AT THE CORNER.
“L'homme s'agite et Dieu le mêne.”
The two men on the edge of the canal waited and listened again. It
seemed still possible that Von Holzen had swum away in the darkness--had
perhaps landed safely and unperceived on the other side.
“This,” said Cornish, at length, “is a police affair. Will you wait here
while I go and fetch them?”
But Roden made no answer, and in the sudden silence Cornish heard the
eerie sound of chattering teeth. Percy Roden had morally collapsed.
His mind had long been t a great tension, and this shock had unstrung
him. Cornish seized him by the arm, and held him while he hook like a
leaf and swayed heavily.
“Come, man,” said Cornish, kindly--“come, pull yourself together.”
He held him steadily and patiently until the shaking eased.
“I'll go,” said Roden, at length. “I couldn't stay ere alone.”
And he staggered away towards The Hague. It seemed hours before he came
back. A carriage rattled past Cornish while he waited there, and two
foot-passengers paused for a moment to look at him with some suspicion.
At last Roden returned, accompanied by a police official--a phlegmatic
Dutchman, who listened to the story in silence. He shook his head at
Cornish's suggestion, made in halting Dutch mingled with German, that
Von Holzen had swum away in the darkness.
“No,” said the officer, “I know these canals--and this above all others.
They will find him, planted in the mud at the bottom, head downward
like a tulip. The head goes in and the hands are powerless, for they
only grasp soft mud like a fresh junket.” He drew his short sword from
its sheath, and scratched a deep mark in the gravel. Then he turned to
the nearest tree, and made a notch on the bark with the blade. “There
is nothing to be done tonight,” he said philosophically. “There are men
engaged in dredging the canal. I will set them to work at dawn before
the world is astir. In the mean time”--he paused to return his sword to
its scabbard--“in the meantime I must have the names and residence of
these gentlemen. It is not for me to believe or disbelieve their
story.”
“Can you go home alone? Are you all right now?” Cornish asked Roden, as
he walked away with him towards the Villa des Dunes.
“Yes, I can go home alone,” he answered, and walked on by himself,
unsteadily.
Cornish watched him, and, before he had gone twenty yards, Roden
stopped. “Cornish!” he shouted.
“Yes.”
And they walked towards each other.
“I did not know that Von Holzen was there. You will believe that?”
“Yes; I will believe that,” answered Cornish.
And they parted a second time. Cornish walked slowly back to the hotel.
He limped a little, for Von Holzen had in the struggle kicked him on
the ankle. He suddenly felt very tired, but was not shaken. On the
contrary, he felt relieved, as if that which he had been attempting so
long had been suddenly taken from his hands and consummated by a higher
power, with whom all responsibility rested. He went to bed with a
mechanical deliberation, and slept instantly. The daylight was
streaming into the window when he awoke. No one sleeps very heavily at
The Hague--no one knows why--and Cornish awoke with all his senses
about him at the opening of his bedroom door. Roden had come in and was
standing by the bedside. His eyes had a sleepless look. He looked,
indeed, as if he had been up all night, and had just had a bath.
“I say,” he said, in his hollow voice--“I say, get up. They have found
him--and we are wanted. We have to go and identify him--and all that.”
While Cornish was dressing, Roden sat heavily down on a chair near the
window.
“Hope you'll stick by me,” he said, and, pausing, stretched out his
hand to the washing-stand to pour himself out a glass of water--“I hope
you'll stick by me. I'm so confoundedly shaky. Don't know what it
is--look at my hand.” He held out his hand, which shook like a
drunkard's.
“That is only nerves,” said Cornish, who was ever optimistic and
cheerful. He was too wise to weigh carefully his reasons for looking at
the best side of events. “That is nothing. You have not slept, I
expect.”
“No; I've been thinking. I say, Cornish--you must stick by me--I have
been thinking. What am I to do with the malgamiters? I cannot manage
the devils as Von Holzen did. I'm--I'm a bit afraid of them, Cornish.”
“Oh, that will be all right. Why, we have Wade, and can send for White
if we want him. Do not worry yourself about that. What you want is
breakfast. Have you had any?”
“No. I left the house before Dorothy was awake or the servants were
down. She knows nothing. Dorothy and I have not hit it off lately.”
Cornish made no answer. He was ringing the bell, and ordered coffee
when the waiter came.
