A RACE FOR A LIFE
The Shady ’un, in the vindictiveness of his temper, had a word or two
to say to the stricken man, before he was marched off.
“You’re the bloke wot took ’old of me by the windpipe—ain’t yer?” he
said, going close up to Philip, and thrusting his face forward at him.
“Let this ’ere be a warnin’ to yer not ter tike ’old of other chap’s
windpipes in futur’. You’ve done me rather a good turn—you ’ave,
Mister Dandy Chater; there was a ’underd pound a ’angin’ to you—for
sich infermation as would lead to you bein’ nabbed—an’ that ’underd
pound is mine. I calls all these ’ere gents to witness,” he cried,
raising his voice, and looking round about him—“as I brought yer all
to this place, an’ nabbed ’im meself. An’ I’m a goin’ ter stick to
these ’ere noble coppers, till I gits my ’underd pound!”
Before Philip was marched away, he turned towards Madge—who stood with
her face buried in her hands—and made one last appeal to her.
“Dear girl,” he said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper—“there is
but one way to save me now—but one hope left for me. Before God I am
innocent. Find Dr. Cripps!”
There was no time to say more; they took him off at once—meeting, at
the very door of the place, the doctor who had been sent for to examine
the dead man. Madge followed the little party out, and saw Philip
placed in a cab, with three constables inside and another on the
box—and driven off; the Shady ’un—still in pursuit of his “’underd
pound”—running after the cab, as if his very life depended on keeping
it in sight.
In the stress of the moment Madge Barnshaw had lost all idea of time or
place—indeed of everything. She quite forgot in what neighbourhood she
stood or at what hour; and was only roused by hearing a voice address
her.
“I asks yer pardon, young lady—for a speakin’ of sich a trim built
craft, without leave—but this ain’t no place for you to be a standin’
about alone in. If so be as you’ve lost yer way, put yer faith in a old
mariner as knows the points of Life’s compass a bit, an’ let ’im tow
yer into wotever ’arbour you may be bound for.”
This extraordinary speech was delivered at such a rapid rate, and in so
hoarse a whisper that Madge had no time to interpose a word, or to
check the flow of words. Moreover, on looking at the face of the
speaker, whatever indignation she might have been disposed to feel
melted away; for it was a good kind honest face—ruddy with much
exposure to wind and weather, and fringed with a luxuriant growth of
tangled hair.
“My lass—I’m a married man—(an’ well I knows it, w’en Mrs. Quist
ain’t got ’er temper ironed out straight!)—and there ain’t no ’arm in
me. But there’s a few craft of a queer rig in these waters—and you’ll
do well not to stay in ’em.”
Madge made up her mind at once to trust him; explained briefly that she
knew nothing of the neighbourhood, and had merely come there to keep an
appointment. And then, without more ado, she suddenly turned
round—made a frantic effort to stand upright—and dropped into the
man’s arms. The scenes through which she had passed so recently had
utterly unnerved her, and Miss Madge Barnshaw was lying in a dead faint
in the arms of Captain Peter Quist.
The Captain’s first thought was to shout for help; his next, to carry
the girl to some place where he could procure something which would
revive her. Glancing about him eagerly, he caught sight of the lighted
windows of The Three Watermen; and, without a moment’s delay, half
carried and half supported her through the door, and into the little
private bar.
Only one person happened to be in that bar at the time—a little man,
seated in a corner, half asleep, with a glass of spirits beside him.
The Captain, entering hurriedly with his burden, looked round, and
cried out—“Give me some brandy—quick! an’ tell me w’ere I can find a
doctor.”
At the mention of that last word, the little man in the corner
staggered to his feet; swayed uneasily for a moment; and then came
towards the Captain, with what dignity he could muster on such short
notice. But his eyes no sooner fell upon the Captain, and then upon the
girl, than he uttered a sort of cry—spun completely round like an
unsteady top—and made for the door. But the Captain had recognised
him, too; and caught him just as he was slipping out.
“’Ere ’old ’ard, mess-mate—’old ’ard,” exclaimed the Captain, who had
deposited his burden on a bench and was able to give, for the moment,
his undivided attention to his captive. “You’re a man as I wants to
see, in ’arf a shake, so soon as I’ve attended to this ’ere young lady.
An’ per’aps, as there don’t seem to be nobody else ’andy—p’raps you
can tell me w’ere I’ll find a doctor?”
