort of white small smile on his lips. Thinking my
own thoughts, I was sorry for him.
The Sergeant and I made for the coppice. Passing
the constable at the gun-room door, he nodded to
him. ‘That’s a poor thing inside,’ he said, as we


78 THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
went on. ‘What a lot of trouble she’d save if she
could speak! Well, I suppose that him that did it
thinks she’s got her deserts.’ ‘ I hope he'll get his,’
I answered. ‘ Ah 1’ he agreed, ‘ I hope he will.’ We
turned a bend as we came near the fatal beech-tree
—and there was the Baron before us !
The detective stopped with a smart exclamation,
then went on slowly.
‘Doing a little amateur detective work on your
own, sir?’ he asked sarcastically.
‘ I was considering, my friend,’ answered the Baron.
'It becomes interesting to me, you see, since my
man is involved.’
‘Who said he was involved, sir?’
'Ah I Who, now? You-can see very distinctly,
Sergeant, where the body lay—just the one ugly
token. No signs of a struggle, I think; and the
ground too hard to have left a trace of footprints.
But I won’t disturb you at your work.’
' I wouldn't, sir,’ said the detective pretty bluntly.
‘You can undertake, I fancy, to leave it all to
me.’
‘I’m sure I can,’ answered the Baron pleasantly,
and he went off towards the house, humming softly
to himself a little French air.
‘Who is he?’ asked the detective, when the odd
creature was out of hearing.
‘I know little more about him than you do,’ I
answered ; ‘and Sir Calvin’s acquaintance with
him is, I think, almost as casual as my own. We
both met him abroad at different times. He may


THE SCENE OF THE CRIME! 79
be a person of distinction, or he may be just an
adventurer for all I know to the contrary.’
‘Well,’ said the officer, ‘whoever he is, I don’t
want him meddling in my business, and I shall have
to tell Sir Calvin so.’
‘Do,’ I said. ‘Chess is the Baron’s business, and
it’s that that he’s here for.’ .
But I kept my private suspicions, while duly
noting as much as might or might not be implied
in Le Sage’s curious interest in the scene of the crime.
No doubt the last thing he had expected was our
sudden descent upon him there.


CHAPTER VIII
AN ENTR’ACTE
JAKE was a boy of imagination, though one would
never have thought it to look at his jolly rubicund
face and small sturdy form. The very gaiters on
his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have
precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis
Orsden—the son of one of whose gamekeepers he
was—would never, though a young man of imagina-
tion himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit.
Yet, when Sir Francis played on the organ in the
little church at Leighway, and Jake blew for him,
it was odds which of the two brought the more
inspiration to his task. Sir Francis would practise
'there occasionally, and bring the boy with him,
because Jake was dOgged and strong of muscle, and
not easily tired. He never knew what secret goad
to endurance the small rascal possessed in his
imagination. The business in hand-blowing was to
watch a plummet’s rise and fall: you pumped for
the fall and slackened for the rise. That was the
hard prose of it; but Jake knew a better way. He
would imagine himself blowing up a fire with a
bellows. When a full organ was needed, he had to
blow like the devil to keep the plummet down, and
80


AN Er ’TR’ACTE 8 r
then the fire roared under his efforts; otherwise, a
gentle purring glow was easily stimulated. At
another time he would be filling a bucket at a well
for a succession of thirsty horses, and would so nicely
time the allowance for each that the bucket was
descending again on the very point of its being sucked
dry. Or he would be the landlord of the Bit and
Halter, dozing over his parlour fire, nodding, nodding
down in little jerks, and then recovering himself
with an indrawn rising sigh. Sometimes, when the
music was very liquid, he would work a beer engine-—
one or two good pulls, and then the upward flow
through the syphon; sometimes he would fish, and,
getting a bite, pull in. These make-believes greatly
ameliorated the tedium of his office by importing
a sense of personal responsibility into it. It was
not so much the music he had to keep going as his
fancy of the moment. .
One morning he was blowing for his master—and
pretending, rather gruesomely, to be an exhausted
swimmer struggling for a few strokes, and then
relaxing and drifting until agonised convulsiver to
fresh efforts—when he became aware of a young lady
standing by him and amusedly watching his labours.
Jake ducked, even in the process of pumping, and
Miss Kennett put a finger to her lips. She was
quite a popular young lady among the villagers,
whom she treated on terms of sociability which
her father would strongly have disapproved had
he known. There was nothing of Touchstone’s rosy
Audrey about Miss Kennett, but there was a good
.s.L_ _


AN ENTR’ACTE 83
silly. If I am going to stop here, you must talk
sense.’
‘I have hardly said anything yet.’
‘Well, don't say it. Sit down and play.’
‘I don’t want to play: I want to be serious.
Why am I so obnoxious to you, Audrey?’ .
‘Now I shall go.’
‘No. Do be patient. Really, you know, you
have never yet said, in so many words, why you
won’t marry me.’
‘Yes I have. It is because I couldn’t possibly
call myself Audrey Orsden of Audley.’
‘Well, if you will be flippant.’
She stood looking at him a moment. ‘I didn’t
mean to be flippant, Frank—nothing but kind.
Shall we go a walk together? It’s such a lovely
morning. Only you must promise.’
‘ I think I know what you mean by kind, Audrey-—
kind in forbearing. Very well, I will promise.’
He stowed his music away, and they went out
together—out through - the green and shadowed
churchyard, with its old headboards and epitaphs.
There was one to a merry maid dead at sixteen,
whose thoughtless laughter had served some mor-
tuary rhymster for a theme on the perishableness of
sweet things, with an earnest recommendation to the
Christian to be wise while he might—as if wisdom
lay in melancholy. There was a fine opportunity
for drawing a moral; but Sir Francis did not draw
it. Perhaps he thought he would rather have
marriage as a jest than no wife at all.
S.K. G


84 AN ENTR’ACTE
Soon they were outside the village and making
for the free Downs. Audrey was always at her best
and frankest on the Downs.
‘I had wanted to speak to you,’ said her com-
panion. ‘ Is it really true that our friend the Baron’s
man has been arrested in connexion with this horrible
affair?’
‘Yes, it is quite true. Poor Baron! I am not
allowed to know much about it all; but it seems that
everything points to this Louis being the culprit.
He went out on the afternoon of the murder with
the express purpose of seeking Annie, and did not
come home till long afterwards. The police have
taken him into custody on suspicion.’
‘It must be awkward for you all, having the Baron
for a guest.’
‘It is, in a way; but we can’t very well ask him
to go elsewhere while his man is in peril He offered;
but papa wouldn’t hear of it. He said the best
thing for them both was to go on playing chess.’
‘How’s Hugo?’
‘He’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?’
‘ I don’t know. Only he struck me as being upset
about something on that day we shot together.’
‘Well, he doesn’t give me his confidence, you
know.’
‘No, I know. Poor Audrey !’
‘Why do you call me poor Audrey?’ asked the
girl angrily. ‘ I don't want your pity, or anybody’s.’
‘You don’t want anything of mine, I’m sure; and
yet it’s all .there for your acceptance—every bit.’


AN ENTR’ACTE 85
‘Is this keeping your promise? No, I don’t. I
want what I want, and it’s nothing that you can
give me.’
‘Not my whole love and submission, Audrey?’
She flounced her shoulder, and seemed as if about
to leave him, but suddenly, thought better of it,
and faced him resolutely.
‘ It’s that, Frank, though you don’t seem to under-
stand it. I don’t want any man’s submission! I
want his mastership, if I want him at all.’ Her
eyes softened, and she looked at him pityingly. ‘ I
hate to pain you, you dear; but I can’t marry you.
You have a thousand good qualities; you are gentle
and true and just and honourable, and you have a
mind to put my poor little organ to shame. Why
you should possibly want me, I can’t tell; but I’m
very sure of one thing—that I am wise in disappoint-
ing you. We should be the brass and the earthen-
ware pots, Frank, and you would be the one to be
broke. I know it. You are a poet, and I am the
very worst of prose. You have a right to despise
me, and I have a right—mot to despise you, but to
see what you are not—from my point of view.’
‘That is to say, a sportsman.’
‘ You know I could never pretend to any sympathy
with your real tastes—books and music and musty
old prints, and all that sort of thing.’
He laughed. ‘Well, I shall try again.’
His persistence goaded her to cruelty.
‘If you want to know the truth, I like a man to
be a man, as my brother is.’


86 AN ENTR’ACTE
His face twitched and sobered. ‘And I am not
one.’
‘Why do you make me say these things?’ she
cried resentfully. ‘You drive me to it, and then
take credit, I suppose, for your larger nature.’
‘I take credit for nothing,’ said he. ‘My account
with you is all on the debit side. Audrey, dear,
please forgive me for having broken my word. It
shall be the last time.’
‘I believe it has been the first,’ she said, with a
rather quivering lip. ‘I will say that for you,
Frank. Your word is your bond. Now do let us
talk about something else. I came out to get rid
of all that horrible atmosphere, of police, and detec-
tives, and suspicions about everybody and every-
thing, and this is my reward. The inquest is taking
place this very day, and how glad I shall be when
the whole sick business is over, and the poor thing
decently buried, words can’t say. Now, one, two,
three, and let us race for that clump.’


CH'APTER IX
THE INQUEST
THE Bit and Halter was seething with excitement.
Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the
jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which,
five days earlier, had been the living entity known
as Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master
of the Ceremonies at some important entertainment.
The tap overflowed as on an auction day~—occasion
most popular for bringing together from near and
far those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a
bankrupt farm stock offers an irresistible attraction.
Here it was another sort of calamity, but the moral
was the same. It turned upon that form Of Epicurism
_ which consists in watching comfortably from an
auditorium the agonies of one’s martyred fellow-
creatures in the arena. There are sybarites of that
complexion who, if they cannot be in at the death,
will go far to be in at the burying.
The case, both from its local notoriety and the
agreeable mystery which surrounded it, had aroused
pretty widespread interest. Speculation as to its
outcome was rife and voluble. Quite a pack of
vehicles stood congregated in the road, and quite
a crowd of their owners in and about the inn
87


88 THE INQUEST
enclosure. Each known official visage, as it appeared,
was greeted with a curious scrutiny, silent until the
new—comer had passed,~and then rising garrulous in
the wake of his going. There was no actual ribaldry
heard, but plenty of rather excited jocularity, with
odds given and taken on the event. If the poor
shattered voiceless thing, which lay so quietly in
its shell in an outhouse awaiting the coming verdict,
could only once have pleaded in visible evidence for
itself, surely the solemnity of that mute entreaty
for peace and forgetfulness would have found its
way even to those insensate hearts. But charity
is as much a matter of imagination as of feeling,
and many an unobtrusive need in the world fails
of its relief through the lack of that penetrative
vision in the well-meaning. Our souls, it may be,
are not to be measured within the limits of our
qualities.
At near eleven o’clock the deputy District
Coroner, Mr Brabncr, drove up in a fly. He was
a small important-looking, be-whiskered man, in
large round spectacles of such strength as to impart
to his whole face a solemn owlish look, very sapient
and impressive. A hush fell upon the throng as he
alighted, with his clerk, and, ushered by the landlord,
entered the inn. But he had hardly disappeared
when a more thrilling advent came, like Aaron’s
serpent, to devour the lesser. This was of the
arrested man, in charge of a couple of officers from
the County police-station. The unhappy little
Gascon looked frightened and bewildered. His


THE INQUEST 89
restless, vivacious, brown eyes glanced hither and
thither among the people, seeming to deprecate, to
implore, to appeal for pity from a monstrous terror
which had trapped and was about to devour him.
But his emotions had hardly found scope for their
display when he was gone—hurried in by his escort.
Thereafter—thepparty from the house, with all
necessary witnesses, being already assembled in the
inn—no time was lost in opening the proceedings,
which were arranged to take place in the coffee—room,
the one fair-sized chamber in the building, though
still so small that only a fraction of the waiting
public could be allowed admittance to it, the rest
hanging disconsolately about the passages and
windows, and getting what information they could
by deputy. The Coroner took his seat at one end
of the long table provided; the jury—probi et legales
homines to the number of twelve, good farm-hands
and true, the most of them, and ready to believe
anything they were told—~were despatched to view
the body; and the business began. Mr Redstall, a
Winton solicitor, watched the case on behalf of Sir
Calvin, the deceased’s family being unrepresented,
and Mr Fyler, barrister-at-law, appeared for the
police. A report of the subsequent proceedings is
summarised in the following notes :—
Evidence of identification being in the first in stance
required, Sergeant Ridgway, of the Scotland Yard
detective force, stated that it had been found
impossible so far, in spite of every effort made, to
trace out the deceased’s relations. He had himself


90 THE INQUEST
made a journey to London, whence the girl had been
originally engaged, for the express purpose of
inquiring, but had failed wholly to procure any
information on the subject. All agencies had been
communicated with, and the name did not figure
anywhere on their books. An advertisement,
appealing to the next of kin, had been inserted
in a number of newspapers, but without as yet
eliciting any response. He called on Mrs Bingley
to repeat the statement she had already made to
him regarding the deceased’s engagement by her,
and the housekeeper having complied, he asked the
Coroner, in default of any more intimate proof, to
accept the only evidence of identification procurable
at the moment. Further attempts would be made,
of course, to elucidate the mystery, as by way of
the deceased’s former employer, Mrs Wilson; but
that lady, being gone to New Zealand, might prove
as difficult to trace as Evan’s own connexions; and
in any event a long time must elapse before an
answer could be obtained from her. A search of
the girl’s boxes and personal belongings, though
minutely conducted by himself and the housekeeper,
had failed to yield any clue whatsoever, and, in short,
so far as things went, that was the whole matter.
The Sergeant spoke, now as hereafter, always with
visible effect, not only on the jury but on the Coroner
himself. His cool, keen aspect, his pruned and
essential phrases, the awful halo with which his
position as a great London detective surrounded
him, not to speak of the local reputation he had


TIIE INQUEST 9r
lately acquired, weighted his every word, to these
admiring provincial minds, with a gravity and
authority which were final. If he said that such a
thing was, it was. The Coroner’s clerk entered on
his minutes the name of Annie Evans, domestic
servant, age twenty-three, family and condition
unknown; and the case proceeded.
Mr Hugo Kennett was; the first witness called.
He gave his evidence quietly and clearly, though
with some signs of emotion when he referred to his
discovery of the dead body. His relation of the
event has already been given, and need not here
be repeated. The essential facts were that he had
entered the Bishop’s Walk, on the fatal afternoon,
shortly after three o’clock; had encountered and
stood talking with the girl for a period estimated at
ten minutes; had then continued his way to the
house, which he may have reached about 3.15, and
later, just as it struck four, had suddenly remem-
bered leaving his gun in the copse, and had returned
_ to retrieve it, with the result known. The body
:as lying on its face, and from its attitude and the
nature of the injury, it would appear that the shot
had been fired from the direction of the road. He
went at once to raise an alarm.
At the conclusion of this evidence, Counsel rose
to put a few questions to the witness.
Q. You say, Mr Kennett, you left at once, on
discovering the body, to give the alarm?
A. Yes.
Q. Leaving your gun where it was?


THE INQUEST 93
Q. Don’t you think it would have been well if
it had occurred to you? Don’t you think you would
have done better to leave the gun alone altogether,
until the police arrived?
A. (The witness for the first time exhibiting a little
irritability under this catechism) : I dare say it would
have been better. I was agitated, I tell you, and
the situation was new to me. One doesn’t think of
the proper thing to do on such an occasion unless
one is a lawyer. I just took the gun with me, and
chucked it into the gun-room as I passed, hating the
infernal thing.
Q. Very natural under the circumstances, I am
sure. Now, another question. The shot was fired,
you consider, from the direction of the road. At
what distance from the deceased would your know-
ledge as a sportsman put it?
A. Judging roughly, I should say about fifteen
feet.
Q. About the distance, that is .to say, between
the tree against which you had leaned your gun and
the spot where the body was found?
A. Yes.
Q. Then the inference is that the gun had sud-
denly been seized by some one from its position,
fired, and replaced where it was?
A. I suppose so.
Q. You reached the house, you say, about 3.15,
and left it again, on your way to the copse, just as
it struck four. Would you mind telling us how you
disposed of the interval?


94 THE INQUEST
A. (With some temper): I was in my own den
all the time. What on earth has that to do with
the matter?
Q. Everything, sir; touching on the critical
movements of witnesses in a case of this sort matters.
1 wish to ask you, for instance, if, during that
interval from 3.15 to 4 o’clock, you heard any sound,
any report, like that of a gun being discharged?
A. If I had, I should probably have paid no
attention to it. The sound of a gun is nothing very
uncommon with us.
Q. I ask you if you were aware of any such
sound?
A. Not that I can remember.
Mr Fyler was an advocate of that Old Bailey
complexion, colourless, blackeyebrowed, moist,
thick rinded, whose constant policy it is to provoke
hostility in a witness with the object of bullying him
for it into submission and self-committal. With
every reason, in the present case, to respect, and
none to suspect, the deponent, his professional habit
would nevertheless not permit him to cast his
examination in a wholly conciliatory form.
Q. Now, Mr Kennett, I must ask you to be very
particular in your replies to the questions I am about
to put to you. You came upon Annie Evans, I
understand, shortly after entering the copse, and
put down your gun with the purpose of speaking
to her?
A. With the purpose of lighting a cigarette.
Q. But you did speak with her?


THE INQUEST 97
Such, at least, from the witness’s own implied
admission of a certain freedom in his conversation
with the deceased, would appear a justifiable
assumption. His final statement—though legally
inadmissible—inasmuch as it supplied the motive
with a name, caused a profound stir in Court.
Mrs Anna Bingley, housekeeper to Sir Calvin
Kennett, was the next witness called. Her evidence
repeated, in effect, what has already been recorded,
and may be passed over. Where it was important,
it was, like the other, evidence of hearsay, and
inadmissible. ,
Jane Ketchlove, cook to Sir Calvin, gave evidence.
She had never seen the prisoner till the night of his
arrival, though she had seen his master once or
twice on the occasion of former visits. He, the
Baron, had not at those times come accompanied
by any gentleman. Mr Cabanis made himself quite
at home like : he was a very lively, talkative person,
and easily excited, she thought. He showed himself
very forward with the ladies, and they remarked
on it, though putting it down to his foreign breeding.
On the night of his arrival the valet went up to lay
out his master’s things about seven o’clock. Shortly
afterwards Annie followed him with the hot water.
She, witness, rather wondered over the girl’s assur-
ance in going alone, after the way the man had been
acting towards her. He had seemed like one struck
of a heap with her beauty; for the poor creature was
beautiful, there was no denying it. It was as if
he claimed her for his own from the first moment


98 THE INQUEST
of his seeing her, and dared any one to say him nay.
A few minutes later Annie came down, red with
fury over his having tried to kiss her. She had
boxed his ears well for him, she said. Mr Cleghorn
was in the kitchen, and he flew into a fury when he
heard. He said she must have encouraged the
man, or he never would have dared. He was a
great admirer of Annie himself, and it was a'ways
said among us that they would come to make a
match of it. Annie answered up, asking him what
business it was of his, and there was a fine row
between the two. In the middle this Cabanis came
down. His cheek was red as fire, and he looked
like a devil. He said no one had ever struck him»—
man, woman, or child»—without living to repent it.
He and Mr Cleghorn got at it then, and the rest of
us had a hard ado to part them ; but we got things
quiet after a time, though it was only for a time,
Mr Cleghorn having to go upstairs, upset as he was.
They simmered like, and came on the boil again
the next day at dinner in the servants’ hall. Annie
was not there, and that seemed to give them the
chance to settle things in her absence. Mr Cleghorn
began it, insisting on his prior claim to the girl, and
Cabanis answered that, if he couldn’t have her,
nobody else should; he would see her dead first.
That led to a struggle, ending in blows between
them; and at the last Cabanis broke away, declaring
he was going out then and there to find the girl and
put the question to her.
Q. What question?


