was a wet night. She stepped back and whispered to him before she crept
with a stealthy, springy step up the stairs. Stapley went on, past my
rooms, past Murphy’s, to the top floor. He put in his key and opened
the door of his set--the fatal set, which had been responsible for so
much; the set which had egged on Orion to murder, which had saddled
poor Orchard with such a horrid companion--I’ll tell you that some
other day--which had seen Jimmy die. He opened the door. There was a
bracket lamp on the wall immediately opposite. It was burning feebly,
and there was a dark circle on the wall paper behind it, where the oil
had sweated. Below the lamp was a little glass which Orion had gilded
with a sixpenny bottle of dye. Barbara was close behind Stapley--so
close that she could see her own face in the little glass slightly
behind his.
He stepped in. She leaned over the banisters and swiftly beckoned. She
heard the roar of the streets through the open window on the staircase,
and she heard the heavy tread of the policeman’s boots on the wood.
Then she glided after Stapley. Before he turned to shut the door she
was in the passage alone with him at the top of the big, quiet house,
with the policeman coming steadily up the stairs. Her eyes, when later
on she told me the scene, were the glowing, deadly eyes of a wild
beast. I suppose she must have looked at Stapley in the same
way--accusingly, fiercely, without a shimmer of mercy. No doubt she
thought of Bob waiting for his trial, of the quiet, narrow life at
Norwood which had satisfied her, and which she was in danger of losing.
She said crisply:
“A policeman is coming up to arrest you for the murder of Denis
Murphy.”
When she saw Stapley’s face she no longer had the least doubt of his
guilt.
The policeman came up, puffing a little, to the third flight, and
Stapley, taken utterly by surprise, not knowing how much had been found
out, never said a single word in defense, never resisted when he was
arrested. There wasn’t a tittle of evidence against him. It was a
woman’s instinct, only a woman’s instinct, that--hanged him? No; the
set spares its victims that. It gave Orion a hint to fling himself out
of the window. Only a woman’s instinct. If I had not taken her to that
melodrama, Bob Piety would have swung.
“The Play’s the Thing.” Now, wouldn’t that be a splendid title? If only
poor Nat had been alive!
Stapley was tried. He made a full confession. The jury, finding his
story much too fantastic, brought him in mad, and, so far as I know, he
is alive, at Broadmoor at this moment.
It came out in evidence, and on his own showing, that he had been
going queer for some time before he stabbed Murphy. He had been reading
very hard, and then, of course, those rooms got on his nerves. He
exaggerated trifles. For instance, he fixed a certain hour for his
laundress to turn up in the morning. He used to get up and wait for her
with his watch in his hand, dreading that she would be a minute late.
That morning arrival of hers became the one moment of his day. He could
think of very little else. Would she come in time to-morrow? Was it
worth his while to pay her if she wouldn’t be punctual, if she wasted
daily five minutes? Five minutes! Ten sometimes. How much did that
mount up to in a month? The woman was deliberately robbing him. He
would not stand it. One must draw the line somewhere. He used to
beseech her, bully her, raise her money, threaten to sack her. He
bribed her with old hats and trousers for her husband. If she would
only turn up to time, so that the one hour of the day--that hour of
nine--could take its place with the others, sink into comparative
insignificance like the rest!
He used to ask other fellows very earnestly--we all remembered it
afterward:
“What would you do if your laundress was always five minutes late in
the morning? I want practical advice. I don’t want to be hard on the
woman; but, then, no one likes to be imposed upon.”
Sometimes he would oversleep and she would slip in quietly with her key
and wake him by planking his boots down outside his bedroom door. On
those days he was more wretched than ever, because he had no means of
judging how late she had been.
He used to decide beforehand what dress the pretty cousin would wear
next time they met. He dared not influence her. But if she wore blue,
that meant damnation for him--this world and the next. But red was
bliss forever. He used to say to himself, “This is the very last time
I’ll play these mental pranks. To-day shall decide everything.”
And she would be on the platform waiting for his train, smiling and
radiant in a blue gown, and he would have to go over it all again.
The fang of some dread or other was always fastening in him. He was
full of all kinds of whimsical fancies--those whims which seem so
unimportant, so imbecile and contemptible to the level-minded, and
which are so tragic to the morbid. You understand the sort of thing;
avoiding the seams of paving stones, taking your fate from the chance
expression of the first strange face you meet when you go out of
doors, from the color of a horse, the chime of a clock, street
cries--anything.
