There is not much that can be done for a thatched cottage once well
alight, and for such salvage as could be done there were plenty of
ready helpers soon upon the scene. That aged rustic was not among
them, nor did I afterwards see or hear of him; but among them before
long appeared Vane-Cartwright himself, brisk and alert, and forward to
proffer to Trethewy every sort of help and accommodation for his now
homeless family. Trethewy’s response was characteristic—total and
absolute silence.
It seemed late but was still early morning when I had the Trethewys
assembled for breakfast in my private sitting-room in my inn.
Neighbours had readily supplied the women with clothes, and a cart had
been forthcoming to carry them. Trethewy and I walked to the inn
together, and his attitude to Vane-Cartwright was naturally quite
altered. He told me a second time of the dislike, which he had felt
from the first, of being in Vane-Cartwright’s service, and he told me
that he had just decided to accept a situation which was open to him
in Canada, and had expected to sail with his family, who did not yet
know it, in six weeks, but supposed he must put it off now.
At last I really heard what it was that Ellen Trethewy could tell and
for knowing which she had been removed to Crondall, and it did not
come up to my expectations.
About noon after Peters’ murder, after Callaghan and I had gone into
the village, and while Vane-Cartwright, by his own account, had stayed
reading in the house, the girl had twice seen him as she looked out of
the window of the cottage. She had seen him come out of the gate of
the drive and turn to the right up the road away from the village.
About twenty minutes later she had seen him turn in again at the gate,
and this time he came down the green lane. To any one who knew the lie
of the ground, the significance of this was certain. He could not have
got round by road or by any public footpath in that time; either he
had come through the plantation and the fields, where the tracks were
made, or he must have made a round over ditches and hedges and rough
ground by which a man taking a casual and innocent stroll was
extremely unlikely to have gone, especially in frost and snow.
The inference was convincing enough to me, but then, as I knew, I was
ready to be convinced. Vane-Cartwright was not likely, I felt, to have
done so much to prevent the girl revealing merely this. Was there
nothing more?
Yes, there was, but it was something of which Ellen did not feel sure.
During that twenty minutes the sun shone out brilliantly upon the
snow, and tempted her to stroll out a little way up the drive, when
she stood for awhile to look, in spite of the horror of the time, with
delight at the spotless covering of the lawn and the shining burden of
the cedar branches, and then up at the sun. Her eyes were soon so
dazzled that all sorts of fancied shapes danced before them. Turning
suddenly and looking towards the field, she thought for an instant,
but only an instant, that she saw between two trees a man up in the
field, about half-way up, walking towards the hedge, towards a spot in
the hedge which we already know. She covered her eyes with her hand
and looked again with clearer vision. There was no one there, and she
tried to brush aside the fancy that she had seen any one. But somehow
she had often wondered since about what she had seen, and somehow she
connected it in her fancy with the murder. She could not connect it
with the making of the tracks, for she had only read of them in a
muddled newspaper report which had given an entirely wrong impression
as to whereabouts they were found. Now it was all obvious.
Vane-Cartwright, while he made those very tracks, had passed before
her eyes; he had seen her standing and looking towards him, and he
could not entertain the hope, though it was true, that her eyes did
not see him clear.
This much being plain, my first thought was of amazement at the
coolness of Vane-Cartwright on the evening after the murder, while he
could not be sure that the discovery of the tracks had not been told
to the girl and had not already drawn forth from her an explanation
which, if believed, must be fatal to him. My second thought was of
great disappointment that the identification of him with the maker of
the tracks was still to so large an extent a matter of inference. I
cannot say whether I myself, or Trethewy, or the girl, who, having
long brooded over these matters without the necessary clue, now showed
astonishing quickness in grasping them, was first to see the next step
which the enquiry required. Evidence must be sought which would show
whether Vane-Cartwright or some other person had undone the
window-latch in Peters’ room. I was ready immediately to rush off to
Long Wilton and see whether Sergeant Speke could recollect anything of
importance about the movements of the persons who were in the room
that morning. It was the girl who suggested to me a possible witness
rather nearer at hand. The young doctor had been in the room till
nearly the last, and, as her mother happened to have told her, he had
very shortly after the event in question removed to London. Could not
I see him?