THE INQUEST 99
A. Whether it was to be himself or Mr Cleghorn,
srr. \
Q. Did he utter any threat against the girl, in
case her choice was against him?
A. Not in so many words, sir; but we were all
terrified by his look and manner.
They struck you as meaning business, eh? ‘
That was it, sir.
About what time was that?
As near as possible to two o’clock.
And Mr Cleghorn followed?
. After waiting a bit, sir, to recover himself.
Then he got up sudden, saying he was going to see
this thing through, and, putting on his cap and
coat, out he went.
Q. At what time was that?
A. It may have been ten minutes after the
other.
Q. Did you form any conclusion as to what he
meant by seeing the thing through?
A. We all thought he meant, sir, that he was
going to follow Cabanis and get the girl herself to
choose between them.
Q. When did you see him again?
A. It was at half after four, when, as some of us
stood waiting and shivering at the head of the path,
he came amongst us.
Q. In his cap and. overcoat?
A. Yes, sir. Just as he had gone out. We told
him what had happened.
Q And how did he take it?
5.x. 1!
we as as
74250B


r00 THE INQUEST
A. Very bad, sir. He turned that white, I
thought he would have fallen.
Q. And when did the prisoner return?
A. It may have been five o’clock when I saw
him come in.
Q. Did his manner then show any signs of
agitation or disturbance?
A. No, sir, I can’t say it did. On the contrary,
he seemed cheerful and relieved, as if he had got
something off his mind.
Did you tell him what had happened?
Yes, to be sure.
And how did he take it?
Very quiet—sort of stunned like.
Did he make any remark?
He said something in his own language, sir,
very deep and hoarse. It sounded like—but I really
can’t manage it.
M. le Baron (interposing) : ' It was “ Non, non, par
pitié !”’
Counsel (tartly): I shall be obliged, sir, if you
will keep your evidence till it is asked for. (M. le
Baron admitted his error with a bow.)
Q. Was that all?
A. One of the maids told him, sir, that his master
was asking for him, and he went off at once, without
another word.
Q. And he has never referred to the subject
since?
A. He would not talk of it. It was too horrible,
he said.
9*‘9 ELEQF‘S


THE INQUEST IO I
Jessie Ellis, parlour-maid, and a couple of house-
maids—(they kept no male indoor servants, except
the butler, at Wildshott)—Kate Vokes and Mabel
Wheelband, gave corroborative evidence, substan-
tiating in all essential particulars the last witness’s
statement.
Reuben Henstridge, landlord of the Red Deer
inn, was the next witness summoned. He was a
big cloddish fellow, unprepossessing in appearance,
and reluctant and unwilling in his answers, as though
surlily suspecting some design to ensnare him into
compromising himself. He deposed that on the
afternoon of the crime he was out on the hill some-
where below his inn ‘taking the air,’ when he saw
a man break through the lower beech~thicket skirting
Wildshott, and go down quickly towards the high
road. That man was the prisoner. He parted the
branches savage-like, and jumped the bank and
trench, moving his arms and talking to himself all
the time. Witness went on with his business of
‘taking the air,’ and, when he had had enough,
returned to his own premises. Later, Mr Cleghorn,
whom he knew very well as a casual customer, came
in for a glass. He did not look himself, and stayed
only a short time, and that was the whole he knew
of the matter.
Q. What time of day was it when you saw the
prisoner come from the wood?
A. Ten after two, it might be.
Q. And he went down towards the road?
A. Aye.


1 02 THE INQUEST
Q. Did you notice what became of him?
A. No, I didn’t. I had my own concerns to
look after.
Q. Taking the air, eh?
A. That’s it.
Q. You weren’t taking it with a wire, I suppose?
(Laughter.)
A. No, I weren’t. You keep a civil tongIIe in
your head.
The witness, called sharply to order by the
Coroner, stood glowering and muttering.
Q. Where is your inn situated?
A. Top 0’ Stockford Down.
Q. How far is it from the high road?
A. Call it a mile and a half. ~
. Where were you on the bill when you saw
the prisoner?
A. Nigher the road than the inn. Three-quar-
ters way down, say. '
Q. Were you anywhere near the prisoner when
he emerged?
A. Nigh as close as I am to you.
Q. Did he see you?
A. No, he didn’t. I were hid in the ditch.
(Laughier.)
Q. You didn’t recognise him?
A. Not likely. I’d never seen him be-
fore.
Q. Did anything strike you in his manner or
expression?
A. He looked uncommon wild.


THE INQUEST 103
Q. Did he? Now, what time was it when you
started to return to your inn?
A. It may have been an hour later.
Q. A little after three, say?
A. Aye.
Q. Did you pass anybody by the way?
A. No.
Q. The Red Deer is very lonely situated, is it
not?
A. Lonely enough.
Q. High up, at the meeting of four cross roads,
I understand?
A. That’s it.
Q. You don't have many customers in the course
of a “day?
A. Maybe, maybe not.
Q. Not so many that you would forget this one
or that having called yesterday or the day before?
A. What are you trying to get at?
Q. I must trouble you to answer questions, not
put them. What time was it on that day when
Mr Cleghorn looked in?
A. Put it at four o’clock.
Q. And you thought he looked unwell?
A. He said himself he was feeling out of sorts.
The liquor seemed to pull him round a bit.
Q. Did he say anything else?
A. Not much. He went as soon a’most as he'd
drunk it down. I thought he’ d tired himself walking
up the hill.
Q. What made you think that?


THE INQUEST 105
Couple 0’ hundred yards, maybe.
Was it climbing the hill fast?
What you might call fast—hurrying.
. Didn’t it strike you as odd, then, that it
should take it a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes
to cover that short distance between the spot where
you saw it and your inn?
A. No, it didn’t. I didn’t think about it. Mr
Cleghorn, he might have stopped to rest himself,
or to tie a bootlace, or anything.
Q. After seeing the figure did you return to the
bar?
A. No. I went into the parlour to make tea.
Q. And remained there till Mr Cleghorn entered?
A. That’s it.
Counsel nodded across at the detective, as if to
say, ‘Here’s possible matter for you, Sergeant,’ and
with that he closed the examination, and told the
witness he might stand down.
Samuel Cleghorn, butler to Sir Calvin, was then
called to give evidence. Witness appeared as a
substantial, well-nourished man of forty, with a full,
rather unexpressive face, a fixed eye (literally), and
a large bald tonsure—not at all the sort of figure
one would associate with a romantic story of passion
and mystery. He admitted his quarrel with the
prisoner, pleading excessive provocation, and that
he had followed him out on the fatal afternoon with
the intention actually suggested by the witness
Ketchlove. He had failed, however, to discover
him, or the direction in which he had gone, and
ease


:06 THE INQUEST
had ultimately, after some desultory prying about
the grounds, withdrawn himself to the upper kitchen
gardens, where he had taken refuge in a tool-shed,
and there remained, nursing his sorrow, until 3.30 or
thereabouts, when, feeling still very overcome, he
had decided to go up to the Red Deer for a little
refreshment, which he had done, afterwards returning
straight to the house.
Q. How did you leave the kitchen garden?
A. By a door in the wall, sir, giving on the downs;
and by that way I returned.
Q. During all this time, while you were looking
for the prisoner, or mourning in the tool-shed—
(laughter)—-did you encounter any one?
A. Not a soul that I can remember, Sir.
Q. You were greatly attached to the deceased?
A. (With emotion.) I was.
Q. And wished to make her your wife?
A. Yes.
Q. Though your acquaintance with her extended
over only a couple of months?
That is so.
Almost a case of love at first sight, eh?
As you choose, sir.
Did she return your attachment?
Not as I could have wished.
She refused you? I
I never offered myself to her in so many words.
Had you reason to suspect a rival?
None in particular—till the Frenchman came.
Rivals generally, then?
Sessssssss


THE INQUEST 107
Naturally there were many to admire her.
But no one in especial to excite your jealousy?
No.
Did the deceased give you her confidence?
Not what you might call her confidence. We
were very friendly.
Q. She never spoke to you of her past life, or of
her former situations, or of her relations?
A. No, never. She was not what you might
call a communicative young woman. _
Q. You had no reason to suspect that she
was carrying on with anybody unknown to
you?
A. No reason, sir. I can’t answer for my
thoughts.
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. Why, I might have wondered now and again
why she was so obstinate in resisting me.
Q. But you suspected no rival in particular? I
ask you again.
A. A man may think things.
Q. Will you answer my question?
A. Well, then, I didn’t.
Q. Are you speaking the truth?
A. Yes.
Witness was subjected to some severe cross-
questioning on this point, but persisted in his refusal
to associate his suspicions with any particular
person. He argued only negatively, he said, from
the deceased’s indifference to himself, which (he
declared amid some laughter) was utterly incompre-
esese


108 THE INQUEST
hensible to him on any other supposition than
that of a previous attachment. Counsel then
continued :—
Q. When, after leaving the garden, you were
making for the Red Deer, did you observe any
other figure on the hill, going in the same direction
as yourself, but in advance of you?
A. There may have been. I won’t answer for
sure.
Q. Will you explain what you mean by that?
A. I was what you might call preoccupied—not
thinking much of anything but my own trouble.
But—yes, I have an idea there was some one.
Q. How was he dressed?
A. I can’t say, sir. I never looked; it’s only
a hazy sort of impression.
Q. Was he far ahead?
A. He may have been—very far; or perhaps it
was only the shadows. I shouldn’t like to swear
there was any one at all.
Q. You have heard the witness Henstridge’s
evidence. Are you sure you are not borrowing from
it the idea of this second figure, a sort of simulacrum
of yourself?
A. Well, I may be, unconscious as it were.
I can’t state anything for certain.
Q. Were you walking fast as you got near the
inn?
A. I dare say I was—fast for me. (Laughter)
What with one thing and another, my throat was
as dry as tinder.


THE INQUEST 109
Q. Did you stop, or linger, for any purpose when
approaching the inn?
A. Not that I can remember. I may have.
What happened afterwards has put all that out of
my head.
Q. You mean the news awaiting you on your
return?
A. Yes.
Q. So that you can’t tell me, I suppose, whether
or not, as you climbed the bill, your coat-collar
was turned up and the peak of your cap pulled
down?
A. It’s like enough they were. I had put the
things on anyhow in my hurry. But it’s all a vague
memory.
Counsel. Very well. You can stand down.
Daniel Groome, gardener, was next called. He
stated that he was sweeping up leaves in the drive
to the east side of the house—that is to say, the side
furthest from the copse—on the afternoon of the
murder. Had heard the stable clock strike three,
and shortly afterwards had seen the young master
come out of the head of the Bishop’s Walk and go
towards the house, which he entered by the front
door. He was looking, he thought, in a bit of a
temper : but the young master was like that—all in
a stew one moment over a little thing, and the next
laughing and jokingaover something that mattered.
Had wondered at seeing him back so soon from the
shooting, but supposed he had shot wild, as he
sometimes would, and was in a pet about it. Did


rro THE INQUEST
not see him again until he, witness, was summoned
to the copse to help remove the body.
Q. During the time you were sweeping in the
drive, did you hear the sound of a shot?
A. A’many, sir. The gentlemen was out with
their guns.
Q. Did any one shot sound to you nearer than
the others ?
A. One sounded pretty loud.
Q. As if comparatively close by?
A. Yes, it might be.
Q. From the direction of the Bishop’s Walk?
A. I couldn’t rightly say, sir. It wasn’t a
carrying day. Sounds on such a day travel very
deceptive. It might have come from across the
road, or further.
Q. At what time did you hear this particular
shot?
A. It might have been three o’clock, or a little
later ; I couldn’t be sure.
Q. Think again.
A. No, I couldn’t be sure, sir. I shouldn’t like
to swear.
Q. Might it have been nearer half-past three?
A. Very like. I dare say it might.
This point was urged, but the witness persisted
in refusing to commit himself to any more definite
statement.
John Tugwood, coachman, Edward Noakes,
groom, and Martha Jolly, lodge-keeper, were
called and examined on the same subject. They


THE INQUEST rr 1
had all distinguished, or thought they had dis-
tinguished, the louder shot in question; but their
evidence as to its precise time was so hopelessly
contradictory that no reliance whatever could be
placed on it.
Sergeant-Detective Ridgway deposed that, having
been put in charge of the case by Sir Calvin Kennett,
he had proceeded to make an examination of the
spot where the body had been found. This was some
twenty-four hours after the commission of the
alleged crime, and it might be thought possible that
certain local changes had occurred during the inter-
val. He understood, however, that the police had,
when first called in, conducted an exhaustive investi-
gation of the place, and that their conclusions differed
in no material degree from his own, so that he was
permitted to speak for them in the few details he
had to place before the jury. Briefly, his notes
comprised the following observations:—The measured
distance from the wicket in the boundary hedge to
the tree against which the witness, Mr Hugo Kennett,
had stated that he rested his gun was nineteen and
a quarter yards: thence to the beech-tree by which
the body had been found was another fifteen feet.
Between the wicket and the first tree there was a
curve in the track, sufficient to conceal from any
one standing by the second, or inner, tree the move-
ments of one approaching from the direction of the
gate. All about this part of the copse, down to
the hedge, was very dense thicket, which in one
place, in close proximity to the first tree supporting


112 THE INQUEST
the gun, bore some tokens as of a person having been
concealed there. If such were the case, the move-
ments of the person in question had been presumably
stealthy, the growth showing only slight signs of
disturbance, not easily detected. His theory was
that this person had entered possibly by the gate
from the road, had crept along the path, or track,
until he had caught a glimpse through the trees of
the deceased in conversation with Mr Kennett, had
then slipped into the undergrowth and silently
worked his way to the point of concealment first-
mentioned, where he would be both eye and ear
witness of what was passing between the two, and
had subsequently, whether torn by the passion of
revenge or of jealousy, issued noiselessly forth, some
few minutes after Mr Kennett’s departure, seized
up the gun, and either at once, or following a brief
altercation, shot the deceased dead as she was
moving to escape from him. Conformably with this
theory, there was no sign of any struggle having
occurred; but there were signs that the murderer had
moved and conducted himself with great caution and
circumspection. Unfortunately no evidence as to
footprints could be adduced, the ground being in too
hard and dry a state to record their impression.
Finally, he was bound to say that there was nothing
in his theory incompatible with the assumption that
the prisoner was the one responsible for the deed.
On the other hand, it was true that the man’s
movements between the time when the witness
Henstridge had seen him descending towards the


114 THE INQUEST
A. You surprise me.
Q. I am asking you for information.
A. I have none to give you.
Q. Very well; we will leave it at that. On the
afternoon of the murder, about half-past two, you
entered the Bishop’s Walk?
A. I had been out driving with Miss Kennett,
and, passing the gate, asked her whither it led. She
told me, and I decided to go by the path, leaving her
to drive on to the house alone.
Q. Why did you so decide?
A. I had caught a glimpse among the trees, of,
as I thought, the maid, Annie Evans, and I wished
to speak with her.
Q. Indeed? (Counsel was evidently a little taken
aback over the frankness of this admission.) Would
you inform me on‘what subject?
A. I had been accidental witness the night before
of the scrimmage between her and Louis already
referred to, and I wished at once to apologise to her
for Louis’s behaviour, and to warn her against any
repetition of the punishment she had inflicted.
Q. On what grounds?
A. On the grounds that, the man being quick-
tempered and impulsive, I would not answer for
the consequences of another such assault. (Sensa-
tion.)
Q. And what was the deceased’s answer?
A. She thanked me, and said she could look
after herself.
Q. Anything further?


I 16 THE INQUEST
A. He came in about five o’clock, and was
immediately sent up to me.
Q. You asked him, perhaps, to account for his
absence?
A. I did.
Q. And what was his explanation?
A. He made a frank confession of his quarrel
with Mr Cleghorn, described how his first intention
on rushing from the house had really been to find
the girl and throw himself upon her mercy; but how,
once in the open air, his frenzy had begun to cool,
and to yield itself presently to indecision. He had
then, he said, gone for a long walk over the downs,
fighting all the way the demon of rage and jealousy
which possessed him, and had finally, getting the
better ‘of his black unreasoning mood, grown
thoroughly repentant and ashamed of his behaviour,
and had returned to make amends.
Q. And you credited that wonderful story?
A. I believed it implicitly.
Q. Well, indeed, sir! Did he appear overcome
by the news which had greeted him on his return?
A. He appeared stupefied—that is the word.
Q. Did he comment on it at all?
A. If you mean in the self-incriminating sense,
he did not.
Q. In what sense, then?
A. He cursed the assassin capable of destroying
so sweet a paragon of womanhood. (Laughter)
Q. Very disinterested of him, I’m sure. Thank
you, sir; that will sufi‘ice.