The little man—no other than Dr. Cripps—was cowed by the superior
size and strength of the Captain and capitulated. “I—I am a doctor,”
he said, giving himself a sort of shake, probably with the object of
pulling himself together—and bending over Madge, who had begun to open
her eyes, and to look about her. “Ah—nothing more than a temporary
faintness, as I imagined.”
He turned round suddenly, and went to the bar, and hammered on it with
his fists, and shouted out in a voice sufficient to be heard at the
other end of the house. “Hi—hi—why the devil don’t you look after
business, all of you! Here’s brandy wanted—and all sorts of
things—and yet any one might die, and be buried forty times over,
before you’d turn a hair. Hi—hi—where are you all?”
A surly-looking man came slowly out of an inner room, and advanced to
the bar. “All right—all right—you needn’t shout the ’ouse down, Dr.
Cripps,” he said, stooping to get what was wanted, and glancing
carelessly at the girl as he did so.
But it happened that the brandy was not required; for the mere mention
of the name of Cripps was sufficient to rouse Madge, as nothing else
could have done. She sprang up at once, and caught the little man by
the shoulders, and looked into his eyes. Cripps, for his part, began to
shake and to tremble very much; for he remembered the fifty pounds she
had paid him, and wondered whether or not she wanted it back.
“Are you Dr. Cripps?” she asked, staring at him intently. “Yes—I see
you are. What Providence has sent you to me at this time!”
“Madam,” said the Doctor, feebly, “if it would be any use for me to
deny my own identity I would most willingly do so. I have been hunted
and badgered to an extent beyond all belief; I have been dragged about
in the dead of night—sworn at—carried miles on hay waggons, without a
chance of obtaining natural and necessary refreshments; and all because
my name happens to be Cripps. But I give in, Madam; I am vanquished; do
what you will with me—but let me finish my liquor.” He walked across
to where his glass stood, and drained it, and then looked expressively
at the Captain. But nothing came of that; and at last beginning dimly
to see, in the coming of these two people—each connected, in such a
different fashion, with his recollections of Dandy Chater—something
which he had to face, whispered the landlord over the bar for a moment,
and then turned again to them.
“If you want me—if you have anything private to say,” he said—“you
had better come upstairs; there is a room there, of which I can claim
the use.”
“And in which you an’ me met some little time back,” said the Captain,
nudging him.
Cripps led the way upstairs, and ushered them into the same room in
which the meeting had been held not so long before. Carefully shutting
the door, he motioned to them to be seated, and stood looking at them
curiously, and waiting for them to speak.
“A day or two since,” began Madge, speaking with much eagerness, and
looking straight at the Doctor, “I paid you a large sum for certain
information concerning Mr. Dandy Chater——”
“’Ullo!” broke in the Captain, staring from one to the other. “I asks
yer pardon, Miss—but I ’adn’t no idea, w’en I took yer in tow, as you
was acquainted with my ole friend Phil.”
She looked at him in perplexity. “Nor am I,” she said slowly. “I spoke
of Mr. Dandy Chater, who has been recaptured, and is to stand his trial
to-morrow for murder.”
“Dandy Chater is the false flag as ’e’s bin a sailin’ under,” replied
the Captain. “But, anyways—call ’im Dandy Chater, or Phil Crowdy—or
Phil Chater—’e’s my pal, and I’m beatin’ up these ’ere quarters for to
find ’im.”
Again there flashed through Madge’s mind the words the Doctor had
spoken, about the one man living, and the other dead; again there
seemed to ring in her ears the words of Ogledon, when he had confessed
to her that he had killed Dandy Chater. Yet that same Dandy Chater had
stood—alive and well—in the hut by the river; that same Dandy Chater
was now on his way to Chelmsford Jail!
“He said to-night,” she said, turning to Cripps—“that I must find
you—that you could save him. I have heard that the trial will be held
to-morrow. Won’t you help me; won’t you tell me something more than you
told the other day? Think in what a state of mind I am now left! The
one man has been murdered; the other, of whom you spoke, is either
Dandy Chater, or a total stranger to me. How am I to find out?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but the Captain suddenly raised
his hand, and checked him. “Avast!” he said hoarsely—“I’ve got the
bearings of this ’ere business—an’ I’ve got it from Phil ’isself. An’
if so be as this ’ere young lady ’ll bear with me, she shall ’ave the
straight of it. Dandy Chater—own twin brother to my pal Philip Crowdy,
or Philip Chater—was took out of the river by this ’ere gent an’
myself a while back. I ’ad my reasons fer sayin’ nothink, an’ I cut an’
run.”