He was very candid when he stood on his trial for his life; he poured
out all his troubles, piteously magnifying trifles, blaming the
laundress, the blue dress, the clock in the square, the cab outside,
for his misfortune. The prison doctor and another examined him. Of
course they said he was mad. He may have been. Yet, if he had taken
some other set, he would have been as sane as you are to-day.
On the Saturday that he killed Murphy he had delayed going to Dulwich
by the usual early afternoon train. He was afraid for one thing--afraid
of the poor little cousin’s frock. He kept putting it off--the
time-table spread out in front of him--from one half-hour to the other.
And then, as the afternoon went on, a new terror presented itself.
The Inn began to fill up and grow gay with fellows home early from
their offices, and smart shop girls, light-hearted with the weekly
half-holiday. He could see them all at the open windows--men in
lounging coats and women in cambric bodices.
Pretty faces peeped over flower boxes and round idly flapping curtains.
He was afraid to cross the square. Directly the girls saw him they
would lean over the window ledges, make funny grimaces, and cough.
There would be a perfect chorus of short, dry, mocking coughs. He had a
little nervous trick of clearing his throat, and the girls, who were
full of chaff, and not over-fond of him because he was so grave and
proper, always mimicked him and called him Splutters. They have a
nickname for most of the men, but no one but Stapley ever took any
notice.
He was afraid to run along that line of little coughs and bantering
cries of “Splutters! Splutters!” He looked at one girl immediately
opposite, a girl with very fluffy hair and a flashing steel buckle at
her waist, and said tragically:
“If that girl coughs and calls out ‘Splutters,’ I may as well go and
hang myself. I shan’t have any luck. It will be all up with me.”
So for fear that she would, he waited until dusk, when he thought he
would be able to glide out of the Inn unobserved.
While he waited he noticed that there was something unusual about the
paneling of the wall--something that he had never observed before. It
was near the window, at a part where Orion’s leather paper had peeled
off. There was a slight but unmistakable difference in the molding. The
possibility of a secret cupboard in the wall at once occurred to him.
At the same moment he seized it feverishly as an omen, a thing that
might make a free man of him once more. The nervous, prompting fiend at
his side made him say to himself, as his quivering fingers fiddled at
the wood:
“If there should be a secret place behind, then there will be an end to
your foolery. It won’t matter whether Augusta wears red or blue. Mrs.
Worsell may stay away until ten, if she chooses.”
He tapped and pushed and pressed and coaxed for a little, and at last
the panel moved slightly upward. He put his hand in, felt a bolt, drew
it down, and sliding up the panel saw a shallow cupboard. It was full
of dust, and empty except for a knife. Ah! _The_ knife. The knife which
later on was to investigate the very recesses of Murphy’s heart. A
knife with a chased silver handle and a fine blade.
He held it in his hand, and stood pondering on it and on the shallow
hidden place behind the panel. He became conscious of something heavy
and still in the air, something waiting, watchful, as his hand gripped
that handle. Every little sound in other sets became full of portent.
That knife! Who had hidden it there? How had it been used? How long ago
was it since a human hand, warm with life, made a blur on that
polished, delicately chased handle?
Then he suddenly thought that he would take it down and show it to
Kinsman, who was very interested in curios and had some knowledge of
them. He gave a last rapid look at the time-table, and decided that he
would not go down to Dulwich in time for dinner; he’d have a steak at
Gatti’s. Kinsman would be interested in the knife. He went downstairs
as he was, in his old slippers, leaving his door ajar and his rooms in
darkness. He had not lighted the lamp because he had been telling
himself every half-hour that he would get off to Dulwich.
On the way downstairs he heard a woman’s clear strong voice singing
“Tatters.” It was Sophia’s voice, and Sophia was the worst tease of
them all. He began to clear his throat directly he thought of her. He
would not go downstairs to Kinsman. He would wait until he could find
him alone. He would go upstairs and get his hat and bag, and put on his
boots and be off to Dulwich. It was evening. Augusta--dear, tender
little Augusta--would have on her evening gown--red nun’s veiling.
As ill-luck would have it, there was a light under Murphy’s door. And
Murphy’s oak was hospitably black, and the inner door with its gleaming
brass knocker seemed to wink an invitation. The very knife in his hand
seemed to point to Murphy’s door. Well, why not show it to Murphy? He
was a bit of a fool, but he would be interested.