THE INQUEST 117
Counsel sitting down, Mr Redstall, for Sir Calvin,
rose to put a question or two to the witness :—
Q. You have never had reason, M. le Baron, to
regard the prisoner as a vindictive man?
A. Never. Impulsive, yes.
Q. And truthful?
A. Transparently so—to a childish degree.
Q. He would have a difficulty in dissembling?
A. An insuperable difficulty, I should think.
Dr Harding, of Longbridge, was the last witness
called. He deposed to his having been summoned
to the house on the afternoon of the murder, and
to having examined the body within an hour and
a half of its first discovery in the copse. The cause
of death was a gunshot wound in the back, from a
weapon fired at short range. Practically the whole
of the charge had entered the body in one piece.
Death must have been instantaneous, and must
have occurred, from the indications, some two hours
before his arrival; or, approximately, at about 3.30
o'clock. The wound could not possibly have been
self-inflicted, and the position of the gun precluded
any thought of accident. He had since, assisted by
Dr Liversidge of Winton, made a post-marten;
examination of the body. Asked if there was any-
thing significant in the deceased’s condition, his
answer was yes.
This completed the evidence, at the conclusion
of which, and of some remarks by the Coroner, the
jury, after a brief consultation among themselves,
brought in a. verdict that the deceased died from a


CHAPTER X
AFTERWARDS
THE Inquest was over, the provisional verdict
delivered, and all that remained for the time being
was to put the poor subject of it straightway to rest
under the leafless trees in Leighway churchyard.
It was done quietly and decently the morning after
the inquiry, with some of her fellow-servants attend—
ing, and Miss Kennett to represent the family; and
so was another blossom untimely fallen, and another
moral—a somewhat ghastly one now—furnished for
the reproof of the too hilarious Christian.
Audrey, coming back from the sad little ceremony,
met Le Sage walking by himself in the grounds.
The Baron looked serious and, she thought, dejected,
and her young heart warmed to his grief. She went
up to him, and, putting her hands on his sleeve, ‘1
am so sorry,’ she said, ‘so very, very sorry.’
He smiled at her kindly, then took her hand and
drew it under his arm.
‘Let us walk a little way, and talk,’ he said; and
they strolled on together. ‘Poor Louis !’ he sighed.
‘ It is not true, is it, Baron?’
‘I don’t think it is, my dear. But the difficulty
is to prove that it isn’t.’
I 19


m AFTERWARDS ‘-
‘How can it be done?’
‘At the expense only, I am afraid, of finding the
real criminal.’ '
“Have you any idea who that is?’
He laughed; actually laughed aloud.
‘Have I not had enough of cross-examination? ’
‘I could not help wondering why, as I have been
told, you confessed to the warning you gave the
poor girl.’
‘About the danger of tempting hot blood, and so
forth?’
‘Yes, that.’
‘It was the truth.’
‘Yes, but-—~—-’
He put a finger to his lips, gIancing at her with
some solemnity.
‘You were not going to say that it is my way to
repress the truth?’
‘No,’ answered the girl, with a little flush; ‘ but only
not to blurt it out unnecessarily.’
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘take my word for it that I
always speak the truth.’
‘0! I only meant to say—-—' she began ; but he
stopped her.
‘What would you do if a question were put to
you which, for some reason of expediency, or good-
feeling, you did not wish to answer? ’
‘I am afraid I should fib.’
‘Try my plan, and answer it with another ques-
tion. It saves a world of responsibility. That is a
secret I confide to you. An answer may often be


122 AFTERWARDS
and realise the more sympathetically the condition
of my poor Louis.’
'0, don‘t! It would kill me to be in prison.
Baron, you are going to stop with us, are you not,
until the trial is over?’
‘Both you and your father are very good. I may
have, however, to absent myself for a short time
presently. We will see. In the meanwhile I am
your grateful Baron.’ He took vast snuff, making
his eyes glisten, and somehow she liked him for it.
‘I shall be glad,’ she said, ‘when that detective
goes. One will feel more at peace from the squalor
of it all.’
He shook his head.
’ I do not think he means to go just yet.’
‘Not? Why not?’
‘Ah ! that is his secret.’
’But what can he have to do now?’
‘You must ask him, not me. All I can tell you
is that he considers his work here not yet finished;
in fact, from words I heard him let fall to your
father this morning, little more than just begun.’
‘ How very strange ! What can it mean?’
‘Let us hazard a conjecture that he is not wholly
satisfied with the evidence against my Louis. It
would be a happy thought for me.’
‘0, yes, wouldn’t it! But—I wonder.’
‘ What do you wonder?’
'If the question of that other figure on the hill
is puzzling him too.’ ‘ .
Le Sage laughed. ‘Well, we are permitted to


AFTERWARDS 123
Wonder,’ he said, and, humming a little tune, changed
the subject to one of topography, and the situation
of various places of interest in the neighbourhood.
Audrey was perplexed about him. That he felt,
and felt deeply, not only the unhappy position of
the prisoner, but the disturbance which he himself
had been the innocent means of introducing into
the house, she could not doubt; yet the patent
genuineness of this sentiment was unable, it seemed,
wholly to deprive him of that constitutional serenity,
even gaiety, habitual to his nature. It was as if he
either could not, or would not, realise the black
gravity of the affair; as if, almost, holding the
strings of it in his own hands, he could afford to
give this or that puppet a little tether before reining
it in to submit to his direction. And then she
thought how this impression was probably all due
to that unanswering trick of his which they had
just been discussing, and which might very well
seem to inform his manner with a significance it did
not really possess or intend. She left him shortly,
being called to some duty in the house, and he
continued his saunter alone, an aimless one appar-
ently, but gradually, after a time, assuming a definite
direction. It took him leisurely down the drive,
out by the lodge gates into the road as far as the
fatal wicket, and so once more into the Bishop’s
Walk. Going unhurried along the track, he sud-
denly saw the detective before him.
The Sergeant, bent over, it seemed, in an intent
observation of the ground, was fairly taken off his


124 AFTERWARDS
guard. He showed it, as he came erect, in a momen-
tary change of colour. But the little shock of
surprise was mastered as soon as felt : self-possession
is not long or easily yielded by one trained in self-
resourcefulness.
‘Were you wanting me, sir?’ he said ; ‘because,
if not——-—-’
‘Because, if not,’ took up the Baron, wagging
his head cheerfully, ‘ what am I doing here, interrupt-
ing you at your business?’
‘Well, sir, it’s you have said it, not I.’
‘So your business is not yet over, Sergeant?
Am I to borrow any hope for my man from
that?’
‘Was it the question, sir, you were looking for
me to answer?’
‘ Excellent ! My own way of meeting an awkward
inquiry.’
‘What do you mean by awkward?’
‘Why, you won’t answer me, of course. What
sensible detective would,~ and give away his case?
Still, I am justified in assuming that there is some-
thing in the business which, so far, does not satisfy
you; and I build on that.’
‘0! you do, do you?’ He rubbed his chin
grittily, pulling down his well-formed lower jaw,
and stood for a moment or two speculatively regard-
ing the face before him. ‘I wonder now,’ he said
suddenly, ‘if you would answer a question I might
put to you?’
' I’ll see, my friend. Chance it.’


AFTERWARDS ‘ -.\ 125
‘What made you so interested in this business
before even your man was charged on suspicion?’
‘You allude—-—?’
‘I allude to my finding you already on the spot
here when Icame down to make my own examination
of it.’ -
‘Surely I have no reason to hide what I have
already admitted in public. I was uneasy about
Louis.’
‘And wanted to look and see, perhaps, if he’d
left any evidences of his guilt behind him?’
‘ I admit I was anxious to assure myself that there
were no such evidences.’
‘And you did assure yourself?’
‘Quite.’
‘You found nothing suspicious ?’
‘Nothing whatever to connect with his presence
here.’
‘Found nothing at all?’
‘Yes, I did: I found this.’
The Baron took from a pocket a common horn
coat-button, and handed it to the other, who received
it and turned it over in silence.
‘I picked it up,’ said Le Sage, ‘near the tree
where the gun had stood.’
‘Why,’ said the detective, looking up rather
blackly, ’didn’t you produce this at the Inquest?’
'I never supposed for the moment it could be of
any importance.’
'H’mph !’ grunted the Sergeant, and after a
darkling moment, put the button into his own


CHAPTER XI
THE BARON DRIVES
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
ON the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened.
It became really entertaining. One did not know
whether to appear the more scandalised or amused.
On the one hand there was a certain satisfaction in
knowing that the last word was apparently not said
in what had seemed to be a perfectly straightforward
affair, on the other one’s sense of fitness had received
a severe blow. In short, the impeccable Cleghorn
had,been_ arrested, and was detained on suspicion.
I saw him go off in a fly in charge of a couple of
policemen, and never did hooked cod-fish on the
Dogger Bank look more gogglingly stupefied than he
over the amazing behaviour of the bait he had
swallowed. Sir Calvin stormed, and blasphemed,
and demanded to know if the whole household of
Wildshott was in a conspiracy to shame him and
tarnish his escutcheon; but his objurgations were
received very civilly and sensibly by the detective,
who explained that he must act according to his pro-
fessional conscience, that detention did not neces-
sarily mean conviction, or even indictment, and that
127


128 THE BARON DRIVES
where a sifting of the truth from the chaff imposed
precautionary measures, he must be free to take
them, or abandon his conduct of the case. Whereon
the wrathful General simmered down, and contented
himself only with requesting sarcastically a few
hours’ grace to settle his affairs, when it came to
be his turn to wear the official bracelets. \
And so, for the while, we were without a butler;
nor could one, on reviewing the evidence, be alto-
gether surprised, perhaps, over that deprivation.
Certainly Cleghorn’s account of his own movements
could not be considered wholly satisfying or con-
vincing, and he had admitted his lack of any witness
to substantiate it. It seemed incredible, with a
man of his substance and dignity; but is not the
history of crime full of such apparent contradictions?
After all, he had had the same provocation as the
other man, and had departed, apparently, the same
way to answer it; and, as to his moral condition
after the event, all testimony went to prove that it
was worse than that of the Gascon. Anyhow, this
new development, however it was destined to turn
out, added fifty per cent. to the excitement of
the business. Cleghorn! It seemed inexpressibly
comic.
As day followed day succeeding this terrific event,
however progressively other things might be assumed
to be moving, no ground was made in the matter of
tracing out the dead girl’s origin 'or connexions—~
and that in spite of the publicity given to the affair.
It was very strange, and I was immensely curious


THE BARON DRIVES 129
to know what could be the reason. Her portrait
was published in the Police Gazette, and exhibited
outside the various stations, but without result. I
saw a copy of it, and did not wonder. It had been
reproduced, enlarged, it seemed, from a tiny snapshot
group, taken by one of the grooms, in which she
had figured quite inconspicuously, and was like
nothing human. I spoke to Ridgway about it, and
he said it was the best that could be done, that no
other photograph of her could be traced, though
all the photographers in London- had been applied
to, and he owned frankly that there seemed some
mystery about the girl. I quite agreed with him,
and hinted that it was not the only one that remained
to be cleared up. He did not ask me what I meant,
but I saw, by his next remark, that he had under-
stood what was in my mind.
'Why don't you persuade him, sir,’ he said, ‘to
throw this business off his chest, and get back to
his old interests? He takes it too much to heart.’
It was to Hugo he referred, of course, and I did
not pretend to misapprehend him. To tell the truth,
I was a little smarting from my friend’s treatment
of me, and not in the mood to be indulgent of his
idiosyncrasies. I might have my suspicions as to
his involvement in a discreditable affair, but I had
certainly not made him a party to them, or even
touched upon the subject of the scandal to him save
with the utmost delicacy and consideration. If he
had chosen to give me his confidence then and
there, I would have honoured it ; as it was, since


r 30 THE BARON DRIVES
he showed no disposition to keep his promise to me
made on the day of the shoot, I considered myself
as much at liberty to canvass the subject as any one
else who had heard, and formed his own conclusions,
from the doctor’s evidence. It was true that, to
me at least, Hugh was doing his best to give his case
away by his behaviour. He seemed to make little
attempt to rally from the gloom with which the
tragedy had overcast him, but mooned about, silent
and aimless, as if for the moment he had lost all
interest in life. It was only that morning that,
moved by his condition, I had come at last to the
resolution to remind him of his promise, and get
him to share with me, if he would, the burden that
was crushing his soul. His answer showed me at
once, however, the vanity of my good intentions.
‘Thanks, old fellow,’ he had said; ‘but a good deal
has happened since then, and I’ve nothing to con-
fide.’ ,
Now, that might be true, in the sense that the
danger was past, and I could have forgiven his
reticence on the score of the loyalty it might imply
to a reputation passed beyond its own defence; but
he went on with some offensive remark about his
regret in not being able to satisfy my curiosity,
and ended with a suggestion which, however well-
' meaning it might have been, I considered positively
insulting.
'You are wasting yourself here, old boy,’ he said.
‘I’m not, truth to tell, in the mood for much, and
we oughtn’t to keep you. I feel that I got you


THE BARON DRIVES 131
here under false pretences; but I couldn’t know
what was going to happen, could I? and so I won’t
apologise. I think, I really think, that, for the
sake of all our feelings, it would be better if you
terminated your visit. You don’t mind my saying
so, do you?’
‘On the contrary, I mind very much,’ I answered.
‘Have you forgotten how, at considerable incon-
venience to myself, I responded at once to your
invitation, and came down at a moment’s notice?
The reason, as you ought to know, Hugh, was pure
regard for yourself and a desire to help, and that
desire is not lessened because I find you involved
in a much more serious business than I had antici-
pated.’
‘0, if you put it in that way ’—he began.
‘ I do put it in that way,’ I said, ‘and I don’t take
it very friendly of you that you should talk of denying
me a privilege which you were ready enough to
grant to that precious new Baron of yours—even
pressing him to stay.’
‘ It was not I who asked him,’ he murmured.
‘No,’ I insisted, ‘I came to be helpful, and I am
going to remain to be helpful. I don’t leave you
till I have seen this thing through.’
‘Well,’ he said very equivocally, ‘ I hope that will
be soon’-—and he left me to myself to brood over
his ingratitude. I was sore with him, I confess,
and my grievance made me more unguarded perhaps
in my references to him than otherwise I should
have been.
S.K. x


132 THE BARON DRIVES
‘I dare say he does,’ I answered the detective;
‘but after all, I suppose, it is his heart that is
affected.’_
He looked at me keenly.
‘You mean, sir?’
‘0! what you mean,’ I answered, ‘and that I can
see that you mean. What’s the good of our beating
about the bush? My friend wouldn’t be the first
young fellow of his class to have got into trouble
with a good-looking servant girl.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘no,’ in a hard sort of way. ‘They
are not the kind to bother about the consequences
to others where their own gratification is concerned.
I’ve knocked up against some pretty bad cases in
my time. So, that’s what you gather from the
medical report? ’
‘Partly from that; not wholly.’
‘Ah! I dare say now, being on such friendly
terms with Mr Kennett, you’ve been taken into his
confidence?’
‘Not directly; but in a way that invited me to
form my own conclusions. What then? It doesn’t
affect this case, does it, except in suggesting, a
possible motive for the crime on the part of some
jealous rival?’
‘That’s it. It’s of no consequence, of course-—
except to the girl herself—from any other point of
vrew.’
His assurance satisfied me, and, taken by his
sympathetic candour, I could not refrain from
opening my rankling mind to him a bit.


134 THE BARON DRIVES
‘Ah !’ said the detective, ‘he feels that, I dare say,
and it doesn’t help to cheer him up. Well, sir, I’d
get him out, if I was you—distract his thoughts, and
make him forget himself. He won’t mend what's
done by moping.’ .
‘All very well,’ I answered, ‘ to talk about making
him forget himself; but when I’m forced to affect
an ignorance of the very thing he wants to forget—if
we’re right—what am I to do? You might think
that after having had me down for the express
purpose of advising him—as I have no doubt was
the case—in this scrape, he would take me more
into his confidence, and not at least resent, as
seemingly he does, any allusion to it.’
‘Well, you see,’ said the detective, ‘from his point
of view the scrape’s ended for him, and so there
isn’t the same need for advice. But I’d keep at it,
if I was you, and after a time you may get him to
unburden himself.’
I had not much hope, after what had passed
between us; but I held the Sergeant’s recommenda-
tion in mind, and resolved to watch for and encourage
the least disposition to candour which might show
itself on my friend’s part. Perhaps I had gone a
little further than I should have in taking the
detective into my confidence about a scandal which,
after all, was no more than surmise; but it was so
patent to me that his judgment ran, and must run,
with my own, that it would have been simply idle
to pretend ignorance of a situation about which no
two men of intelligence could possibly have come


THE BARON DRIVES I 3 5
to differing conclusions. And, moreover, as Ridgway
himself had admitted, true or not, the incident had
no direct bearing on the case.
These days at Wildshott, otherwise a little event-
less for me as an outsider, found a certain mitigation
of their dullness in the suspicion still kept alive in
me regarding the Baron’s movements, and in the
consequent watchfulness I felt it my duty to keep
on them. I don’t know how it was, but I mistrusted
the man, his secretiveness, the company he kept,
the mystery surrounding his being. Who was he?
Why did he play chess for half-crowns? Why had
he come attended—as, according to evidence, never
before—by a ruffianly foreign man-servant, ready,
on the most trifling provocation, to dip his hands
in blood? That had been outside the programme,
no doubt : men who use dangerous tools must risk
their turning in their hands; but what had been
his purpose in bringing the fellow? Throat-cutting?
Robbery?——I was prepared for any revelation. U
Abduction, perhaps : the Baron was for ever driving
about the country with Audrey in the little governess
cart. In the meanwhile, following that miscarriage
of his master’s plans, whatever they might be,
Mr Louis Victor Cabanis had been had up before a
full bench of magistrates, and, the police asking for
time in which to compact their evidence, had been
remanded to prison for a fortnight. The delay gave
some breathing space for all cOncerned, and was, I
think, welcomed by every one but Hugo. I don’t
know by what passion of hatred of the slayer my


I36 THE BARON DRIVES
‘r
friend’s soul might have been agitated. Perhaps it was
that, perhaps mere nervous tension; but he appeared
to be in a feverish impatience to get the business
over. He did not say much about it; but one could
judge by his look and manner the strained torment
of his spirit. We were not a great deal together;
and mostly I had to make out my time alone as best
I could. Sometimes, in a rather pathetic way, he
would go and play chess with his father, a thing he
had never dreamed of doing in his normal state. I
used to wonder if the General had guessed the truth,
and how he was regarding it if he had. According
to all accounts, he had been no Puritan himself in
his younger days.
I have said that Audrey and the Baron were about
a good deal together. They were, and the knowledge
troubled me so much that I made up my mind to
warn her. .
‘You appear to find his company very enter-
..taining,’ I said to her one day. .
Audrey had a rather disconcerting way of respond-
ing to any unwelcome question with a wide-eyed
stare, which it was difficult to undergo quite stoically.
‘Do I?’ she said presently. ‘Why?’
‘You would hardly favour it so much otherwise,
would you?’
‘Perhaps not. You see I take the best there is.
I can’t help it if the choice is so limited.’
‘That’s one for me. But never mind. I’m con-
tent he should do the entertaining, if I can do the
helpful.’