“Haven't met any incident in life yet,” he said cheerfully, “that
seemed to justify missing out meals.”
The incident that awaited them was not, however, a pleasant one, though
the magistrate in attendance afforded a courteous assistance in the
observance of necessary formalities. Both men made a deposition before
him.
“I know something,” he said to Cornish, “of this malgamite business. We
have had our eye upon Von Holzen for some time--if only on account of
the death-rate of the city.”
They breathed more freely when they were out in the street. Cornish
made some unimportant remark, which the other did not answer. So they
walked on in silence. Presently, Cornish glanced at his companion, and
was startled at the sight of his face, which was grey, and glazed all
over with perspiration, as an actor's face may sometimes be at the end
of a great act. Then he remembered that Roden had not spoken for a long
time.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“Didn't you see?” gasped Roden.
“See what?”
“The things they had laid on the table beside him. The things they
found in his hands and his pockets.”
“The knife, you mean,” said Cornish, whose nerves were worthy of the
blood that flowed in his veins, “and some letters?”
“Yes; the knife was mine. Everybody knows it. It is an old dagger that
has always lain on a table in the drawing room at the Villa des Dunes.”
“I have never been in the drawing room at the Villa des Dunes, except
once by lamplight,” said Cornish, indifferently.
Roden turned and looked at him with eyes still dull with fear.
“And among the letters was the one you wrote to me making the
appointment. He must have stolen it from the pocket of my office coat,
which I never wear while I am working.” Cornish was nodding his head
slowly. “I see,” he said, at length--“I see. It was a pretty _coup_. To
kill me, and fix the crime on you--and hang you?”
“Yes,” said Roden, with a sudden laugh, which neither forgot to his
dying day.
They walked on in silence. For there are times in nearly every man's
life when events seem suddenly to outpace thought, and we can only act
as seems best at the moment; times when the babbler is still and the
busybody at rest; times when the cleverest of us must recognize that
the long and short of it all is that man agitates himself and God leads
him. At the corner of the Vyverberg they parted--Cornish to return to
his hotel, Roden to go back to the works. His carriage was awaiting him
in a shady corner of the Binnenhof. For Roden had his carriage now,
and, like many possessing suddenly such a vehicle, spent much time and
thought in getting his money's worth out of it.
“If you want me, send for me, or come to the hotel,” were Cornish's
last words, as he shut the successful financier into his brougham.
At the hotel, Cornish found Mr. Wade and Marguerite lingering over a
late breakfast.
“You look,” said Marguerite, “as if you had been up to something.” She
glanced at him shrewdly. “Have you smashed Roden's Corner?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Cornish, turning to Mr. Wade; “and if you will come out
into the garden, I will tell you how it has been done. Monsieur Creil
said that the paper-makers could begin supplying themselves with
malgamite at a day's notice. We must give them that notice this
morning.”
Mr. Wade, who was never hurried and never late, paused at the open
window to light his cigar before following Marguerite.
“Ah,” he said placidly, “then fortune must have favored you, or
something has happened to Von Holzen.”
Cornish knew that it was useless to attempt to conceal anything
whatsoever from the discerning Marguerite, so--in the quiet garden of
the hotel, where the doves murmur sleepily on the tiles, and the breeze
only stirs the flowers and shrubs sufficiently to disseminate their
scents--he told father and daughter the end of Roden's Corner.
They were still in the garden, an hour later, writing letters and
telegrams, and making arrangements to meet this new turn in events,
when Dorothy Roden came down the iron steps from the verandah.
She hurried towards them and shook hands, without explaining her sudden
arrival.
“Is Percy here?” she asked Cornish. “Have you seen him this morning?”
“He is not here, but I parted from him a couple of hours ago on the
Vyverberg. He was going down to the works.”
“Then he never got there,” said Dorothy. “I have had nearly all the
malgamiters at the Villa des Dunes. They are in open rebellion, and if
Percy had been there they would have killed him. They have heard a
report that Herr von Holzen is dead. Is it true?” “Yes. Von Holzen is
dead.”
“And they broke into the office. They got at the books. They found out
the profits that have been made and they are perfectly wild with fury.
They would have wrecked the Villa des Dunes, but----”
“But they were afraid of you, my dear,” said Mr. Wade, filling in the
blank that Dorothy left.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Well played,” muttered Marguerite, with shining eyes.