So he pulled up, knocked at the door--and you know the rest.
He swore to the very last that he did not do it, that he was merely the
agent of the knife--that diabolical knife with the secret history.
Murphy came to the door. His pretty, dissolute face was rather flushed
with annoyance. His lips, those pouting, cherry-red lips like a girl’s,
showed his white, even teeth under his mustache, which was turning
white. His sodden brown eyes, half veiled in a web of crow’s feet, his
smirking, unfailing air of conceit and satisfaction, struck
clean-living, over-wrought Stapley as disgusting. The man was an evil
clod upon an honest earth. There was the trail of twenty years’
intrigue, shuffling, and sham on his features. His eyes were dull with
the ruin of many women. He was accursed, heavy, hateful with old
secrets, old sins--like the knife. The knife! It claimed kinship. It
flew forward to his heart.
That is all. As Murphy shouted out and fell, Stapley went, quick and
silent like a panther, up the stairs--quick and silent, with the
cunning of a wild animal, just as Barbara, a few weeks later, stole up
after him. He softly shut his oak--the oak is always discreet--and sat
shivering, almost breathless, in the dark, listening to the tramp of
feet and the anxious buzz of tongues underneath.
When everything was still he stole out and went to Dulwich.
Augusta had a blue gown--it was the Boat Race day--and Stapley was a
Cambridge man.
She wore blue constantly afterward. This was one of his plaintive
injuries when he babbled out everything at the trial. Blue at the
theater that night when his face betrayed him to the vigilant eye of
Barbara. Blue when she came to the court to give evidence against him.
I wonder if she wears blue when she goes to see him at Broadmoor. Some
women would do that in the hope of a cure; though, as you say, they
probably don’t allow visits at Broadmoor, and a cure wouldn’t be of any
real help in Stapley’s case.
HOPKINS.
ORCHARD was artistic--and talked about it. How tiresome such people
are! He split the world into two factions--the artist and the rank,
impossible Philistine. Religious bigots talk in the same way--of
professing Christians and the unregenerate. I knew a dear old lady once
who thought that we had a perfect right to stone some Mohammedan
missionaries who came to England.
In the middle of a country walk Orchard would stop, with a deep gulp of
admiration, and ask you to admire the view. He raved of autumn tints,
apple blossoms, bare boughs. He pretended to like a fog. He painted
landscapes--or seascapes, according to your imagination--on the panels
of his walls; he stenciled his ceilings, and produced an idealized
portrait of his laundress.
He had all the delightful courage and egotism of the amateur. He
boasted that he had only once been to the Academy--that temple of
mediocrity. He told you coolly that there was only one English artist
of talent--and he was Whiffin. “Never heard of Whiffin! Who is Whiffin?
You astonish me. My dear fellow,” he would say pityingly, “there is
_only_ Whiffin.”
The others--men whom the ignorant regard as leading--he disposed of
glibly. This one was color-blind; he thought that was common knowledge.
That one employed a ghost; the fellow could hardly hold a brush
himself. Another only painted flesh tints; you can’t have a picture all
flesh. “My dear fellow, I assure you there is no one but Whiffin. He is
the coming man. I’m surprised you don’t know his work. Galleries! A man
like Whiffin wouldn’t exhibit at the galleries.”
Orchard was willing to undertake anything--artistic. But his great
hobby was house-building. He said that the average architect didn’t get
the surroundings in harmony. The architect’s work only began when the
roof was on. He should design the garden, the furniture. He should
choose the pictures, the tenants. Every new house ought to be embowered
in creepers from the very start. An old lawn and a clipped yew tree
were as essential, more essential, than water pipes. The house must
cultivate a ghost. It must have a peacock with a spread tail, a fish
pond, full of hoary carp, a raven that would say “nevermore.”
He was full of amusing sentiment. He bought his bread at Mackary’s, the
confectioner’s near Bernard Street. It was a queer old shop. Orchard
said that it reminded him of Hogarth. Of course he had the greatest
possible contempt for Hogarth--but he liked the faint flavor of hoops
and beauty patches which hung about Mackary’s.
Mackary’s business, so it is said above the door, was founded in 1712.