THE BARON DRIVES 137
’To me, Mr Bickerdike? ’
‘ I hope so—a little. As Hugo’s friend I feel that
I ought to have some claim on your forbearance,
not to say your good will. I think at least that, on
the strength of that friendship, you need not resent
my giving you a word of advice on a subject where,
in my opinion, it’s wanted.’
‘I have a father and brother to look after me,
Mr Bickerdike.’
‘I’m aware of it, Audrey ; and also of the fact
that—for reasons sufficient of their own, no doubt—
they leave you pretty much as you like to go your
own way. It may be an unexceptionable way for
the most part; but the wisest of us may occasionally
go wrong from ignorance, and then it is the duty—I
dare say the thankless duty—of friendship to inter-
pose. You are very young, you know, and, one
can’t help seeing, rather forlornly situated—-—'
‘Will you please to leave my situation alone, and
explain what this is'all about?"
' Frankly, then—I offer this in confidence-I don’t
think ,the Baron very good company for you.’
‘Why not?’
'It’s a little diflicult to say. If you had more
knowledge of the world you would understand,
perhaps. There’s an air about him of the shady
Continental adventurer, whose purpose in society,
wherever he may seek it, is never a disinterested
purpose. He’s always, one may be sure, after
something profitable to himself—in one word, spoil.
What do we any of us know about the Baron, except


138 THE BARON DRIVES
that he plays chess for money and consorts with
doubtful characters? Your father knows, Ibelieve,
little more than I do, and that little for me is summed
up in the word “suspect.” One can’t say what
can be his object in staying on here when common
decency, one would have thought, seeing the trouble
he has been instrumental in causing, should have
dictated his departure; but, whatever his object,
it is not likely, one feels convinced, to be a harmless
one, and one cannot help fearing that he may be
practising on your young credulity with a view to
furthering it in some way. I wish you would tell
me—will you?—what he talks to you about.’
She laughed in a way which somehow nettled me.
‘Doesn’t it strike you,’ she said, ‘as rather cheek on
the part of one guest in a house to criticize the
behaviour of another to his hostess?’
‘0, if you take it in that way,’ I answered,
greatly affronted, ‘I’ve nothing more to say. Your
power of reading character is no doubt immensely
superior to mine.’
‘Well, I don’t think yours is very good,’ she
answered; ‘and I don’t see why the question of
common decency should apply to him more than
to another.’
‘Don’t you?’ I said, now fairly in a rage: ‘then
it’s useless to prolong the discussion further. This
is the usual reward of trying to interpose for good
in other people’s affairs.’
‘Some people might call it prying into them,’ She
answered, and I flung from her without another


THE BARON DRIVES I 39
word. I felt that I really hated the girl—intolerable,
pert, audacious young minx ; but my rebuff made
me more determined than ever to sift the truth out
of this questionable riddle, and face her insolent
assurance with it at the proper time.
I!-


CHAPTER XII
THE BARON WALKS
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
I WAS still in this resolved mood, when something
happened one night which confirmed my worst
suspicions, showing me how faithfully I had weighed
and measured the character of the man posing as a
benevolent guest in the house, the hospitality of which
he was designing all the time, in some mysteriously
villainous way, to abuse. On that night I had gone
to bed rather late, outstaying, in fact, the entire
family and household, whose early country ways
my degenerate London habits found sometimes
rather irksome. It was past midnight when I
turned out the lights in the billiard room, and,
taking a candle, made my way upstairs. There was
a double flight rising from a pretty spacious hall,
and both the Baron’s room and my own gave upon
the corridor which opened west from the first-floor
landing. As I passed his door I noticed that a
thread of light showed under it, proving him to be
either still awake, or fallen asleep with his candle
unextinguished. Which? For some unaccountable
reason a thrill of excitement overtook me. No
r40


THE BARON WALKS 14:
sound came from behind the door; the whole house
was dead quiet. I stooped to peer through the key-
hole—a naked light burning beside one’s bed is a
dangerous thing—but the key being in the lock
prevented my seeing anything. Soft-footed I went
on—but not to sleep. I determined to sit up and
listen in my own room for any possible developments.
I don’t know why it was, but my heart misgave me
that there was some rascality afoot, and that I had
only to wait patiently, and go warily, to unmask it.
And I was not mistaken.
Time passed—enough to assure the watcher at
last of my being long in bed and asleep—when I was
aware of a stealthy sound in the corridor. All my
blood leaped and tingled to the shock of it. I stole,
and put my ear to my own keyhole; and at once the
nature of the sound was made clear to me. He had
noiselessly opened his door and come out into the
passage, down which he Was stealthily creeping in
a direction away from me. I don’t know how I
recognized all this, but there is a language in pro-
found stillness. When silence is at its deathliest, one
can hear almost the way the earth is moving on its
axis. I waited until I felt that he had turned the
corner to the stairs, then, with infinite care, manipu-
lated, a fraction at a time, the handle of my own
door, and, slipping off my pumps, emerged and
followed, hardly breathing, in pursuit.
At the opening to the stairs I paused discreetly,
to give my quarry ‘ law,’ and, with sovereign caution,
peered round the corner—and saw him. He was in


142 THE BARON WALKS
his pyjamas, and carried an electric torch in his hand,
reminding me somehow, thus attired, of the actor
Pellissier, only a little squatter in his build. He
descended soundlessly, throwing the little beam of
light before him, and, reaching the foot of the
flight, turned to his left at the moment that I with-
drew my head. But I could see from my'eyrie the
way he was going by the course of the travelling
light, and I believed that he was making for Sir
Calvin’s study. And the next moment there came
to my ears the tiniest confirmatory sound—the
rrrinute bat-like screak of a rusty door-handle. I
had noticed that very day how the one in question
needed oiling, and the evidence left me no longer in
doubt. It was for the study he was bound, and
with what sinister purpose? That remained to see;
but I remembered the hidden safe in the room. I
had happened upon it once when left alone there.
A minute I paused, to allow him time to settle
to his business; then descended the stairs cat-footed.
At the newel post, crowned with a great carved
wyvem, the Kennett device, I stood to reconnoitre,
pressing my face to the wood and looking round it
with one eye. And at once I perceived that I
neither could nor need venture further. He stood,
sure enough, at the desk in the study, fairly revealed
in the diffused glow from his torch, whose little
brilliant facula was turned upon a litter of papers
that lay before him. But the door of the room—he
had left it so in his fancied security—stood wide
open, precluding any thought of a closer espionage


THE BARON WALKS 143
on my part. I could only stay where I was, con-
centrating all my vision on the event.
Suddenly he seemed to find what he sought, and
I saw a paper in his hand. Something appeared to
tell me at the same moment that he was about to
return, and I yielded and—judging discretion, for
the occasion, to be the better part of valour—went
up the stairs on my hands and feet as fast as I
could paddle, in a soft hurry to regain my room
and extinguish the light before so much as the
ghost of a suspicion could occur to him. It would
not have served my purpose to face him then and
there, and I had learnt as much as for the time
being I needed. To have detected our worthy friend
in a secret midnight raid on his host’s papers was
proof damning enough of the correctness of my
judgment.
Listening intently, I heard him re-enter his room,
as he had left it, with supreme caution. I was
feeling a good deal agitated, and the moisture stood '
on my forehead. How was I to proceed; what
course to take? My decision was not reached until
after much debating within myself. It might be
guided by the General’s chance assertion that some
important document had been lost or mislaid in his
room, in which case I must act at once; but if, on
the other hand, he made no such statement, it might
very well be days or weeks before his loss were
brought home to him. In that event I would say
nothing about my discovery, trusting to lead the
criminal on, through his sense of immunity, to


144 THE BARON WALKS
further depredations. By then I might have
acquired, what at present I lacked, some insight
into the nature and meaning of his designs, holding
the key to which I could face him with any discovery.
No, I would not tell Sir Calvin as yet. In such a
case premature exposure might very easily prove
more futile than unsuspicion itself. The keystone
being wanting, all one’s structure might fall to pieces
at the first test.
But what a stealthy villain it was ! As I recovered,
it was to plume myself a little, I confess, on my
circumventing such a rogue. I would have given
a good deal to know what was the character of the
paper he had stolen. Hardly a draft, for such
would not have been left about, not to speak of
the crude futility of such a deed. No, there was
some more subtle intention behind it—blackmail
perhaps—but it was useless to speculate. He had
not at least touched the safe, and that was so much
to be thankful for.
Now I came to my resolution. I would speak to
Sir Calvin on the subject when the moment was
ripe, and not before: and then, having so far justified
my remaining on as his guest, I would go. In the
meanwhile I would make it my especial and indi-
vidual province to expose this rascal, and thereby
refute Audrey’s detestable calumny of me as a sort
of unpleasant eavesdropper and hanger-on. Per-
haps she would learn to regret her insult when she
saw in what fashion I had retaliated on it.


CHAPTER XIII
ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE
WEDNESDAY of the third week following the Inquest
was appointed for the magisterial inquiry, and
during the interval Sergeant Ridgway was busily
occupied, presumably in accumulating and piecing
together various evidence. Of what it consisted no
one but himself knew, nor did it appear whether or
not its trend on the whole was favourable or disas-
trous to the unhappy prisoner, at the expense pos-
sibly of Cleghorn, or possibly to the complete
exculpation of that injured man. The detective
kept his own counsel, after the manner of his kind;
and if any had thought to extract from the cover of
that sealed book a hint of its contents, no reassuring
message at least could have been gathered from its
unlettered sombreness. But nobody asked, fearful
of being thought to profane the majestic muteness
of the oracle; and the labouring atmosphere lowered
unlightened as the days went on. Even M. le Baron,
most individually concerned in the fate of his
henchman, made no attempt to plumb the offic'al
profundity, and that in spite of his curiosity about
most things. He seemed, indeed, oddly passive
about the whole business, never referring to it but
us


I46 ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE
indirectly, and, so far as appeared, taking no steps
to interview the prisoner or supply him with the
means of defence. If any sneering allusion was
made to this insensibility by Mr Bickerdike or
another, Audrey, were she present, would be hot
in her' friend’s vindication. It may have been that,
in the course of their queer association, he had
confided to her sufficient reasons for his behaviour;
Old Viv, on the other hand, saw in her attitude
only proof of the process of corruption he had
suspected. But, whatever the case, cheerfully
detached the Baron remained, asking no questions
of the detective, and taking chess and life with as
placid a gaiety as if no Louis Victor Cabanis lay
caged a few miles away, awaiting his examination
on a charge of wilful murder.
Whether it were in some apology for a darkness
which he could not afford to illuminate, or to avoid
teasing inquiries, or for any other reason, the Sergeant
came gradually to give the house less and less of his
company. He seemed rather to avoid contact with
its inmates, and his manner, when he rarely
appeared, was sombre and preoccupied. No one,
perhaps, felt this withdrawal more than the house-
keeper, Mrs Bingley, with whom he had been accus-
tomed to take his meals, and who had found him,
when once her awe of his office was overcome, a most
entertaining guest, full of intelligence, rich in
anecdote, and deeply interested in everything
appertaining to Wildshott, from its family portraits
and accumulated collections to the beauty of its


ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE I47
grounds and of the country in which it lay situated.
‘ It must have been,’ she said one day to her master,
to whom she was lamenting the Sergeant’s prolonged
absences, ‘such a relief to a man of his occupations
to be able to forget himself, even for an hour or two,
in such noble surroundings. But perhaps he wants
to show us that he’s taking no advantage of the
attentions paid him, lest we might think he was
trying to worm himself into our confidence.’
‘Or can it be that he has already found out from
you all that he wants to know?’ observed Le Sage,
who was present on the occasion, with a humorous
look.
‘I’m sure, sir,’ said Mrs Bingley with asperity,
‘that he is incapable of the meanness. If you had
heard him express the sentiments that I have you
would never hint such a charge. No, there is some
delicacy of feeling, take my word for it, at the
bottom of this change in him; and I can’t help ,
fearing that it means he has found out something
fresh, something even more distressful to the family,
which makes him chary of accepting its hospitality.
I only hope--—— ’ she paused, with a little sigh.
‘You’re thinking of Cleghorn ! ’ broke in her
master. ‘Damme! I’ll never believe in respecta-
bility again if that man’s done it.’
‘God forbid !’ said the housekeeper. ‘But I wish
Sergeant Ridgway would appear more, and more in
his old way, when he does honour me with his
company.’
Her wish, however, was not to be fulfilled. The
s.x. r.


ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE 149
‘to give to a view like this. People of my profession
don’t get many such.’
‘ I suppose not,‘ answered Le Sage, ‘nor of a
good many other professions. Proprietary views,
like incomes, are very unfairly distributed, don’t
you think?’
‘Well, that’s so, no doubt; and among the wrong
sort of people often enough.’
Le Sage laughed.
‘ Are you one of the right sort of people, Sergeant? ’
‘I won’t go so far as to say that, sir, but I will go
so far as to say that, if I owned this property, I’d
come to feast my eyes on it here more often than
what Sir Calvin does.’ .
The Baron, without moving his head, took in the
face of the speaker. He saw a glow, a subdued
passion in it which interested him. What spirit
of romance, to be sure, might lurk unsuspected
under the hard official rind. Here was the last man
in the world whom one would have credited with
a sense of beauty, and he was wrought to emotion
by a landscape !
‘You talk,’ said he, 'of your profession not afford-
ing you many such moments as this. Now, to my
mind, it seems the profession for a man romantically
inclined.’
‘Does it, indeed, sir?’ -
‘Why, don't you live in a perpetual atmosphere
of romance? Think of the mysteries which are
your daily food.’
‘That’s it—my daily food, and lodging too. The


I 50 ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE
men who pull on the ropes for a living don’t think
much, or see much, of the fairy scene they’re setting.
That’s all for the prosperous folks in front.’
‘You’d rather be one of them?’
‘Which would you rather, sir—be a police-officer,
or the owner of an estate like this? If such things
were properly distributed, as you say, there’d be no
need perhaps for police-officers at all. You read
the papers about a case like ours here, and you see
only a romance : we, whose necessity puts us behind
the scenes, see only, in nine cases out of ten, the
dirty mishandling of Fate. Give a man his right
position in the world, and he’ll commit no crimes.
That’s my belief, and its founded on some experience.’
‘ I dare say you’re right. It’s comforting to know,
in that case, that my valet has always fitted into
his place like a stopper into a bottle.’
The detective stood silent a moment; then turned
on the speaker with a queer enigmatic look.
‘Well, I wouldn’t lose heart about him, if I was
you,’ he said drily.
‘That’s good !’ said Le Sage. ‘I can leave him
_ with a tolerably safe conscience then.’
‘ ‘What, sir—you’re going away before the
inquiry?’
‘ I must, I am afraid. I have business in London
which I can no longer postpone.’
‘But how about your evidence?’
‘After what you have said, cannot you afford to
do without it?’
The detective considered, frowning and rubbing


ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE I 5 1:
his chin; then said simply, ‘Very well,’ and made
a movement to go.
They went down the garden together, and parted
at the door in the wall. This was on the Saturday.
On the following Monday the oflicer appeared for
the last time to arrange for his witnesses on the
Wednesday ensuing. He carried his handbag with
him, and intimated that it was not his purpose to
return again before the event. They were all—Mrs
Bingley perhaps excepted—glad to see the last of
him, and the last of what his presence there implied,
and welcomed the prospect of the one clean day
which was to be theirs before their re-meeting in
Court.
The Sergeant’s manner at his parting was re-
strained, and his countenance rigidly pale. Sir
Calvin, receiving his formal thanks for the courtesy
shown him, remarked upon it, and asked him
if he were feeling overdone.
‘No, sir,’ he replied: ‘never better, thank you.
I hope you yourself may never feel worse than I do
at this moment.’
Something in his way of saying it, some significance ‘
of tone, or look, or emphasis, seemed to cast a sudden
chill upon the air. The General turned away with
a slightly wondering, puzzled expression, and
shrugged his shoulders as if he were cold. There
were one or two present who remembered that
gesture afterwards, identifying it with some vague
sensation in themselves.
That same night the Baron caused a considerable


r 52 ACCUMULATIN G EVIDENCE
stir by announcing his intention of leaving them
on the morrow. They all had something to say in
the way of surprise and remonstrance except Mr
Bickerdike, and he judiciously held his tongue.
Even Hugo showed a certain concern, as a man might
who felt, without quite realizing what it was he
felt, the giving way of some moral support on which he
had been unconsciously leaning. He looked up and
asked, as the detective had asked, ‘What about
your evidence?‘
‘It is said to be immaterial,’ answered Le Sage. ‘ I
am speaking on the authority of the Sergeant himself.’
Hugh said no more; but he eyed the Baron in a
wistful, questioning way. He was in a rather
moving mood, patently looking forward to Wednes—
day’s ordeal with considerable nervousness and
apprehension, and not altogether without reason.
The Inquest had been trying enough; yet that had
been a mere local affair, conducted amid familiar
surroundings. To stand up in public Court and
repeat, perhaps be forced to amplify, the evidence
he had already given was a far different and more
agitating prospect. What was in his mind, who
could know? There was something a little touching
in the way he clung to his family, and in the slight
embarrassment they showed over his unaccustomed
attentions. Audrey, falling in for her share, laughed,
and responded with only a bad grace; but the glow
in her eyes testified to feelings not the less proud
and exultant because their repression had been so
long a necessity with her. ‘


ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE 153
Coming upon the Baron in the hall by-and-by,
as he was on his way upstairs to prepare for the
morrow’s journey, she stopped and spoke to him.
‘Can you manage without a valet, Baron?’
‘As I have managed a hundred times before, my
dear.’
‘Must you really go?’
'I must, indeed.’
‘Leaving Louis to shift for himself?’
'I leave him in the hands of Providence.’
‘Yes, but Providence is not a lawyer.’
‘ Heaven forbid ! God, you know, like no lawyer,
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb—d brebis tondue
Dieu mesure le vent. That is a good French proverb,
and I am going to France in the faith of it.’
‘But you will come back again?’
‘Yes, I will come back. It will be all right about
Louis—you will see.’
She did not answer. She had been holding him
by the lapels of his coat, running her thumbs down
the seams, and suddenly, feeling a little convulsive
pressure there, he looked up in her face and saw that
thick tears were running down her cheeks. Very
softly but resolutely then he, captured the two
wandering hands and held them between his own.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘my dear, I understand.
But listen to this—have confidence in your friend
the Baron.’
And on the morrow morning he left, accompanied
by Mr Vivian Bickerdike’s most private and most
profound misgivings. That he was going to London


I 54 ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE
on some business connected with the stolen document
was that gentleman’s certain conviction. But what
was he to do? Expose at once, or wait and learn
more? On the whole it were better to wait, per-
haps: the fellow was coming back—he had said
so, and to the same unconsciousness of there being
one on his track who at the right moment could
put a spoke in his nefarious wheel.
He was still considering the question, when some-
thing happened which, for the time being, put all
considerations but one out of his head. By the
first post on the very morning of the inquiry he
received, much to his astonishment, a snbjuena bind-
ing him to appear and give evidence in Court. About
what? If any uneasy suspicion in his mind answered
that question, to it was to 'be attributed, no doubt,
his rather white conscience-troubled aspect as he
presently joined the party waiting to be motored
over to the Castle in the old city where the case
was to be tried.


