“Who are you?”
“I am the voice of the avenging angel, calling you to account for the
evil you have done and still would do. You foolish old man! Are you so
ignorant as not to know that only through repentance comes
forgiveness? Repent!--there is still time--and God’s infinite mercy
will give you peace at last.”
He gasped--I thought every moment he would collapse.
“If I only thought it--if I only could believe it!”
“Surely your own common sense must tell you that there is at least
more chance that way than this.” I held out the phial. “Take your sin
to God; show that you repent of it; try to right the wrong which you
have done; make public atonement; it is not improbable that that way
you will know once more the comfort of a mind at ease.”
“I do not know who you are, where you come from, what you want with
me; but--if I only could believe that by doing what you say I could be
at peace again with God and man.…”
He did believe before I had done with him, or, if his faith was not so
perfect as it might have been, he did as I wished. He made a complete
confession of the whole painful business. I wrote down every word he
said. Then I read over to him what I had written; the landlady was
called in, and in her presence and mine he signed it. The landlady, by
the way, seemed surprised to see me, and rather disposed to wonder who
I might be and how I came to be where I was. When she had gone
again--with her curiosity unsatisfied--and I was alone again with Mr.
Hutton, I was struck by what I have noticed on other occasions--that
there is some truth in the saying that “Open confession is good for
the soul.” Confession had done him good--visible and obvious good; he
owned as much. His tongue once unloosed he became positively
loquacious. He told me many things about himself which enabled me to
understand the situation better than the bare outlines of the formal
confession he had just now made.
His son had been the thief--his only child. When detection threatened,
to escape punishment he had committed suicide. There was a good deal
in this part of his story which impressed me in a manner which I tried
to hide from him. The son had poisoned himself; how he had obtained
the poison remained a mystery. And not only so, the tragedy had been
handled in such a fashion as to make it appear that George Young had
been to blame for it. At the trial certain evidence was produced which
made it seem that he had been Young’s victim; that he was of such a
sensitive nature that, rather than face what must be the result of
George Young’s villainy, he preferred to die. As I heard this part of
the tale I thought of the phial which had been given to the old man
and I drew my own conclusion.
I was with Mr. Hutton altogether about four hours--I even lunched with
him. It was a strange lunch. When I left I returned to my hotel--to
find a telegram awaiting me. It was in answer to one I had sent while
I had been following that Bath chair. I smiled as I read it; I glanced
at the clock, and I thought I saw my campaign finished. I had learnt
from Mr. Hutton where Mr. Thomas Walker was staying; he was in a
house--in the higher part of the town--which belonged to a relative of
his, and of which, in his relative’s absence, he was, with the
exception of some sort of servant, the only occupant. About a quarter
to four, at which time the London express reaches Torquay, I went to
call at Mr. Thomas Walker’s--leaving a note for a person whom I told
them I presently expected.
The address the old man had given me was “Tormohan, Ilsham Road.” Any
idea I might have had of introducing myself to Mr. Walker as I had
done to Mr. Hutton vanished directly I saw what kind of place
“Tormohan” was. It was shut off from the main road on which it stood
by a high wall. Admission was gained by a gate which opened on what
was presumably some sort of passage-way; the way to get that gate to
open was to pull at the old-fashioned bell which hung beside it. I
pulled; when nothing particular happened I pulled again; I pulled four
times before the door was opened a few inches, and the square-faced
man looked through the opening. Rather an odd dialogue took
place--which I commenced.
“Mr. Thomas Walker?”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I wish to see you on very important business, and my name is Judith
Lee.”
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
“It is possible; if you will open the door a little wider, I shall be
able to come in.”
“I don’t know that I want to see you--why do you want to see me?”
“I think I shall be able to satisfy you that I do want to see you when
you have allowed me to enter.”
He opened the door just wide enough to allow me to enter, and I went
in; the moment I was in he closed it. Now I rather wanted that door to
be left open; but as I did not see my way to tell him so in so many
words, I suffered him to close it. We were, as I had expected, in a
sort of passage covered with a glass roof. He led the way to the
house; I followed. We passed through another door, which, this time,
was opened by turning a handle. We went into a dark hall, and then
into a room at the back which was shadowed by a big tree which grew
nearly up to the window; if it had been my house I should have had
that tree cut down in less than no time. When we were in the room he
eyed me with what I felt were inquiring glances.
“Did I understand you to say that you are Miss Lee? On what business,
which is of such great importance, do you wish to see me? I should
have told you, if you had not said your business was so very
important, that I was alone in the house; the woman who acts as
servant is out; which explains why you were kept waiting at the door
and why I answered your ring myself.”
It did occur to me as I observed him that it would have been the part
of discretion to have postponed my visit until I was accompanied by
the person whom my telegram had brought from town; but I had all at
once become convinced of this man’s utter baseness to such an extent
that I was consumed by a desire to bring him to book on my own
account, before the law began to deal with him. The thought of the
innocent man, despairing, desperate with a sense of wrong, wearing his
life out within the prison walls which must seem to him like some
hideous, mocking, unending nightmare; and of the woman, young, pretty,
gentle, delicate, refined, with her white face, hopeless eyes, broken
heart, longing with a longing which she knew never would be gratified
for the beloved husband of whom she had been so foully and cruelly
bereft; these rose before me, moving me to sudden rage, so that I
broke into language which amazed Mr. Thomas Walker.
“The business which has brought me here is to tell you that you are a
contemptible, cowardly, murderous scoundrel, and that the hour is
struck in which your sins are going to find you out; that, in the
first place.”
I rather fancy that that fashion of opening the ball took him rather
by surprise. He stared as if he wondered if I were mad. Then he smiled
oddly.