Cornish had risen, and was folding away his papers. “I will go down to
the works,” he said.
“But you cannot go there alone,” put in Dorothy, quickly.
“He will not need to do that,” said Mr. Wade, throwing the end of his
cigar into the bushes, and rising heavily from his chair.
Marguerite looked at her father with a little upward jerk of the head
and a light in her eyes. It was quite evident that she approved of the
old gentleman.
“He's a game old thing,” she said, aside to Dorothy, while her father
collected his papers.
“Your brother has probably been warned in time, and will not go near
the works,” said Cornish to Dorothy. “He was more than prepared for
such an emergency; for he told me himself that he was half afraid of
the men. He is almost sure to come to me here--in fact, he promised to
do so if he wanted help.”
Dorothy looked at him, and said nothing. The world would be a simpler
dwelling-place if those who, for one reason or another, cannot say
exactly what they mean would but keep silence.
Cornish told her, hurriedly, what had happened twelve hours ago on the
bank of the Queen's Canal; and the thought of the misspent, crooked
life that had ended in the black waters of that sluggish tideway made
them all silent for a while. For death is in itself dignified, and
demands respect for all with whom he has dealings. Many attain the
distinction of vice in life, while more only reach the mere mediocrity
of foolishness; but in death all are equally dignified. We may, indeed,
assume that we shall, by dying, at last command the respect of even our
nearest relations and dearest friend--for a week or two, until they
forget us.
“He was a clever man,” commented Mr. Wade, shutting up his gold pencil
case and putting it in the pocket of his comfortable waistcoat. “But
clever men are rarely happy----”
“And clever women--never,” added Marguerite--that shrewd seeker after
the last word.
While they were still speaking, Percy Roden came hurriedly down the
steps. He was pale and tired, but his eye had a light of resolution in
it. He held his head up, and looked at Cornish with a steady glance.
It seemed that the vague danger which he had anticipated so nervously
had come at last, and that he stood like a man in the presence of it.
“It is all up,” he said. “They have found the books; they have
understood them; and they are wrecking the place.”
“They are quite welcome to do that,” said Cornish. Mr. Wade, who was
always business-like, had reopened his writing-case when he saw Roden,
and now came forward to hand him a written paper.
“That is a copy,” he said, “of the telegram we have sent to Creil. He
can come here and select what men he wants--the steady ones and the
skilled workmen. With each man we will hand him a cheque in trust. The
others can take their money--and go.”
“And drink themselves to death as expeditiously as they think fit,”
added Cornish, the philanthropist--the fashionable drawing-room
champion of the masses.
“I got back here through the Wood,” said Percy Roden, who was still
breathless, as if he had been hurrying. “One of them, a Swede, came to
warn me. They are looking for me in the town--a hundred and twenty of
them, and not one who cares that”--he paused, and gave a snap of the
fingers--“for his life or the law. Both railway stations are watched,
and all the steam-boat stations on the canals; they will kill me if
they catch me.”
His eyes wavered, for there is nothing more terrifying than the avowed
hostility of a mass of men, and no law grimmer than lynch-law. Yet he
held up his head with a sort of pride in his danger--some touch of that
subtle sense of personal distinction which seems to reach the heart of
the victim of an accident, or of a prisoner in the dock.
“If I had not met that Swede I should have gone on to the works, and
they would have pulled me to pieces there,” continued Roden. “I do not
know how I am to get away from The Hague, or where I shall be safe in
the whole world; but the money is at Hamburg and Antwerp. The money is
safe enough.”
He gave a laugh and threw back his head. His hearers looked at him, and
Mr. Wade alone understood his thoughts. For the banker had dealt with
money-makers all his life and knew that to many men, money is a god,
and the mere possession of it dearer to them than life itself.
“If you stay here, in my room upstairs,” said Cornish, “I will go down
to the works now. And this evening I will try and get you away from The
Hague--and from Europe.”
“And I will go to the Villa des Dunes again,” added Dorothy, “and pack
your things.”
Marguerite had risen also, and was moving towards the steps.
“Where are you going?” asked her father.
“To the Villa des Dunes,” she replied; and, turning to Dorothy, added,
“I shall take some clothes and stay with you there until things
straighten themselves out a bit.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot let you go there alone.”
“Why not?” asked Dorothy.
“Because--I am not that sort,” said Marguerite; and, turning, she
ascended the iron steps.