CHAPTER XIV
THE EXPLOSION
THE Magistrates assembled to hear the case were
four in number, two of them being local magnates
and personal friends of Sir Calvin, who was accorded
a seat on the Bench. They took their places at eleven
o’clock, the Court being then crowded to its utmost
capacity. The case stood first on the list, and no
delay was experienced in opening it. As before,
Mr Fyler appeared for the police, and Mr Redstall
for Sir Calvin. The prisoner was undefended.
' At the outset of the proceedings a surprise awaited
the public. The prisoner having been brought up
from the cells beneath the Court, and placed in the
dock, Sergeant Ridgway asked permission to speak.
Addressing the Bench, he said that since the inquiry
before the Coroner, which had ended, as their Wor-
ships were aware, in a verdict by the jury of wilful
murder against the prisoner Louis Victor Cabanis,
facts had come to his knowledge which entirely
disposed of the theory of the prosecution, proving,
as they did, an unquestionable alibi in the prisoner's
favour. Under these circumstances he proposed to
offer no evidence against the accused, who, with
their Worships’ permission, would be discharged.
155


I 56 THE EXPLOSION
Smart in aspect, concise in phrase, the detective
stood up and made his avowal, and again, though
in an auguster atmosphere, with a marked impres-
sion upon his hearers. Some of them had already
encountered him, no doubt, and were prepared to
concede to his every statement the force and value
of an official fiat. .
‘Very well, Sergeant,’ was the reply, while the
public wondered if they were going to be defrauded
of their feast of sensation, or if some spicier substi-
tute were about to be placed before them. They
were not kept long in suspense.
Following the Sergeant’s declaration, brief evidence
was given by Andrew Marle, shepherd, and Nicholas
Penny, thatcher. The former deposed that on the
afternoon in question he was setting hurdles on the
uplands above Leighway, at a point about three
miles north-east of Wildshott Park as the crow
flies, when he saw prisoner. That was as near three
o’clock as might be. Prisoner had stood watching
him for a few minutes while exchanging a remark
or two, and had then gone on in a northerly direction.
Penny gave evidence that, on the same afternoon,
at three-thirty, he was working in the garden of his
cottage at Milldown, two miles beyond the point
mentioned by the last witness, when prisoner came
by and asked him the time. He gave it him, and the
prisoner thanked him and continued his way, still
bearing north by east. until he was out of sight. He
was going leisurely, both witnesses affirmed, and
there appeared nothing peculiar about him except


158 THE EXPLOSION
his naive declaration. He was then given to under-
stand that he was discharged and might go, and
with a joyous expression he stepped from the dock and
vanished likea jocund goblin down the official trap.
Counsel for the prosecution then rose, and stated
that, the charge against Cabanis being withdrawn,
it was proposed to put in his place Samuel Cleghorn,
against whom, although no definite charge had as
yet been preferred by the police, a prima facie case
existed. His examination, and the examination of
the witnesses concerned, would probably prove a
lengthy affair, and he asked therefore that the case
might be taken next on the list. The justices con-
curring, Samuel Cleghorn was brought up from the
cells, and stood to undergo his examination.
Confinement and anxiety, it was evident, had told
upon the prisoner, whose aspect since the Inquest
had undergone a noticeable change. He looked
limp and deteriorated, like a worn banknote, and
his lips were tremulous. Respectability in a sides-
man caught 'pilfering from the plate could not have
appeared more self-conscious of its fall. He bowed
deferentially to the Bench, with a slight start on
seeing his master seated there, and, making some
ineffectual effort to appear at ease, clasped his plump
White hands before him and fixed a glassy eye on
the wall. The public, reassured, settled down, like
a music-hall audience to a new exciting ‘turn,’ the
Bench assumed its most judicial expression, and
Counsel, adjusting its wig for the fray, proceeded
to open the case.
A


THE EXPLOSION 159
It is not proposed to recapitulate in extenso the
evidence already given. In bulk and essentials
the two hardly differed, the only marked changes
being in the order of the witnesses examined, and
in the absence from their list of the Baron Le Sage,
who, however, inasmuch as his sole use had been to
testify to the character of his servant, was no longer
needed. There was the same reference to the
insuperable difficulty—experienced and still unsur-
mounted—in tracing out the deceased’s connexions,
the same statement by Sergeant Ridgway as to the
fruitlessness of the measures taken, and the same
request that, in default of further information, such
evidence of identification as was at present available
should be provisionally accepted. The Bench agreed,
the detective sat down, and Counsel rose once more,
this time with a formidable eye to business.
Mr Fyler began by reconstructing, so far as was
possible, the history of the crime from the evidence
already adduced, into the particulars of which it is
unnecessary to follow him. In summarising the
known facts, he made no especial point, it was
observed, of bringing them to bear on the presump-
tive guilt of the prisoner, but used him rather as a
convenient model or framework about which to
shape his story. Indeed, when he sat down again,
it might have been given as even odds whether the
conviction or acquittal of the accused man was the
thing foreshadowed. And what then? After two
attempts, was the whole business to end in a fiasco?
Incredible! Some one must have killed the girl.


160 THE EXPLOSION
The very atmosphere of the Court, moreover, fateful,
ominous—derided such a conclusion. ‘Attend and
wait !’ it seemed to whisper.
Counsel was no sooner down than he was up
again, and calling now upon his witnesses to appear.
They came one by one, as summoned—Mrs Bingley,
Jane Ketchlove, Jessie Ellis, Kate Vokes, Mabel
Wheelband; and there the order was broken. The
examination of these five was in all essentials a
replica of that conducted at the Inquest, but, to the
observant, with one significant note added. For
the first time Counsel showed, as it were, a corner
of the card up his sleeve by suggesting tentatively,
insinuatively, d propos the question of a guilty
intrigue, that one or other of them might possibly
have her suspicions as to the identity of the second
party implicated in it. The hint was disowned as
soon as rejected; but it had left a curious impression
here and there of more to come, of its having only
been proffered to open and prepare the way to
evidence, the stronger, perhaps, for some such moral
corroboration. Not one of the women, however,
would own to the subtle impeachment, and the
question for the moment was dropped.
But it was dropped only tactically, in accordance
with a pre-arranged plan, as became increasingly
apparent with the choice of the next witness. This
was Dr Harding, who had made the post-mortem
examination, and whose evidence repeated exactly
what he had formerly stated. It added, moreover,
a detail which, touching upon a question of time,
I


THE EXPLOSION I61
showed yet a little more plainly which way the wind
was setting; and it included _an admission, or
correction, no less suggestive in its import. The
question was asked witness: ‘At the Inquest you
stated, I believe, that death must have occurred at
3.30 o’clock, or thereabouts. ‘ Is that so?
A. I said ‘ approximately,’ judging by the indica-
tions. .
Q. Just so. I am aware that, in these cases, a
certain latitude must be granted. It might then, in
fact, have occurred somewhat earlier or somewhat
later?
A. Yes. By preference, somewhat earlier.
Q. How much earlier?
Witness, refusing to submit to any brow-beating
on the quation, finally, at the end of a highly
technical disputation, conceded a half hour as the
extreme limit of his approximation; and with that
the matter ended. As he stepped from the box
the name of a new Witness—~a witness not formerly
included in the inquiry—was called, and public
interest, already deeply stimulated, grew intensified.
Margaret Hopkins, widow, deposed on oath. She
was landlady of the Brewer’s Dray inn at Long-
bridge. The inn was situated to the east of the
town and a little outside it on the Winton Road.
One afternoon, about five weeks ago, a lady and
gentleman had called at her inn, wanting tea, and
a, private room to drink it in. They were shown
up to a chamber on the first floor, where the gentle-
man ordered a fire to be lighted. ‘ Tea was brought


162 THE EXPLOSION
them by witness herself, and they had remained
there shut in a long time together—a couple of
hours perhaps. They were very affectionate with
one another, and had gone away, when they did go, ’
very lovingly arm in arm. The gentleman was Mr
Hugo Kennett, whom she now saw in Court, and
whom she had recognised for the male stranger at
once. The name of the lady accompanying him she
had had no means of ascertaining, but her companion
had addressed her as Annie.
Mr Redstall, rising to cross-examine witness, put
the following questions :—
Q. Will you swear to Mr Kennett having been
the gentleman in question ?
A. Yes, on my oath, sir.
Q. You already knew Mr Kennett by sight,
eh?
A. No, I did not, sir.
before, and have never seen him since till to-day.
I hadn’t been settled in Longbridge not a two-month
at the time he come.
I had never seen him ‘
Q. You say the two appeared to be on affectionate 1
terms. On companionable terms would perhaps be
the truer expression, eh? ,
A. As you choose, sir, if that means behaving
like lovers together. (Laughter)
Q. What do you mean by like lovers? They
would hardly have made a display of their sentiments
before you.
A. Not intentional perhaps, sir; but I come
upon them unexpected when I brought in the tea;
J
l


164 THE EXPLOSION
assume, if you like, that the downs and your beha-
viour were equally open. You were setting snares,
that’s enough. Did anything suddenly occur to
interrupt you at your task?’
A. Yes, it did.
Q. What was that?
A. The sound of a gun going off.
Q. From what direction?
A. From down among the trees near the
road.
. Quite so. Now will you tell the Bench
exactly what time it was when you heard that
sound?
The time when I started to go home.
About three o’clock or a little after?
That’s it.
You state that on your oath?
. Yes, I do.
It was as if a conscious tremor, like the excitement
of many hearts leaping in unison, passed through
the Court, dimly foretelling some approaching crisis.
The examination was resumed 1-—
Q. What makes you so certain of the time?
A. The stable clock had just gone three.
Q. And, following on the sound of the gun, you
left your snare-setting and made for home?
A. Aye.
Q. For what reason?
A. Because I thought they might be working
round my way.
Q. Whom do you mean by ‘they? '
soses


THE EXPLOSION :65
A. The party as was out shooting. I made sure
at first it come from them.
Q. What made you alter your opinion?
A. I see them, as I went up the hill, afar off nigh
Asholt wood.
Q. Now, tell me: why didn’t you mention all
this at the Inquest? '
A. Because I weren’t asked.
Q. Or was it because you feared having to confess
to what made you bolt, and from what occupation,
when the shot startled you? (No answer.) Very
well. Now attend to this. You have heard it pro-
pounded, or assumed, that the murder took place
some time between 3.15 and 4 o’clock. Do you still
adhere to your statement that it was just after
three when you heard the sound of the gun?
Aye.
You are on your oath, remember.
All right, master.
And you adhere to it?
Yes, I do.
. That is enough. You can stand down.
A sibilation, a momentary rustling and shuffling,
as on the close of an engrossing sermon when tension
is relaxed and the hymn being prepared for, followed
the dismissal of the witness. A few glanced fur-
tively, hardly realizing yet why they were moved
to do so, at a rigid soldierly figure,. seated upright
and motionless beside the justices on the Bench.
But the sense of curious perplexity was hardly
theirs when the next witness was claiming their
Q>Q>©s


I 66 THE EXPLOSION
attention. This was Daniel Groome, the gardener,
whose evidence, generally a repetition of what he
had formerly stated, was marked by a single amend-
ment, the significance of which he himself hardly
seemed to realize. It appeared as follows :—
Q. You stated before the Coroner that this
louder shot heard by you occurred at atime which
you roughly estimated to be anything between three
and half-past three o’clock. Is that so?
A. No, sir.
Q. What do you mean by ‘no’?
A. I’ve thought it over since, sir, and I’ve come
to the conclusion that my first impression was
nearer the correct one.
Q. Your impression, that is to say, that the shot
was fired somewhere about three o’clock?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What is your reason for this change of
opinion?
A. Because I remembered afterwards, sir, having
heard the clock in the master’s study strike the
quarter past. I had gone round by then to the
back of the house.
Q. And you had heard the shot fired while at
the front?
A. Yes, sir. .
This witness was stiffiy cross-examined by Mr
Redstall, who sought to shake his evidence on the
grounds that he was, consciously or unconsciously,
seeking to adapt it to what was expected of him.
But the poor fellow’s honesty was so transparent,


THE EXPLOSION I67
and his incomprehension of the gravity of his
statement so ingenuous, that the only result of his
harrying was to increase the impression of his dis-
interested probity. He said what he believed to be
the truth, and he adhered to it.
He went, and the usher, tapping with his wand
on the floor, called in a loud voice on Vivian
Bickerdike to appear and give evidence.
A famous writer has asserted that there are two
kinds of witness to whom lawyers take particular
exception, the reluctant witness and the too-willing
witness. To these may be added a third, the
anxious witness, who, being oppressed with a sense
of responsibility of his position, fears at once to
say too much or too little, and ends by saying both.
Bickerdike entered the box an acutely anxious
witness. The trend of some recent evidence had
left him in no doubt as to the lines on which his own
examination was destined to run, and he foresaw
at once the use to which a certain conversation of
his with the detective was going to be put. Now
it was all very well to hold the Sergeant guilty in
this of a gross breach of confidence, but his conscience
would not thereby allow him to maintain himself
blameless in the matter. He should have known
quite well, being no fool, that a detective did not
ask questions or invite communications from a
purely altruistic point of view, and that the apparent
transparency of such a man’s sentiments was the
least indication of their depth. By permitting
pique a little to obscure that fact to him he had
4


168 THE EXPLOSION
done his friend—for whom he had a real, very warm
regard—a disservice, to which he had now, in that
friend’s hearing, to confess. So far, then, it only
remained to him to endeavour to repair, through
his sworn evidence, the mischief to which he had
made himself a party.
But could any reparation stultify now a certain
issue, to which-——he had seen it suddenly, aghast—
that too-open candour of his had been seduced into
contributing? What horrible thing was it which
was being approached, threatened, in the shadow
of his friend’s secret? The thing was monstrous,
damnable; yet he could not forget how it had
appeared momentarily adunrbrated to himself on
his first hearing of the murder. But he had rejected
the thought with incredulous scorn then, as he would
reject it now. Of whatever sinful weakness Hugh
might be capable, a crime so detestable, so cruel,
was utterly impossible to him. He swore it in his
heart; but his faith could not relieve him of the
weight of responsibility which went with him into
the witness box. It was like a physical oppression,
and he seemed to bend under it. Counsel took the
witness’s measure with a rolling relish of the lips,
as he prepared, giving a satisfied shift to his gown,
to open his inquisitions :—
Q. You are on very intimate terms, I believe,
Mr Bickerdike, with Sir Calvin and his family?
A. With Sir Calvin’s permission, I think I may
say yes.
Q. You have seen the prisoner before?


THE EXPLOSION I69
A. Many times.
Q. Could you, as a guest, speak to his general
character?
A. It has always appeared to me quite unexcep-
tionable.
Q. Not a violent man?
A. O! dear, no.
Q. At dinner, on the night before the murder,
did you notice anything peculiar about him?
A. He appeared to me to be upset about some-
thing. -
Q. And you wondered, perhaps—having only
arrived that afternoon, as I understand—what
domestic tribulation could have discomposed so
stately a character? (Langhter.)
A . I may have. I had always considered Cleghorn
as immovable an institution as the Monument.
The laughter which greeted this sally appeared
to reassure witness somewhat, as did the unexpected
lines on which his rather irregular examination
seemed to be developing. But his confidence was of
short duration. The very next question brought
him aware of the true purpose of this preliminary
catechism, which was merely to constitute a pretext
for getting him into the witness-box at all.
Q. Was your arrival that afternoon, may I
ask, in response to a long invitation or a sudden
call?
A. (With a sudden stifiening of his shoulders, as
if rallying his energies to meet an ordeal foreseen.) A
sudden call. I came down in response to a letter


170 THE EXPLOSION
from my friend Mr Hugo Kennett, inviting me to
a few days’ shooting.
Q. Mr Hugo Kennett is a particular friend of
yours, is he not?
A. We have known one another a long time.
Q. Intimate to that degree, I mean, that you
have few secrets from one another?
A. That may be.
Q. And can depend upon one another in any
emergency?
A. I hope so.
Q. There was a question of emergency, perhaps,
in this case?
A. I am bound to say there often is with Mr
Kennett.
Q. Will you explain what you mean by that?
A. I mean—I hope he will forgive my saying
it—that his imagination is a little wont to create
emergencies which nothing but his friends’ immediate
advice and assistance can overcome. He is apt to
be in the depths one moment and on the heights
the next. He is built that way, that’s all.
Q. Was this a case of an emergency due to his
imagination?
A. I won’t go quite so far as to say that.
Q. Then there was really a reason this time for
his having you down at short notice?
A. I may have thought so.
Q. We will come to that. Had he mentioned
the reason in his letter to you? ’
A. No. The letter only said that he badly


THE EXPLOSION - I71
wanted ‘bucking,’ and asked me to come down at
once.
Q, He gave no explanation?
Kindly say what you mean by ‘somewhat.’
I mean that, while he told me nothing definite
about his reason for having me down, he did seem
to hint that there was trouble somewhere.
Q. What were his exact words?
A. I can’t remember.
Q. Were they to the effect that he was in a
devil of a fix with a girl, and could only see one way
out of it? (Sensation)
A. (Aghast) Nothing of the sort. Now I
recall, he described himself as sitting on a barrel
of gunpowder, smoking a cigarette and waiting for
the explosion that was to come.
Q. Thank you. Another 'effort or two, Mr
Bickerdike, and your memory may need no refresh-
ing. Did you find your friend’s manner, now, as
strange as his talk?
A. It might often have seemed strange on such
occasions to those who did not know him.
Q. Answer my question, please.
A. (Reluctantly) Well, it was strange.
Q. Stranger than you had ever known it to be
before?
A. None whatever.
Q. In the letter, or afterwards when you met?
A. No.
Q. You found him in an uncommunicative mood?
A. Somewhat.
Q.
A.