I resolved to see him, if I could, that day, for I thought I could
gain nothing by further waiting near Crondall. I was anxious about the
safety of Ellen Trethewy, but I found her father, who was as much
persuaded as I of the peril which continued to hang over her, had
formed his own plan for promptly removing her; he thought we should be
safer separate; and it reassured me to see a reminiscence of his wild
youth sparkle in his now sober countenance as he said that it would
not be the first time that he had baffled a pursuit.
Upon some calculation, prompted perhaps by excessive precaution and
futile craft, such as may well be excused in excited men who have
found themselves surrounded by unimagined dangers, we decided that I
should not start for any of the stations on the branch line that
passes Crondall, but should leave my luggage behind, drive, in a fast
trap which the baker sometimes let out, to an ancient castle in the
neighbourhood, thence, three miles, to the junction on the main
line to London, send the trap back with a note to my landlord, and
go to town by the one fast train in the day which there was easy
time to catch. I suppose we thought I should get some start of
Vane-Cartwright, and that this was worth while, as he was likely to
stick close to me, and had shown already his fertility of baleful
resource.
Accordingly, I arrived at the junction just as the up-train came in.
The train from Crondall had arrived a little while before, and was
standing in a bay on the other side of my platform of departure. I was
by this time so sleepy that I could hardly keep my eyes open as I
walked. I did barely notice the screaming approach of a third train,
which was in fact the down-train from London, but in which of course I
felt no interest, and I noticed some but not quite all of the people
on the platform or in the waiting-shed. I took my seat in the far
corner of a carriage. I began instantly to doze, and the train, I
believe, waited there awhile. I faintly heard shouts and whistles
which heralded the starting of the train, but it did not start
immediately. When the carriage door again opened and two other
passengers got in, I did half-open my eyes; but I started broad awake
when to those half-open eyes my fellow-passengers revealed themselves
as Vane-Cartwright and the foreign visitor at the inn, whose looks I
had irrationally disliked. I say broad awake—but not awake enough to
do the proper thing to be done. The train was already in motion before
they sat down, and my fellow-passengers with their luggage so
encumbered the door that I could not have got back on to the platform.
I ought, I suppose, to have pulled the communication cord. As it was,
I merely sat up, looking at them as indifferently as I could, while
really my heart sank within me, and I wished my muscles had not been
so stiff and chilled from my adventure of the night before.
The train was moving but not yet fast. It seemed to be slowing down
again. There was fresh shouting and whistling on the platform; the
stationmaster saying angrily, “Put him in here”; a voice that sounded
somehow well known, but which I could not recognise, answering him
vigorously; and just as the train began to go faster a big man, still
shouting and very hot with pursuit, tumbled into the carriage. To my
delighted surprise I found myself joined by Callaghan.
The most surprising turns of good fortune, I have learned to think,
are generally the reward of more than common forethought on the part
of some one. My rescue in this case, which I will none the less call
providential, could never have happened but for the zealous care of
Callaghan himself, and of another person many hundred miles from the
scene.
But of all this I was soon to hear. Meanwhile, Callaghan, who was in
the highest of spirits, bestowed on me a mere smile of recognition,
and poured himself forth upon Vane-Cartwright with an exuberance of
pleasure at the unexpected meeting which must have been maddening. It
was the only time, during my acquaintance with Vane-Cartwright, when
he appeared to be in the least at a loss. Hearty good-humour was, I
should think, the only attitude towards him which he did not know how
to meet. So he passed, I take it, a miserable journey. Nor was his
mysterious companion left to enjoy himself. To my astonishment
Callaghan addressed him politely by a strange-sounding name, which I
suppress, but which from the start which the gentleman gave appeared
to be his name.