“I, too, had my reasons,” said Cripps, in a low voice—“for I feared
Ogledon, and my own connection with him, and I suspected that Ogledon
had killed him.”
Madge had laid her head down on the grimy table, and was weeping
bitterly. “Then it is true,” she said, in a whisper—“Dandy Chater is
dead!”
“Steady, my lass!” said the Captain, laying his rough hand lightly on
her shoulder—“Don’t give way; for there’s summink I’ve got to tell
you.”
She raised her head, and looked full into his eyes. Kindly eyes they
were, and they smiled at her sympathetically.
“A long while ago, my lass, there was a cruel wrong done—a bright lad
cut out of ’is ’ome, an’ all that should ’ave bin ’is, an’ cast adrift,
many miles across the sea, without a name—an’ with the brand of
’Bastard’ upon ’im. That lad was my pal Phil Chater; an’ ’e was the
twin brother of Dandy Chater.”
Again the words singing in her ears—“The one living—the other dead!”
“Think on it, my lass,” went on the Captain gently. “The one boy—an’
’im the youngest—brought up in luxury, an’ with powdered lacqueys for
to wait on ’im at every turn; the other—an’ ’im the eldest—sent miles
across the sea, an’ roughin’ it like any common child. Lost in the
bush, ’e was—pitched about from one place to another—’omeless,
friendless, without a compass. But—an’ mark you this, my lass—if ever
a boy steered ’isself straight by the stars o’ God, that boy Phil did.
An’ when at last ’e comes ’ome, with no thought in ’is ’eart of
anythink but a ’earty greetin’ for ’is brother, an’ a share-and-share
alike business with that brother—an’ finds ’im dead—wot do ’e do? I
put it to you, Miss—wot do my pal Phil do?”
She looked at him, with a brighter face, and slowly shook her head.
“My pal Phil finds as that brother of ’is loved a young gel—(an’ I
don’t need look far, for to find that young gel to-night!)—an’ was
loved by ’er. Phil is took for the real Dandy by that young gel—an’ ’e
loves ’er! Bein’ afeard that, if she knowed the truth, she would cast
’im off, ’e takes ’is brother’s place—’is brother’s sins—dips ’is
clean ’ands, so to speak, in the blood that guilty brother shed—an’
all—mark you this, my lass—all for love of that young gel. An’, for
love of ’er—the Judge will cry ‘Death!’ on Phil Chater to-morrer!”
The Captain, in his honest excitement and admiration, had risen to his
feet, and waved one arm above his head. Madge had risen, too, with
almost equal excitement.
“There was one man as could ’ave saved ’im—a man of the name of
Ogledon——”
“Ogledon is dead,” said Madge. “He died to-night, and can do neither
good nor harm any more. But we”—she looked round quickly at both
men—“we can save him; we can prove to all the world that this man is
innocent, and is suffering for another. The trial is to-morrow—the
first on the day’s list. We must reach Chelmsford to-morrow morning; we
must save this man!”
The Captain looked at her, in an excess of admiration. “My lass,” he
said slowly—“I ain’t surprised that my pal Phil should ’ave gorn
through wot ’e ’as, for sich a gel! I’d ’ave disowned ’im, if ’e’d done
less!”
* * * * *
The sun is shining brightly outside the crowded court-house; and men
and women, densely packed within the walls, glance up at the grimy
windows, and from them to the prisoner, and wonder, perhaps, what he is
thinking about. The prisoner, for his part, scarcely makes a
movement—scarcely turns his weary eyes round when any one speaks. For
hope has gone out of him; the battle has been fought and lost; the
murderer of the real Dandy Chater is dead and has carried his secret
into another Place where all secrets are known. The crowd of faces
about him bears but one stamp upon it all—hard, unrelenting, vengeful,
every face there looks upon him with certainty as a dead man and is
glad to think that he gets what he deserves.
There has been—as there always is in such cases—much eloquence on
both sides—and some dramatic moments. At the present the jury are a
little tired of it, and the Judge palpably nods; for the whole thing is
such a foregone conclusion. The great man who has come down specially
instructed by the Treasury, has pointed out that this, gentlemen, is a
case in which no considerations of social standing, birth or position
must be allowed to weigh. Indeed, gentlemen of the most intelligent
jury, in the most intelligent country of the world, if it be possible
to make it a little hotter for the prisoner than is made already, then,
gentlemen, clearly it is your duty to make it hotter. For this man—(a
most desperate character you must understand, gentlemen—as witness the
cloud of police about the dock and even in the dock with him)—this man
had the advantages of a great name—a fine position—much property.