I72 THE EXPLOSION
A. Perhaps so.
Q. I suggest that it was wild and reckless/to a
degree—the manner of a man who had got himself
into a hopeless scrape, and saw no way out of it
but social and material ruin?
A. It was very strange: I can say no more.
Q. Would you have considered his state compa-
tible with that of a young man of good position
and prospects, who had entangled himself with a
girl greatly his social inferior, and was threatened
by her with exposure unless he, in the common
phrase, made an honest woman of her?
Mr Redstall rising to object, the Bench ruled that
the question was inadmissible. It had created,
however, a profound impression in Court, which
from that moment never abated. Counsel, accepting
their worships’ decision, resumed :—
Q. Had you any reason to suspect a woman in
the case? _
It was pure conjecture on my part.
Then you did entertain such a suspicion?
Not at that time. Later perhaps.
After the murder?
Yes, after the murder.
When?
. The moment I heard it had been committed.
I was told by a groom.
Q. About the woman or the murder?
A. About the murder.
Q. When was that?
A. When I returned from shooting that day.
ssesess


THE EXPLOSION 173
Q. You returned alone, I believe?
A. Yes.
Q. Mr Kennett having left you shortly before
three o’clock?
A. I fancy about that time.
Q. And at the moment you heard there had
been this murder committed, that conjecture, that
association between your friend and the murdered
girl came into your mind?
A. It was wholly preposterous, of course. I
dismissed the idea the moment it occurred to me.
Q. You dismissed the idea of Mr Kennett's
having been involved with the girl?
A. No, of his having committed the murder.
(Sensation)
Q. But you still thought the entanglement
possible?
A. I thought it might account for his state.
Q. ‘ Why did the first idea, associating Mr Kennett
with the crime, occur to you? (Witness hesitating,
the question was repeated.)
A. (In a low voice.) 0! just because of some-
thing—nothing important—that had happened at
the shoot—that, and the extraordinary state I had
found him in.
Q. Will you tell the Bench what was this unim-
portant something that happened at the shoot?
A. (With emotion.) It was nothing—probably
my fancy—and he denied it utterly.
Q. Now, Mr Bickerdike, if you please?
A. I thought that in—in pulling his gun through


174 THE EXPLOSION
a particular hedge that morning, he might have
done it with less risk to himself, that was all.
Q. You suspected him, in short, of wanting to
kill himself under the guise of an accident?
A. I swear he never admitted it. I swear he
denied it.
Q. And you accepted his denial so implicitly
that you asked him to go home, leaving his gun
with the keeper. Is that not so?
A. Yes.
Q. He refused?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. Did not much the same thing occur again,
later in the afternoon?
A. Nothing of the sort at all. Shortly before
three he came to me, and said he was no good and
was going home.
Q. What did he mean by ‘no good’? No good
in life?
A. No good at shooting.
Q. And again you asked him to leave his gun
with you?
A. No, I did not—not directly, at least.
Q. Please explain what you mean by ‘not
directly’?
A. He may have understood what was in my
mind. I can’t say. He just laughed, and called
out that he wasn’t going to shoot himself, and
wasn’t going to let me make an ass of him; and with
that he marched off.
Q. And that is all?


THE EXPLOSION I 75
A. All.
Q. He didn’t, by chance, in saying ‘I’m not
going to shoot myself,’ lay any particular emphasis
on the last word?
A. Certainly not that I distinguished. The
whole suggestion is too impossible to any one who
knows my friend.
Q. Thank you, Mr Bickerdike. That will do.
If witness had entered the box like an oppressed
man, he left it like a beaten. His cheeks were
flushed, his head bowed; it was observed that he
purposely avoided looking his friend in the face as
he passed him by on his way to the rear of the Court.
The excitement was now extreme. All attention,
in the midst of a profound stilhiess, was concen-
trated on a figure come more and more, with each
adjustment of the legal spy-glass, into a definite
focus. It was felt that the supreme moment was
approaching; and, when the expected name was
called, a sigh like that of a sleeper turning seemed
to sound through the hall. The prisoner in the dock
had already long been overlooked—forgotten. He
had been put up, it seemed, as a mere medium for
this deadlier manifestation, and his purpose served,
had ceased to be of interest. He stood pallid with
his hands on the rail before him, rolling his one
mobile eye, the only apparently mystified man in
Court.
As Hugo entered the box, he was seen to be deadly
pale, but he held his head high, and stood like a
soldier, morally and physically upright, facing his


THE EXPLOSION 177
sort. I suggest that this so-called chaff is better
described as a quarrel between you. Will you swear
that that was not the case?
A. No, I will not.
Q. Then your statement was a fabrication?
A. I accused her of being there to meet some one.
Q. You accused her. I am your debtor for the
word. Will you swear that she was not there to
keep an assignation, and that assignation with
yourself?
A. I sWear it most positively. Our meeting was
quite accidental.
Q. On your part?
A. On my part.
Q. But not on hers?
A. I am not here to answer for that.
Q. Pardon me; I think you are. I suggest that,
expecting you to return by the Bishop’s Walk, she
was waiting there to waylay you?
A. She might have been, on the chance.
Q. I suggest you knew that she was?
A. I say I did not know.
Q. Well, you took that way at least, and you
met and quarrelled. I suggest that the person you
accused her of being there to meet was yourself,
and that the dispute betweeniyou turned upon the
question of her thus importuning you? Is that so?
A. (After a Pause.) Yes.
Q. And I suggest further that the reason for her
so importuning you lay in her condition, for which
you were responsible?


178 THE EXPLOSION
A. Yes. It is true. (Sensation.)
Q. She entreated you, perhaps, to repair the
wrong you had done her in the only way possible
to an honourable man?
A. (Witness seeming to stiflen, as if resolved to
face the whole music at last.) She had already urged
that; she pressed to know, that was all, if I had
made up my mind to marry her. I refused to give
a definite answer just then, since my whole career
was at stake; but I promised her one within twenty-
four hours. I was very much bothered over the
business, and I dare say a bit impatient with her.
She may have upbraided me a little in return, but
there was no actual quarrel between us. I went on
after a few minutes, leaving her there by herself.
And that is the whole truth.
Q. We will judge of that. You say the meeting
was none of your seeking?
A. I do say it.
Q. Now, please attend to me. You were on
your way back, when you met deceased, from the
shooting party which you had abandoned?
A. Yes. '
Q. You have heard what the last witness stated
as to a certain incident connected with that morning.
Was his statement substantially true?
A. I can’t deny it. It was a momentary mad
impulse.
Q. And, being forestalled, was replaced possibly
by an alternative suggestion, pointing to another
way out of your difficulties?


THE EXPLOSION 179
A. I don’t know what you mean. It was just
the “culmination, as it were, of a desperate mood,
and was regretted by me the next instant.
Q. Was it because of your desperate mood that
you refused to be parted from your gun when you
finally left the shoot and returned home?
A. No; but because I declined to be made to
look a fool.
Q. I put it to you once more that you knew,
when you went home, carrying against all persuasion,
your gun with you, that the deceased would be
waiting for you in the copse?
A. It is utterly false. I knew nothing about it.
Q. Very well. Now, as to the time of your
meeting with the deceased. I have it stated on
your sworn evidence that that was at three o’clock
or thereabouts, and that after spending some ten
minutes in conversation with her, you resumed your
way to the house, which you reached at about 3.15,
appearing then, according to the evidence of a
witness, in a very agitated state.
A. I was upset, I own—naturally, under the
circumstances.
Q. What circumstances?
A. Having just promised to do or not do what
would affect my whole life.
Q. No other reason?
A. No.
Q. Did you hear the sworn statement of the wit—
ness Henstridge and another that the report of the
shot, which could have been none other than the
5.x. . N


180 THE EXPLOSION
fatal shot, was heard and fixed by them at a time
estimated at a few minutes after three o’clock, that
is to say, at a time when, according to your own
admission, you were in the deceased’s company?
A. It is an absolute lie.
The crisis had come, the long-expected blow
fallen; but, even in the shock and echo of it, there
were some who found nerve to glance from son to
father, and wonder what super-dramatic incident
yet remained to them to cap the day’s excitement.
They were disappointed. Not by one sign or move-
ment did the stiff grey figure on the Bench betray
the torture racking it, or concede to their ex-
pectations the evidence of an emotion—not even
when, as if in response to some outspoken direction,
a couple of policemen were seen to move silently
forward, and take their stand on either side the
witness box. And then, suddenly, Counsel was
speaking again.
He addressed the Bench with an apology for the
course imposed upon him, since it must have become
apparent, as the case proceeded, that the tendency
Of the prosecution had been to turn more and more
from its nominal objective in the dock. There had
been a reason for that, however, and he must state
it. The inquiries of the police, and more especially
of the distinguished detective Officer, Sergeant
Ridgway, had latterly, gradually but certainly, led
them to the conclusion that the motive for the
crime, and the name of its perpetrator, must be
looked for in another direction than that originally,


182 THE EXPLOSION
and she turns to leave him. Thinking she is about
to put her threat into immediate execution, goaded
to desperation, the gun in his hand—only ten-
tatively adhered to at first, perhaps—decides
him. He fires at and kills her. The deed per—
petrated, he has to consider, after the first shock
of horror, how best to conceal the evidences of
his guilt. He decides to rest the lethal weapon
against a tree (with the intention of asserting—or,
at least, not denying, if subsequently questioned—-
that he had left it with one of its barrels loaded).
concocts in his mind a plausible story of a cigarette
and an oversight, and hurries on to the house,
where, in his private room, he spends such a three-
quarters of an hour of horror and remorse as none
of us need envy him. His nerve by then somewhat
restored, he decides to take the initiative in the
necessary discovery, and, affecting a sudden recol-
lection of his oversight, returns to the copse to fetch
his gun, with the result we know. All that it is
open to us to surmise; what we may not surmise
is the depth of depravity in a nature which could
so plan to cast the burden of its own guilt upon
the shoulders of an innocent man.’
One dumb, white look here did the son turn on
the father; who met it steadfastly, as white and
unflinching.
‘We have heard some loose talk, your worships,’
went on Counsel, ‘as to the appearance of a
mysterious fourth figure in this tragedy. We may
dismiss, I think, that individual as purely chimerical


THE EXPLOSION 183
-—a maggot, if I may so describe it, of the witness
Henstridge’s brain. There is no need, I think you
will agree with me, for looking beyond this Court
for a solution of the problem which has been
occupying its attention. Painful as the task is to
me, I must now do my duty—without fear or favour
in the face of any considerations, social or senti-
mental, whatsoever—by asking you to commit for
trial, on the capital charge of murdering Annie
Evans, the witness Hugo Staveley Kennett, a
warrant for whose arrest the police already hold
in their hands.’
Not a sound broke the stillness as Counsel ended
-—only a muffled rumble, like that of a death-drum,
from the wheels of a passing wagon in the street
outside. And then the blue-clad janissaries closed
in; the Magistrates, without leaving the Bench,
put their heads together, and the vote was cast.
‘Hugo Staveley Kennett, we have no alternative
but to commit you to take your trial on the capital
charge.’
A sudden crash and thump broke in upon the
verdict Cleghorn had fainted in the dock.


CHAPTER XV
THE FACE ON THE WALL
THE morning of the inquiry found M. le Baron in
Paris, in his old rooms at the Montesquieu. He was
in very good spirits, smiling and buoyant, and not
at all conscience-smitten over his desertion of his
servant in his hour of need. ‘It will be a not
unwholesome lesson for the little fanfaron,’ he
thought, ‘ teaching him in the future to keep a guard
on his tongue and temper.’ He foresaw, be it
observed, that certain issue, and felt no anxiety
about it._ But his face fell somewhat to an added
reflection: ‘I wonder if they have committed him
for trial by now. Poor girl !’ and he shrugged his
shoulders with a tiny sigh.
Having crossed by the night boat from
Southampton, one might have looked for a certain
staleness in the Baron’s aspect. On the contrary,
he was as chirpy as a sparrow, having slept well
throughout a pretty bad crossing, and since had a
refreshing tub and brush-up. He sat down—though
very late, with an excellent appetite—to his Petit
pain and rich coffee and brioche, and, having con-
sumed them, took snuff at short intervals for half
an hour, and then prepared to go out.
I84


THE FACE ON THE WALL I85
M. 1e Baron’s movements seemed carelessly
casual, but he had, in fact, a definite objective, and
he made for it at his leisure. It lay on the left bank
of the river, in or near the district calling itself
loosely the Latin or Students’ Quarter. He crossed
the river by the Pont des Arts, and went straight
down the Rue de Seine as far as the Rue de Tournon,
where he turned off in the direction of St Sulpice.
The great bell up in the high tower was crashing
and booming for a funeral, and its enormous rever-
berations swayed like Atlantic rollers across the
fields of air. In all the world St Sulpice bell is the
death-bell, so solemn, so deep, and so overwhelming
it sounds. M. le Baron paused to listen a moment.
‘ Is it an omen?’ thought he, ‘and am I going to hear
bad news?’
Somewhere at the back of the church, in a little
street called the Rue Bourbon-1e-Chateau, he came
to the shop of a small dealer in prayer-books and
holy pictures and pious images. It was a poor shop
in a faded district, and suggestive of scant returns
and lean commons for its inmates. A door, as
gaunt and attenuated in appearance, stood open to
one side of the shop, and by this the visitor entered,
with the manner of one who knew the place. A
flight Of bare wooden stairs rose before him, and up
these he went, to the first, to the second floor, where
he paused, a little breathless, to knock on a door.
‘Que diable ! ’ cried a hoarse voice from within.
‘Who’s that?’
For answer the Baron turned the handle and


THE FACE ON THE WALL 189
it could not matter, and that he had no idea of
leaving the portrait there to become the cynosure
of common eyes. He was a hard man, Monsieur,
and we came to words.’
The visitor grtmted. ‘M. Ribault, what was the -
name of this Goth?’
‘It was the name of my friend, Monsieur.’
‘What! Christian and surname the same?’
‘ Precisely one, Monsieur. They were beaux-freres,
no more. With such it may be.’
‘Indubitably. And the lady’s name?’
‘I could show you sooner than pronounce it. It
was written by Jean under the portrait.’
‘But the portrait is lost !’
‘Nevertheless, it is not altogether forgotten.
Before it was destroyed I had borrowed a camera
from a friend and achieved a reproduction of it.
Alas, Monsieur! but a cold shadow of the original—a
sadness, a reflection, but, such as it is, a record I
would not willingly let perish.’
The Baron’s brow was smoother again; his eyes
had recovered their good humour.
‘But this is interesting, my friend,’ he said.
‘Might I be permitted to see it?’ _
‘Who sooner 1’ cried the designer. ‘Monsieur
has only to command.’
He went to a cupboard, and presently produced
from it a photograph mounted on brown paper,
which he presented to his visitor.
‘You must not judge from it,’ he said, ‘more
than you would from the shadow of an apple tree


CHAPTER XVI
THE BARON FINDS A CHAMPION
(From the Bickerdike M S.)
W HO that was present at that scene could ever forget
its anguish and pathos ? Its fierce dramatic inten-
sity will remain for all time indelibly seared on my
soul. Could I believe in my friend’s guilt? Know-
ing him, it was impossible : and yet that seemingly
incontrovertible evidence as to when the shot was
fired? If he had done it, if he had done it, not his
own nature but some fiend temporarily in possession
of it must have directed his hand. But I would not
believe he had done it. I would not, until I had
heard him confess to it with his own lips. However
appearances might be against him, he should find
an unshakable ally in me. And if the worst were to
come to the worst, and the trial confirm his guilt
beyond dispute, there would be that yet for me to
plead in revision of my former evidence so cruelly
surprised from me, to plead in virtue of my intimacy
with the unhappy boy—that in the moods to which
he was subject he was apt to lose complete control
of himself, and to behave on occasions veritany
like a madman. It might mitigate, extenuate—who
192


THE BAHON FINDS A CHAMPION I93
could say? But in the meantime I would not
believe—not though the world accused him.
Before he was taken away he and his father met
in a room below the Court. Sir Calvin, coming across
the floor after the committal, looked like a white
figure of Death—Death stark, but in motion. He
walked straight on, avoiding nobody; but a little
stagger as he passed near me was eloquent of his
true state. I was moved impulsively to hold out
my arm to him, and he took it blindly, and we
descended the stairs together. In a bare vault-like
Office we found my poor friend. He was in charge
of the two policemen who had arrested him. His
deadly pallor was all gone, and succeeded by a
vivid flush. He held out his hand with a steadfast
smiling look.
‘Take it or not, sir,’ he said.
It was taken, and hard wrung—just that one
moment’s understanding—and the two fell apart.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the boy simply. ‘ I did not
do it, of course.’
The father laughed; it wrung one to hear him,
and to see his face.
‘One of your judges, Hughie,’ he said, wheezing
hilariously—‘old Crosson; you know him»—told me
not to lose heart—that appearances weren’t always
to be trusted. He ought to know, eh, after three
attempts?’
‘ I wanted you just to hear me say,’ said the other
hurriedly, ‘that I’m glad it’s come—not the way it
has, but the truth. I’ve behaved like a blackguard,


194 THE BARON
sir, and it’s been weighing on me; you don’t know
how it’s been weighing. It’s been making my life
hell for some little time past. But now you know,
and it’s the worst of me—bad enough, but not the
unutterable brute they’d make me out.’ He turned
to me. ‘So they got at you, Viv.,’ he said. ‘Never
mind, old boy; you meant the best.’
‘It was an infamous breach of confidence,’ I burst
out. ‘ It was that Sergeant led me on.’
‘Yes,’ said Hugh: ‘ I supposed he was at the bottom
of all this. But I can’t help his witnesses. It was
the truth I told.’
‘He has betrayed the house,’ I said hotly, ‘he
was engaged to serve.’
But to this Sir Calvin, greatly to my surprise and
indignation, demurred, in a hoarse broken way:
‘If he thought his duty lay this road, it was his
business like an honest man to take it. We want
no absolution on sufferance—eh, Hughie, my boy?’
‘No, sir, no. You will see that I am properly
advised as to the best way to go to clear myself.
Thank God my mother isn’t alive 1’
It was said with the first shadow of a break in
his voice, and the General could not stand it. He
gave a little gasp, and turned away, his fingers
working at his moustache.
‘She’ll see to it, Hughie,’ he said indistinctly,
‘that—that it’s all made right. There was never
a more truth-loving woman in the world. But
you shall have your advice—for form’s sake——the
best that can be procured.’


