THE CHIEF OF THE BRAZENCROOK POLICE MAKES A
BOLD STROKE FOR THE GOVERNMENT REWARD.
The Brazencrook officer, after sleeping upon the resolution he had
made, received notification of the Government reward; and, determined
not to be bilked by Mr. Bales, he went off quietly the next morning to
Montem Castle, and asked for Captain Hammerton.
When Lionel appeared, he said,--“Will you be good enough to come a
little way with me; there is a man who has a question to ask you?”
Lionel looked puzzled for a moment at the request, and then
replied,--“Certainly, if you desire it.”
“Yes I do,” said the officer; and without another word they went forth
together.
When they were outside the Castle gates, the superintendent said, “The
truth is, I did not wish to make any fuss; but I went to Mr. Smith,
the county magistrate, early this morning, and upon the facts that I
considered it my duty to lay before him, he granted me a warrant for
your apprehension; and I now claim you as my prisoner on the charge of
wilfully and maliciously killing Richard Tallant.”
Saying this the officer laid his hand upon Lionel’s arm, who started as
if he had been stung. The officer thereupon gave a shrill whistle, and
two policemen rushed out from a hiding place in the hedge.
“If you will go quietly with me,” said the officer, “I will dismiss
these men.”
“You may rely upon it I shall make no attempt to escape, not that your
men would intimidate me were I inclined to have a fight for it,” said
Lionel, stretching himself up to his full height and surveying the
force. “You represent the law so far that you are its officer: you may
dismiss your fellows.”
The chief did so at once, and when he and Lionel reached “The Magpies,”
there was a cab waiting to convey them to Brazencrook.
When Earl Verner learnt what had taken place, he rode to Brazencrook,
and demanded that Lionel should be released, fumed and threatened, and
at last discovered that although he was an Earl and Lord-Lieutenant
of the County, the Brazencrook police superintendent was master of
the situation. Lionel was taken before the Brazencrook bench, and
remanded until the conclusion of the inquest, and was then conveyed to
“The Magpies” at the request of the coroner, that he might hear the
remainder of the evidence.
The jurymen were considerably surprised at what the Brazencrook officer
had done, and so was the coroner, who said, in commencing the business
of the day, that the superintendent had, he hoped, acted on evidence
which had come to his knowledge since the business of the previous
day; otherwise he had no hesitation in saying that he had committed
a serious error. He was a plain, outspoken fellow, this Severnshire
coroner, who, though he might not always conduct his investigation with
legal discretion, fearlessly searched out the truth, and endeavoured to
do justice.
It was soon noised abroad that the Earl’s brother was in custody; and
this fact was conclusive in the minds of large numbers of persons,
especially of the lower order, that he was guilty. There was a great
crowd about the inn on this second day, and a numerous body of
policemen, chiefly of the county force, to keep the mob in order.
“The Magpies” never had so good a time of it. The landlord had been
compelled to send into Brazencrook for fresh supplies of beer and
spirits, and several additional waiters had to be employed in serving
the thirsty customers.
The only additional witnesses were the gunsmith’s assistant and a
railway clerk; the former to make that absurd statement about the
prisoner purchasing pistols and ammunition, which were not sent home
until after the murder; the latter to prove that it was Lionel’s
intention to leave Montem Castle that day. But there was another
fact which the officer thought a great deal of. In the prisoner’s
pocket-book there were some memoranda relative to an account between
the deceased and himself, with regard to some share speculations prior
to the panic, and in the margin was written in pencil,--“_This was a
downright swindle of Tallant’s._”
In addition there was a scrap cut from a newspaper, alluding to a
_fracas_ which had taken place at the Ashford Club, and in which the
Hon. Lionel Hammerton’s name was mentioned, and also Mr. Tallant’s.
Our readers will remember that Lionel had alluded to this gossiping
paragraph when he left England. They also know that Hammerton had been
led into speculations by Tallant, which had ended in grievous losses
that seriously involved Lionel, and had cost the Earl no small sum. The
policeman naturally argued from these papers and memoranda, that there
had been a quarrel between his prisoner and the deceased; and he laid
them before the coroner’s jury with an air of triumph.
But the coroner strongly advised the jury to adjourn for a week, and
they did so, leaving the onus of committing the prisoner for trial on
the magistrates. Meanwhile Mr. Bales, the detective, did not agree
with the opinion of the Brazencrook police. The case bothered him
considerably, he acknowledged; but he could not bring himself to think
that the prisoner had killed Richard Tallant. If the crime had been
committed in London, he would certainly have looked up Mr. Shuffleton
Gibbs; for, in the course of the inquiries he had made in those past
days for Mr. Christopher Tallant, and since then, he had come across
suspicious transactions in which Mr. Gibbs had been mixed up when the
ex-swell was in the hey-day of his questionable glory. Hunting out this
same gentleman for Mr. Williamson, and finally bringing him to Bow
Street to be unsuccessful in his charge against him, the detective knew
that Gibbs had appealed to Mr. Tallant in vain for assistance. But
Gibbs was a broken-down, drunken wretch: what could he do down here?
However, it might be worth while to run up to town, and see if the
fellow had been away.
In the evening Mr. Arthur Phillips and his wife arrived at Montem
Castle. The Earl welcomed them heartily, and poor Amy, who had come
down-stairs wrapped up with shawls, fell upon her dear friend’s
shoulder, and sobbed until Phœbe’s heart ached with sympathetic sorrow.
What a weary, weary time it was!
Lord Verner started early the next morning to town, that he might
personally consult his London solicitors, and take some potent action
against the police, or the magistrates, or anybody and everybody by
whom his brother was detained in custody. The poor Earl was almost
beside himself with indignation and passion.
And all this time that shrinking, hiding, halting, slouching figure,
which the reader has seen before, had found shelter in Brazencrook.
Moving in the darkness, with the rain splashing on the highway and
hissing in the hedge-rows, the figure stalked back again towards
Brazencrook, instead of getting away from that town, as the cunning
mind had planned. But having no knowledge of the district, and being
nervous and excited, and lacking gin, the wretched criminal had
succeeded the next day in reaching the town he would have avoided; and
when Mr. Bales was thinking of going to town as a sort of forlorn hope,
or an excursion by the way, to see Gibbs, this same Gibbs was imbibing
his favourite liquor at a sixth-rate tavern at Brazencrook, and reading
a full account of the murder in the “Brazencrook Daily Banner.”
“Hang that bruise on the hand,” thought the half-tipsy reader--“clear
case of suicide but for that--clear case of _felo-de-se_--they might
have buried the beast in the cross-roads. A rum go if they hang that
swell Hammerton--a very rum go. I must burn this pocket-book, and the
cheques too for the matter of that--it’s no good trying to cash them; I
can get rid of the notes easily enough. What an infernal scoundrel he
was, to be sure--threatening his sister the Countess! By Jove, I was
close to him then; she ought to thank a fellow for stopping his mouth.
How he clutched me--a good thing the pistol was pretty heavy, but
confound that bruise and the torn pocket! That policeman is a clever
fellow; nobody else would have thought of the pocket-book: wish I’d had
time to get his purse--these notes are a nuisance. I’m safe enough,
that’s one thing--good idea following the thief by train, deuced good!”
Thus the gin-drinker’s thoughts flitted through his mind, as he sat
before the tavern fire drinking raw spirits and drying his clothes, a
poor thin, wretched-looking object, with one foot in the grave, as the
slipshod servant had said to her boozy master, when he asked who it was
that had such “a big swallow.”