As for me, Callaghan leaving me in the corner which I had originally
chosen had manœuvred Vane-Cartwright into the other corner of the same
side of the carriage, and the stranger into the seat opposite him,
while he placed himself between me and Vane-Cartwright, and with his
back half-turned towards me entertained them both.
I dozed away again and again, and I daresay I was asleep for a good
part of the journey, but I endeavoured to think out in my waking
moments what was the nature of the peril which had threatened me, for
peril assuredly there was, and how it could have come about that I was
thus rescued.
As to the former question, I got no further than the reflexion, that
to stick me with a knife and jump on the line or make a bolt at the
London terminus (which was our first stop) would have been too crude
for the purpose. As to the latter question, Callaghan, suffering our
fellow-passengers to escape for a moment behind their newspapers,
roused me with a nudge, and surreptitiously passed me what proved to
be several pounds’ worth of telegraphic message from my wife at
Florence to himself. I was hardly yet aware how thoroughly my wife’s
original aversion for Callaghan had given way in the day when he had
been her guest, and when she had passed from observing his weaknesses
to putting up with them and occasionally reproving them. I learned now
that a few hours after I had left her, my wife had telegraphed to
Callaghan through a mutual friend whom she believed would have his
address, stating the sort of errand on which I had gone, and the few
particulars known to her which might determine my movements, and
entreating him to find me, and having found me, never to leave me
alone. But that was not all. The telegram stated that Vane-Cartwright
was on his way home, having sent home one communication only, a
telegram to a registered telegraphic address in London, that address
being the word by which Callaghan had accosted the stranger.
As I afterwards learned, my wife, directly I had departed, had removed
to Vane-Cartwright’s hotel. Vane-Cartwright did not know her by sight,
and, if he had discovered her, he was the sort of man who would
probably despise the intelligence of any nice woman. She had taken the
best rooms in the hotel, close to Vane-Cartwright’s, and had otherwise
set about, for the first time in her life, and for a few hours, to
throw money about in showy extravagance. By money and flattery she had
contrived to be informed of the address of every letter and telegram
that Vane-Cartwright sent before his departure, of the name and
nationality (nothing more was known of him) of his only visitor that
morning, and of the further fact that shortly after Vane-Cartwright’s
departure that visitor had returned and had enquired whether she had
moved to that hotel, but had not asked to see her. She learned also
that Vane-Cartwright had been at the station when the Milan train
started, but had returned and waited for the next train. The reader
already knows that she had had the intuition that false messages might
be sent me in her name.
Callaghan had been away from home, and had not got the message till
late in the evening before he joined me. He lost no time in going to
my house to ascertain my address and what had last been heard of me.
He called also at Vane-Cartwright’s house, where he was only informed
that he was abroad. He left London by the first train in the morning
armed with a _Bradshaw_ and a map. Study of _Bradshaw_ had led him to
notice that I might possibly be leaving by a train which would be at
the junction about the same time as his. So he was on the look out,
and with his quick sight actually saw me in my train as he arrived. By
running hard and shouting entreaties and promises to the officials, he
had just managed to catch me.
When our train arrived at Paddington, Callaghan shook me awake. It
appeared to me that Vane-Cartwright, who had not been conversational
before, had just started an interesting subject by which he hoped to
detain Callaghan while our mysterious companion got away from the
train. It was not a successful effort. Callaghan pushed me somewhat
rudely out of the carriage, and jumping out after me told me to wait
for him, and kept me, while he stood about on the platform till every
passenger by the train but ourselves had gone away. At last he called
a hansom; still he did not enter it till the driver of an invalid
carriage which had been waiting in the rank of cabs appeared to give
up the expectation that the person for whom he waited was coming, and
drove away.
“Do you see that invalid carriage?” said Callaghan to me. “It was
ordered for you.”