' 196 THE BARON
them there one could only surmise, but at least it
was marked by no audible sounds of emotion. In
that dead oppression I would have welcomed even
her company; but she never came near me, and I
was left to batten as I would on my own poisonous
reflections. They passed and passed in review, with
sickening iteration, the same wearisome problems—
the evidence, my hateful and unwilling share in it,
my friend’s dreadful situation. Against the detec-
tive I felt a bitter animosity. No wonder that,
conscious of his treachery to his employer, as I still
persisted in regarding it, his manner had changed
of late, and he had held himself aloof from us. Even
that cynical official fibre, I supposed, could not be
entirely insensitive to the indecency of eating the
salt of him he was planning to betray. I was so
wrath with him that I could have wished, if for no
other reason than his discomfiture, to vindicate my
friend’s innocence. The thought sent me harking
back once more over familiar ground. If Hugh were
innocent, who was guilty? If another could be
proved guilty, or even reasonably suspect, the whole
evidence against the prisoner fell into discredit.
Who, then?’ A
Now, not this overwhelming business itself had
been enough to dismiss wholly from my mind its
' haunting suspicions regarding the Baron. SO secret,
so subtle, so inexplicable, could it still be possible
that he was somehow implicated in the affair? If
not, was it not at least remarkable that it should
have coincided with his coming, involved his servant,


FINDS A CHAMPION 197
been followed by that midnight theft of the paper?
And then suddenly there came to me, with a little
shock of the blood, a memory of our conversation
in the keeper’s cottage on the fatal day of the shoot.
How curious he had been then on the subject of
poachers, of their methods, of their proneness to
violence on occasion! He had asked so innocently
yet shown such shrewdness in his questions, that
even Orsden had laughineg commented on the
discrepancy. And that mention of the muflling
properties of a mist in the matter of a gunshot!
Why, it was as if he had wished to assure himself of
the adequacy of some precaution already calculated
and taken to mislead and bewilder in a certain issue!
The thought came upon me like a thunderclap.
Was it, could it be possible that some blackguard
poacher had been made the instrument of a diabolical
plot—perhaps that fourth shadowy figure that had
never materialised; perhaps Henstridge himself, who
had volunteered the damning evidence, and whom
it would be one’s instinct to mistrust? Le Sage
and Henstridge in collusion ! Was it an inspiration?
Did I stand on the threshold of a tremendous
discovery? In spite of the feverish excitement
which suddenly possessed me, I could still reason
against my own theory. The motive? What
possible motive in murdering an unoffending ser-
vant girl? Again, what time had been the Baron’s
in which to complot so elaborate a crime?
But, supposing it had all been arranged beforehand,
before ever he came? I had not overlooked the


198 THE BARON
mystery attaching to the girl herself. It might
cover, for all one knew, a very labyrinthine intrigue
of vengeance and spoliation.
And then in a moment my thought swerved, and
the memory of Cleghorn returned to me—Cleghorn,
white and abject, grasping the rail of the dock.
Cleghorn fainting where he stood. What terrific
emotion had thus prostrated the man, relieved from
an intolerable oppression? Was mere revulsion of
feeling enough to account for it, or was it conceivable
that he too was, after all, concerned in the business,
a third party, and overwhelmed under his sense of
rmexpected escape from what he had regarded as
his certain doom?
I was getting into deep waters. I stood aghast
before my own imagination. How was I to deal
with its creations?
It was an acute problem, my decision on which
was reached only after long deliberation. It was
this: I would keep all my suspicions and theories
to myself until I could confide them to the ear of the
Counsel engaged on Hugo’s behalf.
In the meantime some relief. from the moral
stagnation of Wildshott had become apparent
with the opening of the day succeeding the inquiry.
That deadly lethargy which had followed the first '
stunning blow was in part shaken off, and the
household, though in hushed vein, began to resume
its ordinary duties. Sir Calvin himself reappeared,
white and drawn, but showing no disposition to
suffer commiseration in any form, or any relaxation


FINDS A CHAMPION 20x
bottom of my soul, I was crying on my dead darling
to come back to me, that I could not live without
her. 0, Viv. ! why is it made so difficult for some
men to go straight?’
He paused a moment, his head leaned down on
his hands, which held on to the bars. I did not
speak. His allusion to the ‘tricky business’ he had
surprised the girl over was haunting my mind. How
did it consort with my latent suspicion of a mystery
somewhere?
‘Hugh,’ I said presently, ‘you won’t tell me what
she was doing when you first——’
‘No, I won’t,’ he interrupted me bluntly. ‘Think
what she became to me, and allow me a little decency.
I’ve told you all that’s necessary—more than I had
ever intended to tell you when I promised you
my confidence. I’m sorry for that, Viv. God
knows if I had spoken to you at first it might have
altered things. But I couldn’t make up my mind
while a chance existed—or I thought it did. She
put me out of my last conceit that day, swearing she
was going to expose the whole story. It was all
true that I said. She may have been waiting there
on the chance of my passing: I swear I didn’t know
it. We had our few words, and I gave my promise
and passed on. The evidence about the shot was
a black lie. I can say no more than that.’
I give his words, and leave them at that, making
no comment and drawing no conclusions. If his
admission as to his first emotion on learning of his
release might repel some people, I can only plead'


202 THE BARON
that one man’s psychology, like one man’s meat,
may be impossible of digestion by another. I found
it, I confess, hard to stomach myself; but then I
had never been a spoilt and wayward only son.
We talked some little time longer on another
matter, which had indeed been the main object of
my visit—the nature of, and Counsel for, his defence.
I had undertaken, at Sir Calvin’s instance, to go to
London and interview his lawyers on the subject,
thus sparing the father the bitter trial of a pre-
liminary explanation, and I told Hugo of my
intention.
‘What a good fellow you are, Viv.,’ he said fondly.
'I don’t deserve that you should take all this trouble
about me.’
‘If I can only appear to justify my own indecent
persistence in remaining on to help,’ I said stifliy,
‘ I shall feel satisfied.’
I could not forbear the little thrust : that wound-
ing remark of his had never ceased to rankle in me.
‘ Well, I asked for it,’ he said, with a flushed smile.
‘ But don’t nurse a grudge any longer. I was hardly
accOuntable for what I said in those days : a man
hardly is, you know, when he’s on the rack.’
‘01 I forgive you,’ I answered. ‘There’s a
virtue sometimes in pretending to a thick skin——’
and we parted on good terms.
My journey to London was arranged for the
morrow after the interview. I had one of my
passages with Audrey before going. I don’t know
what particular prejudice it was the girl cherished


204 THE BARON
‘That is your perverse way of looking at it,
Audrey,’ I answered quietly. 'From my point of
view, it is just trying to help my friends.’
‘By maligning them to their enemies?’ she
answered. ‘I suppose that was why you confided
to Sergeant Ridgway all you knew about Hugh’s
affairs?’
It gave me a certain shock. I knew that she
had read a full report of the proceedings, but not
that she, or any one, had drawn such a cruel con-
clusion from it.
‘Confided, is the word, Audrey,’ I answered, with
difficulty levelling my voice. ‘I can’t be held
responsible for that breach of trust. Yes, thank
youfor that smile; but I know what was in my
heart, and it was to help Hugh over a difficult
place I foresaw for him. My weakness was in think-
ing other men as honourable as myself. But, any-
how, your stab is rather misplaced, since I wasn’t
“ maligning,” as you say, my friends to their
enemies, but the other way about, as I see it.’
‘Well, don’t see it,’ she said insolently. ‘Perhaps
—just consider it as possible—I may happen to
know more about the BarOn than you do.’ _
‘O! I dare say he’s been yarning to you,’ I
answered, ‘ and quite plausibly enough to a credulous
listener. But, if I were you, I wouldn’t attach too
much importance to what he tells you about himself.
I’ll say no more as to my own suspicions, though
events have not modified them, I can assure you;
but I will say that regard for your brother should


CHAPTER XVII
AND AUDREY
AUDREY had been starting for a walk when detained
by the interview recorded in the last chapter. She
left it burning with indignation and passionate
resentment. That this man could call himself a
friend of Hughie, and conceive for one moment the
possibility of his guilt! He pretended to be his
intimate, and did not even know him. How she
hated such Laodicean allies! And that he should
dare to try to involve her in his doubts and half
concessions! It was infamous. It had needed all
her sense of the confidence her father placed in him,
and of the authority to act for him which he had
delegated to him, to stop her from saying something
so cuttineg rude that even he could not have con-
sented to swallow the insult and remain on.
She did Mr Bickerdike, as we know, a sad injustice.
The truth was, one suspects, that in all this business
of his friend’s exoneration the unhappy gentleman
was flying in the face of his own conscience, and
doing it for pure loyalty’s sake. He could not quite
bring himself to argue against appearances in the
Justice’s sense; but he hoped, and he tried to take
a rosy view of his own hopes. It was not to be
207


208 AND AUDREY
expected of him, or of his disposition, that he should
feel or express that blind and incorrigible staunchness
to an ideal natural in a devoted blood-relation; yet
it should be counted to him that he was staunch too,
and on behalf of a cause which in his heart he mis-
trusted. Perhaps his suspicions anent the Baron
were conceived more in a desperate attempt to
discover a way out for his friend, than in any spirit
of strong belief in their justification. But Audrey
was prejudiced against him, and the prejudices of
young people are like their loves, unreasoning and
devastating.
She was very miserable, poor girl—proud, friend-
less, solitary. Essentially companionable by nature,
the social restrictions of her state, man-administered,
had deprived her of all warm intirnacies among her
own sex. She was not allowed to know those she
would have liked to know; the few selected for her
acquaintance she detested. There was none to
whom she could appeal for understanding or sym-
pathy. Repellent to them all in her pride, was it
likely they would spare her in her humiliation?
The very thought made her hold her head high, and
filled her heart with a hard defiance. Nobody cared,
nobody believed but herself and her father. Poor
Hughie, to be so admired and courted in prosperity,
so slandered and abandoned in adversity! Never
mind; the truth would be known presently, and
then the humiliation would be theirs who had un-
wittingly betrayed their own abject natures.
She crossed the high road, and, entering the


2 10 AND AUDREY
then rose to his feet. He had been engaged over a
fly rod, which he held in his hand.
‘Momin’, Miss,’ he said, grinning and saluting.
‘Are you fishing, Jacob?’
‘Me and the master, miss. He’ll be back in a
minute. He’n been whipping the stream up-ways.’
Her lip curled, ever so slightly. There might be
better occupation than fishing for a man who cared.
‘He’s thinking,’ said Jake.
‘Thinking!’ she echoed scornfully.
‘Yes’m. He says to me, he says, " Jacob, fishing
helps a man to think; and what d’you suppose I’ve
been thinking about, Jacob? ”’
‘Well?’
‘ “Why, who it was as killed Annie Evans,” ’ he
says. The boy looked up shyly. ‘We knows any-
how as it weren’t Master Hugo, Miss.’
‘Do you? Did he say that, Jacob?’ She spoke
softly, with a wonderful new glow about her heart.
‘Yes’m,’ said the boy. ‘He did that. You
should ha’ heard him yesterday giving Squire
Redwood the lie. We was hunting otter, Miss, and
was on to his spraints, when Squire said something
bad about Master Hugo as caught Sir Francis’s ear.
He went up to him, he did, and he told him he’d
lay his good ash-spear across his shoulders unless
he withdrew the expression.’
‘Redwood ! That great powerful bully !’ cried
Miss Kennett.
‘Yes’m. And Squire looked that frit, it might
ha’ been a boggle had sudden come to life and faced


AND AUDREY 2rr
him. But he did what he was told, and saved his
shoulders.’
‘He did, he did?’ She put her hands up to her
throat a moment, as if to strangle the emotion that
would not be suppressed, and in the act heard his
footstep and turned.
He came with wonder and pleasure in his
face.
‘Audrey!’ he exclaimed; ‘what good luck has
brought you here?’
‘ I don’t know, Frank,’ she answered a little wildly:
‘but it is good luck, and I thank it. Why do you,
who hate hunting, hunt otters, sir?’
‘ Because they kill my fish,’ he replied promptly.
‘And so spoil your thinking, I suppose,’ she said.
He seemed to understand in a moment, and his
face flushed. /
‘ Jake has been t-talking, has he? ’ he said. ‘ Jake,
I’m ashamed of you.’
‘And did Redwood save his big shoulders?’ she
asked.
‘Jake !’ cried his master reproachfully.
She laughed and sobbed together.
‘Frank, will you leave your things here, and come
a little way with me, please?’
‘0, Audrey! You know—not only a little way,
if it could be.’
They walked together along the green bank of
the stream, from sunlight into luminous shadow,
and forth again, parting the branches sometimes,
always with the water, like a merry child, running
S.K. P


212 AND AUDREY
and talking beside them. Suddenly she stopped,
and turned upon him.
‘If it could be,’ she said, repeating his words:
‘that is to say, if I had not a murderer for a
brother.’
He cried out : ‘ Good God ! What do you mean?
Hugh is not a murderer !’
‘You declare it—in spite of all, Frank?’
‘All what? I know him, and that’s enough.’
‘For me, for me, yes, and for you ! 0,
Frank !—-—-’ she could not keep them back; they
came irresistibly, and rolled down her cheeks-—
‘you don’t know what you have done, what
you have lifted from my heart! And I said
you were not a man—like him. 0, forgive me,
Frank dear !’
‘Hush!’ he said. He took her arm and tucked
it close and comfortable under his, and led her on.
‘I am not, if it comes to that,’ he said.
‘You don’t mean that unkindly? No, you never
would, of course. But I can be glad to think it
now—glad that you are not. He is not good, Frank.
I should hate him for what he has done—I can say
it to you now—if he were not suffering so dreadfully
for what he has not done.’
‘I know, Audrey. Poor fellow—for what he has
not done. That is the point. How are we going
to p-prove it? I have been pushing some private
inquiries, for my part, about that mysterious figure
seen or not seen by Henstridge on the hill. 1‘ can’t
get it out of my head that there really was such a


CHAPTER XVIII
THE BARON RETURNS
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
I HAD a long and interesting interview with Sir
Calvin’s lawyers, when I used the occasion to unbur-
den my mind of some of the misgivings which had
been disturbing it. I spoke theoretically, of course,
and without prejudice, and no do'ubt considerably
impressed my hearers, who were very earnest with
me to keep my own counsel in the matter until one
of the partners could run down—which he would do
in the course of a few days—to examine into all the
circumstances of the case on the spot; and, above
all, not to let the Baron guess that he was in any
way an object of my suspicion. They had, of course,
heard of the murder and its sequel, and had been
expecting their client’s instructions for the defence.
They were very sympathetic, but naturally cautious
about advancing any opinion one way or the other
at this stage of the affair, and the gist of the matter
was relegated for discussion in diem. I do not, how-
ever, describe the interview at greater length for the
simple reason that, as things came to_ turn out, it
bore no eventual fruit. But that will appear.
216


THE BARON RETURNS 223
took for their text that licentious proverb which,
in the name of love and war, exempts a gentleman
from those bonds of truth and honour which alone
make him one. He was in a strange state altogether,
distraught, nervous, excited by turns, and yet always
with a look about him which I should have described
as exultant pride at high tension. What was the
meaning of everything?
During the following day or two I kept myself
studiously in the background, proffering no opinions
on anything, and only pleading mutely to be put
to any use I could reasonably serve. My attitude
commended itself to Audrey at last. ‘Frank and
the Baron,’ she once said to me, ‘have been meeting
and having a long talk together. I wonder if you
will disapprove, Mr Bickerdike? ’
‘Two heads are better than one,’ I answered,
‘and as good as three when the Baron’s is counted
in. I’m not sure you weren’t right, Audrey, and
that I’m not a worse judge of character than I
supposed.’
She looked at me in that queer way of hers.
‘That’s jolly decent of you,’ she said; ‘and so I’ll
say the same to you. It’s something to be a
gentleman, after all.’
Cryptic, but meant to be propitiatory. I forgave
her. She had recovered her spirits wonderfully.
She knew, or felt, I think, that something was in the
air, though she could not tell what, and it made her
confident and happy. I fancy it was her dear friend
the Baron who kept her on that prick of expectancy,


224 THE BARON RETURNS
without quite letting her into the secret. Sometimes
now she would even condescend to speak with me.
‘Do you know,’ she said one day, ‘that Sergeant
Ridgway is coming down again from Scotland Yard
to see us?’
‘No !’ I exclaimed. ‘ He can’t have the atrocious
bad taste.’ ’
‘0, but he is l ’ she said. ‘The First Commis-
sioner, or the Public Prosecutor, or the Lord High
Executioner, or somebody, isn’t satisfied with
Henstridge’s evidence, and he’s got to come down
- and go through all that part of it again. He’s to
be here to-morrow to see my father at two o’clock.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hope we shan’t run across one
another, that’s all.’
‘No,’ she answered, in a rather funny way: ‘I
don’t suppose you exactly love him.’
I will say no more, since I have reached the
threshold of that extraordinary event which was to
falsify at a blow every theory which I, in common
with hundreds of others, had built up and elaborated
about the Wildshott Murder Case.


CHAPTER XIX
THE DARK HORSE
SERGEANT RIDGWAY, turning up punctually to his
appointment, was shown into Sir Calvin’s study,
where he found, not his former employer, but the
Baron Le Sage, seated alone. Characteristically, the
detective showed as little surprise at seeing who
awaited him as he did embarrassment over his return
to a house whose hospitality he had, according to
Mr Bickerdike, so cruelly abused. He could have
understood, no doubt, no reason for his feeling any. _
His commission had been to discover the murderer
of Annie Evans, and, according to the best of his
lights, he had executed that commission. It was
not his fault if it had led him in a direction tragically
counter to the expectations of his employer. He
had been engaged for a particular purpose, and he
had dutifully pursued that purpose—inevitably, if
unfortunately, to a regrettable end. But sentiment
could not be allowed to affect the ,rdetectival
philosophy, or the Law became a dead letter. In
professional matters he was, and had to be, a simple
automaton; wherefore no sign of uneasiness was
visible in his expression as he entered the room, nor
was there discernible there a trace of animus Of any
225


228 THE DARK HORSE
No time, sir. Chess takes a lot of thought.’
‘So it does. But it can be sampled in a problem.
These tests are rather a weakness of mine. Look
here,’-—he led the way to the window, which, it being
a mild warm day, stood wide open, and in which was
placed the usual table with the board on it, and
half a dozen pieces on the squares—‘ there’s a neat
one, I flatter myself. I was at work on it when
you came in——black Knight (or dark horse, shall
we call it?) to play, and mate in three moves. Take
the opposition, and see if you can prevent it.’
He moved the Knight; mechanically the detec~
tive put down his hand and responded with a Bishop:
at the Baron’s third move the other looked up, and
looked his adversary full in the face. Le Sage had
stepped back. He had a way sometimes of thrusting
his hands into the tail pockets of his coat, and bring-
ing them round in front of him. SO he stood now,
with a curious smile on his lips.
‘Dark horse wins,’ said he. ‘My mate, I think,
Sergeant john Ridgway.’
The door opened with the word, spoken pretty
loudly, and there came quickly into the room an
inspector and two constables of the local police,
followed by Sir Calvin and another gentleman.
‘I have the pleasure,’ said M. 1e Baron to the
new-comers, ‘of introducing to you the murderer of
Annie Evans, alias Ivy Mellor.’
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


THE DARK HORSE 231
me, and it was him that led her to it, and by
doing so made himself responsible for the con-
sequences.’
The Inspector thought it right here to utter the
usual oflicial warning. It was curious to note in
his tone, as he did so, a suspicion of deference,
ahnost of apology, such as might characterise a
schoolboy forced to bear witness against his head-
master. 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 example,’ said the Baron, looking up, ‘a
skeleton key, a coat button, a packet of letters, a
false character, a falser impersonation, a proposed


232 THE DARK HORSE
disinheritance, and, to end all, a confederate mur-
dered, and the plot to hang an innocent man for
the deed l—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 re-
markable 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 depre-
cation, ‘if you make a practice, as I do, of never
loosQing 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