“That, in the first place--and in the second?”
“In the second, I am going to enter into details by way of recalling
certain facts to your recollection.” Then I jumped at my fences
without stopping to consider what was on the other side. “How many
years ago is it since you began to incite young Frank Hutton to rob
his father?”
At that he did change countenance; I had found a safe landing on the
other side of the fence.
“What on earth are you talking about? Who are you? and what do you
want with me?”
“You taught Frank Hutton to be a thief--in a small way at the
beginning, on a large scale later on. You shared his ill-gotten
spoils, yet, when detection threatened, you so played upon his fears
that you induced him to commit suicide in order to escape the
consequences of what were more your misdeeds than his. Did you, a
lawyer, forget that when A assists B in committing suicide, A is
guilty of murder? When you put the poison within Frank Hutton’s reach,
knowing perfectly well the use he was about to make of it, you
committed murder; for that murder the law is presently going to call
you to account. Part of the business which has brought me here is to
tell you so.”
The way in which he looked at me! I already began to suspect that his
fingers were itching to take me by the throat. He merely said:
“Is that so? May I ask from what quarter you have acquired the facts
on which you base your rather surprising observations?”
I did not answer him; I just went on, warming to the work as I did so.
The feeling was growing momentarily stronger that this man was one of
those unspeakable creatures who are dangers to whom ever they are
brought in contact with.
“Not content with destroying young Frank Hutton, soul and body, to
cover your own offences, you proceeded to wreck his father’s
happiness, and to lead him into crime. You lied to him about his son;
you were so skilful as to be able to make him believe that his boy was
the sole offender; and then, pretending that it was your desire to
spare him shame, you put it into his head to lay the burden upon an
innocent man; you were so skilful as to make it seem that the
suggestion came from himself and not from you. You unutterable thing!”
This time, when I paused, he said nothing; I was aware that he was all
the more dangerous on that account. But I cared nothing--so intent was
I on speaking my mind.
“You made black seem white; you manufactured false evidence; you lied,
and lied, and lied--and George Young was sentenced to fourteen years’
penal servitude; thief, murderer, liar, you have succeeded in doing
that. I have no doubt you hoped that you were safe at last--you
short-sighted fool! The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind
exceeding fine--your sort they grind to powder. You are already being
slipped between the stones--your course has run.”
That time, when I paused, the grimace which distorted his face was
rather a grin than a smile. He asked:
“In the name of all that’s marvellous, from what madhouse have you
been permitted to escape?”
“When you planned that grand _coup_, putting the onus of all your
guilt upon an innocent man and shutting him up for fourteen awful
years, you overlooked one small point--that all men are not devils;
that to some is given the power to repent of their sins; and so poor a
judge of character are you, that you were unaware that your own
partner, your first victim’s unhappy father, was one of them. From the
moment he sinned, he began to repent.”
He interrupted me--speaking for the first time savagely.
“Have you been talking to old Hutton? Has he been coaching you in this
tissue of nonsense?”
As before, I left his questions unanswered; I simply went on:
“Fortunately for himself, your partner was one of those who cannot
know happiness unless his conscience is clear and he is at peace with
God; better be whipped in this world than through all eternity. Had
you in your composition even a trace of the things which make for
goodness you would have been moved by his remorse. Instead, you have
made of it a mock; you seem to be all evil; instead of joining
yourself with him in an act of atonement, you pressed him towards
further crime. You had his son in your mind. By inciting him to
self-murder you believed yourself to have escaped one danger. You
hoped, by inducing the father to imitate his son, you would escape
another. To-day--only a very little while ago--you murdered him.”
It was, if I may be allowed to say so, my _coup de théâtre_; I had
planned it from the first; it produced the effect I had intended. He
became, on an instant, another man. His skin became livid, his lips
trembled, words stuck in his throat, fear touched his heart.
“What--what do you mean?”
I believe he meant to say more but could not; he shrank back from me
as if in physical terror. I gave him no quarter. I held out my right
hand, palm uppermost. On it was the small blue phial.
“Do you know that?”
He looked at it as if it were some dreadful thing; again he stammered
his question: “What--what do you mean?”
“This morning I saw you give that phial to your partner, Michael
Hutton. He has long had it in his mind to escape from the weight of
remorse which has made life intolerable to him, as you are well aware.
I saw you give him this phial a few hours ago in the public gardens.
He said to you, ‘What is it?’ You replied, ‘Mandragora.’ He asked,
‘Will it give me sleep?’ You said, ‘If you choose; sleep which will
know no waking.’ You let him take the phial between his shaking
fingers, and you walked off, knowing that you had left death behind
you.”
“Who are you? How do you know these things?”
“My knowledge is of God. He has given me the power to put to confusion
such men as you.”
There was a momentary silence; he cast shifty glances round him, as if
he sought on every side some way of escape, finding none. Presently he
asked, moistening his parched lips with the tip of his tongue before
he was able to pronounce his words:
“Is--is old Hutton dead?”
“Do not imagine that that will profit you; he made complete
confession. The whole story is set down in black and white, signed by
his own hand. This phial will avail you nothing.”
Suddenly I realized that he was eyeing the tiny glass bottle with a
new expression in his glance.
“I don’t believe it’s empty.” He said it almost as if he were speaking
to himself. He drew closer. “I don’t believe the contents have been
touched.”
He made a sudden grab at the phial; I withdrew it just in the nick of
time. There was a sound of an unmusical bell.
“Who is that?” he asked; he was probably so obsessed by other thoughts
as to be unaware that he had all at once acquired the trick of
speaking his thoughts out loud. “It is some one at the outer door; who
can it be?”