Yet, gentlemen, what have you heard of him? He stands before you a
convicted forger, bank robber—burglar—and as you will have thrust
down your throats a little more, gentlemen, a murderer! You have had a
most honest gentleman here to-day on whom stolen notes were passed to
cover the amount of a forgery committed by the prisoner on his greatest
friend. You have heard of transactions whereby the estate handed down
to the prisoner has been gradually sapped away by riotous living until
not one stick of it remains that is not encumbered or bartered away.
And to-day, gentlemen, in effect, behold the prisoner brought before
you to receive his just doom!
All this and much more from the learned gentleman instructed by the
Treasury. A movement in Court as the learned gentleman sits down and
the prisoner turns his eyes in the direction of a new voice.
The new voice belongs to Mr. Andrew Banks, rising young barrister; and
Mr. Andrew Banks is disposed to be flippant. For it must not be
understood, gentlemen of the jury, that because a man of the station of
life of the prisoner has run through a fortune—or half-a-dozen
fortunes for the matter of that—and has made a mistake in the
exuberance of his heart in signing some one else’s name instead of his
own—it must really not be imagined, gentlemen, that that man for that
reason is capable of the atrocious crime with which he stands charged.
In fact, this rising young barrister would have the gentlemen of the
jury believe that the fact of his having done these things and done
them in an open-handed devil-may-care gentlemanly fashion, rather
redounds to his credit than otherwise—and goes indeed far to prove him
incapable of such a crime as this. The rising young barrister would beg
to call the attention of this most intelligent jury to the witnesses
relied upon for the prosecution. One—the witness in regard to the
forgery and the stolen notes—is a sixty per-cent. money-lender who has
doubtless bled the prisoner pretty freely for years; the other—and a
most unwilling witness it must be remembered, gentlemen—is a former
servant of the prisoner and now on his own confession out of a
situation. In a word, gentlemen of the jury, this rising young
barrister absolutely flouts the testimony of the witnesses for the
prosecution; has a little to say about hearths and homes and British
liberties; and sits down amid a little murmur of applause.
But the rising young barrister is not so sanguine as he appears, for he
leans across towards his learned brother from the Treasury and whispers
before that gentleman rises again—“Devilish uphill work! Can’t get a
word out of him—won’t suggest any course of defence at all.”
A few more words from the prosecution—wholly unnecessary words, for
the jury are whispering and have obviously made up their minds. Then
amid a silence the Judge sums up; would evidently be merciful if he
could; but is compelled to point out all the most damning facts against
the prisoner—his desperate attempts to regain his liberty—the absence
of any evidence to rebut the weight of testimony brought forward by the
prosecution. In a word, gentlemen of the jury, your course is clear
before you, and you are called upon to do your duty.
A whispering—a rustling—and a nodding of heads among the jurymen; for
it is not even necessary for them to retire. Then amid a silence
greater even than before the usual questions are put and the
verdict—known long ago to every man and every woman in the Court—is
spoken in one word. Guilty!
As though that word loosed the pent-up emotions and passions of the
crowded place, and as though the grim satisfaction at the supposed
justice of the thing can no longer be suppressed, a great cheer breaks
out and rolls through the Court and out through echoing corridors into
the street itself; where it is taken up by hundreds of throats and sent
on and on to fill the town. Then following immediately on it and as
suddenly as though no sound had been raised, fell a death-like silence;
for Judge and prisoner are face to face—eye to eye. But though he were
asked a thousand times, the prisoner has nothing to offer—except the
simple words—“I am innocent.” Men whisper each other that he seems
stunned.
Some one glides behind the Judge and fits a square of black on his wig.
The Judge has actually opened his mouth to speak, when there comes a
sudden commotion at the doors; cries of remonstrance; people thrusting
this way and that; and foremost of a little knot of people who seem to
be fighting their way in—a woman.
She stops for nothing—will be stopped by nothing. Men fall back from
before her as though she had some power above mere humanity. Philip
Chater turning towards where she comes, has a dim idea that
Cripps—staggering and waving his arms; Betty Siggs, with her arms
stretched out towards him; Captain Quist struggling fiercely with a
gigantic constable—are all about that central figure. Then the
imperious voice of the woman rings out above all the tumult.
“Stop—in God’s name! That man is not Dandy Chater!”