THE DARK HORSE - 233
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 dis-
honest? 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
234


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 235
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 tremen-
dous 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


238 THE BARON LAYS
\
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.
‘0! 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 im-
mensely. 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


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 239
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 pro-
perty, 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 discre-
tion 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,


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 241
band 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 de-
manded 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 dis-
tinction I will call him henceforth Jean.
‘Jean lived with a friend, Caliste Ribault, in


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 243
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 pater-
nity, 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.
‘Judge of my feelings. From that moment I was
possessed of a piece of knowledge whose significance
5.x. R


HIS CARDS ON THE'TABLE 245
for a livelihood, ever since the days of his adolescence.
He was a man of twenty-eight when I knew him.
‘There for the present I will leave Jean’s story,
turning from it to a subject of more immediate
interest to you—namely, the murder of Ivy
Mellor, and the methods by which I was
enabled to bring the crime home to the actual
delinquent. I can claim no particular credit
for my part in the business. Destiny, acting
blindly or providentially as you will, had woven
about me, as a web is woven about a spider, a most
extraordinary concatenation of coincidences, from
whose central observation-point I was able, as it
were, to command all strands of the design. My
casual encounter with Mr Bickerdike in Paris; the
discovery that he was there to meet Mr Kennett, the
son of a gentleman already slightly known to me; the
accident witnessed by us; my subsequent visits
to the patient, and his confiding to me of his story;
my second meeting with Mr Bickerdike in London,
and the coincidence of our common invitation to
Wildshott; the act which betrayed Jean’s father
to me, and seemed to confirm the truth of the man’s
story; the news that a second John Ridgway was
at work in the neighbourhood—in all this, considered
alone, there lay some grounds, perhaps, for wondering
entertainment, but surely none for suspicion. It
was only when the murder occurred that any thought
of a connexion amongst the parts flashed inevitably
into my mind; and since Fate had placed, if in any
hands, in mine, what clues might exist to the truth,


HIS CARDS oN THE TABLE 247
the crime. I came upon him unexpectedly, and
surprised him. What was he looking for? He had
already overhauled every detail of the girl’s belong-
ings. Had he missed something which he had
expected to find among them? A skeleton key pos-
sibly. But how could he have known she possessed
' such a thing? Obviously, there was only one
answer—because he himself had provided her with
it. For what reason—he, John Ridgway? Natur-
ally, my mind flew off at a tangent to the other John
Ridgway, my Parisian Jean, and his extraordinary
story. A reputedly sham marriage which never-
theless had turned out genuine; documents in proof,
and their possessor my host? Was it conceivable
that this John Ridgway was interested in the recovery
of those documents, and had employed a female
confederate to steal them for him?
‘ It was quite conceivable, and quite true, for that,
as appeared by degrees, was actually the case. But
why was this John Ridgway interested in the
recovery of those papers ? We shall see.
‘In the meanwhile, to what conviction had my
reflections led me? That the detective and the
girl were in collusion for a certain purpose. But
much was to be deduced from that conviction—that
the girl was an irnpostor, that she had secured her
situation very possibly by means of a false character
written by herself or her confederate, that, quite
certainly, her name was not Annie Evans at all.
Hence the calculated impossibility of tracing out her
connexions.


248 THE BARON LAYS
‘So far, then, so good. We come now to the
frustrated business of the theft, and the crime
which was its terrible consequence. It had inevit-
ably occurred to me that the safe in Sir Calvin’s
study must be the repository, and known by the
confederates to be the repository, of the papers in
question; else, if of easier access, they had long ago
been abstracted and used to serve their purpose.
Probably, as it appeared to me, the girl’s first busi-
ness had been to secure an impression of the keyhole
in wax, which she had despatched to Ridgway,
receiving back from him in exchange the master-key.
I seized an opportunity to examine the safe, and
detected about the spot in question certain faint
marks or scratches in the paint, which I had once
before taken some curious stock of, and which I now
perceived might well correspond with that little
sharp projection I spoke of at the end of the key. I
even once tried the key in the lock myself (that
was on the night, Mr Bickerdike, when you stalked
me ’~—poor Vivian looked unutterably foolish—‘ but
without detecting me in my second descent, which
occurred after you had returned to your room) and
found it easy to manipulate. Then the girl had
already been secretly at work there, fumbling her
job maybe? But why, in that case, had she not
secured the plunder, given notice to leave, and at
once cleared out? Because—as it was perfectly
legitimate to infer from the evidence at the inquest-—
she had, in the meantime, fallen desperately in love
with our young friend, and had refused to take any


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 249
further part in a transaction designed to dispossess him
of his name and inheritance.
‘Now, that is to anticipate matters a little, per-
haps; but grant my deduction sound—as, indeed,
it proved to be—and what followed? Necessarily,
a breach between the two confederates of a very
violent nature. To the detective it meant betrayal
and the ruin of his plans. Would that consideration
be enough in itself to goad him on to murder? With
a man of Ridgway’s character and trained cautious-
ness of disposition I did not think it probable.
Assuming, then, that the murder were his act, what
more overmastering motive could have driven him
to it? What but jealousy, the one passion uncon-
trollable by even the most self-disciplining nature.
He was himself passionately enamoured of his own
beautiful decoy, and she had betrayed not only his
interests but his love. The crime had been, in the
expressive French phrase, and in the fullest sense,
a crime passionel. I had it.
‘To figure the course of events, even, was now
no diflicult task for the imagination. We will begin
with Mrs Bingley’s timely advertisement for a
housemaid, upon which the confederates happened,
and which gave them—~perhaps suggested to them—‘-
the very opportunity they desired. Once the girl
was established in the house, the two corresponded.
We know that she received letters, though none
could be found after her death. Of course not.
She would have taken scrupulous care to destroy all
such incriminating evidence, including the fraudulent


250 THE BARON LAYS
“ character.” But they corresponded, and pro-
bably, on her part, very early in a tone which
gave her accomplice to suspect, with growing uneasi—
ness, that all was not right with her. Accident»—it
could have been nothing else—brought him down
professionally and opportunely into this part of the
country. He took the occasion to write and arrange
for a secret personal interview with her—we had it
from the housekeeper that a letter was received by
Annie quite shortly before her death-and she
answered appointing the Bishop’s Walk for their
place of meeting. Of that I have no doubt. She
Was there to keep her engagement with Ridgway,
and not to waylay the other. His appearance on
the scene was quite fortuitous, and, as it turned out,
the most fateful contretemps that could have hap-
pened. He came, and we know from his own con-
fession what passed between them, with what she
upbraided him, and with what threatened. Ridgway
had overheard it all. He had arrived at the place
duly to his appointment, and, on his first entering
the copse, had probably heard, or perhaps caught
distant sight of, the other male figure coming his
way, and had slipped into the thick undergrowth for
concealment. His propinquity unsuspected by the
girl, she had delivered herself in his hearing of her
deadly secret, and he knew at last of her double
treachery to him. The lover gone, he came out of
his ambush, and damned her with the truth. Likely,
even then, it was the presence of the gun, so adversely
left to his hand, which compelled him to the deed.


252 THE BARON LAYS
convincing myself that that hypothetical figure on
the hill was as wholly a figment of the imagination
as most people seemed to consider it. The cap
pulled over the eyes and the turned-up collar—what
butler ever turned up his coat collar?~—were strong
presumptions in my mind that Mr Cleghorn had not
been their wearer. Then the figure had been
described as advancing hurriedly; yet it had taken
twenty minutes or so to cover a distance of two
hundred yards. You may object, possibly, that, in
all your experience of Sergeant Ridgway, you have
never seen him wear on his head other than a black
plush Homburg hat. I answer that on the day of
the murder he was wearing a cloth cap, easily, in
the distance, to be mistaken for the cap worn by
Mr Cleghorn. I know this, because, in the course
of one of my drives about the country in the com-
pany of a very charming young lady, I had made
a point of calling at the Sergeant's one-time lodgings
at Antonferry—I had procured the address from
Sir Calvin-where, at the cost of a little insinuative
word-play, I was able to ascertain that the Sergeant
had gone out, wearing a cloth cap, fairly early on the
day of the murder, and that he had returned late,
and seemingly in an exhausted condition, from a
long walk. He had, and that hypothetical figure
hurrying over the hill—at the moment with little
concern for its safety—had been the figure of Ser-
geant Ridgway, tramping back to his lodgings in
Antonferry after the murder. He had passed by
the inn, making north by west, and had long turned


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 255
this matter, and with what result? You will be
surprised to hear. The stable clock, to which Daniel
is accustomed to listen, strikes the quarters—one
for the first, two for the second, and so on. The
study clock, to which Daniel is not accustomed to
listen, strikes the half-hour only—a single stroke.
But the single stroke represented to Daniel the quar-
ter past, and therefore he concluded, when he heard
that single stroke sound from his master’s study,
that it was recording the first quarter, instead of,
as it actually was, the second. And on this ingenu-
ous evidence—not realizing in the least what he
was doing—was that simple man prepared to tighten
the noose about his young master’s neck.
‘But, if Daniel Groome was wrong, it followed of
necessity that Henstridge must be wrong also—as
of course he was. He had been simply got at by
the detective, and officially bullied and threatened
into stating what was wanted of him. As a matter
of fact, he had had no idea of what the time was
at all, but had taken any suggestion offered him.
The fellow is a blackguard and a coward, and would
swear any man’s life away for thirty pieces of silver.
I did a little persuasion with him on my own account
——again during one of those refreshing drives, Sir
Francis—and, taking a leaf out of Ridgway’s book,
had little difficulty in bringing him to his knees.
He was abject when I had finished with him. (Par-
enthetically, I may suggest here—what I am con-
vinced was the case—that our murdering friend had
also “ got at ” Mr Fyler, but in another sense. He


260 THE BARON LAYS
‘ Ivy Mellor had been not many months discharged
from a reformatory, to which she had been com-
mitted for three years for procuring a situation as
nursery governess with a forged character, and
obtaining goods by false pretences. She was the
illegitimate daughter of an actress now dead, and
was possessed herself of some decided histrionic
ability. Upon her discharge, Ridgway had somehow
got hold of her, or had been got hold of by her, with
the result that he had fallen a complete slave to her
attractions. It was probably she who had been
his evil genius from the first; probably she who had
planned and perpetrated the “ written character "
which had procured her an entrée to Wildshott.
He promised her great things in the event of success,
and, in view of those great things, she held him at
arms’ length; there were to be no questionable
relations between them. The man was hopelessly
infatuated; he used to visit her under an assumed
name; probably “kept her,“ in the unequivocal
sense. I am‘ giving here not only the agent’s report,
but some of my own conclusions drawn therefrom.
Summarized, they showed my case complete, so
far as eflect was concerned. I had only now to
penetrate to the cause. It could be fathomed, I
believed, but fathomed in one direction alone. I
determined to go boldly to the fountain-head, and
challenge there a decision. In Sir Calvin’s hands
lay the final verdict. I could hardly doubt what it
would be, or that for the sake of the whole truth he
would yield at last to daylight the guarded secret


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 26I
of a long-past episode. I judged him rightly,
and I need say no more. He told me the story,
produced for my examination the written evidence,
and left me to deal with the matter as I
would.
‘But one remark more I have to make before
running, as briefly as I can, through the main points
of the narrative unfolded to me. While in Paris I
had procured from my very good friend, M. Despard,
the head of the secret police, an introduction to our
own First Commissioner. I saw the latter, confided
to his interested, and rather horrified, ears the whole
truth of the case, so far as I had then conceived
and mastered it, and arranged with him the little
trap which was to entice John Ridgway into our
midst again—conditional always on my procuring
that supplementary evidence which was to prove
his guilt beyond any possibility of doubt. The rest
you know.
‘We come now to the final chapter, which, like
the postscript to a lady’s letter, contains, in Hazlitt’s
phrase, the pith of the whole. In relating it I choose
my own words, and must not be understood to
aim at reproducing the actual terms in which it was
revealed to me by Sir Calvin. I wish to give a mere
brief or abstract of a painful story, and I wish,
moreover, to warn you once more that certain reflec-
tions and conclusions of mine, not affecting the
main body of the narrative, were and are conjectural,
and must so remain unless and until the accused
himself shall confirm their accuracy; and that, in


264 THE BARON LAYS
fellow; the woman’s situation very certame des-
perate and deplorable. Anyhow, following whatever
distressful scenes, she was brought to consent, the
two were married, and shortly afterwards the child
was born in London, whither the couple had removed
in the interval.
‘1 am quite prepared to believe that George
Ridgway made his wife a good husband during the
few years which remained to them in company, for
he did not very long survive his marriage. More-
over, Sir Calvin’s liberality had placed the two in such
comfortable circumstances that no excuse for dis-
content existed. The Quartermaster-Sergeant
adhered honourably to'his part of the bargain, and
it was not until long after his death that the ques-
tion arose in the widow's mind as to whether or
not she was justified in continuing to mislead
her son in the matter of his origin. Of that in a.
moment.
‘In the meantime the two children, step-brothers
in fact, were brought up together, and considered
themselves as half brothers. They were both
christened John—the younger through some uncon-
querable perversity of the mother in insisting on
calling him after her seducer’s second name—an
anomaly which, however open to curious comment
at first, was soon no doubt lost sight of in the
inevitable nicknames which affection would come
to bestow on the pair. Still, for the purposes of
distinction, I will continue to call the one John
and the other Jean. Jean was popularly regarded


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 265
as the Ridgways’ child, though in truth no child
was born of their union.
‘John, though the elder by some three years, was
frequently, as time went on, mistaken, by those who
did not know, for the younger of the two boys—an
error also not without its bearing on subsequent
events. Jean from the outset betrayed, if it could
have been guessed, an unmistakable sign of his
origin in the use of his second for his digit finger—
an inherited trick due to the shock caused to his
mother by the sight of Sir Calvin’s mutilation,
associated as it had been with all the agony and
despair of that time. He was a dreamy boy, and
early developed artistic p'roclivities. I have no
means or intention of tracing the career of either of
the children up to and beyond manhood. At some
period, as we know, Jean went to Paris; at some
period John joined the Metropolitan Police force,
with subsequent promotion to a valued position in
the Criminal Investigation Department. I pass
from these ascertained facts to an estimate of the
circumstances which first engendered in the latter’s
mind a thought of the daring project which has ended
by bringing him to his present situation.
‘Now I have already told you how Jean, on the.
occasion of a visit to England, had been at last
made acquainted by his mother with the true story
of his paternity. She told it him, being herself under
> the fear of death at the time; and there is no doubt
that the poor woman still believed perfectly honestly
in the legality of her first marriage, not only before


266 THE BARON LAYS
heaven, but on the practical testimony of the little
Catholic vade-mecum in which the names of the
contracting parties, with their clerical witness, had
been inscribed. She behaved, moreover, on the
strength of some muddled innuendo gathered from
the Quartermaster-Sergeant, that the creature Barry
Skelton had deceived, as much as she herself had
been deceived by, Sir Calvin, and that he had actually
been an ordained priest at the time of the marriage.
It was not true, I think, the ordination having
occurred subsequently, as the General took pains
to make known to her; for she wrote to him on the
subject of the vade-mecum, begging him to return
it to her hands, whence he had appropriated it when
he deserted her. Why, you may ask, had be, after
securing possession of, persisted in retaining through
all these years that damning witness to his guilt?
For the very same reason of the evidence it con-
tained, which to her stood for proof, to him for
disproof, of the legality of the marriage. Wherefore
he could not make up his mind to destroy it. But
he thought it well to pay a visit to his correspondent,
to assure her that she was completely mistaken in
her surmise, and that the continuance of his
support depended upon the utter future abandon-
ment by her of any such attempts on his
forbearance.
‘Still thinking for her boy, the fond soul was not
' convinced. So little was she convinced that, when
her death came actually to be imminent, she called
John to her side and confided to him the whole


268 THE BARON LAYS
what were the odds P To consider them was to
find them already curiously in his favour. The
similarity of their names; the fact that he himself
had always been regarded as the younger; the early
death of the Quartermaster-Sergeant, and the
consequent long removal of the one most damaging
witness to the truth; Jean’s prolonged absence from
home in a foreign city; his own more apparent
devotion to the woman to be claimed as his mother—
he could find nothing in it all inimical to the success
of the plot. Only the first essential would be to
obtain possession of the vade-mecum. There was
full reason to believe, from what Sir Calvin had
told Mrs Ridgway, that the book to this day was
jealously retained by him, for the reason stated, in his
secure keeping. How to recover it?
‘So the conspiracy was hatched. Ivy Mellor was
to be the means, the condition of her success the
bestowal of her spotless hand upon the rightful heir
of Wildshott—a splendid dream, a transpontine
melodrama. But John saw at once that a first
condition of its success lay in a scrupulous oblitera-
tion of all clues pointing to the identity of his
confederate: hence his anger on discovering the
portrait, and the immediate measures taken by him
to wipe it out of existence.
‘ Well, we know the rest—how the beautiful accom-
plice betrayed her trust; how she developed a passion
for the very man whom she was scheming to disin-
herit; how, to be sure, she came to recognize that
she could much more fully and satisfactorily realize


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 269
her own ambitions by baulking than by furthering
the designs of her fellow-plotter. To be the wife
of the problematic heir of Wildshott might be a
good thing; to be the wife of the heir of Wildshott
in esse, a gentleman, a soldier and an Antinous, was
certainly a better. So, having surrendered to love,
she played for the greater stake—and she lost. We
can pity her : she was frankly an adventuress. We
could pity him, were it not for the thought of that
inhuman revenge. Yet he had provocation perhaps
beyond a gambler’s endurance. To find the very
woman, for worship of whom he had been scheming
away his position, his reputation, his soul of truth
and honour, not only turned traitor to his best
interests, but faithless in the worst sense, and for
his rival’s sake, to her pledge to him—well, one must
pause before utterly condemning. And after all it
was only a moment’s madness served by oppor-
tunity. Yes, I can pity him. I have a notion, too,
that she told him what was not the truth—that she
had already destroyed for her love’s sake the
evidence of the prayer-book. If she had—it was
the last touch. Yes, I can pity him.
’Gentlemen, that is the story.’
M. le Baron ceased speaking, and for a time a
silence held among them all. Then presently
Mr Bickerdike asked :—
‘There is only one thing, Baron, which remains
to puzzle me a little. Was not Ridgway’s employ-
ment in the case originally agreed to by Sir Calvin
in response to a suggestion of yours?’


HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE 271
didn’t.’ He turned to the Baronet : ‘ I congratulate
you with all my heart, Orsden.’ '
‘Thanks, old fellow,’ said Sir Francis. ‘It’s all
due to him there. I'll give his health, in B-Bob
Cratchit’s words. Here’s to M. 1e Baron, “the
Founder of the Feast ” l’


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