The shop window was bow-fronted and had small square panes. Behind
these panes were home-baked puffs and Banburys, straight glass bottles
full of pink lozenges or sponge fingers. Mackary kept up the traditions
of his house. He still made a feature of a special cake said to have
been a favorite with Queen Charlotte, and he ignored French pastry.
Miss Mackary kept the books, and wrote poetry after the shutters were
up. Mrs. Mackary was plump, wore a lace cap, and had house property in
her own right near Tarn’s. They were superior people. Orchard willingly
paid a halfpenny more on the half-quartern loaf for the privilege of
stepping in with the assured air of a regular customer. He never paid
his bill, so that it really made no difference. He used to sit and eat
Queen Charlotte’s cakes and talk poetry with Miss Mackary. They were
all very civil to him--he used to say that nothing demoralized a
tradesman more than cash payment.
I don’t know why I tell you of Whiffin, of the Mackarys, of Orchard’s
crazy architectural ideas--they have nothing to do with the story. But
they will prove to you what a harmless simpleton he was before he took
set 7, before the advent of Hopkins.
Hopkins had the set on the other side of the landing--the right-hand
side as you go up. Orchard took the one on the left, he moved there
from a ground floor in the other square. Set 7 was cheaper--that
baleful set, which held at different times the tragedies of Orion, of
Jimmy, of Stapley.
No one had ever seen Hopkins, he was said to be abroad. Therefore it
surprised me when Orchard said casually, with faint annoyance, that his
neighbor across the landing was a nuisance; he came in late and made an
awful row taking off his boots.
I didn’t see Orchard for two or three months after this. It was
astounding when next I went up to his rooms to see that Hopkins’ name
was painted out from the oak on the right-hand set and bracketed with
Orchard’s name on the left. There it was, as plain as white paint on a
black door could make it:
MR. D. B. ORCHARD.
MR. GEOFFREY HOPKINS.
I was surprised, I was also interested; no one had ever seen Hopkins.
No one particularly wanted to. Still, as I waited for Orchard to let me
in, I had a languid curiosity to know what his co-tenant was like.
Orchard was not looking well. He didn’t talk in his usual airy,
sweeping way. There were no new daubs on the wall. When I said, with a
look round the room:
“What’s this about Hopkins?” he jerked his head toward the bedroom
wall, with the cautious remark:
“Don’t speak so loudly: he’s in the bedroom. Hopkins! Oh! he’s all
right. We thought it more convenient for him to come here. Great
authority on Italian art; subject I’m interested in, as you know.”
I didn’t know, but I waited on, chatting in rather a strained way, and
expecting Hopkins--who never came out of the bedroom. Orchard wasn’t
conversational that night. He let every subject I started flaccidly
drop. He wanted perpetually winding up. His accustomed dogmatic manner
had quite deserted him. He didn’t bring out his sketchbook. He talked
disjointedly of Hopkins. I must come in some other night and look over
Hopkins’ books on Italian art--thirteenth century principally. It was
quite a valuable collection. Hopkins played the violin. That was his
fiddle case in the corner. To hear him play Rubinstein’s “Melody in F”
was a genuine musical treat.
Other men noticed the change in Orchard. Some said that he was drinking
too much beer; others that he was in love with Miss Mackary, who had
produced a true degenerate poem. He was not sociable, rarely came out,
and took to sporting his oak. He said that he and Hopkins were deep in
thirteenth-century Italian art, and had no time for anything else. They
were writing a book on it. No one ever saw Hopkins. I, living
immediately underneath, never heard his violin.
It was about this time that Orchard took to making me his father
confessor. He was always admitting small sins. He came in one night and
said earnestly:
“You know we were playing ha’penny nap at Green’s last Wednesday. Yes.
Well, I didn’t put in the pool. It worries me. It was a mean trick,
wasn’t it? Green kept saying, ‘Tit up,’ and I--I didn’t. Nobody
noticed. It was pretty late. I feel ashamed of myself. What can I do?”
“I don’t know that you can do anything now,” I returned, staring at his
anxious face.
“It was a mean, dirty trick,” he said despairingly. “I must have
cheated you fellows first and last out of two bob. What can I do?”
“You can’t do anything. What--what does Hopkins think? How is Hopkins,
by the way? Quiet kind of fellow, isn’t he? Why don’t you bring him
down some night?”
“Hopkins! Oh! he’s a regular recluse. Steeped to his eyes in Italian
art. Plays well, doesn’t he?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never heard him.”
Orchard looked at me in perplexity.
“Never heard him! That’s odd. Why, he was practicing until one this
morning.”
Another night he came in, his pocket bulging with a book. He sat down
in my saddle-bag chair with a groan. His face was clammy with emotion.
“I’ve--I’ve stolen this book,” he said, bringing out a fat volume with
lots of plates. “Couldn’t help it for the life of me. What on earth am
I to do? It was on a stall in front--that shop at the corner of the
Turnstile. They’ll run me in. What do you advise?”
“That’s a matter for Hopkins. It’s on Italian art, isn’t it? The plates
look good; no doubt he’ll be delighted. All’s fair in love and
collecting, you know--but the policeman doesn’t admit that. I wouldn’t
do it again.”
The third time I happened to go up to him. He answered the door to my
knock. For a moment, before he recognized me, there was blank horror on
his once carelessly cynical face.
“Hopkins in?” I asked, with a comprehensive movement of the head.
Hopkins was a nuisance, although--perhaps _because_--one never saw him.
I had more than once asked Orchard why he had taken in an odd, churlish
chap like that, and he had answered, in a short, matter-of-fact way,
that it was a perfectly natural selection--they had tastes in common.
That night he said, looking very relieved:
“Hopkins is out.”
We went into the sitting room. Before he sat down he added, with a
vague, troubled stare about the place:
“Hopkins is a very untidy chap. He leaves his things about.”
He made an irritable movement with his hands about the bare, big table
in the middle of the room--and only shifted the evening paper. Then he
threw himself into the easy chair on the opposite side of the hearth,
and I brought out my tobacco pouch.
“I’m going from bad to worse,” he broke out, but retaining enough
presence of mind to hand me a box of matches and an ash tray.
“I paid something on account of Mackary’s bill to-day--with a bad
sovereign. But that isn’t all. I picked that picture up in a
saleroom--put it under my arm and walked away, you know. I believe it
is a ‘Simms.’” He looked gloatingly at a dark, little oil on the wall.
“And I--I stole ten pounds from my young nephew. He gave it me to buy a
bicycle--and I’ve spent every penny.”
“These confidences are becoming oppressive,” I said. “So long as you
restricted yourself to not putting in the pool, it didn’t matter so
much. Cheating at cards may be one form of moral protest. Stealing
books and pictures is simply an overflow of artistic enthusiasm.
But passing bad sovereigns and spending other people’s money is
reprehensible--to say nothing of its being idiotic. You’ll get found
out, arrested, ruined. My dear fellow, you are suffering from a severe
attack of crime. Crime is merely an infectious disease, like the
measles; all sensible people admit that nowadays. Some of us have it;
some escape. Occasionally there is an epidemic--look what a run there
often is in a certain form of murder. You must see a doctor. It seems
to me that you have only developed the attack since Hopkins----”
He stopped me with an eager wave of his unsteady hand.
“Hopkins,” he began excitedly, “Hopkins! Good Heavens!”--he stopped,
then concluded calmly, with a sort of mechanical cordiality toward the
other man--“Hopkins is a very good fellow.”
A couple of mornings later I met him in the square. He had developed a
peculiar walk; several men had commented on it. He seemed to be
painfully trying to keep step with someone. Occasionally he threw a
hunted, conciliating look over his shoulder. Sometimes he started off
in a spasmodic trot, and then pulled up as if it were no use to
struggle, and tried to keep step again. He meant to pass me with a nod,
but I stepped in front of him and took his hand. He looked round,
started, stared across the square, and then said:
“Excuse me for not having introduced you to Hopkins. Don’t think it
strange of him to make off like that. He’s a student, you see, very
retiring and preoccupied.”
“Hopkins!”
“Yes, there he goes--that man with a pronounced stoop, a Norfolk
jacket, and a soft hat.”
The square was absolutely empty except for Orchard and me. There was no
man with a stoop and a Norfolk jacket anywhere in sight; there never
had been. Orchard, with his halting, timid walk, had crossed the square
alone, had come out of his own doorway alone. Absolutely alone. I had
watched him. I had never taken my eyes off him, from first to last. I
took his arm.
“Come over to No. 2 and see Harrowsmith,” I entreated. “You don’t look
well. He’ll give you a tonic. Perhaps you’re smoking too much--don’t
believe in a pipe myself. There isn’t half so much harm in a mild
cigarette.”